Do the characters really carry so much around in Caps?

Because, especially in the case of the richer residents of the Mojave Wastland, that would be a lot of weight and bulk to carry around.

I mean where would you even fit over 12,000(enough to buy one of the more expensive weapons some traders sell) bottle caps on you?

Even though you must sell your Pre-War Money, $NCR, Aureus, and Denarius for caps to effectively use them as currency, it would only make sense that people would carry around a combination of the currency types (Pre war money excluded) using caps as change.

With 12,000 caps worth of money that would be most efficiently carried around as 120 Aureus, or 300 $100 NCR notes.

The exchange rate seems to be
$2.5 NCR = 1 Cap
One Denarius = 4 caps
And
one Aureus = 100 caps

I just answered my own question... Oh well I typed too to just delete it all.

I'm guessing people don't carry all the caps around individually like the UI implies. I could imagine people gluing ten caps together in a stack, then bundling them up in stacks of five or ten for easier counting, for example. But yeah, there are some mods which add weight to bottlecaps.

I'd briefly wondered about this too, and then stopped because it made my head hurt.

I tried to apply some flimsy logic to the cap situation for my own sanity:

The Fallout currency is Caps, such as we here have dollars/pounds etc. When a person here for example has ￡100 it doesent mean they're carrying around 100 pound coins. Maybe allthough the Currency in Fallout is caps there are different denominations for caps, and the game designers just chose not to go into such detail?
For all we know there could be different colors of caps that equate to different values? Like gambling chips, perhaps?

Ideally just having a barter system to get items would have made more sense, but I suppose a currency was essential because I imagine game play would get a bit tedious if you had to cart several thousand packages of cigarettes across the wasteland just to get enough ammo to kill a deathclaw.

Good question

In Fallout 1 when collecting them from dead enemies they wear stored in little pouches as the little picture indicated and in New Vegas on the Roving Traders Outfit there a little cylinders at the waist and chest(?) that I believe they use to carry/store their caps but no one ever seems to have that much bar the PC and the odd trader who is behind a counter.

From what I understand, Nuka Cola caps and Sunset Sarsaparilla are the only caps accepted as currency. Maybe caps from say, Nuka Cola Quartz or Nuka Cola Quantum are worth more than caps from regular Nuka Cola or Sunset Sarsaparilla.

I support the idea of in the way that you have ￡100, but instead of carrying around 100 ￡1 coins you'd carry around a ￡100 note, you'd have 1,000 caps, but instead of carrying around caps you carry a combination of $NCR notes and Legion Coins.

It's kind of pointless to try and place logic on this game. Apparently injecting a syringe into your face will help you see better, its best to just ignore logic and play the game.

Now, have you actually never injected a syringe into your face? I can vouch for that being just like Real Life.

That's doing the game a disservice. The world building in Fallout (at least West Coast Fallout) is damn good and usually internally consistent, even if the game mechanics don't reflect reality exactly (nor would you want them to).

Players don't want to micromanage different denominations of caps so the game doesn't make you do it. That's all.

I'm not trying to insult the game and I love the retro feel of it all. There are some concessions the designers have to make, but I'm not saying that I don't like the unrealistic mechanics it. I love that stimpaks can be used to cure any injury and bottle caps of all things are used as currency.

It didn't used to be that way.


In the series, Bottle caps were not really currency, they were a means to even up a trade (though the casinos accepted them in the slots and at the tables). I would have liked if they penalized 'Sneak' based on how many caps the PC was hauling.

**Stimpacks curing crippled limbs was a mistake IMO... prior to that the series made a rather strict distinction between flesh wounds and crippling or blinding; Obsidian fixed this in NV (when playing HC mode only).

I think hardcoe + the limb damage system is superior to the damage system in F1/F2 personally. Getting crippled limbs only when you suffered a critical failure or took a critical hit always felt a little disjointed.

There are probably more soft drinks out there that are currency related as well. Jus not in Fallout 3 or New Vegas

If you notice on the tables when gambling there are many different coins counting as caps. Caps is more a word for money than a word for dollar when you find 5 caps that could be a nickel (prewar) though yes you end up carrying more caps than you should but unless they made an exchange you would never be able to buy anything "good"