One way I imagine hydroponic farming to take place in vaults is similar to the native south americans technic.
Using floating beds on which natural waste products are put on as fertilizer, after a period of time they sink through and return to the indoors lake.
Able to be dredged up in a near constant cycle, combined with proper lighting, and sewage this could be a very friendly way to supply large long term demands imo.

Maybe it's not a hydroponic chamber, giant food storage, live stock, cannibalism, gardens, underground connections to pre-war grocers, maybe the developers of Fallout didn't take this into consideration and hoped you guys weren't smart enough or as investigative as you are.

:rofl: spot on very true.

" I know what lets make it microwave ovens that you tell what you want and it makes it out of thin air with a beep, cause thats *SCIENCE*".

Allways trust that all rpg, fantasy, sci-fi, cult and gamers are smart arses and are allways right.

Soylent Green!

The Lone Wanderer can mention to Moira something about food dispensers, if they choose to say something about the Vault for her book.

I...am going the route of Science! and will theorize that maybe they use a matter converter to convert stored energy/compounds into imitations of food. Synthetic foodstuffs, if you will. And when the LW talks to Butch, he flings an insult about his mother using up all the ration coupons on Vodka (random: you can get three bottles of vodka from her room during the escape) again. So they probably have rations on the foodstuffs that is harder to replicated.

Hydroponics and vat grown genetically modified meat managed by an automated system beyond the control of anyone but the overseer would probably be the correct solution. Recycled human waste and stocks of fertilizers could be used to keep specially designed facilities like a vault operating indefinately. Things like this have been designed and experiments have been carried out with self-contained environments capable of sustaining humans in preperation for long term space exploration. It wouldn't be hard to imagine that technology like this exists in the Fallout world, in fact it is probably what makes the scenario possible at all.

In the manual of the first Fallout, hydro-agricultural farms were listed as one of the standard equipment for the vaults. That is where they get their food from.

Was reading the Vault Dweller's Memoirs just before and found this