Yeah, another nagging question......

Tell me how Colonel Autumn can just tell the Enclave's human forces to just "ignore" President Eden's orders. I mean am I confused about how the whole Colonel/President thing works? What's more, is that the human soldiers ACTUALLY LISTENED! WTF? If President Eden was that easily overridden, then why was he even necessary in the first place?

"Many people are content with a reassuring voice of authority, and never question the lack of public appearances."
- President JH Eden

That's why, Eden has been in-charge for 30 years and nobody question having seen him. Autumn comes on and says that the Prisoner who was going to meet the President is to be shot-on-sight. What's the more likely thought process for the troops?

"I guess Autumn's defecting from the President and we should join him."

or the more likely.

"[censored], the outsiders turned hostile, the President must be being taken to saftey; shoot on sight."

It's pretty clear to me, the troopers follow orders from their superiors largely un-questioningly and there's pretty plausible scenarios for what they could have thought was going on as opposed to immediately assuming that Autumn was going rouge. They're not going to stand around questioning orders when there's an apparently hostile wastelander spy in their home, possibly running amongst the civilian populace, gathering intelligence, sabotage and such.

I never thought of it in that light. Your response was actually very informative. Thanks! Now, I can finally give my brain the answer it wants!

Please... I'm just doing my job sir .

That's an overly bias 'Eden is right Autumn is wrong' arguement. A soldier's primary directive is 'to obey the orders of those appointed over me'. To add to this, Eden played the spineless route and decided to instead of announce Autumn as going rogue, to sacrifice the lives of his soldiers to 'test' you. (He even states this as well.) So for all they knew, the President had changed his mind and directed Autumn to kill the Lone Wanderer, seeing as the President gave no directive to the contrary. The Enclave soldiers and civilians are brainwashed from birth to obey their superior unquestioningly, what makes a better soldier than a fanatically loyal and unquestioning one?

Er... isn't that what I just said. I don't even like Eden and came to realisation that he didn't counter-mand Autumn ages ago, he's a piece-of-[censored] alongside Autumn - I guess you can blame some of it on him being a computer and inherantly impersonal as opposed to Autumn who's just a self-serving [censored]. I still hate them both. Eden bias indeed, that's just what happened; there's a precident for them following orders, Eden gives an order and then Autumn comes on and gives a new one - it's only logical to assume that they supposed Autumn had some kind of authority and that the reason for Eden's silence was that he had been removed to a safer location as opposed to the truth.

I don't think so, I think they just didn't realise Autumn was 'throwing Eden out of office'. I'm prone to sentiment for Autumn, even giving mercy to him at the Purifier. But ultimately, Autumn is overly idealising the Enclave. The idea of the Enclave EVER coexisiting peacefully with 'Wasteland Trash' is laughable because the Enclave is a racist organisation, judging others based on their genetic structure. He's chasing a pipe dreaming that would never be because the Enclave's naive 'purity' is their version of the Codex, an outdated concept impeding their progress. Look at the Enclave integrators in New Vegas, they've survived in the wastes and surivived just fine. Maybe the world isnt perfect, but it IS livable for 'Pure Strains'.

There is absolutely nothing to suggest that, not only do you admit that Eden has built a very successful cult-of-personality around himself (with some Enclave Troopers last words being "For Eden...") but also Raven Rock is entirely under his constant visual and audio supervision; you think that Autumn could possibly organise any kind of secret uprising there? Not only that but when your talking to Eden his wording suggests that this is the first overt action that Autumn has taken against him ("Now that he's openly countermanding my orders") and I can't accept that anykind of largel popular resistance with Raven Rock of all places could take place.

It makes so much more sense that Autumn simply used the popular consensus to his own ends to combat the perceived threat that the Lone Wanderer presented, what-ever that was (baring in mind that Autumn was sincerely of the belief that Eden had abandonned the Project); who knows actually, combined with his denial at the Purifier that Eden would ever betray him, his defence that he's operating in the chain-of-command maybe he did what he did thinking that he was helping Eden; it seems clear from the Purifier that he never considers his actions as a hostilities against Eden.

“Eden betrayed you. See this vial? He trusts me more than he trusts you.”

“That’s not true. That plan was abandoned months ago. He would never go behind my back!”

“But you know he has. He sent me to do a job that you wouldn’t.”

“You could have stolen the vial… it means nothing. It proves nothing.”


“Why are you doing this? Why give your allegiance to a machine?”

“I am sworn to protect the Presidency. The chain of command must be upheld. I wouldn’t expect you to understand.”

In-fact yeah it makes total sense, he either thought that the Lone Wanderer was going to take his place with Eden or that Eden himself had been fooled into trusting the Lone Wanderer whom in reality presented a threat.


Quite frankly Autumn started the chain-of-events that got everyone in Raven Rock killed, everyone under his command at the Purifier killed and then he gets the chance to walk away?

“You’ve already won. Allow me to leave with some dignity.”

[censored] off Autumn, you don't get any dignity you imcompetant, selfish [censored].

In come the conspiracy theories and assumptions about a faction I find droll and boring and don't care about, out goes the Colonel.

Oh but if House says that he was going to build spaceships he's clearly just giving a metaphorical example of his potential capabilities in 100 years?

It's left to either open interpretation, or at the least it's an idealisation of 'Progress could bring us the chance for new life'. But I don't overlook into it like a certain someone who quotes political propaganda to prove their theories on the Enclave.

When have I ever used political propaganda - that's otherwise unjustifyable to - prove a point? And overlook? It was only yesterday that you were bringing your own musings on capitalism and meritocracy into things were they were completely un-connected, talking about the 1% and such.

Actually, it is connected, but seeing as this this thread about the Enclave, me going into in this thread would just be going offtopic and risking a warning.