I have Verizon, and with my grandfathered unlimited data plan, I would have to pay $30 bucks a month to allow my device to be tethered. It also wouldn't surprise me if they cap the data allowed for tethering, I could maybe try it for a month(depending on how much data they allow for tethering, could be pointless) or I can try to download Fo4 to my phone and transfer it to my comp.

As I said in a previous post.. they really wouldn't need to withhold that much to keep you from playing the game and keep others from cracking it. The executable, some install setup files, dll files. , ..

I doubt you'll really have to download that much to play the game. (unless there's a day one patch.. then you might.)

You are probably right, not many missing files is needed to not be able to crack but... i just had a thought: since the game uses same engine and filetypes like skyrim, i think a lot of people have made third party file loaders or something like that and they could dig up a lot of info from the game files. So maybe they didnt include the esm files that include characters, quest, locations and all that good stuff. It would be a spoilfest

do i need to have money on steam or a previous purchase to download?

i know there are some limitations if you don't have 5$ or something on your account

Just as a suggestion, but if you know anyone else who uses Steam and who has also pre-ordered the game, could you not just get them to create a backup of the game files and put this onto an external device? As long as you've also purchased the game yourself, Steam should allow to to install from ANY backup. I know this because my son owns many of the same games that I do, and this is how I installed most of his games without having to download them twice.