I was wondering lorewise just how many vertibirds did the Brotherhood of Steel send for the invasion of the Commonwealth. We know from BoS NPCs that Maxson turned the eastern BoS into a true military power in less then ten years and that they managed to build the Prydwen in only six years so i'll imagine they could easily had build swarms of vertibirds in Adam's air base.

Well apparently there was a sale on sheets of plastic explosive soaked in petrol, so they use that to make their vertibirds.

Actually, I wonder if they "get better over time?" (not to say the stats change, but just the probability that a BoS scene results in one crashing and burning)

For the first few in game days (dozens of play hours) after I came out of the fort and the BoS presence was visible, I noticed seemingly most vertibirds crash and burn.

Here lately, seems like it has been a while since I've seen or heard one crash. Also it seems like more often now, they drop off two armored soldiers and then leave.

Lore wise a couple dozen and they would be devastating in the fallout world.

Gameplay wise an infinite amount with lo health values so the player stands a chance against them.

I reckon that, canonically, the Brotherhood only brought a dozen or so. Of course those dozen would basically be flying tanks that should require the most powerful of weaponry to bring down. They wouldn't be the paper airplanes that we see in Fallout 4.

You do realise building a complex rotory wing aircraft is much,much more complex than building a blimp with few engines strraqed to its side, so the answer how many vertiberds has Washington Dc chapter of BOS build lore wise wud most likely be 0, (they wud need plans,proper automated factory facilities etc...) So lore wise realistical numbers wud be like 10-20 max.(basicly a large portion of whatever they got from the base when you took it in Fo3)

Ofcourse here is where lore/gameplay separation comes into play because ofcourse the numbers of all non unique(named) enemies in the actual game is infinite. And as some others have pointed out already they are weak in vanilla game for a simple reason of you being able to take them on even at lower lvls, with crap weapons. Now i also see lots of people overeastimating how tough should they be, in essence Vertiberd is support/transport craft and such should be resistant to small arms fire but thats about it.

Not enough. From the videos I have seen they do not last long and have a habit of crashing. I guess the pilots are kamikaze's. I have not had a character get far enough in over 100 game hours to get to the point of seeing any of them flying.

Vanquishing their enemies by raining burning vertibird wreckage down upon their heads is a questionable warfighting strategy, but they are really committed to it, huh?

I choose to belive after they figured out how to make their own vertibirds they just ended up being inferior to the enclave made ones. At least thats an excuse for why their so flimsy compared to the last games.

But of course. Bos was always inferior to Enclave and will be.

The Enclave that has been completely wiped out, this last time by the Brothethood of Steel? I'm not so sure about that "always will be" part.

Unlimited vertabirds because enemies respawn and PAM in the railroad has quests for killing vertabirds that never end

Correction, the enclave that was wiped out by us and Liberty Prime. Not Bos. They can't even deal with a gang of raiders, let alone Enclave. Also, you don't know wether they are completely wiped out or not.

The LW is part of the Brotherhood. Plus, like it or not, Fallout 4 confirms that they helped take on the Enclave at Adams AF Base without Optimus Prime. And yes, considering that the Enclave was never a large group, and that their main base has been complete destroyed, I'm fairly confident that they've been wiped out as a faction that matters. There are likely remnants, but nothing organized enough to take on the Brotherhood.

I'm not sure where you get that the BoS can't take on raiders. They cleared the Pitt and the Capital Wasteland, and are better equipped and trained than any raiders.

This is why I modded for hardier vertibirds. They still die way too much.

I will say I am disappointed in these vertibirds. I was expecting some tough fights against these like in Fallout 3. The Enclave ones were tough. You couldn't take them down with a pistol or a couple grenades. I remember soaking them with a gatling gun for who knows how many rounds before one would blow up in FO3.

So... I think the BoS has an infinite number of these paper birds.

There are outposts in Chicago, yet you said completely wiped out so I was correcting you. Plus you can't go around saying not organized enough when we don't know in what state these outpost are, you ain't bethesda.

Yes, with OUR help.

I remember taking them down with a single shot of Tesla canon.

Yeah.... how many recon squads have they lost over the years? First recon squad they send to Commonwealth, boom, few members get ambushed and killed by raiders.

I had ran into 2 vertibirds that followed me giving me cover fire through the entire east side of the map. Was awesome. Id idle and they circled points of interest tag teaming things. We wiped out gunners on a bridge super mutants in a town and raiders in build. Best vertibirds ever

Well, they lose five every hour, by the time they show up i continue the game for at least 40 hours, that's real time, timescale i set to 12, so...
5*40*12
So at least 2400