Out of all the factions in the fallout series, there is none that I have utterly gone to despise as the Railroad.

When the RR was one of the factions announced as joinable, I thought I would enjoy them. I thought it'd be me and them taking the fight to the Institute as guerillas. However, what I instead got was a bunch of hypocritical, short-sighted, fanatical lunatics who would sooner see the Commonwealth burn than have anything actually happen to their synths, though their actions pretty much show they only care about synths that support them.

For starters on some of my problems with the RR, here they are

1) They make the Commonwealth an objectively unsafe place

Out of all the factions, they are the only ones who provide absolutely nothing of value to stabilize the Commonwealth. The MM and BOS both protect the Commonwealth after their endings and the SS can be headcanoned as making reforms to better help the Commonwealth after the Institute ending. The RR however could care less about the Commonwealth as they only care about synths. There are no patrols stopping the various threats to the wasteland from killing innocent settlers, nothing stopping synths from becoming raiders just like what happens after the MM ending where you get radiant quests to kill a synth who has become a raider leader, and the BOS obviously can't protect the Commonwealth as you blew up the Prydwen with them. Furthermore, the MM aren't as effective as they don't have to renown of being the ones who defeated the Institute, so less people are likely to join them, plus they don't have checkpoints throughout the CW so the CW is definitely less safe. Furthermore, Father essentially says that the BOS will want revenge so that's why he has you destroy the BOS in the way its is done in the Institue ending. However, nothing like that happens in the RR ending so the BOS will likely return to seek vengeance and wind up starting war with the CW which will likely cost many lives.

2) They are hypocrites

The RR continues to show how much it svcks with their plans for the Institute. First, they plan on destroying the Institute which means no more synths are created, thereby dooming synths to a slow extinction since they can't reproduce. Second, once they actually beat the Institute and manage to sneak all synths to safety, their entire point for existence is gone and thus they will have to disband. Furthermore, they don't really care about gen 1 and 2 synths or even gen 3's that don't support them. This is shown by the fact that the RR doesn't order you to sound the evacuation or even call you out if you don't evacuate. Considering the fact that if you evacuate, Des says that lots of synths are flooding into their safehouses, that pretty much means that the RR doesn't care about synths that don't support them and is perfectly willing to murder them for not supporting them. This gets hypocritical when you consider they are supposed to save synths, and the fact that Des turns the RR hostile on you if you don't evacuate in a MM ending but doesn't care if you don't evacuate in a RR ending. They are hypocrites through and through.

3) They are fanatics

This one just proves why killing them was one of the best things I did. When the Prydwen first arrives, the RR knows they want to kill synths and already plans on murdering them all. They haven't even interacted yet and the RR already plans on killing them all. Furthermore, they are willing to betray the only person in the Institute who wants to help them and lies to his face as they plan on murdering all of his friends and family where he commits suicide and calls you out on being such backstabbing [censored]s in his suicide note. Then Des has the gall to tell you to cover up his death as an accident and have his funeral say he was always a loyal and supportive member of the RR. That scene is what made me glad to murder all those fanatical imbeciles.

Who else feels the same and why do you hate the RR?

I thought I would love them and that they will be my go to faction. But after some quest with them, they would have been better off as a minor faction. The Commonwealth has no change if they win aside from the Synths being more free.

But I don't see how the Commonwealth as a whole benefits from it, the Minutemen and BoS(maybe the Institute too? Never tried that ending) have checkpoints and protect the people.

Glad you took me up on my offer. Pissing on the Railroad never gets old!

A few minor quibbles.

Not sure how the bolded part makes them hypocrites. They may not have thought things through or have a long term plan for Synths (which is a problem), but that isn't the same as hypocrisy. The other stuff, yes.

To be fair, the Brotherhood of Steel has already made excursions into the Commonwealth before the decided to go full on invasion, so it's more than likely that they have had an encounter at one point or another prior to all this.

But yes, I despise the Railroad. They talk about Synths being equal to humans, but clearly place more value on Synths (at least those loyal [programed?] to their cause), and don't give a damn about the earlier models. They also undermine themselves by giving Synths fake identities. People are paranoid of Synths because they blend in and replace people. So suppose one of the Railroad's rescued Synths gets killed. All of a sudden, people think the Synths are replacing people, increasing the paranoia and bigotry towards Synths. The Institute might actually be replacing people with Synths, but I think the Railroad's actions have artificially inflated the number of times it's "happened" in the peoples' minds.

And for what? Having them undercover as humans is going to fail eventually. They can't have kids and they don't age, so within 5 years or so (depending on what the age the chassis seems to have), they're going to be discovered as a Synth and brutally murdered because the lack of transparency makes people distrust them.

So the one group the Railroad is supposedly helping, it actually hurts.

I knew I wasn't going to support them even before the game came out, but after seeing what they are I just dislike them even more.

Yeah, The Institute does have checkpoints.

The Commonwealth is worse off if they win. Even realistically, they should never have won. It's very unrealistic if they won over the other two groups, the Institute wiped out all their bases, and the BoS knows exactly where their HQ located with bigger troops and higher firepower. The only reason why they're appeared to be the "nice" group out of the 3 factions is to make up for how incompetent they are. They don't care about synths after being freed. They don't care about what kind of memories being given to the synths. You can totally blame them for synths become raiders because the memories being given to the synths are pretty crappy. What Danse pissed off the most about being is synth is the fact that they don't even bother to give him a happy memory, he was basically an orphan with no one to love him, no siblings, no parents, growing up alone, having to fend for himself. Is this the kind of memories you want to give to a synth that want a new life? Maybe if they're more responsible with the memories being given then some of them wouldn't have turned into raiders. They're living in the moment, none of them cares about consequence. They're short-sighted and all the damages they deal to the Commonwealth are all byproduct of their actions is even more infuriating since they can't be held accountable for the end results. They can't be held accountable if the synths go rogue even though they give them terrible and half-ass memories, they can't be accountable for destroying the technology because the Institute is evil, they can't be accountable for the BoS being destroyed and future retaliation because they're just responding to the attacks, they can't be accountable for creating chaos because synth freedom. Basically, they're ignorant and their actions make it in a way that they can't be held accountable for because they have good intentions.

In their defense, Gen 1 and 2 synths seem capable of at least some amount of abstract thought... and what the hell are you supposed to do with robots like KL-E-O, Ironsides, or Codsworth, who have their own goals and motivations?

And I don't see how them "losing" their purpose by taking down the Institute is a point against them. They've fulfilled their purpose. They just need to wrap up with the remaining synths, and then they can move on. Why is that a bad thing? They're not supposed to be a huge faction with a longterm goal for the Commonwealth, like the other groups.

I agree with the second point, but I don't see how the first is a point in their favor. How is them being indifferent to less human looking Synths a positive about them?

The give me Ballistic Weave......that is pretty much all they are good for in my opinion, I'm still trying to come up with a reason to complete a playthrough with them as the victors since it leaves me in the same place as a Brotherhood victory, no new Synths ever and since the Brotherhood makes no attempts to round up existing Gen-3 Synths already in the population both end with existing Synths being left alone.

So a Railroad victory, puts me in the same position with the long term threat of Synths ended and just minus a large force guarding my home base and the loss of several radiant quests.

As I've said in other threads, I could support their cause if they were unrelentingly pro-synth freedom as they claim to be, human sacrifices or not, but the fact is they utterly thwart synth freedom. You're a synth and don't want to leave your safe and comfortable home in the Institute? Too bad. You'll die to the wasteland dangers or vengeful Commonwealth citizens if you're displaced? Stuff happens. You've been made a courser but the Institute blows up and ceases to give you orders that make you a threat? PAM will still send someone to kill you, svcks to be you.

I genuinely feel like the synths as a species are better off in the Institute ending.

Sound like a pretty irresponsible group to me. They're short sighted, and once their goal is achieved, everything is worse off because of them. Even after synths are free, which are in the hundreds at most, they can't hide being a synth forever, eventually, people will find out, and the distrust grows or they may get murdered right away. They have no long term goal for the synths and what may happen. Sound like a bunch of idealistic fools.

Glory stated herself that she wouldn't shoot synth-1 and synth-2, but Glory would always use killing humans as the first action. Yeah, that really makes me want to help them. If RR people wants me to consider synths and humans as equal then they shouldn't treat synths as better than humans.

Well, you could always get the Ballsitic Weave then dump their ass. BoS becomes the protector, you are the sentinel and second highest in Command, with Maxson going back to the Capital, you are pretty much in control. RR would disappear in every ending anyway, so killing them or not have no consequence. BoS also has data on the Institute and the Liberty Prime, so they also have the technology and troops to defend the Commonwealth and the research data could yield good result for the biology department of the BoS. Both Institute and BoS have good and bad sides to them, but they can generally be viewed as good, nothing the RR does or the aftereffect indicate any good can come of it.

Well, the BoS also gets PAM, so you don't lose out on anything if you side with the RR long enough for the Ballistic Weave and get PAM on the ship.

Feel sorry for PAM though since Proctor Quinlan is a jerk and pretty much abuses PAM.

I didn't know about this and decided to look it up and watched a video on it. [censored] Desdemona.

Prior to release I didn't think to highly of them. I thought all they would bring to the plot was the typical "FREE MY PEOPLE" shenanigans and all of that cheesy stuff I wasn't interested in. However, upon meeting them, the faction sort of grew on me. I enjoyed the way the operated with secrecy with the code names and secret phrases, liked some of the characters, and sympathized with the synths well enough to support their cause. The question of what exactly they could contribute to the Commonwealth and putting synths above all else however lingered in the back of my mind, and it was upon meeting the Institute that these thoughts came forward and I ultimately decided the Railroad was not worth siding with, nor keeping around.

After having completed the game with the Institute, I loaded a previous save to see what Nuclear Option was like with the Railroad and by the end of it, I felt awful and I was sick of the Railroad. I felt I more so doomed the Commonwealth at the hands of a nonsensical and ludicrous faction, rather than having saved it. There was no good future to be provided with the Railroad, not even for the synths.

I did with my BOS playthrough, so for my second playthrough dealing with the MM is just annoying and the Railroad are pretty much a wasted effort so Institute it is, although I'm going to have to go full dark side to make it work for me, none of this doing for the Synths sake nonsense.

Actually that would have been an ending that made sense to me, the Railroad taking control of the Institute to truly liberate the Synths rather than just doing almost exactly what they apparently hate the BOS for planning to do.

You can the Minutemen ending pretty easily by loading up an old save and just kill a named Institute character like Justin Ayo or insult Father when you first meet him. Then all you need to do is talk to Preston to start the missions that lead up to the Nuclear Option.