I finally did the USS Constitution quest line last night and I loved it. I took the side of the robots and wiped out the scavengers when they objected to me taking that circuit board out of their complex lol.

And final battle when they boarded the ship was really fun too.

I had no idea you could still get on the ship when it landed on top of a building in down town. I actually found out by experimenting to see if I could still reach it.

Really loved it, too, when I first did it, also killed the scavengers.

Ya I have never sided with the scavengers, I would like to know if anyone ever has.

You can go to the top of the building, you even get an cabin on the ship if you go back and talk to the robots.

And yes it was an fun quest,

I didn't want to side with the scavengers, but Piper's comments made me doubt. So I saved and sided with the scavengers first.

This is one time I shouldn't have minded Piper, felt much better siding with the robots - and it was funny as hell!

I found various aspects of the first one to be slightly annoying, but overall enjoyed it; haven't followed up to go visit them at their new mooring. Pretty lawl moment when it hit the other building.

The overall theme of the quest is a hoot, the voice actors are generally quite good and the artwork is great. Most of the little errands you run in the quest are not too bad. Pretty decent balance between, stuff that you might be able to do right here and now, and stuff that requires you to go out wandering. Some of the dialogues are pretty humorous too.

The two or three things that stuck out to me as annoying:

1. The scripted battles: I actually reloaded a couple times on both of these and not because I "failed" it was because the behavior of the robots _caused_ me to fail. I think they either ran in front of my shot, or got hit by an explosion. A fairly small complaint, but it always annoys me when I behave as I've learned works in a game (based on hundreds of hours) and then find that the AI behavior and/or enemy-friend-friendly fire tolerance is slightly different. They are not "allies" so I don't expect them to be completely oblivious to friendly fire, but one little ding and suddenly the robots are completely oblivious to the scavengers and attacking only me!? Annoying.

2. I found the ship itself to be very confusing to get in to. Probably just my own bad that I didn't look up at the end of that gangplank.

3. The broadsider seems pretty lame. Maybe I've made my toon too OP, but I have a legendary gauss rifle that does 505 damage. Given I use it as a sniper rifle and will generally be getting sneak bonuses (plus stacking psycho, overdrive, jet fuel, ultrajet, etc.) whatever the Broadsider does (even souped up to max) I found to be very underwhelming.

4. Maybe I didn't pay close enough attention, but I didn't find the explanation for why these robots are on this rocket-powered "sailing ship" to be very engaging, much less believable. It almost seems like it was just a "Ha! Wouldn't it be cool to have rocket-powered sailing ship with robots manning it and speaking in 18th century dialect and fighting for the U.S. Army?

Given how much trouble they went to to put apparently trivial bits of useless information on terminals all over the Commonwealth, I would think that creating a bit of a backstory to this thing would've been doable.

Yes one of my favorite quests. My only real disappointment was that the quest did not continue. I would of liked to help them get all the way to the water and watched them sail off

Ironsides is Property of the United States Navy and has chosen to defend the Constitution with the Constitution

You know what'd be really awesome? An expanded Robots faction, with a questline that ends up with you taking the fully flight-capable Constitution up against the Prydwen, making flypasts as you exchange broadsides.

Is it just me or does Captain Ironsides sound a bit like Darth Vader?

I like this idea but there are so many others that could of worked as well. I do smell a DLC involving them, it is just too nice a quest to leave them 'hanging' at the top of that scrapper.

So, let me see if I get the basic idea here: Ironsides was a robot in teh USN. When the war ended, he did his best to continue with his duties . . . presumably he was programmed to have that crazy archaic accent as a bit of a lark on the part of the pre-war naval engineers?

So in the years after the war, Ironsides in his wandering finds the Constitution sitting in harbor (I think the ship is a museum ship in Boston right?), and in somewhat 'deluded' processing, concludes that THIS ship is his new 'mission' since it is named the Constitution (and his programming tells him his primary duty is to "defend the constitution . . ."). So then he goes about assembling a crew of fellow robots, teaching them to speak with his outrageous accent, and making all the high-tech modifications to the ship?

Not bad story wise, but it would be more 'engaging,' if not believable if, you find a holotape from immediately after the war, and learn there was a surviving USN officer who was involved in the origins of this motley crew. Even just two or three entries in a terminal or something would do wonders. It would make a lot more sense if there was a human involved in the origins of the ship and its crew.

I agree that would be a hoot!

And yes, I agree Ironsides DOES sound like Darth Vader!

One of those damn robots . . . the bosun I think, his accent is so thick I could only vaguely follow what he was talking about.

I agree the Storyline should have been expanded upon, like finding the actual Museum Site.

I still dislike the idea of Anyone choosing to mount Rocket Thrusters to the U.S.S. Constitution, even if the Fallout Government was corrupt enough to allow it to happen

Well, at least it wasn't something truly sacrilegious like raising up the USS Arizona and turning her crew into ferals

I take it you're not real familiar with the USS Constitution? It's an 18th century heavy frigate that gained a reputation after a string of spectacular victories against the British Navy during the War of 1812. It is the oldest commissioned warship afloat. The HMS Victory is older, but it's in dry dock. The USS Constitution is taken out at least once a year to prove it is still seaworthy. The crew is handpicked and it's considered a great honor to serve aboard her.

As for why Ironsides (which is also the nickname of the USS Constitution) talks the way he does. First, if he was associated with the ship before the war, his manner of speaking would make perfect sense. Second, there is an idea presented elsewhere in the game. Over time a robot's understanding of its programming can evolve, giving rise to abnormal behavior. It's original directives to defend the US and the constitution, combined with a very lo g time spent with an 18th century ship, could conceivably give rise to that behavior.

No, I wasn't familiar with the real world history of the Constitution. I guess outfitting it with rocket thrusters is fairly "sacrilegious" too then!

Very cool that she is still an active warship, despite being ~200 years old! I can imagine it is a great honor to serve on her, and I'm amazed and impressed that the USN still teachers sailing techniques and there are enough capable hands to man her.

I don't think the average sailor is trained for it. The crew is picked, among other things, for their personality and how they interact with others. It is, after all, open to the public most of the time. I think they're then specially trained for sailing it. I could be wrong about that, though.

I enjoyed this quest as well, and here's hoping a future DLC allows us to get them into the Atlantic.

I didn't bat an eyelash when the scavvers wanted into the ship. I said "No", and they went about their business. I sat in that room and timed the movements, then stole the component.

Of course, a fight was scripted, but it didn't matter. If they would have sold me the part, everyone walked away alive.

After the ship took off, I immediately chased it. Took two days to finally get to it, only because once I discover a new location, I have to check it out. Otherwise, I'll forget about it (as I'm sure I did with many locations so far).

If Captain Ironsides ordered me to follow him to the gates of hell, I'd be the first to kick them open.

"Cursed Weatherby Savings and Loan. I spit at ye!"

well the USCG still uses an old captured Nazi sail ship as an active warship, and even trains handpicked crews in its workings. so I think they carry over from that ship to the constitution on occasion.

It odd indeed a lot of fun if you side with the robots. My problem though, is that it feels completely biased. Realistically, I would never murder a bunch of non-hostile scavengers to take their gear (that's the definition of what a raider does, after all), but for some reason, this is treated like the "right" course of action, as if they're raiders, and it's just so off-handedly done that it left me somewhat baffled. Of course, the questline in which you side with the scavengers is incredibly lame and unrewarding. I'm not sure why Ironsides doesn't drop the broadside when killed, but he definitely should have.
I still went through with it. I'm not breaking character for a novelty weapon, but it seems like 99% of the attention in this quest was put into the robot option, and the scavengers were an afterthought.

Ironsides asks you to do all you can to resolve the situation peacefully. So its not like he's ordering you to kill them all and let the almighty sort em' out. Ironsides conducts himself in a noble, albeit eccentric, manner. The scavengers double-talk and just want to make money off the loot on the USS Constitution which doesn't even belong to them in the first place. Openly plotting to assault and destroy the Constitution.

Its also eventually revealed that the scavengers were little better than greedy backstabbers themselves. Although that obviously isn't something someone would know immediately.

Strange as it may seem, Ironsides and his crew present themselves as far more well-intentioned than the human scavengers do. Not sure if that's supposed to be some sort of commentary about the human vs. robot question presented in Fallout 4. But its something to think about.

Oh I'm fully aware that Iromsides wanted it to be resolved in a reasonable manner. And I've got no problem with the scavs being backstabbers (like you said, the character couldn't know they would be). But besides the ending, I find them completely justified in this quest. I mean, they are just trying to loot a ruin that they believe is lucrative, no differently than we do all the time. Iromsides is a robot who was programmed to act like a gentleman, but unlike synths, where their sentience is up for debate, he is not, in any way, an actual living thing, and any ownership over the U.S.S. Constitution's valuables died with the old world, just like in any other ruined structure that might be guarded by military turrets. Realistically, I'd never consider murdering those scavengers for the sake of a machine's ludicrous, whackjob (and admittedly hilarious) goal, and indeed I can't side with Ironside without robbing and killing the scavengers, who I have no reason at that point to view in a negative light. My only complaint is how biased the quest is towards the robot side, despite it seeming completely unreasonable to me.

I to very much enjoyed this quest and sided with the robots. I do have to say however that I found Ironsides optimism of reaching the ocean in the next 100 years dubious at best. I question if Mr Navigator is really the right robot for that job seeing they actually went further into town. There new location was also the first high spot I jumped off of after getting the freefall legs and quickly found out that you indeed need to have both equiped. My second jump went much better!

Depends on how you look at it. I suppose if a character is the type to loot and destroy anything for parts or to sell, it wouldn't make much sense to side with Ironsides and his crew. That's true.

But, for instance, I usually try and keep pre-war structures and things intact as much as possible. Not destroying pre-war robots/environments or looting things unless absolutely necessary etc. A good example is the Natural History museum quest in Fallout 3. In which I went to great lengths to not destroy the robots (even though they were initially hostile, so I had to sneak). And allowed Button to continue his mission of guarding the declaration by giving the forgery instead.

So I don't sympathize with the scavengers in the USS Constitution quest at all. All they're doing is looting and ruining things that don't belong to them. They don't have a "right" to the material anymore than the robots IMO. And I see them as little more than vandals.