So, I don't know if/how often devs read this forum, and if they do, how likely it is they'll see this.

But if you are a dev, hi! I have a mild gripe that's been bothering me since Fallout 3, and now that it has shown up in Fallout 4 too, I figure it's worth mentioning (it's also probably a fairly easy design fix).

Here's the setup: In Fallout 3, I was a Brotherhood of Steel stalwart. In Fallout 4, I am once again a Brotherhood of Steel stalwart. So, in both games, I took the whole "collecting and studying tech" mission of the Brotherhood seriously - that's why I joined them.

EDIT: Minor location spoilers here. They have nothing to do with the main plot and I won't tell you where to find them, but if you're reading along and would rather not know these places even exist, avert thine eyes. Otherwise, read on.

I have a gripe about people posting huge spoilers in General Discussion.

Thanks for the spoilers.

Well, the developers can't account for everything of course.

Still, taking the Forged's functional steel mill for the Minutemen and the nuclear submarine for the BoS as an option would have been good.

Revealing that there is a location that you can discover that has literally nothing to do with the main campaign and can be completely ignored is not much of a spoiler. I didn't tell you where it could be found, and the details I revealed are uncovered within seconds of finding the location. There's no real story associated with it. That's sort of my point.

Yes, I told you there's a location within sight of the Prydwen (so, a good third of the map) that has nothing to do with the story. Terrible spoilers, I know.

Right, I get that they can't account for every single thing. But really, really big things? Like nuclear submarines and alien spaceships? Come on, now. I'm actually even okay with them not dealing with the Saugus Ironworks, since although that IS pretty impressive, it's also not super high tech. The Brotherhood is interested in technology, not rebuilding, and a working steel mill is primarily useful for rebuilding. Now if this was New Vegas and, say, the NCR wasn't interested in a working steel mill, that would be a different story. But Obsidian was pretty good about that.

Well, I don't really care about the Brotherhood of Steel in the book since the only thing I intend to do with them is blow them straight to hell but the Minutemen having a functional steel mill? Something Ashur went to ABSURD lengths to procure?

That thing needs to be manned and not turned into a Radiant quest!

Pronto!

As for Motherbase Zeta, I would have have added a line or two to Elder Lyons saying, "Do not let anyone else know about this."

Yeah, I get where you're coming from. In my mind the Minutemen aren't really quite ready for that level of sophistication - they're in the very early stages of actually forming a state through mutual cooperation - but I agree that it is weird that SOMEONE isn't interested in it.

And agreed regarding Zeta. Literally anything would have done for that.

The alien spaceship thing started as a lark in the older pre-Bethesda Fallouts... a sort of fun little joke that wasn't meant to be a serious part of the Fallout storyline and probably not even cannon. A Fallout 3 DLC kinda brought it in a little tighter, but I'm guessing the writers aren't quite committed to bringing it into the main storyline yet. I can fully understand why they wouldn't want the BoS to recognize that aliens and alien tech exists. As long as the major factions don't recognize it, Bethesda is free to ignore aliens and keep it at a joke level.

A submarine full of a nukes is a different story. I think it should have been recognized, but the commander does mention he doesn't have any big nukes left... just tactical nukes. Perhaps the BoS isn't interested in messing with an old potentially crazy chinese submarine captain over what amounts to a mid-range Fat Man. They ignore the Minutemen building similarly powerful artillery after all.

Of course, even if you explain away those, the game is full of little discontinuities like that. That is standard for Bethesda games though. They create a huge world with tons of characters all around, but most things exist only as small self-contained quest lines, with very little interaction between them. As they increase the connections between those little plots, the workload increases exponentially. I'd argue they should take care of the bigger fish like those examples, but I can see why they didn't.

Yeah... but then they went and had an alien spaceship crash land in Fallout 4. And of course you could find a crashed ship in Fallout 2 (and 1? I can't remember - been about 8 years since I played through). It's canon at this point, and not even joke canon. I guess I would have preferred at least some minimal in-game writing to explain it. For example: "This ship has a cloaking field and is specifically keyed to your biometrics once you leave so only you can beam back up, so unfortunately there's no way to show others what you've found. You'll just be a madman raving about UFOs."

And I do understand that continuity like this is one of Bethesda's weak points (and part of why I always preferred New Vegas over 3 - Obsidian is quite a bit better at making everything feel connected, in my opinion), but major things like this in two games... well, I figured it was worth mentioning. It's not a ton of work, and it would really help.