Because it's an army and you follow orders?

I mean, you ask why wouldn't you tell them in the same argument "Why wouldn't someone warn the BoS?"

Probably for that exact very reason?

It's also possible the Institute doesn't have any nuclear weapons or doesn't know how to make proper use of their resources. Father mentions the reason you're being appointed Director (and the way you're treated indicates everyone has been briefed on this) is because they believe they've had a failure in leadership with 200 years of scientists versus a military or political leader.

Besides, they wanted Liberty Prime for themselves.

Like they followed the order to help the Colonel during the QM?

My point is that, if you trusted them you, would tell them, that you don't tell them only shows that you don't trust them.

I trust them to follow orders.

Like they did when they abandoned the colonel during the QM?

And the settlers aren't your soldiers.

They are if they're manning the artillery and defenses.

They're Minutemen settlements.

As for the former, my Survivor was a soldier in Operation: Anchorage, so he knows how it can feel to be under leaders you don't respect. He encouraged MacCready, Cait, and others to seek redemption.

So shall he do the same with the Minutemen.

It's what Preston wants.

You can call them "Flamingos" if you want to, because it doesn't matter how you call them. They are still free thinking humans.

I would mind if someone told me to to watch for raiders, better than stoop labor. And when someone wanders by, who want to kill me I would try to kill him. But If someone told me start a war against a superior force, I would hesitate.

And again the Quincy Massacre happen, because the Minutemen were disloyal.

Of course there are, vertibirds at top speed can move pretty quickly. I'd refer to Fallout 3 when we see instances of vertibirds really booking it (ex escaping from Raven Rock). Regardless though, a missile turret without smart projectile capabilities is as good as a point and shoot RPG when it comes to taking down a moving aircraft. Which is to say: you're lucky to hit anything. The Brotherhood could bomb the Castle with relative impunity, and then send in the power armored troops to mop up whatever is left. They have both ground and air superiority: a massive advantage for any sustained engagement.

As for your second point: that gets back to what I said earlier. Short term the Brotherhood have the ability to do some very heavy damage to the Minutemen. Wiping the castle off the map and potentially disrupting their organized operations. However, in a longer term engagement, the results become more muddled. The longer the Brotherhood takes to defeat them, the angrier the local populace will become and the more attrition losses the Brotherhood will suffer. At some point, Brotherhood leadership would have to decide whether or not continuing the fight is worth it. Its a typical US/Vietnam. Russia/Afganistan. Britain/The American Colonies situation. Home field advantage goes to the Minutemen, who can wage a guerrilla ware pretty effectively.

The thing is, they DO hit the Vertibirds in game.

So is an abstraction of the fact the computers are just THAT good, the Vertbirds are meant to be svcky (or their pilots), or the missiles are tracking?

Food for thought.

Because there's no reason if they can build small nuclear reactors that the Minutemen couldn't build seeking missiles or scavenge them.

Yeah, when the vertibirds are hovering like idiots. Which is sort of my whole point. Gameplay doesn't exactly reflect realistic or logical aerial tactics.

Alternatively, there's no reason the Brotherhood couldn't match it by using precision targeted long range air-to-surface missiles fired from a vertibird half the Commonwealth away.

I mean we can come up with new technologies all day for the factions to happen upon and use, but the fact of the matter is that in any engagement, a faction with both clear air and ground superiority is going to have a massive advantage over one that doesn't. Especially when you consider that the Minutemen are an ad-hoc local militia. Not disciplined full time soldiers like the Brotherhood.

In a straight out slugging match with realistic combat scenarios, the Brotherhood could mop the floor with any minutemen force. However, that means jack-[censored] relatively speaking for a long-term war, because of the same reasons why Russia lost the war in Afghanistan and the United States lost the war in Vietnam.

You can win battle after battle and still lose the war.

Ehhh, the simple fact is I'm unconvinced the Brotherhood has the equipment or numbers to take the Castle.

It was a good Medieval rule of thumb that you need x10 the number of people in a fortress to take it.

The weird technology of Fallout aside.

Of course if we just ignored everything that contradicts, you would be right.

That you are not convinced is rather an opinion than a fact, people tend to mistake their opinions for facts.

Thankfully, Fallout isn't set in the Medieval period.

But it was also a good rule of thumb that you need at least x10 the numbers of conscript levy troops to defeat disciplined professional soldiers.

The chance that it all fires back is quite high.

First we have the problem that the settlers aren't soldiers, they are just people who want to survive, they might refuse to attack the brotherhood, because they don't want to be dragged into a war.

And how do you coordinate this attack without telling settlers and the other Minutemen that you want to attack the BoS? You can't simply say "execute operation Phoenix" without telling people what operation Phoenix is.

Let's say there is a 15% risk that it fails before they attack the BoS.

Then there is the risk that Maxson isn't on the ship when it is attacked. He can't possibly spent the whole day there. And it's possible that someone listens to radio freedom, looks that the howitzer, realizes what's happening and evacuates Maxson Let's say 5% risk that Maxson survives.

I would say that the BoS chance that they attacks the castle is only 25%, but I will be gentle and say 50%

And finally the risks that the BoS successfully attacks the Castle. Lets say the Minutemen have a 75% chance of defeating them.

That means the chance that the Minutemen fail is 70%

That their attack fails before it start might be the best outcome for the commonwealth. The BoS destroys or seizes the howitzers and attacks the castle.

However if they destroy the airship and the BoS regroups, they will likely attack the settlement, destroy the supply lines and wait until the Minutemen starve in the castle. They would probably dare everyone to help the Minutemen.

In a straight up conflict with the Brotherhood, the Minutemen would be slaughtered. Concerned Citizens armed with some jury rigged lasers aren't going to beat quality pre-war military hardware in a stand up engagement. The Brotherhood's too mobile for the Minutemen to realistically stand a chance. I mean, the Brotherhood is right across the bay from the Castle. All you'd have to do is hover on over and proceed to turn Fort Independence into rubble.

Artillery is all well and good, but it's not a precision weapon and part of the design philosophy of Power Armor is it's a main battle tank that can circumvent traditional means of stopping armor.

Ideally, I wish there was some way to contract out with the Gunners, which is the only group outside the Institute that has the firepower to match the Brotherhood, but more then that - the Gunners are closer to the Brotherhood in terms of organizational structure and discipline. Isolated Gunner patrols get picked off by Vertibirds, but I have yet to see one of those encounters go the Brotherhood's way when they assault a established Gunner sites.

I was privileged to witness a Brotherhood Paladin with a minigun get backhanded by three separate missile launcher strikes when he tried to storm Gunner Plaza after his Vertibird death-dived.

This whole "it's unrealistic1!!!11" discussion is bogus, in a "realistic" situation the Brotherhood of Steel wouldn't even be in this game because building giant airships full of helium/hydrogen when everyone and their dog has a missile launcher or a [censored] fat man is a terrible idea.

People say that the minutemen wouldn't be able to survive the fight against the Institute and the BoS without player intervetion, ANY faction that isn't the Institute wouldn't be able to survive 10 seconds without the player's help, The Director of the Institute could've just teleported a synth inside the Prydwen and simply assassinated Maxson or they could've replaced an engineer with a synth and sabotaged the ship, the possibilities are endless when you have teleportation and robots.

Worrying about realism in a franchise like Fallout(that has always been driven by the rule of cool) is quite silly.

Yeah if this were more realistic they would know how vulnerable airships are, they would restore land vehicle, a ship (would take a little longer) or parked far from the shore. Anything would have been better.

The Minutemen basically don't exist without the player. Without him, Preston would have be killed. The BoS just arrive if they had had more time, they would have figured something out.

The are limits to how much absurdity is acceptable.

It's pretty absurd that people survive head shots, but that doesn't bother me, as long they don't say that it is canon.

All these things that defy common sense, doesn't matter as long as they are keep separated from the story.

I have to wonder, though.. How much game time does that take? Maybe 12 hours? Still a bitn unrealistic. But again, it's a game. Id rather not spend hours walking across empty land.

You divorce it from the context. I never said that is is bad that you can do that.

Fine, Gotz, the Brotherhood of Steel is so beloved and the Minutemen so hated that the Commonwealth would never go against them.

The Minutemen are so outgunned, so overmatched, and so outtalented they could never in a million years defeat the Brotherhood of Steel in battle or surprise them.

You win.

Never said that the BoS were beloved nor that the Minutemen hated. Bbut the people of the common wealth have far bigger problems than the BoS. Neither the BoS or the institute are democracies, but the world of Fallout is not the world we live in. Beside the NCR the BoS is the best chance humanity got. And thr NCR basically started as a monarchy.

They could surprise them, but the odds are against them. It's simply not right to start a war when there is a good chance that it backfires and kills innocent people.

And all this tech the BoS found can probably help humanity.

Here are some excerpts from the Codex of the BoS:

Sorry but what? I thought the main goal of the BoS was MILITARY tech i.e. weapons and armor. How can that help humanity? I giving them better tech to kill each other with?

To be fair, House's robots are pretty good for bringing order to the Wasteland.

The minutemen are weak because they have no command structure to hold it up. Having big numbers and the support of the people are definitely advantages, but if the minutemen cannot adapt in the situation where their General is killed or gone, their uses are situational.