Your not supposed to like it but the lives of many is more important than the lives of few.

Wow thankyou all, i have enjoyed reading all of your thoughts & reasonings, which seem pretty split down the middle. No wonder i had trouble choosing myself. I think i will make a save, try both & and see if the Vault Dwellers or Farmers are more appreciative, and get to look them in the eyes :wave:

But after you negotiate with the NCR in that Kings quest, they give food to locals too. It ties together for me.

My feelings about the NCR are that they have a leadership problem but all of the people I deal with in the many quests are soldiers and doctors and pretty regular people who really care about all the people of the wasteland. That's how they talk anyway. That's what made the difference for me. Like Boone says, People forget how it was before the NCR came...meaning all the raiders, Caesar's Legion enslaving people, etc.

:fallout:

if you do this quest before white wash or youve met the westside co-op and anderson, the choice is easier, once you've knowledge of where this water is also going, then the odds change, as i said earlier...the ghouls die

WHen you say the Ghouls die, do you mean the vault dwellers ? becasue if so they are not Ghouls, i am trying both scenarios first, and i met the handfull of trapped valut 34 people, and they are normal, two hot chicks wiht them two, i would guess those 2 men are lucky gits & would prefer to stay down there & die happy :foodndrink:

However, as the quets is bugged & no reward is given for saving them, then i am going to save the water supply from being radiated, & hopefully stop mor epeople becoming sick.

:rofl: All I can say is... I hope you never decide to make me a hero!

You've hit on an interesting point, maybe without knowing it. Part of what makes this decision so engaging is that you don't get to look anybody in the eyes before you decide. You don't get to talk to the trapped people or the farmers. You don't get to ask, hey, is it OK if I leave you guys to die if it saves thousands of starving babies. You don't get to ask, hey, how tough would it be to move this farming operation a few miles away. You don't even get to ask, hey trapped people, are you still alive or dead already.

Also want to agree with Kristoffer that the writers sadly fell down with making the decision compelling. What the hell, I can't unlock one door and then seal some vents? Just one or the other? Why? So I decided that what was really happening was that there was another floor or something that was so radiated that automatic systems had sealed it off already, and the people were trapped in there. And I had to decide whether to fire the explosive bolts that would break the seal for good in order to let them out.

Personally, I'm too much of a wimp to let someone die right in front of me for the sake of some abstract greater good. I can already see a lynch mob of hysterical moms saying I made their babies starve. Too bad, moms. I helped the people screaming for rescue right in front of me. So sue me.

I chose to free the valut dwellers. There's a whole wastelasnd out there. I assumed they would just up and move the farms elsewhere.

Save the farms.

Why would you sabotage the farms, which supply food for people around the area, so that a few, meaningless people could live? The choice seems fairly obvious.

I let them out because I hated Vault 34 so much that I couldn’t even let npc's be stuck there.

This.

farmers can move, others are stuck and doomed to die a horrible death

My presumption was that the reactor would pollute for decades. This pollution, which is radioactive is going to kill more than the few trapped. This is all based on a false premise:

The choice is bogus. Why not free the captives, then come back and shut the reactor down later? Maybe I forget the details but I don't get how you couldn't let them out, then come back and clean up.

From that premise, there is really no choice. A little more radiation can be endured while the people are freed.

I appreciate the developers attempt at a Kobiyashi Maru, but it didn't fully make sense to me.

My character is willing to sacrifice herself for the greater good, but sacrifice is not something I can decide for others.
Not being able to look them in the eye or telling them about the situation makes it all the more difficult. But Vault 34
is a horrifying place I wouldn't wish on anyone, let alone let people die down there. So the NCR is going to have to
move their farm in my current and future playthroughs.

If you're going to run the NCR out of there anyway, you might as well free the dwellers.
What I want to know is why you can't free them and come back later to shut down the reactor.

If moral choice is the only problem, toss a coin.

Is that what you do when driving along and see someone crossing the road at a Pedestrian Crossing in R/L, toss a coin to see if you run them over or not ? :rofl:

I’m sorry, but I was too busy fighting for my life to take the time to read a ‘help me’ note on a computer my first time through, maybe next time.

With this character i saved the vault dwellers, and just now i came across a group of sharecroppers that were leaving Mojave because the farming is hard enough and the radiation was the last straw, meaning no food for anyone. Bad ToJKA :slap:

You can always find another plot of land to farm. Hardship from less food is not the same thing as imminent danger to human life. People are trapped(like the Chilean miners)and without your help they will perish. There is only one answer if your looking to make the good choice, save the vault dwellers.

If 10 dwellers are trapped in one room and 2 are trapped in a different room, and you can only open one door because you have only one nearly broken bobby pin, then your damned for heartbreak no matter what you do. I would save the 10 and pray the 2 I have to leave behind understand I had no other choice.

I saved the people. The thing is I didn't already have the Hard Luck Blues quest so I didn't know what "crops" it was talking about.

I sealed the reactor, wasn't much of a choice really.

What if the 10 you saved later killed thousands of innocent women and children and the two you left would have found a cure for a disease saving thousands or it was your wife and child. There is no right decision in this scenario. You make a chose and move on.

They lie and say they give you an itam if you sabe them.

That is the reason they should die.

Learn to gib proper itams, dumb vaulties.

Glad you made this thread Adcal. I just stumbled upon this quest while I was loot- I mean scavenging the vault. At first it seemed pretty simple, find the reactor and shut it down. But then I found that SOS on the terminal and froze not sure what to do. But after reading all the posts I've come to my decision. I love stuff like this in games, makes me think about my decision.