Fallout Sandbox: The Ant-enna

Elara stepped out, blinking  into the dazzling light, her eyes adjusting to it's tone, so different to that created by the luminescent strips of the vault.

She gazed down upon the wide open space before her and her head span. Of course she knew that the surface would have open skies and and no walls, but knowing and comprehending were very different.

She had lived her entire life in the close confines of the vault and now the whole world lay in front of her.

The intercom of her pipboy buzzed into life with the crackling voice of the Overseer, "Elara, if you head to the southeast you'll find the antenna. It should be easy to spot."

Elara could see the dish. It was easy to spot. However, the familiar shapes moving around its base might mean getting to it was not so easy.

"Damn. I knew ants live in colonies."

Welcome back to the second part of my sandbox campaign for Fallout Wasteland Warfare.

Having cleared several intrusive pests from the top level of the vault, Elara Vance (Sole Survivor: Day One) must now venture out onto the surface to repair the faulty antenna which had caused the vault door to open.

She is equipped with her trusty 10mm pistol, a pair of binoculars and is wearing a damaged hazmat suit, which given the nature of the mission, might prove crucial.

She also has a couple of items she picked up in the vault that might be worth something to someone at a later date. I intend to use items with a caps value as a method of levelling up, purchasing items and hiring companions. However, narratively, none of that made sense right now.

Unfortunately for Elara; there is a giant ant colony living around the base of the antenna.

I'm using the Radroach Swarm unit card to represent the ants and I've put four of them in play as it's a roughly equivalent caps cost to Elara.

I randomised the location of their starting points and placed three searchables should Elara feel like getting distracted, although that seems unlikely.

I decided to put a six turn limit on this mission based on the fact that my adventure in the vault dragged a bit due to having no pressure to keep moving. Also, it made sense that Elara would want to get the job done quickly and get back home.

Turn 1

As Elara surveyed the area she had a creeping feeling she was being watched. Glancing round, she couldn't spot anybody, but if there was a hidden observer, she knew that her bright yellow hazmat suit would make her easy to spot.

Turning back to the problem at hand, she saw that she had three viable routes to take. To the left there were pools of liquid that her pipboy was telling were radioactive, and through the ruined building was direct, but she wouldn't have clear lines of fire on the ants that were sure to swarm at her.

The third option, the road, seemed the wisest. The ants would surely still attack her, but at least she'd see them coming.

Sure enough, a six-legged shape came scuttling towards her as she moved past the side of the building, its pincer clacking together feverishly.

I should note that during the vault mission I was incorrectly using the armour values printed on the Sole Survivor: Day One card, which were changed in an update some time ago. To be honest, Elara would have died in her first encounter with a Feral Ghoul if I hadn't, so I look at it as the tutorial mission. In this fight, she only has the hazmat suit, which is convenient as the Giant Ants (Radroaches) only do radiation damage.

Turn 2

Elara reeled backwards as the creature scurried at her, desperately trying to bring her pistol to bear.

Her first shot went wide echoing through the silent landscape, giving the impression of distant gunfire and almost certainly alerting the rest of the colony.

Elara's second shot found it's mark, blasting the ant's head from its body, but as it slumped to the ground she looked up towards the ruins in horror.

The creeping forms of ants were crawling all over the rubble and rushing directly for her.

Turn 3

The eeire quiet of the creatures was only matched by that of her environment and, for a moment, the world seemed almost frozen.

Then they were on her, claws and manbiles scratching and scraping, Elara trying desperately to get a clear shot, but to no avail.

In retrospect, it would have made sense to adjust the Radroach Swarm Bite attack to be a single attack worth 2 damage, rather than 2 weaker attacks. In not sure it would have made any difference, but these are so ngle creatures, not swarms.

Turn 4

In the midst of her struggle, Elara saw that a neutral party had entered the battlefield. Has this been the hidden observer? Would he help her?

Before she could call out to him, the man had clearly seen danger she was in and started to withdraw. Whatever he wanted, he wasn't willing to risk the ants for it.

Even though Elara didn't interact with the stranger, I drew the card to reveal a Wandering Merchant. This Scavenger had clearly been drawn by the prospect of loot. He clearly thought better of it as the random movement on turn five took him back off the table.

With no help in sight, Elara decided to make a break for it. She may get overrun by these things, but she had to complete her mission to protect everyone in the vault from suffering a similar fate.

She could feel sharp bites in her calves as she ran from the ants towards the antenna, but to her horror, more of the creatures scuttled at her from that direction.

Surrounded, Elara began to realise with a heavy heart that she wasn't going to make it back to the vault.

Even if she fixed the antenna, there were just too many ants.

She was going to die here.

Turn 5

Whether it was the weight of this realisation, the emanations from the clearly radioactive pool to her right or the unbearable heat of trying to run and fight in a hazmat suit, Elara felt sluggish and slowed.

Once again, she dragged herself forwards, using every ounce of her strength to try to reach her goal. All the while, giant ants nipping at her heels.

Turn 6

As she scrambled to the antenna and flipped open the circuit box she found that one of the wires had corroded beyond use. Aware of the ants closing in behind her, she quickly replaced the wire with one she'd pulled from the desk fan and in lieu of a soldering iron, used Wonderglue to fix it in place. 

As the ants reached her, she pulled the switch...

"Elara? Elara? Are you there? The system is working, at least partially. Well done...There's a problem, though. The door still won't close because the system is saying that a vault dweller is outside and alive. That's you...Elara, please respond...Elara, I'm sorry. We can't risk the radiation and those creatures you reported. I need to purge you from our system so that the doors can close...Vault 26 appreciats your sacrifice...I'm sorry Elara."

***

Yep, she failed the skill test to fix the antenna and then was brought down by the ants. A catastrophic failure.

Don't worry. She's not dead, and I'm not just going to reload a previous save point and play through the mission again. If the Courier can survive being shot and buried alive, Elara can get out of this scrape, but there will be a cost.

More details next time.

Fallout: Sandbox - Pest Control

The elevator's speakers crackled back into life to life, repeating the message that had sent the Vault's population into a panic:

“CONTSINMENT BREACHED. UNKOWN LIFEFORMS DETECTED ON UPPER LEVELS.”

The elevator door opens onto the topmost level for the first time in generations.

As Elara stepped into the darkened corridor, Vault alarms continue to blare. She was here because there was no option. If something had entered the Vault, that meant that either the door had been opened or...well...something more catastrophic.

She hoped it was the former.

She had been equipped with a trusty 10mm pistol and tasked with three goals: clear out whatever had entered the Vault, ascertain their means of entrance, and fix it, ensuring the integrity of the Vault.

Elara briefly wondered why she had been chosen. The Overseer has been most insistent it was her.

Yes. I've decided to start a Fallout Wasteland Warfare campaign, and this time, I'm not rooting it in published scenarios (although I may adapt some), I'm being a bit more creative.

I say more creative, but I'm taking the traditional starting point of a character leaving a Vault. I'm not sure where this is heading, but I'm going to be using a variety of tools to come up with ideas and build my world.

For now though, I'm beginning with a very simple scenario. Elara Vance (Sole Survivor - Day One) must clear and unknown number of unknown creatures (the blue tokens) out of the top level of the Vault before heading to inspect the door.

Initially, I had laid out a number of searchables (the orange tokens) to help Elara get equipped, but as the game went on the Event 'deck' (the Vault chart from the Capital expansion) I was using three out several more searchables, and so you'll notice that most of the preset ones disappear towards the end as I didn't want her to be too tooled up.

As soon as Elara stepped out of the elevator, she could make out some movement in the darkness. Drawing her pistol, she advance cautiously.

In the gloom she could make out an imaciated form. Elara called to the figure, which turned and began to lumber in her direction and into the torchlight.

It's withered skin, spuless eyes and absent no's gave the figure a ghoulish appearance. A wave of sympathy wash over Elara. This poor person was clearly a victim of the irradiated wasteland outside, and was clearly a threat to the integrity and wellbeing of the Vault.

She opened fire.

The bullets didn't stop the creature, but they did slow it down as it advanced on Elara, its teeth bared. It made two powerful lunges at her and Elara though she was done for, but somehow she evaded its clutches and managed to pump two 10mm rounds into its skull, dropping it to the floor.

As she looked down on the poor wretch who has clearly once been human, her pipboy gave out the telltale click of radiation. Her suspicions had been correct. The creature was radioactive and she had been exposed to it.

(I actually forgot to apply the radiation damage at this point, but I did remember later. You will spot when.)

Pushing on in her search for more intruders, Elara wandered through rooms filled with equipment she had no clue as to the purpose of. What had Vault-Tec intended for this?

Amongst the debris she came across items that might be helpful should she have to mend or replace elements connected to the Vault door: an electric fan and a tube of Wonderglue.

Elara also stumbled upon an unused packet of Med-X. It looked like the painkillers had been dropped years before, when all the critical supplies were being moved down below.

She hoped she wouldn't need them and could just drop them off in the infirmary.

The eerie stillness was unsettling. These rooms must have been passed through by those first inhabitants of the Vault, who had descended below the Earth turning their backs on everything they knew which was about to be destroyed.

Elara wondered how that had felt, how frightened they must have been to shut themselves away.

She was grateful they had. She owed them her very existence.

Suddenly she heard something behind her.

Spinning around and shining a light into the darkness, Elara was shocked to see a six-legged from scuttling towards her.

She was momentarily baffled. She had seen pictures of these insects, 'ants', in books, but as far as she could remember they were usually tiny.

This one was massive!

(I used the Radroach Swarm profile for the Giant Ant, which is sadly lacking from the game.)

Again she fired, chipping its carapace, and she kept firing as it came on, taking chunks out of it until it stopped moving.

She paused for breath.

Didn't ants live in colonies? That was a worrying thought.

Pressing on, Elara found herself in some sort of crew office or storage room. On the shelves she found a pair of binoculars and a hazmat suit.

Although the hazmat suit was slightly damaged, she reasoned that both items would be more than useful if she were required to venture outside.

A sudden noise out in the corridor brought Elara back to the mission at hand. She needed to clear out the Vault.

Creeping out into darkness, Elara spotted another emaciated figure lurching towards her. Were these things common in the irradiated world? Had they 'survived' since the bombs dropped? Or were people living some sort of life out there?

The lurching figure bearing down on her brought Elara back to her senses. Fortunately this one seemed weaker and slower and seemed to missing limbs.

She opened fire, dropping the creature quickly, more quickly than the last one.

As the echo of the shots faded, Elara realised that the alarms had stopped. Standing in the darkness and silence, she realised that the first part of her mission was over.

As Elara moved towards the final door before the main entrance chamber, the intercom suddenly cracked into life with the distorted voice of Overseer:

"Elara, we've run diagnostics and determined that the fault is with the external sensors. A failsafe has tripped and opened the Vault door. You need to got out to fix them."

She had feared as much.

Reloading her pistol before struggling into the hazmat suit, Elara braced herself for the unknown outside world.

Well, that was fun. I learned a little about not putting too many searchables on the table and that I should also glance through the events table during set up to ensure that they won't unbalance the scenario.

I might also pick up the Into The Wasteland expansion which is designed to enhance solo play.

Anyway, expect more of this.