The Art Deco Bob Semple

We can ask this question from the other direction: why doesn’t everywhere else have a flamethrower helicopter?

“It’s a safety feature to reduce spalling!”

For sure. It’s kind of fascinating, in a grim way, to contrast Haiti’s revolutionary course with the US, where basically every major power was cool with them a few years after their revolution.

One wonders how history would be different if the nations of the world had spent centuries screwing the US with debt and propping up their worst leaders and left Haiti to do its own thing.

Right? Most of this stuff was already the case in 2012, so it barely even counts as a prediction.

China’s lead in rare earth production doesn’t exactly come out of nowhere, nor does Haiti having a crisis of some sort or terrorists being called freedom fighters. And having AI do the targeting work in place of humans has been floating around as an idea since what, when The Forbin Project came out? 1970 or so?

It’s a good idea, but we can go even further. Just think of what we could fit into a spinal mount!

See also Brigador: apart from the various lasers, exotic ballistics, and nightmarish chemical weapons it includes, there’s also the prosaic “Mãe Dois.” The tech entry leaves no doubt about what it is:

My understanding is that this weapon not only predates the colonies, but space travel entirely. If that is the case then it’s a truly venerable design, and one I’m told will continue to serve for the foreseeable future.

Biblically-accurate Ace Combat aircraft.

A turret toss does seem like it would be effective as reactive armor. Is this how tanks evolve to survive drone predation? Main turret autotomy to give the smaller turret buds a chance to flee?

The microwave thing? I couldn’t even guess, though I personally wouldn’t want to stand next to it even if it works. A big microwave emitter on the battlefield is just asking to catch a HARM.

It really doesn’t seem like anyone knows for sure what to do about drones right now.

Large, non-nuclear EMPs mostly use explosives. Covering a large battlefield means you’re essentially bringing a massive, single-use explosive charge to the battlefield, staying uncomfortably close enough to benefit from it, and trying to set it off at exactly the right time, because they’re not reloadable. And your enemy is probably thrilled you’re doing this, because it saves them from hauling their own explosives there. (On that note, why are you sitting on this thing instead of dropping it on the enemy?)

This is in addition to whatever shielding you brought, which is likely bulky and conspicuous. And you’re probably not doing combined arms, because shielding infantry and light vehicles from massive explosions is, it is fair to say, something of an unsolved problem.

But wait, you might be thinking. I know there are non-explosive ways to generate EMPs. Yes, there are, but you need a power source for those, and if you have a really good, portable one of those and a consistent supply of fuel to run it, you probably have better uses for it, like powering a modest laser. Oh, also, you’re 100% sure your shielding works perfectly, right? You’ll find out quick if you don’t.

Nobody:

Absolutely nobody:

The ghost of Sam Hughes: Okay but have you considered

Oof, I definitely did that once or twice.

It really does seem like they decided to bring this sequence up to introduce settlement building and power armor early. I get why they did it, but man, I do not think it ultimately has the effect they wanted.

Maybe a controversial suggestion, but my advice is to ignore the Minutemen stuff until late in the game. Just don’t even go to the museum until you’ve followed some leads and want something else to do for a bit.

This is definitely not the intended way to play, but I promise the story flows so much better without it. Setting out to find your kidnapped son just to immediately get sidetracked helping some uncharismatic misfits set up mattresses is just an underwhelming start to an otherwise decent game.

Doing all this stuff later on, when you’ve actually demonstrated you’re a badass survivor and the OP gear you get free from the Minutemen quest actually feels earned, just flows so much better. It’s a great coda that they unf put two minutes into the game for some reason.