I started FO3 GOTY edition...

[PZ]

Good tip, AB 

You could even try playing in the windowed mode if it is not too distracting.

[T.V.]

I left the tip page open and reentered the game so I could Alt+Tab back and forth between the two only FO3 is not forgiving with that sort of window manipulation.

If You open the tip page before starting the game, You should be able to Alt+Tab out of the game, and then Alt+Tab back without any crashing. 

And speaking of tip page, this Fallout wiki has a lot of tips for all of the Fallout games:
http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Portal:Fallout

[PZ]

   Good to know, T.V!

[Art Blade]

T.V. you are seriously undermining your lurker status, you know that, right? 

[T.V.]

An added bonus of traveling on foot (for exploration value) from vault 92 back to Agatha to deliver the violin I stumbled across the crashed Zetan space craft and picked up the powerful alien blaster that easily turns my targets into piles of ashes similar to the Martian ray blasts from the old '1953'  War of the Worlds movie.

If You could pick up the alien blaster without being abducted, then the "Mothership Zeta" add-on is not activated!

The add-ones are activated from the splash screen that appears when starting the game from Steam, in the Data Files menu. (There is 6 add-ons that should be ticked, unless You want a play through without the GOTY stuff first.)

T.V. you are seriously undermining your lurker status, you know that, right? 

I'll soon crawl back under that stone again. 

[Art Blade]

of course you can do that 

However, I think you've sampled a taste of freedom and found no one has tried to kill you.. on the contrary, people responded nicely to your posts, so why crawl back into hiding.. I'll leave that for you to mull over while you're slowly walking back to that stone

[PZ]

... I'll soon crawl back under that stone again. 

You're a valued member here, T. V. 

[Art Blade]

T.V., with that post/kudos (karma) relation, you'd have 9,169 kudos by now if you had my post count.

[mandru]

Thanks T.V., I found the check off boxes to enable the additional download content as you suggested.    +1

It turns out I've been sprinting through the splash screen to dive into the game and never noticed that feature before. 

[Art Blade]

mandru, I assume that you haven't noticed yet that you don't have an avatar. I tried to tell you before but apparently you haven't read that post so I try again now  Just check the top menu selecting Profile and from that pull-down menu Forum Profile, and you're almost done.

[Dweller_Benthos]

I started playing FO3 again and just don't like how intentionally inaccurate the weapons are. Not to mention how bullet spongy the enemies are. Shooting a giant ant from near point blank range and I can see the bullets flying off in all directions, and the ones that do hit cause one tick of damage on them. I've resorted to using grenades and mines just to get their damage down to where I can shoot a clip of 10mm at them to get the one or two shots to actually hit that kill it. And these are just ants, how the heck are you supposed to go up against the bigger enemies in this game? Not to mention the extreme scarcity of ammo, which makes the fact that you have to shoot something 20 or 30 times before it dies even more annoying.

[PZ]

I also did not like the vanilla weapons, which reminded me of cartoons. In order to play the game the way I like it, weapons need to look proper, and behave like they should. I always installed weapon mods that look realistic, shot accurately, and packed a punch. I don't recall right now which one, but there was a sniper rifle mod that was most excellent, and was found in the environment.  I would need to fire up my old gaming rig to find it (and the others I liked) to continue playing FO3 some more.

[Art Blade]

now that you mention modded weapons, I recall having modded a pistol that would kill about anything and everything. And I had a companion pet dog that couldn't die. I think I also modded him to be a lethal weapon wrapped in fur as my bodyguard.

[PZ]

I forgot about the dog (and other companions). I recall having a couple ladies that were heavily armed and made excellent body guards.

[mandru]

Art I had noticed your previous prompt that I was missing an avatar and was thinking that it would be unique to go without one.

So it's fixed now.