Fallout 4

[T.V.]

Agreed BinnZ, Fiber Optics are probably the rarest commodity in the game. Microscopes and Biometric Scanners are the best sources for that. Sometimes Alexis the Depot trader in Vault 81 has Fiber Optics Shipments for sale, as does the quartermaster Teagan aboard the Brotherhood of Steel's airship, the Prydwen, which may not have appeared in your game yet - it only appears (in a very cool fashion) when a certain point in the story is reached.

A tip for obtaining fiber optics without buying from traders:

There is a lot of laser trip wires in the Jamaica Plain Town Hall basement (also the location for the quest "Find the Treasures of Jamaica Plain") that can be disarmed manually.
(Disarming a laser trip wire will get You fiber optics, crystal and steel.)

And if one opens and then closes the door in the end of the hall (using the push button twice) the laser trip wires re activates for another "run" of disarming.

The nice thing is that this scenery also re spawn after a while. 

I do recommend a save before starting to disarm though, as the turrets that can be triggered is "a bit  nasty"...

[BinnZ]

Thanx for all that inside info gents! I am certainly going to make good use of the adhesive brewing! I knew of this method, but didn't know how. Now I know it's the cooking station
I already visited the fish packing facility for aluminium, indeed also a rare and useful product. And I will definitely frequent that Jamaican area as soon as I found it.
I did see the BoS airship, but since I didn't want to w0#k 'under someone's command' I refused to do anything with them other than that primary mission after helping them at the police station. I may have to accept their invitation sooner or later I suppose

[Art Blade]

If you don't make the BoS your enemy, you'll always have a nice option for "fast travelling:" their vertibirds are essentially air-taxis and I like to use them

[fragger]

Nice tip, T.V. Gonna try that one.

Been playing for well over a year now, and I'm still finding hidden locations... Found a new one yesterday. Just north-east of Coastal Cottage is the bridge that leads to Mahkra Fishpacking, and under the bridge I found a door set in the base of the western-most pylon that was simply marked "Hideout". Inside were two rooms with a couple of ghouls (including a tough Bloated Glowing One) and a few bits of minor scavenge, plus a Fusion Generator with a removable Fusion Core. It was radioactive as hell in the second room though by dint of a bunch of nuclear waste barrels adorning the place. Interesting skeletal tableau in there...

I'm impressed that I can still find new stuff even after all this time, especially on a map that represents a "mere" 3.8 square miles (compared to approx. 50 square miles for GTA V's map).

Speaking of map sizes, here's a neat comparison between GTA V, Fallout 4 and The Division. Only about 60-70% (very rough guess) of GTA V's entire map is shown here, and the Fallout 4 map shown is the Commonwealth only, without The Island (Far Harbor) and Nuka-World, which are each about a third of the Commonwealth map size:

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Of course GTA V has to have a much larger map because there is so much fast vehicular travel involved, including jet aircraft. Need plenty of room for that I don't know about The Division as I've never played it, but Fallout 4 of course has no vehicular travel except for the relatively slow-flying Vertibirds (and even then you're a passenger, not the pilot), so it doesn't need a giant map.

[Art Blade]

they surely packed the FO4 map. Many houses and ruins are accessible, oftentimes they're multi-storey buildings and there are caves and vaults and tunnel systems.. and little rooms like the one described as "hideout." That makes the game so much deeper, literally

[LowPolyOWG]

The Division map is outdated. West Side Pier, DZ07-09 and Brooklyn is missing. Which would put it slightly larger than FO4. TD doesn't have vehicles either and kinda lacks the caves/buildings you can go inside. It does have some underground metrostations you can explore. You can loot electronic stores/workshops/police stations/pharmacies for crafting materials etc and some rooftops.

I wonder how FO76's map is in size, compared to FO4's base map

[Art Blade]

probably not any bigger

[fragger]

According to Bethesda, the FO76 map is about 4 times the size of the FO4 base map.

[LowPolyOWG]

Both in size and bugs? 

[Art Blade]

 

[mandru]

If you don't make the BoS your enemy, you'll always have a nice option for "fast travelling:" their vertibirds are essentially air-taxis and I like to use them

In my 1st play through that I was able to complete (2nd run through was cut off when Windows died on my computer so now I'm on my 3rd) I gave the BoS access to the nukes in Fort Strong and they immediately attacked the Railroad's hideout forcing me to defend the synths as I liked the Railroads goals and behavior a lot more than those of the BoS.

The BoS Quartermaster should have never forced me to strong arm or extort my settlements for supplies.  So with that grudge unforgiven I destroyed the Prydwen and my only regret was that I couldn't directly kill the child initiate that was onboard. 

With the presence of the BoS greatly diminished the Railroad stepped right up and became the local vertibird taxi service in their place. 

I don't know if in a situation where both the BoS and Railroad were wiped out or turned into enemies whether the Minutemen would gain access to the vertibirds or not.

[Art Blade]

ah, cool. I played it so I was at peace with everyone except the Synths which were wiped out.

[fragger]

Same here, I've only ever gone for the peaceful Minutemen ending, although this time I intend to keep my options open by doing a save at that one particular point which should allow me to explore a few other ending paths.

Interesting tidbit of info, mandru The only time I've seen Vertibirds in the hands of anybody other than the BoS is on a couple of occasions where I've been attacked by an apparently stolen VB crewed by Gunners - once when one flew in and started strafing me at Quincy, and once when one had landed outside Weston Water Treatment Plant. On the latter occasion, from a distance I'd seen that the VB was on the ground and assumed the BoS had landed to deal with some bad guys, as happens there at times, but it was either already stolen or the Gunners had won the fight with the BoS (although I later could find no sign of any dead Brothers). Whatever the case, when I got close, the Gunners piled into the VB, lifted off and started harassing me from the air. But when the VB took off, there was a muffled bang and one engine immediately started blowing smoke, so I was able to knock the aircraft down fairly easily. I was never really sure what the story had been there.

I had an odd experience recently. During a firefight near Hangman's Alley between the BoS and a band of Rust Devils, I accidentally clobbered a BoS Scribe, and her two PA-clad mates immediately turned on me (I was already a fully-fledged member of the BoS at that point, having been aboard the Prydwen and everything). So I skedaddled forthwith and assumed that once I was well away from the trouble zone, the BoS would "forgive" me, as is standard when something like that happens. But sometime later I fast-travelled to the Airport, and as soon as I arrived, every bugger in the place opened up on me. Apparently, by accidentally killing that one Scribe, I'd gotten myself into a permanent state of antagonism with the Brotherhood that couldn't be reversed and I had to reload from a previous save to restore relations.

Sometime after all that, I went to meet X6-88 at the Libertalia to recover the rogue synth/raider, but upon reaching the mission site (at the docks), a BoS Vertibird flew in and immediately started scrapping with X6. Two PA types dropped from the bird while it continued to circle and strafe. Being on good terms with both the BoS and the Institute, I could just stand around with impunity and watch the pretty laser show. However, it began to drag on. The BoS would knock X6 on his *bleep* before proceeding towards the same target that X6 and I were headed for (the upturned ship), so after a minute when X6 got back up, we'd catch up to the BoS and their beef with X6 would flare up all over again.

Eventually (after a number of sit-downs) X6 wore down one PA soldier and shot down the Vertibird, leaving a sole PA trooper to deal with. X6 was slowly wearing him down but I was getting tired of the proceedings, so I decided to help things along a little by shooting PA-guy a bit myself, intending to bring his damage meter down a bit more. But instead, I unintentionally killed him outright (shouldn't have used the Spray and Pray...)

Fearing a repeat of what had happened after I'd earlier accidentally killed that Scribe, once the Libertalia mish was complete I FT'ed to the Airport, but all was sweet there, no repercussions. Why they turned on me after accidentally offing one lousy Scribe but were tolerant of me costing them a trained front-line Knight (along with his valuable suit of power armor) is a bit of a head-scratcher.

[Art Blade]

the latter one: perhaps because that time you had no BoS witnesses

[BinnZ]

Speaking of making allies with the various groups in the game... I wanted to know whether you guys have the same thoughts as I have in some specific occasions.

For instance the moment where you find Gwyneth, the Atom woman who's gone rogue. You have various options. You can advice here to escape, and find a new life in the commonwealth, or go back and reunite with the family. You can also kill her, as that Tectus guy asked you to. Or the other weirdo from that crew in the submarine base
Anyway, when I have a choice like that to make, I truly try to find the right thing to do. What the heck? Who cares, it's a freaking video game! I might chose whatever I want, or get the best benefit of, but no, morale comes in to play and steers me in certain directions. Me, who has the personal line "killing is very important".
I advised the woman to go to the common wealth. Later I regretted, because I wanted to see, hoped actually, that she would be able to find more followers who would leave this absurd religion and turn their backs to that foolish priest. Anyway, I can still kill 'm all

My point is, that I keep surprising myself with my efforts to choose the righteous path. I find that weird.
As if I'm sharpening my moral judgement with the game. Maybe it's one of the reasons why I keep playing the game. I am actually curious what things will turn out to be. I even enjoy when Nick Valentine seems to like my actions. And I was straight forward enjoying it when my character said (after I chose the corresponding option of course) to that mighty guard of the atoms something like "What, you think I'm just going out to execute someone, like that? Because you aske me to??!! Are you nuts?!"

Well, not exactly curious if you guys have the same thoughts as I have in those occasions, but the same surprise about your own morality messing with your gameplay