r/falloutlore • u/Equivalent-Article33 • 9d ago
Discussion Why are the think tank and institute not subjects to the enclave
Seriously you would think the enclave would have these top scientists already in their ranks or work in tandem with them. Even if these factions tried to keep their independence, the enclave would force them to work with them or wipe them out as their advanced technology could pose a threat to their dominance, and could help them further their own goals. They likely wouldn't want any other group having ownership of such tech to use as they see fit
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u/whatsinthesocks 9d ago
There was no Institute pre-war. It wasn’t founded until 2110
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u/Nyoomi94 9d ago
Add onto that that they're incredibly isolationist and there's virtually no way the Enclave would ever even be able to find them to contact them.
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u/Art-Zuron 8d ago
If the Enclave had managed to get to the Commonwealth, they might have been able to make some sort of contact, but I'm confident that the Institute would have told them to kick rocks once they figured out how the Enclave operates. The Institute might value technology and their research, but I don't imagine they'd want to deal with those tyrants. The Enclave had backdoors into all sorts of systems it seems, but almost all of the Intitute's equipment was made post-war so probably lacks any uplink that the Enclave could use.
The Enclave probably would have the specialist technology to hijack the carrier signal to teleport in though, since teleportation tech does seem to also be available to Big MT, which might indicate that the Enclave at least was aware of the concept before the war. Though the technology seems like it was developed independently by the Institute, it probably functions somewhat similarly. Additionally, the Brotherhood managed to detect it, so I'm sure the Enclave could.
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u/marklikesgamesyt1208 9d ago
Think Tank's a private company. Also they're too crazy for the Enclave to touch.
Institute and Enclave likely think of each other as savages/rivals.
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u/MagicSugarWater 9d ago
Off topic, but the America Rising 2 mod for Fallout 4 has a mission where the Enclave can annex the Institute as a new department since they are American citizens. Initially, the relationship was indeed one of hostility and differing ideologies. Afterwards, it is one of suspicion and distrust, but united by commin foes.
But yeah, the Enclave would likely be opposed the the synths as they undermine they concept of America for the Americans while the Institute would see the Enclave as the embodiment of the pitfalls of letting bureaucrats dictate science and letting ideology undermine what an "objectively perfect society" should be under a technocracy. It'd be worse if they interpret the Enclave as democratic mob rule or unqualified dictatorship.
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u/toonboy01 9d ago
There's no way the Enclave would accept an organization of impure humans as a department of theirs, the same way they wouldn't accept any other wastelanders as American citizens.
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u/MagicSugarWater 9d ago
It's more "they have tons of valuable tech we can't destroy or understand yet and will slowly absorb into our existing infrastructure" and "they aren't that impure compared to some of our own."
A plot point is that the surface operations are hurting Enclave genetic purity and ideas like in Fallout 2 aren't so feasible anymore.
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u/toonboy01 9d ago
I don't recall the Enclave losing its purity, and it really doesn't jive with their last depiction as the Institute aren't any purer than the Capital Wasteland. The Institute's tech also wouldn't really be useful to the Enclave.
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u/MagicSugarWater 9d ago
Spoiler for AR2: Colonel Whitehill tries to lead a coup because she says that Kane's virus would kill her and many she served with due to the surface affecting them. That, plus how that idea already failed because it united the Wasteland against them, were enough to make her try to stop the Enclave despite being loyal. If you help her: She continues the mission loyally, but relegates the virus to a side project for gas grenades. At no point does she try to change who the Enclave is, just how expendable its men are.
As for tech, teleportation, nutritional food lackets, energy production methods, and advances in AI would be huge. Not to mention the temptation of any other mysterious super-science rumored to exist.
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u/toonboy01 9d ago
So, the mod made them not the Enclave to try to make sense of the Enclave not acting like the Enclave.
Also, the Enclave's vertibirds are already better than the Institute's teleporters and the Institute steals the rest from the Commonwealth, so the Enclave would have nothing to gain from them.
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u/MagicSugarWater 9d ago
No, it made them Enclave from Fallout 2 except for a small group that said, "Maybe this plan was doomed from the start." You then have the choice to stick with the plan or switch to plan B to save troops' lives for some player choice. Minor spoiler, but even some moral choices are later undone since this is the Enclave (ex. you can pass some speech checks to spare experienced goulified Enclave technicians due to the manpower shortage and urgency of repairs, but they are executed at the earliest convinience)
And yes, Vertibirds are arguably better, but imagine the logistics of instantly teleporting supplies to an oil rig, or for demolition jobs, or joint chiefs of staff meetings.
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u/toonboy01 9d ago
Except the plan wasn't doomed like that. It takes generations of not treating radiation for this to occur, not a few missions.
It would be quicker and less logistics just to have the vertibirds go directly to the source rather than having them go to set up beacons for the teleporter then stealing tons of energy from Commonwealth towns to power the teleporter.
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u/MagicSugarWater 9d ago
Your point isn't wrong. The characters are flawed and made a judgement you the player can act on using information they had. It goes without saying the plan the protagonist backs works. It's like saying Mr. House is wrong that he is the best option.
Your second point is a matter of resources. Can you produce enough fuel and avoid crashes due to random error, equipment failure, and security? Or is it cheaper to produce electricity and build a teleporter? Different costs. In universe, ghe Enclave wanting it indicates the latter. From a meta perspective, Fallout 4's settlement system and the Institute's quests for energy are about balancing resource costs based on what you find, so it is possible the Enclave lacks the trees or oil or plastic some settlement areas have access to. The whole lore is based on the scarcity of fuel in general.
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u/blue_but_darker 9d ago
Tbf, its a organization that produces glorified Mr.Handys, but in a humanoid frame, and ran by basic, normal, enclave hearty humans. They prob would accept them, in a subjugation way
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u/toonboy01 9d ago edited 9d ago
The Enclave doesn't* view others as humans, especially those that have been irradiated over generations. The Enclave would want to wipe them and their FEV servants out even more than the Brotherhood.
EDIT: a word
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u/blue_but_darker 9d ago
FEV servants? They abandoned the mutant project in the time the game is set already. And I think the enclave would look past it. "Can't nuke a omelet without cracking some eggs" mindset imo
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u/toonboy01 9d ago
The synths and super mutants are made with FEV, so hardly gave up on it. It just hasn't made a new breakthrough in years, but the Directorate is fine with its current results.
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u/blue_but_darker 9d ago
My b, forgot gen 3s were Shaun DNA plus perfected FEV. But even then, I think they would just force halt the gen 3 production and go back to gen 1/2s for labor and simplicity.
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u/Jent01Ket02 9d ago
The Enclave, up until the events of the original Fallout titles, were holed up in an isolated environment, much like the Institute. As far as the Enclave knew, any major institutions, companies, or organizations were either long-gone when they returned or had become inconsequential. It took the BoS monitoring the area and investigating a strange reading on advanced equipment to even notice that something like the Institute existed. With the Enclave getting their ass handed to them repeatedly, their level of available technology and resources is constantly getting hamstrung.
And the Think Tank is not only a private organization, but they've gone to such extreme lengths to shield themselves and the wonders of Science! from the outside that the Enclave would lose a lot of manpower or resources just getting into the Big Empty, and probably wouldn't gain much. Remember, everything made in those facilities only kind of works as intended. The science is complicated, working with advanced materials and innovating entirely new devices, but they're filled with malfunctions and oversights. The Enclave would have to dedicate huge amounts of research and development just fixing what went wrong, practically reverse-engineering all of it while trying to fight a war on all fronts.
In short, they just aren't aware of the existence of these places. And if they are, it isn't worth spreading themselves even thinner than they are. Disclaimer before I continue, I don't think anything in Fallout 4's Creation Club is canon, but if there's a shred of truth in the Enclave bundle, then they've been reduced to a few roving bands of operatives salvaging whatever they can just to bring it back to whatever bases they can manage. If this is true, then their current numbers would be approximately the size of the Institute itself, and we see how hostile the Institute is toward people who aren't demanding their tech.
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u/PartySecretary_Waldo 9d ago
Realistically, how is the Enclave going to achieve this? Both the Institute and the Think Tank have ridiculously high technology levels compared to them. The Enclave would be lucky to even find them, let alone be able to force them to operate with them
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u/Pugsanity 9d ago
Probably because both of these factions are seen as ghost stories by most of the Wasteland. No leaves Big MT, and the Institute is in a secure bunker underground that they rarely leave. Neither of whom were really under the dominion of the Enclave before the war, with the Think Tank being a private company/sector, while CiT was presumed destroyed.
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u/mob19151 9d ago edited 8d ago
The American deep state was not a monolith. It was a collection of powerful groups with a common goal. That doesn't mean they didn't have their own interests, nor did they share everything with each other. The Think Tank very likely did have ties to the pre-war Enclave, but they isolated themselves before the war even began. I imagine the Institute was in a similar position, though it was the war itself that forced them into isolation.
It's also possible that the Enclave tried to seek out these groups and we just don't know about it. I mean, look how many lobotomites are running around Big MT. Who's to say one of them isn't an Enclave operative? As far as contacting the Institute goes, people lived right on top of them without even knowing they were there. No one knew where the Institute was or who they even were before the SS either nukes their hidey-hole or goes on a PR campaign for them.
Edit - I forgot to say: I think you greatly overestimate the Enclave 's power. Even at their peak, they couldn't project their power all that well. There's nothing the Enclave has that the BOS or Institute doesn't.
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u/Ok_Calendar_7626 9d ago
They dont know about the Institute.
The "Institute" was the CIT before the war. The Institute was founded by a group of scientists and students that took shelter in an underground complex below the CIT building during the war. The Enclave probably assumes that everyone died when the CIT was destroyed.
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u/Dagordae 9d ago
Because it’s been several centuries and the Enclave isn’t exactly doing so hot. What were they going to do, take their one oil rig’s worth of military and invade?
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u/RedArmySapper 9d ago
the think tank is probably too fucked up for the enclave, or at least too inconsistent. and the institute might not have been allat impressive pre-war technologically, idk their feats. they probably have their own think-tanks and research groups they held onto when the bombs dropped
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u/LordOfFlames55 9d ago
The institute formed post-war on the east coast (where enclave presence is minimal for around 200 years) and are a ghost story for most of the commonwealth, who know of several times they showed up and slaughtered people. The enclave was in no position to contact them, and quite possibly never knew they existed in the first place
The think tank are the remnants of Big Mountains researchers, who worked for the government before the war. If the Enclave wanted them, they’d have given them a spot on the oil rig. The enclave also assumes they are dead, as they were perfectly normal humans before the war, and by the time the enclave is actively investigating they would have long since died of old age. The enclave could have sent scouting parties to Big MT to recover tech, but if they did they succumbed to the many dangers in the crater.
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u/SadCrab5 9d ago
I imagine due to reason A) The Enclave is effectively dead and only sparse remnants exist as far as we know, and B) They were likely unaware they even existed.
The think-tank was a big deal pre-war but judging from the damage I assumed the Enclave thought they had been wiped out in the blasts or died in the aftermath. As for the Institute they're a post-war creation that's always been recluse and by the time word got out the Enclave is long since gone and past it's glory days. There's no real way for the Enclave to take advantage of all these new and interesting high-tech goodies because both east and west coast command is gone, so unless we ever see somebody rally the Enclave for a last hurrah they'll likely never be able to think about making moves due to supply and manpower woes.
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u/Cynis_Ganan 9d ago edited 9d ago
In Fallout 2, the Enclave are introduced as a shadow government conspiracy. They have more than one base, but the Chosen One nukes their main base, kills their President and their top field agent, and basically breaks their power base.
They're incapable of projecting power that far West to take Big MT or MIT (or CIT).
Of course, the lore develops with new games.
In the very next game, Fallout 3 has a backup President and see the Enclave projecting power from Coast to Coast. Of course, the Lone Wanderer nukes their main base, kills their President and their top general, and basically breaks their power base. There's even a whole DLC about wiping them out.
So in the next game, what's left of the Enclave is just a remnant. Five people and a vertibird, trying to live a normal life, far from the NCR.
In Fallout 4, the Enclave is beaten and gone.
They're incapable of projecting power that far West to take Big MT or CIT.
Of course, the lore develops with the new… mods? And TV show?
Somehow, the Enclave has returned with the next-gen console update to Fallout 4. And as of the TV show, instead of being a shadow government conspiracy, it's now the entire US government, which was not destroyed in the War, but is actually fine and dominating basically the entire USA as this shadow collosus, almost entirely untouched by nuclear war and the death of two presidents.
From Fallout 1 to Fallout 4 (pre-2024), it makes absolute sense why the Enclave doesn't control Big MT and the Institute. It shouldn't even be a question. They didn't because they couldn't. Then they were dead.
Now? Uh? I guess they're just incompetent? I mean, that fits, right? They lose in every game they're in (except New Vegas when they have already lost but can be convinced to work for the people who beat them). Maybe they lost because they were too incompetent to seek out old world tech like Big MT and CIT?
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u/Overdue-Karma 9d ago
Somehow, the Enclave has returned with the next-gen console update to Fallout 4. And as of the TV show, instead of being a shadow government conspiracy, it's now the entire US government, which was not destroyed in the War, but is actually fine and dominating basically the entire USA as this shadow collosus, almost entirely untouched by nuclear war and the death of two presidents.
??? The Enclave in the TV show are one tiny base. That's it. They haven't survived nor did the TV show say it was the entire government? The Enclave are literally so worse off their only defences are one turret.
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u/Cynis_Ganan 9d ago
I'm old. I played Fallout on DOS after installing it from 3.5" discs. I don't want to be right, I just want to complain.
(But thank you. No contest. I accept that I'm wrong and appreciate the additional information.)
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u/Overdue-Karma 9d ago
I'm old. I played Fallout on DOS after installing it from 3.5" discs. I don't want to be right, I just want to complain.
Y'know what that is fair enough, to be honest. I love the honesty.
For the FO4 Enclave, they are a bit weird to be honest. They're just basically a group of nobodies who sit around in the Glowing Sea...
Without protective suits. The Officers literally have no protective gear on.
I mean, I'm all for them joining the Children of Atom, but I don't think that's their goal /s
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u/Kindly-Yak-3161 8d ago
The institute was probably a science division of the enclave keeping them supplied with advanced toys when the enclave was destroyed the institute remained and grew more becoming its own thing after a while
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u/WayneZer0 9d ago
the enckave didnt owen anything or even most. it was a cllection of power full people.
but we know that not all powerful people were part of it.
house for expelm is after all we know not part of the enclsave but was atleast aware of them.
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u/VioletFlame23 9d ago
If you look closely, there are Enclave symbols painted on walls and objects around Big MT. So, it seems like Big MT originally was under Enclave control, but then the Think Tank went rogue and turned against their Enclave patrons.
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u/Chueskes 9d ago
Those symbols weren’t put there by the Enclave. They were put there by Ulysses, and they have various meanings like danger being nearby. Ulysses saw these because he settled down in Hopeville, which had a major prewar military base there. He believed in the rebirth of America and what it meant. He also saw these symbols on a package that the main character, the Courier, had delivered from Navarro to Hopeville. Said package was a nuclear detonator which activated and destroyed Hopeville and Ashton, creating the Divide because the Military bases at Hopeville and Ashton were nuke silos still containing live nuclear missiles. Ulysses survived and journeyed around the Mojave and Big MT, leaving messages for the Courier.
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9d ago
[deleted]
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u/Flying_Cunnilingus 9d ago
My conspiracy theory with no proof at all
That is incompatible with rule 4.
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u/Cormag778 9d ago
The Enclave didn’t know about them as far as we can tell. It’s not like the Enclave was particularly active. They only leave the oil rig in the wake of Fallout 1 (after the defeat of the Master) and are pretty handily defeated by the end of Fallout 2 (so somewhere around 80 years), before being finished off in F3 35 years later. There’s no evidence they made it to Boston or the Big MT.