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[Rolan7]

Yeah I don't understand the hate either.  From what I've seen they:
Preserve pre-war technology
Research new technology
Trade safe technology with outsiders, the NCR and tribals
Keep the military technology for self-defense

And yet a lot of people (including a good friend of mine) act like they're raiders.  My friend can't point out any cases where they start fights to seize technology, though.  I understand why their attitude would bother some people, but not where they get this reputation for stealing technology.

The one situation I can think of is the NCR-Brotherhood war.  The wikis don't provide any canon explanation for why the conflict even started (just references to Van Buren, the game which wasn't made), and I don't remember exactly what was said in New Vegas, but it seems like an unfortunate misunderstanding to me.  The expansionist NCR had certainly annexed all the land around the west-coast bunkers.  Then I seem to recall they had a rather crazy leader who declared war on the NCR out of paranoia, possibly over the Enclave technology they'd captured together from the oil rig?  I don't really remember and I can't find information about it.

That was an inevitable conflict, though.  The NCR had the brotherhood surrounded, and with their expansionist tendencies I'm sure they were pressuring the Brotherhood to give up weapon technology.  It was a tense situation that I think just got mishandled, and I have trouble believing the isolationist Brotherhood was the aggressor.  Maybe someone else has a better recollection of what was said about that conflict.

On further wiki examination, the Mojave chapter of the Brotherhood stayed out of the war until the NCR attacked and overwhelmed them at Helios 1.  Practically speaking they should have retreated, but still...  Shows NCR's dark side, in my opinion.  And then the NCR had the gall to hold a grudge over taking heavy losses in a fight they initiated, and declared total war against the survivors.  Kinda makes me regret helping the NCR.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Though the peace treaty I brokered was probably the best thing for the Brotherhood survivors.

Of course we're ignoring Fallout 3 and Fallout Tactics, where the Brotherhood is a great deal more cooperative with outsiders... But those were splinter groups anyway.

They preserve the knowledge and do fuck-all with it. Not exactly a good thing.

They trade useful technology, just not the really deadly stuff or power armor.  If they had taught the NCR to use power armor properly they'd probably have been absorbed and dissolved long ago.  Ugh...  I hate the NCR for walking around in mangled power armor with the joints ripped out.  They have all those annexed colonies yet couldn't spend the scientist-hours to figure out the proper usage?  So they scrapped miracles of pre-war tech into fancy metal plates.  The NCR's research team in New Vegas is a joke too, it exists to have a mercenary recover incredibly dangerous viral biomatter research.  I'm sure *that* will end well.  Not to mention their "science team" at HELIOS 1.  The few Brotherhood survivors in Hidden Valley aren't getting much done anymore, but they were before the NCR rolled in.

Yeesh, why did I support the NCR again?  I should have taken the courier route with a Brotherhood alliance.

Two: House originally could've been convinced into letting the Brotherhood work with them, and all the files are there, including the ending. Mods are fun.

Oh hell yes, there's the ending I wanted.

[KingofstarrySkies]

Aye. Although, if you kill noone and hit the self-destruct button in the BoS bunker, most of them theoretically would escape.

I prefer using my sexy, sexy mods and having BoS bros.

[GobbieMarauder]

Nah, Ulfric. But yes, Siddgeir is a dick.

He's not. The document you're thinking of refers to him as an "asset" because the Dominion tortured him into giving them information they already had, but he didn't know they had, leading him to blame himself for the Empire losing the war.

Spoiler: Further Ramblings (click to show/hide)

What actually caused the loss of the war was the gross incompetence of the Emperor, who surrendered the second things went hairy despite the Dominion being on the verge of surrender themselves.

That same document goes to lengths to establish that an independent Skyrim is just as bad for the Dominion as a unified Empire - If the war ends in the Empire's favor, the Empire will turn around and stomp the Dominion. If Skyrim gains independence, it'll immediately reconcile it's differences with the Empire over how much they hate the Dominion and team up to stomp it. The Dominion only wins if the war drags on and completely wears both sides down. This was obviously done to make sure the civil war divide remained a (for lack of a better term) philosophical one for the players rather than "but which one beats the Dominion?" Unfortunately most players just saw "Ulfric," "Thalmor," and "asset" in the same sentence and cried "conspiracy!"

It's a shame, because that combined with the mild whiff of racism (which is overblown, in my opinion) spoils the popular opinion in what is probably the most interesting character in any Elder Scrolls game - he has a checked past and real flaws, along with a clear personal beliefs, which sets him apart from his Imperial counterpart, General Military Man, who does Military Things.

[NullForceOmega]

Thank you Rolan7, that was well summarized.  I believe the reason for the initial hostilities between BoS and NCR were based upon an agreement between the two that all advanced technologies be turned over to the BoS for research, and NCR violated that agreement by seizing materials recovered from the Enclave at Navarro.

[Isdar]

And yet a lot of people (including a good friend of mine) act like they're raiders.  My friend can't point out any cases where they start fights to seize technology, though.  I understand why their attitude would bother some people, but not where they get this reputation for stealing technology.

In two of the five BoS endings in F:NV they more or less steal any technology they do not find appropriate for wastelanders to have. That's probably where they got their reputation as raiders from.

[Flying Dice]

And yet a lot of people (including a good friend of mine) act like they're raiders.  My friend can't point out any cases where they start fights to seize technology, though.  I understand why their attitude would bother some people, but not where they get this reputation for stealing technology.

In two of the five BoS endings in F:NV they more or less steal any technology they do not find appropriate for wastelanders to have. That's probably where they got their reputation as raiders from.

This, more or less. People are conflating stated goals with actual behavior -- what we see in-game isn't the BoS trying to rebuild society, it's the BoS being isolationist hoarders. Obviously FO3 doesn't count, because even the relatively normal BoS in that were still super-friendly (Hey, want to come into this pre-War bunker we found and play with lostech? Oh, thanks for doing what we would have done anyways, random wasteland scavenger, feel free to clean out the armory and take everything we came here for!)

[NullForceOmega]

You are certainly entitled to your opinion.  If I were the BoS, I'd be actively appropriating tech relics from wastelanders all the time, and leaving a massive swath of death and destruction in my wake.  The BoS doesn't exist to 'rebuild society', they exist to preserve the technology and science of the past.  It is not and never has been the goal of the Brotherhood to save the wasteland, their involvement with NCR and destroying the Masters army were purely out of good intentions (and the NCR proved that they couldn't be trusted with that aid, as they actively tried to circumvent the arrangement they had with the BoS at every turn).  All the BoS does is gather the vestiges of the advanced tech left behind after almost the whole damn planet was reduced to dust, and maintain the knowledge necessary to build and use it.  They are the enemies of anyone who thinks they should hand out plasma rifles like candy to persons who reveal daily that they can't be trusted with them, they are heroes to me specifically because they will sacrifice every last drop of their own blood to safeguard our advances in medicine, science, and engineering against the dark ages of the post apocalypse.

Does anyone know whether Skyrim calculates skill experience based on damage dealt or successful strike?  I'm wondering if one of my mods is causing this problem with my destruction skill.

[Zanzetkuken The Great]

Does anyone know whether Skyrim calculates skill experience based on damage dealt or successful strike?  I'm wondering if one of my mods is causing this problem with my destruction skill.

Start casting lots of high-level spells and see what happens.

[Rolan7]

Thanks for the answers - those ending scenes are pretty clear.  Now I understand why people say they steal technology: they do.  If I feel like arguing the ethics of that, I'll dig up the New Vegas thread.

Sorry for the derail...  Back to Skyrim, I'm amazed that I suffered the vanilla UI when I last played.  What's a good mod for that?  I'll probably just install that and the interesting stealth rebalancing mod mentioned earlier in the thread:
http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/28418/?

I'm going to miss being absolutely muffled for little effort.  I might have to get some actual armor...  I was running into combat in *elven* armor, enchanted for archery and *smithing*.  At level 51, so I ought to be finding *dragonscale* as random loot.
My favorite items are:
Someone's mundane silver ring I apparently stole
An amulet of Mara... I think I was planning to get married
An amulet of Zenithar for better prices which I'm pretty sure I barely used
A flawless daedric dagger, finally something that makes sense.  Except it's "of burning" haha
Elven bracers of alchemy I apparently carried everywhere
Elven bracers of *punching*, why the hell did I have these
Elven gilded armor of smithing (legendary), my only cuirass
Elven helmet of +33% bow damage, sweet.
Legendary Glass gauntlets of +32% bow damage.  Why was I wearing mismatched items aaaaah
The shrouded boots of being absolutely silent at all times

And a bunch of miscellaneous smithing and one-handed buff items.  I was going to take all this shit to Stohvakor for some reason.  And that's just my *favorites*, not counting my alchemy supplies and potions.  157/385 pounds of mostly non-combat crap.

I <3 hoarding.  I just need to drop things off more often.  And get some freaking dragonscale armor.  Maybe I wanted to practice blacksmithing on cheap stuff first (and actually, I do like the elven armor aesthetic on my bosmer).

[miauw62]

SkyUI is generally used to replace the normal UI.

[KingofstarrySkies]

And yet a lot of people (including a good friend of mine) act like they're raiders.  My friend can't point out any cases where they start fights to seize technology, though.  I understand why their attitude would bother some people, but not where they get this reputation for stealing technology.

In two of the five BoS endings in F:NV they more or less steal any technology they do not find appropriate for wastelanders to have. That's probably where they got their reputation as raiders from.

They do it because they think they're protecting the wasteland still, keeping it safe from itself. Frankly, they're doing an alright job. Although they could probably use a management-change.

[AVE]

SkyUI is generally used to replace the normal UI.

Nope. SkyUI is used to replace that horrible, horrible UI programmed BY crab people exclusively FOR crab people.

[Ultimuh]

edit: nevermind.

[Orange Wizard]

SkyUI is generally used to replace the normal UI.

Nope. SkyUI is used to replace that horrible, horrible UI programmed BY crab people exclusively FOR crab people.

crab people crab people

i am the king of the crab people

[Gentlefish]

Crab people. Crab people.