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HELIOS One (Fallout) - Brian Valeza

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NCR has so many engineers in Hoover Dam that they probably have more than they know what to do with but they can't send a few of them to fix Helios One? the existence of Fantastic has been bothering me for a while. here are my theories:

i just don't see why Hoover Dam is absolutely crawling all over the place with presumably properly trained engineers who know what they're doing (and they have to know what they're doing, because Hoover Dam is running fine and presumably powers all of New Vegas with even just a tiny fraction of its power, and New Vegas is wasting energy 24/7 365 days of the week)-- and they can't spare one (1) engineer to go check on how Fantastic (an outside contractor) is doing?

it's not like nobody knows Fantastic is an idiot. and it's not like Fantastic has connections higher up, if from what it sounds like they basically kidnapped him when he wasn't necessarily trying to hide that he doesn't know what he's doing

obviously the answer is gameplay reasons, but still. so i have a few explanations.

(theory 1) the output from Helios One is so tiny it's just not worth it

according to the US Bureau of Reclamation(which operates the Dam)'s website, last updated in 2018, Hoover Dam "generates, on average, about 4 billion kilowatt-hours of hydroelectric power each year for use in Nevada, Arizona, and California - enough to serve 1.3 million people". the NCR has been said to have a population of 700K during the time of Fallout 2, but obviously they must have grown exponentially since then. so I assume by the time of F:NV they at least have a population larger than the size of one small modern city. still, the residents of the NCR may not need to use as much energy as modern 21c people do, and 1.3 mil is still a lot of people. for context California in 2026 has a population of 39.53 million.

Wikipedia says Nevada Solar One generates about a 110 gigawatt-hours a year. which should be 110000000 kilowatt-hours, i.e. one hundred ten million. which is about a 36th of Hoover. so yes, Solar can still generate quite a lot of energy, but ofc not as much as THE Hoover Dam. it also must be noted Helios One doesn't have an actual irl equivalent that we can compare 1:1 to, so its output can be whatever we want it to be.

certainly, if Hoover Dam is worth 36 Helios One's, I can see why Hoover Dam gets most of the NCR's attention. the thing that throws a wrench in this theory is that the NCR presumably spent a lot of manpower and energy taking it from the Brotherhood of Steel. perhaps the point was to kick the BoS out instead of using the plant for themselves? it also doesn't explain why they, again, couldn't send at least one engineer to Helios One to get it functioning, since it does genuinely help take the load off of Hoover in the local area. and this way they have a backup if they ever lose Hoover for whatever reason.

(theory 2) Fantastic is actually competent

this is the theory that they did already send real engineers to try and outsmart BoS shutdown on the plant but they all failed. Fantastic somehow managed to stupid his way through the security and get the output running to at least 1%. maybe the BoS locked down the plant in a way that expected whoever's trying to hack it to be at least somewhat aware of technology and set traps accordingly. Fantastic ignored all of it and he got 1%

this does make sense to me. i don't remember Ignacio Rivas ever introducing himself as an engineer (maybe he's a medical doctor or not someone with an expertise in solar power engineering specifically?) but he's still a seriously educated person and he couldn't figure out how to increase the production without the Courier muscling their way through the security either. so the problem with Helios One is that it just needed someone to bite the bullet and go die in droves to get rid of all that security mechanisms, not that the engineering team is stupid. so Fantastic actually did his job well, and even if anyone else came in they couldn't get it over 1%

perhaps the NCR engineers they sent did figure this out pretty quickly and told the higher-ups this, and the NCR brass didn't want to send an unknown amount of soldiers to die just to get a slightly higher energy output.

this does make a lot of sense to me. the NCR has exhibited signs of being a little too careful at preserving manpower in other cases as well, so it would be consistent. i think i'm going with this explanation

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