Big Trouble in Big Town

 is a Fallout 3 quest. It is also a Xbox 360/PC achievement and a PlayStation 3 Trophy.

Objectives and walkthrough
Flash, a local resident of Big Town, asks you to go secure some hostages from super mutants in the Germantown police station. If Flash does not give you the quest, another citizen of Big Town will. Once at the station, use the upper level door to gain entry and make your way down to the ground level, or if you have 100 Lockpicking, you can pick the Very Hard lock outside which will place you very close to Red, and save alot of hassle with Super Mutants.

Once you are on the ground level, find Red and get her cell door open (pick the lock, open it with a Germantown jailor's key found on mutants, or use the lockup computer with a password found upstairs). Talk to her and she will thank you for rescuing her and tell you about her friend Shorty. Rescuing Shorty is optional and gives good karma. Before leaving the area you might want to explore a bit: if you have at least 50 lock picking you can pick the locks on the two armories in the H.Q. — one of them has a few conventional weapons while the other has the coveted "Fat Man".

Afterwards, exit the building and make your way back to Big Town, dealing with any super mutants remaining in the area.

When you make it to Big Town they will both thank you and Red will tell you that she heard the super mutants discussing yet another attack on Big Town and ask for your help. If you accept you'll be rewarded with good karma upon completion. 2-3 super mutants will storm into the area (if you difficulty is higher, more Mutants can appear), but the residents are pretty weak, so it's your job to help them. If you have at least 50 skill in the following:
 * With a high enough Small Guns skill you can teach/train them how to shoot.
 * With a high enough Science skill you can also reactivate some broken robots in the junkyard. (Currently buggy) You can really find a broken robot in the Town's junkyard.
 * With a high enough Sneak teach the residents how to sneak.
 * With a high enough Explosives you can help the residents to make a minefield. (IMPORTANT NOTE: If the minefield is still active when escorting Sticky from Little Lamplight, he will set off the mines as if he were a hostile! Make sure to have him wait while you clear out the remaining mines.)

Once the super mutants have been dealt with, the residents consider you their hero. Talk to Timebomb after the attack and he will give you his Lucky 8 Ball with a +1 Luck bonus. It is important to protect Timebomb during the super mutant attack as you will not be able to receive the Lucky 8 Ball without speaking to him afterwards. Also, if you cured Timebomb (Medicine 40 or greater) in the clinic, Red will heal you for free. Bittercup will also have new conversations that hint at an attraction to the player, regardless of gender, and with polite responses, she will provide the player with random small items.

With little preparation, you can make the whole fight a lot easier: while Shorty, Red and Sticky are following the player, they can be given any armor, including Advanced Power Armor Mk II, as well as stimpacks. Sticky is also keen fan of Big Guns and will be very helpful if you give him one.

To make the fight even easier (and reduce the chances of NPC deaths during the battle), you can also reverse-pickpocket the other Big Town residents to give them better armor and weapons, and maybe a couple of stimpacks each (it's best to do this before going to Germantown and triggering the events leading to the Super Mutant attack). If you give an NPC a different weapon from their default, you'll also have to give them ammo for it. Also, you have to fast-travel away from Big Town and then fast-travel back before the residents will have on their new armor.

No attack?
After rescuing Red and Shorty, sometimes the mutants won't attack. if you came across some mutants on the way back to big town and killed them it's possible that they were the attackers to-be. Red will still ask for your help and you can still train the town folk, but you can wait around all you like and no mutants will show which also means you will not receive timebomb's lucky eight ball. Or sometimes they will ask you to train them, then as soon as you train them, they go 'Your our hero' and stuff like that. I killed every mutant in the police department so that could be the problem.

Shorty
If a player rescues Red and does not enter the basement to rescue Shorty, after returning Red to Big Town and fighting off the super mutants, the player will no longer be able to rescue Shorty. He will still be in the basement, but the speech between him and the super mutant captor will carry on as if the player was not present. Upon defeating the mutant, Shorty will remain in the crouched, cuffed position and speak as if he was back in Big Town.

Bittercup Pappy Speech
(Note: This bug was fixed on all platforms with the first patch release)

This bug allows for the fastest experience gains possible. It only works before the Big Town quest has been completed. It does not require the 'Lady Killer' perk to have access to Bittercup's dialogue options. Bittercup will also flirt with and provide free items to any character, male or female, who is polite to her and takes an interest in her life.

Bittercup will tell you about her dating history if you choose the "Nice to meet you, Bittercup." and "I know! No one understands me either!" dialog options. After that, Pappy will offer a dialog option about Bittercup with a Speech skill check, and the option will never go away. It can be repeatedly selected for 5xp each time the check is successfully made. If the player has a Speech skill of 50, the Speech check will have a 100% chance of success. If the player has maxed out the Swift Learner perk, it will be worth 7xp each time. This dialog option (and thus the XP cheat) is no longer available once the quest has been completed.

If going for the achievements to reach Level 8, 14, and 20 with different Karma ratings, the quickest way is to grind experience with Neutral Karma, but save the game shortly before reaching each milestone level. That save can then be used to leave town, do good or bad things until the Karma changes, and then come back to make the next level.

For users having trouble finding Bittercup or Pappy, both are often found sleeping in one of the town's many comfortable dwellings.

Robots
(Note: This appears to have been fixed with the first patch for all platforms. A sentry bot appeared for me. I am not sure if a Protectron was supposed to have appeared as well but I was allowed to proceed with this portion of the quest by just fixing the sentry bot.)

The broken robots option is bugged (observed on all 3 platforms). When you go to find the robots, they are nowhere to be found in the junkyard. On the PC, to get them to reappear, you have to use the following Reference ID codes to get the robots to reappear.
 * Protectron - 0002d934
 * Sentry Bot - 0002c11b

Since the player.placeatme command does not work with RefIDs, you have to go through this set of commands: (in big town, near the junkyard, press ~ to open the console, then type these in. After each line, hit enter)


 * prid 2d934
 * kill
 * resurrect
 * disable
 * enable

-


 * prid 2c11b
 * kill
 * resurrect
 * disable
 * enable

-

This will move the destroyed bots to the Player's location, so it is advised to be standing in the locale where they should have been.

The bots may seem stuck in the ground, but as soon as they're "repaired", they will do their "get up" animation and properly stand on the ground.

Make sure you do hang around after doing this, for it won't be long before Super Mutants attack the town (4 total, you will get positive Karma when they're dead). Afterward talk to Red and she will thank you for having defeated the Super Mutants.

Super Mutants
It is possible when offering to help Big Town defend against the Super Mutants that the system (Xbox 360) will freeze. One possible remedy is to sleep on the bed near the bridge for an hour in which case the Super Mutants will spawn properly.

Disappearing Town
Sometimes after the attack when you return to the town (after all the dialogue) there will be a super mutant roaming the town and all the townspeople will have gone missing. (This may not be a bug; It's possible everyone was killed by a super mutant attack.)

After successfully defending the town from the supermutant attack, the NPC Flash may suddenly disappear eventhough he is not killed in the skirmish during the attack.

Behind the scenes
The name of this achievement is a nod to the 1986 film Big Trouble in Little China.

Loot

 * D.C. Journal of Internal Medicine in the Germantown Police HQ, top floor, in the conference room on the table next to a first-aid kit.
 * Lying, Congressional Style in the Germantown Police HQ, ground floor, in the room with 3 long tables, on the rusty child-sized desk.
 * Tumblers Today in the Germantown Police HQ basement, in the locked weapons closet.
 * Fat Man in the Germantown Police HQ basement, in the locked weapons closet.
 * Lucky 8 Ball is given to you by Timebomb as a reward for completing the quest. This will only happen if you go into Red's and revive him (requires a Medicine skill of 40).