Liberty Prime

Liberty Prime (redesignated Liberty Prime Mark II after its reconstruction if rebuilt) is a unique U.S. Army robot. It stands 40 feet (12.19 meters) tall and is heavily armored, which coupled with its armament of a powerful eye laser and tactical nuclear bombs make it a major combat asset.

Liberty Prime was found and brought to working order by the Brotherhood of Steel. Its total restoration was due to the assistance of Dr. Madison Li, who solved Prime's power issues in the year 2277. After its destruction at the satellite relay station in the same year it remained in disrepair until 2287, when it was brought to Boston for restoration and activation.

Background
Prime is the result of military contract 38917, for which the United States Army contracted RobCo Industries and General Atomics International to collaborate on an unprecedented joint project: The creation of the most powerful combat robot in the history of warfare, to liberate Anchorage, Alaska from Chinese occupation. Development commenced in 2072, and was intended to serve both military and propaganda needs. The former dictated the capacity, the latter the design: In the words of General Constantine Chase, initiator of the project, Liberty Prime was to embody the American military: A walking, talking, nuke-tossing hero reminding enemies of the U.S. that they picked a fight with a global super power. Confident that the project would soon yield result, General Chase publicly confirmed in June 2072 that the U.S. Army was working with General Atomics and RobCo to create a superweapon meant to establish dominance of the United States on the Alaskan front.

However, while the chassis of the robot and its weapons were all completed by the projected date, including the voice module, the developers were unable to finish the project for one simple reason: As Stanley Bloomfeld, project lead, reported to General Chase, they were unable to develop a power source compact enough to power all of its systems. Vault-Tec Industries was unable to help, as the only person capable of solving this conundrum - Stanislaus Braun - went into seclusion shortly before the problems manifested. The robot could technically move and navigate terrain, but it would only do so with all weapons systems offline. The delay was unacceptable and the U.S. military was forced to press on without the aid of Liberty Prime. The Alaskan campaign was won, at a heavy cost in men and materiel, while Liberty Prime remained in his bay below the Pentagon, waiting for a solution to its power management problems.

A new lease on life
With the Great War beginning and ending, leaving nearly all destroyed, the robot was abandoned and soon forgotten. Its new chance came in 2255, when the Brotherhood of Steel expedition under Owyn Lyons arrived in Washington and found him beneath the ruins of the Pentagon. This impressive find led them to claim the Pentagon as the D.C. Bunker, their Citadel, and resuming development of the failed pre-War project. However, the same problems would plague the program as before the War. Chief among these was energy consumption. The Brotherhood had no way of powering the behemoth robot, even with Reginald Rothchild heading the project.

For twenty years, the Brotherhood struggled to launch its robot. Every attempt to gain ground was compensated with failures, even as late as 2277. On May 8, 2277, the research team managed to restore 46% power to internal processors, 45% to weapons, and 37% to power management systems, and attempted to redistribute power to bring the robot online. The attempt proved fruitless, with problems coming from the least expected direction: Liberty Prime himself. Rothchild's team tried to bypass the aggressive combat subroutines by trying to fool the robot with a neural dampener that power was being redistributed from a source other than its weapons. However, the onboard AI routines detected the attempt and again refused to allow the researchers to draw power away from its weapon systems. The attempt fried some of the robots circuitry and set the project back three months, again.

Another attempt was made on July 13, 2277. However, a faulty power capacitor caused a power spike and degraded system performance, dropping internal processor, weapons, and power management power to 12%, 13% and, 1% respectively. Tired of struggling with rerouting power, Rothchild ended power management experiments and resumed work on Accelerated Vector Fusion module to simply meet the power demands. Inspired by the work of Dr. Madison Li at Rivet City, Rothchild hoped for a breakthrough. Unfortunately, this avenue of research proved.. Risky. In its first major experiment on August 1, 2277, the AVF device resulted in 2nd degree burns for Scribe Bowditch, while an accidental weapon discharge nearly killed Elder Lyons. These events led to stricter control imposed on the experimentation team.

Yet there was hope. Despite the accidents, Rothchild's team was able to restore much of the power and improve its distribution (bringing power to internal processors to 87% and weapons to 60%), but problems with power management (operating at 3% efficiency) made deployment impossible. Mobility and navigation translation, as always, stubbornly remained at 0%. Only the voice module worked at 100% at all times, mocking the researchers.

Help came unexpectedly. When the Enclave seized Project Purity, Dr. Madison Li arrived at the Citadel. With her experience in fusion research and applications, Rothchild and his team were able to resolve the power management problems.

Liberty Prime was awoken and brought online for the first time in its life and more than two centuries overdue. Deployed against the Enclave in the Battle of Project Purity, Liberty Prime making its way towards Project Purity over the Arlington Memorial bridge. The massive robot acted as a spearhead, destroying Vertibirds and entrenched Enclave positions with ease. The Enclave was entirely unprepared for such an offensive and could not counter such brute force, even with Vertibird strafing runs and artillery bombardment.

Lyons's Pride and the Lone Wanderer followed the robot's path of destruction, mopping up any Enclave personnel that survived the initial assault. Liberty Prime continued its assault up to the Purifier, destroying photonic resonance barriers set up around the island to deny land access. Upon arrival at the Memorial, Liberty Prime and the Pride set up a security perimeter, while Sarah Lyons and the Lone Wanderer headed inside the facility.

Death
The victory at the Purifier set the pattern for attacks using Liberty Prime. For two weeks, the Brotherhood mopped up Enclave forces throughout the Capital Wasteland, until the Battle of Rockland. The attack followed a standard pattern. Liberty Prime was deployed as spearhead, destroying the bulk of the enemy forces and bypassing their fortifications, while ground troops under Tristan's command followed the robot, mopping up any stragglers. The initial attack went well and the combat group penetrated enemy defenses right up into the facility. Liberty Prime proceeded to create an access point into the facility, by punching through the concrete walls.

However, this was a ruse by the Enclave. Liberty Prime was lured into the cul-de-sac in front of the Rockland facility in order to be destroyed. Just as it opened the facility to the Brotherhood's assault, the Enclave initiated a tactical missile bombardment from the Bradley-Hercules orbital weapons platform, turning the area into a kill zone. Liberty Prime was destroyed, with Tristan's forces just barely able to reach minimum safe distance. The destruction of Liberty Prime put the Brotherhood in a very difficult position, as it removed the only significant military advantage it had over the Enclave. Lyons had little in the way of men and resources at the beginning of the conflict with the Enclave, and after the loss of Prime all of these problems surfaced, exacerbated by the ongoing water delivery program. With the resources pooled into defense against the Enclave, the Brotherhood had to rely on the Lone Wanderer as their trump card.

Meanwhile, Rothchild immediately began work on rebuilding Prime, hoping to restore him to working condition. Eventually, the project was shelved due to a lack of success until Proctor Ingram was ordered to resume operations. Despite the terrible state of salvage, she labored for several years to reconstruct the robot. When Elder Arthur Maxson realized that the Institute can be tracked down and confronted in the Commonwealth, Prime's components were loaded onto the Prydwen and brought along for the campaign. A special gantry was constructed in the ruins of the Boston Airport, to assemble the war machine under Proctor Ingram's orders - as long as the Brotherhood would be able to salvage the components that would allow for it to be deployed.

Rebirth
There were several problems that had to be rectified. For starters, the fragile CPU blew itself out whenever the scribes tried feeding power to it, due to the complexity of the robot's power system. The missile strike that destroyed Prime also wrecked the power system, necessitating the development of a new system, enlisting the aid of either Doctor Madison Li or Professor Scara. They helped restore the total corruption of the memory core, caused by improper salvaging of Prime and flaws in its original design (lack of inertial dampeners and titanium shock casing to protect it).

The next step in the reconstruction was rebuilding its limbs. Electromagnetic actuators were used for this purpose, constructed on site using high powered magnets. The restored memory core posed a constant problem, as explaining to a combat robot why it can't move was a drain on the scribes' patience. Following the successful assembly of the limbs, the penultimate component of the combat robot was a supply of modified Mark 28 nuclear bombs, necessary if it was ever to operate at more than half capacity. The nukes salvaged from the Commonwealth at Sentinel site Prescott had to be adapted to remain stable in the unconventional launcher.

The final step in bringing Liberty Prime back to life was reactivating its fusion reactor, which lay dormant ever since its destruction. Kept online by power leeched from the Prydwen, Prime's reactor required the experimental beryllium agitator to cold start the reactor. The agitator - located at the Mass Fusion Building - would provide the power surge necessary to start the reaction.

Design
Liberty Prime was built to be the very embodiment of American military might - a walking, talking, nuke-tossing hero to remind the world what it means to be a super power. As such, it is patterned after the human silhouette and outfitted with the most powerful weapons available to the United States military. Liberty Prime had two primary weapons: Its head-mounted Liberty laser and a back-mounted supply of Mark 28 nuclear bombs, modified from standard aircraft weapons. The sheer power output of the chassis allowed it to destroy fortifications simply by crushing or punching through them.

The combination of a directed energy weapon capable of destroying targets at hundreds of yards with pin-point accuracy and high-yield specialized explosives produced a weapon system theoretically capable of engaging any target in any terrain. The only drawback was Prime's slow speed, as it could only move at a walking pace due to the amount of weapons it carried. Foreseeing this issue, Liberty Prime was outfitted with the toughest armor available, allowing it to withstand extended combat with no performance loss. In fact, Prime was so well equipped that the only weapon that could reliably damage or destroy it was a nuclear warhead detonating point blank (or an orbital missile salvo, as witnessed by the Brotherhood of Steel).

However, as mentioned above, Prime was a miracle on paper, but less so in practice. No fusion power source available in 2072 produced enough energy to allow Liberty Prime to operate even at a minimum combat capacity, and as the war with China dragged on, the project was eventually mothballed. The self-sustaining fusion reactor remained active, powering the robot, until finally Madison Li resolved the power distribution and management problems, allowing it to be deployed into combat. Moreover the machine's slow speed and large size made it supremely vulnerable to high-yield artillery and orbital missile strikes capable of overwhelming its armor, potentially limiting its practical effectiveness in combat against an enemy on similar military footing to the United States.

While undeniably effective in an asymmetrical post-apocalyptic context, Liberty Prime in reality embodied very different aspects of the American military-industrial complex as of the 2070s than were originally intended - over-funded, bereft of oversight, and seemingly obsessed with super-weapons and displays of power.

Overview

 * Liberty Prime fires dual, head-mounted energy beams, which are similar to shots fired from a Tesla cannon. The beams can kill multiple Enclave soldiers with a single shot. Its backpack holds a seemingly inexhaustible supply of explosives that it hurls at enemies with unerring accuracy. These munitions detonate on contact, in a manner very similar to a mini nuke, but with many times the explosive power. Liberty Prime's massive size and strength count as weapons too, as it can crush or rip to shreds anything in its path, if it doesn't blast them to bits first.
 * Prime is immune to all kinds of conventional attacks, being able to withstand a barrage of mini nukes with no damage and is able to defeat energy barriers simply by walking into them, although it will sometimes grab them and rip them down. Finally, to inspire its allies and demoralize foes, it constantly spouts anti-communist phrases as well as declaring that "American democracy cannot be defeated." For all the sophistication of its combat systems, it does not appear to be able to "think" in the way Mister Handy or other robots with neural networks do.
 * Due to its size, Liberty Prime primarily follows pre-scripted paths whenever it appears and has little independence outside of them. The walk to the Purifier is filled with scripted elements: As it is being lifted out of the Citadel lab, Liberty Prime will hit the wall of the Citadel, dislodging some pieces of the wall.
 * Although it can't be killed, it's possible to cause it to turn hostile, in which case it will eliminate the player character and their followers in a matter of seconds.

Quests

 * Take it Back!: The Brotherhood of Steel, with the help of Dr. Li, manages to fix the power issues with the robot. With the pressing need to reclaim Project Purity, Elder Lyons orders Prime deployed without proper testing. Liberty Prime makes its way to the Jefferson Memorial, while destroying Enclave energy barriers, vertibirds and troops. Once there, Liberty Prime assists the Brotherhood in guarding the memorial's entrance, after taking down the force field surrounding it. The giant robot will then remain there for the duration of the quest.
 * Death From Above: Liberty Prime joins the Lone Wanderer in the assault on the Satellite Relay Station, an Enclave base located beyond the Rockland Car Tunnel. After the Enclave hits Prime with an orbital strike, Prime crawls from the wreckage and initiates its self-destruct sequence to prevent being captured by the "communists." Its head, feet, and what appears to be a forearm are taken back to the Citadel. Similar to Deputy Weld, its head can be activated, which will cause it to playback some of its anti-communist phrases, although they sound much more garbled than they are during the 'Take it Back!' quest.
 * Three Dog will make a news report as a eulogy for it on Galaxy News Radio when it is destroyed.
 * After Broken Steel is completed, Liberty Prime's head can be found on the table in the Citadel lab. However, it is not removed from the satellite relay station, and it will remain there as well.
 * Getting Ready for Prime Time: At the conclusion of Broken Steel's main questline, Scribe Rothchild vows the Brotherhood of Steel will rebuild Prime, although it may take months, or even years. He then asks for the player character's help in scavenging sensor modules and cameras to assist in the rebuilding process.

Overview

 * When Liberty Prime is brought back online at the Boston Airport in 2287 after its destruction in the line of duty, the Brotherhood of Steel has already implemented several upgrades to its systems, including an almost complete redesign of his limbs and arms which has replaced old liquid-feed hydraulic systems with electromagnetic actuators. They have therefore designated him as 'Mk. II,' a designation it has willingly accepted into his programming. Other changes include its eye laser - which now fires a single massive red beam instead of a salvo of blue beams - as well as a lifetime supply of more modern Mark 28 nuclear bombs for Prime to hurl at its enemies after completing the quest Liberty Reprimed. The latter it now does with markedly increased frequency to the point where Prime almost completely foregoes the use of its eye laser in favor of nukes, which are now tossed at pretty much anything it considers a target, even a lonely raider toting a base pipe pistol.
 * Liberty Prime MK II also demonstrates a significantly greater understanding of battlefield tactics than its predecessor; switching from a land-based route to an amphibious assault during its attack on the Institute whereas before it only demonstrated the capacity to overcome straightforward obstacles such as energy barriers. Prime was also able to correctly deduce that the Institute was a subterranean complex and utilized its laser weapon to bore a tunnel directly into the Institute. Together, these changes easily make Liberty Prime the most powerful NPC in Fallout 4 as it is capable of killing almost any enemy at any level with only one or two attacks.
 * Since Liberty Prime is entirely immune to its own weaponry and well aware of the fact, it has no qualms about using nukes at point-blank range, should it find itself faced with enemies milling around its feet. In such a case Prime displays complete disregard for any collateral damage to allies, who are therefore advised to maintain a healthy distance from the massive robot at all times. Other than that, not much has changed in Prime's overall behavior - it still believes it is fighting for the liberation of Anchorage from Chinese forces and continues to broadcast anti-communist propaganda slogans in the most thunderous way possible while carving an irradiated swath through the incinerated remains of its hapless foes.
 * Although it is possible to target Liberty Prime in V.A.T.S., it is immune to any form of damage, much like in Fallout 3. It never turns hostile against the player character if shot at. However, the Sole Survivor can be trampled underfoot if they are in its path.

Quests

 * Liberty Reprimed: Upon returning to Proctor Ingram after Outside the Wire, it is revealed that the Brotherhood of Steel is reconstructing Liberty Prime, who was destroyed in the war against the Enclave in the Capital Wasteland. The Sole Survivor is asked to help restore Liberty Prime to its former glory, in order to help the Brotherhood fight the Institute.
 * Spoils of War: With Liberty Prime almost ready, the Sole Survivor is tasked with recovering a beryllium agitator in order to power him up. The Sole Survivor is to travel to the Mass Fusion building with Proctor Ingram to get the agitator.
 * Ad Victoriam: With Liberty Prime fully operational, the Brotherhood of Steel is ready to launch their assault on the Institute. The Sole Survivor is to follow Liberty Prime to the C.I.T. ruins and put an end to the Institute. After completing the quest, Liberty Prime will be found patrolling Boston Airport after the endgame.
 * When Liberty Prime reaches Bunker Hill it recognizes it as a memorial site and engages "patriotism subroutines," pausing to salute while saying "honoring the fallen is the duty of every red-blooded American."
 * If the player turns on the Brotherhood of Steel after completing their storyline, and then takes down the Prydwen during With Our Powers Combined, Liberty Prime will actually survive the fight against the Minutemen.
 * Airship Down: After the Institute and Sole Survivor has dealt with the Railroad in End of the Line, the Institute will initiate their final assault against the Brotherhood of Steel. To take down the Prydwen, the Institute created a computer virus that will reprogram Liberty Prime's targeting system. After they push back the heavy resistance and the computer virus is uploaded, Liberty Prime will target the Prydwen as an aerial communist incursion and shoot the airship down. The wreckage of the Prydwen subsequently lands on Boston Airport, destroying both the Brotherhood outpost and Liberty Prime.

Notable quotes
Many of its quotes give reference to '50s and '60s anti-communist slogans made to be more specific to China.

Appearances
Liberty Prime appears in Fallout 3, its add-on Broken Steel, Fallout 4 and is mentioned in the Operation: Anchorage and Automatron add-ons. Liberty Prime also appears in Fallout 76 as a power armor skin in the Atomic Shop and the Fallout 76 update The Legendary Run on the Legendary perk card Power Armor Reboot. Liberty Prime also appears in Fallout: The Board Game, where the Brotherhood of Steel may send him out to take out Project Purity during the Capital Wasteland scenario, ending the game.

Behind the scenes

 * In an interview with 1UP.com, Emil Pagliarulo denied any intentional relation between Liberty Prime and Optimus Prime. Pagliarulo admitted he could have made the reference subconsciously.


 * It is the "technological marvel" mentioned in the Brotherhood's faction profile, and the unknown "superweapon" referenced in the "Development of Super Weapon Confirmed" Capitol Post article that appears in terminals at the Capitol Post building and the Citadel.
 * Liberty Prime has several unused animations related to Broken Steel. Originally, it was supposed to appear in Rockland not by stomping down the hill, but jumping into the area and taking down an Enclave gunship with a double-fisted strike. The animation can be restored, and the Vertibird shot down in the game - referenced internally as DLC03PrimeWalkSmashedVertibird - will be correctly destroyed.
 * Furthermore, when the orbital strike begins, Prime was supposed to brace for the attack. This animation can also be restored in the game.


 * In the early parts of the development of Fallout 3, Liberty Prime was supposed to be larger than seen in-game, and the player character was going to ride inside of its head during the final battle.
 * The G.E.C.K. lists a cut quest called "Infiltration" which was situated between The American Dream and Take it Back! and had the player character stealing a power source from Rivet City to power Liberty Prime.
 * Liberty Prime appeared in an advertisement for the PlayStation Now service, where he appeared alongside a cast of characters from various video games.
 * Liberty Prime's head design strongly echoes Gort, the powerful robotic protector from the 1951 anti-nuclear-war science-fiction movie The Day the Earth Stood Still. Both robots share a powerful beam attack from their visor-like "eyes."

Fallout 3

 * Liberty Prime often gets stuck. Although the most common places for this glitch is on the left side of the highway when heading to retake the purifier at the Jefferson Memorial, and on the first large bridge the Lone Wanderer crosses.
 * If all else fails, you may be able to fix this by selecting Liberty Prime in the console and typing "moveto player."
 * If you kill Vargas at any point in the game before starting Take it Back!, Liberty Prime will stay immobile, preventing the player from continuing the questline.
 * The only way to fix this issue is using the console command: 1 to respawn Paladin Vargas and proceed with the quest.
 * It is possible to get around this by baiting Liberty Prime into chasing after you by attacking BoS initiates.
 * Liberty Prime may launch into the air and remain there. The best way to solve this is to wait (real-time). If this fails, the player may need to reload the previous autosave.
 * If the Lone Wanderer manages to get far enough ahead of Prime when it is attacking Enclave forces, it is possible for the player character to be killed by its attacks.
 * If the Lone Wanderer manages to get too far ahead of Liberty Prime before it disables the first "force field," Liberty Prime may stop walking across the first bridge after shutting down the first "force field."

Fallout 4
Liberty Prime often stops right before the body of water on the way to the Institute.