So i'm more than 350 hours into the game and would like to share some experience:
Even with 2 guards in my front room, that have all specials on 10, and the best power armor, and the best gatling laser and Grognak's Axe, and with 6 highly skilled and armored heros in the room behind, the deathclaws still beat the guards down to a few hitpoints and kill everyone in the next two roomes. You never get there. The damn deathclaws just keep getting harder and harder, according to average vault skills, even when the single dwellers can't get higher anymore. If it goes on like this, some day they'll overun and kill six roomes in a row again, like it used to be at some point three days into the game. My guards can't get any harder, but it very much looks like the deathclaws can...
You can have armies of fully skilled and equipped heros in the wastes for days, they'll never bring home anything better than the Mr Handy from Star Paladin Cross, or maybe a Gauss Rifle from on of the mini quests. Apart from those mini quests they only ever find standard crap, that never changes. Guys with more perception and luck do NOT find anything more or better. The one guy who discovers the location is ALWAYS the guy closest to the Vault btw. Even a level 15 dweller with zero training can bring that Mr Handy, or the Gauss Rifle home. Just bring enough stimpaks. So no need for skilling scouts, won't help.
I've done all the quests. Half skilled level 50 heros with standard rocket launchers and pets are good enough to kill every boss. Noone needs fully skilled heroes, as they'll never stop deathclaws, and are not needed for the bosses. so don't bother skilling them for weeks. It won't help.
I've done the whole season vault, including all quests, in four days. 200 people. everything runs, 20 people scouting the wastes, all season quests lines done, all rewards received. No real world money involved, of course. You get powerful heros right at the start, including legendary weapons and armor, get loads of bottles, and a rain of fusion cores, and can rush through the quests fast, while keeping all the women pregnant all day. When i got my final Mr Handy achievement, the deathclaws were still too week to kill a level 4 dweller at my entrance, haha. I never trained anyone, the legendary guys i got were good enough. I never built a power armor, but had six of them. I drowned in pets but only used the +2-special-one. I never had atomic power or advanced water plant in this experimental vault. No need. The vault runs great with 200 people on basic skills in standard clothing, the legendary guys are skilled enough for everything.
So yeah, it's not worth it, sadly. You've seen all the content after four days, your people never get much better, or find anything better, the locations stay generic and the quests are just stupid. You CAN have a 100 people vault with best skilled people, but what for, if 200 basic people run the vault just fine, while your legendary guys do the quests just fine, without further skilling. The quests also give you every armor or weapon you'll ever need, before you ever finshed building a decent one yourself. While i built my first gatling laser, i got two others from quests. Half of the game makes the other half futile.
Little story at the side: My dweller roaming the wastes thinks to herself: "Cats are NOT extinguished, we were wrong". With a vault full of cats. THAT is a great example for how stupid and lazy this game can get at times.
This game is NOt about you organizing anything, or skilling someone, or finding anything better than others, it's ONLY about your time. You wait and wait and wait. In the end you have all the skill, all the armor, all the pets, but still get devastated by those deathclaws at the vault entrance (sometimes they even glitch out and just run past your guards without touching them), you still only discover red rockets in the wastes and the quests are still just "kill everyone in the room and loot stuff you will sell". This game has NO end game, but is very good at making you wait (and grind) for it. One of the most addictive, while least rewarding games i've ver seen. Few games have left me that unsatisifed after investing all that time.
I very strange (and somehow good) thing about it is, that it motivates you to switch off. Let them search, level, be pregnat and get to their locations while you're off. Reduces vault accident stress immensely.
