Fallout – What contributes to extinguishing room fires faster

Ok, I will address the issues as I come across them:

• It is indeed cheaper to build one large room and upgrade it all at once than individual parts (upgrade discount is 25 % for size 2 rooms, 33% for size 3 rooms). If you have the option to build in this manner then always do so.. Running low on some resources though can make getting a single room more important.
  • NOTE: The exception to this, from my knowledge right now, are the radio rooms. A larger room will reduce the time a bit but not increase the chance at the end of that time of getting a new dweller. It is better to have single individual rooms for this (though I will admit I have not answered the door in over a month myself). Radio Room bonus happiness is based only on the number of dwellers assigned to it (observation with a size 3 Radio Room, putting 6 dwellers with 1 charisma or 6 dwellers with 10+ charisma yeld the same 6% happiness boost).
• Room production is very simple and straight forward. Each room produces a resource of a certain amount. That amount is directly tied to the size and upgrade level of the room. The time it takes for the resource to be made ready for collection is also an initial fixed time based on the same factors. Your workers then combine their appropriate stat together and reduce the time it takes for the resource to be produced. Dweller stats have diminishing returns on production cycle duration (having a dweller with 6 PER in a water room won't give half cycle duration as assigning a 3 Per dweller).
  • Basically this means that one worker with a stat of six is equal to six workers with a stat of 1.
  • Luck adds towards this score for any room and also assists with the random caps bonus you can get. I am not sure what the chance is to get caps but by going over the cap of the primary stat with luck, you can reduce the time and rush failure rate significantly. I so far have gotten one rush to 0% followed by a 6% chance of failure. I have heard reports that you can get 0% twice in a row with enough points. Having all your dwellers with 10 Luck and 10 in the romm-related skill yeld 0 % failure on first rush, increasing with each rush.
• For the raiders, the room does not matter. Health is determined by the people's levels. Their damage is determined by the weapons you give them. You basically want the first room with someone in it to have the best weapons inside your vault. Endurance -may- have some impact on damage taken but not enough to make it noticeable as compared to level variance of the dwellers (endurance is directly tied to HP gained when they level up : a dweller with END5 will gain less HP when leveling than an END6 dweller, confirmed by reading values in save file [all dwellers have 105 base HP at lvl 1]).
  • My first room was my diner and now garden.. My staff are just armed to the teeth with the best weapons.. 2 of the 3 raiders drop dead before they even make it to the middle of the room.
  • Do NOT use the gate room for defense. You can only put two people in there.. its just not as effective as a full sized room can be.
• Layout of the vault has nothing to do with the attacks. The only thing to be concerned here is if something happens in an empty room, usually rad roaches but some times fire, that they will spread until a room with people in them are found. After that they will only spread if they kill all of the people in them.
  • Simple rule of thumb, arm everyone in your vault with guns. The best ones should be in your diner to stop raiders since they steal resources vs the other events just annoy the room they occur in. But cycle the weapons from First Room to Wanderers to Everyone else until everyone is armed. As you get better weapons, spread them around and upgrade people.

And so much for a short answer.. If anything needs more detail let me know in the comments.

Edit: Redid the Luck section based on @SkyHiRider's information in the comments.

A well-staffed radio room helps boost the happiness of the population. Even if you're ignoring the newcomers it attracts (which I'm currently doing) it's useful if you have the power and guns to keep your fortress running.

While it is much faster to carry out breeding en-masse, the radio room is nice if you're just stopping in to collect resources and SPECIAL training, since you don't have to micro-manage your population, and you don't have to wait for newcomers to grow up before assigning them to a room.

Deathclaws aren't that big a deal if you have a reasonably large, armed population. They don't stay in one room long enough to kill a dweller (the first time they go through your vault), so as long as you can kill them before they reach the end and start looping back you'll be fine. The only remaining danger is that incidents will occur while your dwellers are still on low health.

I have a 6-person room just by the door, and nobody in the double storage rooms/living quarters on the top couple of floors. This means that any invaders will only encounter 6 dwellers at a time for the first 4 or 5 rooms. These rooms have priority (after my wasteland wanderers) for good weapons. Raiders don't make it past my first room (6 dwellers in a Nuka Cola Bottler with enhanced sawed-off shotguns), and deathclaws don't make it past my 4th inhabited room.

Because of these security measures, I keep my radio room fully staffed and I'm currently sitting at around 93-94% happiness.