Hey guys im new to this game, ive played a little of fo 1 and 2 and played 1000 hours of 3, 2000 of nv and about 200 in 4. I fairly committed in the ways of gaming, as well as ill never break any rules including the servers and yours. Im also just looking for a new experience and really want someone to share the experience of fallout. Looking forward to a reply
Personally I'd recommend checking out the mods for Fallout NV, and Fallout 3. Tale of two wastelands makes things a bit different as items from Fallout 3 transfer to NV. (the two games are also connected with all the quests and stuff, great experience)
Fallout 4 also has a briming modding community on the Nexus.
Fallout 1/2 builds don't generally work well here, as the majority of combat will lead to real time based combat. Its essentially sniping to knockout people, bursting to kill them, and healing damage away with characters with 220~300HP
Build info is in a section of the forums here. Fonline focuses more on resource gathering when you start off, after you get a character established you'll want to make a new one, keep a crafting/mining account, then a main battle account.
While factions can help you out in regards of material most on here don't cover everything, so you'll need to become self sufficient. Be wary of making trade deals with players on here as more often than not they'll take advantage of your new status.
If you can help it craft your own materials (wiki has alot of this info tab up top) it'll be cheaper, easier, and less time consuming for most cases.
This is all after you manage to secure a tent, its an item/bundle that can be used on the world map (in a zone you can click the green triangle to enter a zone or be in an encounter) use the tent and you'll have a safe location to store items unless you get followed or lose the map to the location, when someone follows you you'll notice them in your party screen on the left of the overworld screen and will have the option to kick them.
When starting you'll want to know about wood, flint, ore, mineral, and junk gathering. From there you'll want to craft combat shotguns. At this point some people go into combat armor, and M60's on a secondary account. At which point with sufficient skill you'll more or less be able to put up a fight against other players, and in groups of similar members win fights.