» Wed Dec 30, 2009 10:47 am
West Coast SM's would definitely win in a large scale war against East Coast SM's. Mainly because the East Coast, thought they do have Overlords, Behemoths, etc., they're not as well organized to fight in a drawn out war as say the West Coast would. Sure they're dumb enough to run in, uncaring if they live or die, against a group of West Coast Mutants, but doing that is not good for long term conflict, unless you can continue churning out Mutants. But like it's been said already, the VATS or whatever it is that holds the FEV in Vault 87, is low and probably would be gone by the time such a thing would maybe happen. (Imagine the BOS v. NCR war, where the BOS was few but did major damage to NCR ranks, but in the end the NCR was able to pull through because it could conscript/draft their people into the military, unlike the elitist BOS who were very choosy.) Behemoths on the other hand could be easily gotten rid of since they're rare, and more importantly, easy to capture. (If a whole raider group can capture one in Evergreen Mills, probably loose a bunch of people, but still do so successfully, then just imagine what a small little contingent of West Coast SM's could do to capture one.)
The matter of whether East Coast SM's have "better" tech, like a tri-beam laser, or gatling laser doesn't matter since West Coast SM's would probably have the same weapons, and more to boot since depending on which way the forces go, the West Coast SM's would pick up tech and stuff along their way. (Since it's clear that West Coast SM's are more prominent to wander and travel, than their mindless, basic minded cousins in the East.)
As for the West Coast SM's becoming "extinct", remember that the Mojave Wasteland is not apart of the Core Region (the original home of the Super Mutant), and what we saw was just a little piece as far as we know. There wasn't anything in NV to say that Super Mutants were going extinct, or their numbers had dropped drastically, just that there were few of them living in the Mojave Wasteland. Who knows in the future, Beth or Obsidian could take us back to the Core Region and we'd see just as many SM's as we do Humans and Ghouls in the towns and cities.