And they earned control over these states in what? A third of the time it took NCR to earn Cali. (If not less.)

My only grip with cl is they did not provide much in game combat. When they did the bring a knife to gun fight tactis didn t equal combat either. So yeah I do hate them becausd they r weak and dumb and their weakness helped ruin what could have been a fun game if some other evilish faction took thier place that understands gun beat knives.

I have at least 125 video game yrd range wity my sniper, they have a 1 yard range wity thier knife.

The 1 that has a gun trys to shoot me, but his gun is about to break.

That is why I hate them I have to seek them out, they do a poor job of returning fire, because only 1 in 4 has a gun. They are scrubs and that makes them no fun.

Although the NCR used diplomacy sometimes when annexing areas. CL probably did too, just much less.

My thoughts exactly.

They slaughtered tribals. Where did u learn they have ever faced a real enemy other then a loss to the NCR?????

Mean while NCR takes maybe the biggest state in the country while beating bos into holes and mopping up Enclave

Who s job was harder.

ohhhh I slaughtered 100 tribals 2 Enclave or bos are worth 100 tribles in lore. You guys need to check you head gear.

Just proves how much better Legion is at warfare really.

How?

1. They have never faced an enemy as strong as NCR, I believe Caesar, Vulpes, Lanius and Lucius all state that.

2. And how much do we know about them taking out BOS except for Helios One? And mopping up Enclave is exactly what it sounds like, they mopped up the remains, the remains still had good gear but they were outnumbered by a swarm of enemies. In Vegas both NCR and Legion are swarms, but Legion is better trained and better equipped with far better loyalty and morale.

3. Legion's.

4. Erm:
No matter how strong you may think NCR is because of the past the fact is that currently they are losing Vegas.
Legion don't really have to fight at the Dam at all, they could just sneak in troops from the north and south and corner the Dam and then starving the NCR out of it while taking over the rest of the Mojave.
Lore-wise, in 2281, in the Mojave, Legion are the top dogs and NCR are slowly losing.
Besides, the Centurions prove that Legion has also conquered the BOS before.

louie97, Ah, never mind. Too tired to think. (5:20AM in Sweden.)

[edit]

By the way, it's very easy to just pitch two groups against each other and say "GO!".
But what some of you seem to forget is that a lot of other variables need to be accounted for as well.
Things that are outside the box that we think of.
So saying stuff like "Well Legion attacks with machetes while NCR has guns!" is way too simplified.
We need to know what the area looks like, where are the holes in NCR's defense?
How supplied are they?
What gear does the legionnaires have?
Can some legionnaires flank them?
Can they climb up the side of a building the NCR is on?
Can they toss a grenade at a cliff and make part of it collapse on the NCR which are holed up against it?
And tons, TONS of more variables.
Like Searchlight, could any of us had though up that scheme on the spot here?
Or how about bombing the monorail?
Or how about holding Nelson solely for decreasing the morale of NCtRoopers?
So please, for any further "who is stronger" try to think of everything and not just going "12 legionnaires attack 12 troopers."

I have thought it all through. wiki says ncr owns the state of maxon and bos are scattered in holes in cali. This is under the bos section in wiki.

I have thought about all the imortant in and outs, and that s how I know I m right. Wiki says 1 bos can destroy a entire town by himself.

NCR drove them into holes in cali and nv. CL beats up nomads. You say better train, but they r trained in a very good way to die.

As I have stated NCR has real time command and control which is essential in a battle. CL may have good plan from the start, but things change. CL will have no way to properly command an assult on many fronts. Things will change no one will know and men will die. Mean time NCR will know what is going on and be able to reinforce when needed. This plus all the other reasons I ve listed during the last 3 pages is why I know Im right. NCR wins............

If the CL can capture Nelson, with having half as many soldiers as the NCR had at Nelson, the CL can't be all that bad....

*sigh*

Listen, they might have been a good army in the past, but currently, with all the things I stated, they are no longer a good army.
Things change, and NCaRmy has changed for the worse.
It doesn't matter how many BOS they killed in the past.
What matters is the present, and they are losing the war.

Cause if you have to go by that NCR has killed a lot of BOS then Legion equalizes it since their centurions prove to have killed PA soldiers as well.

Also, NCR having a good command and control?
No?
The snipers are not allowed to attack Cottonwood Cove because it's a "low priority target".
The NCR outside of Primm aren't allowed to enter and take out the convicts for the people.
Their radio master who handles the radio reports deliberately messer around with them to cause mishaps and confusion.
They have no control over things at all.

You can say all you want about NCR's command and control and brag on their behalf on the past wars with the BOS but the fact still stands:

"Yknow, Cottonwood Cove, Nelson, Searchlight, Ranger Station Charlie, Monorail bombing, Khans alliance, WGS alliance, Omerta alliance, NCR's supply line tightened, NCtRooper morale sinking, NCR under equipped, NCR under trained, legionnaires having trained most of their life in the Legion, legionnaires proficient in both melee and guns, Centurions required to kill 100+ people to earn their ranks, legionnaires being fanatically loyal, Misfits ending slider, Vulpes, Caesar and Lanius being better commanders than Oliver, NCR barely able to get a hold of the Powder Ganger situation, NCR being enemy of just about everyone."

You cannot avoid this.
This is the lore.
It's telling us that NCR can barely keep up with the Legion while Legion are making progress around every corner.

But to be fair, NCR did do two things: They captured Silus and his team (not that Silus was a good leader but whatever.) and they lured a trap with the Van Graffs.
That's about all.
Comparing that to the amount of stuff the Legion has going I'd say NCR is losing.

They COULD, but since the NCR and BoS are at war, their troops are down, Numbers matter more. The NCR won Helios because training and better weapons doesnt count for much when you're outnumbered 15:1. And between the Legion and NCR, guess who's got the better numbers, Ceasars Legion.


And the NCR is trained in a cushy way of fighting. 'HERP DERP SHUT YER GUN BOIS'. We'll see who wins when that NCR troopers gun jams and has to fight a Veteran Legionare coming at him with a Machete Gladius.

The fact of the matter is, no matter how civilized NCR and House may be, the Legion has the force, the drive, the will, the training, and most importantly, the numbers. Look at what they've done so far, they've bombed Searchlight, they took over Cotton Wood Cove and Nelson, and without the Courier, I can bet they'd take Forlorn Hope too.

Also, they do have a way to fight and command, between Santa Legate and their Centurions on the field, their command skill is just as effective. You're letting that 'AMERICAN DEMOCRACY FTW!' love cloud whats really there. I don't like the idea of a Legion victory, but I won't be so nieve as to turn a blind eye to it.

Edit: Also, the NCR Troopers weapons and armor are crap, and before you deny it, yes, they are. The NCR is in an economic downturn thanks to their warhawk monkey, aka President Kimball. Look at the going value of the NCR dollar then tell me their money is as strong as the bottlecap.

New Vegas - The Kings: What isn't cool about The Kings? They are crafted by cool! "The King" leads y example, I couldn't help buy help the guy.

Fallout 3 - Brother Outcasts: The real deal, the guys who didn't cave in or go back on their beliefs. Those guys are the sure thing and live by the code.

I don't find this to be a valid reason to hate a faction.

While they arent my FAVORITE, they are one of my favorites. I mean hell, they look cool, dress cool, act cool, and listen to good music. :disguise:

Here's my take on the strategical and tactical situation as it stands:

As far as the NCR's combat effectiveness goes, think along the lines or some of the large empires and their struggles to gain/maintain control of far off conquests. I immeidately think of France in Indochina. France, a major Nato power after WWII, was unable to maintain their colony in indochina, in spite of technological, numerical and doctrinal advantages. The basic cause of this was the country's lack of resolve in committing the neccessary resources to achieve acceptable success. Now if the whole of France mobilized, as they did during both world wars, and France committed all of their considerable (at the time) combat power to the conflict, they would have easily gained combat superiority over the indiginous forces they were fighting. The same happened when the US subsumed the problem years later.

In another example, look at Napoleon's drive to Moscow. Napoleon had one of the greatest fighting forces the world had ever seen, yet super long supply lines, a lack of appreciation for the effect of weather on operations, and incredible losses due to illness paved the way for a defeat of collossal proportions.

The gist of this is that strategically, NCR has a difficult road here. The long supply lines are blatantly apparant, and there are the same kinds of rumblings about folks "back home" losing support for the conflict. Ceasar's Legion, being closer to their main operating bases, and being more of a light infantry, seem to hot have such supply or support probelms. Strategically, CL seems to have an advantage here, going by lessons we've learned from history. The key is whether NCR has the cajones to pony up the neccessary resources and combat power to overcome the local numerical and supply advantages that CL seems to enjoy.

Tactically, this is much more clear. The NCR is outfitted with better gear, hands down. Heavy weapons toting armored combat troops are going to enjoy a decided advantage over light infantry in any circumstance. I can point you the the Battle of Chosin Reservoir in the Korean Conflict to show you the disparity in combat effectiveness between *heavy* and *light* forces. One Marine Corps division was attacked by 8 divisions of Chinese veteran light infantry. Sound familiar? The 1st Marine Division turned around, collected the remains of the demolished US Army Task Force Faith, and as so famously stated by Col Chesty Puller, simply "attacked in another direction". They fought their way through the 9th Chinese Army, completely decimated about 8 Chinese divisions, collected the majority of their heavy equipment and dead, and completed a sweeping combat action all the way back to the sea at Hungnam.

Properly supported heavy combat units will almost always prevail over light combat units, tactically. Case in point: it is gernerally agreed that the US combat forces in SE Asia did not lose any significant tactical combat actions. We beat the Viet Vong and the NVA in every major action. Like the French, though, we did not win strategically, by not securing the populace and pacifying the countryside. The NCR should take a lesson from this.

As for recent/current combat operations, any impending attack on the dam is a potential failure of great proportions. Tactically speaking, a well defended choke point such as a river crossing/bridge is one of the toughest nuts to crack. I will point you to the failure of Operation Market Garden in WWII. Even using vertical envelopment, the Allied army was not able to bridge the Rhine with a considerable advantage in combat power and effectiveness. As for defending such a tactically superior position, look at what the Spartans did at the battle of Thermopylae: a few thousand Greeks held back huge hordes, some estimates number them in the 100,000s, of Xerxes' Persians. Any attack on the Dam by CL light infantry is doomed to failure as long as the dan is defended by properly supported NCR heavy infantry. It is generally condidered that attacking forces should outnumber defending forces 3 to 1 for operational success. A defended river crossing may require an attacking advantage of closer to 6-1. Their best bet is to envelope the dam from the south, where they gained a foothold on the west bank of the Colorado at Nelson. To the trained tactician's eye, Ceasar is making a huge mistake attacking the dam head on.

To sum this up, as long as the NCR properly supports their combat operations in the area, Ceasar's Legion should be stopped cold at the Colorado. The only way CL, with their light infantry, can win strategically over the superior combat power advantage that the NCR enjoys is for the NCR to lose support for the operations from back in California or get bogged down in the Vegas area fighing local indiginous forces that drain away combat power.

-Gunny out.

.46- The problem though is Oliver, as we see it in the game, Olivers 'strategy' is a straight forward slugging match with the Legion. As we see in the game, most of the troops at the Dam in the final battle wear standard armor, which has a fairly low DR, which in real terms means it couldnt take alot (But more than the Legion), in reverse, the Legion is sending their Centurions, armed with some pretty heavy duty guns. As I see it, the Legion is bound to win, what's your take on the situation as it is? I mean, Oliver is a horrible tactician, he's left the south vulnerable and massed troops at the Dam, Caesar has pretty much sat back and let NCR exhaust themselves.

What's your take?

I don't see how NCR has better heavy support than Legion.
All they have are Desert Rangers and Heavy Troopers, both of which are in limited numbers and which have equipment on par with Centurions.
So "light infantry"?
I don't really get it.
Legion has as good as equipment as NCR does at Hoover Dam and they got superior numbers and tactics.
It's not like they're strictly attacking head on only, they're using the tunnels to get inside the Dam, like a forgotten Trojan Horse.
Not only that but they also have Khans attacking from the west.
This means that NCR is in chaos at the dam with enemies striking from the west, the east and the heart of the dam itself.

Oliver may seem like a horrible tactician, but he's made the most astute observation in the game: The legion will attack the dam head on. Collecting intelligence and figuring out what the enemy is going to do is an incredibly hard business. He might have guessed, or maybe you're not giving him the credit he deserves, but he's made the correct tactical assessment and has positioned his combat power effectively. His decision to leave the south vulnerable, while risky, seems to be the correct one. Give him credit for that.

As far as combat effectiveness goes, I still give the edge to the NCR forces. Just because Josh completely screwed up weapons like the service rifle doesn't mean that NCR troops in *low level* gear would not be more combat effective than the light infantry CL deploys. Just a few Heavy troopers would be a considerable combat advantage. If anyone wants to they could count up the forces available on both sides and do a deathcage smackdown match to see who wins in straight up combat. I think someone did this already and NCR troops won. Even if the forces are even, the advantage goes to the home team, just like in football. Defending forces fight from prepared positions and attacking forces have to cover open ground. It's been that way since the first guy threw a rock at another guy.

Long term, strategically, as I've said, NCR needs to settle affairs around the area to stop the drain of combat power from where it needs to be. So basically, as the game was designed, it's up the PC to determine what the odds of the final battle will be. If the NCR is still stretched thin, then CL may be able to amass enough combat power to overcome the advantages the NCR enjoys. If the NCR can consolidate their positions around the area and mass combat power at the crital points, there's no way CL is gonna budge them.

-Gunny out.

Its also important to note that most NCR troops have had two weeks of training at best. Most men in the Legion have been fighting their entire life.

Ahem.

Putting one team against another on open ground and saying "go!" is a horrible way to measure combat effectiveness.
Sure enough it will measure the raw head on force, but all other aspects of tactics within combat is thrown out the window.

Yeah. I suppose I might have some experience with this kinda stuff. If you're measuring raw combat effectiveness, it's a good way. Two combat units in open terrain. No cover, no tactical manouver room. You're gonna see which side has the better gear and knows how to use it most effectively. The only other way you could assess the CL/NCR combat effectiveness, to include their tactics and training, would be to set up a Hoover Dam battle, where NO other factions are involved, do not help one side or the other, and see who wins. The only problem with this is that I don't think the programming will allow it. Will the opposite forces actually procede with the battle if you just stand there and watch?

Edit: It seems like the Hoover dam Centurions have up to 195 HP, a DT up to max 23 (with helmet), and are armed with thermic lances, super sledges, hunting rifles, marksman carbine and AMRs. The Veteran Rangers can have up to 270 HP, DR of 30%, DT of 24, armed with Ranger Sequoia, Brush gun, Anti-materiel rifle, Trail Carbine, Hunting Revolver, Assault Carbine, Riot Shotgun. Heavy NCR Trooper can have 365 HP, DT of 24, armed with Light machine gun or Flamer or Minigun or Hunting Shotgun, and Super Sledge. It still looks to me like a clear advantage in terms of gear for the NCR.

-Gunny out.

The Followers of the Apocalypse seem like the only ones who care about everyone, most of all those who need the care, rather than themselves. For that reason, they are my favourite faction. This is a viewpoint based on "who I'd like more if this were real life". :tops:

I'm pretty sure the heavy troopers aren't "on par" with centurions. During my CL playthrough, they had super sledges, flamers, incinerators, and a full suit of power armor instead of just pieces.

Sure, but there are around like a dozen or so of them, Legion uses weapons on par with them, only thing they have that is better is their armor which isn't true power armor.