Which side do you think has a better chance at winning if they really went for an all out war?

I can clearly see that this thread is going to go sour very quick.

I personally think the NCR would, though we don't actually know the full capabilities of either side and we don't know if either nations other borders are contested.

The NCR has a higher population and much greater industrial capacity. If it was an all out war I'd bet sure money on them. They have a few cards up their sleeve as well, including a small fleet of Vertibirds that they captured from the Enclave.

NCR has more resources and more men, but the Legion, for the most part, have tougher soldiers. NCR are more subtle in military and try to survive, while the Legion throws itself onto them.

(NCR would probably win, but not before they take a HUGE amount of casualties.)

Well, that depend a lot on whether they're still fighting a brush war back home with those walking tanks with laser guns. I mean, that's the whole reason why they haven't launched their relentless, decades-long campaigns against the Legion like they've employed against pretty much everyone of their other enemies like the slavers, Vipers, Jackals, Khans, the Enclave, and the BoS. You take the NCR-BoS war out of the equation, and the Legion's prospects dim significantly. Otherwise, the Legion holds some significant asymmetric advantages, much of which it is already using in the Mojave. They have an advantage, but as long as the NCR's objective remains to simply contain the Legion rather than actively engage them, not a particularly decisive, war-winning one.

If the NCR remains on the defensive, they can fight conventional, pitched battles where their massive advantage in firepower from powerful defensive positions can be brought to bear. A defender with superior firepower to the attacker can inflict horrendous casulaties disproportionate to their size. Plus, the terrain in the Mojave isn't exactly helpful for an asymmetric approach. It's mostly desert, much of it empty and unsettled. There's no cover, no civillian population to hide behind, and no way to live off the land.

And frankly, time is on the NCR's side, not the Legion. Unless the Legion is willing to take a huge gamble on a quick and decisive war, the tide will only turn against them if the war drags on too long. The war with the BoS won't last forever, and when it ends, god help the Legion as the entire NCR Army puts them in their sights as they march East. The Vipers and the Jackals send their condolences. If anything, it is in the Legion's interest to NOT escalate the war, as they have clearly benefited from the NCR's low priority for the region. And besides, the Legion is already in total war, full-mobilizatoin mode, how will they meet the demands of dramatically escalating the war anyway? Mobilize the women and children?

Legion would definitely win in Mojave, but I doubt they could overrun the entire NCR. I suspect it would be a few years of trench warfare which the NCR would eventually win through sheer industrial superiority.

The NCR has a lot of enemies. It depends. Are military tactics that take more than Int 1 going to be used, or the utter luck horrible tactics from NV?

The industrial capacity means nothing. NCR is not producing tanks, planes, bombers, etc etc, ie things that can give one side a serious edge in war.

It is basically 20th century tactics, without tech. Based upon what I have seen, they both svck. I could see either side making fatal errors that could doom themselves, so meh.

NCR would win in their homeland as cities like New Reno could send there gangsters, san francisco could supply them with 2mms and 4.7mms and vault city with stimpaks. Add in enclave armor and vertiberds and well they could just massacre the battlefield by mounting avenger miniguns in vertiberds and enclave power armored foot soldiers with M72 gauss rifles.

They would suffer huge casualties and if legion found a way to destroy city by city like they did with nipton then maybe they would win.

NCR

They have a larger population which = larger army.

They have manufacturing of post war weapons.

They would have kicked the Legion's ass at the first battle of Hoover Dam if not for what happened at the Divide.

Well, it is a tad more complicated than just that. Troop deployment would be about the same, which is worse than Civil War times.

The North had all the advantages you listed, but got their butts kicked up until Gettysburg. Huge advantage for the North was a much more extensive railroad system than in the south, which helped with deployment, supplies, etc. This does not exist in the FO world.

A lot of the NCR military are green troops. Legion is fairly battle tested. In situation like this, just about anything can happen.

Large parts of the Legion only have melee weapons available, the majority of the NCR troops do at least have a service rifle. How is the Legion supposed to win?

I am not kidding and I'm not being arrogant, this is a serious question. Hopefully somebody has valid answer.

And NCR has a lot more heavy troops than the Legion

Well, if Legion wins in Mojave, there is a Gun Runners facility. Make us weapons, or die. You collect the weapons and ammo from your enemies. You raid enemy production centers. It isn't like the Legion wouldn't be able to get spies or covert ops guys into NCR where a few well placed explosives, say at a weapons manufacturing plant, would cause a lot of damage.


If you think that is all that matters, then maybe you can explain Russia in Afghanistan, or the Vietnam Conflict.

In Fallout they're a little tougher to fight against.

If this is just NCR vs Legion, ignoring all the other factions, House, and the Courier, NCR would win but that's only if there willing to lose a lot of people.

What's your point about the Civil War? The real-life Union was a lot more advanced than the NCR, but the Legion is far beneath the Confederacy, so if anything, the NCR has a greater industrial advantage than the RL Union.

You do realize that in most western armies, it's not the fighting man, but the noncommissioned officers that are the backbone of the organization. Enlisted personell come and go, but it's the noncoms and the officers that hold it all together. And since they've been at war with much stronger foes than the Legion in recent decades, I doubt most of them are "green".


Scavenging weapons and coercing a small outpost of a company that for some reason hasn't fled with the rest of the NCR *if* the Legion wins in the Mojave is your grand strategy to make up for the Legion's nonexistant industrial capacity? That dosen't even warrant a further response.

There is a big, big difference between a conventional war and a guerilla one ><, and a full-scale war with the NCR would fall under the category of the former. If you want an apt example of a industrial army and a preindustrial one fighting a conentional, pitched battle you should look up the Battle of Omdurman.

I agree it is more complicated then that. But the thing is the NCR has the edge in pretty much everything. They even have rail lines and as you mentioned the Civil War, rail lines were key in that war. The North had something like 9 times as many miles of rail than the South. They also had a larger manufacturing center.

A smaller force can do alot of damage to a larger one, but the keys are surprise and speed. Take the German invasion of France. France had a much larger force than the Germans but thanks to surprise and speed as well as tactics, the Germans won.

The thing with NCR vs the Legion a blitzkrieg like take over of either side can't happen. Right now the NCR doesn't even seem to take the Legion seriously and we already learned that the NCR would have royaly kicked the Legion's ass at the FBoHD if not for what happened at the Divide.

I see the NCR as a sleeping Giant. They just need an event powerful enought to wake them up and take the Legion seriously. Such an event would be losing the Mojave.

If they utilized their whole armies I think the NCR would win.

If I'm not mistaken we are told that the legion is bringing in troops from all around their territory. So a considerable chunk of their people are already there, opposed to NCR just picking up random people and shipping them off to the Mojave, and even those people could of beat the Legion in the first battle.

The NCR doesn't take the legion seriously, and they are still holding their ground even when everything goes against them, so a full force NCR would most likely crush the Legion.

Also I think the NCR is building train tracks in the Mojave or something like that. If they really wanted they could make a train run into Nevada. This would work especially well in a total war situation.

My point on Civil War has nothing to do with who is advanced, who is industrial, or anything else.

It was that in FO world, troop deployment is the same for Legin and NCR. In the Civil War, the North had far greater means of deployment, and supplying troops. That advantage does not exist.

The Industrial aspect is mostly moot. NCR weapons production can't be that awesome, as they still contract with the Gun Runners, and it is questionable if they can keep up with the demand.

The Legion does NOT have to engage in conventional warfare. There is no rule that says the NCR would rather fight conventional as opposed to guerrilla warfare, so the Legion must abide.

The Legion has shown they have no problems using covert ops, sabotage, and they are supposed to fight to the death and would possibly even utilize suicide missions.

This type of tactics would cause severe devastation to the limited NCR industrial complex. Which they could do if they won in the Mojave or not. They have already infiltrated NCR military, posing as a merchant or simple NCR citizen would be cakr.cake.

I am also not impressed with brilliant super top notch NCR battle hardened tactics, as their flank is wide open. The Legion has also been fightin non-stop. Their troops and officers would be battke hardened. NCR has a lot of green troops, and if you want to take green troops with "awesome" officers, and I have vets in both troops and officers, I would much rather have the vets.

Your idea is that the Legion for some reason is forced to fight a conventional war, and that is not the case.

True, this war would go nothing like WWII. There no mechanized units. Mobilization is awful.

Which is why I see Legion doing what they do best. Traps, espionage, covert ops, surprise attacks, attacks on civilians, etc.

This takes its toll. It is extremely demoralizing. It could almost be too late for the NCR, because, as people have said, they didn't take the Legion seriously. This gave the Legion time to setup and dig in. Now, the cost of war for NCR has increased, and to remove Legion from the area would result in a lot of casualties, especially seeing how the Legion does not have to engage NCR in conventional warfare.

I agree that the Legion's strenght is in their ability to do covert ops, espionage and general guerrilla warfare tactics. They have proven they will fight dirty and us WMDs if given the chance. The Legion wouldn't make it easy for NCR that is a given. Just like the NCR wouldn't make it easy on the Legion.

The problem I see is that guerrilla warfare works best when the enemy isn't out to conquer your land. As for demoralizing, if NCR can convince it's people that it's victory or death in a war against the Legion, then the demoralizing effect of guerrilla warfare might be reduced.

There is also the chance that people in Legion land that NCR takes might see that as a good thing and side with NCR. Whole armies of slaves the NCR could get to rebel. Like with the Roman Empire. It did a good job keeping the tribes it conquered under foot, until large outside forces got them to rebel against Rome.

Then again every legion town could fight to the death like Japan threatened to do. It all depends on how fanatical they are and how much they like Caesar.

Yeah, but the Gun Runners factories are in NCR land, work for the NCR military, and would lose pretty much all business if the Legion wins, so I think we can count the Gun Runners and other companies as NCR's industrial aspect. In the Civil War thats what many of the weapons and suppies came from, private companies, and you saying earlier that no rail lines exist in the Fallout world? What about all the ones in the Core Region?

PS: Just to let you and Styles know, Gingy started the conventions again.

Numbers are nothing, William Wallace and his men fought thousands of English with only a few hundered men in a battlefield thanks to a clever battle plan.

Worth noting is that ultimately, the Scottish lost the war for independence. Hence they are incorporated under the British Crown.

A single clever battle does not necessarily the war win.

Usually states with higher population and industrial/technological capacity finally win out because it comes down to a war of attrition.


Largely it also depends on what an "all out war" means and what the definitions of victory would be. If the NCR has to completely obliterate the Legion and takes its land (and the Legion vice-versa) the outcome of the war is going to probably end in either a stalemate or a hard-fought victory for the NCR.

Invading Legion territory would be very difficult for NCR forces, while likewise invading NCR home territory would be nigh-impossible for Legion troops.

The Dam: Caesar. Really wiping each other out fully: N/A.

I don't know who would win in really wiping each other out. There's not enough information about Caesar's territory. All we know is that it's roughly the size of NCR in terms of square miles. But the Dam, Caesar has similar amount of soldiers as NCR and considering that he has allies (Khans and Omertas) while NCR doesn't, Caesar will win the Dam.

Biggest factor for me is the Brotherhood of Steel. They'd seize the opportunity to retake Helios One, as stated by the ending of Caesar's Legion. But they lose enough forces to easily fall to the Legion.