The NCR do not have the means of muscling the Legion out of the area. At best they can hope to make the cost of victory to be too high for the Legion. I do not know where you came to the conclusion that they had the manpower and supplies to do what you want.

The NCR has a population of nearly a million in 2281, and a heavy industrial base capable of refurbishing a massive hydroelectric dam and building railroads. If the NCR mobilized for total war the Legion wouldn't last long....even Eddie tells you that. When you ask him what he thinks of Kimball he tells you if Kimball had overthrown the Council and made himself Dictator of the NCR he wouldn't be anywhere near the Mojave. The only thing stopping the NCR from crushing the Legion under it's boot-heel is the lack of political will to do what's necessary to accomplish the task.

The NCR at the time of Fallout 2 had a population of 700,000. That was 40 years ago. Since that time they have doubled their land size and have created a much higher standered of living. They could have easily doubled in population since Fallout 2. I would say they have at least quadrupled their population.

That's simply not the case. The Mojave Outpost and the Primm NCR easily have enough force to take back the I-15 to Sloan. Look what happens when the NCR takes back the prison they slaughter the Powder Gangers. Ranger Ghost could of easily killed the Legion raiding party that burned down Nipton. A random NCR patrol post patch could take down the Legion slaving camp. The NCR at Searchlight just have to release the barrels at Cottonwood while the ghoul Rangers keep the Legion pinned down from the snipers nest. A ranger or two could snipe Nelson to submission, Forlorn hope's problems would be solved simply by clearing the Legion slaving camp. Ranger Station Charlie could easily survive if the NCR had taken out Cottonwood or the Raiding Camp. Camp Golf's Veteran Rangers could easily kill the Fiends, and Deathclaws at Sloan freeing all the supply lines. Lastly the NCR McCarran could further secure the Outer Vegas region and supply lines. I've written a long ass post on this matter before but that's basically the summary.

I guess I misheard all of the dialogue in the game. Apparently wishing for things to be different is considered fact in these forums. The only reason NCR won the first battle was a clever ambush. They do not have a numbers advantage.

Even if they have the numbers I think the graveyard at Forlorn Hope speaks a lot about that numbers doesn't mean strength, it's how strong the soldiers are, in training, disciplin, loyalty and gear.
From what I've collected, the avarage NCtRooper lacks in training, disciplin and loyalty compared to the average legionnaire
Let's take a couple of examples, from Legion we have Silus, a Centurion that when cornered gave up and allowed himself to be captured while his subordinates killed themselves in order to protect Caesar.
From NCR we have the drunks over at The Strip, we have emotionally scarred Betsy, Hydra addict Stone, Psycho addict Razz, pansy ass O'Hanrahan and cowardly Pointdexter. Any other I've forgot?

Also remember that this is Gamebryo we're talking about here ingame. A engine where if a legionnaire or trooper has a rock in their path they have to side step it instead of jumping over it.
A engine where the AI is so dumb that when a legionnaire with a machete comes up close it hacks maybe once or twice then it has like a 2 second delay while it slowly sidesteps the player/trooper.
An engine where if you face off against a group of 5 legionnaires they just run straight towards you instead of having the marksmen cover the close combatants as they flank you.

Lore>Gameplay, at least when the gameplay and the NPC AI is :shudders: Gamebryo.

Just food for thought.

Did you not pay attention to Joshua Graham in Honest Hearts where he talks about how NCR lost entire divisions to the divide and that if those troops made it to Hoover Dam, Caeser would have had his ass royally handed to him? You know Joshua Graham the man that led the attack.

There is also mentions in the game about how NCR is having trouble getting troops to the Mojave and there is also a lack of political will to send enough troops to wipe out the Legion. The leadership just wants to contain the Legion.

Well I guess it depends on what you are looking at. Game wise, they are no where near the strength of the NCR and much easier for the courier to deal with. This changes when dealing with the situation canon/lore wise.

A threat? I thought they were more of a joke. A bunch of morons running around with swords and spears thinking they are Romans going up against well armored and well armed NCR and their allies? Sounds like natural selection to me.

Gamebryo is only used for rendering textures and lighting and whatnot. The AI and gameplay design is all gamesas. They only have themselves to blame and it does not help that most of their customers misunderstand Gamebryo and allow it to be used as a scapegoat. I think the Mods and Devs became tired of correcting people on the forums.

I missed that part in Honest Hearts. From the Vanilla game I got the impression that the NCR would only be able to put up a fair fight if they were to receive proper reinforcements and not an overwhelming victory.


EDIT: @apocalypse212 The NCR does not have well armored and armed troops in general and they don't have any allies in the region.

Whatever, the point is that the AI is [censored] horrible and hardly depict how real legionnaires nor troopers would behave if attacked or attacking.

The Legion is a real threat but NCR doesn't see them as a threat. They only send the smallest amount of troops to the Mojave. They don't have the will to send more. They feel that they are doing a good job containing the Legion. NCR is also having trouble getting troops into NCR. Main reason is the Divide, followed by the powder gangers. Those they do send take along time to get there.

The Legions main weapon is infiltration and fear. They managed to easily infiltrate NCR. They would have done alot of damage, if we as the player didn't go in and stop them. Caesar isn't in his right mind. He doesn't know how lucky he was to even have done as good of job he did during his first attack on the dam. He pretty much got lucky that NCR lost whole divisions to the Divide. The attack failed and what does he want to do? He wants to attack the Dam head on again. NCR knows this so they send most of their troops to the dam.

The Legion could easily fight a guerilla war against the Mojave. They could blow up locations NCR has in the Strip. Helios and so on. Yet Caesar wants to take on the Dam head on in a wave attack. Granted going through the pipes is clever but all NCR has to do is turn on the turbines and you have Legion smoothies.

The Legion aren't using their strenghts to their full advantage. Guerilla warefare/terrorist infiltration tactics.

Random NPC's opinions are hardly considered unobjectionable views of military strategy. In fact given the bias of those NPC who cares what they have to say. In Lore and real life terms the NCR has the ability to defeat the Legion. If you listened to the NCR military officers and Rangers the situation is very clear. In many cases such as what I'll call the Western Front which is I-15+ McCarran+Vegas the NCR simply has a bad general strategy from Oliver which is wait and see, that strategy was approved by Kimball. The reason it fails is because Outpost such as the Mojave outpost must always have a standing force but they don't have enough extra troops to meet that standing force requirement AND free up supply lines.

Go talk to Ranger Ghost, she'd get court maritaled if she simply scouted Nipton, or talk to Ranger Jackson, he'll note how he can't just hire a private contractor to do the work he needs done, although he'll give that work to the courier. Common sense tells us that those NCR troopers and Rangers at the Mojave Outpost can take out some Jackals on the highway, a few Powder Gangers, and 6 or so ants. Then the NCR at primm could easily take back the town, the rest of the NCR have shown in a quest they can take back NCRCF. Talk to Sunny or Trudy they'll tell you how the NCR generally keeps the I-15 clear and only the Powder Gangers have stopped that, and the Prison Break wouldn't of happened if Oliver wasn't wasting troops sending them to Forlorn.

Then there's the Deathclaws which a group of Veteran Rangers could kill by posting up on a hill, in fact, the rest of the Western Front could be cleaned up with the Veteran Rangers. Black Mountain, The Quarry, and the Fiends could all be easily taken out by the Veteran Rangers. On the eastern front it gets even easier. A group of Rangers from Echo attacking Cottonwood while another opens the rad, containers onto Cottonwood would stop Legion movement into Southern Nevada. A random NCR patrol plus the Searchlight group post patch could take out the Legion Raiding Camp stopping the destruction of Ranger Station Charlie. Nelson would be killed off by a group of Rangers sniping if from above.

Honestly the NCR could easily beat the Legion, especially post patch, only Kimball and Oliver's ignorance of strategy, tactics and diplomacy that stop the NCR from winning.

In

You do realize that the Japanese forces were heavily outnumbered, about 19,000 to 3,000, endured hours of heavy bombardment from both naval and air sources, and still were able to hold their positions while also putting a large dent into the allied forces before retreating with losses only around 600.

The problem with the majority of the NCR troops in the Mojave is that they aren't well armoured or well armed.

I think you missed the massive red wall of text Gabe put up - Legion uses weapons - GUNS - too and pretty damn good ones too, the Service Rifle is just a basic mass produced piece of [censored] compared to Trail carbine and Marksmen Rifles the Legion uses.
Add as much upgrading to the NCRs weapons as you like but the fact is: THEY never use such upgraded weaponary - just plain simple Service Rifle, with a complete lack of ammo. What can you do with 20 CL charging at you and only 10 standard rounds? Kill 2 with one bullet each time? You'd be dead by then.

I think you might be misunderstanding what Tiberius67 and Styles are saying here. The NCR in the Mojave are hard-pressed to defend the region against the Legion, but as Tiberius pointed out correctly it's a lack of political will that ultimately limits the NCR in the Mojave, "in the Mojave" being the operative phrase here. If Caesar takes the Dam and Vegas (and they will without the Courier's intervention) and starts threatening the NCR core lands, you can bet the population is going to start taking the Legion seriously. The Legion is a threat to the NCR in the Mojave because the leadership is reluctant to fully commit to fighting Caesar and pacifying the Mojave, but I don't see how what is essentially an empire of raiders with no independent source of modern weaponry can ultimately stand up to a fully-militarised war machine of an industrial civilization.

AHAHAHAHAHAHA! Oh, man. You slay me. Really, you should do stand up.

The Trail Carbine? Really? It's a level-action .44-.40, which is nothing more than a beefier pistol round with decent enough stopping power against large game and other unarmored targets, but has crappy ballistics and low muzzle velocity. It also has a small magazine and takes forever to reload. The marksman carbine is simply a dressed up service rifle with a shorter barrel and some tarticool attachments. It uses the same round, and is the same rifle for all intents and purposes. The Service Rifle is mass produced because it's meant to be the standard armament of a standing, professional army. The legions' guns are carbines and a few rifles at later levels given to proven troops while 90% of the rest of their "army" uses machetes and throwing spears.

Know what other armies use a basic, semi-auto .223/5.56mm mass produced service rifle? Ever western army on the planet at this time. But hey, they must be stupid for not using a level-action .44-40 backed up by a few spears as any real professional, driven warrior should.

As for the ammo, the legion subhuman "warriors" that have proven themselves "worthy" (lol) of carrying weapon designed in the last 200 years don't carry more ammo than the NCR soldiers do.

Your beloved glorified primitives are outclassed and exist as a threat only because a writer played too much Final Fantasy. Deal with it.

They're a threat because unlike the NCR, they have the will to power. That's all they have going for them. NCR loses in the Mojave, they'll find their will to power and slaughter the hell out of the legion. Probably not quite how Eddie saw the "Thesis+antithesis=synthesis" working out, but that's actually the plan my current attempt at a legion player is counting on.

No. The Legion are a threat because F:NV is an RPG, not another craptasticly boring FPS. In every Fallout game except Fallout 3, Unarmed, Melee/Throwing, Guns, Energy Weapons, Explosives/Big Guns, & pacifism have always been valid playstyles. The Legion exist as a threat given their tactics because the writers bothered to actually play FO & FO2 this time, and thought it would be cool for factional tactics to differ as player tactics differ. Also to showcase the relative superiority of Survival over Medicine & Unarmed over Guns in the game.

That said, whatever the Legion has been doing...is working.

-Nukeknockout

Botherd to play them?
They MADE them!

I know It's just pretty blatantly clear the FO3 devs didn't, though.

-Nukeknockout

This, so many times this.
I hate it when people diss on Legion and ignore what they're doing.
If the player don't intervene then Kimball is assasinated, the monorail gets blown up and Legion doesn't exactly "need" the Courier's help, NCR does.
So what have they done?
Captured Nelson.
Set off a radiaton bomb at Searchlight.
Killed like 50 to 100 NCR at Forlorn Hope (look at the graves.)
Set up mines around dying NCR inbetween Nelson and Forlorn Hope.
Allied themselves with Gomerrah and Great Khans.
Gomerrah sets off an attack on The Strip when Legion attacks.
They captured Benny, who most likely would have fled if The Courier had died and House couldn't use him/her.
They've cut down on NCR's trading routes.
They raid NCR caravans.
They crucify hostiles in order to bring down morale in NCR. (which is working by the way.)
Alexis captured a NCR patrol as well.


Those who are anti-Legion bias can keep ranting on about how inferior Legion is with their machetes and football gear all you want but you cannot ignore the events that has happened and will continue happening if The Courier doesn't intervene.
However "inferior" Legion is in your eyes: whatever Legion is doing, it's working.

Yes the Legion is winning only because.

A. They have amazing spy tactics
B. Oliver is incompetent
C. Senators from Boneyard and other far flung places don't want to put any more resources or troops into the conflict
D. The Divide

If ONE of those things changed the Legion would already had been kicked out of the Mojave and that's the bottom line.