Fallout: New Vegas

Problem with the Beth forums is that they tend to paint the Legion as flawless and the NCR as pure evil.

I think dark grey is the best descriptor of the Legion. If they fought nothing but Tribals and Raiders instead of a functioning and advanced Civilization like the NCR, I'd call them just regular grey.

Edit: agree with Five X on the Anti-Tech thing. People seem to seriously overstate the Legion's wariness of technology.

edited 16th Oct '12 5:42:10 PM by Millardkillmoore

That's true too lol. Its like one bias over the other.

To me, the fact that the Legion commits genocide regularly and enslaves anything without a pair of balls moots the argument of whether or not they may have a good point. That, and they're going to fall apart in a few years anyway. The NCR brings a good level of stability without committing genocide and while being democratic, altruistic, and equal-opportunity. The fact that the Legion is ruled by a Psychopathic Manchild who has people tortured to death for once speaking to or about a man who failed him in one battle also doesn't paint a good picture, nor does the fact that said manchild is worshiped as a god, and anyone who doesn't worship him as a god is crucified.

I honestly don't know how much more the developers could've gone out of their way to make the Legion as pointlessly evil as possible. They're a raping, sexist, racist, bigoted, homophobic, anti-intellectual, barbaric, xenophobic, cruel, unstable, cowardly, condescending, cannibalistic, hypocritical, sadistic, warlike, corrupt, eugenic, genocidal, dishonest, slavery-based bunch of pedophile mass murderers that nonetheless are lousy in actual warfare when the enemy has more than pointy sticks. Word of God says that the entire Legion is like this, and Caesar obviously has no intention to change this as he maintains these policies even if he conquers New Vegas. How else could they possibly be any worse? It baffles me that people equate them morally to the NCR and House.

I am not misunderstanding any of this. It is all explicitly stated in-game and by Word of God.

edited 16th Oct '12 7:06:56 PM by CPFMfan

The enslave everything WITH a pair of balls as well if I recall. Pretty sure the whole army is also slaves.

The men are slaves too. Life as a male in the Legion is no more dignified or pleasant than as a woman.

The Fiends and Powder Gangers pointlessly evil jerks. The Legion have a good reason for what they do: saving human civilization. It's up to the individual to determine whether what they do will work or is justified. Personally, I don't think they've got a snowball's chance in hell of succeeding and I don't think good intentions justify their list of atrocities. But I still don't think it's right to paint them all as Complete Monsters that do everything for the evulz.

Edit: The Legion is this way, but the Non-Legion residents of Legion territory still live lives that aren't completely hellish.

edited 16th Oct '12 7:08:43 PM by Millardkillmoore

Most of them are just that though. Caesar himself is an exception, not the rule.

Yep, everyone's a slave. I just thought it would have more weight if I phrased it like that, otherwise I just know somebody would go "well if everyone's a slave then they're all equal, so it's not that bad..." or something. Men arguably have it worse in the Legion, being brought up as sadistic killers with every inch of humanity drained out of them.

The Non-Legion people who pass through are such a small part of the population that they aren't worth considering.

edited 16th Oct '12 7:09:31 PM by CPFMfan

That's why I don't think it'll last much past Caesar's death. As long as he's alive, the Legion can be more than a marauding horde. Once he's been dead for a while, it will degenerate into just a really big army of Complete Monster raiders.

Non-Legion people don't just pass through. They live permanently in Legion territory.

edited 16th Oct '12 7:12:12 PM by Millardkillmoore

And Caesar's not gonna last very long even without the brain tumor.

Plus, I highly doubt that even if Caesar is alive it'll be more than a marauding horde. Caesar's vision of what constitutes a good society is certainly different than most sane people's. Plus, they're gonna lose the war against the NCR no matter what and that's repeatedly stated in-game.

edited 16th Oct '12 7:16:06 PM by CPFMfan

Hence, dark grey.

Too bad the NCR is bleeding out at the recently-nuked Long 15 in my game.

I like to spare both sides in LR. House needs the Legion strong to counter the NCR and nuking the 15 will mean cutting off the NCR and all of their caps from pouring into Vegas. And we can't have that.

I would nuke no one, as I think nuking even the Legion would completely ruin the whole aesop of the series, but... I really wanted to access Dry Wells.

edited 16th Oct '12 7:33:49 PM by CPFMfan

I do it for the loot.

I just fire both nukes at the Legion because seriously, FUCK the Legion.

Yes, they deserve it, and when it comes to them, I feel comfortable acting as judge, jury, and (mass) executioner.

edited 16th Oct '12 8:12:31 PM by Balmung

Regarding the Legion, I think people are forgetting just what Caesar actually wants. Nevermind the slavery, nevermind the bigotry and hypocrisy. These are, in his mind, just details.

Caesar wants his Rome. He tells the Courier this much in their conversation in the tent. He's looking for a city which he can use to epitomize the ideals of the society he wants to build.

He wants the Legion to look at New Vegas the way the Roman Empire looked at Rome. Even though many in the Empire had never even been there, they would look at Rome and say "This is what we want to be like." Remove the cult of personality from himself, and transplant it onto this city, which will outlast the life of Edward Sallow.

He knows he's sick, and he's trying to stay alive long enough to conquer New Vegas, which is why he's put so much focus into the war with NCR. Ulysses is right in that Caesar is obsessed with the Dam.

In keeping with the themes of New Vegas, it's a gamble on Caesar's part. In the same way House and Benny are gambling, Caesar is risking everything to win this game.

Caesar looks at Hoover Dam and the Colorado River and compares it to Julius Caesar crossing the Rubicon. If he succeeds, he will only have history to answer to. If he fails, the Legion will disintegrate.

When Julius Caesar crossed the Rubicon, he said "Alea iacta est" - "the die is cast." Appropriate for a gamble with history, is it not?

The default result is a loss, however, so it was a dumb gamble. Plus, even if he captures the city, unlike Lanius he doesn't understand that the war with the NCR has doomed the Legion either way, and he doesn't plan to change the 'morals' of the Legion after he takes Vegas, just the infrastructure.

I really don't. It violates the aesop of the series and brings about tons of pointless deaths and environmental damage. The Legion is already on the way to collapse, doubly so if the Courier helps the NCR, so there's really no reason to nuke them.

It occurs to me: What if a sufficiently Magnificent Bastard of a Courier supported the Legion. Would said Courier be able to replace Lanius as Caesar's heir before he died? What would happen to the Legion if the Courier was able to rule and maintain some of Caesar's values without necessarily having his flaws. Could the Legion eventually conquer the NCR? Could they become a permanent empire instead of slowly disintegrating?

Could the right man in the right place make the Legion last long enough to fulfill Caesar's dream? Could it, under the right leadership, become a bastion of order and stability in the Wasteland?

I want to hasten that collapse in any way that I can and, assuming the nukes air burst (like most nukes), the environmental damage will be pretty much entirely temporary. And pointless deaths? No more pointless than the hundreds of legionaries I've already shot in the face with bullets or evaporated with esther. In other news, I don't actually care that much about the aesop, at least not when it means disposing of monsters like the Legion.

I'd go a step farther and say that such a Courier would probably be literally the only person who could hold the Legion New Roman Empire together.

edited 16th Oct '12 9:40:15 PM by Balmung

Probably not. The Legion was taught to worship Caesar as a god. They are loyal to Caesar, not his ideals or his successor. Plus the way Caesar ran the Legion means that every single member is a sadistic bastard or an uneducated slave. It has no real way to survive on its own.

Even if the Courier becomes the leader, this isn't going to magically change the fact that the Legion soldiers wear football pads and carry sharpened scraps of metal, that the Legion lacks any real industrial facilities, and that they are on their way to a complete logistical collapse. Nothing will really change that.

I'm sure all those slaves appreciate the fact that you can't wait a year for the Legion to collapse.

edited 16th Oct '12 9:42:36 PM by CPFMfan

If Caesar was more like historical Caesar instead of a silly cosplay maniac, then you'd have your man.

As callous as it sounds, that's called collateral damage. On top of that, it gives an opportunity to wipe out a high level Legion general and hundreds if not thousands of legionaries.

The default result is loss -only- if the Legion loses at Hoover Dam. Again, big gamble.

Lack of industrial capacity hasn't meant much to the Legion for years, in spite of what Lanius says about Denver. Any real loss after securing New Vegas is offset by the fact that the Empire is set.

The Legion will only really run out of means to support themselves once they reach the coast (meaning, once they run out of people to fight) with the current method of operation, and the person who tells you that doesn't take into account that Caesar is changing a fundamental aspect of the Legion from being revolving around himself to revolving around the centerpiece of New Vegas.

With that plan in mind, Caesar is not likely to be so blinded by either his tumors or his ego to not notice that Lanius is a far more canny and intelligent general than Caesar lets on. You can't set up a plan for changing the Legion's infrastructure after you're gone without also knowing who is going to be left in charge when you're gone.

edited 16th Oct '12 10:22:49 PM by DevilTakeMe

It's a default loss because the Legion CAN'T win at Hoover Dam without MASSIVE Courier assistance. If, at the beginning of the game, they launched their attack, the NCR would mow then down with proper gunfire. The Legion simply doesn't have the manpower present to overwhelm the NCR's defenses and they're matching what's probably two full strength legions (total 10,000) against about one NCR brigade of about 3,500. I'd call each average NCR soldier worth more than 3 legionaries, especially given their weapons and (relevant) training. Even if the Legion trains more, much of it is focused on irrelevant bullshit like swordfighting and spear-throwing, while the NCR's soldier are actually properly trained in modern tactics and gun usage. Yes, legionaries HAVE guns, but they are not good (modern) military weapons, even though they are good individual weapons. Simply put, the Legion is bringing soldiers with "swords" (that are an insult to the word sword) and bolt action rifles against an army with semi-automatic firearms as the norm (and bolt actions to fill the sniper and designated marksman roles as would be more appropriate) and grenades available to all soldiers. Basically, unless the Courier does something substantial about how fucked the Legion is by seriously fucking up the NCR's forces, they WILL lose.

edited 16th Oct '12 10:37:22 PM by Balmung

Where is all that coming from? Personal Fanon? Are you basing numbers based on the assumption that everyone in the Fort (and the surrounding tents) are involved in the attack?

Number one, it's made clear that the First Battle of Hoover Dam was a clusterfuck of just that sort of thinking. General Oliver is even going to repeat the exact same tactics for the Second Battle of Hoover Dam.

Number Two, Lanius has devised a tactic around that. The whole point of sneaking in through the pipes is designed to take away the advantage of long range arms and put the NCR in CQB.

Again, it's not a loss if the Legion takes the Dam and takes New Vegas, regardless of how many lives are lost by the Legion. When you're part of a society based around giving your life for a self-imposed "God," it's not a loss if you succeed at what he told you to do, even if it costs you your life. The strategy for both the NCR and Legion is that they can always get more troops.

The NCR, on the other hand, is much more concerned about its well-being. If they lose Hoover Dam, they retreat, out of the Mojave, and abandon most everything in order to fall back to a secure position on the other side of the mountains.

The Courier is a Wild Card (actually, a Joker if you read into the cards). He can tip the balance in favor of anyone. House, himself, the NCR, whatever. That's the whole point of his involvement. There's no "default" ending aside from the one at the start of the epilogue and the one that ends with "War Never Changes."

It's called a gamble for a reason.

edited 16th Oct '12 11:07:09 PM by DevilTakeMe

The numbers are based on the command staff present. The NCR has two colonels and a brigadier general in the theatre, but complains of manpower issues. This sounds to me like a moderate to low strength brigade given the forces actually seen, probably with about 3,500 soldiers. The Legion is stated to not just outnumber them, but severely outnumber them, and their forces most likely come in units of legions (a traditional Roman legion being about 5,000 men). Two legions (10,000 men) puts it at a relatively even match, if still slanted in the NCR's favour, and leaves one in Lanius' command and another either in the hands of another unnamed legate or directly under Sallow's command. If the Legion has 3 legions present, then they have a pretty good chance of winning pretty much by default, but its closely matched even if you go Independent/House (and I'd dare say, still favouring the NCR overall), which points to two legions being present. This is also a scale in which forces like the Boomers and Enclave Remnants could actually have a fairly substantial effect on the battle.

So, yes, the numbers are technically fanon, but they're a very well educated guess.

Sallow made a gamble, and it was a pretty poor bet on his part. He basically had 17 and said "hit me". He MIGHT win, but it's very unlikely.

edited 16th Oct '12 11:07:56 PM by Balmung