Because he's 200+ years old and stuck in his life support machine. Doesn't even matter when he can beam himself into a securitron as seen at the end of a House playthrough.
He's facetiming through them and the range for that doesn't even extend as far as Goodsprings by his own admission. He could've brain-jar'd himself and actually been transportable or even had autonomy like Robobrains or the Think-Tank, but he wanted his Marilyn Monrobot to be able to activate the penis pump. Great forward thinking by the steward of humanity tying himself down to the basement of a casino located in a region that was already inhospitable before the war.
True, but GECKs are few and far between. Even if the Legion and NCR weren't factors in fucking up the wasteland, you'd still have Khans (without a Bitter Springs gimping their numbers and spirit), the Brotherhood (without an NCR firefight to dwindle their numbers and corner them in a bunker), Fiends, Powder Gangers, other local raider gangs, the Black Mountain mutants, and so forth. There's a reason why he wanted three different malleable gangs at his disposal, in addition to his securitron fleet. It's only through sheer luck that someone like the Courier would be able to deal with all of those factors, in addition to the trouble in paradise with the three families.
The millionare genius couldn't pull some strings and get a GECK put in the vault a quarter mile away from him? He didn't think his "customers" might need some clean water? Outside of The Divide which was kind of a universally unintended fuckup, and Searchlight, the factions aren't really fucking up the wasteland any more substantially than it already is. And his "malleable" gangs are almost all looking to dispose of him because his autistic ass thinks Securitrons spouting prerecorded lines is a functioning stand in for leadership.
For one, the chip was to be delivered the day of the great war. The fact that the apocalypse happened the day he was supposed to get all his defenses operational was something nobody could account for. Two, you need to account for the time it would take to produce the chip in-house rather than in a factory that's already set up to manufacture it. When opportunity cost comes down to time, you'd probably go with the faster option - in other words, it wouldn't matter if he made it in his safe space or a factory, but he had no way of knowing that. The bombs were always going to fall on that exact day. His only mistake was that he wasn't more precise in predicting the apocalypse.
Either he should've taken into account a potential for error and produced the chip closer or he should've made sure it was produced ahead of schedule. If he drew the short straw and the Shady Sands settlers were on par with the sub-beaver wastelanders that the east coast has, he wouldn't have a courier service to deliver it to him. They'd be too busy huddling around undetonated nukes for warmth and detonating said nukes so they can stare directly into the flash. But, as he always does, House was too busy huffing his own farts to assume he might ever be wrong and didn't think of contingencies.
So his planning was so piss poor that he only stayed in the game by pure luck. And by default, if the Courier doesn't carry his sorry ass over the finish line his luck has already run out before NV even starts.
That's why he had multiple couriers delivering different items. Only one of those items is of any actual importance, the rest were decoys. Yes, if Ulysses took that job, then he would have lucked into getting the item that actually has any usage had he bothered to deliver it to Caesar instead of doing his job normally. Additionally, the Legion was already scared to death of setting foot inside the bunker. Maybe they'd have been successful in neutralizing the security measures using machetes and throwing spears, but Caesar would be out of a lot more men than he's willing to send on a mission that is, at best, a curiosity to him. This is why he has the Courier go down instead. He's smart enough to know that whatever's down there can't be good for him, but is it worth thinning out the troops around your home base?
Honestly Caesar wouldn't even need to neutralize the bunker. If he just told someone to smash the chip with a hammer until it broke, or threw it into Lake Mead, or just threw it in a box and forgot about it, which he would've had a chance to once Benny's dumb ass tried stealth boying through a steel door in front of three Centurions. he could've FUBAR'd House's plans easily. And his decoy plan doesn't matter when he couldn't even detect Yes Man in his systems. If a tribal in a tacky suit and some rando from the followers could breach his security it's a miracle/testament to their stupidity the NCR hasn't done so already.
You work with what you can get. He made a gamble on Benny not being a complete paranoid retard, and lost hard. If Benny wasn't so schizophrenic he might have been able to smooth things over with the Omertas the way the Courier could. A little naive to think the "former" cannibals wouldn't try to go back to cannibalism, even if they signed a contract promising they wouldn't.
Benny's not paranoid or schizo. Retarded yes, but as far as tribals go he's the pick of the liter, and he's still smart enough to outfox House. House burnt his bridges with Benny autistically assuming he'd just do what he wants when he wants it and never get fed up with any lack of communication. A leader has to understand how to actually
lead people. House does not. He's a pre-war relic that thinks dangling a paycheck in front of people that are used to bludgeoning each other to death with rocks for food is enough motivation. Which is why none of "his people" are loyal to him and almost all of them are actively planning or open to betraying him.
There's nothing anyone could do to dissuade the government from taking what they want that you've got, outside of declaring war, which isn't the smartest thing to do when your (potential) business partner still has work to do throwing their men at the enemy. They're also highly incompetent and have no way of breaching his perimeter outside of the Courier, a choice that comes down to whatever you would rather do. Actually, in theory the NCR could raid House tower, but they'd want to use their best men to make sure they take down his guards. Best men that they're saving for the giant war on the horizon. Hell, they'd only want to kill him before the war is over because they have no idea what move he would make the moment they win or lose. Actually, no, given the showdown with Oliver at the end of the game, they had no idea at all that House was going to show up and demand the NCR vacate the region.
Moore wants him out of the way before the second battle, Crocker wants him annexed too. Of course they wouldn't assume he has any say in the war when without the Courier's intervention, he doesn't. House is cocky enough to dismiss the NCR as nothing but customers when Bitter Springs proved they're wiling to pave the road of their expansionist agenda with the bodies of non-combatants. He assumes Kimball will take the blame for the Mojave campaign failing and that he won't continue with a part two of the war or be replaced with an even more war-hawkish candidate. The NCR already has an established military base in McCarren and easy access to the strip via the Monorail.. If they wanted to declare war on Vegas after the Legion is pushed back east they have all the means they'd need to do so, and after the war with the Brotherhood they should be used to dealing with armored units like the Securitrons, except the Brotherhood wouldn't be completely negated by something as simple as a staircase, because Paladin's aren't reliant on a single fucking wheel for mobility. Great planning by him once again.
Benny is a wild card, just like the Courier. House's mistake was not realizing that Benny was a schizophrenic retard. He mistook a backstabber killing his previous boss to work for him as loyalty, rather than a red flag. That's on House.
I forgot that Benny already had an established history of backstabbing. the fact that House doesn't even know that a tiger can't change it's stripes is yet another point towards him being a completely unreliable retard.
The same could be said of the NCR and Legion. No matter what, the Courier is the deciding factor in winning the war.
The Legion's winning by default. The NCR worked things to a stalemate the first time via Hanlon's ingenuity and Graham overextending. Both of those factors are removed come the second battle. Joshua is playing den mother to superstitious retards in the Grand Canyon and Hanlon is actively sabotaging the NCR. and when you take into account McCarren getting attacked by Fiends, the Embassy getting attacked by the Omerta's, the Khan's serving as shock troops, and House being a complete non-factor without the Courier stepping in, Caesar wins easy. Part of the reason why the Legion main quest line is so short is because they really don't need the Courier.
That's true. A billionaire who's stuck in the past probably won't be able to convince anyone living in the radioactive middle ages that sending a rocket to the moon could possibly have any meaning to them
Sending a rocket to the moon didn't even have any meaning to us. It was a glorified pissing contest. There are no habitable planets for humans besides Earth in our solar system. Unless the guy that can't even schedule a UPS delivery can manage to either build eco-domes on Mars, develop FTL travel, or replicate the Emil magic Vault-tec accidentally made with 111 or 112, along with an autopilot system for space ships, his space dreams are a worthless diversion. That idiot would just be firing the brightest wastelanders he can find off into space for nothing.
It is locked, it's just a lock that you're able to open. It's also a good assumption to make, that most people aren't petty enough to start killing and rampaging just because someone was snide to them the first time they met. Doesn't make much sense unless you're roleplaying as a psycho junkie. A bullet to the head is a much better call to kill someone than saying roughly "Your revenge mission can wait, I'm going to pay you a lot of money if you put it aside for two seconds to get the thing I want from your mark before you murk him."
It's locked with a key you are guaranteed to have either the first or second time you enter the Lucky 38. He made the assumption that Benny wouldn't betray him because of his snotty attitude and look where that got him. Even schizo Ulysses knows that those who do not know their history are doomed to repeat it, King retard sees a man crawl out of a shallow grave, slaughter his way across the wasteland. all to kill the man who put in him said grave, and he assumes "ah yes, I can talk down to this one." The low karma House ending should be the default for how he treats the Courier from the second he walks out of Doc Mitchell's house, but his ego blinds him to the fact that he's already three ways over a barrel before the time the mail man hits the strip. The self made millionaire doesn't know how to negotiate with fucking cave men. Either his post-war nap gave him even more brain damage than two 9mm's in the frontal lobe would've, or he's a supremely lucky idiot whose fate is now entirely dependent on someone beyond the fourth wall failing to see how out of his depth he is.
It's one thing if you just don't give a shit about what he's offering Vegas in terms of "the big picture," but you can't deny that an army of soldierbots patrolling most of upper Vegas is a lot better than chaos in the streets like an independant victory, or incompetent NCR soldiers fucking with the locals and taking your money for inadequate protection, or the Legion wiping away any sense of freedom. He only takes taxes from the casinos, doesn't care about what you're doing as long as you're not massacring the locals, and is too busy focused on his stupid dreams of space exploration and rebuilding vegas to actually expand past his own territory. No conscription for you, no enslavement for you, no getting shot in the head while you're trying to enjoy a radscorpion casserole at the local diner with your family. He's literally too autistic to do anything needlessly harmful to his citizens.
Wildcard has just as much access to said army as House does. Arguably more so since the Courier would have an AI managing all of them instead of a horny mummy in a fish bowl reliant on how stong of a wi-fi connection he has. I don't know why they wrote most of the Wildcard ending slides as if the Courier either isn't around or has no interest in enforcing any semblance of law and order, but there's no reason why they couldn't. Acting like all House is content to let people be is either willful or blissful ignorance. He genocides the Kings if they show any clemency to NCR citizens, demands you wipe out the Brotherhood of Steel despite them being so far out of the picture that they don't even know that the NCR is getting their shit pushed in by Dick's Sporting Goods enthusiasts, and he was willing to push the residents of Vault 21 out into the wastes until they convinced him they could directly benefit him.
House is the worst of all worlds. He has the vanity and ego of the NCR plus the uncaring efficiency yet shortsightedness of the Legion. With the NCR, you're continuing the legacy of the Vault Dweller and the Chosen One by carrying Shady Sands to a thriving future. With the Legion, you're embracing the harshness of the wasteland and ensuring that might will continue to make right. With Wildcard, you're doing whatever the hell you want to because Cyborg Courier 6 with access to Think-Tank technology and Divide nukes should go a lot further than the game's writers seem to know. With House, you're the gopher of an incompetent plutocrat in a world where wealth is below secondary to survival. He's sub-par fence sitting. He's a golf club receptacle.
