You mean the riot gear that's even better than combat armor? The riot gear that's just shy of T-45 power armor for protection, while being far lighter and not needing specialized training? And by high-caliber rifle you mean the Anti-Materiel Rifle, hands down one of the single most destructive rifles in any Fallout game, only beaten by the Gauss Rifle? There's a reason everyone fears the Rangers.
Most Rangers use Brush Guns. Also, having riot gear be close to the defense rating of the T-45 power armor isn't that impressive, especially since it's not even close to being as good as the T-51b that the Enclave Power Armor far surpasses. And yes, the Legion elite soldiers use those guns too, which explains why Legion officers wear parts of Brotherhood armor for their outfits, since they were killing those bastards too. So having an armor that's close to the T-45 in terms of defense isn't that impressive when the Legion HAS been killing Brotherhood paladins who wore that armor. Both sides only have a few elite soldiers using the anti-materiel rifle. In fact, in the Legion version of the Hoover Dam battle, only ONE NCR Ranger uses an anti-materiel rifle. At least two Legion Centurions use those guns in the House version of the Hoover Dam battle.
You mean the Presidential transport, Bear Force One? The fact there's any Vertibirds at all outside of Enclave remnants is a miracle. Thank God for the Chosen One giving the plans to the BoS and the Shi.
The Enclave and the BoS in the East Coast managed to make more vertibirds. They both had a veritable armada of them in Fallouts 3 and 4 despite both the East Coast Enclave and Arthur Maxson's BoS being far smaller than the NCR and having less resources.
What the fuck do you think kicked off the BOS-NCR War? Couldn't be that the NCR is rebuilding the Boneyard into a proper city and has gotten their hands on shit from Navarro, now could it?
Uh, you do know it's not about rebuilding the boneyard that kicked off that war, right? It was the use of technology that kicked off that war. The NCR wanted to use the Enclave tech seized from Navarro, the BoS wanted that tech for themselves. It was Brotherhood dogma that kicked off the war. If the NCR set about rebuilding the Boneyard without using Enclave tech, or if they gave the Enclave tech from Navarro to the BoS, there would have been no war to begin with.
Quartermasters don't need armor or rifles, and if I was the NCR you bet your ass I'd be worried about someone going after my food supply. You know, like the BoS.
Hanlon wasn't talking about quartermasters, he was talking about the average soldiers. In fact, the one quartermaster in Hoover Dam has both armor and a service rifle. Not all soldiers have that, though. Many common soldiers have potato-sack uniforms and dinky pistols instead of service rifles.
Only because its got a hydra of foes going at it. Domestically the war with the Brotherhood is a slow, bloody success, with the BoS being forced to blow up more bunkers to prevent seizure than the NCR has taken by force. In the Mojave the Brotherhood got shattered at Helios One, losing more than half of the entire Chapter in one battle. The Vipers, Jackals, and Khans all fled the NCR east to the Mojave, barely clinging to life in their hidey-holes. If you solve the NCR's problems for them, they become the strongest faction by far, even before they drive the Legion out.
Yes-the NCR can prosper in the east if you choose to solve their problems for them. EVERY. SINGLE. ONE. If you don't, they'll keep collapsing until Lanius bum-rushes their forces at the Dam and eradicates them.
The NCR didn't even finish the war with the Brotherhood of Steel in Lost Hills before expanding to the Mojave, which was a BAD idea. They should have kept going and not expanded eastward until AFTER the Lost Hills Brotherhood has been destroyed. Ditto for the raiders in NCR territory, who are so threatening that the rich folk of the NCR have to requisition power-armor troops to defend their landholdings from raiders. And they should have used the time they gained by defeating Joshua Graham in the First Battle of Hoover Dam to eradicate local threats like the Fiends, the Vipers, the Jackals, and the Khans, before the Legion returns. Instead, they deployed their troops ineffectively, not finishing off these other factions, which meant that the Legion could use factions like the Fiends and the Khans to harass NCR forces and attack them when the time comes for the second big battle. And then of course, there's the incompetence the NCR has that causes new gangs to form like the Powder Gangers, whom they are also unable to contain.
Yes, the NCR becomes strong if you solve their problems for them. But the same goes for House and the Legion. Literally, any faction the Courier helps becomes the strongest in the Mojave. House's faction goes from a weak fortress with some guard bots to a large Securitron army that can make even the mighty Enclave look like spear-chucking barbarians. You think the Boomers peppering the enemy with artillery was bad? Try hundreds of robots with rockets and grenade launchers. Combine that with him re-igniting the tech sectors, and you'll have a prosperous Mojave under House that will continue to expand as it outshines Shady Sands and becomes the new seat of civilization in the west.
The Legion, if you win New Vegas for them, becomes even stronger than before, with their conquest giving them more options for expansion into the west, especially since the NCR is already weakened by the loss of their president, their top general, and thousands of troopers in the Mojave. The Legion is just as big and numerous as the NCR army, except they're better trained, (just as well-trained as the Rangers, if Colonel Moore is to be believed) they don't have bureaucratic messes and senatorial infighting, they don't have enemies back home since they're all dead, and they have a massive spy network with agents having infiltrated the NCR for years, making a potential invasion of California be about as easy as sweeping Hoover Dam would be for Lanius, especially after the NCR's defeat and imminent collapse. And since the Courier solved that brain tumor problem for Caesar, he can keep ruling for several decades more, giving him more than enough time to anoint a worthy successor.
Quite frankly, you have to do a lot more babysitting for the NCR to make things work for them in the Mojave. Whereas with House and the Legion, all you need to do is a few odd jobs. Because unlike the NCR, which is about as efficient as the 40K Imperium of Man, the Legion and New Vegas run smoothly like a new car hot off the factory assembly lines, while the NCR is like a broken-down jalopy that would just end up breaking apart if the owner doesn't commit to an expensive restoration effort.
The NCR's biggest problems are much like the Imperium of Man's. Surrounded by enemies, too many problems to deal with by themselves.
Not really. The NCR, unlike the Imperium, could have dealt with these problems one by one. They just chose not to and chose to blindly expand instead despite still having enemies everywhere. Their collapsing state in New Vegas is the result. The Imperium is a victim of circumstance, the NCR, a victim of its own greed.
Meanwhile Caesar started his legion in 2247. By 2281 Caesar's Legion still lacks a single doctor capable of removing a tumor. 34 years and the bloviating fucktard either hasn't figured out that doctors are pretty goddamn useful in a post apocalyptic hellscape, hasn't managed to stop his men from killing them all, or is simply such a shitty person to work for nobody with any medical training would go anywhere near him.
I mean, this idiot read Hegel and thought "Wow, this is perfect justification to create an authoritarian society built on slavery!" so he's pretty fucking dumb.
Er, I wouldn't say that. Not only does he allow the use of Auto-Docs, but he only bans drugs for the Legion itself. The communities living in Legion territory are free to shoot themselves up with drugs and drink all the time, it's just that, similar to Marcus Aurelius in Ancient Rome, he forbade certain things for the army to keep them efficient. (Caesar forbade drugs and robots to keep the army from being addicted and getting lazy, Marcus Aurelius forbade marriage so that the soldiers can be full-time fighters.)
Caesar is kind of dumb in the long term, but the NCR just happens to be dumber than him. FAR dumber than him. The NCR has the advantage of old-world science and tech, and the same large manpower numbers as the Legion, and some dumb history nerd and his tribe of yahoos wielding guns and machetes are about to defeat a republic that has old-world Enclave tech, power armor, riot gear, and high-caliber weapons. You have to be pretty dumb to be losing to THAT. Especially since the NCR fought the Legion before, so they should have been familiar with Legion tricks and how to crush them. They had years to prepare for the Second Battle of Hoover Dam, and somehow, the Enclave's Colonel Autumn in FO3 who only had a few days to prepare for a Brotherhood assault on the Jefferson Memorial did far better to prepare than a massive republic that had literal YEARS to prepare for the Second Battle of Hoover Dam.
