A New Government in the Commonwealth

[TheSpaceShuttleChallenger]

@anvilofwar If you're going to @TheSSChallenger me then could you at least argue about something I've actually said? I'm pretty sure I explicity stated that the BoS is an authoritarian government that only cares about acquiring tech and waging wars, and I also explicitly said, I quote: “I especially don't trust the BOS to succeed as a holistic government." Which might be taken as meaning, I don't know, that I don't f***ing trust them, but sure go ahead and tell me what I said about the BoS being here for the benefit of the common man.

 

I'm saying that if there is a faction that has considerable firepower and is focusing that firepower on your enemies (which helps you, even if they're not doing it out of the kindness of their hearts) instead of on you, then you do what you must to keep it that way. Who gives a s*** if the BoS is only fighting the Institute for ideological reasons? They're fighting the Institute. They're killing super mutants, synths, ghouls and, yes, raiders. The drawback is that they confiscate tech. So what? Have you seen the Commonwealth? There are functional terminals and generators lying around in nearly every explorable building, you can't take ten paces without tripping over pre-war weaponry and yet the vast majority of the commonwealth's citizens carry pipe pistols and use nothing more technologically advanced than a lightbulb. Your most involved quest for technology outside of the Brotherhood and Institute is with a bunch of museum robots with pirate accents. If the Commonwealths' settlements didn't pursue even the most basic and useful forms of technology when it was just there for the taking, what makes you think they're going to fight the Brotherhood over components that very few of them will ever use?

And yes, the BoS does exterminate raiders. There is not a specific quest in which you go out and kill some raiders. Well spotted. Now play the rest of the game. Danse makes it very clear how the Brotherhood feels about raiders and gunners (“No better than super mutants.”) There are patrols of Brotherhood knights who walk around the Commonwealth and every time they see a raider they start hollering about Victoriam and open fire. Just because the Brotherhood doesn't pursue raiders as actively as they pursue other targets does not mean that raiders are not targets.

 

 

 

As for the matter of why the BoS is such a terrible excuse for a military organisation? I'm going to guess that it boils down to two main things:
a) Same reason that settlers will sit down next to a barrel of nuclear waste and drink their coffee. NPCs in these games don't think. The only rational behaviour they have is what a developer coded in for them, and developers probably have better things to do than sit there and code the Brotherhood to act like they know what they're doing. Especially consider that with every generation of their games, they make their AIs smarter and people still find things to complain about.
b) Bethesda and Obsidians' jobs are to make fun games first and realistic games second. There is nothing fun about having to comply with a twenty pound book of protocol and there's nothing satisfying about having all major decisions made above your head--they tried that with Skyrim's civil war and everybody complained for days. So the BoS functions less as a military and more as a federation of freelancers with some military sparkle, because that gives you freedom to play the game how you want.

 

For what it's worth, it's kind of canon that the BoS is pretty s*** at being a military. Danse complains about missions being a clusterf*#@ all the time. He recommends you to the Brotherhood specifically because he sees that you can function amidst clusterf*#@s. Ingrahm cheerfully admits that the Prydwen is rust held together with tape and she doesn't completely understand the schematics for the molecular relay but she'll just stick a Paladin in it and see what happens. Maxon gives you orders he doubts you'll obey, shows up in person on a Vertibird to catch you in the act of disobeying, and... can't do anything about it, please don't tell his m8s. It's not like Bethesda is trying to convince us that the Brotherhood has everything under control.

 

But just because the BoS has no idea how to military doesn't mean it's not a military (or militaristic organisation, I'm not here to argue semantics) or that it's completely unrealistic. Militaries suck at their jobs all the time. I mean. In 1915, the guys in charge of (ostensibly) the best military organisations in the world figured they could win a war by charging tens of thousands of men into machine gun crossfire. In Vietnam, the wold's greatest military superpower was still experiencing those “oops we doused our own guys in agent orange” moments. Terrible discipline, dudes stealing provisions and selling their guns for pocket change and deserting whenever they feel like it is actually not that rare in developing armies. At least the Brotherhood has an excuse in that nobody in their organisation (except the player character) has ever belonged to or even seen a proper military before. The closest frame of reference they have are mercenary co-ops and, not surprisingly, that's what they resemble.

Edited February 28, 2017 by TheSpaceShuttleChallenger

[Moraelin]

@CiderMuffin

As with all analogies, it does have some merits, but is also somewhat inexact. Isn't that always the case?

 

A knight paladin, or more corectly a knight palatine, or "palatinus" in Latin (Latin was very much used in medieval documents), was a relatively high ranking noble attached to one of the imperial castles. In the Holy Roman Empire he pretty much invariably held the rank of count, and be named a "comes palatinus": count palatine. He carried the emperor's authority in all sorts of matters from judicial to representing the Emperor im the provinces. And of course was tasked with the maintenance and administration of one of the imperial palaces; remember that the HRE had several such.

 

In that role, he was also automatically in command and responsible for the military force of that county, including lower knights, men at arms, levies, etc. In that aspect, I think the BOS rank is somewhat apt. It WAS a senior commander rank.

 

As far as I know, the monastic orders did not have an equivalent of a palatine, nor really the vast territories to warrant such.

 

Protection of pilgrims or of a specific institution (e.g., the Hospital of Saint John of Jerusalem, or the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem) would be more like the primary official goal of a whole order, rather than only certain ranks of it.

 

The number of clergy in such orders was also anywhere between small and very small, depending on the order, while the BOS has far greater numbers of scribes. And I certainly don't remember them being interested in technology. Although I suppose they would be interested in relics, so that's a kind of a parallel.

 

The clergy also had at least the role of spiritual guidance, although the knights would be officially in charge, and the clergy would have SOME authority from the Pope (you may be in charge, but you don't want to be excommunicated) while in the BOS they don't seem to have a similar role. The scribes seem to have not much say in what the soldier types will do.

 

Personally I think they're simply like the (real) feudal knights. Which were a lot less nice than in chivalric ideals. Basically it's not as much specifically a monastic order, as just plain old feudalism.

[Moraelin]

@TheSpaceShuttleChallenger

I think probably the most exact and concise way would be to say that they're less of a military (which acts under the authority of a state), and more of a paramilitary organization. It may have originated with members of a military force, but it's been paramilitary since day one, when the old Maxson decided to break off and be their own group.

 

And of course, paramilitary organizations are a vast spectrum of organizations, from highly organized and trained elite forces (e.g., the SS) to villagers with hunting rifles, and from protecting the people to being some warlord's or drug baron's bid for power to being plain old terrorists.

 

In that sense, I will agree with you that the BOS isn't all that unrealistic, especially after 200 years since the last guy who had actual military training. They fall quite comfortably within all that broad spectrum of paramilitary organizations.