Which Faction is Best?

[Thedragonemperor]

Bravo to all of those who have submitted wonderful, insightful opinions! Seeing wonderful mods and reading threads like this makes me proud to be a member of this family of sites.

[ballsofpoe]

i like the ncr the most

[Neariox]

Truthfully I would side with the NCR. If you side with the NCR you can get the brotherhood of steel on your side. Also if you see a firefight between the ncr and the legion the NCR will normally win. I mean I took out the whole fort and almost very other legion camp or outpost with just my fists on normal. And I have an unarmed skill of only 15. When I tried this with the NCR I died right away. Plus there are many more quests for the NCR than there are for the legion. You might learn the special legion punch, but the NCR teaches you the ranger take down which I kiled the legendary deathclaw with easily. AIso once you are about to beat the game for the legion they try to kill you. Which means you wasted all your time on nothing and are hated by everyone. Guess in the end it your choice on whether u want to be good or evil.

[Nihilisaurus]

It tells us this because, when ordered, NCR soldiers are willing to slaughter entirely helpless noncombatants, just as Legionaries are.

There is a huge gulf between closing your eyes and rapid-firing a rifle at a distant crowd, and throwing a man onto a pile of burning tires and watching him burn or hauling a man up onto a pole, and hearing his dying groans every hour for days... Guns give detachment, but bitter springs still scarred Boone's psyche pretty bad.

 

Then along comes a spider, a man seemingly without a conscious and ruthless to boot. Add this to the fact he is the first of the legion we meet and maybe we can chalk up some negative legion response to their means of introduction. After all, wouldn't we all be coloured poorly to the NCR if the first thing we saw of them was Bitter Springs? Continuing on from this we have a dog trainer who steals toys from slave children, crucified convicts and prisoners of war, an emissary calculating the necessary killing required to absorb his hosts into the legion and a man who is more animal than general; the Lord Legate Lanius, monster of the East. Ok, so they're harsh, perhaps this is all fair in the face of an enemy like the NCR. An enemy whose greatest evils are incompetent commanders and an over-abundance of written records. The NCR equivalents of Lanius are are a respectable old man and an over ambitious man in a khaki suit, hardly the type of opposition which requires the wholesale slaughter of non-combatants.

 

As for the legion and their stance on tech? Anyone who utters any words other than 'hypocritical luddites' is deceiving themselves. They eschew all medical and social technology, the closest they come to mass production is eight guys with whetstones sharpening similar machetes. The steel walls around the fort are cobbled together from junk, probably (by the looks of them) using no more than ropes and work teams. Yet their centurions wield thermic lances and Caesar has an autodoc! They aren't even consistent with their stance. Now compare this to the NCR: if you can afford it you can have it. It is by no means perfect, but at least if an NCR citizen can afford a laser/plasma gun there are places that will freely sell them to him/her - the Van Graffs, although thugs, do not seem to discriminate as to their customers. A flawed distribution system, but at least one exists.

 

All in all, the Legion's only saving grace is that it may well be better equipped in the short term to survive, but eventually they are doomed, this is not imperial rome where they are already entrenched in a moderately resource-rich country with numerous other holdings to keep the rabble at bay whilst the elite squabble over who gets to be emperor, any protracted power struggle will have the NCR at the gates. And we all know how opportunist they are.

Edited February 15, 2011 by Lt Albrecht

[mdingman]

I'm back, sorry about the wait my life got pretty usy for a while. Thanks to all of you who responded with intelligent arguments. To all those who use fallacies or make arguments that have been previously addressed, or no argument at all(post 52), just leave. There have been so many responses since I left that I can't read them all so I'm going to just go off of the last few

@ Thedragonemperor Thank you, that was my goal from the beginning, to create a topic where people could debate the merits of different factions intelligently.

@ Neariox, i'm just going to ignore you. You obviously tweaked the game because what you said you did is impossible. Then you said "good or evil", are you kidding me!!!

@Lt. Albrecht, i agree that our first impressions color the NCR as "good" and the Legion as "evil". But, the NCR's greatest evils are utter failure, massacre of civilians at Bitter Springs, subjugation and opression of their people, corruption, a terrible economy, and being about as inefficient as possible.

I agree that Lanius is bad, and as far as the dog-trainer goes, hes crazy. But, people like Caesar and Lucius redeem them, and I might add, are much better than the cowardly, indecisive, and outright stupid bureaucrats like kimball, who one person(i can't remember who) said that they "don't know which end is his ass and which end is his head"

As I have said before, the Legion rejects tech(for now) because they don't have access to much of it. Caesar knows that if they rely too much on tech when there's not enough of it to go around, the Legion will crumble. The Legion, once they gain access to the tech in the Mojave(more so if they take over California because of the Gun Runner factories), they will undoubtedly learn to replicate and implement it in their society.

And, thermic lances are melee weapons, and are far more simplistic to maintatin and create than robots or other advanced tech.

As for the distribution of weapons, every citizen of the Legion has one!!! We don't know if the people who are part of the Legion but not in the army have weapons because the game doesn't give us any insight into Legion lands(more unfair portrayal of the Legion).

 

Which Roman Empire are you referring to in your last paragraph? The greatest civilization of all time thats people were actually treated well(compared to other civilizations of the time), and with no power struggle between the elite for hundreds of years due to (mostly) strong leadership, or are you talking about the post-3rd(or 4th i can't remember) century Roman Empire that was all that you describe it as because of long periods of peace and stagnation?

 

I think the Legion is best simply because there is no better or more viable option. Sources in the game say that Legion lands have no raiders or bandits of any kind. How well has the NCR done with that? Now, I'm not saying that I agree with everything the Legion does. The sexism is what I least agree with. The slavery and brutality are not the most delicate methods to win a war and assimilate a people, but they're damned effective. I agree with their banning of chems though, and I don't know why (some)people don't agree with this. Chems only cause problems(THE FIENDS), in the game as they do in real life.

[Nihilisaurus]

You mean the Rome that went through 4 emperors in 69AD and 3 in 198AD? The Rome which was headed by the mad and inbred Nero? The Roman Empire was imperfect, and to top it off it was a bureaucracy like no other. To follow the example of Rome would give you all the problems of the NCR (an economic/political elite, exessive bureaucracy, expansionism and over-confidence) with none of the benefits. Western society has glorified the Romans beyond measure, they really weren't all they're said to be.

 

I agree with their banning of chems though, and I don't know why (some)people don't agree with this. Chems only cause problems(THE FIENDS), in the game as they do in real life.

Read some of "On Liberty" by J S Mill, and listen to the "Two Concepts of Liberty" talk by Isaiah Berlin. People disagree with having their freedoms restricted even if they will harm themselves by exercising them, they are their freedoms after all and resent your intrusion into their lives. Mill's 'Harm Principle' explains a justification for this, and Berlin's talk explains two different views on liberty which I will surmise for you if you'd like.

[FishFiend]

maybe the legion is more effective in the short term with conquering and controlling but in the long run the whole of the legion is made up of people who dont want to be in it so in the long run will almost definitively going to lead to a mass revaluation by the slaves and some of the legionnaires which will lead to a cave in of the society leading to yet another war

 

now im in no way saying that the ncr would do any better they would fall to their corruption and size they are just as doomed to fall

 

Mr house on the other hand is probably the best bet for ruling new Vegas he has the army Securitrons (which from what i saw in that vault under the fort appears to be in the thousands ) that are fully loyal and obedient and most of all replaceable he is a brilliant tactician has the majority of the region rigged to his favor has the caps to any project he wants new vegas is a very well fortified base of operations he controls one of the most wealthy settlements in the world and is a very logical person

[mdingman]

Nero(and Caligula) are exactly why I said MOSTLY good emperors. On the whole, Rome had great rulers: Augustus Caesar, who was arguably the greatest leader in all of history, Trajan, Hadrian, Marcus Aurelius, Constantine the Great, just to name a few Imperial rulers, and even before the Empire, they had leaders and generals like Cincinnatus, Julius Caesar, Scipio Africanus, and others. After a guy named Commodus(who was assassinated by his wrestling coach) came along, that's when the cycle of in-fighting, poor leadership, assassination, and stagnation began(briefly halted by some good emporers such as Constantine).

 

So, yes, eventually the Roman Empire did fall, but while it stood it was the pinnacle of human existence. They were extremely advances and even had semi-automatic weapons(not with gunpowder obviously, but they had ballistas that held multiple bolts at once) They had technology that matches what we have today, and much of modern engineering is based off of what they accomplished. They even had Greek Fire, a weapon that we haven't even discovered how to make!(napalm is close but it's not quite the same thing).

 

Now I know that the Romans had flaws, but we can learn a lot from them. We could solve the problem of Illegal Immigration if we implemented what they did. (If you need verification look up the Auxilia).

 

As for those books, a quick summary would be appreciated as I have finals coming up. Personally, I agree with the belief that the government should not infringe on your rights in any way(that's why I hate the EPA, gun control, socialism, communism, and all other oppressive ideologies, laws, and organizations). I am extremely right-wing. However, drugs(AKA Chems), are the one exception in that I think that the government should intervene. I know that some consider it an infringement on their rights, but the results of drug use(especially if it was legal), are too damaging to both people and society to go unchallenged.

[mdingman]

@FishFiend: The whole point of treating people like the Legion does is to erase their identity and their culture. Doing this gives them nothing to rally behind. And, as you can see, the slaves wouldn't have much of a chance in a revolt seeing as how they are all limping around with huge packs on their backs. The slave revolt(if there is one), won't be like the Pitt. The Legion slaves don't have auto-axes. The Legionnaries would put them down and would certainly never join them. That concept in itself is rediculous due to their loyalty(which is made clear by the fact that they have plenty of opprotunities to revolt, desert, or sabotage the Legion but they don't).

 

As for Mr. House, he is not going to last. Even if he is able to drive the Legion and NCR out, they will return, and he will be sandwiched between forces totalling in the MILLIONS, against his mere thousands. And, last time I checked, Securitrons can't snipe. NCR has snipers, Legion has snipers(i'm using the Caesar's Legion Overhaul mod which I highly recommend as it makes things more balanced in terms of combat and overall presence.). That is how house would be defeated. the Legion and/or NCR will fight a war of attrition, which they will undoubtedly win. Even if House withdraws all of his forces to the Strip itself, he could be killed easily if somebody brinds along a howitzer and blows up the Lucky 38.(the Legion has a howitzer, although I never saw the NCR with one). In addition, what about the Boomers? They could annihilate the Strip entirely! Finally, the Legion could just charge in with Melee Weapons, keeping the Securitrons(upgaded I presume) from using their missile launchers due to friendly fire(which they can't have seeing as how they are terribly outnumbered).

 

House isn't a "brilliant tactician". He's a schemer, yes, but he hasn't been tested in combat itself. Also, the securitrons are NOT replaceable. There is no Securitron factory, the Securitron vault is just that, a storage facility. And as for him being a "very logical person," Otto von Bismarck was a logical person, as was Admiral Yamamoto, Napoleon Bonaparte, General Cornwallis, and many others throughout history. They were military geniuses and very "logical" thinkers, yet that didn't forestall their demise.

 

House, also, does not have the whole region rigged to his favor. The people who are supposed to be his allies, the families of the Strip, are plotting against him! That's how the Courier got shot in the head in case you don't remember. House is alone. House has no allies. House has many enemies. House is outnumbered. House is outgunned. House is vulnerable. House has no chance.

 

Sorry about the double-post I didn't notice until after I posted

Edited May 20, 2011 by mdingman

[ita]

I like how all Legion apologists seemingly have no problems whatsoever with women being enslaved and treated like cattle.