Crichton said:
You are missing the point. Most societies in FO have crumbled to the tribal state. In that case, the NCR is the abberation, using advanced weaponry on those who are in their way. Were the Raiders really that bad? Well, regardless, they were slaughtered. They make reference to this throughout the game. The tribals fight with melee weapons, and CL represents an organized society structured around an advanced tribal state. The NCR represents the worst of what started the wars to begin with. All their folks are drunks, lesbian sharpshooters, and conscripts who have no reason to be there. Look at Vegas: whores, gambling, and drunkeness. Caesar has none of that. This contrast was there for a reason, in case you missed it.
They did make the legion a copy of ancient Roman society. You want it like Roman society, only more liberal? Then it's not like the Roman society, hell, its not like any society. The people lived in Roman society because it was safer than not being part of the Roman society. They didn't expect everyone to be equal, if they did, slaves wouldn't really fit in.
CL doesn't resemble ancient Roman society, it doesn't resemble any society and there will never be a society that it does resemble.
from the wiki:
This horde of cruel, yet highly disciplined slavers has spread across the southwest like an all-consuming flame. Founded by a fallen member of the Followers of the Apocalypse, Caesar's Legion is effectively an enormous, conscripted slave army. As Caesar conquers the peoples of the wasteland, he strips them of their tribal identities and turns their young men into ruthless legionaries and women into breeding stock. They are well organized, moving and attacking in large packs, and deliberately commit atrocities to terrorize those who might dare oppose them.
Nearly all physically capable, compliant males are compelled to serve in its armed forces. The primary value of pre-menopausal females is to serve as breeding stock (with Caesar or a legate governing how they are assigned to males), though they, like older females and less physically-capable men, are also used to perform a variety of other tasks; such as being assigned as Caesar's priestesses, whose duty is, among other things, to raise children taken away from their parents as members of the Legion. The largest unit of organization in Caesar's Legion is the "Cohort", numbering about 480 infantrymen. Cohorts are further divided into "Centuriae", which contrary to their name numbers about 80 men, and each Centuriae is divided into ten "tent groups" ("Contubernia"), making this the squad level of organization. Raiding parties are of this size (about eight men) and will be led by a Decanus (squad leader).
A society that produces nothing, allows its people no rights or privileges and has 100% conscription for more sucicide attacks on the Hoover Dam. This isn't a human society it's orcs/darkspawn/imperial stormtroopers, a collection of human-like figures with no redeeming aspects so you don't have to feel bad about shooting them. It's just comic-opera stuff, no trace of belivability.
NCR is the agressor. They want to take over Las Vegas but do not have the manpower. They are taking over towns against their will, even if the towns are not threatened by Caesar. Caesar is doing the same thing, but he seems to have some moral principles. The NCR has none, unless expanding the reach of a far off gubmint is manifest destiny.
Caesar doesn't have any principles. The game makes it quite clear that not only does he not care about his victims, he uses his own people as fodder. He isn't even honest about it, he sends minions to lie to the Khans and his people collude with corrupt townspeople to ambush the NCR and then instead of honoring their bargin, they kill the townspeople. I don't know when the FO:NV writing team made the decision, but as written, "Caesar" is a cross between Kurz and that asshole from KotOR 1.
I took it more along the lines of the Taliban in Afghanistan. Under ordinary circumstances, a force that fucked up, that unpopular who goes that far out of their way to be a murderous pillaging dick to everyone they rule, that requires you to either sign up and go jihad or die horribly, could never exist - it would fall apart long before it reached statehood.
But put it in an environment where civilisation seems nigh impossible, and people are just so worn out and desperate after countless generations of random murder, idiocy and resultant starvation that they'll give it a go if it promises to bring some order to the chaos.
No it still isn't plausible if you think about it seriously, but it passes the gaming test in a campy setting. What, you think that the Master's army wasn't completely implausible? Remember, that lot of supermutants had normal intelligence. Don't you think at least one of them would have noticed that he didn't seem to have much in the way of female company? You don't think that ol Marcus might have caught up with at least ONE woman from the same town that he lived in pre-mutation, and wondered why she's spawned a cock?
Not to mention, it's really fucking hard to get a large group of people to agree on anything without some coercion (whether environmental or direct). And yet EVERY single one of them is utterly loyal to the Master and his plan? Not one supermutant who wants to rule the roost himself, and gets a significant faction together? No peaceniks, no anarchists, just all totally loyal? Oh, yes, there's conditioning, but we know from Marcus that it wasn't exactly brain-programming. They had free will.
More importantly, everything I can gather in Fallout suggests that the Supermutant army was working on pretty much the same principles as CL - every supermutant is a conscripted soldier, end of story. So who is working the farms and the power generators? That stuff requires expertise - and you've just killed off or mutated (and then conscripted) all the people in the towns who know anything about agriculture and power generation.
Seriously, that's a fucking huge land area the Master's army was covering. You can't possibly rule an area that size without some serious delegation and bureaucratic structures. So what kind of government was the master running? Where's the structures of lieutenants and local governors? Are they liberal or conservative?
If the complaint is that CL produces nothing, then what about the Master's Army? I'm not so convinced that CL does produce nothing - they seem to have functioning towns under a government/bureaucratic structure, and I'd envisage that each of those towns produce stuff like they would under another government. I just figured that was something they could reasonably leave blank - just put the towns and people there, and the player doesn't need to know which one produces timber and which one makes steel. But if it IS something you need to spell out to the player, what on earth does the Master's Army do in the way of production?
Yes yes, I'm being retarded I know. I just don't think that even FO 1 holds up to any serious examination of the factions' plausibility. Like CL it 'resembles' a more plausible factional design, while remaining a piece of fantasy. The only advantage I can see is that the Master's Army is a much more blatant step into fantasy 'evil wizard with his mighty orc army' than CL, and so the implausibility is less jarring. But that's hardly a game-breaking or game-saving difference.
