The Dam is the key to the region. It's why the NCR is even in the Mojave....thier economy is dependent on the hydroelectric power it provides. Caesar uses it to keep the NCR's eyes fixed on him while he rips thier guts out. Once he has it he can feed troops into the Mojave as easily as the NCR can as Hoover Dam is the only bridge across the Colorado anywhere near the theater of operations.




That is, of course the big plot hole. Any competent military officer would see immediately what Caesar is doing and take steps to counter it. Those steps may succeed or fail but the NCR's position would not be as dire as it is without the Courier. One also would ask why there isn't a NCR Expeditionary Force sacking Flagstaff while Caesar is sitting in the Mojave....If I were Kimball that is what I would have Moore doing, it would be a perfect assignment for her.

I am commenting what's happening in the game is the direct result of Caesar's inability as a field commander.

The Legion also give player fair amount of quest as well. Without player intervention, the Legion would need to work much hardrer to win the battle.

not realy

I do not believe Caesar has made it anyway clear in the game that he is keeping the ncr occupied at the dam while he attacks elsewhere or has even set up any other operation to take place. What has he done, taken Nelson well the Ncr have retaken it. Planted a spy, the spy has been discovered and killed, the monorail plot foiled. A landing at Cottonwood? well that's been rendered useless as a landing area for the Legion. This is a No Courier scenario the Ncr do all that themselves. The dam being the key to the region as a distraction for the ncr is something that "should" be but it isn't.

There is nothing left but the dam for the legion to attack because there has been nothing else put in place accept for final alliances which apply to both factions.

As i stated above Caesar does not really have much in place at all to counter but I totally agree with you about Flagstaff , that would take a whole other game though.



The subplots are all ncr, there is nothing happening to Legion behind their lines. I'm not really talking about the main quests which apply to both factions.

I hope next game they brush up on their war strategies. I like this game, but it sure has it's faults.

What on Earth are you basing this on? If the Courier didn't do any of that, the NCR sure as hell couldn't have. Everything in the game says their military is in shambles. Look at Forlorn Hope. Everyone there is acting as if they've already lost. If they were just waiting to take back Nelson, why on earth is everyone so damn depressed?

And then theres the Fiends. The sheer fact that they are such a threat to the NCR speaks on how bad the NCR is doing.

Also, the Legion has nowhere as much sidequests as the NCR. They don't need the Courier anywhere near as much as the NCR does.

If you look at history, it is common that a leader is good at a particular style of maneuverer and pretty bad at anything else. Since the Legion's flaws aside from their primitive and crude method is the fact that they follow Caesar and Caesar alone, it is pretty obvious that Obsidian try to imply the imperfectness of Caesar.

My speculation is that when we get to talk to Joshua Graham, we would know how Caesar is nothing more then a cosplayer.

Non-sequitur. The Mojave is NCR-controlled territory. It stands to reason that the NCR would have had more stuff on their agenda in this particular terrotiry. Caesar's interests are strictly military; he doesn't have to deal with power, water and food distribution, keeping the wildlife from creeping into human settlements, maintaining refugee camps etc. It doesn't mean that the NCR is weaker or less effective, it means they have more on their metaphorical plate.

You know, you can use something as a distraction even though it is your primary objective. Oliver has stripped every outpost of all the troops he can for the Dam....which is the direct cause of the Powder Gang revolt amongst other things. And as far as re-taking Nelson and such the NCR doesn't do that...either the courier does it for them or they won't do it without the courier present to provide extra firepower. The monorail would be destroyed for sure as they never would have found him in time themselves. When it comes to the situation as presented in the game the CL would win hands down without the courier assisting the NCR, House, or Yes-Man. Now if one replaced Oliver with Hsu, Hanlon, or even Moore the situation would be quite different. The NCR has the latent strenght to beat the Legion, they merely need a competant commander.

When I think about the whole idea of this thread there's a few major problems.
A. Why would House be dead? The only person in game to kill House was the player character. Even Benny got caught trying to get the securtons to kill him! So why would he be dead?
B. Why would the Fiends leaders still be alive? The NCR has bounties out for them and even the mercenary at Mccaran notes he does jobs for them.
C. This assumes that on a micro level the NCR is still but that's not true. On a marco, yes, but the NCR aren't just setting around doing nothing. Look at how they dealt with the Powder Gangers.

The Courier is the only person to actually go out and kill the fiend leaders. In every conclusion in which you don't do it, the fiends stage an attack on McCarran that either takes the camp, or the NCR takes massive casualties in the defense. Clearly those bounty contracts don't work out.

Yeah I thought about that but it still doesn't explain A. or C.

That's because the conclusions are based on the actions the player took or did not take with respect to any given faction and/or quest. This discussion assumes the player was never involved in the first place, in which case I would say it's fair to assume that all the things on both sides that are there for the player to do would have instead been covered by the respective parties in one form or another as there is no need to keep things in stasis for the player's benefit.

Case in point: when you get to the endgame and talk to either Caesar or Colonel Moore they both imply the assault on the dam is 'imminent', however you can blow them off and go about your business for as long as you please and the assault itself will wait patiently for your arrival. Were the player not a factor to begin with, the assault would have taken place long before it ever does in a typical play-through as there would have been no need for the player to run around like a headless chicken getting whichever side he/she chose to support off its collective butt beforehand.

I have noticed that those supporting each side have decided that all objectives for their chosen side are automatically fulfilled while all those for the opposition are automatically unfulfilled, which is highly unrealistic. It's more likely that some of each group's objectives will be met and some will not, and depending on which ones those are one side will win due to the other having failed at a critical point.

Now, both Caesar and Oliver have tunnel vision where the Dam itself is concerned, however their lieutenants know that the real battle is taking place along I-15 and the banks of the Colorado River. Should the NCR manage to keep I-15 open their supply lines are assured and the Legion will be in an untenable position even if the dam falls, since the NCR will have taken out the Legion's west-bank outposts and be in a position for an amphibious assault on the Fort itself. If I-15 falls, even partially, to the Legion, however, the it's the NCR who has insurmountable supply problems and will have to withdraw from the dam or risk having their army destroyed.

The way I see things playing out is that the Legion's scare tactics initially work and keep sizable detachments of NCR troops deployed all over the place, however once the attack on the dam begins these get recalled and thrown into the fight. Whether or not this is enough to allow the NCR to hold the dam depends on what Lanius actually does without the player there to do it for him; if he is killed leading from the front (which is likely given his attitude towards combat and the presence of multiple veteran NCR snipers in the guard towers) the Legion troops will be demoralized and unable to capitalize on their initial advantage, while if he lives there is a good chance they will throw the NCR out of the dam and drive them back to at least Boulder City if not further. This does depend on when the recalled NCR troops arrive; if they get there soon enough they might even regain a foothold on the dam itself, while if they do not then there will be a brutal fight in and around the ruins of Boulder City. The recall of the NCR troops would force a recall of the Legion troops that are pinning them down, as doing otherwise would doom the assault on the dam and render these troops' presence in the rear areas pointless anyway.

For the attacks on I-15 and the Ranger outposts to actually affect the battle for the dam, however, they would have to take place ahead of that fight, which would telegraph the Legion's intentions and cause the NCR to shift troops to counter these assaults. That might well leave the dam under-defended, however at the same time the NCR has probably crushed the Fiends and thus freed up the heavy garrison at McCarran for use elsewhere, and those troops might be sent instead of ones at the dam. Timing would be crucial; if the NCR makes a major move on the Fiends (and without the game-shackles odds are good Hsu will do exactly that and the hell with orders) then the aforementioned assaults should be launched immediately if at all, if they do not then the Legion would be better served having their troops in the far South outposts come up the river and land near Boulder City in an attempt to cut off reinforcements and/or any retreat. Observers at Camps Echo and Golf will spot any such movement, though, which makes it quite a gamble given that deployment of a few sniper-types to the hills just East of BC would allow for easy picking-off of the Legionaries coming up the river in addition to any fire they take from Echo.

Short form: I think the Legion's initial assault on the dam would succeed to the point of driving the NCR troops back to the visitor's center and the access bridge, but at that point the NCR cannot be flanked and their sharpshooters will pick any attempted Legion advance apart unless the Legion is somehow able to land troops behind the NCR lines in the face of heavy opposition from McCarran, as well as Camp Golf and any other nearby detachments. This does assume that Caesar lives to see said assault, if he dies first then the NCR just might take advantage of the resultant demoralization and drive the Legion out of their forward base, if not the Fort itself.

I-15 is a gonna:BoS, DeathClaws, Fiends and Powder Ganger all over it. Retaking it would means abandon the Dam and retreat to Vegas.

I also assume NCR be still because that's what they did in game; I did not assume Caesar's plan work smoothly either. But CL does have a huge advantage over NCR.

But then there is Benny.

Securing I-15 should be a NCR priority but it isn't. Aside from Mojave Station and a handful of men at Primm....the NCR has no control whatsoever of I-15. They let the Powder Gangers run riot up and down it, and totally ignore the fact that Deathclaws have shut down the Quarry and cement factory they must have spent a fortune to get operating again. And the Legion is nowhere to be found along the entire highway. Even if they win they don't bother patrolling it....they leave it to the BoS if they haven't been exterminated.

The Legion is attacking the dam because they think they can take it, thereby:
1. Weakening the NCR for future offensives
2. Opening up New Vegas for their occupation

The NCR is defending it because their citizens rely on the power it provides.
They are vastly overextended and are only holding because they have no other choice.

Without the Courier's aid or assistance from House, the NCR is driven back (but inflicts heavy casualties). The Legion finally has its Rome.

Yes but Benny still coudn't activate securitron vault,evidence: he gets cuaght in the game.

A. All somebody needs is a pulse gun and a few pulse grenades.
B.Merc at Mccaran said he quit fiend work just waiting to get paid for previous jobs and their isn't any merc with the courage to face a fiend or any large merc contractor in the mojave.
C.They never finished the job plus powder gangers at vualt 19 would probably get hold of sulfur and the NCR woudn't mobalize a force large enough to fight them because it is still and take severe casualties or if they join Great Khans means more Khans at dam.
D.Legion good at short-medium range where most fighting takes place.

Only because of his vanity....Caesar tells you that the only reason Benny was caught is because he didn't have a CL appropriate haircut.

The thing is, NCR is only 'still' in-game because if they actually got off their collective butt and took care of the apparently insurmountable list of problems they are facing there wouldn't be a hell of a lot left for the Courier to do.

This is why I feel a bit too much is being made of the point that the NCR is apparently vastly overextended, when it's made abundantly clear through dialogue that 'General Oliver's orders' is synonymous with 'because the game says so for the player's sake'. With the player a non-factor, I would be willing to bet a large sum that a lot of what appear to be insoluble problems would disappear in short order now that the officers in charge of dealing with them are no longer artificially restrained.

I will grant that the game does a good job of making it feel like the NCR's grab has exceeded its reach, however after running through the various 'problem-solving' quests that remove major impediments (such as the player's actions in For the Republic, Pt. II) several times the situation starts to feel 'forced', as no competent commander would leave all these troubles in his rear areas and one as apparently incompetent as Oliver is presented as being would have long since been relieved of command in favor of someone who could actually get things done.

Of course, this works both ways, as Caesar is only sitting on his hands for the player's sake as well, but I still feel that the case against the NCR is being overstated to some degree as the situation the Courier walks into would not have been allowed to stand as it's presented.

It is simply too hard to determine a define out comes if both NCR and Legion handle the quests themselves. For the sake of this thread, we should base our anolysis with game content about what would happen when the Courier didn't layer a finger on them.

Which I what I have been doing. Since the Courier is a non-factor one is pretty much forced to assume that each side handles its own problems by themselves, and if that is, indeed, the case then I would have to give the edge to the NCR due to sheer numbers. If one assumes that only one of the two sides takes care of its issues then the outcome is already decided in that side's favor, which renders this discussion moot.

My detailed account a few posts up does grant the Legion the ability to take the dam, however once they get past it they are pinned at the bridge from the visitor center to the Boulder City area as the NCR has more troops and is effectively operating on interior lines, and thus can move troops to counter any potential flanking operation(s) the Legion might undertake.

Thus the way I see it falling out:

Legion wins Second Hoover Dam, as they have the advantage here and have troops in place to come up through the drainage system and flank the defenders.

NCR blocks any further advance due to superior defensive positions outside the dam, and given that Caesar has committed pretty much his entire expeditionary force to the battle at the dam while the NCR can call reinforcements at will (it is implied Caesar has no reserve forces to call upon, although I will grant he might actually have some) the Legion is forced back by sheer weight of numbers and the dam eventually retaken by the NCR. This is done at a pretty steep cost, however, so whether or not the NCR can retain possession of the area afterward is another matter entirely.

Note that I am not saying the Legion cannot win if the NCR gets its act together, just that I don't see them managing it given the concentration of forces at the dam combined with the NCR's known numerical superiority in-theater. For all I know loss of the dam would demoralize the NCR forces and cause them to not attempt to hold the position at the bridge, and if that happens then they might well get driven back to the Outpost since McCarran cannot be held if flanked.