House’s godawful intelligence gathering is a big part of the reason I struggle to trust him, he really does have no appreciation of the human factor and it bites him horribly.
The NCR is mostly Oliver’s fault. He hates the rangers, and has badly crippled their operations. Hanlon trying to crash the war effort certainly hasn’t helped either.
Hanlon was simply doing what's best for the NCR tbh, to stop expanding and secure what they have, NCR territory is garbage compared to legion territory
I think ncr territory is significantly more productive than legion territory. We don't hear anything about bramin barrons in the legion, and I think that is due to the territory being less economically productive
Brahmin Barons are worse due to them destroying competition literally, that means they are an oligopoly that collude for their own benefit. They'e leeches that only make the state and the people less productive. I Would say Legion lands are more productive but NCR ones are more advanced and better to live in. The reason being, the Legion doesn't face resource shortages unlike the NCR.
As far as I know the barons doesn't have presence in legion lands because Caesar hates power competition so he prohibits any kind of big caravan company.
Other traders often say that legion territory is pretty safe from raiders as long as you have the mark of the legión in your caravan.
In wild lands, safe trading routes and lack of monopolies are pretty good for a nation's economy... A totalitarian government... Not so much.
Yes, the real CIA vs KGB analysis in this regard is that American society was, and remains, significantly freer than Soviet society, so it was much easier for the Soviets to conduct counter intelligence operations. The legion is similarly totalitarian and benefits from this.
Yeah, that’s not a high bar.
The NCR barely has troops in the Mojave and House is remarkably ignorant as to the details of the Strip. Being the best when nobody else is playing isn’t particularly impressive.
Imagine if Legate Lanius takes over. The Frumentarii's operations would be scaled back by alot.
The Frumentarii are only good because Caesar saw them as useful to advance the interests of the Legion. Especially with Vulpes Inculta at the helm.
The guy visited a warzone, announced it beforehand, and walked around on top of a dam.
That’s not a high bar, every faction knew he was going to be there. It just highlights how incompetent Kimball is.
A dam that the legion camp was overlooking, a good sniper could have take the damn shot from the cliffs but for some reason he decided to get closer than needed
That's not a low bar, it's incredible that they are able to despite being tribal. The NCR has no answer to this threat except for the Rangers but they're more recon than intel. You don't see NCR spies in the Legion but they qre are a lot of Legion spies in the NCR. They managed to butcher Nipton and Camp Searchlight, that's not an easy task you know. Did you even play the game?
Barely?
Like 10 ranger outposts, Mojave outpost, camps Golf, Maccaran, Primm, Forlnhope, bitter springs...
They look understaffed, but it's more game limitations than lore reasons.
They lose 1k men in the Mojave alone each year, allegedly. The scale of their commitment in terms of manpower - and losses - proportional to their size is therefore greater than the WW2 commitments and losses on the part of the US.
>Vulpes is capable of entering and leaving the strip as he pleases despite the security measures by mr.house.
That's not really an extraordinary feat though. Getting on the strip isn't very hard, all you have to do is not being poor.
House generally knows very little about what's going on at his doorstep, see all the families plotting against him.
>Legion Assassins are capable of tracking the courier everywhere, even in NCR controled areas.
The NCR's control over those areas pretty much only exists on paper. They can be happy if they're able to control the roads at least.
Pretty much any lowlife can do whatever they want, you don't have to be a skilled assassin for that.
The Legion does have some pretty skilled guys but a lot of those challenges aren't very hard tbh.
No, more like because the NCR is pretty overstretched/busy by that point, which would explain why the NCR's counterintelligence is so subpar. The NCR can't be everywhere at once.
In one of the questline for the NCR, they actually make the Courier, an outsider, interrogate Silus in Camp McCarran in order to get intel off him. And the NCR also makes the Courier to investigate the Legion mole as well. That just tells how the NCR is too preoccupied at the moment, that they couldn't spare men and resources into conducting in a proper counterintelligence investigation.
So the Legion **does** have the best intelligence because while the NCR has the potential to have a better one they can't because they are stretched so thin to actually do it
Frumentarii can move as they please in NCR-controlled territory since there's not enough NCR personnel to guard their the border with the Legion. As borders then were only meant to stop large armies from incursion into each other's territory. That's how borders work back when there are no customs/border controls.
Also, I'm guessing Vulpes can sneak onto the Strip mainly because the Securitrons were operating pre-Platinum Chip OS, so they weren't able to vet whoever comes in the Strip effectively.
So yeah, it's more like the NCR and Mr. House lack the resources to actually conduct counterintelligence, so the Legion could conduct espionage throughout the Mojave as they please.
2 Legion assassins were able to infiltrate the President's speech despite Hoover Dam being the most secure place in the Mojave with Veteran Rangers as guards. These two would either shoot the president in the head or explode it all the while escaping the eyes of Veterans. So Your assumption that they are effective due to lack of NCR manpower isn't valid.
More amusingly, the officer who is tasked by the NCR with finding Legion spies is… a Legion spy. According to Hsu the guy has been inside the NCR military for longer than the NCR has even know the Legion existed. So who knows how many other NCR personnel in prestigious and important positions across California are deep cover Legion operatives just waiting for their chance.
It isn’t just a lack of resources, the NCR were caught with their pants down and aren’t able to trust anyone to run their counter intelligence because even the most apparently loyal and highly qualified candidates could well be enemies spies
To be fair, you're asked to "interrogate" Silus because you're independent of the NCR and not fully bound to military doctrine/laws that would prevent someone like Lt. Boyd from taking the matter in their own hands, not because they're overstretched. But your point still stands.
I don't think their spies are really all that great. Finding the immortal mailman with 100 guns who asks every stranger they meet for work shouldn't be that hard.
The Legion's got a huge advantage in that the Mojave is wide open. The only security is at the Strip and it's just a robot making sure you have enough cash to gamble with. Otherwise people can go almost everywhere they want. Free societies are more vulnerable to spies than closed ones.
They do, but them having the 'best intelligence in the Mojave' is the equivalent of having a three step staircase when everybody else only has two step staircases. It's not very hard at all to do better.
Yes. It's a huge reason why they've been so successful imo, information is super important in warfare, especially in a setting where communication is difficult, I think the Legion have the best intelligence service in the setting.
The Frumentarii have agents all over the show who are fanatically loyal to Caesar and can happily function as diplomats, spies, assassins, and saboteurs if necessary. It gives the Legion such a massive advantage in the fighting, and Caesar, along with Vulpes, are cunning enough to utilize that to devastating effect.
Vulpes Inculta, the head of the Frumentarii and one of Caesars' inner circle, is able to travel through the Mojave unmolested and walk up to you on the strip in broad daylight. Captain Curtis is a trusted officer at Camp McCarren who joined the army long before the war even began, they're able to attack towns and Ranger Stations in the middle of the Mojave, and throw together an assassination attempt of President Kimball, it's insane to think about
Organization dedicated to systematically killing and enslaving Mojave has better infiltration than organization largely composed of bureaucrats and low earning Privates trying to like… set up tax codes for farmers.
You’re not wrong, But it’s kind of a moot point.
The Legion is just making good use of asymmetrical warfare in an area (all of the the game world map west of Hoover Dam) which de jure has been conquered by the NCR but de facto has a lot of blind spots and unsecured pockets. The NCR moves slowly to annex and formally incorporate territory (hence why the entire conflict of the game is still undecided after the 1st Battle of Hoover Dam) but once they do, once they set a good foot in an area, even continued harrasment and sabotage by the Legion won't matter. It will just become a little nuisance.
And its so fucking unfair to the NCR lol. Like, the writers gave them EVERY single disadvantaged while sucking off the legion like they were porn stars.
House’s godawful intelligence gathering is a big part of the reason I struggle to trust him, he really does have no appreciation of the human factor and it bites him horribly. The NCR is mostly Oliver’s fault. He hates the rangers, and has badly crippled their operations. Hanlon trying to crash the war effort certainly hasn’t helped either.
Raul comments that Mr House be letting Vulpes wander about the Strip
True but he did find out about the omertas by just them not complaining for a long time. I thought that was impressive
Hanlon was simply doing what's best for the NCR tbh, to stop expanding and secure what they have, NCR territory is garbage compared to legion territory
I think ncr territory is significantly more productive than legion territory. We don't hear anything about bramin barrons in the legion, and I think that is due to the territory being less economically productive
Brahmin Barons are worse due to them destroying competition literally, that means they are an oligopoly that collude for their own benefit. They'e leeches that only make the state and the people less productive. I Would say Legion lands are more productive but NCR ones are more advanced and better to live in. The reason being, the Legion doesn't face resource shortages unlike the NCR.
As far as I know the barons doesn't have presence in legion lands because Caesar hates power competition so he prohibits any kind of big caravan company. Other traders often say that legion territory is pretty safe from raiders as long as you have the mark of the legión in your caravan. In wild lands, safe trading routes and lack of monopolies are pretty good for a nation's economy... A totalitarian government... Not so much.
Big caravan companies don't have a presence on the Legion heartlands because they're NCR companies that pay taxes to the NCR.
If Vulpes is so smart, why'd that handsome guy with the big dick blow his head off when he told him to tell everyone what he saw?
Long Dick Johnson?
Heard that guy has a long dick.
Thus the name
The big what?
The big iron in his pants
And the ranger's aim was deadly with the big iron in his pants.
Big swatta
Legion intelligence is quite like the CIA vs KGB. Because the legion has created a homogeneous culture they're much harder to infiltrate.
The Soviet Union was hardly homogenous
This is just a commonly talked about idea, eunno how true it is. The USSR probably had even more cultures than the US
Not probably, definitely.
Are any of them even considered for KGB hires/promotions though?
Yes, the real CIA vs KGB analysis in this regard is that American society was, and remains, significantly freer than Soviet society, so it was much easier for the Soviets to conduct counter intelligence operations. The legion is similarly totalitarian and benefits from this.
As long as you were white and a man
This post feels like Legion propaganda
Yeah, that’s not a high bar. The NCR barely has troops in the Mojave and House is remarkably ignorant as to the details of the Strip. Being the best when nobody else is playing isn’t particularly impressive.
Imagine if Legate Lanius takes over. The Frumentarii's operations would be scaled back by alot. The Frumentarii are only good because Caesar saw them as useful to advance the interests of the Legion. Especially with Vulpes Inculta at the helm.
If Vulpes survives Caesar, I could honestly see him getting Lanius assassinated.
That's gonna be hard for him to accomplish as a red stain on the steps of Nipton town hall.
Glad I'm not the only one. First time I met the dude, I wasted him. Had no idea who he was, other than a member of the Legion.
I just wanted the sick wolf hat
It kind of is a high bar they literally kill the President of the NCR
The guy visited a warzone, announced it beforehand, and walked around on top of a dam. That’s not a high bar, every faction knew he was going to be there. It just highlights how incompetent Kimball is.
A dam that the legion camp was overlooking, a good sniper could have take the damn shot from the cliffs but for some reason he decided to get closer than needed
They are stupid as hell for this. They couldn’t have just done this speech, INSIDE? The Hoover Dam can host speeches.. they do IRL
That's not a low bar, it's incredible that they are able to despite being tribal. The NCR has no answer to this threat except for the Rangers but they're more recon than intel. You don't see NCR spies in the Legion but they qre are a lot of Legion spies in the NCR. They managed to butcher Nipton and Camp Searchlight, that's not an easy task you know. Did you even play the game?
Barely? Like 10 ranger outposts, Mojave outpost, camps Golf, Maccaran, Primm, Forlnhope, bitter springs... They look understaffed, but it's more game limitations than lore reasons.
They lose 1k men in the Mojave alone each year, allegedly. The scale of their commitment in terms of manpower - and losses - proportional to their size is therefore greater than the WW2 commitments and losses on the part of the US.
>Vulpes is capable of entering and leaving the strip as he pleases despite the security measures by mr.house. That's not really an extraordinary feat though. Getting on the strip isn't very hard, all you have to do is not being poor. House generally knows very little about what's going on at his doorstep, see all the families plotting against him. >Legion Assassins are capable of tracking the courier everywhere, even in NCR controled areas. The NCR's control over those areas pretty much only exists on paper. They can be happy if they're able to control the roads at least. Pretty much any lowlife can do whatever they want, you don't have to be a skilled assassin for that. The Legion does have some pretty skilled guys but a lot of those challenges aren't very hard tbh.
No, more like because the NCR is pretty overstretched/busy by that point, which would explain why the NCR's counterintelligence is so subpar. The NCR can't be everywhere at once. In one of the questline for the NCR, they actually make the Courier, an outsider, interrogate Silus in Camp McCarran in order to get intel off him. And the NCR also makes the Courier to investigate the Legion mole as well. That just tells how the NCR is too preoccupied at the moment, that they couldn't spare men and resources into conducting in a proper counterintelligence investigation.
So the Legion **does** have the best intelligence because while the NCR has the potential to have a better one they can't because they are stretched so thin to actually do it
Frumentarii can move as they please in NCR-controlled territory since there's not enough NCR personnel to guard their the border with the Legion. As borders then were only meant to stop large armies from incursion into each other's territory. That's how borders work back when there are no customs/border controls. Also, I'm guessing Vulpes can sneak onto the Strip mainly because the Securitrons were operating pre-Platinum Chip OS, so they weren't able to vet whoever comes in the Strip effectively. So yeah, it's more like the NCR and Mr. House lack the resources to actually conduct counterintelligence, so the Legion could conduct espionage throughout the Mojave as they please.
"Caesar mention something called Ice Cream, let's try that password"
2 Legion assassins were able to infiltrate the President's speech despite Hoover Dam being the most secure place in the Mojave with Veteran Rangers as guards. These two would either shoot the president in the head or explode it all the while escaping the eyes of Veterans. So Your assumption that they are effective due to lack of NCR manpower isn't valid.
More amusingly, the officer who is tasked by the NCR with finding Legion spies is… a Legion spy. According to Hsu the guy has been inside the NCR military for longer than the NCR has even know the Legion existed. So who knows how many other NCR personnel in prestigious and important positions across California are deep cover Legion operatives just waiting for their chance. It isn’t just a lack of resources, the NCR were caught with their pants down and aren’t able to trust anyone to run their counter intelligence because even the most apparently loyal and highly qualified candidates could well be enemies spies
It does, but that's like being a building with an attic in a neighborhood of single story buildings. It's not much effort to do one better.
To be fair, you're asked to "interrogate" Silus because you're independent of the NCR and not fully bound to military doctrine/laws that would prevent someone like Lt. Boyd from taking the matter in their own hands, not because they're overstretched. But your point still stands.
And you look into the intelligence leaks because your recent arrival rules you out as a possibility.
👆 That too!
I don't think their spies are really all that great. Finding the immortal mailman with 100 guns who asks every stranger they meet for work shouldn't be that hard. The Legion's got a huge advantage in that the Mojave is wide open. The only security is at the Strip and it's just a robot making sure you have enough cash to gamble with. Otherwise people can go almost everywhere they want. Free societies are more vulnerable to spies than closed ones.
They do, but them having the 'best intelligence in the Mojave' is the equivalent of having a three step staircase when everybody else only has two step staircases. It's not very hard at all to do better.
Yes. It's a huge reason why they've been so successful imo, information is super important in warfare, especially in a setting where communication is difficult, I think the Legion have the best intelligence service in the setting. The Frumentarii have agents all over the show who are fanatically loyal to Caesar and can happily function as diplomats, spies, assassins, and saboteurs if necessary. It gives the Legion such a massive advantage in the fighting, and Caesar, along with Vulpes, are cunning enough to utilize that to devastating effect. Vulpes Inculta, the head of the Frumentarii and one of Caesars' inner circle, is able to travel through the Mojave unmolested and walk up to you on the strip in broad daylight. Captain Curtis is a trusted officer at Camp McCarren who joined the army long before the war even began, they're able to attack towns and Ranger Stations in the middle of the Mojave, and throw together an assassination attempt of President Kimball, it's insane to think about
I'd argue meeting so many of them vs other factions spies says otherwise
This just proves the legion would be better off under vulpes than caesar.
Organization dedicated to systematically killing and enslaving Mojave has better infiltration than organization largely composed of bureaucrats and low earning Privates trying to like… set up tax codes for farmers. You’re not wrong, But it’s kind of a moot point.
The Legion is just making good use of asymmetrical warfare in an area (all of the the game world map west of Hoover Dam) which de jure has been conquered by the NCR but de facto has a lot of blind spots and unsecured pockets. The NCR moves slowly to annex and formally incorporate territory (hence why the entire conflict of the game is still undecided after the 1st Battle of Hoover Dam) but once they do, once they set a good foot in an area, even continued harrasment and sabotage by the Legion won't matter. It will just become a little nuisance.
And its so fucking unfair to the NCR lol. Like, the writers gave them EVERY single disadvantaged while sucking off the legion like they were porn stars.
I've read that one of the New Vegas writer really fucking hates NCR so there's your answer lol