What's the latest date in IRL earth you could teleport Caeser's Legion to and not have them pasted militarily?
What's the latest date in IRL earth you could teleport Caeser's Legion to and not have them pasted militarily?
What's the latest date in IRL earth you could teleport Caeser's Legion to and not have them pasted militarily?
Their strength varies drastically depending on what level the player is so it's hard to say
Low level legion would get btfo by the actual Romans
High level legion could compete with WW1 armies, obviously only if we're talking about in equal numbers
They have access to (limited) modern firearms so probably later than you'd expect. A squad of legionaries with .223 bolt actions would give good account for themselves pretty much any time prior to the 20th century and they're quite adept at guerrilla tactics. More skilled soldiers with stuff like 10mm SMGs, pump actions, and .308s wouldn't be anything to scoff at.
They also love plastic explosives so the sabotage hijinks they could get up to would be very impressive in the gunpowder era.
Related, I wonder how much it would take to put down a dude in power armor during the black powder era. I assume you'd either have to hit him with a cannon or otherwise bury him.
Would even cannon work? Lore-wise they were meant to be one-man tanks that the Chinese even for the era had little or no counter to
T-51b are rated to resist up to 7.62
T-45d is most likely impervious to 5.56
So yeah cannons would work.
what i wouldn't give for a pre-bomb fallout game about the American/Chinese war, with the Chinese stealth tech and the American power armor tech.
I think Operation Anchorage is the closest we're ever going to get.
>the Chinese even for the era had little or no counter to
... Strategically. They couldn't counter them strategically. That doesn't mean they were just invincible superheroes that laughed off tank shells. You're not really suggesting that powered armored soldiers (who are killed in the post apocalypse) are flatly immune to modern artillery shells or anti tank weapons are you?
>Related, I wonder how much it would take to put down a dude in power armor during the black powder era. I assume you'd either have to hit him with a cannon or otherwise bury him.
The ballistic resistance of powered armor isn't exactly consistent in game, lore or otherwise, but given the scale of it you can at the very least assume most of the suit is at least rifle rated.
Now obviously iron shot with a stronger point on it is going to penetrate much better than a lead brick or ball, and the armor is likely to start taking internal damage before it gets penetrated by low velocity shells in any event because of how packed in the powered components must be.
If powered armor is supposed to be vulnerable to AM rifle fire, dynamite, and massed AP rifle fire, it should be vulnerable to iron conical shot from anything in the range of larger elephant guns or deck guns. Anything vulnerable to 50BMG will get shrecked by a standard 12lb cannonball, and so you can work back from there when you're dealing with long bodied conical bullets.
Sheer volume of musket fire would eventually degrade the capabilities of the suit or penetrate weak points. A cannon hit would probably still remove his head/limbs or dent the chest plate.
Give him poisoned food, or give him women and stab him when he gets naked.
The Legion got completely pasted by the Boomers because practically no one in the whole Wasteland has an answer to aircraft except perhaps the Enclave, Brotherhood of Steel, and the most developed parts of the NCR.
Unless they found some secret wunderwaffe to counter it they'd be incapable to do anything to anyone with the minimum of air power.
Concentrated small arms fire take down a salvaged bomber.
Yeah good luck shooting a plane at 25,000+ ft
They got pasted by the Boomers because the Boomers are sitting on a functional artillery battery and enough surplus ammo to make a Russian logistics officer cream his pants. You straight up can't approach them unless they allow you to.
Lore wise, aren't the wastelands we've seen in games mostly the absolute worst shitholes in terms of post-war Earth? The UK (or whatever it's called in the lore) has people sailing across the Atlantic again. The East Coast has massive civilizations around the Midwest and Atlantic NE. The West Coast has the entire NCR which is advanced enough that the average dick can own a car or motorcycle again, and they have a functioning Air Force (although a small one). IIRC only the American West and sporadic parts of the East Coast are complete shitholes still. And frick, New Vegas still wasn't THAT bad, they had reliable access to clean purified water, a functioning electric grid, etc.
The Mid-West was hit hard as well, any civilian population got at least one nuke so there wasn't any place really spared beyond Vegas because of House's anti-missile system. Europe is alluded to being worse than America even in the post-apocalypse which is why Tenpenny left it. 76 may or may not be canon, I forget which way Bethesda went on it, and the only reason Boston wasn't made to look like the Capital Wasteland is because the captain of the sub meant to nuke it changed his mind and launched one and even that did a lot of damage.
>NCR advanced enough to have vehicles again
The NCR has a few vertibirds but limits the proliferation of vehicles to itself because of the short supply. The problem with the NCR and each game putting time forwards is eventually it stops being a post-apocalypse and either has to become more like frontier territory or a new civilisation. All the mutants would be hunted down like dangerous wild animals were to stop them from being a threat again.
>All the mutants would be hunted down like dangerous wild animals were to stop them from being a threat again.
nah more of them just show up no matter what
strong unit cohesion paired with any ranged weaponry at all seems like it could be enough to face down some thirdies even today.
The legion and the NCR need massive overhauls to make sense based on what we see and hear in game, anyone who tells you for a "fact" how strong the legion is has to be throwing out half of the information so that the other half fits together.
The only way the Legion actually makes sense as is is if they really do operate on game mechanics and can absorb bullets to their unprotected skin like zombies until they hit their pre-determined bullet limit and explode.
kinda depends on the area? Amazon or the cannibal island tribes ? would clap them today. other area you need to go back in time like most of pre gun africa
The peak Roman military capabilities surpassed pretty much any European country in the middle ages up till the invention of relatively reliable gunpowder.
It's hard to understand just how big and complex the military machine for the Roman empire was.
We are talking about armies being regularly ten times the size of most middle ages armies, with much better logistics and much more advanced ability to replace losses with well trained and equipped soldiers.
The late middle ages around the time of gunpowder start to gain several other advantages, primarily in steel quality, as late period knights begun using higher quality metal than the Roman ever had, but mostly only for the wealthy.
Regarding tactics and strategy, well of we are talking about Caesars it's hard to compete, in particular considering that the middle ages wasn't particularly famous for great tacticians, more like bands of nobles squabbling over who would lead the charge and get the most loot.
The Battle for Lyon had some 60.000 to 70.000 Romans fighting for two claimant emperors on both sides.
The Battle of Cannae had similar numbers.
The Battle of Cape Ecnomus
The Romans: Led by 2 consuls, had 330 ships, a crew of 140,000 men including "marines"
The Carthaginians: Led by Hamilcar and Hanno, had 350 ships, a crew of 150,000 "including Archers and marines"
Off the coast of Sicily in 256 BC
This naval battle was still the biggest naval engagement in history till late WW2 in Leyte.
By comparison Hastings was 8000 against 9000.
Agincourt was 7000 against 12000.
The only medieval battle of great size was fought by the byzantine (Eastern Roman empire) against the Turks with roughly 50000 soldiers on both sides.
So if we don't make the Romans fight eastern Romans than they could still be an impressive fighting force till the 1500s when guns became reliable enough and common enough to be the main weapon.
Roman history is known to involve inflated numbers and statistics. The further back you go with recorded history the more the sources tend to take liberties.
> The further back you go with recorded history the more the sources tend to take liberties.
It's the opposite, actually.
It's a lot easier to find reliable sources in modern times if people aren't lazy and moronic like you. Plus I fricked your mother.
The pleb seethes, for he does not understand.
Even leaving aside the machete guys, there are countries today that couldn't deal with a few thousand white riflemen with good discipline.
Lore wise Legion only made very recent recruits exclusively use melee weapons. Basically they had huge influxes of unproven tribals in their ranks. System was, "kill a guy up close and personal and you get a gun". Way of managing a limited supply and not wasting resources on low quality fighters. Eschewing technological dependency was also a huge part of this doctrine. Many legion units would need to work completely self sufficiently, and even things as simple as pipe guns would jeopardize that
Every actual legionary would be armed with firearms and used modern tactics. Elite troops would be just as well trained and armed as their NCR equivalents
it's only their conscripts that exclusively used machetes, javelins, and Molotov wienertails
Legion is so fricking based it's not even funny.
>tfw you end up mind warped to the point you consider being treated like an unironic subhuman animal by threat of death to be based
Lore wise a significant portion of the legion is armed with machetes and spears when they could be digging holes or carrying supplies, and this mode of combat doesn't have a ten million percent fatality rate, meaning either their enemies have worse accuracy than Napoleonic infantry, the legionaries are supermen that can walk through a dozen hits from a rifle, or every single person in the legion is so moronic that it's impossible for them to even have fed themselves this long.
>their enemies have worse accuracy than Napoleonic infantry
The NCR outside of the Rangers are either demotivated poorly trained conscripts or demotivated poorly trained soldiers. They have a few units that are capable but they're largely the opposite which is why they lost Nipton, Searchlight, the prison, Nelson, can't control the fiends, forced out of Primm, lost the highway to ants, lost Ranger Station Charlie and Camp Guardian, and they can barely manage their camps. Even their victory against the Legion the first time was only achieved by destroying an entire city.
The Legion do not have a formidable foe to fight against which is why their tactics work against the NCR, and given the quality of the NCR troops, tourists and expats in Vegas and those in the nation itself, it would largely fall to a Legion advance as Brahmin ranchers make deals with the Legion or fend for themselves instead of a collective defence, the drug dealing mafias who control large urban areas would be as easily convinced to join the Legion against the NCR as the Khans and the Gommorahans. The Legion wins everytime against the NCR.
>The NCR outside of the Rangers are either demotivated poorly trained conscripts or demotivated poorly trained soldiers. They have a few units that are capable but they're largely the opposite which is why they lost Nipton, Searchlight, the prison, Nelson, can't control the fiends, forced out of Primm, lost the highway to ants, lost Ranger Station Charlie and Camp Guardian, and they can barely manage their camps. Even their victory against the Legion the first time was only achieved by destroying an entire city.
No you're not getting the scale of it. I wasn't even exaggerating. What you're describing could explain "bad" accuracy, it could explain "really bad accuracy", but it can't explain "much, much worse than a musket", which is what they'd have to be.
AFAIK the newbies in wet t-shirts with machetes typically do sneaky raids at night. Stuff they're actually experienced with since it's just tribal war shit and they're all former tribals.
We hear about legionaries charging straight into guns several times and winning.
Sometimes they do. But the majority of Legion engagements are them laying in wait along a known patrol route and shoving a javelin down some schmuck's windpipe because they have the NCR's bureaucracy shot through with spies and, again, a lot of the NCR's rank and file can't shoot for shit.
Also there is probably actual armor under the football pads. At least enough to keep you from eating shit from a 9mm or something.
The Legion attacks as
says and also uses human wave tactics that overwhelmed NCR positions at the Battle of the Spillway and the Battle of Willow Beach. Outside of the first battle for the dam, the tactics encountered the Battle of Nelson is described and the Legion won by surprise and speed against an under-equipped force.
Probably WWI, as other anons have said
Assuming equal numbers
they have just the right amount of suicidal elan and high tech weaponry, combined with their good personal discipline and fitness, to make the difference in trench warfare-- think the arditi but on steroids (Buffout?)
It depends on what scenario you're considering them for. As an independent force going up against a proper nation? They start falling off around the 1860s/1870s when breech loading artillery and repeating firearms start proliferating, and nation-states can call up enough troops to outnumber them. If you just dropped them in the Southwest ten years after the US Civil War the US would defeat them given enough time and willpower, and they'd just finished losing most of the cream of their youth to a bloody war. Same if you threw them and their whole southwestern empire into the Franco-Prussian war in place of either of the combatants. They likely wouldn't hold up as well as the Boers if put in Africa twenty years later to take on their shoes in the Second Boer war.
As a military unit they hold up better. Put them in any theater in WWI and properly support them with another nation's artillery and air recon, they'll be good shock troops on the western front and be good light infantry on the eastern/middle eastern fronts. This would extend into WW2 to a lesser degree, assuming they continued to get supported by a host nation.
They have guns and basic explosives and above all will. They would win any war today.
The average guys are disciplined riflemen in excellent physical condition, they'll do fine. They also have good spies and scouts, at least one legion mission involves giving false intel to the NCR so the legion can mine a patrol route.
The set up of NV just doesnt make any sense when you get autistic about the details, you have to chuck stuff that is objectively canonical in the garbage for it to work. The Legion is a faction with machine guns that wastes thousands of men who could be doing other valuable things on suicide charges that wouldn't work in the 1800s, yet also sometimes this works against a faction with even more machine guns.
The smallest change I guess you could make would be to give the legion a huge stockpile of bulletproof armor (like they found a shipping container of sci-fi kevlar or something), then you could still have their eclectic variety of weapons and have the occasional zulu charge overwhelm semiautomatic riflemen believably.
>that wastes thousands of men who could be doing other valuable things on suicide charges that wouldn't work in the 1800s
no they clearly work