RAR!: 2281 NCR Sent Back to 1846

[Serafina]

The NCR also has vastly superior body armor.
Not just power armor (which they barely use), but also their standard infantry combat armor. It seems to be equivalent to the best we can currently (2012) produce, so it should reduce most gunshots to minor wounds. Combine that with their medical technology and they have a serious survivability edge.
And unless i got it seriously wrong, they can produce that combat armor locally.


On the lack of artillery:
Most engagements in Fallout seem to be on a small unit scale. Raiders and tribes operate on it due to not being able to field anything else, and the NCR would of course counter them with similar (if better trained and equipped) units (due to being unable to field a large amount of troops quickly). Operations against the Brotherhood of Steel and the Enclave probably went similar due to the small amount of soldiers each could field.
Thus, Cesars legion is probably the first large, organized military force the NRC encountered.

Two things follow from that: Their doctrine until that point didn't fit with artillery, explaining why they don't have any. And their tactics are likely badly adjusted for large-scale open battles.


In small engagements, the NCR would be clearly superior to anything OT-Earth can field for about a century.
How they fare on a large scale depends on how they can adapt their tactical doctrine and how well they can acquire artillery.

[Rabid]

I can easily see the NCR "advising" ghouls and super-mutants to stay safe inside NCR's borders - both for their own security and because having "monsters" roaming around claiming they are from the NCR would be very bad PR for it given the mentality of the time : Mary Shelley's "Frankenstein's Monster" hadn't been written yet, so the idea of sympathetic monster may be very novel to them...
They might send a Ghoul or even a Super-Mutant Ranger (if those last one exists) to DC, but it'd likely be to "showcase" them to a restricted audience only.



Forlorn Hope had a shortage of medical supplies, but this may have more to do with shitty logistical lines than anything else : first with the difficulties people and supplies have to reach Las Vegas, and then the fact that Camp Forlorn Hope was under siege (IIRC, you can find around the camp the remains of pillaged NCRA caravans).
Although I'm agreeing with you on the fact that the NCR wasn't on a total war footing (they where on a war footing though, what with the conscription for one thing). I seem to remember bits of dialogue ingame that suggest there was constant bikering about it in the Senate, between those who thought the NCR had to swallow the pills and enter a total war footing against the Legion (The Brutes), those who thought the NCR could get by without having to resort to such extreme measures (The Meeks), and those who fought the very idea of a total war because it would hurt their businesses (The Corrupts).



RE : Open battles : as a stop-gap measure (until conventional artillery is put into production), vertibirds can provide some amount air cover, and deliver High Explosives (conventional or mini-nukes) or laser gatling fire above troop concentrations. I don't think the armies of the time have MANPADS or anything else susceptible to shoot down or even hurt them, so lack of ammunition might be an issue before anything else...

[Panzersharkcat]

Ranger Patrol Armor is the stuff equal to pre-War combat armor, albeit more durable. The body armor most soldiers wear are about as protective as reinforced leather armor, but heavier and more durable. That's not quite the level of stuff the modern US Army is equipped with, unless you're referring to ballistic vests worn by cops. It's still better than what people of the time wore, though, and it blends in better with the environment.

On artillery:
The only things NCR seems to have in the way of that are small mortars and grenade rifles and launchers. Useful, but doesn't quite match up to cannons. They would either need to rely very heavily on air support by vertibird to take out enemy artillery units and capture their cannons or somehow acquire them from the Boomers, and even that's only one base's worth of artillery.

On medical supplies:
That may be the case for Bitter Springs, too, I guess. It's just a refugee camp surrounded by friggin' cazadores. It's not that high on the NCR's list of priorities, as evidenced by the fact you have to do a lot of quests for the NCR before you can even get reinforcements there. Being under sniper fire doesn't help, either.

[Enigma]

What about robots? I wonder how the U.S. would react to them?

[Panzersharkcat]

After they're done freaking out about metal men with high intelligence, maybe sell them as an alternative to slavery? They would need to recover the knowledge of how to build them in the first place and have all the proper resources to do it but if they're successful, they may be able to get people to use Protectrons to pick cotton instead.

[Rossum]

Well a quick look at the Wikipedia article on the cotton gin tells me that the cotton gin was invented in 1793 and increased the profitability of the cotton industry. Also it looks like the south imported over 80,000 African slaves between 1790 and 1808. The article on the American civil war mentions there being around 3.5 million slaves in the 1860 census. I don't know how many slaves were in use in the south in 1846, but I'm pretty sure it was in the millions and it's very doubtfull the NCR could build enough protectrons to replace human slavery even if they wanted to.

Heck, if they had that many protectrons to toss around then they they could outfit them with weapons and just take over the south outright with a robot army.

Anyway, insofar as slavery is an issue then I suspect the NCRs black population will have a few issues with the southern united states of the time. Slavery isn't unheard of in the Fallout universe and I'm pretty sure it's rejected by the NCR (although they might use prison labor or employ farmers who aren't being paid fairly), but in the series all the slaver factions we come across enslave people regardless of their race. Caesers Legion treats women like slaves but they didn't seem to treat people differently due to skin color.

In regards to growing cotton, the slavery was mainly needed for the planting, growing, and harvesting process (the cotton gin helped out with the harvesting of the cotton). I'm pretty sure tractors would be a hell of a lot more effective in planting and growing the cotten then using slaves or robots would be. NCR should have tractors on hand or at least the knowledge of how to build them if they can build anything. Given the population of North America at the time, they could fuel their tractors with diesel or ethanol even if they don't feel like drilling for oil.

Anyway, the NCR could sell tractors or whatever else before they go around selling robots. The big deal is that the NCR treats humans equally regardless of race while the southern states... don't. Also, NCR has plenty of weapons including the machine gun and minigun while the gatling gun won't be invented until 1861. The American Civil War was fought both to end slavery and to keep the south from ceding from the United States (or something). I'm pretty sure if the NCR ever felt the need to go to war and take over the land occupied by the southern states then they could cite their use of slavery as a reason.

Actually... if the NCR can use its technological advantage to hold its own against the US of the time and hold enough land to get close to the South then it could be another place for southern slaves to flee to. Even if for some reason the NCR isn't a place its own citiezens want to be in, or people from other nations want to move to, I'm sure alot of slaves of the time would want to go there so they can be treated like human beings. Heck, considering that the NCR had dealings with hostile tribes during their time then the lack of literacy southern slaves had wouldn't be that surprising. They'd just have to get them a place to work, give them access to medicine, and pay them fairly decently and it would be just as good or better than what they would get in the northern states.

Depending on relations between the northern states, southern states, and the NCR, there might not be an American Civil War. Actually, I'd be surprised if there was. It's one thing for the slave owners to decide to secede from the US because Lincoln got elected, its another to secede while a technologically superior nation that don't like racists is sitting right next to them eying their property and waiting for an excuse to rush in, murder them, and take all their stuff.

Lincoln: Slavery is a gross offense against human dignity. It should be ended!

South: But they're our property! And as inherently superior white-skinned non-jewish male humans who aren't smelly girls or ugly blacks, ghouls, or super mutants, we have the god-given right to treat everyone different than us like crap! Also, we aren't robots, cyborgs, trogs...

NCR: Hey, Northern States! Mind if we liberate the crap out of these guys?

North: Um, well they did secede from us so I guess we can't stop you but...

NCR: I choose to interpret that as a "yes". Let's bet 'em toys!

Super Mutant (bursts into the southern guys room with a minigun): I AM BULLETPROOF!!

South: ...swampfolk, beastlords, psyckers, sentient deathcla... HOLY SHIT!! *gets ripped apart*

[Panzersharkcat]

Not sure about how many tractors NCR can produce. I suppose that could be part of the new factories set up in Nevada powered by Hoover Dam and Helios One. Their own people need it, too, as the farmers in the Sharecropper Farms don't appear to use them. But yeah, NCR is not going to look on slavers nicely. Rangers regularly hunt them down, if I remember Fallout 2 correctly. Of course, the presence of NCR with its fairly well-preserved records of history may throw things out of whack completely, since they can demonstrate that history will vilify the South for slavery if they keep going. It'd also throw German history out of whack, too, since France would know not to heed Bismarck's attempts to goad them into war. Heck, Bismarck may never even come to power and Germany might not be united for a while.

[Rabid]

I wouldn't bet too much money on the exactitude and reliability of the NCR's archives relative to Pre-War facts... After all, a lot of things were destroyed during the Holocaust, and even if the FotA may have made efforts in order to recover as many old world books as possible, well... it hard to recover what has been lost.

Remember the guy from Rivet City's museum in Fallout 3, to understand what I'm talking about. Sure, the guy may have been a wacko (and I think he was put here by the developers purely for comedy), but it still demonstrate that people that don't come from a Vault have only heard tales about the Old World - and I'd bet even those coming from Vaults don't know much about Pre-War history apart from a simplified World History and the propaganda version of how the war with China happened.

[Panzersharkcat]

That's true enough. Most people outside of NCR don't remember the Romans, which is how Caesar can get away with pretending to be the son of Mars. Even within NCR, most of them probably just know the Romans as some big pre-War empire in funny outfits. Still, Caesar was one of the Followers and he managed to get enough info to construct a somewhat accurate depiction of the Romans.

[Rabid]

The thing is, even as a Follower interested in Roman history (obviously) it seems like the knowledge he got of it is only summary, what you would expect from someone using "popular" vulgarisation sources, and not academic works (which likely aren't available in the Wasteland...).

And this is about the Roman Empire, one of the most important things in History : who knows what they know about more obscure subjects like European History of the 19th century above the most basics knowledge ? Heck, if you want to be grimdark about it, the NCR saying "we know there's going to be a war between France and a united Germany" may reinforce history more than dissuading it :

France, feeling menaced by the potential of a united Germany more than in OTL (as it has now the certainty Germany is going to unite if nothing more is done), do all it can to keep it divided, furthering in reaction a nationalistic sentiment in Germany, strengthening in the German people the popular will for a united Germany ; and as Germany unite, it is much more hostile to France, which then prepare for the "inevitable" war, which cause Germany to also prepare for war. And at the end of the day, war, war never changes.


Don't forget we're in the Fallout 'verse, were the only Law is Murphy's Law.

[Panzersharkcat]

He got a copy of Caesar's Commentarii in the original Latin and he's apparently fluent in it. But yeah, I guess if they try to do that, it will invoke Godwin's Law of Time Travel or something.

Anyway, NCR may not need to take much more land to be right next to the South. If the US-NCR alliance beats Mexico and enforces a treaty similar enough to what originally happened, the South may already border NCR, making a nice convenient place to escape slavery. As NCR is a separate country, they won't exactly be bound to accept fugitive slave laws.