Defense and Criticism of Lonesome Road

[The Dutch Ghost]

I think the basic idea of Honest Hearts could have worked in Arizona, the player having to protect a tribe from being absorbed by the Legion.

 

[TorontoReign]

Even one Legion town somewhere would have helped.

 

[The Dutch Ghost]

We are kind of going off subject now as this is better reserved for a topic discussing the Legion and Arizona but it is a shame that there is not even any mod attempt at making a decent settlement in Arizona.
Big issue would of course be, how would the player actually be able to get on it and travel all the way from there to for example Hoover Dam and the Fort.

 

[Atomic Postman]

Eh, you could just have a boat rocked up somewhear near Cottonwood that that takes you further down the Colorado to Lake Havasu or something.

But yeah this is getting off topic.

 

[The Dutch Ghost]

My last post on this subject, I promise

I wish there had been something like a bridge downstreams from Hoover Dam, with perhaps one side being controlled by the NCR and the other side by the Legion, but that would of course defeat the purpose of the fight for Hoover Dam. (yes I know that in real life there is a bridge next to Hoover Dam and that Hoover Dam is no longer used by regular traffic https://www.roadtraffic-technology.com/projects/hoover-bypass/)

Or something like a tunnel, something that boxes in either side should people want to get through it.

Reason I am thinking about this is because I would have wanted to make travel between Nevada and Arizona feel "natural" and not something that should be unlocked by a quest.
A ferry?

And now back to the original topic.

 

[Risewild]

This is a pretty big assumption/specualtion. For all we know, House had an Israel style "Iron-Dome" system and expended all of his counter-ICBM tech at the conclusion of the war, and that's equally as valid considering it is literally never brought up in context of the modern day.

My assumptions are usually based on information from the games themselves. Mr House's defense grid was able to use codes to disable 59 of the 77 nuclear missiles aimed at the Mojave, 9 were shot down by Mr House's Laser Cannons that he has on top of the Lucky 38 (he can tell the Courier this, during the game).
If his cannons are so powerful that they can shoot down 9 nuclear missiles that are falling on the Mojave simultaneously, it would probably be a breeze to shoot down Vertibirds or a few Divide Missiles (Ulysses' Temple only has 6 missiles). Also his defense grid that can disable missiles would have no problem doing that too, since it managed to simultaneously do it to 59 missiles during the great war.

And with the Platinum Chip, his cannons and defense grid will also be upgraded (he can tell the Courier this himself, during the game).

We see that the NCR has a singular Vertibird. We don't know if they have anymore, but there's no proof of it either way. Vertibirds, as far as I am aware in the Fallout 2/ New Vegas canon, aren't armed with any weapons? Either way, the NCR clearly does not have any actual real air-combat capabilities as evidenced by the fact that if they did, The Fort would have been air-striked by now.

This is false. The NCR has more Vertibirds, and it's shown in game.
In the Long 15 we can see two other NCR Vertibirds.
The Long 15 is a small NCR checkpoint base, to control who enters the Mojave from their territory.

We are also told in game that the NCR military is stretched thin and the Mojave is being neglected in terms of supplies and manpower, Which means that if the NCR can spend two vertibirds in a small military outpost, in a region they neglect spending resources on, it's not a stretch to assume they have way more vertibirds in their military. The Long 15 is also very close to the Mojave, since we can clearly see the Ranger Unification Treaty's statue in the distance.

I don't think Mr House's intelligence network would not notice NCR Vertibirds flying near the Mojave's border.

Also, Fallout New Vegas uses Fallout 3 Vertibird lore, since their Vertibird model is the XVB02 one and not the Fallout 2 model. And even if it's not possible to somehow have a few soldiers shooting missile lauchers or dropping grenades from the air using Vertibirds in FNV. There is nothing saying that they couldn't just air drop troops on the Lucky 38 and capture Mr House. But still, as mentioned in game, the Lucky 38 has anti air capabilities to prevent that, because of it's Laser Cannons. And those were already used in the past to destroy nuclear missiles, so it wouldn't be hard to do it again.

About not bombing Caesar's Camp. Who knows... but I always had the feeling when talking to and about General Oliver in FNV, that what he wants is a glorious and magnificent second battle of Hoover's Dam. So he can be named a hero and a great strategist. Just bombing the camp would sound coward and not glorious at all.
Basically he wants to redeem himself and be called a hero, and he might think that only another battle will achieve that.
For example, he purposefully neglects or refuses to do certain things that would help defeat the Legion, so bombing the camp could fall on the same situation.

 

[BiggumsBoi]

Liking Ulysses as a concept is not the same as liking the character we got.
Plenty of great ideas get ruined by poor execution, and lonesome road feels like they wrote its plot in about 30 mins with crayons