(I just wish I knew how strong that Old World combined arms battalion was, though. IRL, something like a Bradley could eat T-34s like buttered popcorn.)
If equipped with Old World Hardware: unstoppable by any unit of remotely equivalent size on the continent, save by an NCR unit breaking out the doomsday weapons. Otherwise, it's basically a unit of special forces who've spent their entire lives fighting a war for survival against
your specific opponents.
It
is a potent asset, and I want to emphasize that. The big issue with it is that it does not
scale. Both are very serious considerations, and to speak frankly, I want to applaud the thread for arguing both.
That was a single Abrams tank. The Old Guard start gives us an entire battalion of those.
To be pedantic: it gives you a Combined Arms Batallion, which, per Wikipedia, consists, "of a headquarters company, two mechanized infantry companies, two armor companies, and a forward support company attached from the battalion's parent brigade support battalion." So you'd only get
two companies worth of tanks.
(Anybody who has actually served in the Army is welcome to correct me about the existence of these things or provide details, depending on how much they actually exist. I'm willing and able to tweak.)
I assumed outlasting to imply our vehicles won't run out of fuel before theirs do. I mean, this is a 3CP option, so it should be pretty damn good to be worth 15 auto-win battles at the minimum. But then again, that's a question for
@PoptartProdigy
If you have Old World Equipment, you have a finite amount of supplies to make it run, thus its limited uses, and that's the result of scrounging everything you possibly can from an incredibly wide area, devoting measurable amounts of state resources to the task, for
years. Your
logistics network moves what you can actually supply on the regular. Your best and most accessible fuel source is coal, at the moment. It's tough to build a non-train ground vehicle, small enough to be practical while powerful enough to be relevant, on coal.
Most of your military vehicles run on crop-derived fuels, what little oil you've been able to liquefy from your coal (not huge amounts, given the Collapse, but not nothing), and the
minuscule quantities that have been able to reach you in trade. The result: your military vehicles consume the vast majority of your liquid fuel supply, aren't on a single fuel standard, half of them directly impact your food supply if you want to build them, and you can't even field huge numbers of them. Thus, for you, vehicles do not actually have a huge presence in your military. You have them, but they are very carefully-husbanded resources. Securing or developing a reliable oil supply is going to be
critical in modernizing your armed forces.
Happily, Victoria's vehicle forces are similarly shitty, if it comes up, but that's due to the idiots'
aesthetic preference. I give no guarantees that this never changes, of course.
Like, Jousting At Windmills is a canonical omake. In it, a single Abrams tank destroys 33-38(!) T-34s. That is how badly we outclass them militarily, using Old World Hardware. We might even outclass them more, because our gunnery is actually Old World standard.
Worth restating: I canonized that on the word of folks more learned on the subject than I who corroborated its plausibility. If other learned folks wish to contest that, I'll listen, out of fairness's sake if for no other reason.
Character Profile:
Name: Dylan Leone
Background: Dylan was in his early 20s when the country fell: he likes to claim he celebrated his 21st birthday, and his first drink, on, depending on his mood, the day Boston fell, the day of the Ivy League massacre, and/or the day Atlanta was nuked (he freely admits this is bullshit).
He was living on the outskirts of Boston when that city fell: he admits that, for a brief moment, he welcomed the Northern Confederation and the stability it represented. Then the black sharecropping program began.
Dylan's response was to join the Underground Railroad. For nearly two decades he worked to evacuate as many "undesirables" (non-whites, lgbt+, women, etc) out of Victoria controlled territory as he could. Unfortunately, with the state of the post-collapse continent, there was never really a good place to deliver his charges
to. It was, in his words "delivering people from the fire to the frying pan". Ultimately, most of the people he helped settled in the Chicago region.
Dylan wasn't Victoria when his organization fell. He doesn't know how they fell. All he knows is that he was on his way back when the bug out signal went out. He ended up regrouping with the few survivors and joining the community of those they had rescued as a community leader and organizer.
Then the Nazis came. Dylan was preparing to uproot
again and get his people out when organized resistance out of Chicago became apparent. He decided to sign on with them instead. At the first congress he represents a large community of Victoria refugees.
Politics: Aligns with the socialists, particularly focused on progressive social policy. Has some interest in the possibility of connecting with Victorian resistance movements. Dylan is perhaps a bit drunk on the possibility of actually being able to stand up to Victoria, adopting a decidedly hawkish position.
Demeanor: Dylan presents himself as a deliberately false Falstaff, a thin veneer of ironic jocularity and tall tales stretched over a rictus of righteous fury.
@PoptartProdigy
Taken!
Important state of the world question (cause Lind's shitty writing doesn't address this beyond some pro-Vickie map-painting)
@PoptartProdigy :
What actually happened to Canada? IIRC there's been some mentions along the way of them getting hit in the face hard by the collapse but is Canada still a thing? Did it fragment/get fragmented due to Russian/Vickie shenanigans?
Canada is no longer a thing. Much of that was from Victoria and Russia muscling them out of their Atlantic Coast territories, which dealt a frankly catastrophic blow to government legitimacy while they were already in chaos from the USA being gone. The map in the Status Screen is a complete view of the continent, and the situation is
exactly as bad as it looks.
Granted, it won't remain that way for much longer. You are only the
first Revivalists.
I'm skeptical of Brown Water Navy, because while it's useful (immediately useful, even), it doesn't feel as foundational as Libraries, Trade, Bureaucracy, Established, Vaccines, and such.
There's a lot of must-haves, and not enough points to actually
have them all.
I've succeeded.
"They/them," please.
