This is silly. The FUSA faces more hardships then any other nation, and I can't figure out why. I've played the BoS, Enclave, NCR, Legion, Robots, etc and not had the amount of problems the FUSA has. First, they start out with all their units locked which would be fine if they unlocked before the war starts, which they don't, leaving you to scramble the forces that didn't just get lost the second the war starts to make an offensive. Add that to the fact that your units have a much lower attack a defense percentage in battle, for example my infantry had a 35 defense score with a 33 attack score (Rough Estimate), and a garrison of the Dark Cathedral had it to like 130 or something. When I do win a battle, I end up having to fix my organization for days which is fine as that seems to be common, but in a situation the FUSA is in, time is of the essence and every moment counts. And even your best units like the 101st and the 78th Mech take a POUNDING in their manpower very quick, leaving you to really want to pump a lot into manpower replenishment just to keep them alive.
If this wasn't unfair enough, then you have a nation in the west declaring war on you not long after the Dark Cathedral, who might I add has taken a chunk of your industry leaving you with only like two tech slots which will put you a tad bit behind, and for some reason your dissent is very high impacting your combat effectiveness as well. And then, you get repeating events of rebels in other regions of your nation through scripted events that although they aren't devestating, they are still very annoying as they add small amounts of dissent to you each time it happens. Oh, and it's only when the Junkers declare war that you get an event to mobolize the national guard, which honestly should have happened when the Dark Cathedral started or at the very least unlock your Power Armored units which the FUSA has the unique distiction of being the only nation to start out with a Power Armored unit that doesn't seem to unlock in a crisis like the BoS or Enclave.
And the final cherry on top of this disaster, is if you manage to beat the Dark Cathedral and take New York, then the RCC declares war on you and you also have to defeat the large Marauder bands that have started to appear. The whole FUSA starting experience is too stacked against the FUSA. Now, it would be different if the BoS, Enclave, and other major factions have handicaps like that as at least then we could say that everyone has a hurdle to overcome, but no. This is unique only to the FUSA. The Enclave can conquer Alaska with relative ease and expand into some islands, while the BoS can camp in the safety of the NCR who fights everything else. I know I'm ranting, but this is frustrating. To have this many handicaps within the first few months of playing the FUSA that no one else has, and come out at least with some of the empire left. Now...you could do a gamey tactic of getting a peace from them once you take a few territories which the Dark Cathedral does offer and deal with the other problems, but like I said that's pretty gamey as you basically just gave rebels a huge chunk of your land and some important cities, simply because you start out so handicap it's a pain to deal with it any other way. Here is my suggestions on how to make the FUSA at least a little less hectic just starting out.
1.) Unlock the FUSA's units at the very start, allowing the player to reposition them and have more of a fighting chance rather then losing them and having the best units locked.
2.) Activate the National Guard mobilizes event the moment the Dark Cathedral revolts.
3.) Give more events to deal with dissent in your borders, and some morale inducing events to improve combat effectiveness.
4.) Add more garrison units to the FUSA, to at least allow the player to form a perimeter of some sort if things hit the fan while having combat units focused on certain areas at a time.
We need to give the FUSA a little more of a chance then they do. I'm not saying it's impossible to win as the FUSA, because I personally have managed to do it a while ago and see the AI is capable of (sometimes) holding it's own. But that's just me. Maybe you'll have a different opinion, but I think the current challenges right at the start for FUSA are unfair and unbalanced.
