The incompetance of the HECU

[RandomGuy]

The whole game is played out in real time. What we are experiencing is what's happening; there are no cutscenes, that's kind of the whole point. All evidence points to the HECU having nowhere near that many troops in place. Battalion strength seems about right, as the HECU were at first winning, but then the Xenians started to come through in force, forcing the military to pull back and bomb the place, eventually culminating in the nuke.

[ThePest179]

The whole game is played out in real time. What we are experiencing is what's happening; there are no cutscenes, that's kind of the whole point. All evidence points to the HECU having nowhere near that many troops in place. Battalion strength seems about right, as the HECU were at first winning, but then the Xenians started to come through in force, forcing the military to pull back and bomb the place, eventually culminating in the nuke.

 

Imagine the sheer size of Black Mesa. It would take about a week to clear the place of alien wildlife (all of which is hostile to human beings), some of which would have still been displaced due to the effects of the Resonance Cascade, AND clear the building of all humans, all of this being done by about a division sized force (around 20,000 men), and we aren't even taking into account the structural damage from the Resonance Cascade AND the thousands of safety hazards plaguing the complex AND the Nihilanth pouring in forces en masse. Imagine doing all that with a force of 5,000 or less men, with a person tearing through your men at almost every turn. The privates wouldn't know what was going on until they got there, but surely SOMEONE up the chain of command would have some sort of assessment plan (the Marines were on standby in case of the incident too, evidenced by Shepard's diary entries).