Gearheads of War

i always believed the squads mentioned in the game are part of a bigger war going on with locust. i mean there might be hundreds or thousands soldiers fighting, we only get two follow few them or  basically we just follow one particular squad.

I think that after Emergence Day and 14yrs of fighting, humanity is really making a last stand.  Numbers are not in the COG's favor, and the main purpose of the COG's fighting force is to secure and defend Jacinto Plateau.  Why would you begin sprining old soldiers from prison?  Further, I think that the quality of experienced soldiers is fading fast.  Kim was too young to be in command of seasoned soldiers like Dom, Baird, and Cole.  I think what will develop is an hierarchy of fighting COG's; Old School will be Pendulum Veterans like Marcus and Dom, Conscripts will be civilian tough guys like Cole and Baird, Coalition ROTC is represented by Kim, and finally COG Fodder like Carmine.  The COG units that venture outside of the Plateau are elite units on specific missions, thus Alpha, Beta, and Delta designations.  These types of units are in limited supply.  

I expect to see a major frictional conflict between Old School and COG leadership, as the old school felt they were fighting for freedom and now the leadership is too dominating.  ROTCy types like Kim are being raised, bred, and trained to eat, sleep, and shit the party line, no matter what.  

At the point we join the game, I think that humanity was nearly in check, and only after deployment of the light mass bomb did they break out of check for the moment.  This maneuver may only have postponed checkmate.  Besides the lightmass bombs only detonated beneath a single regional city.  You are right, there is a world at war.  Maybe there are still other bastions of humanity still fighting that are not just COG controlled?

Until EPIC put more background on paper, I don't mind having a little fun and creating a bit of our own.

I wouldn't have really thought of that, the whole conscript/old school/ROTC thing.
It would be pretty cool to have some other bastions. . .perhaps the COG is less a United Nations as much as it is a U.S.S.R.
and I'm sure the stranded are all fighting pretty hard too, since they are the ones probably the most in the line of fire.

stranded, that is, are the ones most in the line of fire.

I don't think they are as much in the line of fire, as much as they are forgotten.  They're forgotten by the Locusts and the COG both.  They only exist because the Locusts choose not to exterminate them completely because the are probably consider as inconsequential.  Something left to die.  The COG leadership have made their decision and probably deemed them as unsalvagable and maybe even carriers of disease or worse due to exposure to whatever weapons of mass destruction the COG released on the planet.  Stalin's policy of scorched earth during WWII, is probably a good example of what may be the strandeds' lot.  Stalin said he had two types of Russians, fighting or dead.  My grandfather was a Russian Soldier in WWII, who was captured by the Germans, and it was common knowledge that all Russians lost behind enemy lines or Western (Allies) advances, when returned, were sent to Siberian goologs or worse.  Deemed unfit for Soviet life, they were considered disposable, even more than a soldier.  So, your comparison of the COG to the USSR, rather than NATO, might be closer to the truth. This theory would definitely give the COG leadership a more sinister and foreboding stripe.

On a personal note, my grandfather was a prisoner of war for three years, was freed by Western Forces, and he chose to flee west.  Lucky me.  

Further, I don't think the stranded could be considered a fighting force.  They may be loosely organzied into vagabond troupes, but they are only survival measures.  There was no guerilla war mentality expressed by the one encampment we saw in the game.  Plus, if they were to organize and coalesce into a more organized group, then I'm sure the Locusts would use it as an opportunity to snuff out the concentration of humanity.  Small numbers are safer to move and hide.  Even in the darkest of situations, there can survive a small glimer of hope, and that is all the stranded probably have.

What I really want to see is some other strongholds like Jacinto Plateau.  Maybe there are some out there that COG leadership don't want anyone to know about.  Soldiers only need to know what command tells them.  Kim would agree.  Maybe there are some abandoned factions of the COG on far away continents, rival nations (more democractic or more diablical) are still fighting the Locusts. I like to think that there are more, and if Marcus' father had access to geological data, then maybe Marcus will uncover that there are other geological strongholds where free governments still fight.  

I don't mean to make the COG leadership seem so dark, but I'm basing my perception on the four trailers and Destroyed Beauty Book.  There was definitely a bit of draconian tone in the COG announcements and news releases, plus their thanks for your sacrifice wasn't very positive.  If they were more positive, they may have continued to take in any survivors and search and recover stranded, and continue to send out a beacon of hope, but that doesn't seem the case.      

Atleast, this is one way of looking at the situation.