I've seen no plans for it and only signs that it's not going to happen, I don't think aspect is going to mix beta and retail. idk though.
Yeah, I know that Aspect doesn't like the idea of conscripts. However that is not what this thread is about.
My question is the following: Would it make any sense for conscripts / a similar faction to have existed somewhere in the combine occupation timeline.
In my views: Yes, conscripts could have and actually most probably
did exist in the earlier days of the combine, I'll give a summary of my reasoning:
- When the combine arrived on earth, it's safe to say that transhumans weren't invented / engineered to exist yet.
- Even if the combine had somehow invented transhumans while still on their way to invade earth, the resources and facilities just wouldn't be there. We see in real HL2 that facilities like Nova Prospekt exist to detain anti-citizens and turn them into stalkers / soldiers. However we can't just expect it to have been there for the whole time. When the combine first arrived the world was most probably still in a state of great disorder with pockets of soldiers putting up resistance in cities / rural territories, this would mean that the combine would have to spend some time mopping up the remains and wrapping the initial invasion face up before building up their transhuman might.
- Another pressing issue is that everything was in disarray, citizens were all over the place, the CID system wasn't in place, there were no CPs, the cities were unsafe, there was no Dispatch / Overwatch AI to regulate what happened in the world, the citadels may or may not have been there (Depending on how they were inserted into earth).
What I'm trying to get at with all of these points is that while it's clear that Overwatch transhumans are the backbone of Overwatch's forces, it would have made sense for there to be a temporary "band-aid" solution to earth's problems before an actual one could be found, conscripts would fit the bill. They could be easily armed with pre-invasion weapons, they were more or less replaceable and thereby required minimal training and they could offer some stability in the turbulent times of the early Union.
"But why didn't they just use their original invasion forces to take out the remaining pockets of resistance?" - Someone probably somewhere.
I'd say that the combine are busy on a universe spanning conquest, they just can't concentrate too many troops to guard some planet made of dirt and mud, the second one planet / system is taken, all irrelevant troops are moved to another staging area to take over another system, only leaving a skeleton of what there was before of the invasion force just in case the worst was to happen (Striders, gunships, hunters, all of these pretty incompatible with keeping humans in check due to their lack of communication abilities), thereby it'd make sense to supplement the reduction in these forces with forced / voluntary conscripts who would understand humans better than aliens from outer space. Be able to interact with them and follow the same logic that they do in a firefight / other circumstances.
