117 réponses à ce sujet

[Snowraptor]

Lizardviking wrote...

Because they knew Gavorn's tricks.

LOL ****ing win right here im gonna use that in a video lol
www.youtube.com/watch

[Snowraptor]

no the only thing that made no sence was why there were krogan, they arent immune to it which would explain the helmets but if they do know the plans of the collectors, they would ultimatley know that it would cost there lives as well

[Nightwriter]

Snowraptor wrote...

no the only thing that made no sence was why there were krogan, they arent immune to it which would explain the helmets but if they do know the plans of the collectors, they would ultimatley know that it would cost there lives as well

I really had never considered this before. I've fought so many krogan mercs mixed in with various other bad guys I stopped questioning it when I saw them on the battlefield.

Yeah, it does seem weird, the krogan working with the vorcha to spread a plague that kills all non-humans...

Then again, krogan are mostly guns for hire who care little about anything because they all think they're going to die anyway.

[Onyx Jaguar]

The bloodpack wasn't working with the Collectors. Only the Vorcha population was (Gavorn's Tricks! YAAAA). The Blood Pack was after territory, they were being opportunists.

EDIT : For instance the Blue Suns hadn't moved out and the Blue Suns in that district were mainly Turian, neither side were concerned with the Plague they just wanted power.

Modifié par Onyx Jaguar, 15 avril 2010 - 07:57 .

[Nightwriter]

^ Makes sense, Onyx.

enormousmoonboots wrote...

 Well, the Harbinger alien smacktalk puts down the other races for any reason other than their supposed diversity, which leads me to believe that the reason cited was the dealbreaker, rather than their diversity. The closest he gets to making a comment their about diversity is when he puts down asari for relying on other races for reproduction (derp).

According to the Codex, humans went crazy with genetic modification when they first got it really figured out. Making pets smarter, splicing characteristics, that kind of thing. Upon contacting other planets, the Alliance realized that this could be bad, and put regulations in place against it. Thing is, though...genetic modification can actually increase genetic diversity. If you add new characteristics to something, it becomes more different, after all.

Undesirable genes--well, if they're undesirable enough--get bred out of populations naturally; evolution is all about becoming most fit to your environment. Like the giraffe example, the gene for short necks among giraffes was removed from the gene pool since they couldn't survive to reproduce. Since humanity has significant amounts of tools to make up for bad genes (glasses for bad eyesight, braces for weak legs, other assisting devices), these negative characteristics remain in the human gene pool. It's kind of odd to realize that compassion effectively stops evolution, but there you go. But bad genes dying off isn't a bad thing at all, as far as diversity goes.

Well, yeah, but those are traits that nature found undesirable; they were bred out of us because they were not conducive to our survival.

But when we  decide which genes to keep or not, we may find that our definition of "undesirable" is different - it may be that a particular gene does not support society's current definition of beauty, so we filter it out.

For instance women might modify our bodies so that we can no longer grow hair on our legs. That kind of thing. There are a dozen other examples you could think of where people would want to select for genes that make them look better and increase their standing in society, but actually have nothing to do with survival or evolution.

[enormousmoonboots]

I can't see why it would be really different, though. It's still just certain genes leaving the gene pool. Nature doesn't really give a sh!t whether something happened by chance or by breeding (technically, breeding is just really, really slow, less precise genetic engineering) or by modification. Unless it happened in droves, there wouldn't be a problem.

[Collider]

For instance women might modify our bodies so that we can no longer grow hair on our legs. That kind of thing. There are a dozen other examples you could think of where people would want to select for genes that make them look better and increase their standing in society, but actually have nothing to do with survival or evolution.

A lot of things that appear to have nothing to do with survival or evolution actually do. In this case I would wager that getting rid of unwanted hair can make women more attractive to men, which has much to do with survival and evolution. Like enormousmoonboots said, nature does not care whether it happens through plain nature, eugenics, or through modification.

[Andrew_Waltfeld]

Nightwriter wrote...

Andrew, I'd agree with you if I thought of all the Council races as being universally synonymous with the Council government.

But just like there are lots of humans who don't agree with the Alliance, I'd honestly hoped that in the wide reaches of galactic space there'd be quite a few asari, turians, and salarians outside the Citadel who saw the truth as well and shared humanity's frustration with the Council, who rebelled against their government.

Not all asari are peaceful and calm, not all turians are condescending and dismissive. The Council may be caught up in galactic politics, and the Council may have their opinion, but is every member of the Council races so caught up, so opinionated?

Of course there is always misfits. An perfect example is World War I with the US refusing to merge troops with british and french troops.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_I#First_active_U.S._participation

Here is an link. The US kept their US troops seperate so that morale would not go down etc, also we bought an fresh perspective to the fighting, and came up with many tactics that others had not used for whatever reasons. The council has been around god knows how long, they have become stagant. Stagant in the fact that they are so rutted in their traditions that they can not get out of them, and even refuse to.

Another quote that make relevations is when your in the bed-room on kasumi's loyality mission and you search the plant and kasumi goes "It's just an plant!". She may never have considred the fact that he may take care of his own plants. We have a fresh perspective on everything, thus we have the magically googles to see thru the BS that clouds the council.

[FlintlockJazz]

Andrew_Waltfeld wrote...

Nightwriter wrote...

Andrew, I'd agree with you if I thought of all the Council races as being universally synonymous with the Council government.

But just like there are lots of humans who don't agree with the Alliance, I'd honestly hoped that in the wide reaches of galactic space there'd be quite a few asari, turians, and salarians outside the Citadel who saw the truth as well and shared humanity's frustration with the Council, who rebelled against their government.

Not all asari are peaceful and calm, not all turians are condescending and dismissive. The Council may be caught up in galactic politics, and the Council may have their opinion, but is every member of the Council races so caught up, so opinionated?

Of course there is always misfits. An perfect example is World War I with the US refusing to merge troops with british and french troops.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_I#First_active_U.S._participation

Here is an link. The US kept their US troops seperate so that morale would not go down etc, also we bought an fresh perspective to the fighting, and came up with many tactics that others had not used for whatever reasons. The council has been around god knows how long, they have become stagant. Stagant in the fact that they are so rutted in their traditions that they can not get out of them, and even refuse to.

Another quote that make relevations is when your in the bed-room on kasumi's loyality mission and you search the plant and kasumi goes "It's just an plant!". She may never have considred the fact that he may take care of his own plants. We have a fresh perspective on everything, thus we have the magically googles to see thru the BS that clouds the council.

Ironically your example can be used to prove the opposite: while most people think of trench warfare when talking about WW1, by the end of it most of the military forces involved had actually come to the realisation that it was bad and abandoned it.  When the americans joined the war, they had not learnt this themselves, as shown in your link, quoted below:

AEF doctrine called for the use of frontal assaults, which had long
since been discarded by British Empire and French commanders because of
the large loss of life.

I can't remember the name of the battles, but there were a series of beach assaults wherein the forces were split up to attack on different beaches, with the british and french forces suffering very little casualties relative to the large numbers of american casualties due to them still using the outdated tactics now abandoned by their allies.

In regards to ME, this could be used to argue the Alliance not being an effective force, they lack the experience of fighting different races and they lack the experience of fighting a large scale war with the technology they have suddenly found themselves gifted with.  According to history, the Alliance should actually be rather incompetent as newcomers since they are playing on another's playing field with no experience of how bad their tactics can go.

[Nightwriter]

FlintlockJazz wrote...

In regards to ME, this could be used to argue the Alliance not being an effective force, they lack the experience of fighting different races and they lack the experience of fighting a large scale war with the technology they have suddenly found themselves gifted with.  According to history, the Alliance should actually be rather incompetent as newcomers since they are playing on another's playing field with no experience of how bad their tactics can go.

You know, I really can't disagree with this.

I wonder what kind of counter argument the Bioware writers would give us for this.

[Skilled Seeker]

enormousmoonboots wrote...

@ Nightwriter
The First Contact War history implies that the turians could have wiped out the humans, but it would have been a serious fight. Which is just mind-boggling to me. It's worse than Ewoks beating stormtroopers, at least the Ewoks were on their own territory. The humans were just doo dee doo-ing off on a colony in the middle of nowhere.

The fact that calling on non-Council alien help is never brought up in the second game also implies that the humans somehow have more initiative than everyone else in the galaxy (even though the salarians are shown to be aware of the Reapers, Mordin wrote a goddamn paper on it). From a meta standpoint, I suppose it's because the game wants to force you to rely on TIM, but it's kind of sloppy.

If you bring alien crewmembers to the final fight (I think that's it, I've only ever heard like one of the lines in the actual game, picked up the rest anecdotally from other people and YouTube), Harbinger goes on. and. on about how each and every alien species is not as cool as humanity. "Turian, you are too primitive." "Krogan, you were considered, but are neutered." "Quarian, considered due to cybernetic enhancements, discarded due to weak immune system." "Salarian. Great adaptability, but lifespan too short." "Drell. Potential...but too rare." Human squaddies? "Human. Great biotic potential. Acceptable." "Human. Great genetic malleability. Acceptable." "Human. Great technological potential. Acceptable."

I'm paraphrasing a bit, but he puts down every single recruitable race as nowhere near as perfect and amazing as the humans. It gets tedious.

Harbringer has a fetish for humans: I KNOW YOU FEEL THIS.

[RinpocheSchnozberry]

enormousmoonboots wrote...

STG wrote...

I still find it annoying that out of all the races out there humans are somehow the best choice.

I mean look at us, we suck.

Yeah, it kind of bugs me that humans are the HAX race after being on the galactic scene for less than fiftty years. Powerful enough to give the turians a serious fight in the First Contact War, using only their own resources? Whoa, what? Crying for a Council seat not even a generation after opening an embassy? And a race which the canon states* is growing less diverse is the most genetically diverse race? More genetically diverse than aliens who have been settling insular planetary colonies for thousands of years (what the hell is so primitive about the turians? Sure, economics isn't their strong suit, but they seem like a prime candidate)?

No wonder the volus hate us. I'd find us pretty obnoxious, too. We're the Mary Sue race.

*Kahlee Sanders yaks on about how humans are becoming more genetically similar and blondes are going extinct and that's why she's so gorgeous and ~special~. It's totally wrong science, but it's an established fact inside the universe, and the books have been held to be on an equal level of canon as the game.

You guys might like playing a game where you are second fiddle, watching the hero get the girl, blow up the bad guy, and do awesome things....  most people want to excell and games are one more place besides real life where someone can excell.  Humans are the uber-race because we're all human.  Except the one guy who quotes this and says "are we!?"  He's a chihuahua.



Edit:  Totally forgot to respond to the OP.  Dur dur.

The Collectors are all about grabbing humans.  I think the plague was designed to kill or incapacitate the other races so that the Collectors could find the humans more easily.  Since everyone else would be dead or barfing.

Modifié par RinpocheSchnozberry, 15 avril 2010 - 05:24 .

[Nightwriter]

RinpocheSchnozberry wrote...

enormousmoonboots wrote...

STG wrote...

I still find it annoying that out of all the races out there humans are somehow the best choice.

I mean look at us, we suck.

Yeah, it kind of bugs me that humans are the HAX race after being on the galactic scene for less than fiftty years. Powerful enough to give the turians a serious fight in the First Contact War, using only their own resources? Whoa, what? Crying for a Council seat not even a generation after opening an embassy? And a race which the canon states* is growing less diverse is the most genetically diverse race? More genetically diverse than aliens who have been settling insular planetary colonies for thousands of years (what the hell is so primitive about the turians? Sure, economics isn't their strong suit, but they seem like a prime candidate)?

No wonder the volus hate us. I'd find us pretty obnoxious, too. We're the Mary Sue race.

*Kahlee Sanders yaks on about how humans are becoming more genetically similar and blondes are going extinct and that's why she's so gorgeous and ~special~. It's totally wrong science, but it's an established fact inside the universe, and the books have been held to be on an equal level of canon as the game.

You guys might like playing a game where you are second fiddle, watching the hero get the girl, blow up the bad guy, and do awesome things....  most people want to excell and games are one more place besides real life where someone can excell.  Humans are the uber-race because we're all human.  Except the one guy who quotes this and says "are we!?"  He's a chihuahua.

I know I say this a lot, but it's not that people want to play a weak race that gets stepped on all the time, it's that we don't want to be told we're special automatically without feeling like we've earned it.

That stretches what we can believe and can mess with our immersion factor sometimes.

Well, I say "our". I'm really just speaking for myself.

RinpocheSchnozberry wrote...

Edit:  Totally forgot to respond to the OP.  Dur dur.

The Collectors are all about grabbing humans.  I think the plague was designed to kill or incapacitate the other races so that the Collectors could find the humans more easily.  Since everyone else would be dead or barfing.

Makes sense.

But wasn't the plague designed to test genetic mutations? If so, it means it probably wasn't meant to kill; that was just a side effect. The real purpose might have been experimentation and study.

Modifié par Nightwriter, 15 avril 2010 - 05:34 .

[RinpocheSchnozberry]

[quote]Nightwriter wrote...

I know I say this a lot, but it's not that people want to play a weak race that gets stepped on all the time, it's that we don't want to be told we're special automatically without feeling like we've earned it.

That stretches what we can believe and can mess with our immersion factor sometimes.

Well, I say "our". I'm really just speaking for myself.
[/QUOTE]

I can see your point, howver better and worse aren't really determined until those two things go head to head.  Humanity is the strongest and "best" race in the ME universe because of the thousands of years it took to turn the race into what it is.  Environment, genetics, social structures, etc.  One you put all those together in the Alliance toss them up into the relay war, all those years are expressed against the thousands of years of Turian history in the space of time the war lasted.  Only one side can win and it was the humans.  Winners don't pay reperations.





[quote]RinpocheSchnozberry wrote...

Edit:  Totally forgot to respond to the OP.  Dur dur.

The Collectors are all about grabbing humans.  I think the plague was designed to kill or incapacitate the other races so that the Collectors could find the humans more easily.  Since everyone else would be dead or barfing.

[/quote]

Makes sense.

But wasn't the plague designed to test genetic mutations? If so, it means it probably wasn't meant to kill; that was just a side effect. The real purpose might have been experimentation and study.
[/quote]

If that was said in the game, I don't recall it.    I could easily have missed it.

[Nightwriter]

RinpocheSchnozberry wrote...

I can see your point, howver better and worse aren't really determined until those two things go head to head.  Humanity is the strongest and "best" race in the ME universe because of the thousands of years it took to turn the race into what it is.  Environment, genetics, social structures, etc.  One you put all those together in the Alliance toss them up into the relay war, all those years are expressed against the thousands of years of Turian history in the space of time the war lasted.  Only one side can win and it was the humans.  Winners don't pay reperations.

But the other races have had just as long to develop, if not more. Much more. The turians certainly had more.

In addition, other races have much, MUCH more experience dealing with other spacefaring militaries and how to operate and interact in a galactic community than we do. We'd never even battled other space fleets before.

And I always sort of saw the turians' war reparations as them saying, "Okay, you were the new kid on the block and we made a mistake, brought the hammer down too strong, overreacted." I think if the war had actually played out it would just have resulted in huge loss and damages on both sides.

RinpocheSchnozberry wrote...

If that was said in the game, I don't recall it.    I could easily have missed it.

Mordin said it when you first meet him in the clinic, but I try to remind myself he was speculating.

I have to remind myself that about a lot of things. Like, because Shepard guessed that the awful wailing noise the colonists on Eden Prime heard when Sovereign touched down was a jamming signal, I tended to simply think that was Bioware trying to tell me that's what it was.

Later others said it might've been an indoctrination signal or something.

[Andrew_Waltfeld]

FlintlockJazz wrote...

Ironically your example can be used to prove the opposite: while most people think of trench warfare when talking about WW1, by the end of it most of the military forces involved had actually come to the realisation that it was bad and abandoned it.  When the americans joined the war, they had not learnt this themselves, as shown in your link, quoted below:

AEF doctrine called for the use of frontal assaults, which had long
since been discarded by British Empire and French commanders because of
the large loss of life.

I can't remember the name of the battles, but there were a series of beach assaults wherein the forces were split up to attack on different beaches, with the british and french forces suffering very little casualties relative to the large numbers of american casualties due to them still using the outdated tactics now abandoned by their allies.

In regards to ME, this could be used to argue the Alliance not being an effective force, they lack the experience of fighting different races and they lack the experience of fighting a large scale war with the technology they have suddenly found themselves gifted with.  According to history, the Alliance should actually be rather incompetent as newcomers since they are playing on another's playing field with no experience of how bad their tactics can go.

Well my point was more grafted towards the whole bring new perspective and we're not mixed up with the council races military-wise, sure we make similiar mistakes, but because we're modular, we don't accept the burdens of the other races nor have their concerns. Because of that, we're outside of the group looking in, and  we see things that they refuse to act on. Either way, I remembered reading something from the codex in ME1 about how humans increased the value of fighters/frigates in fleets.

managed to look it up and here is the qoute from the mass effect wiki

http://masseffect.wi...litary_Doctrine

the Alliance military is respected by the Citadel races for its novel
tactics and technology (and not least for the fact the First Contact War
had more turian than human casualties). Their strength lies in fire
support, flexibility, and speed. The Council regards the Alliance as a
"sleeping giant" as only 3% of humans volunteer for military service.
They make up for low numbers with sophisticated technical support (VIs, drones,
artillery, electronic warfare) and emphasis on mobility and individual
initiative. Their military doctrine is not based on absorbing and
dishing out heavy shocks like the turians and krogan.
Rather, they bypass enemy strong points and launch deep into their
rear, cutting supply lines and logistics, destroying headquarters and
support units, leaving enemies to 'wither on the vine'.
On defense, the Alliance military lives by Sun Tzu's maxim, "He
who tries to defend everything defends nothing." Only token garrisons
are placed on their colonies. These are intended for scouting rather
than combat, avoiding engagement to observe and report on invaders using
drones. However the Alliance stations powerful fleets at mass relay
nexuses so that in the event of an attack they respond with overwhelming
force.
The Hahne-Kedar company and Aldrin
Labs are key suppliers of the military. All soldiers receive gene therapy for improved strength and stamina. The
Alliance also recruits biotics,
who are trained using techniques developed at BAaT (originally run by Conatix Industries). The new L3 biotic
implants are considered a significant step forward in biotic
amplification.
The Alliance maintains an impressive navy, though it is only entitled to a small number of dreadnoughts, partly due to the Treaty of Farixen limiting their construction, compared
to the turians or the asari. Arcturus Station, as a key installation with several mass
relays leading to human territory, is heavily defended.

Also must not forget Carriers-

http://masseffect.wi...rigate#Carriers

Carriers
Carriers are dreadnought-sized vessels which carry a large number of
fighters. They are usually kept at a distance from any engagement
because they are not maneuverable enough to survive heavy bombardment.
Alliance carriers are named after great humans in history (Einstein).
Commander Shepard describes fighter
carriers as an example of humanity demonstrating its ability to "think
outside the box", which is evidenced by the fact that the Systems
Alliance was the first to field these vessels.

Considering we're the first to bring carriers into the picture, i think we are more opted to think outside the box is all I am saying. Because of all this, we're more able to adapt quicker than the council who is set in their ways. They have worked together as an group for too long and there is very little advacement in the ways of new tactics and bringing new military devices to the field, while humans, we have fractions in our own ways and because of that, we're always re-inventing the wheel.

Modifié par Andrew_Waltfeld, 15 avril 2010 - 06:13 .

[FlintlockJazz]

Having played the Mordin recruitment mission again, Mordin theorises that the collectors released the plague to see how well the races could be mutated. I think they just wanted to see the survival rates rather than the actual mutations that resulted from them. The plague itself seems to target the respiratory system according to Mordin, causing mutations there, hence why the bodies don't seem to be horribly mutated (its inside the body) and why it causes coughing as one of the symptoms.

[Nightwriter]

FlintlockJazz wrote...

Having played the Mordin recruitment mission again, Mordin theorises that the collectors released the plague to see how well the races could be mutated. I think they just wanted to see the survival rates rather than the actual mutations that resulted from them. The plague itself seems to target the respiratory system according to Mordin, causing mutations there, hence why the bodies don't seem to be horribly mutated (its inside the body) and why it causes coughing as one of the symptoms.

Makes sense to me.

Why do threads like this keep getting ressurrected so often here? In the old forums if a thread fell back a few pages it was just R.I.P., we knew ye well. See ya.

But on this site threads even months old keep coming back.