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[Dean_the_Young]

[quote]adam_grif wrote...

[quote]That's not logistical problems, that's a shortage of supplies and personel, of an overextended front. That's an argument for not attacking someone over double your size, not a critique on logistical support ability.
[/quote]

No, it's a logistics problem because they had the gear and the people, they just didn't have it where they needed it. [/quote]Germany didn't have the gear or people. They never did, which was the problem: their opponent was simply scaled far too large.
[quote]
[quote]The Alliance is built on mobility in a way that no other power is. The Alliance does have logistics, and does have the lift to move faster than most other powers.[/quote]

Their defensive doctrine is based on small garrisons with rapid response forces. How does this preclude them getting ****ing stomped to death in a fight when they force you to stand and fight or lose your homeworld? [/quote]You misread their strategy. The small garrisons are for the smaller exposed colony worlds which can't be garrisoned affordably. Major worlds have significant garrisons from which the massive retaliation fleets are stationed, and Earth would have the largest. When a small world is attacked, the fleets are sent in response. That does not mean that the Alliance Fleet is minor and small wherever it stands: the nature of the retaliatory doctrine is the opposite. The fleet is big and concentrated and able to move to conflict quickly.

[quote]
And when was the last time a democracy waged an offensive war against a significantly larger, more powerful and more influential nation? [/quote]2008, Russia and Georgia. Not even two years ago, and during the Olympics to boot.


[quote]For what amounts to nothing really, since nuclear weapons would kill you faster and more effectively than some crappy bioweapon will?[/quote]Clearly the genophage, being a bioweapon, was utterly useless and never used.



[quote]You're essentially proposing the exact same "they spaz out and attack without a good reason" thing that you were denouncing a few posts ago. This is not logical, since going rogue and attacking smaller races on the off chance that they might be a threat in the future is going to create a political ****storm, have them denounced by the other council races, and possibly spark a war with the Asari/Salarians.

This is not a plausible scenario.[/quote]Since pre-emption as a doctrine has occured multiple times in the last decade alone, as well as being the standing policy of the Salarians, you are mistaken.

The difference between pre-emption and 'spaz out and attack without reason' is that pre-emption is the reason: you expect an inevitable conflict, and so attack first to lessen the costs. It comes with political costs, however, that effect everything else: the US invaded Iraq under the doctrine of pre-emption, and nearly withdrew a few years later because many saw it as an illegitimate war. There was never any sort of total war involved.

War Porn 'spaz out' always assume total war with total political will behind the war effort and with no interest in a settled solution. That rarely happens.

Pre-emption is a doctrine with goals in mind: a more suitable political arrangment, leverage, or simply securing strategic goals from the get go. It is shaped, and effected by, politics.


[quote]I don't even know what you're trying to say here. The Alliance has some tenuous connections to a terrorist group who have done relatively minor things (on a galactic scale, killing thousands, mostly humans, is jack ****. If this was enough to declare war on humans, the Batarians would have been invaded hundreds of years ago), and so they wage a war against them, instead of just demanding that it be shut down and the group be hunted down? [/quote]I'll not bother explaining it to you then.



[quote]Are you talking about the Luna rogue VI thing?[/quote]No.
[quote]
Regardless, Spectres are sent specifically to avoid open conflict, trying to resolve the situation in order to preserve galactic stability and peace. It's evidence that they DON'T want a conflict, not that they're spoiling for a fight.[/quote]Negative, Spectres are specifically sent to signal the the Council has a direct hand involved.
[quote]
[quote]A few have occured in this decade alone.
[/quote]
Examples?
[/quote]...you're not joking, are you? You honestly aren't aware.

An act of war by a weak nation against a much stronger first-world nation was world news last month. If you can't even figure that out, then there's no point continuing this conversation.

Modifié par Dean_the_Young, 22 mai 2010 - 04:17 .

[adam_grif]

An act of war by a weak nation against a much stronger first-world nation was world news last month. If you can't even figure that out, then there's no point continuing this conversation.

Are you referring to the NK torpedo that killed a SK patrol boat? If so, that's not a workable example, because:



- The North Koreans clearly didn't want an actual war, given that they denied all involvement as opposed to storming across the border.

- The countries are geographically similar in area

- The NK military is nearly twice as large as the SK military, although the SK military is technologically more advanced.



The only contemporary examples of very weak countries picking fights with very strong ones are all minor border skirmishes that didn't escalate.

I'll not bother explaining it to you then.

No, please do. Because if links to Cerberus would be enough to trigger an interstellar war, then why the frack have all of the council races sat on their asses for the last several hundred years when the Batarian government has been actively sponsoring slaving and piracy? Perhaps it's because something like that isn't worth a war?

2008, Russia and Georgia. Not even two years ago, and during the Olympics to boot.

You mean 2008, Georgia and South Ossetia, with Russian backing? The spark that set off the conflict is unknown, with both sides claiming the other started shooting first. Even if it was the Georgians, it wasn't a war against Russia, it was a war against South Ossetia, with Russians providing military support.

Clearly the genophage, being a bioweapon, was utterly useless and never used.

It's like you're deliberately trying to be dumb.



The genophage wasn't designed to kill anybody, it was designed to adjust fertility rates. Adjusting fertility rates was an appropriate countermeasure to the Krogan because that's why they were being so aggressive in their expansion. The human populations grow comparatively slowly, on par with other races, and aren't constantly invading other people's colonies for Lebensraum like the krogan were. Human populations are easily capable of zero population growth without too much trouble. So a genophage for the humans wouldn't make sense.



If the Salarians were prepping a bioweapon for deployment against humans, specifically, it would be some sort of conventional bioweapon, that kills people dead. If extermination of large concentrations of humans was the goal, other weapons are much more useful in this role, given that nuclear bombs can't be stopped with quarantine measures.

Since pre-emption as a doctrine has occured multiple times in the last decade alone, as well as being the standing policy of the Salarians, you are mistaken.

Except that the Alliance is comparatively tiny and with marginal military power compared to all other council races? They aren't a threat to the Salarians, why would they preemptively declare war on them?



The only race that has any real right to fear the alliance is the Batarians, because of the historical tensions between the factions. The alliance would have to be suicidal to risk war with the council.

Negative, Spectres are specifically sent to signal the the Council has a direct hand involved.

Did you even- what?



I know it's the council intervening - the point is that it's the council intervening in order to prevent an open conflict. They don't want war, so they send in the Spectres.

You misread their strategy. The small garrisons are for the smaller exposed colony worlds which can't be garrisoned affordably. Major worlds have significant garrisons from which the massive retaliation fleets are stationed, and Earth would have the largest. When a small world is attacked, the fleets are sent in response. That does not mean that the Alliance Fleet is minor and small wherever it stands: the nature of the retaliatory doctrine is the opposite. The fleet is big and concentrated and able to move to conflict quickly.

... and? Did you miss the part where I proposed a direct attack on all such large concentration of forces, as well as a push to Earth to force the others to stand and fight? What is First Fleet going to do when a force three times its size attacks it?

Germany didn't have the gear or people. They never did, which was the problem: their opponent was simply scaled far too large.

I'm just going to concede this part because it's utterly irrelevant to the discussion at hand, and I don't have time to continue arguing about the second world war in addition to all the other rubbish going on in this thread.

[superimposed]

Germany didn't have the gear or people. They never did, which was the problem: their opponent was simply scaled far too large.

lol.

History: Read up on it.

[Mangalores]

Dean_the_Young wrote...

Logistics is the ability to get something from point a to point b. When it comes to water, that means ships. When it comes to space, that means space ships. Production alone does not equal either: Persia was far larger, more populace, and had more resources than Greece, but decisively lost the naval wars there. Germany had well surpassed the British and the French in production in WW1, but the German Navy was largely irrelevant. The Soviet Union (Cold War) had higher production than the US, but was never able to project power far from it's borders while the US nearly owned the seas.

That's not called logistics but geography. Germany, the Soviet Union and Persia had problems with their shipbuilding because their immediate strategic security was guaranteed by their armies so the navies always came second and would be abandoned in a life and death struggle.

Germany only has access to limited part of ocean which is easily bottled up by other naval powers so they can't break out with large fleets. Russia has the opposite problem of access to 4-6 different oceans where they have to defend their coasts. This leads to every individual fleet being inferior to any concentrated force and limited in their operations because of local defense concerns. Persia's seas were on the periphery of their empire and thus their navies based on client states which were the farthest away from their power center. In the preservation of power taking Greece was always a region they'd given up easily.

The Soviet Union projected further in the Cold War than you give them credit for. Aside of a massive navy buildup they meddled in South America, Africa, Asia and Europe. The far reduced Russian Federation is still a key player on anything going on in Eurasia.

Fleets don't help when there's only land. This is also an essential difference to any Science Fiction set up because everyone competes in the same kind of medium: space. Here on Earth land and the sea create two totally distincts ways on how to handle military or economic affairs. This creates a great difference in priorities for different countries based on their location.

[Dean_the_Young]

superimposed wrote...

Germany didn't have the gear or people. They never did, which was the problem: their opponent was simply scaled far too large.

lol.
History: Read up on it.

Russia won because it had space, numbers, and weather. Despite massive kill ratios, the Germans lacked the manpower to match Russia or the equipment to operate in Russian winter.

Germany had 69 million people in 1939, and lost 5.5 million in combat in the entire war between all theatres. The Soviets had 168.5 million, and lost about twice as many (up to about 10.7) being the Eastern Front alone. Ignorring all other theatres, the Germans had a 2-1 ratio. Include other theatres, they had a higher ratio. But they never had the men and material to make that ratio matter: by mid-war, the German airforce on the East was composed of obsolete craft because most their best planes were trying to match the bombing campaigns from the west. 

[Dean_the_Young]

[quote]adam_grif wrote...

[quote]An act of war by a weak nation against a much stronger first-world nation was world news last month. If you can't even figure that out, then there's no point continuing this conversation. [/quote]

Are you referring to the NK torpedo that killed a SK patrol boat? If so, that's not a workable example, because:

- The North Koreans clearly didn't want an actual war, given that they denied all involvement as opposed to storming across the border.
- The countries are geographically similar in area
- The NK military is nearly twice as large as the SK military, although the SK military is technologically more advanced. [/quote]If the North Koreans clearly didn't want an actual war, they wouldn't have performed an act of war.

North Korea denies everything when confronted. North Korea denies it started the Korean War in the first place.

While the two countries are geographically similar in area, the power imbalance between them is massive. Despite it's massive conscript army, even North Korean strategy now reflects that their strategy in a war between the two amounts to holding as much of Seoule hostage as they can.


[quote]
The only contemporary examples of very weak countries picking fights with very strong ones are all minor border skirmishes that didn't escalate. [/quote]Then you obviously weren't paying attention during the Beijing Olympics. Or the defining historical event at the beginning of the decade.

That would be Georgia and Afghanistan, if you still don't remember.


[quote]
[quote]I'll not bother explaining it to you then.[/quote]

No, please do. Because if links to Cerberus would be enough to trigger an interstellar war, then why the frack have all of the council races sat on their asses for the last several hundred years when the Batarian government has been actively sponsoring slaving and piracy? Perhaps it's because something like that isn't worth a war?[/quote]The Asari practice slavery as well, and the Asari are on the Council. The Batarians didn't conduct piracy until 30 years ago because until then they weren't a rogue state. They became a rogue state only recently when the Council sided with the Alliance, at which point they joined the Terminus systems which the Council repeatedly has not wanted to fight.

[quote][/quote]
[quote]
You mean 2008, Georgia and South Ossetia, with Russian backing? The spark that set off the conflict is unknown, with both sides claiming the other started shooting first. Even if it was the Georgians, it wasn't a war against Russia, it was a war against South Ossetia, with Russians providing military support. [/quote]Military support in the form of tanks, battalions, airborne divisions, and bombing attacks. This was no Bay of Pigs, in which one power propped up a shadow army. Actual Russian tanks stopped hours from the Georgian capital.

Georgia did attack: there's little doubt about it these days. They may have had reason to attack when they did. There certainly were plenty of provocations by the Russians leading up to it.


[quote]
It's like you're deliberately trying to be dumb.
[/quote]You're the one who insisted that bio weapons were pointless.

[quote]
The genophage wasn't designed to kill anybody, it was designed to adjust fertility rates. Adjusting fertility rates was an appropriate countermeasure to the Krogan because that's why they were being so aggressive in their expansion. The human populations grow comparatively slowly, on par with other races, and aren't constantly invading other people's colonies for Lebensraum like the krogan were. Human populations are easily capable of zero population growth without too much trouble. So a genophage for the humans wouldn't make sense.[/quote]A biowar weapon can do far more than adjust fertility rates or simply kill.


[quote][/quote]
[quote]
Except that the Alliance is comparatively tiny and with marginal military power compared to all other council races? They aren't a threat to the Salarians, why would they preemptively declare war on them?

The only race that has any real right to fear the alliance is the Batarians, because of the historical tensions between the factions. The alliance would have to be suicidal to risk war with the council.[/quote]If the alliance were tiny, it wouldn't have been on the cusp of getting a Council seat within a single human lifetime. You are arguing against the lore of the series itself.


[quote]
Did you even- what?

I know it's the council intervening - the point is that it's the council intervening in order to prevent an open conflict. They don't want war, so they send in the Spectres.[/quote]An open conflict is, by it's nature, something that is highly visible.

Spectres are highly visible signals of attention. The STG are a silent service.

The Spectres are open conflict short of a war.


[quote]
... and? Did you miss the part where I proposed a direct attack on all such large concentration of forces, as well as a push to Earth to force the others to stand and fight? What is First Fleet going to do when a force three times its size attacks it?[/quote]Fight where concentration of defense nullifies the advantages of numbers, at the necessary relays. The fleets don't have to stand and fight except where they want to.

[Dean_the_Young]

Mangalores wrote...

Dean_the_Young wrote...

Logistics is the ability to get something from point a to point b. When it comes to water, that means ships. When it comes to space, that means space ships. Production alone does not equal either: Persia was far larger, more populace, and had more resources than Greece, but decisively lost the naval wars there. Germany had well surpassed the British and the French in production in WW1, but the German Navy was largely irrelevant. The Soviet Union (Cold War) had higher production than the US, but was never able to project power far from it's borders while the US nearly owned the seas.

That's not called logistics but geography. Germany, the Soviet Union and Persia had problems with their shipbuilding because their immediate strategic security was guaranteed by their armies so the navies always came second and would be abandoned in a life and death struggle.

Logistics and geography are intertwined. That Germany and the Soviet Union were Continental Powers is a reflection of that neglect of their logistical capability. How one devotes their production is more relevant to what their production is.

The Alliance follows a more maritime strategy. The Turians are more static continental strategy: while the warfleets are important, they have a heavy focus on mass-fire ground tactics and attritional ground warfare.

The Soviet Union projected further in the Cold War than you give them credit for. Aside of a massive navy buildup they meddled in South America, Africa, Asia and Europe. The far reduced Russian Federation is still a key player on anything going on in Eurasia.

Most of their meddling was in shipping aid through largely unchallenged lines of traffic: shipping, railroads. When confrontation did come, such as the Cuban Blockade, the Soviet Union lacked the ability to keep it's connections, whereas with the Berlin Airlift the US was able to quickly set up an air bridge to Berlin despite the land lock.

Fleets don't help when there's only land. This is also an essential difference to any Science Fiction set up because everyone competes in the same kind of medium: space. Here on Earth land and the sea create two totally distincts ways on how to handle military or economic affairs. This creates a great difference in priorities for different countries based on their location.

Never disputed in the least, and I believe your points are good... for another debate. It just missed my argument, which was that production doesn't equal logistics (for all the same reasons you mention, because of priority).

[Mangalores]

Dean_the_Young wrote...

The Alliance follows a more maritime strategy. The Turians are more static continental strategy: while the warfleets are important, they have a heavy focus on mass-fire ground tactics and attritional ground warfare.

That however makes no sense because the primary battlefield would be always space and only the secondary one can be a planet. As such it makes no sense for any species to lay their focus on ground combat. There is no such geostrategic predisposition as it is on a planet with water and land.

... When confrontation did come, such as the Cuban Blockade, the Soviet Union lacked the ability to keep it's connections, whereas with the Berlin Airlift the US was able to quickly set up an air bridge to Berlin despite the land lock.

In this example you ignore various factors, most importantly distance to staging grounds, level of escalation and actual abilities. During the Berlin blockade the Soviets could have started shooting down bombers, no problem > It was a Soviet choice not to close the air corridors!  In the Cuban crisis Soviet subs in the area caught up with freighters approaching the blockade line and at that stage the very same crossroads were reached: If a sub goes down or a ship blows up there will be all out war. It was the US choice to close the sea lanes!

Both incidents also display completely different levels of conflict in very different stages of the Cold War.The Berlin blockade was the Soviet response of the currency reform in the western occupation zones (thus indicating a step into creating a western german state in opposition to the Soviet Union). Escalation to full war was never really the idea, that's why the Soviets did not also severe the air connections although they had the aircraft and air defenses to do so.
The Cuba crisis was an escalation of the arms race which for the first time put the US in immediate and undefendable danger of a nuclear strike by ballistic missiles (they somehow didn't see a problem in putting Moscow under that threat by deploying such missiles in Turkey though). It was about military escalation from the getgo and would have continued down that path.

Never disputed in the least, and I believe your points are good... for another debate. It just missed my argument, which was that production doesn't equal logistics (for all the same reasons you mention, because of priority).

You however stressed the failure of naval buildup of certain empires and nations. As said: In a space environment where essentially all major powers have to be naval oriented to protect their assets and ship their goods this becomes a non issue because there is no sense in focussing into one above the other. It's the space arms race alone which decides power, not the tank, aircraft, ship arms race and you have to pick what helps you most.

[Dean_the_Young]

Mangalores wrote...

Dean_the_Young wrote...

The Alliance follows a more maritime strategy. The Turians are more static continental strategy: while the warfleets are important, they have a heavy focus on mass-fire ground tactics and attritional ground warfare.

That however makes no sense because the primary battlefield would be always space and only the secondary one can be a planet. As such it makes no sense for any species to lay their focus on ground combat. There is no such geostrategic predisposition as it is on a planet with water and land.

Mass Effect in general doesn't make sense: the Krogan Rebellions shouldn't make sense, the Rachni threat shouldn't make sense, nor the Turians strategy. But that's what they do.

In this example you ignore various factors, most importantly distance to staging grounds, level of escalation and actual abilities. During the Berlin blockade the Soviets could have started shooting down bombers, no problem > It was a Soviet choice not to close the air corridors!  In the Cuban crisis Soviet subs in the area caught up with freighters approaching the blockade line and at that stage the very same crossroads were reached: If a sub goes down or a ship blows up there will be all out war. It was the US choice to close the sea lanes!

Power projection is the ability to overcome such obstacles, especially distance and political/military objections. Bending to other's refusals is a delimma shaped by capabilities.

For Cuba, surface ships project power and presence in a way that subs never have been able to, simply by being visible. The Soviets lacked a surface navy to do what the US could do, IE send a carrier task force whenever and wherever to enforce their ability to move shipments.

You however stressed the failure of naval buildup of certain empires and nations. As said: In a space environment where essentially all major powers have to be naval oriented to protect their assets and ship their goods this becomes a non issue because there is no sense in focussing into one above the other. It's the space arms race alone which decides power, not the tank, aircraft, ship arms race and you have to pick what helps you most.

Alas, this is a case where the in-universe rules are illogical. The Krogans and Rachni are powerful for their ground forces and numbers more than anything else, while the Turians strength is emphasized as being ground power. SInce those are, apparently, viable strategies in the Mass Effect universe, what and how polities spend their efforts do matter more.

When we take too much logic even further, more of the Mass Effect story falls apart: how humans are any sort of power in the first place, the timeline of exploration and expansion for any power, or, when you get down to physics, mass effect technology in the first place.

Modifié par Dean_the_Young, 22 mai 2010 - 04:14 .

[Mangalores]

[quote]Shandepared wrote...

[quote]Mangalores wrote...

(they somehow didn't see a problem in putting Moscow under that threat by deploying such missiles in Turkey though). [/quote]

[quote]What an utterly foolish thing to say. [/quote]

Yeah, wow what an argument. The Soviet gamble was - among other things - instigated by the fact that Moscow was under direct nuclear threat. It was part of why Chrustchow was willing to risk that gamble knowing fully well that it would not be a stroll in the park if he was found out. It is a very simple example of different viewpoints. The West always saw the Russian bear tearing through Europe if unchecked, the Russians saw what **** Germany had done to them and knew that the USA was one of the more anti communist countries left standing after WW2 and multiple times germany's war potential and the guys who invented that neat, little bomb and used it on a beaten foe just to scare them - the Russians - off.

So you should take care before writing simplistic oneliners without backing up your opinion. It is otherwise rather condescending tone and talking out of your butt. The Cold War is over so we know what the Cold Warriors on the Russian side were thinking throughout those events and they weren't lunatics either (for the most part).

[quote]Now, to the topic at hand: Dean is right, most of Mass Effect doesn't make sense. Krogan and rachni birth rates shouldn't matter because they can have a population of ten trillion but unless they also have a massive fleet to cart it around it won't matter. In the end what would make them dangerous would be their production facilities pumping out ships; not their birth rates. If you destroyed their infrastructure they'd be defeated; isolated on their planets and all without needing sterilize them.[/quote]

Though assuming the Insectoid archetype alien for the Rachi it actually might be about the same thing aka bio ships.

[quote]I do have a question though for those of you saying the Alliance can't possibly match the Council races: if that is true then how come the Renegade ending to ME1 didn't result in mankind being a client race of the turians in ME2? The fact is the Alliance staged a coup on the Citadel, seizing control of the Council and the Citadel itself. If that isn't good enough reason to go to war then nothing is. So why didn't the former Council races attack right then? Why wait, why withdraw from military support in the asari's case and then sit there and mumble in the case of the turians? Why do they allow the Alliance to get away with so much? The longer they wait the more powerful the Alliance becomes and the harder it gets to ever take military action against it. [/quote]

I can never choose that option precisely for that reason. The Codex itself states that Turian, Asari and Salarian fleet strengths outmatch human one by battlefleet power 10:1, if the Destiny Ascension is the example of Asari ship building capacity (a dreadnaught several times the destructive power of human one) these odds get even worse. This scenario is actually imo not even justified within the universe's lore. Mankind wouldn't be that stupid to begin with and there is no reason for three races that have settled and lived in a territory for up to two millenia to just cede it to a newcomer without a major war where they lost it to them.

And from all we see the Asari are not that timid (they are pretty cutthroat in alot of their doings from coperate economy to mercenary operations) and Salarians and Turians don't have much morale in their ways to use force for what they see is their right either. To me that is really sloppy writing. You can use the canon axe but that's akind of accepting midi-chlorians just because George Lucas thought this a great idea. I don't think that scenario is a good idea, it is highly implausible and illogical even within the metaphysics of that universe.

To the Turian military: I never got an impression of them having a greater focus on ground forces. The codex mentioning them using conventional shock and awe tactics with high artillery fire etc., not that they somehow see that as taking precendence over their fleet. Their fleet is afterall the biggest one with a heavy emphasis on battleships and their fleet was supposedly the major reason to make them the third Council species.

[Dean_the_Young]

[quote]Mangalores wrote...

[quote]Shandepared wrote...

[quote]Mangalores wrote...

(they somehow didn't see a problem in putting Moscow under that threat by deploying such missiles in Turkey though). [/quote]

[quote]What an utterly foolish thing to say. [/quote]

Yeah, wow what an argument. The Soviet gamble was - among other things - instigated by the fact that Moscow was under direct nuclear threat. It was part of why Chrustchow was willing to risk that gamble knowing fully well that it would not be a stroll in the park if he was found out. It is a very simple example of different viewpoints. The West always saw the Russian bear tearing through Europe if unchecked, the Russians saw what **** Germany had done to them and knew that the USA was one of the more anti communist countries left standing after WW2 and multiple times germany's war potential and the guys who invented that neat, little bomb and used it on a beaten foe just to scare them - the Russians - off.

So you should take care before writing simplistic oneliners without backing up your opinion. It is otherwise rather condescending tone and talking out of your butt. The Cold War is over so we know what the Cold Warriors on the Russian side were thinking throughout those events and they weren't lunatics either (for the most part).

[/quote]Or he could have been referring to the fact that Washington was already considering to withdraw the missiles in Turkey, which would be a strong indication that they did see a problem in putting Moscow under threat from Turkey.

Or the point that the US missiles in Turkey were redundant in the first place, because Moscow was already covered by US ICBM's much further away.

Either point is a valid (if under-articulated) rebutal to that the US saw no issue to threatening Moscow from Turkey: the first being that there was debate that was seeing the Turkish missiles likely being drawn down, the second being that Turkey was irrelevant to the US's ability to hurt Moscow, cutting back on an equivalence argument.

[quote]
Though assuming the Insectoid archetype alien for the Rachi it actually might be about the same thing aka bio ships.[/quote]Bio-ships are rare enough that they should never be assumed unless specified otherwise. By all accounts, Rachni use metal ships, just like the rest of us. Even if they were grown, the liklihood that they wouldn't take the time and obvious surface space like space port infrastructure (and thus be vulnerable to infrastructure-destruction) would be minimal.

[quote]
I can never choose that option precisely for that reason. The Codex itself states that Turian, Asari and Salarian fleet strengths outmatch human one by battlefleet power 10:1, if the Destiny Ascension is the example of Asari ship building capacity (a dreadnaught several times the destructive power of human one) these odds get even worse. This scenario is actually imo not even justified within the universe's lore. Mankind wouldn't be that stupid to begin with and there is no reason for three races that have settled and lived in a territory for up to two millenia to just cede it to a newcomer without a major war where they lost it to them.[/quote]I never saw why there would need to be a war in the first place. Sovereign was the genuine threat, and the Council's fleet arrangements were it's own fault.

[quote]
To the Turian military: I never got an impression of them having a greater focus on ground forces. The codex mentioning them using conventional shock and awe tactics with high artillery fire etc., not that they somehow see that as taking precendence over their fleet. Their fleet is afterall the biggest one with a heavy emphasis on battleships and their fleet was supposedly the major reason to make them the third Council species.
[/quote]Once space superiority is assured, there's really no point in artillery: you'd have to ship down guns and ammo with limited ranges rather than one-stop-drop from space. Heck, it would save steps just to put the artillery guns on the outside of the space ships and fire from there.

Ground warfare is a big part in Mass Effect, for whatever reason. Aerospace is rarely enough dominated by one side or another that ground forces are vital.

A possible reason could be because it's easier to hit into space than to hit on the ground: city-scale kinetic barriers with generator capacity that couldn't be matched by fleets, for example, could make 'parking' in orbit impossible. That could be why defense towers (like we saw on Horizon) are so valuable.

[Vaenier]

Humans epicly fail against Rachni. Only Krogan could win against them.

Humans would have failed horribly against Turians in the First contact war if they didnt form a truce.

Humans would lose against Reapers. Duh.

Humans could maybe win against the Volus. Maybe

[ChanceRandom]

Sand King wrote...

kglaser wrote...

Onyx Jaguar wrote...

@jlb

Secure that **** Hudson!

Look into my eye.

ROFL!!! All your base....

[Mangalores]

Shandepared wrote...

Mangalores wrote...

So you should take care before writing simplistic oneliners without backing up your opinion. It is otherwise rather condescending tone and talking out of your butt.

Perhaps you shouldn't naively expect countries to play fair.

Huh? Can I summarize that you plainly didn't comprehend my lengthy explanation because when that is what you came up with as a rebuttal .... Oh well... you kinda missed the whole planetsized point.

Mangalores wrote...
...

Whether they grow them or construct they are none-the-less producing them. That means productions facilities of some kind. You destroy those facilities and you defeat the rachni. There is no need to EVER fight a ground war in space (go figure)..

What I meant: Based on the SF archetype Rachni population growth could equal ship production as in Rachni ships being Rachni. Thus a quickly growing Rachni population could equal a big space fleet. That is however only a vague explanation how you could spin it with them.

...

I understand; it's a ballsy move. I chose that option for three reasons:

1.) I thought it would lead to a more interesting sequel (which it did)

2.) I figured Udina knew something I didn't and that this would thus be better for humanity

3.) Ultimately my Shepard sacrifices the Council purely for pragmatic reasons, not intending to launch a coup.

Now reason two is important here. Udina, despite what most forum posters think, is not an idiot. I don't think he'd have ever suggested a take-over unless he knew we could get away with it. Thus I do like to speculate on how that all works out. As near as I can figure the Council losses were much greater than they appeared, with entire fleets destroyed around other relays, and the Citadel is such a strategic asset that its possession greatly enhances the Alliance's (soft/hard) power. Furthermore, perhaps these problems are compounded with turian military doctrine; with such heavy losses what ships they have left are needed to garrison all of their worlds, so they can't afford to mass up the rest of their fleet and invade the Alliance.

There is one other possible reason: the geth represent an immediate threat and nobody is willing to risk war until after they've been dealt with. By which point the Alliance has reinforced its old on the Citadel. In the end a war would be too costly and there isn't the political will to do it. After all these species haven't fought a real war in a millenia and their two most recent military conflicts resulted in humiliating defeat.

Sorry, in 10000 years of human history the occupation someone else's capital and the claim on its political titles always meant one thing: allout war. It's like Brazil annexing New York because some terrorists blow up the UN building. Everyone would think it's a joke and if it wouldn't: be Brazil would be trashcanned by virtually everyone regardless of affiliation. It's a rather outlandish scenario why any of the established Council races would secede their influence here. The Geth argument goes both ways: Given that mankind was also attacked and has more colonies in the verge why risk a two front war over something by any established human or intergalactic customs belongs to someone else, is inhabited by someone else and is meant to be there so everyone gets along with everyone else.

Concerning the real war... Mankind hasn't fought a real intergalactic war ever... and the First Contact War resulted in less than 1000 casualties. By modern political analysis this wouldn't be even categorized as a war (which defines it as an armed conflict costing more than 1000 lives a year).

For me point 3) also would be the only actual point, but why would the other races have trouble sending new representatives? They are called Asari republic, Turian Hierarchy, etc. and they have their capitals elsewhere so the death of the Council wouldn't affect the functioning of their individual political bodies. That Udina can get major concessions and mankind's admittance to be a Council race is one thing. That he can strongarm three intergalactic superpowers to submit to him without a fight I can't buy.

[Gavinthelocust]

2pac Shakur wrote...

[EmperorSahlertz]

It's very simple really. Salarians got 16 Dreadnoughts, humans got 8. That means Salarian can bring twice the amount of firepower to any battle as the humans. It says in the codex, taking on a fleet with a dreadnought without a dreadnought of your own is folly. Humans simply don't have the firepower to win any war....





And to all of those tards saying "Hurr durr logistics win a war!". No. BAD logistics LOSE a war. Thats's how it is. You don't win a war simply on good logistics alone... You don't win a war with firepower alone... You win a war with a collection of it all, you win a war with good strategy.

[lovgreno]

EmperorSahlertz wrote...

It's very simple really. Salarians got 16 Dreadnoughts, humans got 8. That means Salarian can bring twice the amount of firepower to any battle as the humans. It says in the codex, taking on a fleet with a dreadnought without a dreadnought of your own is folly. Humans simply don't have the firepower to win any war....

Plus even more dreadnoughts if you include the salarians close allies the turians and asari.

[Dean_the_Young]

It's kind of funny. I took naval history the other semester as my military history, and we studied up a bit on Mahan. Mahan was a big supporter of the 'who has the most battleships/dreadnaughts wins', which shaped British, American, and German fleet building in both WW1 and WW2.



Everyone figured counting by numbers would do everything. The Germans judged that if the German navy was at least 2/3rds the size of the British, the British would not go to war on account of exposing their empire elsewhere. Britain figured it's battleships would win the naval war, and the US and Japan were similar but behind.



Instead, the German Navy didn't deter war and never made it to the high seas, British dreadnaughts never left port because they were too important to risk losing, and the weapons that mattered most in the naval war were submarines and the far weaker/easier to build cruisers and destroyers made to counter them. Battleships and dreadnaughts, the big gun ships of the era, played almost no appreciable role in the conflict, and most their benefit was in the form of coastal artillery. The numbers never made a difference.



By WW2 everyone fell back on numbers again: the Japanese thought that a 7:10 battleship ratio to the US would enable them to win their decisive battle, the Britain clung to a 1:1 ratio with the US as enough to defend their empire, and Germany and Italy eagerly built up as many battleships as they could within the expanding treaty limits. Then almost the entire US battleship fleet was sunk at Pearl, Japan never got a chance to make it's battleship total dominance matter, and Britain was still desperate for destroyers, cruisers, and other small vessels to provide numbers rather than firepower.



Since Mass Effect seems to draw alot of it's strategic reality from history (and I think more and more often that planet-based defenses are far better than we give them credit for), I suppose a telling historical lesson we should take is 'don't count on numbers of ships to determine wars.'

[DarkSeraphym]

Shandepared wrote...

Mangalores wrote...

So you should take care before writing simplistic oneliners without backing up your opinion. It is otherwise rather condescending tone and talking out of your butt.

Perhaps you shouldn't naively expect countries to play fair.

Mangalores wrote...

Though assuming the Insectoid archetype alien for the Rachi it actually might be about the same thing aka bio ships.

Whether they grow them or construct they are none-the-less producing them. That means productions facilities of some kind. You destroy those facilities and you defeat the rachni. There is no need to EVER fight a ground war in space (go figure).

I can never choose that option precisely for that reason.

I understand; it's a ballsy move. I chose that option for three reasons:

1.) I thought it would lead to a more interesting sequel (which it did)

2.) I figured Udina knew something I didn't and that this would thus be better for humanity

3.) Ultimately my Shepard sacrifices the Council purely for pragmatic reasons, not intending to launch a coup.

Now reason two is important here. Udina, despite what most forum posters think, is not an idiot. I don't think he'd have ever suggested a take-over unless he knew we could get away with it. Thus I do like to speculate on how that all works out. As near as I can figure the Council losses were much greater than they appeared, with entire fleets destroyed around other relays, and the Citadel is such a strategic asset that its possession greatly enhances the Alliance's (soft/hard) power. Furthermore, perhaps these problems are compounded with turian military doctrine; with such heavy losses what ships they have left are needed to garrison all of their worlds, so they can't afford to mass up the rest of their fleet and invade the Alliance.

There is one other possible reason: the geth represent an immediate threat and nobody is willing to risk war until after they've been dealt with. By which point the Alliance has reinforced its old on the Citadel. In the end a war would be too costly and there isn't the political will to do it. After all these species haven't fought a real war in a millenia and their two most recent military conflicts resulted in humiliating defeat.

I think your first assumption is the correct one, the Battle of the Citadel was far more costly for the Salarians, Asari, and Turian fleets to the point that they more or less allowed humanity to walk right onto the Citadel's "doorstep of power" so to speak and assume control of it. History has examples of wars where superpowers have been defeated due to loses within other wars that left their military might effectively drained. Aside from that, I think your hypothesis is perfectly logical. Until the Alliance showed up at the end of Mass Effect, it more or less looked like the Council Race's fleets were being crushed by the attack by Sovereign and the Geth. The game does not do a good job of actively giving us an indication of just how long the battle lasted but it appears that humanity came into the battle very late and likely would not have suffered the same casualties from their naval fleet that the other races would have.

Furthermore, I think that your second assumption could also be true but only within the context of the first hypothesis you have. Perhaps the reason the turians, salarians, and the asari are not interested in waging war against the new human council and the Alliance is because they not only lack the firepower from the Battle of the Citadel but also because they lack the firepower to readily deal with the Geth situation thanks to the battle. If your hypothesis is correct that humanity holds power because it did not suffer the same loses that the other three races did, one could also assume that it would not be within the interest of the other races to go to war against humans if humans will eventually have to address the Geth dilemma and because of their deficiency of firepower, they cannot afford to risk losing that sort of ally.

However, I think there is another possibility that ties into your first hypothesis that others here have not considered. Perhaps the fact that humanity is so new to the Council is something that makes it more plausible that humanity would have been least damaged by the Battle of the Citadel and more able to assume control of it. The Turians, Salarians, and Asari do have their own sovereign governments beyond the Citadel but the Mass Effect lore seems to suggest that each of these governments have come to rely on the Citadel and the idea of the intergalatic Council quite a bit. This much is also evident in the purpose of the Citadel itself since all species come to depend on it. Vigil does mention that the whole purpose behind the Citadel is to allow the Reapers the ability to effectively destroy the governments of the sentient species involved there in one sweep and then pick off the remains one by one. When Shepard gets off of Illos through the Conduit onto the Citadel, we see that the Presidium, at least ,appears to have been completely ravaged in the onslaught. One can assume that not only did the three Council Races suffer heavy losses from their fleets in the battle, but lost government officials and many others of importance with the actual damage that was done to the Council itself. Humanity had ties to the Council, but because of its "youth", so to speak, does not appear to have built the level of dependency upon the Council that the other three races have.

I think when taken in these contexts, the Renegade ending to Mass Effect is quite believable. The attack on the Citadel by Sovereign and the Geth was likely not only devastating to the fleets of the Three Council Races, but also on key figures and government officials when the Citadel was more or less ransacked by the Geth. Humanity's late entry into the battle on top of its "youth" in Council affairs would have made the battle a far less powerful blow not only to humanity militarily but also politically and leaves them in an advantageous spot where either A. the other species lack the ability to fight back to humanity's newfound control over the Citadel or B. simply lacks the will.

Modifié par DarkSeraphym, 25 mai 2010 - 08:41 .