Shandepared wrote...
How can I possibly argue against such rampant speculation? Maybe the rachni commune with the elder gods who grant them magical powers. I mean, who knows?
More begs the question: Why do you feel the need to do so. I have marked this multiple times as a "theory" which might at least allow a plausible explanation for the Rachni. That you jumped on the bandwagon... you obviously were as bored as me. I thought you knew what the stereotypes concerning insectoid speciesin SF often are.
...
No they don't. Their militaries have stagnated and they've been decimated after the attack on the Citadel. The asari have withdrawn completely and the turians are busy building dreadnaughts. Times are changing though and I suspect stealth frigates will be more valuable than dreadnaughts.
Turians building dreadnaughts != stagnation.
Turians building dreadnaughts and revoking the naval treaty if I remember correctly = militarization.
Asari withdrawing their defense commitment from the Citadel != stagnation
Asari withdrawing their defense commitment from the Citadel = isolationism (which might or might not include a militarization)
The buildup of Turian dreadnaughts would usually also imply a buildup in all smaller ship classes as well. Them revoking the treaty kinda implies they want to have more heavy units than the treaty would grant them which kinda implies they want to establish a numerical superiority over who ever has still the biggest battlefleet. From the ME1 cinematics that'd be the Asari who then probably still have more than the humans.
The point of contention however was wether mankind has more experience in intergalactic war. My point aimed at the fact that seemingly alot of individuals of the Council species we meet who were anywhere near a military position (and e.g. Asari are seemingly far more militaristic and gunho than they let on if they consider it casual going off killing people for several centuries in their life) have experience in actual combat missions that equal anything mankind experienced so far in the first Contact war and pirate clashes (which overall do not amount to much large scale action for the humans).
Which leaves the battle of the Citadel where humans and anyone else were present to take notes. At best they are on equal footing.
And if the writers make carriers and stealth frigates the next superweapon I will cry because these innovations aren't nearly as impressive as every SF writer seems to think ("Oh gee, tiny cheap ships can blow up big, expensive ones? What will we do, what will we do... let's continue building big ships! *facepalm*).
Yet the most militarized of them got humiliated by newcomers who'd never fought an interstellar war before.
About 600 dead humans with slightly more Turians may be a hack job done by the Turians but a humiliation means squat. Plenty of Great Powers faced humiliating defeats at some point. They usually get back to that latter crushing the pesky nuisances.
You want to tell me that mankind now has ultimate military dominance and 1200 dead meant a significant power change there. More people died during the Football War!
Mangalores wrote...
Yeah, gues what: It does. Napoleon, Caesar and every other successful warlord actually would like to agree with you and enact wishful thinking to say it doesn't but even the successful onces got screwed by entirely different dynamics than that their army was supposedly invincible.
That has nothing to do with public opinion. Napoleon and Hitler lost their hold on power because poor military decisions.
Interesting why you bring Hitler in as successful warlord. Napoleon won against 5 coalitions defeating all major powers and their military forces... and these powers still came back with more military forces. Caesar turnt around in victory and got stabbed 42 times. The Spanish had a nearly 150 year long record of being undefeated in battle and they still couldn't shut anybody up. WW1 Germany isolated herself on the world stage (in 1890 she was called a constitutional monarchy in European newspaper, by 1910 a tyrannical dictatorship, nothing but public opinion changed due to diplomatic but also economic, demographic, industrial and military shifts). Britain lost its whole field equipment at Dunquerque (for a short interrim a single artillery piece might be assigned to defend as much as a 5 mile beach), they completely rebuilt their military capacity.Germany, demilitarized post 1918, rebuilt its military within 6 years to be capable to fight a new world war.
All these are only small examples of how political, economic, demographic, social and obviously the overarching public opinion (not just the opinion of your fellow citizens but everyone else's as well) is important in how you can shape expansionist policy.
So in simple words: Occupying the capital of an intergalactic civilization with a big alien population while all those aliens have massive soft and hard power to outmatch you = very bad idea and doesn't give you anything but a freaking huge security nightmare in an already overstreched strategic outset (mankind was already incapable to cover her own colonies in ME1 which lead them to the concentration of forces decision which essentially gave up static defense to maintain a flexible one. The aim of such a move is mainly force preservation and traditionally used by a faction when in a weak strategic position). Overall this is what makes this scenario so implausible.
Either the Citadel races are idiots (although the Turians do nothing but military thinking, the Asari can be extremely smart and ruthless and the Salarians do nothing but intelligence operations) or there is a big plot hole needing more filling. Them allowing the humans in is already a concession of massive proportions since - as can be seen in reality - you can easily stretch out the joining process of a country into an international organization for more than 60 years and come full circle to actual not want that country in anymore if you plan on doing that...
Only democracies need to worry about public opinion (Vietnam being an excellent example of winning the war of bullets but losing the war of words).
This is plainly incorrect. Dictatorships have it easier _controlling_ public opinion but they often worry more about it than democracies because a shift in public opinion in a dictatorship by the nature of the government means a bloody uprising and violent toppling of the government while in a democracy this only means a change in government. The reason dictatorships usually kill or imprison so many more people disagreeing with them and control all channels influencing public opinion is that they are worried sick about it. The Soviet Union actually had a public opinion problem with their Afghanistan war. They could keep it better under wraps but it still had major effect on the Politbüro feeling the heat.
This gets worse if you are occupying foreign countries because the natives might listen even worse to propaganda than your own which leads to even bigger problems on the public relations front, esspecially if three of those still have massive conventional and covert military capacity because of an overbearing military industrial complex, a massive economy or deeply entwined intelligence networks.
and btw: None was winning the war of bullets. The US shyed away from going all in because it would have been a replay of the Korean war with China intervening in better shape than 1950 and the Soviet Union having more nukes and thus not fearing American nukes anymore (major incentive to keep it off the books during Korea and the Cuba crisis being a major incentive for the US not do go down a lane again where neither side knows if they can stop a train wreck). The Communist block was still only propping up North Vietnam while it fought the USA and South Vietnam all by its own. There'd be plenty of fubar in escalating that which is why smart people in Washington told the military guys not to.
The error was already pre public opinion in entering a military endevour without any achievable and time limited objective. The preservation of South Vietnam was already a failing objective otherwise the US wouldn't have had to send their own troops there.
Regardless it is canon so you can keep weeping about how it doesn't make sense or you can figure out a way that it does.
I hope you are just playing this thick to annoy me. The canon axe is a stupid argument if the point in question is the canon story. So you bringing it up actually implies you have no argument. That's okay, too.
Is there a definition of canon for ME by the way? The game clearly shows only Turian cruisers, human cruisers and one Asari dreadnaught... so if that's the first level canon...
Ce sujet est fermé
Guest_Shandepared_*
Retour en haut
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.[/quote]
