3478 réponses à ce sujet

[Panda Warlock]

STG wrote...

Hey man, can you pass some of that? I'm getting hungry and there seems to be no end to all this in sight

[implodinggoat]

I think all these who's more trustworthy Cerberus or the Council arguments are missing the point, although I would argue that the Council is ultimately less dangerous since it can't react as quickly or uniformly as an organization who's actions are dictated by the will of one single despotic leader (Ceberus).



The truth is you can't trust either of them and that's why destroying the base is the right move. In fact if the choice had been to give the base to the council or the Alliance, I still would have blown the thing to hell; because none of them can be trusted with that sort of power.



True you're giving up a potential resource you could have used against the Reapers; but if you kept the resource you would dramatically shift the balance of power in the favor of Cerberus which is under the complete control of the Illusive Man. So even if things went according to plan you might improve your odds against the Reapers; but once they were gone you would have set the Illusive Man up in a position where he could control the entire Galaxy.



I'll admit that Tyranny is preferable to extinction; but resigning yourself to such a fate is the act of a coward or a pawn (I mean wasn't that Sarren's plan in ME1?).



On top of that I'd like to point out that....



#1: Cerberus is a laughably incompetent evil organization run by a treacherous **** who has betrayed you on multiple occasions.



#2: The Reapers control people through Indoctrination and were I a Reaper the totalitarian leader of a secretive terrorist organization with immense resources and no morals would be at the top of my list of potential targets for indoctrination.



#3: Cooperating with the Illusive Man precludes me from carving the names of every man he killed on Akuze into his skull with my combat knife.

[implodinggoat]

Shandepared wrote...

Sajuro wrote...


I'd rather die than submit to the control of Cerberus(...)

I hope the trillions of other lives being sacrificed along with you agree, as well as the trillions to come in future Reaper cycles.

You do realize that's the exact argument Saren used in ME1?

[SnakeStrike8]

There is the simplest answer to this question.

Jag the base because no-one, not Cerberus, not the Council, not the turians, the Alliance, or the STG can be trusted with that responsibility. The base is too dangerous and too likely to corrupt whomever controls it to be left intact.

I've always seen the Collector Base as Mass Effect's Star Forge. Yes, it's super-powerful and can be a great asset against the Reapers, but what'll happen after the Reapers have been jagged? Only one faction (Cerberus, in this case), will have control of the base, and the Illusive Man has never made a secret of his plans to put humans on top of the galactic food chain. By any means necessary. If that means flooding the galaxy with new Reapers, then he'd do it.

Better to jag the base before that happens, I think. We might lose a million lives fighting the Reapers, but we'll lose fifty million after the Reapers are done when everyone starts fighting over the Collector Base.

[STG]

Panda Warlock wrote...

STG wrote...

Hey man, can you pass some of that? I'm getting hungry and there seems to be no end to all this in sight

Sure thing, plenty to go around.

[implodinggoat]

Shandepared wrote...

implodinggoat wrote...

You do realize that's the exact argument Saren used in ME1?

Saren wanted us to surrender to the Reapers; something that was never really popular. None the less, if surrender had been possible then his argument would have been a very good one.

I don't want surrender though; I want victory at any cost.

I find your definition of "Victory" misguided.   What you're arguing for is survival at best; but submitting to tyranny in order to stave off death is hardly what I'd call a victory.

If you're willing to resign yourself to mass death and tyranny then why not focus your resources on merely surviving the Reaper Purge in the manner the Protheans attempted to then spend the next 50,000 years beefing up to lay a class A **** beating on the Reapers?

[Mangalores]

Simple answer: TIM is talking out of his ass saying it is safe there. How does he know that? We take out one base and that's it? Aren't there collectors elsewhere? We know we can knock out all Collectors, how? We are only 9 guys and gals against a full station and some fancy stuff in the infirmary can knock out the whole base tells me a guy 1000 lightyears away? Why should there be something valuable here? The Collectors are a bunch of degenerate lowlife pets to a reaper living in a scrapyard. Given that all actual reaper tech screwed everyone involved over we can be pretty certain a degenerate base which can be stormed by less than a dozen people is pretty useless.



Rule of thumb in clandestine operations: get in, get out, destroy everything in between. Listening to a guy who either lied to you or was dead wrong the whole way is not a healthy choice if you want to live and are busy.



I saw no reason to listen to TIM's idiotic rants anymore.

Did you read Mass Effect Revelation? Saren was a sadist and he was the council's best spectre for decades.

Difference being one ruthless individual using ruthless measures being used by one organization with balanced agendas vs. one ruthless organization using ruthless measures with radical agendas.

[naledgeborn]

Cra5y Pineapple wrote...

I fail to see the point in doing it. Preserving the base seemed convientient and perhaps increased the chances of getting collector weapons and tech in ME3. I don't get why the majority of the community destroy it. The last person I asked just said it was "to get a more satifying explosion" but it seems like more than that.

Because they want to and it's a(n almost) role-playing game.  I could as easily make a thread titled "Why do people llke Tali as an LI?" but I keep that **** to myself.....

[implodinggoat]

Were I Shepard, I would...

A: Go for a true victory rather than resigning the galaxy to tyranny at the hands of the Illusive Man who I find a perfect target for Reaper Indoctrination, beyond the fact that he's an untrustworthy snake to begin with.

B: Do whatever necessary to privately raise the funds to hedge my bets by constructing a facility like the top secret facility the Prothean's built on Illos. Doing this privately being the key here so that no one, not Cerberus, not the Alliance, not the Council and not the Shadow Broker no what I'm really building so that the Reapers could never trace any intel back to find it. In the facility, you'd have...

#1: Some renewable energy generators which could keep the facility operational for several thousand years.
#2: A VI (not an AI) to run the thing.
#3: A database of genetic information for various races (even if you're a humanity first type you can't deny having some Krogan and Asari at your back would be nice).
#4: A massive library of information so you can preserve culture, history, technology and most importantly the knowledge of the Reaper threat and the tech to fight them.
#5: A small team of trustworthy scientists who would go into cryogenic suspension before having any opportunity of informing anyone where the facility is.
#6: Cloning tech to use the saved genetic data to create a new society in the event that the Reapers win.
#7: A ship or two to get the new society to a new world for colonization.

You hide this facility underground on some backwater uninteresting planet and then in the event that you lose to the Reapers, the facility waits for a thousand years or so then revive a new society with a 50,000 year head start to prepare for the Reapers.

Hell, you could even spend a few thousand years rebuilding then launch a preemptive strike on the bastards in dark space, they wouldn't see that **** coming.

Modifié par implodinggoat, 08 juin 2010 - 03:34 .

[implodinggoat]

Shandepared wrote...

implodinggoat wrote...

I find your definition of "Victory" misguided.   What you're arguing for is survival at best; but submitting to tyranny in order to stave off death is hardly what I'd call a victory.

That depends on how you define victory. I define it as any situation in which galactic civilization survives. Tyranny is not perament, but extinction is.

If you're willing to sacrifice trillions of people on the alter of your personal moral code then you need to reconsider what "misguided" means to you.

If you think tryanny can't become permanent, I reccomend you read 1984 by George Orwell.

Aside from that you're speaking in definite terms ("sacrficing trillions on the alter of my personal moral code") when what we are really dealing with is probabilities.  There is no way to be certain that destroying the base will result in defeat or that keeping it will result in victory.  At best keeping the base improves the probability of survival which in and of itself is a strong justification simply because the stakes (extinction) are so extreme and so permanent.

So it seems a debate between accepting a very high probability of tyranny in the interests of (arguably) improving one's probability of survival.  I do not believe that Cerberus is sufficiently competent, trustworthy, or immune to corruption to improve the odds of survival to such a degree that it would offset the high probability of tyranny; you disagree.

I would question the wisdom in any plan which seeks to defeat the Reapers by using their own tech against them.   The Reapers left the Mass Relays and the Citadel so that societies would evolve to use their technology and thus be vulnerable to weaknesses that the Reapers already have knowledge of.  Using more Reaper tech merely makes the Galaxy more dependent on more tech which the Reapers already understand and already know how to combat.

If you want to take the Reapers down you need to hit them with something they don't understand, not weapons based upon tech which they've been mastering for millions of years.

Modifié par implodinggoat, 08 juin 2010 - 03:33 .

[Christmas Ape]

implodinggoat wrote...

Were I Shepard, I would...

A: Go for a true victory rather than resigning the galaxy to tyranny at the hands of the Illusive Man who I find a perfect target for Reaper Indoctrination, beyond the fact that he's an untrustworthy snake to begin with.

B: Do whatever necessary to privately raise the funds to hedge my bets by constructing a facility like the top secret facility the Prothean's built on Illos. Doing this privately being the key here so that no one, not Cerberus, not the Alliance, not the Council and not the Shadow Broker no what I'm really building so that the Reapers could never trace any intel back to find it. In the facility, you'd have...

#1: Some renewable energy generators which could keep the facility operational for several thousand years.
#2: A VI (not an AI) to run the thing.
#3: A database of genetic information for various races (even if you're a humanity first type you can't deny having some Krogan and Asari at your back would be nice).
#4: A massive library of information so you can preserve culture, history, technology and most importantly the knowledge of the Reaper threat and the tech to fight them.
#5: A small team of trustworthy scientists who would go into cryogenic suspension before having any opportunity of informing anyone where the facility is.
#6: Cloning tech to use the saved genetic data to create a new society in the event that the Reapers win.
#7: A ship or two to get the new society to a new world for colonization.

You hide this facility underground on some backwater uninteresting planet and then in the event that you lose to the Reapers, the facility waits for a thousand years or so then revive a new society with a 50,000 year head start to prepare for the Reapers.

Would you like a pony, too?

[Spectreshadow]

Ya know, if you kept that information on Cerberus from that one side quest and kept the base maybe you could blackmail TIM into not getting a power trip after the Reapers are dealt with.

[Sajuro]

Shand, here's a snippet from Benjamin Franklin
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary
safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."

Modifié par Sajuro, 08 juin 2010 - 05:51 .

[RGFrog]

The reapers didn't create any of the tech. They are just users, longer lived users, more understanding user, but still just users.

Find the manual from the race that did create the citadel/mass drivers, and then you have at least an equal playing field.

Otherwise, mass reproduce krogans and rachni, put them in bullet shapped AP encased, warp enabled being sized rounds and shoot them at the reapers. Those that get through can reek havoc and soften the targets.

Then get the mass driver than killed the derilict reaper, fix it, and attach it to the normandy

[LorDC]

Sajuro wrote...

Shand, here's a snippet from Benjamin Franklin
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary
safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."

Problem is that Collector's Base is not an "essential liberty" and salvation from inevitable destruction is not "temporary safety".

Modifié par LorDC, 08 juin 2010 - 06:02 .

[atheelogos]

Cra5y Pineapple wrote...

I fail to see the point in doing it. Preserving the base seemed convientient and perhaps increased the chances of getting collector weapons and tech in ME3. I don't get why the majority of the community destroy it. The last person I asked just said it was "to get a more satifying explosion" but it seems like more than that.

They destroy it because there're short sighted fools. Keeping Reaper technology has helped the crew of the Normandy every single time they did it. To detroy the base is a dangerous mistake from my point of view.

[Sajuro]

LorDC wrote...

Sajuro wrote...

Shand, here's a snippet from Benjamin Franklin
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary
safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."

Problem is that Collector's Base is not an "essential liberty" and salvation from inevitable destruction is not "temporary safety".

What? I'm for blowing up the collector base, giving it to Cerberus is giving up Essential Liberty for Temporary Safety

[Sajuro]

Shandepared wrote...

Sajuro wrote...

What? I'm for blowing up the collector base, giving it to Cerberus is giving up Essential Liberty for Temporary Safety

I wish you wouldn't desecrate the founding fathers like this.

Well I'm not because the shoe fits, so Timmy better wear it

[Solid_Shepard12345]

I posted this in another thread yesterday (and I'm not typing it out differently just to suit the slighlty different topic) which was about trusting Cerberus but the main theme in the post is to do with the Collector base so I suppose it won't be too out of place.



*Long post warning *



I haven't read any other post and I still have only skimmed the original post but from what I did read, one of your comments was about how human dominance would not be as bad as being completely irradicated.



One thing however, is that The Illusive Man clearly is not completely honnest. That line could simply mean (as Sheppard points out) that he just wants dominance for Cerberus. Who knows what technology he would gain from that base, and if he gained some form of Reaper technology allowing him to indoctrinate selected living creatures, the result would/could be worse then the Reaper's invasion. One possibility of their invasion is that all life would be destroyed. Another is that we would be used like the Collectors were, as soldiers whose goal is to build a new Reaper. If The Illusive Man learned how to control other sentient beings with the technology, something that would be a matter of when, not if, what would be the difference between the two? Then there is the fact that (even if he couldn't indoctrinate living creatures) with his vastly superior technology he would be free to destroy planets of his choosing and could almost control the Citadel.



The way my post is going I am almost missing the point I intended to make and if I did suceed in making it it isn't as clear as I intended so I'll try and further explain using a long reference to a science fiction show.



"Fringe" is a TV show in the science fiction genre which features a company not unlike Cerberus. Massive Dynamic, in the show, was a company set up by a man named William Bell. William Bell and his lab partener, previous to the setting up of the company, ran various experiments regarding the theory of alternative universes and they successfully created a "window" to said universe which allowed them to see what was happening at the same location on the other side. Both of them, however (starting with Walter), managed to create devices which let them go through to the other universe (which was much more technologically advanced then we are. In 1985, at the first successful crossing over for example, mobile phones were already extremely common and were as advanced as they are today).



Massive Dynamic was founded on this side using the Alternative universes advanced technology. Because they had technology years in advance they monopolised everything technological and scientific from cybernetics to cloning to mutation. They had a huge say in the military budget and the heads of the company were given top level clearance to military operations and investigations. This technology however, was used by various scientists in the company for operations such as releasing a deadly toxin on a plane to see what would happen and testing it's scientists with other-worldly hallucigens which tricks the mind into believing what is happening is real, aswell as threatening to release a gas-filled bomb (which would result in the orfices of it's victms sealing up resulting in suffocation) in a city unless someone participated in a game/operation with them.



This is where the parallels to Cerberus comes in. Massive Dynamic was so powerful that the company was immune to the reprecussions of essentialy funding terrorist organisations with the technology to cause complete havoc. If Cerberus became this powerful however, with the technology that creates the most dangerous and advance race of machines in the galaxy, they, not humanity, would be the people in charge of the galaxy and if anyone did not agree with the way things were being run they could be obliterated. Not to mention the fact that The Illusive Man is so intent on gaining power he could open up all of the inactive Mass Relays to gain more area to control, an act which could cause hundreds of wars.



Nobody in the galaxy would live in calmness, and the huge majority would live in fear of what would happen next. To me, it would be better to not live at all then to live in never-ending fear and I would choose extinction/fighting with current technology than using Reaper technology and starting an Age of Universal Terror once the Reaper threat is over.



Also, I know you have stated it is possible that it would not be complete dictatorship/it wouldn't be a nightmarish, ball and chain like scenario, but that seems so unlikely to me that it would not happen. I don't think it would happen because even after all the technology Cerberus has before the Collector ship, they need much more when all their previous attempts at using Reapear technology have backfired completely and been catastrophic rather than beneficial (and the Reapers know the location of their own base so once they invade (which looks to be within a year judging by the ending of Mass Effect 2) they will head in there and reclaim it. That also isn't dismissing the possibility that it is also similar to the Citadel in that it could be a Mass Relay to the edge of darkspace (it doesn't have the same range of the citadel, but can be used as a back-up plan).



The way I look at it, when judging up the risks, is to look at the worst possible outcome (from after the war if it's won and if it was lost) for each choice but excluding the possibility that the technology will make no difference.



Saving it

The war against the Reapers is won. Cerberus rule the Galaxy with an iron fist destroying all those who stand in it's way and performing tests on unsuspecting planets. Alternatively, they may monopolise all scientifical companies and have the power of a race (a seat on the council), threatening to cut off supplies unless the council agrees to Cerberus' demands

OR

The Collector Base has Reaper-like traits in that it can indoctrinate other species. The humans are then forced to repair the Human Reaper and collect more humans. The Human Reaper is completed and gets the co-ordinates of Cerberus' main base. The Human Reaper then destroys that base and all the technology gained from the base is worthless and the invasion is sped up significantly. Alternatively, the technology is not reverse enginereed before the invasion, the Reapers succeed in enslaving the galaxy (wiping out all non-human lifeforms and making the Human Reaper themselves before wiping out humanity and moving back into dark space. The risk of having the base was worthless.



Destroying it

The war is won. Technological advances are significantly (thousands of years) delayed and teh galaxy enters a state of civil war as the Citadel was destroyed during the war to prevent the locations of every colonised from being compromised to the Reapers. On top of that, Cerberus fight off every species in an all out war to recover the remains of the Reapers.

OR

The technology in the base is invaluable. We lose the war due to lacking sufficient weapons and defenses which would of been available had the technology been saved. The Reapers wipe out all life after enslaving all of the universes inhabitants and making the Human Reaper.



So the way I see it, it is not worth having the risk. If the base was given to the various Council races, I would definitely give it to them (keeping the base) but the risk of beating off one enemy with vastly superior technology intent on the destruction or enslavement of every living intelligent organism only to be immediately faced with stopping another enemy with the goal of ruling the galaxy (when all of the species' military force will be unimaginably crippled) is not worth it.



EDIT: Ironically though, I still think it would be better to side/work with Cerberus than the Alliance because The Illusive Man is willing to do what is necessary to succeed (I guess that is why I have ended with almost full Renegade with slightly less Paragon points in both games but choosing the "good" ending in both), something the Council and, as a result, the Alliance won't do. If you were given a choice of destroying the base but still working with Cerberus I would of done that for sure but the disadvantage of handing (for example) the only supply of nuclear bombs (the base and technology) in the world to a dictator (The Illusive Man) who demands control outweighs the advantage of getting aid from similar minded people to finish your mission which leaves you being forced to go rogue with your squadmates (although no doubt that in Mass Effect 3 you will, fortunately for those fools who made no more than 2 squadmates survive, be forced to gather even more!) as the Council (rightly) won't/shouldn't accept you back.