133 réponses à ce sujet

[Siansonea]

I doubt either the weapon or the now-Derelict Reaper were in the immediate vicinity of Klendagon when the weapon fired, though they were probably in the general neighborhood. Probably the kickback of the weapon and the inertia of the Reaper, as well as the overall movement of the celestial bodies, caused the two to drift many light-years from their original positions of 37 million years ago. I'm sure Cerberus had to do a LOT of backward calculations to pinpoint where the Reaper and the weapon should be. Turning back the clock 37 million years in even a small area of a galaxy is an enormous undertaking.



If anything, the entity controlling the weapon was probably using the planet as a shield or cover of sorts, keeping it between itself and the Reaper, and as soon as the Reaper moved into a position where the weapon could fire, it did so, skimming it's round across the surface of Klendagon and creating the Rift.

[didymos1120]

Nightwriter wrote...

Cerberus found the weapon, too.

I was confused when the Illusive Man first told me about it.

"We wanted to find either the weapon or its target. We found both."

I thought, its target? Well, since there was a great gi-normous rift on Klendagon I mistakenly thought Klendagon was of course its target. Pretty big rift there for it to be collateral damage.

What, was the Reaper sitting there camped on Klendagon at the time the weapon hit?

Actually, we've known all along that Klendagon wasn't the target.  The planet description in ME1 says: 

The geological record suggests it is the result of a "glancing blow" by a mass accelerator round of unimaginable destructive power.

Also: just look at it.  It goes across the surface of the planet.  I don't know about you, but if I were shooting at a planet, I'd actually shoot directly at the planet. 

[Nightwriter]

Yes, but because at the time of ME1 I could not conceive of a weapon that powerful belonging to any other race but the Reapers (at the time, "huge mass accelerator weapon" screamed REAPER to me) I instinctually thought that it was the Reapers who fired the shot.

The Reapers are known to bombard worlds and fleets, so I assumed any planet with significant damage had sustained it during a Reaper attack, whether the Reapers had intended it to be a glancing blow or not.

Lol preconceptions lol.

[WoodWizzard87]

Whats the chance the mass accelerator gun was actually built on a moon of Klendagon that was hidden from the reapers, and then they found out. Perhaps, they fired too soon and it glanced off the planet and hit the reaper without knowing. The dreadnaught use 20 kg rounds that hit with the force of 3 hiroshima bombs, or a bomb that can level about 3-5 square miles. Now, anyone have a guess as to how big the projectile was or the gun that shot it.

[SandTrout]

I think that Klendagon just happened to be where the round struck after it passed through it's initial target (the Derelict Reaper). Note that space has nothing to slow down a Mass Accelerator shot except for planets and starts. Any shot will keep going until it strikes something. Note the speech from the Alliance marine on Citadel explaining why Dreadnoughts 'Do not fire from the hip' Those rounds keep going for a LONG time if they don't hit their target, or if they pass through it.

[adam_grif]

SandTrout wrote...

I think that Klendagon just happened to be where the round struck after it passed through it's initial target (the Derelict Reaper). Note that space has nothing to slow down a Mass Accelerator shot except for planets and starts. Any shot will keep going until it strikes something. Note the speech from the Alliance marine on Citadel explaining why Dreadnoughts 'Do not fire from the hip' Those rounds keep going for a LONG time if they don't hit their target, or if they pass through it.

If a round had enough force to make an enormous scar on the planet's surface like that, there's no way the Reaper would have been in-tact. Purely from KE transfer to the target, it would have completely exploded. Over at SD.net we did physics calculations and determined that a Dreadnought round from an Everest class (20 KG @ 1.3% of lightpseed) would burn up before it even got 5% through the atmosphere of Earth. Assuming Klendragon was more like Mars (since it IS mars) it still wouldn't even get close to the ground. The faster you go, the harder the atmosphere tears on you. From the slug's perspective, it's stationary and thousands of tonnes of air going at C fractional velocities are smashing into it.

So, the same slug cannot have caused both the Reaper's damage and the planetary scarring.

If we're assuming that the Reaper was shot by this weapon, then the slug can't have been very big. A single disruptor torp from the SR1 at the end of ME1 basically gutted the reaper end to end and made it completely explode. On the other hand, low-mass high-velocity objects practically never make it through the atmosphere until you get up to ultra-high fractions of C (like, >60%). Once they strike the ground, they should completely stop and dump all of their energy into the target, not continue on for thousands of kilometers tearing up mountains. Balistics do not work that way.

So the possiblities are:

- Cerberus is wrong, the formation is natural. (LIKE MARS).
- Cerberus is wrong, the Klendragon weapon did cause the scars but did NOT kill the reaper.
- Reapers have the most absurdly, stupendously powerful barriers ever, and somehow they caused the massive slug to shrink and do only a tiny bit of damage
- The planet had practically zero atmosphere, and the scars were actually caused by dozens or hundreds of impacts, not one, they just look continuous because of 37 million years of erotion.


Option #3 is flawed because it means that waiting to amass a geth fleet before striking the Citadel is basically irrelevant. He could have ignored the defense fleets and just gone straight for the Citadel without any reinforcements, because NOTHING could have even put a tiny dent in it, after thousands of hours of bombardment. They would literally have to wait until they could build super-massive railguns before they could touch it.

[MerrickShep]

Well if a Weapon like this was outfited to every ship in the Citadel fleet (and otherwise) they could most likely take on the Reapers.

Perhaps the Klendagon weapon was A LAZZERR!

Modifié par MerrickShep, 17 juillet 2010 - 03:35 .

[jklinders]

The weapons that are already mounted on the dreadnoughts of mass effect are spine mounted (ie the gun barrel is most or all of the length of the ship). If we are presuming a weapon powerful enough to carve out the rift and still have enough energy to kill a ship afterwards Then the Citadel fleets would have to build an entirely new fleet of dreads that are 10-15x bigger(at least) to manage it. Call me a negative nelly if you want to but I just don't see that happening. What is far more likely to occur is more reverse engineering of the type that brought us such hits as the Thanix cannon, allowing existing ships and resources to to get more bang for their buck and bigger teeth for their size.

My .02

[Siansonea]

adam_grif wrote...

SandTrout wrote...

I think that Klendagon just happened to be where the round struck after it passed through it's initial target (the Derelict Reaper). Note that space has nothing to slow down a Mass Accelerator shot except for planets and starts. Any shot will keep going until it strikes something. Note the speech from the Alliance marine on Citadel explaining why Dreadnoughts 'Do not fire from the hip' Those rounds keep going for a LONG time if they don't hit their target, or if they pass through it.

If a round had enough force to make an enormous scar on the planet's surface like that, there's no way the Reaper would have been in-tact. Purely from KE transfer to the target, it would have completely exploded. Over at SD.net we did physics calculations and determined that a Dreadnought round from an Everest class (20 KG @ 1.3% of lightpseed) would burn up before it even got 5% through the atmosphere of Earth. Assuming Klendragon was more like Mars (since it IS mars) it still wouldn't even get close to the ground. The faster you go, the harder the atmosphere tears on you. From the slug's perspective, it's stationary and thousands of tonnes of air going at C fractional velocities are smashing into it.

So, the same slug cannot have caused both the Reaper's damage and the planetary scarring.

If we're assuming that the Reaper was shot by this weapon, then the slug can't have been very big. A single disruptor torp from the SR1 at the end of ME1 basically gutted the reaper end to end and made it completely explode. On the other hand, low-mass high-velocity objects practically never make it through the atmosphere until you get up to ultra-high fractions of C (like, >60%). Once they strike the ground, they should completely stop and dump all of their energy into the target, not continue on for thousands of kilometers tearing up mountains. Balistics do not work that way.

So the possiblities are:

- Cerberus is wrong, the formation is natural. (LIKE MARS).
- Cerberus is wrong, the Klendragon weapon did cause the scars but did NOT kill the reaper.
- Reapers have the most absurdly, stupendously powerful barriers ever, and somehow they caused the massive slug to shrink and do only a tiny bit of damage
- The planet had practically zero atmosphere, and the scars were actually caused by dozens or hundreds of impacts, not one, they just look continuous because of 37 million years of erotion.


Option #3 is flawed because it means that waiting to amass a geth fleet before striking the Citadel is basically irrelevant. He could have ignored the defense fleets and just gone straight for the Citadel without any reinforcements, because NOTHING could have even put a tiny dent in it, after thousands of hours of bombardment. They would literally have to wait until they could build super-massive railguns before they could touch it.

I love this analysis, it's very well thought out and complete, and everything sounds very convincing. I do think though that we're dealing with 'fiction physics' here, and that the writers are glossing over all the science. I mean, the whole 'let's melt down humans and pipe them into a baby Reaper" thing is absurd from a scientific standpoint as well. Unfortunately, while your analysis is undoubtedly scientifically sound, I doubt that BioWare has thought it through to this extent. They will just hand-wave all the scientific improbabilities and impossibilities. We are living in a post-George Lucas world, after all.

What I'm more interested in is the relevance of this weapon from a story standpoint. Klendagon and its Rift was just another planet in the galaxy in ME1, albeit a planet with a fun description that made one ponder its history. In ME2 Klendagon was the arrow that pointed to two very significant story points, only one of which was explored in the game. This leads me to wonder if ME3 or DLC will touch upon the significance of the other story point, the weapon itself. Illusive Man says that they're studying the weapon, so potentially there could be some sort of result of this study that impacts the story, even if it all happens 'off-camera'.

ME2 is basically Shepard As Bus Driver, picking up a bunch of people on a list, and then going with them to the endgame. It's a fun bus ride, but there is a LOT left to do if the Reapers are going to be defeated, and much of it is outside of Shepard's area of expertise. I think the Klendagon weapon has to have some significance, it has the feel of a Chekov's Gun about it to me.

[Sniper11709]

adam_grif wrote...

SandTrout wrote...

I think that Klendagon just happened to be where the round struck after it passed through it's initial target (the Derelict Reaper). Note that space has nothing to slow down a Mass Accelerator shot except for planets and starts. Any shot will keep going until it strikes something. Note the speech from the Alliance marine on Citadel explaining why Dreadnoughts 'Do not fire from the hip' Those rounds keep going for a LONG time if they don't hit their target, or if they pass through it.

If a round had enough force to make an enormous scar on the planet's surface like that, there's no way the Reaper would have been in-tact. Purely from KE transfer to the target, it would have completely exploded. Over at SD.net we did physics calculations and determined that a Dreadnought round from an Everest class (20 KG @ 1.3% of lightpseed) would burn up before it even got 5% through the atmosphere of Earth. Assuming Klendragon was more like Mars (since it IS mars) it still wouldn't even get close to the ground. The faster you go, the harder the atmosphere tears on you. From the slug's perspective, it's stationary and thousands of tonnes of air going at C fractional velocities are smashing into it.

So, the same slug cannot have caused both the Reaper's damage and the planetary scarring.

If we're assuming that the Reaper was shot by this weapon, then the slug can't have been very big. A single disruptor torp from the SR1 at the end of ME1 basically gutted the reaper end to end and made it completely explode. On the other hand, low-mass high-velocity objects practically never make it through the atmosphere until you get up to ultra-high fractions of C (like, >60%). Once they strike the ground, they should completely stop and dump all of their energy into the target, not continue on for thousands of kilometers tearing up mountains. Balistics do not work that way.

So the possiblities are:

- Cerberus is wrong, the formation is natural. (LIKE MARS).
- Cerberus is wrong, the Klendragon weapon did cause the scars but did NOT kill the reaper.
- Reapers have the most absurdly, stupendously powerful barriers ever, and somehow they caused the massive slug to shrink and do only a tiny bit of damage
- The planet had practically zero atmosphere, and the scars were actually caused by dozens or hundreds of impacts, not one, they just look continuous because of 37 million years of erotion.


Option #3 is flawed because it means that waiting to amass a geth fleet before striking the Citadel is basically irrelevant. He could have ignored the defense fleets and just gone straight for the Citadel without any reinforcements, because NOTHING could have even put a tiny dent in it, after thousands of hours of bombardment. They would literally have to wait until they could build super-massive railguns before they could touch it.

Option #5  There was at least 2 shots fired
Option #6  There was at least 2 shots fired and the shot that killed the Reaper was weaker then the planet scaring shot because of damage to the weapon.

Also seeing as you put all that nice research can i just mention that it's all based on the rounds materials following all the rules you think it should. This is a Sci-Fi univers where FTL possible is because of an elemant  that has an effect on mass when a electrical charge is applied, that throws most real world physics out the window. Edit - Hadn't gotten around to read the post above mine when i posted this.

Modifié par Sniper11709, 17 juillet 2010 - 07:07 .

[Aulis Vaara]

Did you also notice that the reaper was torn in half? You could see outside while on board, and the picture only showed tentacles and perhaps a bit more, as far as I could tell. That reaper was torn apart, big time.



They are called kinetic barriers. I haven't read any codex entries on them, but I'd say that they reduce the kinetic energy of incoming projectiles. They obviously have a limit of how much kinetic energy they can reduce, and thus couldn't stop the slug from the Klendagon weapon. During the battle for the citadel, Sovereign's shields were off, which was why the human fleet's ordnance could even damage him. That Sovereign exploded could have several realistic reasons, but was done mostly for effect, not because of whatever appropriate reason there might be.



The Mass Effect field is something else, and could've attributed to reducing the damage, though I don't immediately see how. It is what has been keeping that Reaper intact throughout the aeons.



As for "ballistics do not work that way", that is not true. They do work that way, ground does not cause the projectile to instantly lose all its velocity. If that were true, we'd not be able to have craters on planets. A glancing hit can happen as much to a planet surface as it can to someone's arm. And as for burning up or eroding in the atmosphere, that all depends on the substances involved, afterall, spacecraft don't burn up when entering the atmosphere. Less erosion, certainly, but also more sturdy. Having useful substances like carbon-nanotubes and the like might give even more of an advantage to the projectile.



Just some speculation on my part of course, but since other people thought adam_grif's post sounded logical, I wanted to add my own logical sounding post to the mix. If only to get people to actually think about it, rather than accept one argument because it sounds logical.

[Ninniach Lina]

Build us a hundred of these guns and we can fell a hundred reapers.



Let Shep-Shep handle everything and he will fell them all.

[jklinders]

I must be missing something here. There seems to be a reason why the guns on the existing dreadnoughts are the size they are. Either supportable energy systems or barrel size or both. Seems like if bigger guns could be mounted on the ships there would be. So where are these 10 KM + sized ships that will be mounting these new guns come from? Where are the shipyards large enough to accommodate their construction going to come from?

These questions should be answered seeing as the Klendagon weapon is at least 10x the size of any existing mass driver.

[Siansonea]

I wonder how hard it would be to convert a Mass Relay into a ship/weapon?

[Katya Nadanova]

voteDC wrote...

I still believe the solution to the Reaper threat is on the planet Klencory.

In the codex of Mass Effect 1 it says how a volus had a vision and is trying to find the Beings of Light, who were created at the dawn of time to fight 'synthetic machine devils.'

I agree with you.  I hope in ME3 we can go to the planet and talk to Kumun Shol and see is he has found anything.

[MadCat221]

The Klendagon-nicking super-gun has a known kill tally of precisely One reaper. There's still a whole slew of them left, so it obviously didn't work for the people who built it since there are still Reapers and there are no more super gun builders.

So obviously BFMAs are crossed off the drawing board.

One thing that will be needed is a means to copy the Reaper IFF.  The thing that kills the reaping victims is the sudden loss of the mass relay network and the communications hub that is the Citadel; they get completely cut off. If the militaries have reaper IFFs, they can subvert the mass relay lockout.  And who knows what else the reaper IFF can enable people to do with the mass relays...

...Then again, all the Reapers have to do is change their IFF codes.

Modifié par MadCat221, 18 juillet 2010 - 10:15 .

[jklinders]

What I think is that the Citadel races should do is use the Citadel as a trap. Just mine the ever loving bejesus out of the thing. When the reapers come in, set it off.

Just for kicks, let there be a recorded transmission come from the Citadel just before it blows. "I'm Commander Shepard and this is my favorite trap on the Citadel."

[TheScientist]

Siansonea II wrote...

I wonder how hard it would be to convert a Mass Relay into a ship/weapon?

If the relays make trans-galactic travel possible by creating tunnels of low-mass space, then perhaps the opposite would be possible; creating a region of high-mass space. Perhaps the Reapers could be baited with an open Citadel and the moment they go through, they get crushed into oblivion.

[lovgreno]

jklinders wrote...

What I think is that the Citadel races should do is use the Citadel as a trap. Just mine the ever loving bejesus out of the thing. When the reapers come in, set it off.
Just for kicks, let there be a recorded transmission come from the Citadel just before it blows. "I'm Commander Shepard and this is my favorite trap on the Citadel."

As much as I like ironic victories that won't happen I think. Since the Citadell trap didn't work in ME1 the reapers obviously takes a different route to the Milky way. But I agree that it would have been a truly epic piece of explosion.

[jklinders]

lovgreno wrote...

jklinders wrote...

What I think is that the Citadel races should do is use the Citadel as a trap. Just mine the ever loving bejesus out of the thing. When the reapers come in, set it off.
Just for kicks, let there be a recorded transmission come from the Citadel just before it blows. "I'm Commander Shepard and this is my favorite trap on the Citadel."

As much as I like ironic victories that won't happen I think. Since the Citadell trap didn't work in ME1 the reapers obviously takes a different route to the Milky way. But I agree that it would have been a truly epic piece of explosion.

Bah, I was just being funny while I was waiting for someone to explain how they were going to mount planet shattering weapons on existing ships. I stand by my assertion that a whole new fleet of mega dreads would have to bebuilt to accomodate it. The reapers could probably walk to the milky way in the time it would take to develop them.

[adam_grif]

Did you also notice that the reaper was torn in half? You could see outside while on board, and the picture only showed tentacles and perhaps a bit more, as far as I could tell. That reaper was torn apart, big time.

No?







It's hard to tell if the stuff around it is supposed to be from the Reaper or wreckage from some other ship that was killed. It's never stated in the game. Regardless, the Reaper is perhaps 95% in-tact, apparently 'shot through the brain', as it were. Pretty much everything is still online, mass effect core, artificial gravity, indoctrination field etc.

They are called kinetic barriers. I haven't read any codex entries on them, but I'd say that they reduce the kinetic energy of incoming projectiles. They obviously have a limit of how much kinetic energy they can reduce, and thus couldn't stop the slug from the Klendagon weapon.

This is just the "absurdly powerful barriers" answer.

During the battle for the citadel, Sovereign's shields were off, which was why the human fleet's ordnance could even damage him. That Sovereign exploded could have several realistic reasons, but was done mostly for effect, not because of whatever appropriate reason there might be.

Sovereign's barriers only went down after robo-Saren was destroyed (for no apparent reason), yes. But after they were down, it only took one torpedo to totally gut Sov from end to end (provided by the Normandy SR1 no less) and then make it freakin' explode. This is to say, the damage done to the Reaper by the Klendragon done must have been mostly-absorbed by the barriers, and wouldn't have had enough energy left to do much of anything when it got out the other side (especailly not carve a planet up).

As for "ballistics do not work that way", that is not true. They do work that way, ground does not cause the projectile to instantly lose all its velocity. If that were true, we'd not be able to have craters on planets.

- Craters are caused by relatively low velocity, extremely high mass impactors (Shooting Stars are ones that aren't high-mass enough to survive reentry)

- Hypervelocity impacts result in both impactor and target acting like a fluid, and in extreme cases, both actually turn into gas or plasma.



The Klendragon rift is very deep, so either the impactor was like, kilometers in diameter (not supported by the TINY hole in the Reaper, kinetic barriers don't strip away mass, they just slow things down), or it was plowing straight through the ground for thousands of kilometers, head on. If it was doing such a thing, the velocity means that it would be plasma instantaneously upon impact, and instead of skidding across the landscape for thousands of K's, it would stop shortly after impact and create a large explosion instead of a long canyon.

And as for burning up or eroding in the atmosphere, that all depends on the substances involved, afterall, spacecraft don't burn up when entering the atmosphere.

Spacecraft reenter at precise angles with surfaces specifically designed to minimize drag and stuff. They also don't reenter at hundreds of kilometers per second, and would blow up straight away if they did (unless they were extremely high mass, like an asteroid or something).



For a practical demonstration of hypervelocity impact:







I love that shiz!

[Noobiq17]

if I remember correctly, it is possible to change weight in ME. so they could fire relatively small, but very heavy bullet, made of unknown material. That would cause small hole in reaper (no matter what the size of projectile is when it impact on barrier, only projectile's kinetic energy (speed and weight)) and then hit the planet. nobody exactly know what is on the surface, so it can be anything, or maybe sand/dirt (or something like that)

[Exile Isan]

adam_grif wrote...
Sovereign's barriers only went down after robo-Saren was destroyed (for no apparent reason), yes.

Okay I can't let this go without commenting on it. Sovereign's barriers went down because Sovereign was in Saren's body, the same way Harbinger takes over the Collector Drones and the Collector General, and when Shep destroyed Saren's body s/he killed Sovereign. Watch the cutscene carefully once "robo-Saren" is destroyed the lights on the front of Sovereign flicker and go out it lets go of the Presidium tower and the shields went down. When Joker hit it with the torpedo all he destroyed was the body, an empty shell. Nazara was already dead.

[StarcloudSWG]

"We are each a nation..."

"Nazara is what the programs within the old machine called themselves."



Losing Saren definitely stunned Nazara, in the sense of disorienting it. I don't see any reason why it would have killed Nazara by itself, though. Too many programs, too many controls; if Nazara hadn't been under attack at the time, it would have recovered, IMO.

[Ahriman]

StarcloudSWG wrote...

"We are each a nation..."
"Nazara is what the programs within the old machine called themselves."

Losing Saren definitely stunned Nazara, in the sense of disorienting it. I don't see any reason why it would have killed Nazara by itself, though. Too many programs, too many controls; if Nazara hadn't been under attack at the time, it would have recovered, IMO.

If you read last ME novel you'll know that direct control is tiresome for Reapers (space ).

About Klendagon, even if this thing cannot be moved it deserves to be restored. Where else can you get one-shot weapon against Reapers?