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[Inquisitor Recon]

"Was traumatized at Akuze when he was the only survivor of his unit."

"Is this the type of person we want protecting the galaxy?"

"No, not really."

"Okay, moving on..."



I felt my colonist/ruthless Shepard fit the role the best.

[Bad King]

I go Colonist/Soul Survivor. The two backgrounds show that Shepard has unmatched skill and determination and can overcome many physical and mental challenges. I find the war hero and ruthless backgrounds to be typically associated with paragon and renegade characters respectively. Meanwhile a Sole Survivor fits well with either allignment.

[tmk]

Quething wrote...
Ruthless' "throw men at it until we get through" isn't exactly brilliant military strategy or the kind of mindset that takes "protect" anything seriously, galaxy included.

From the description, Ruthless is less about throwing people at it, and more about getting the job done with limited resources. You could argue that War Hero didn't sacrifice anyone, but then WH held a defensive posture at a choke point, and Pressly mentions that the pirates were neither skilled nor equipped anywhere near as well as Alliance forces. And being a Spectre means going places and doing things, not waiting until enemies come to your well-fortified position.

Another interesting dynamic is that Ruthless' Renegade bonus actually means you can use Paragon more often and still keep a balanced character - and to me that makes more sense than being mostly Renegade War Hero (unless you're playing a cocky ****** of course).

Modifié par tmk, 02 septembre 2010 - 02:16 .

[tmk]

Doh, a doublepost... kill it with fire pls

Modifié par tmk, 02 septembre 2010 - 02:15 .

[Crusherix]

Colonist/Sole survivor

Lost all she ever cared for and after failing her mission she'll learn from her mistakes and understand she must get stronger if she is ever gonna be able to protect those she care for.

I don't belive in leaders who haven't made mistakes hence i choose this path. I just can't see ruthless or war hero being a great leader.. it reeks of "i never make mistakes i'm chuck norris".

Modifié par Crusherix, 02 septembre 2010 - 02:34 .

[tmk]

Thing about having people die under your command is that you'll likely always keep re-thinking if you could've done things in a way that didn't require them to die. If you cared about them of course, but then nothing specifically says that ruthless doesn't care. And nothing says War Hero never made a mistake...

Modifié par tmk, 02 septembre 2010 - 03:04 .

[Nightwriter]

Colonist/War Hero. You've suffered, you know the meaning of great loss, and you still rose to the occasion and became greater than your pain. You know why the galaxy needs to be protected, and you protected it as you were never protected. Pain and strength are what heroes are made of.

[Quething]

tmk wrote...

From the description, Ruthless is less about throwing people at it, and more about getting the job done with limited resources.

From just the description, yes - the description doesn't say anything about Torfan at all. It just talks in generalities about Shep's military career, calling her "cold, calculating, and brutal" and adding that her fellow soldiers are wary of her.

You learn more about Torfan in-game, though, and it paints a less pragmatic picture. The codex entry says that "Nearly three-quarters of your own squad perished in the vicious close-quarters fighting, a cost you were willing to pay to make sure not a single slaver made it out of Torfan alive." The same entry very close to flat-out states that ground forces were entirely unneeded to begin with; Torfan was the last slaver stronghold, an underground bunker on a desolate moon, and the Alliance fleet had besieged it with overwhelming naval superiority. The slavers had nowhere to go, no backup coming, and no resources to fight with. All Shep had to do was starve them out; her mission was to clear the Skyllian Verge of slavers and criminals, not personally slaughter every last one. Emily Wong's comment to Ruthless that she shot batarians who were trying to surrender has always struck me as particularly damning - Ruthless wasn't "getting the job done," she was revelling in bloodlust to the tactical detriment of the entire mission.

Now, there is an implication that Ruthless Shep was specifically ordered, if perhaps in an under-the-table way, to "make an example," to put the fear of God Humanity into any future criminals who wanted to try their luck in the Verge - that bloody slaughter and cold execution of helpless prisoners was, in fact, exactly her job, that some scorched-earth terror tactics were exactly the point and she executed the mission to the letter. If so, it's equally damning, because the kind of psych profile you look for when you pick a solder to do that particular job... well, "efficiency" or "tactical brilliance" or "creative use of resources" are not the qualities you base your decision on. If Ruthless Shep also has those qualities, they're a) not the ones she demonstrates most often prior to Spectrehood, and not in evidence at Torfan.

[Bad King]

tmk wrote...

Thing about having people die under your command is that you'll likely always keep re-thinking if you could've done things in a way that didn't require them to die. If you cared about them of course, but then nothing specifically says that ruthless doesn't care. And nothing says War Hero never made a mistake...

Yeah I'm sure the War Hero also lost a lot of people- he rallies the occupants of the settlement to fight and lost a lot of them in the firefight.

[Nightwriter]

That's true. Ashley says, after Virmire, "How did you deal with all the people you lost at Elysium?" And Shepard can say something like, "I vowed to never let it happen again" or something.

[Prince Keldar]

One of my favorite combos is Colonist/War Hero.



After being one of the few survivors left after the attack on Mindoir, he will do anything to not let that happen again during the blitz.

[TuringPoint]

Quething wrote...

tmk wrote...

From the description, Ruthless is less about throwing people at it, and more about getting the job done with limited resources.

From just the description, yes - the description doesn't say anything about Torfan at all. It just talks in generalities about Shep's military career, calling her "cold, calculating, and brutal" and adding that her fellow soldiers are wary of her.
...
If so, it's equally damning, because the kind of psych profile you look for when you pick a solder to do that particular job... well, "efficiency" or "tactical brilliance" or "creative use of resources" are not the qualities you base your decision on. If Ruthless Shep also has those qualities, they're a) not the ones she demonstrates most often prior to Spectrehood, and not in evidence at Torfan.

The definition of a tactic is a plan for achieving a goal.  Resourcefulness is making use of what is available, in this context for achieving that goal.  Efficiency?  Maybe Shepard lost fewer lives than was imagined possible.  It does only say Shepard had a, "squad."  Who knows what the Batarian numbers were?  Perhaps the Alliance needed to keep the base intact, so they couldn't bomb it, but they didn't have time to besiege them without reliable knowledge of how long that would take, meanwhile taking those ships off of patrol.  So no, you did not think of every possibility here.

The Council itself encourages Shepard to ignore those in need if it accomplishes a mission, notably, on Feros.  This is what they look for in a Spectre.  Someone who achieves a goal, no matter what the cost.  Not stupidly or inefficiently, but using whatever it takes - resourcefulness, not always moral, but resourcefulness nonetheless.

However, I appreciate the contrasting opinion here... I'm not convinced the Ruthless background is all that great.

Modifié par Alocormin, 04 septembre 2010 - 09:40 .

[TuringPoint]

I go with Sole Survivor.

Why? Shepard survived a situation no one else in his unit could. If he is still service-ready after that, it proves Shepard is also unusually strong-willed and capable.  He is ready to face anything the universe throws at him, no matter how unexpected, more than a majority of those in the Alliance.

The War Hero background is the most "fun," I think. My own War Hero Shepard is someone who was at the wrong place at the wrong time and made the most of it, and who is ready to take on more responsibility for themselves than is ever necessary.

I see a lot of potential in a Ruthless background to have a Shepard that wants to make amends, or one who is traumatized and believes the reality of the universe is harsh and swift, one way or another, and is just trying to shape circumstance to be a little bit better.

Modifié par Alocormin, 04 septembre 2010 - 09:52 .

[Dr. Doctor]

Colonist/Ruthless Shepard seems a little like the premise behind Inglourious Basterds to me. That Shepard would be perusing the slavers and pirates out of vengeance for what was done to his family and in order to protect others that could have the same done to them rather than the welfare of his men. After seeing what happened to the people under his command when he let personal feelings get in the way of the objective that's where the cold, calculating demeanor came into play.



Plus losing people who mattered to him in both a personal and professional sense could instill a grim sense of realism into Shepard, showing him that in battle people die and that in order to keep that to a minimum discretion is key.



The end result in my mind is a Shepard who is implacable in his will to achieve any goal set before him and the experiences that he faced in the past mean that he is not idealistic in his views of the universe making this Shepard a good candidate for Spectrehood.



To me the only difference between Ruthless and War Hero is that the Shepard on Elysium got very lucky

[tmk]

Quething wrote...
You learn more about Torfan in-game, though, and it paints a less pragmatic picture. The codex entry says that "Nearly three-quarters of your own squad perished in the vicious close-quarters fighting, a cost you were willing to pay to make sure not a single slaver made it out of Torfan alive." The same entry very close to flat-out states that ground forces were entirely unneeded to begin with; Torfan was the last slaver stronghold, an underground bunker on a desolate moon, and the Alliance fleet had besieged it with overwhelming naval superiority.

Do you mean this entry:
"The final battle came when Alliance forces laid siege to Torfan, a slaver base built miles below the surface of a desolate moon. The superiority of the human fleet was wasted in the assault on the underground bunker, but you led a corps of elite ground troops into the heart of the enemy base."?

Because to me it seems like exactly the opposite - the base was miles(!) below the surface, and all the firepower of the Alliance fleet couldn't do spit to them. So, as usual, they had to send people in. Well, or have an entire fleet just sitting there in the middle of nowhere instead of, you know, patrolling the Alliance's borders and stuff.

Quething wrote...
The slavers had nowhere to go, no backup coming, and no resources to fight with. All Shep had to do was starve them out; her mission was to clear the Skyllian Verge of slavers and criminals, not personally slaughter every last one. Emily Wong's comment to Ruthless that she shot batarians who were trying to surrender has always struck me as particularly damning - Ruthless wasn't "getting the job done," she was revelling in bloodlust to the tactical detriment of the entire mission.

It's a matter of personal opinion, but it could be argued that the only certain way to clear the Verge of slavers is to personally slaughter every last one. In Mass Effect universe, it seems that even a handful of people can do a lot of damage. Like, you know, hijacking an asteroid or taking over a missile silo...

[Quething]

tmk wrote...

Because to me it seems like exactly the opposite - the base was miles(!) below the surface, and all the firepower of the Alliance fleet couldn't do spit to them. So, as usual, they had to send people in. Well, or have an entire fleet just sitting there in the middle of nowhere instead of, you know, patrolling the Alliance's borders and stuff.

You underestimate the effectiveness of space superiority against a planetbound force. If the fleet knows where the entrance is (and they obviously did, if they were able to send people in), than a single ship is all it takes to maintain an absolute seige. Anyone who tries to launch a ship from planetside has to get to the surface, and the second they do, anyone in orbit can drop a baseball-sized hunk of iron on them and wipe out a half-mile radius. So call it one frigate locking them down for a couple weeks, maybe a month if the slavers have water stockpiled, until they surrender. That's a fairly minimal resource investment against the lives of however many marines.

Though actually if they knew where the entrance was, they could have just dropped an asteroid on it. "Desolate moon" doesn't sound like a habitable planet, it wouldn't violate the Citadel Conventions to just glass it; even if that doesn't wreck the enemy base, it will collapse their egress and trap them down there, and hey, you want to make a statement about overwhelming force...

Come to think of it, though, this is all probably Major Kyle's call and not Shepard's at all, isn't it? Which actually does start to speak to her effective use of resources, if her objective was the lower-order "lead the ground team" rather than the higher-order "eliminate the base."

It's a matter of personal opinion, but it could be argued that the only certain way to clear the Verge of slavers is to personally slaughter every last one. In Mass Effect universe, it seems that even a handful of people can do a lot of damage. Like, you know, hijacking an asteroid or taking over a missile silo...

... well, fair point. Those competent marines on Nepmos who actually don't go under the minute a half-dozen mook bad guys show up are a notably unique phenomenon.

[tmk]

Quething wrote...
You underestimate the effectiveness of space superiority against a planetbound force. If the fleet knows where the entrance is (and they obviously did, if they were able to send people in), than a single ship is all it takes to maintain an absolute seige. Anyone who tries to launch a ship from planetside has to get to the surface, and the second they do, anyone in orbit can drop a baseball-sized hunk of iron on them and wipe out a half-mile radius. So call it one frigate locking them down for a couple weeks, maybe a month if the slavers have water stockpiled, until they surrender. That's a fairly minimal resource investment against the lives of however many marines.

You assume the base only had one obvious exit. And Torfan wasn't exactly in the middle of controlled territory. Leaving just one ship there would mean risking its whole crew (likely at least as many people as the ground team), not to mention the ship itself. And nothing says the base had limited supplies, with hydroponics they could have stayed bunkered down for months if not years...

Quething wrote...
Though actually if they knew where the entrance was, they could have just dropped an asteroid on it. "Desolate moon" doesn't sound like a habitable planet, it wouldn't violate the Citadel Conventions to just glass it; even if that doesn't wreck the enemy base, it will collapse their egress and trap them down there, and hey, you want to make a statement about overwhelming force...

Moving an actual asteroid is pretty major undertaking in both time and resources.

Quething wrote...
Come to think of it, though, this is all probably Major Kyle's call and not Shepard's at all, isn't it? Which actually does start to speak to her effective use of resources, if her objective was the lower-order "lead the ground team" rather than the higher-order "eliminate the base."

I don't think it was even Kyle's call, likely quite a few ranks higher up the chain of command. Kyle's decision was probably limited to picking the people for the mission.  Kyle took the losses pretty hard, too.

Modifié par tmk, 05 septembre 2010 - 02:56 .

[Quething]

tmk wrote...

And nothing says the base had limited supplies, with hydroponics they could have stayed bunkered down for months if not years...

Sure. Slavers always keep hydroponics farms in their secret bases.

Moving an actual asteroid is pretty major undertaking in both time and resources.

I was being somewhat euphemistic. A dreadnought or a handful of cruisers could glass a planet with their main guns if motivated, that's why it's such an issue to fight a space battle in front of a planet you care about. And the lore does seem to indicate a lot of time, manpower and ship power went into this campaign, certianly enough to field a number of cruisers. (Which is logically more time and resources than an asteroid drop would require, in fact; the fleet over Torfan with its vast naval superiority is thus implied to be one that only an Alliance-sized power could have fielded, while we're told, and shown, that asteroid drops are the tools of terrorists, "third-galaxy" nations, merc groups and other private corporations that have substantially fewer resources and can't build superluminally mobile railguns that fire nuclear-force weapons.)

Kyle might have been in charge, the Alliance seems to be weird that way. I mean, Anderson, who's the same rank, is privy to extremly high-level intel and decisions, and his voice has equal merit with the Admiral of the entire Fifth Fleet and the human ambassador to the Citadel Council. (Hell, a lowly Lieutenant Commander directed the whole conflict at the Battle of the Citadel.) And don't even try to figure out Chakwas. Could have been anybody giving the orders at Torfan.

[Homebound]

Colonist Sole Survivor ftw. My Shep's seen the worst, been through the worst, and is still going.

[PatrickCaspar]

From the description, Ruthless is less about throwing people at it, and more about getting the job done with limited resources. You could argue that War Hero didn't sacrifice anyone, but then WH held a defensive posture at a choke point, and Pressly mentions that the pirates were neither skilled nor equipped anywhere near as well as Alliance forces. And being a Spectre means going places and doing things, not waiting until enemies come to your well-fortified position.



Another interesting dynamic is that Ruthless' Renegade bonus actually means you can use Paragon more often and still keep a balanced character - and to me that makes more sense than being mostly Renegade War Hero (unless you're playing a cocky ****** of course).

[Repzik]

Dean_the_Young wrote...
Sole Survivor is almost a joke: you should have been dishonorably discharged, or at least still in therapy. Emotionally broken/traumatized people make poor soldiers to face the world.

Wait, what? Shepard should be dishonerably discharged because he survived? I think part of the point of Soul Survivor is that Shepard is till going, even after all that.

[Dean_the_Young]

Meant honorably. My bad.

[Repzik]

Ok, so that makes a lot more sense now.

[mopotter]

More often than not, my Shepard's are: Colonist - Shepard lost her family and vowed to do what she could to stop something like that from happening to others; War Hero - pretty much same reason; and towards the paragon side, but never totally. Once in awhile she will be Spacer, because I miss my mom and sole survivor but again more balanced than either extreme.

[HTTP 404]

luckily Mass Effect is a work of fiction. If it were to be true the obvious answer to who can only be the only one to save the galaxy is afterall, Chuck Norris.