190 réponses à ce sujet

[oldag07]

General User wrote...

In this case the “ignorance of the law” type explanation does work. 

First and foremost because the Citadel Conventions and Edicts aren’t laws, they’re conventions and edicts, until and unless the Systems Alliance signs on, they are not bound to accept them.

Second, and nearly as significant, ignorance IS an excuse. The Systems Alliance can no more be held to account of violating Citadel Council rules, than the turians could for violating the Geneva Conventions.

How long does it take to fire a warning shot? Or to arrest human explorers?  Or even to show oneself, surely the presence of aliens alone would eb enough of a shock that the humans would have stopped their work for oh, a minute or two.  Follow that up with a diplomatic envoy. Goodness, even the yahg got an envoy!

The turians actions during first contact were brutal, execessive, lazy,and worst of all stupid. They found ants at a picnic and reached for a sledgehammer.

Excessive, yes.  But back to the OP, yes, they would have beaten us badly had the war escalated into a war.  The majority of our population is on one planet.  One planetary bombardment would have decimated most of our species' population.  As it has been said:

"Truth is the first casualty of war" Hiram Johnson

[Dean_the_Young]

[quote]Arijharn wrote...

[quote]Dean_the_Young wrote...
Trust comes in many levels. Must of it can also be lost is a matter of years. Even though the rest of the Council 'trusts' the Turians, they were still raising humanity as a counterweight. [/quote]
Aren't you sort of arguing this point out of order? They may very well be seeking to raise humanity now as a counterpoint to the Turian Hierarchy, but weren't we discussing whether humanity had any chance at the time of the First Contact War as it happened? [/quote]Not quite: you're missing the important implications.

Even though the Council didn't undergo a worrying, frightening conflict with the Turians unilaterally waging an unprovoked war of aggression against another, worryingly dangerous race, they still quickly started seeking to counterbalance the Turians with that same dangerous race.

Imagine the concern if the Turians didn't step back, admit to a mistake, and turn it into a 'minor' incident? Again, the Council need not side with the Alliance openly with fleets and dreadnaughts, but to go with ways to limit and start restraining the Turians, while limiting the fallout  from themselves?

'Ah, Humanity, you might want to know the Turians are massing an invasion for this point at this time.' 'Ah, Humanity, just to build some trust, why don't you come to one of our worlds for some 'diplomatic negotiations'? Nothing else going on at all?' 'Ah, Humanity, we're worried that you might wrongly attack one of our worlds. Just so you know, we live in these sectors of space, while Turians might live here...'

To varrying levels. Not necessarily 'what's good for Humanity is good for the other Council races,' but 'what's good for the other Council races isn't necessarily good for the Turians.'


[quote]
The only unification that would happen is the nations getting fully behind the Systems Alliance, but maybe that too is just blind idealism on my part.

[quote]Well, that pretty much happened in the canon.

[quote]
The Terminus Systems would go on a heightened state of alert absolutely, but the only frenzy they'd go into is if their territories get invaded. The Terminus Systems may push the boundaries a bit, but I think they'd be more willing to see how the winds blow in case the Turian Hierarchy fully mobilized. Besides; as Omega shows, even there gets up to date news information, so it seems to me that they'd be able to tell as easily as anyone else that the Turian's aren't necessarily pointing their guns at them, but at an emerging threat somewhere else.[/quote]And what if they don't? What if the Turians, while already mobilized, decide they might as well take out the reoccuring problem of the Terminus while they have the momentum? What if the Terminus start to believe this? What if the Council believes this, or believes the Terminus believes this? If the Turians look to be preparing to go on the galactic warpath, the Terminus rallying and including Humanity in their number becomes increasingly possible.

Wars have a way of expanding beyond their initial participants for various reasons. You can look at the leadin from Afghanistan to Iraq, you could look at the Korean War expansion from North Korea to involving China, you could see from

And what about the
[quote]
If Humanity did hit a Council race world, I fail to see how that would make those council races more predisposed to forming an alliance with this new race at the expense of the Turian's for the simple fact that, as I mentioned before, Humanity is brand new (and in our hypothetical, have hit other worlds making it not just a Turian concern but a concern for all species) and if there's one thing that the Council has proven, they look out for themselves first, and at that moment; the Turian's are one of their own.[/quote]Hitting a Council world wouldn't. The needless threat of them doing so, however, can.

[quote]
But still no comment on that Geth/Sovereign idea I mentioned earlier, eh?

What? Fishing for comments? Never...

[/quote]
I didn't see any comments about it (I admit, I was somewhat skimming), but at that point in time how on Earth are they even relevant to... well, anything?

Geth are cloistered off in the Perseus Veil and Sovereign was probably hibernating. Sovereign was never interested in any particular race short of blowing us all up either. If Sovereign was awake, he was likely talkign to the Geth and saying: "HEY GUYZ, LIKE YOU I'M INORGANIC.... YOU KNOW, I CAN GIVE YOU YOUR FUTURE IF YOU WANT... ONLY IF YOU REALLY WANT IT THOUGH."

[/quote]Here the idea:

It isn't that Humanity is important and valuable and desired for ascension, but rather that if Humanity holds out for a time against the Turians, it could become a useful tool, and we know Sovereign's not above organic allies he can trick/manipulate. Rachni, for example: not just once, but twice. In this case, the Alliance is a proven military force who's warring against the exact same people holding the very place Sovereign wants to go. Even better, Humanity (might still) hold a planet with a Beacon Sovereign wants.


So Sovereign can go to the Geth 'hey Geth, let's PUNK the Humans. Just humor them,' and the Geth leave the Perseus Veil and start their war at the most opportune moment, claiming solidarity with the Humans as another race being genocided for doing nothing wrong, etc. etc. etc. Sounds reasonable, distracts/diverts the Turians, and gets the Alliance indebted with them. And the Alliance at this point is presumably desperate, and isn't going to ask too many hard questions either, and so goes along with it gratefully. If the Geth ask for a few favors to investiage Prothean ruins, maybe take some Alliance VIP's to their mothership to 'negotiate' (and said VIP's come back subtly indoctrinated and with a perfect deal), and soon Sovereign is coopting Humanity and accelerating its search for the Conduit... and when the time comes, it can have a manipulated/possibly indoctrinated-controlled Alliance supporting it's attack on the Citadel.

[TelexFerra]

Why did the Minbari surrender again?

[Bomb In My Pants]

Dean_the_Young wrote...

And if a hyperdrive or equivalent remains impossible?


Mind you, nothing stops conventional FTL travel by armadas. And, indeed, from the relays themselves, that's just what happens.

Yes, nothing stops FTL travel by fleets/armadas. But FTL in the ME universe is incredibly slow compared to other Sci-Fi universes. So, even if a race sent a fleet/armada after their enemy in FTL, it would still be a few years before they arrived. By that time, the rest of the fleet could have won the war by using the relays. 

[Randy1012]

TelexFerra wrote...

Why did the Minbari surrender again?

***SPOILERS FOR BABYLON 5***

During humanity's last-ditch effort to try and stop the Minbari from reaching Earth, one of the Minbari ships captured the Starfury piloted by Jeffrey Sinclair (the original lead character). When he got near...some magical crystal device of theirs, it registered as Sinclair carrying the soul of Valen, an ancient Minbari hero. So the Minbari came to believe that humans carried the reborn souls of past Minbari, and they called off the war because they thought they were killing their brethren. It later turned out that Sinclair wasn't actually Valen reincarnated, but Valen himself. He used a Minbari chrysalis device that made him half-Minbari, then traveled back in time to help the Minbari defeat the Shadows in ancient times.

Dang, now I wanna watch that show again.

[Arijharn]

Dean, because the the Terminus Systems I doubt would be as keen as to go to war with the Council races as much as the opposite. Individual groups might push the boundaries, but the Terminus Systems themselves aren't unified in purpose, which is what makes them not quite of a threat right now anyway.



Also, I don't think the Turian's are stupid enough to want to commit to full scale war with two different groups and potentially unify the two for the sake of it. The Turian's would also have strong support from the Batarian industry as well (who are well, basically humans but with a massive slave construction? industry).



As to your Geth/Sovereign hypothetical, it could happen, but I think it's a bit beyond the constraints of the original topic.



Even with 'innovative strategy' the human production capacity and the centric nature of it (obviously solely within the Sol System, and likely in close earth orbit at that) makes me think that as long as the Systems Alliance can mask Earth's location then we can offer straight up effective resistance, but as soon as (or if) they discover Earth, it's gg.



Maybe your minds eye is different, but when I think of the Turian fleet armada's I think of the Zentraedi battlefleet in orbit over Earth under the command of Admiral? Dolza (okay, that's probably a little obscure for some people, but essentially think colossal fleets that would put Xerxes' arrows to shame in Solar Eclipse capabilities). And unlike Earth in that situation, we might not necessarily have a giant reflex cannon on Luna, Lynn Minmei's ridiculous singing that could sow confusion, and probably not a huge rogue group of Turian's that'll throw their lot in with us, and probably not the SDF-1 either...

[Sajuro]

I don't think so, when the Turians fight they fight to make sure the other side isn't getting back up.

[Mnemnosyne]

It is unquestionable that the military might of the Turian Hierarchy would have crushed the fledgling Systems Alliance at that point in time, if the Council hadn't stepped in.  Sure, they had a distinct lack of information - that wouldn't work to humanity's advantage, that would work to humanity's detriment.  After getting pushed off Shanxi, the Turians would have sent several fleets to take on their new enemy, since they had no idea how big humans were or how large their fleet was.  Two or three command dreadnoughts, their entire support fleets, and a few scout flotillas.  Note that this would still be just a tiny portion of the entire Turian navy, but still considerably more than the humans had at that point in time.

After taking Shanxi again, they'd garrison the crap out of it and take their time to study whatever intelligence they can gather there, while their scouts do their thing.  It probably wouldn't take them more than a couple months to figure out the humans' star charts, and realize how small the human territories were.  The rest of their fleet would mobilize, crush the remainder of the human forces, and that would be that.

The reasoning for the Council to step in is an interesting thing to explore though.  The idea that the Asari and the Salarians wanted someone to balance out the Turians might not be far off.  Another simple observation is the fact that at the time, the Turians and the Council didn't have any idea how big the humans were.  The Turians are always ready for war, it's pretty clear they don't back down, but the Asari and the Salarians quickly realized that without any way of knowing how powerful this new species was, offering peace was an entirely beneficial proposition.  If they were too small to worry about (as they turned out to be) no harm would be done.  If they were big, they just saved the Council species from a long and costly war that they may well have lost.  And if they weren't willing to deal, then there would be little to nothing lost from the peace attempt.  So from their position, offering peace was a wholly beneficial move.

[General User]

It’s possible; one of the virtues of the asari and salarian peoples is that they tend to consider options other than violence as a means of resolving conflict. The flaw in that analysis that it assumes the interests of the three Council races coincide, they do not. The turians want to be the big dog, the asari and salarians will go along only if they hold the leash. If the dog breaks his collar (starts random, pointless, costly) wars, they will try everything in their power to restrain him (for asari that’s diplomacy, for the salarians espionage). But if that doesn’t work, if the Council’s prize attack dog cannot be controlled, or worse, turns and bites them, they will put him down, they’ve done it before.



If we’re theorizing strategy, then why would humanity even defend Shanxi when oh, so invincible main turian fleet arrives?



Among Western militaries (which the Systems Alliance Navy seems to be predominantly influenced by), evacuating non-combatants from war zones is standard practice. If the SA Navy followed that practice, the turian Grand Fleet would find no colony to take, only another garden-world who’s air, they could breath, and water they could drink, but whose food they could not eat, that and whatever ships or units of the SA Navy that Alliance High Command deemed appropriate.



The realities of FTL combat in Mass Effect favor the offense only when the defense has something they are unwilling to lose. A deserted (or, even more callously, a populated) colony world is not something the Systems Alliance as a whole would be unwilling to lose. The humans take advantage of either their interior position and/or preparedness, and the hitherto unstoppable Grand Fleet begins to die the death of a thousand cuts. Can the turian fleet make it to Earth before it dies of blood loss, or secondary infection?



And would taking Earth even end the war? Humans were activating mass relays of their own initiative, refuge colonies (even in sectors of the galaxy far distant from Earth) of which the turians are completely unaware are a distinct possibility.



And even if the turians are somehow able, by some magic, to divine the location of those refuges there’s one more rub: if humans “close the door behind them”, deactivating mass relays after passing through, the only way the turians could follow is by reactivating them! How would that play on the Council? The turians start a brutal, costly, and pointless war, and the only way to end it is to do the exact same thing they started the war to stop the humans from doing!

[Mnemnosyne]

As far as we are aware, there is no way to deactivate a mass relay once it's been activated. That's the entire reason for the Council policy of not activating unknown relays, because once you open that gate, you can't close it again and you get a potentially bad situation like the Rachni wars. If deactivating a mass relay were possible, the Council would simply have turned it back off and stopped the Rachni from invading that way.

[General User]

Unless the Rachni turned it back on...


Besides, if relays can't be deactivated, how then did they get turned off in the first place?

Modifié par General User, 28 novembre 2010 - 04:31 .

[Mnemnosyne]

It is indirectly suggested that the reapers deactivate most of them after finishing their cleanup, leaving key ones active so that the next species to gain spacefaring technology can find its way to the Citadel.  It could also be that they automatically shut down after not being used for a certain length of time (probably for several millenia).

There is the one known instance of relays being deactivated: when Saren takes control of the Citadel he shuts down all the relays around it to prevent reinforcements from coming in, then Shepard reactivates them.  A good question would be whether the Council now has access to those controls or not.  The program Vigil gave Shepard to override the Citadel was indicated to not last long, but we don't really know whether, with the master control console now accessible, the Council scientists have been able to access any more of the Citadel's functions or not.  It is clearly indicated to be the control center for the entire relay network.

[Dean_the_Young]

Arijharn wrote...

Dean, because the the Terminus Systems I doubt would be as keen as to go to war with the Council races as much as the opposite. Individual groups might push the boundaries, but the Terminus Systems themselves aren't unified in purpose, which is what makes them not quite of a threat right now anyway.

Whether they want to is different from whether they feel they must. The Terminus does unify in the face of the Council: it's their defining trait and commonality despite the chaos and differences.

And remember: whether the Terminus actually does do this is irrelevant to the point of the Salarians/Asari compared to whether the Turians reckless actions can make this happen. It's the plausible threat of the danger as much as anything else that makes deterence so realistic.

Also, I don't think the Turian's are stupid enough to want to commit to full scale war with two different groups and potentially unify the two for the sake of it. The Turian's would also have strong support from the Batarian industry as well (who are well, basically humans but with a massive slave construction? industry).

At the same time? I would agree, unless they thought they really could do it. Sequentially, piece by piece? That's how a lot of wars expand. Once the momentum of ability and will are present, it's easier to carry on.

[Mangalores]

People overestimate the First Contact War. It was a brief clash of forces with less than 1000 casualties. In real life peace studies this doesn't even qualify the term "war" (as it is often defined by more than 1000 deaths per year through violant conflict).

EDIT: Well, it were 1200 deaths or a little more so it actually was a smallish war. But in terms of resources invested and scope it was still more of a border clash than anything.

As such it might have proven that humanity has competitive military doctrine and some surprises up their sleeve but says nothing about available warfighting potential. For all we know a single Turian battlefleet could have decided the conflict because all we saw were a bunch of Turian border units clashing with humanity's full on counter offensive and being forced into a retreat which was the point at which the Turians switched from treating that an everyday matter and started activating more fleet units (which draw the attention of the Council) meaning they hadn't actually flexed their muscles, yet, while mankind did.

That's a bit like natives beating up a European colonial expedition. The whole tribe rallies to a call to arms while the European governments wouldn't even know that there is a war on and would even consider sending reinforcements only an increased police action without tapping into any of the potential they used in ww1.

The whole affair was more of a prestige boost than an actual challenge or conflict for mankind and a calamity for the Turians mainly because they now have to listen to snide how their awesome military was set back (a bit what the US constantly has to listen to every time something happens although it did exactly nothing in changing the balance of power in a particular conflict or overall).

Modifié par Mangalores, 28 novembre 2010 - 11:40 .

[Arijharn]

I don't think the full extent of the (Turian) casualties is known. I know what is published, but that doesn't ring true for the simple fact that it wouldn't make sense for the staid council races of the Salarian's and Asari so quickly pushing for peace with this emergent species.



I think that while General Williams surrendered the garrison, there was a degree of guerilla warfare waged upon the Turian's, and I think the Turian's suffered relatively badly from it. Also, because the Turian's have social customs against the photographing of their dead, then I think it's unlikely that the official Turian toll is accurate, for the simple reason it can't be independently verified.



If the System's Alliance so effectively kicked the Turian's onto their collective asses with only a minimal amount of exposure to 'space warfare tactics' then I think that further reinforces the rush that the other Council races experienced to quell this burgeoning conflict and get a sit down happening.

[Mnemnosyne]

I would say that the main reason they pushed for peace is as I said above: there were risks in not pushing for peace, but no downside to a peace treaty.  They had little information on this new species, so consider the possibilities:

Possibility: Humans turn out to have a huge and powerful empire.
In this case, if the Council doesn't push for peace, they find themselves locked in a massive war that has the potential to see them defeated.  Who knows, it could be a repeat of the Rachni Wars all over again.  By suing for peace they get diplomatic contact with a new great power, and Citadel space expands significantly.  There is a slight risk in that humans may use the diplomatic contact to learn more about them, then attack, but this risk is small compared to the possibility that humans will simply turn out to be a major power and bring a massive war on Council space.

Possibility: Humans turn out to have a tiny, insignificant empire that the Turians could have crushed easily.
In this event (what actually happened), the move for peace has no major negative effects on the Asari or Salarians.  The only negative effect is that the Turians don't gain a new vassal state, basically.  This is probably a win for the Asari and Salarians, even, who probably don't want the Turians getting any more powerful.

Possibility: Humans turn out to be extremely hostile and not open to peace negotiations.
The Asari and Salarians lose little to nothing.  They may lose a point or something with the Turians, but they can easily make up for this by following up with full support in defeating the humans.  Asking for peace and having it refused has no real downside here.

So, far from not making sense to push for peace with humans, it makes complete sense to do so, and there is almost no disadvantage to asking for peace in this situation.