86 réponses à ce sujet

[Autoclave]

yeah yeah, if they had these shortcuts to our galaxy why didn't they use them sooner? Why wait for the events of ME1 and ME2 to finally say, ok lets use our backup.



Everything that came after ME1 has been a massive plot hole.

[Captain_Justin]

play and complete mass effect 2, duh... you'll have your answer then...

[Chessrook44]

Googlesaurus wrote...

Chessrook44 wrote...

I'd have to rule out the "They Flew" option on the basis of physics in general.  From the view shown, the reapers were dozens, if not hundereds of light years away from the galaxy.  The Relays would be able to get them here pretty quickly, but without the Relays there's NO way that they can get here without breaking the laws of physics, unless the whole "We see the whole galaxy" thing was artistic license and they're really much closer.

Uh, FTL flight and mass effect fields break the laws of physics on a daily basis. 

Not sure about break, but bend at least.  Sure they do things beyond what is known for the Laws of Physics, but even they have limits, like in just how much faster than light they can go.

You are right in that FTL drives could get them there faster, but I suppose I was thinking it couldn't get them here THIS fast.

[Chessrook44]

Autoclave wrote...

yeah yeah, if they had these shortcuts to our galaxy why didn't they use them sooner? Why wait for the events of ME1 and ME2 to finally say, ok lets use our backup.

Everything that came after ME1 has been a massive plot hole.

Reapers: Oh crap, a race actually KILLED one of us again.  Alright, let's wipe them out before we go there just to be safe, make sure they don't kill another of us.

[CARL_DF90]

Well, considering the last ME novel took place in 2186 it is reasonable to assume that a bit more time would have passed between the two. We'll see what happens when more of the bridging DLC comes out.

[amillian]

Everyone realizes that will mass effect technology you can go ftl right?

[Chessrook44]

L.Aendrus wrote...

The Local Cluster is also at the edge of one of the arms of the Milky Way. They don't have to travel deeply into it.

Depends on which arm they're closest to.  They may only need to go to the closest arm, or they may need to cross the entire bloody galaxy.

[MaaZeus]

L.Aendrus wrote...

The Local Cluster is also at the edge of one of the arms of the Milky Way. They don't have to travel deeply into it.

True. Perhaps Reapers got lucky and came from direction which lead directly to us. And since humanity is both pain in the ass AND valuable, might aswell as leave few hundred Reapers to cause havoc while rest keep going at the citadel if that is still their goal.

Modifié par MaaZeus, 13 décembre 2010 - 06:19 .

[Tron Evolution]

everything is running because of reapers. without it, mass effect world doesn't exist. I say a big plot hole. I guess that there is another machine race in universe. they could find reapers for fuel as well. why not? if this is the whole plot hole.

[Alerus2]

The time it took them isn't an issue at all. Lets play with numbers.

We will assume that the time gap from ME2 to ME3 is two years. We know that FTL exists in the ME universe, it's how ships get to nearby systems. To give a lower bound of the Reaper speed, we can look at how fast the galaxy races can go at FTL, which according to the ME wikia, is about 12 light years per day [EDIT: I originally wrote 12 dozen, when I just meant 12... or dozen ). The speed and length of time it can be used depends on the size of the Mass Effect drive. Since this speed varies, we can safely assume that Reapers may have better FTL than the galaxy races.

Okay, now we want to look at how far the Reapers are from the galaxy. The galaxy itself is 100,000 light years in diameter. The nearest galaxy to ours is 25,000 from Earth, or 42,000 light years from our galactic center. If we also incorporate the image provided of the Reapers approach to the Milky Way, we will notice that the galaxy actually looks pretty big to them, suggesting they aren't that far off. Based on all these figures, I think suggesting that they are ~20,000 light years away from the edge of the galaxy (or the closest Mass relay) is reasonable.

The question then, is how fast would they have to go to reach the galaxy in two years, and is this within reason with the lower bound FTL speed that we know of for the galaxy races? At 20,000 light years away, assuming it took 2 years, they would have to go at ~27 light years per day. This is only 2.2 times faster than the average FTL speed of the galaxy races! This is by no means out of reason for the Reapers' capabilities.


The follow up question, is of course why didn't the Reapers just do this to begin with? Why bother with the citadel trap? There are two primary answers for this.

1. It takes lots of fuel to run FTL for two years, and they may not want to do this because it puts them at an unnecessary disadvantage for the upcoming battle.

2. If they go straight to the citadel, they can not only make a surprise attack, but completely neutralize communication between planets preventing any possibility of a formed counter attack. The odds are probably usually in the Reaper's favor regardless of this, but why risk it if you don't have to? Additionally, even if they could guarantee that they would win by an overwhelming amount, a less effective attack may mean a casualty or two. Coupling this with the fact that Reapers seem to pick at most one Race to uplift a cycle (and sometimes none), even a casualty rate of two Reapers per attack would be devastating and ultimately result in the extinction of the Reapers. Their attack simply must be stellar otherwise they guarantee their eventual extinction.

So, as it is, I'm seeing no plot hole here.

Modifié par Alerus2, 13 décembre 2010 - 07:14 .

[AlexXIV]

Alerus2 wrote...

The time it took them isn't an issue at all. Lets play with numbers.

We will assume that the time gap from ME2 to ME3 is two years. We know that FTL exists in the ME universe, it's how ships get to nearby systems. To give a lower bound of the Reaper speed, we can look at how fast the galaxy races can go at FTL, which according to the ME wikia, is about 12 dozen light years per day. The speed and length of time it can be used depends on the size of the Mass Effect drive. Since this speed varies, we can safely assume that Reapers may have better FTL than the galaxy races.

Okay, not we want to look at how far the Reapers are from the galaxy. The galaxy itself is 100,000 light years in diameter. The nearest galaxy to ours is 25,000 from Earth, or 42,000 light years from our galactic center. If we also incorporate the image provided of the Reapers approach the Milky Way, we will notice that the Galaxy actually looks pretty big to them, suggesting they aren't that far off. Based on all these figures, I think suggesting that they are ~20,000 light years away from the edge of the galaxy (or the closest Mass relay) is reasonable.

Then question then, is how fast would they have to go to reach the Galaxy in two years, and is this within reason with the lower bound of FTL which we know of for the galaxy races? At 20,000 light years away assuming it took 2 years, they would have to go at 27 light years per day. This is only 2.2 times faster than the FTL speed of the galaxy races! This is by no means out of the reason for the Reapers to do.


The follow up question, is of course why didn't the Reapers just do this to begin with? There are two primary answers for this.

1. It takes lots of fuel to run FTL for two years, and they may not want to do this because it puts them at an unnecessary disadvantage for the upcoming battle.

2. If they go straight to the citadel, they can not only make a surprise attack, but completely neutralize communication between planets preventing any possibility of a formed counter attack. The odds are probably usually in the Reaper's favor regardless of this, but why risk it if you don't have to? Additionally, even if they would still dominate, and less effective attack may mean a casualty or two. Coupling this with the fact that Reapers seem to pick at most one Race to uplift a cycle (and sometimes none), even a casualty rate of two Reapers per attack would be devastating and ultimately result in the extinction of the Reapers. Their attack simply must be stellar otherwise they guarantee their eventual extinction.

So, as it is, I'm seeing no plot hole here.

You're pretty smart for a chicken.

Only that we don't know how far they would have to travel from 'Darkspace' which I assume is pretty far. Also the question if they travel for 2 years can they go straight on topspeed without breaks or anything? They probably don't need to sleep but maybe maintenance or something?

[Chessrook44]

Thank you Alerus, I'd say that solves the issue nicely. I've never been good with estimation and such, and didn't know the numbers of the speeds of the FTL drives and so on. The angry lamprey is no longer chewing on the back of my brain now.

[Knottedredloc]

Reapers got to Earth fast by jumping the shark.

[Alerus2]

AlexXIV wrote...

You're pretty smart for a chicken.

Only that we don't know how far they would have to travel from 'Darkspace' which I assume is pretty far. Also the question if they travel for 2 years can they go straight on topspeed without breaks or anything? They probably don't need to sleep but maybe maintenance or something?

Thanks We don't know how far they are in dark space, but that's why I give what seems like a reasonable estimate of ~20,000 light years based on universal statistics and the images provided at the end of ME2. I feel the confidence interval on that estimate is reasonable enough such that it won't greatly affect the conclusions.

The maintenance and fuel are quite possibly concerns for them, and that is precisely one of the reasons why I think this would be an undesirable strategy which is relegated to a back up plan—hence the original ME1 citadel plan. 

Chessrook44 wrote...

Thank you Alerus, I'd say that solves the issue nicely. I've never been good with estimation and such, and didn't know the numbers of the speeds of the FTL drives and so on. The angry lamprey is no longer chewing on the back of my brain now.

No problem; it's what happens when you don't want to do your real work

Modifié par Alerus2, 13 décembre 2010 - 07:12 .

[Annihilator27]

Knottedredloc wrote...

Reapers got to Earth fast by jumping the shark.

Lmao, Nice. The Reapers are are just there.

[Urazz]

Alerus2 wrote...

AlexXIV wrote...

You're pretty smart for a chicken.

Only that we don't know how far they would have to travel from 'Darkspace' which I assume is pretty far. Also the question if they travel for 2 years can they go straight on topspeed without breaks or anything? They probably don't need to sleep but maybe maintenance or something?

Thanks We don't know how far they are in dark space, but that's why I give what seems like a reasonable estimate of ~20,000 light years based on universal statistics and the images provided at the end of ME2. I feel the confidence interval on that estimate is reasonable enough such that it won't greatly affect the conclusions.

The maintenance and fuel are quite possibly concerns for them, and that is precisely one of the reasons why I think this would be an undesirable strategy which is relegated to a back up plan—hence the original ME1 citadel plan. 

Exactly, my thoughts as well.  Why would they use the ME1  citadel plan if fuel/energy wasn't a concern.  Hell, they could have a good enough FTL drive to get to the galaxy in a fast enough time but it would leave them drained and more vulnerable to counter attack.  We truly don't know exactly what kind of technology the Reapers have so it is possible.  We know about one weapon they have, they have big mass effect fields, and they are able to land on planets.

[Eternalist]

I'm not so sure about all of this. Perhaps what we saw in the recent trailer was but a glimpse into what could happen in Mass Effect 3, if you don't gather enough allies in the time allotted (fable 3, anyone?) . Not wishing to expend his allies to easily, Shepard is forced to turn his back on Earth.



Or maybe there are Reapers scattered through the Galaxy already, sealed in hibernation until needed as a backup. Of course, that would beg the question "why didn't Nazara use them before". I suppose we won't get details on any of this until the later reveals by Bioware.

[Wiggs Magee]

Alithinos wrote...

Dionkey wrote...

DarthCaine wrote...

They have super advanced technology. And besides, ME3 takes place at least 2 years after ME2. And it's safe to say that the Reapers have been traveling since ME1.

2 years? I never heard about this.

BioWare placed the events of ME2 two years later than the events of ME1,because ME2 took 2 years to come out after ME1.
They did that to make the world of the game seem more alive and believable.
So I assume that the other poster assumed that BioWare will do the same with ME3.

So if this is true it means you have totatlly skipped the recruiting the races to your cause, which to me would seem like a pretty major aspect of ME3

[Shotokanguy]

It's a teaser trailer people. I highly doubt we can form any accurate ideas of the plot from it.

[scarface71795]

Alerus2 wrote...

The time it took them isn't an issue at all. Lets play with numbers.

We will assume that the time gap from ME2 to ME3 is two years. We know that FTL exists in the ME universe, it's how ships get to nearby systems. To give a lower bound of the Reaper speed, we can look at how fast the galaxy races can go at FTL, which according to the ME wikia, is about 12 light years per day [EDIT: I originally wrote 12 dozen, when I just meant 12... or dozen ). The speed and length of time it can be used depends on the size of the Mass Effect drive. Since this speed varies, we can safely assume that Reapers may have better FTL than the galaxy races.

Okay, now we want to look at how far the Reapers are from the galaxy. The galaxy itself is 100,000 light years in diameter. The nearest galaxy to ours is 25,000 from Earth, or 42,000 light years from our galactic center. If we also incorporate the image provided of the Reapers approach to the Milky Way, we will notice that the galaxy actually looks pretty big to them, suggesting they aren't that far off. Based on all these figures, I think suggesting that they are ~20,000 light years away from the edge of the galaxy (or the closest Mass relay) is reasonable.

The question then, is how fast would they have to go to reach the galaxy in two years, and is this within reason with the lower bound FTL speed that we know of for the galaxy races? At 20,000 light years away, assuming it took 2 years, they would have to go at ~27 light years per day. This is only 2.2 times faster than the average FTL speed of the galaxy races! This is by no means out of reason for the Reapers' capabilities.


The follow up question, is of course why didn't the Reapers just do this to begin with? Why bother with the citadel trap? There are two primary answers for this.

1. It takes lots of fuel to run FTL for two years, and they may not want to do this because it puts them at an unnecessary disadvantage for the upcoming battle.

2. If they go straight to the citadel, they can not only make a surprise attack, but completely neutralize communication between planets preventing any possibility of a formed counter attack. The odds are probably usually in the Reaper's favor regardless of this, but why risk it if you don't have to? Additionally, even if they could guarantee that they would win by an overwhelming amount, a less effective attack may mean a casualty or two. Coupling this with the fact that Reapers seem to pick at most one Race to uplift a cycle (and sometimes none), even a casualty rate of two Reapers per attack would be devastating and ultimately result in the extinction of the Reapers. Their attack simply must be stellar otherwise they guarantee their eventual extinction.

So, as it is, I'm seeing no plot hole here.

mfw this shuts everyone up:lol:

[snfonseka]

They don't have to fly all the way to Earth. All they need a mass relay and there may be some mass relays in outer rim.

[NathanKlo]

Can we keep logic out of this? I liked the idea of ingesting spice and folding space/time.

[Kidd]

*claps hands for Alerus2*

Sounds great!

[CARL_DF90]

Well, considering the Reapers built the relay network they would know the position of every one in the galaxy so really all they have to do in FTL to the Mass Relay closest to their arrival in the galaxy. After that it is just a matter of going from relay to relay until they reach Earth.