1062 réponses à ce sujet

[Someone With Mass]

And what stops us from doing the same hit-and-run tactic?

[Moiaussi]

Saphra Deden wrote...

Moiaussi wrote...

Logistics only kill us if the Citadel falls, and we know from ME1 that the Reapers actually have to dock to acheive that.

We'll die a lot faster if the Citadel falls, but we'll still lose either way. Read my first post again.

Re-read it. My opinion hasn't changed.

The Quarians proved that in the absolute worst case, you can become a 'rag tag fugitive fleet' and survive. The Reapers could literally chase forever, but that becomes problematic for them if they are on any sort of time scale.

You also seem to assume that the Reapers are only here to eliminate. If that was true, you would have a stronger point, but the reality is (per ME2) that they are here to harvest. Have you considered that if they fail to do so it could be bad for them in some way? If you rely on crops in RL and all your crops fail, you go hungry, and if you can't find an alternative food source in time you starve and you die.

The fact that the Reapers need to 'reap' means they do have places to defend. Again, we are their supply. The longer the war goes on, the better our odds of finding a countermeasure, just as was occured in the Rachni war and the Krogan rebellions.

Personally I'd go so far as to say that if we develop a counter to indoctrination, the Reapers cannot win. It would allow us to ensure that we had a 'clean' population to flee with, and send enough such colony ships out, each maintaining communications silence and setting arbitrary courses decided upon by the respective captains, there is no real way for the Reapers to follow. They would either have to give chase everywhere and forever, or when they go back into hibernation, we would have 50,000 years to advance while they stagnate.

And if they have no supply issues, why the hibernation?

[Heimdall]

I'm fairly sure we'll have to end up finding somekind of device or something that makes it possible to destroy the Reapers. Like a virus (Bleh), or a ship built from the husk of a dead Reaper that has been rebuilt by a Prothean AI since the last cycle to be powerful enough to take on the Reaper fleets? (Eh)

Note: It may be worthy to note that, even if the Reapers use such hit and run tactics, we can replace our ships, they cannot.

[Moiaussi]

Oh, and of course if we control the Citadel, we can presumably reverse the connection and send fleets to their home systems. We can also pretend not to be able to control the relays and then trap reapers in an infinite loop between two or more relays. Or shoot them into black holes.

That wouldn't get all of them, but it would get some.

[dragonflight288]

I agree with realism. In order to go with all those options would require massive resources on our side. Theoretically it can happen should the galaxy unite, but as I said earlier, the Council absolutely refuses to believe the Reapers exist, so they are completely unprepared. Humans and Batarians hate each other's guts. Quarians and Geth can barely maintain a ceasefire, especially since the Admiralty board is considering war.

The Reapers have several things on their side. Advanced technology. They designed the mass relays so they know the technology better than us, especially since the Council forbids studying the Keepers. Very large numbers. Each one is exceptionally powerful. Indoctrination. Unless the galaxy finds a cure or a preventative measure, that's their best weapon against us. And they are united as a group for whatever motivates them.

What we've got going for us is we have several tricks up our sleeves the Reapers never faced before. They always attacked the Citadel first and shut down the relays. They can't do that thanks to the Protheans. That means for the first time they have to face an entire galaxy, not individual star systems. Several people (not the stupid ones) have listened to Shepard and know what to expect.

Another thing we've got is creativity. Reapers are just basically advanced AI nations per ship. But an A.I. will only take logical actions and conclusions. EDI states this in ME2. If we act outside of rational and logical tactics (General Lee in American Civil War being an example) the Reapers have no idea what to expect because we're outside their logic.

The scales are tipped in their favor, but this is the best chance the galaxy has.

[hussein95]

four words M-920 Cain.

[hussein95]

dragonflight288 wrote...

Another thing we've got is creativity. Reapers are just basically advanced AI nations per ship. But an A.I. will only take logical actions and conclusions. EDI states this in ME2. If we act outside of rational and logical tactics (General Lee in American Civil War being an example) the Reapers have no idea what to expect because we're outside their logic.

The scales are tipped in their favor, but this is the best chance the galaxy has.

Unfortunately Robert E. Lee lost the American Civil War. And no matter how much creativity you have there is no way that shep can unite the galaxy in time to defeat an army that is the equivalent of thousands of dreadnoughts.

[dragonflight288]

Yes, but he only lost after his pride got in the way at Gettysburg. That's when the tables turned. His tactics were still exceptional. He was easily the best general in the war. The fact that he lost shows that even the best generals can't win all the time.

that, and the south just didn't have the economy to handle a long war without relying on britain, which couldn't send them supplies because of the union blockade.

And yes, those kinds of tactics won't work on Reapers long term, I was only trying to point out that even smaller numbers can kick larger numbers butts if used right.

Modifié par dragonflight288, 20 mai 2011 - 03:55 .

[colossus50000]

Wouldnt the game be so awesome if we had a "give up" option, i can see it now...

Garrus: Shepard, the Reapers have taken over earth whats the next step, whats the plan?

Shepard: ughhhh... ummm... i really dont... i dont know just sit here and wait to see what happens. has any one actually tried talking to them, they just want to get rid of us. so let them.

GAME OVER

thanks for playing Mass effect

Credits roll...

[hussein95]

dragonflight288 wrote...

Yes, but he only lost after his pride got in the way at Gettysburg. That's when the tables turned. His tactics were still exceptional. He was easily the best general in the war. The fact that he lost shows that even the best generals can't win all the time.

that, and the south just didn't have the economy to handle a long war without relying on britain, which couldn't send them supplies because of the union blockade.

And yes, those kinds of tactics won't work on Reapers long term, I was only trying to point out that even smaller numbers can kick larger numbers butts if used right.

At best all we can hope is to give the reapers a good fight and that probably will not last long. unless there is a supre-weapon at disposal all we can do is sink a few reapers before we inevitably perish and help future species.

[Moiaussi]

Saphra Deden wrote...

Here is a fact you are forgetting: the quarians are NOT surviving!

They are dying. Slowly, but surely, their fleet is crumbling from within and in another three centuries (or much less than that) it will be gone entirely. Furthermore, the Migrant Fleet does not exist in a vacuum.

There is still a galactic civilization all around them that has conveniently built fuel stations, mining outposts, and factories that they can make use of.

              Citation needed with respect to the state of the Quarian fleet. While you do have a point regarding the lack of other civilizations, we shouldn't have to run forever either. As long as we keep transmissions tight beam, space is really really big and finding us isn't as easy as you make it out ot be.

Here's another problem for us as the Reapers destroy our settled worlds: we'll be unable to conduct research and development on new technologies.

More and more great mines will be killed off as well as the critical infrastructure needed to conduct experiments and develop new weapons. Even if new technologies are developed they'll have no way of mass producing or deploying them.

  This hasn't stopped the Quarians at all. The ability to strip mine surface minerals on the fly is not particularly high tech. Consider how many ore bodies Shepard finds on the surface in ME1 essentially just by driving around in the Mako and looking. In ME2, the Normandy seems to be capable of its own mining operations, obtaining enough resources for the development of significant upgrades on the fly.

I don't assume the Reapers are only here to eliminate everybody. They are here to harvest us, but everyone else is fair game. They'll destroy the other races completely, in the end. When it comes to harvesting us though they still have a lot of leeway in how to go about it. They could wipe out 95% of our species and then breed us for many generations to acquire the appropriate number of humans to build a Reaper.

Though wiping us out so thoroughly isn't necessary. They don't need to kill us, just prevent us from resisting. The objective in war isn't really to kill the enemy, it is to enforce your will. By bombing our major cities and military bases they will render us completely helpless but the majority of our species will be intact. They can do this with the other races too and then finish them off much later.

Their first priority is just to demolish our ability to make war and they can do this easily. They've got all the advantages.

 
They can't simply hit and run everything though. Not if we control the relays. To hit anything they have to subject themselves to return fire. We already have newer, more effective weapons and that is merely what is leaked to us or developed by us in a little lab on the Normandy. You really think that noone else has made any advancements in that time? Even if they don't believe the Reapers are coming, research is still happening.

Well I hope you saved the base than and that this whole Cerberus thing is just a misunderstanding.

The reason Reapers hibernate is because in darkspace there is very little energy beyond the odd hydorgen atom. There is especially no place for them to discharge their drive cores. Within the Milky Way however that is obviously not the case.

Whether I saved the base or not, I saved the data from it. It is funny how the keep/destroy decision is treated by so many as all or nothing. And you are missing the point regarding hibernating. Why do they retreat at all rather than simply mange their crop in a hands-on manner?

[Eternalist]

Come on, really? Seasons don't fear the reaper, nor the wind, sun or the rain.

Why should we?

[dragonflight288]

There is nothing to hit and run against. We have cities to defend and the enemy does not. Our system survives as a monetary economy, theirs does not.

At most the Reapers will need to locate sources of fuel and energy, but they won't need to hold onto those sources as strongly as we will. Their bigger mass effect cores grant them a great deal more freedom than even our largest ships. Not to mention they will surley have a greater knowledge of the galaxy than we will, meaning they'll about all the dormant mass relays and all the unsurveyed star systems. It will be much easier for them to set-up any staging grounds than it will be for us.

I just thought of a new argument that supports it is possible to defeat the Reapers. They are coming to harvest all life. That means they can't just destroy everything. Each individual Reaper will need a massive amount of fuel and resources to maintain themselves in battle. That's a lot of Reapers. They will HAVE to form a base to gather resources, likely run by the indoctrinated. They don't have unlimited energy and their numbers will require massive resources.

That means there will be targets to hit. There will be supply lines. And as the reapers are giant machines, they will need to repair themselves. Making a greater need for resources. If they get broken or damaged, they can't keep running in space. They will have to stop.

[Moiaussi]

Saphra Deden wrote...

We can't run forever. We'll eventually run out of the materials and infrastructure to repair our ships. The Reapers will find us, all it will take is time, and they have an infinite amount of it.

That's why they are a galactic superpower. Also, where do you think they get the equipment to strip-mine with in the first place? Why do you think they're always scouring the galaxy for junk?

The writing is on the wall here. Please read it.

You strip mine something, but then you also have to refine it and turn it into a usable product.

The Quarians aren't a superpower because they lost most of their population, so they are behind on pop, and because they are staying within Council space rather than risking setting up shop outside it. They also are treating re-settlement as all or nothing rather than finding a few suitable remote worlds and 'seeding' colonies.

Refining and manufacturing are not anywhere near as tough as you make them out to be. Consider that the Normandy, which I point out is a frigate and not a dedicated factory ship, is quite capable of refining the ore it gathers, and not just developing new tech from it but fabricating the parts and implementing said tech.

All that they are managing on the fly, as a frigate.

How will you control the relays? Unless you master the Citadel that isn't happening. That's also hoping that the Reapers can't manipulate relays directly.

They do not have to subject themselves to much return fire at all. They can drop in and fire off rounds in a few minutes or less. That isn't enough time to locate them, target them, and engage them. That's the entire point behind hit and run. It's what makes it successful.

 
We know that the Reapers cannot remotely control the Citadel. We also know that Shepard had a control program at he end of ME1. It seems reasonable to conclude that would have been studied after the fact. At the very least the Council learned that such a program can exist and where the interface is. It is plausable that we could indeed have that control available in ME3, or that it will become available in ME3.

Moiaussi wrote...

I saved the data from it.

[citation needed]

Whether you save or destroy the base, EDI scans the base's computer core. Among other things, she finds information to suggest that there are no additional Collector ships and she obtains an image of Harbinger (you can see the image on a datapad near the end). It is reasonable to conclude she got more than just pretty pictures.

[Bad King]

Saphra Deden wrote...

Seriously, it can't be done. Let me give you a run down of why we can't possibly hope to be victorious in this war.

Firstly, as the codex will tell you, in space-borne combat the combatants can flee at any time. If at any point one side feels it is losing the battle it can turn tale and run away. It can do this infinitely. This is especially true of the Reapers.

There is a key difference between us and the Reapers though. Any enemy we fight will, somewhere, have some sort of planet/moon/asteroid based assets to defend. Thus we can assault their planets to earn a victory if we must.

With the Reapers however this is not so. They have no planetary assets that they must defend. The Reapers are self sufficient, space-borne intelligences. It has been pointed out that they want the Earth and while this may be true, I guarantee you that they want their own continual survival even more than that. Assuming we successfully rally the galaxy to come and get their people killed to save our planet this offers no promise of victory against the Reapers. As soon as they realize the battle is turning against them (assuming that it does and that they don't just obliterate every fleet in the galaxy), the Reapers will flee.

They'll fly up, abandon the Earth, and disappear in to the vast Milky Way galaxy. Maybe some aliens will get smart and blow up the Charon relay, isolating the Reapers in our cluster. This might buy the galaxy some time, but they'll never have any hope of winning the war.

The thing is, the Reapers don't need to capture any planets besides Earth. All they have to do is drop in out of FTL near a planet and bombard all of its inhabitants into ash. They can do this again and again on every populated world in the galaxy until none remain.

Whether it takes decades or centuries in time every race in the galaxy will be exterminated and any human survivors will be cultivated into a new Reaper.

The only remote possibility of victory is if we wait until all of the Reapers are busy harvesting Earth and then blow up the Charon relay. Theoreticaly the shockwave would overtake the Earth and destroy all of the Reapers before they could flee. After all, it is safe to assume that shockwave is travelling at the speed of light, or near it, or even faster than that. There is no way to avoid it unless you know ahead of time that it is coming. The Reapers could do this. If they have quantum entaglement devices installed in the relays (or at least in the Charon relay) they would know immediately that it had been destroyed and may be able to flee to avoid the shockwave. This is quite likely considering how trivial and widespread quantum entaglement technology is for the Reapers. The Collectors and Saren were riddled with it and the implants 'given' to Paul Grayson were linked to the Reapers in this way.

Now, assuming this isn't necessary and Shepard discovers some miracle that can defeat the Reapers, it will still be a hollow victory in some respects. The inescapable fact is that we will ALL BE CONSUMED BY REAPER TECH ANYWAY! Their technology will not vanish, it will instead be laying around for everyone in the galaxy to scoop up and reverse engineer. Terrifying things like indoctrination and quantum-entaglement devices will proliferate throughout the galaxy. One way or another, we will all become Reapers.

Don't worry, we will simply use teh crypts of teh beingz of light on Klencory as a deus ex machina and blast the reapers to kingdom come.

[Sharptooth]

The Reapers need both the Citadel and the Relay for the continuity of The Cycle. They're not totally without needs.

[Moiaussi]

Saphra Deden wrote...

So it's like... being a transient population on a fleet is not good for you compared to having actual colonized worlds. Somewhere deep in your soul you are understanding this.

You are also forgetting how vulnerable the Migrant Fleet can be at times. It's large size means it is also rather slow. It can take the fleet weeks to travel through a mass relay, for instance. Imagine the Reapers sitting there for weeks and picking you off.

I think the Normandy obtaining parts for upgrades is a gameplay contrivance more than anything else. Unless you really think we revive Legion with omnigel.

 
I didn't say that becoming a transient population is ideal or an easy life. This thread is about worst case scenarios. I maintain that it is a viable fall back position if need be.

As for Omni-gel since it literally rearranges matter (remember, in ME1, gear can be broken down into Omni-Gel and it can be used to break locks and handle other inorganic tasks), repairing legion with it isn't any more far fetched than its existance. Its ability to handle such tasks is lore, like it or not.

They might not need to. On an individual basis it is not inconvievable that they could control relays. They have a big headstart in that regard, being the creators of the relays in the first place.

If we can figure out how the Citadel is shut out though, we should be able to override any such overrides. I am not saying we will manage that, just that it is plausable.

However it is not reasonable to conclude that she got anything concrete or anything useful. If she had then TIM never would have cared very much about the base because he'd already have everything.

If you already got all the relevant intel then why'd he ask you to save it? Actually, don't answer that question, I've seen you and countless others blunder and stumble through an explanation countless times.

Of course we don't know yet, however you made a strong statement, that if we didn't keep the base that we are doomed because you feel the secret to countering indoctrination is on it. It might be. It might also be in the data EDI recovered and it might be developed from studying Grayson or from some other source.

You were the one seeming to make the statement that the base is the only source of such tech.

I guess what I am saying is that your logic is sound based on what Shepard knows about as of the end of ME2, but that as players we don't know what everyone else knows yet so we could easily have more to work with than we currently know about. We also have clear possible fall back options and research paths, so it is premature to consider ourselves doomed.

[GenericPlayer2]

I am sorry but there are some questionable comments in this thread. Some people suggest that if the Charon relay explosion was traveling at the speed of light then the reapers would see it first and move out of the way. If its traveling at the speed of light then the explosion arrives the same time as the light from it does.

I think dark energy is going to have something to do with defeating the Reapers. Dark Energy is mentioned by Tali on Haelstrom and by Parasini on Ilium. I would like to think that BW was planting the seeds for a bigger role for Dark Energy in ME3.

Another possibility would be that Sovereign was lying when he claimed that the reapers built the citadel and the relays to force FTL technology to evolve in a way that relies on mass effect. I think he was lying and that the race that created the Citadel and relays also created the Reapers. I think this 'Dark Energy' thing might be used to destroy the Reapers but would also permanently disable the relays and the citadel. Thus the galaxy would be isolated again until a race developed viable FTL technology that did not rely on the relays. That could be one option. The other option would be that Shep makes another choice that cripples the reapers but keeps the relay - thus making the galaxy safe for the next 50,000 years but with the possibility of Reapers returning after that.

Modifié par GenericPlayer2, 21 mai 2011 - 05:48 .

[Someone With Mass]

Saphra Deden wrote...

There is nothing to hit and run against. We have cities to defend and the enemy does not. Our system survives as a monetary economy, theirs does not.

At most the Reapers will need to locate sources of fuel and energy, but they won't need to hold onto those sources as strongly as we will. Their bigger mass effect cores grant them a great deal more freedom than even our largest ships. Not to mention they will surley have a greater knowledge of the galaxy than we will, meaning they'll about all the dormant mass relays and all the unsurveyed star systems. It will be much easier for them to set-up any staging grounds than it will be for us.

They have to discharge their cores sooner or later...

[GenericPlayer2]

Moiaussi wrote...

The Quarians proved that in the absolute worst case, you can become a 'rag tag fugitive fleet' and survive. The Reapers could literally chase forever, but that becomes problematic for them if they are on any sort of time scale.

Having finished another ME1 play through this morning I remember Vigil saying that once the Reapers took the Citadel, they closed all relays to non-reaper traffic. Sovereign says that the mass relays and citadel are left in place to make sure that organic technology develops along specific lines. So FTL propulsion relies on the mass relays - but if the Reapers can control the relays (such that only their IFF can use them for instance) they can strand any fugitive fleet and hunt it down or starve them out.

[Moiaussi]

GenericPlayer2 wrote...

Having finished another ME1 play through this morning I remember Vigil saying that once the Reapers took the Citadel, they closed all relays to non-reaper traffic. Sovereign says that the mass relays and citadel are left in place to make sure that organic technology develops along specific lines. So FTL propulsion relies on the mass relays - but if the Reapers can control the relays (such that only their IFF can use them for instance) they can strand any fugitive fleet and hunt it down or starve them out.

It is possible though to travel without using the relays. It is less efficient but doable. If we can figure out how to unlock relays, we may even be able to keep using them.

Edit: This is especially true if we blow them up behind us. If we break the chain, it might end up with the Reapers being the ones having to follow using conventional propulsion. If we spread them thin enough as they look for us, we might even end up in situations where we can ambush them.

Modifié par Moiaussi, 21 mai 2011 - 06:09 .