661 réponses à ce sujet

[jamesp81]

Tleining wrote...

@ Saphra Deden
The Ships that transported Colonists to Eden Prime also transported others to other Colonies. They didn't need to be build for each colony. One Freighter flying between Earth and one Colony would be enough to transport Ressources to Earth, and Colonists to the Colonies. That doesn't benefit the Colonies. If the Ressources were used there, they could build cities and grow.
We don't know where the houses and Refineries come from. But we do know that Mechs and Armor is already being built on Space Stations. Away from earth.

I'm not questioning WHO build all that. I'm asking FROM WHAT. Arcturus Station wasn't build on earth, it wasn't build with Ressources form earth, but with Ressources from other Planets.

You don't make people strong by making them depend on you, you make them strong by letting them build their own world.
Take the US as an example. As a Colony everything they produced was send of to England, and nothing they could use came back.
Take modern Africa as example. If you want to make them strong, you need to let them build their own world. Instead, we sell them our stuff, so that they will always need us to survive.

I was always under the impression that colony ships were dismantled and served as the first buildings on a colony.  That explains, at least to me, the look of the buildings on young colonies you visit.

[Dave666]

jamesp81 wrote...

Tleining wrote...

@ Saphra Deden
The Ships that transported Colonists to Eden Prime also transported others to other Colonies. They didn't need to be build for each colony. One Freighter flying between Earth and one Colony would be enough to transport Ressources to Earth, and Colonists to the Colonies. That doesn't benefit the Colonies. If the Ressources were used there, they could build cities and grow.
We don't know where the houses and Refineries come from. But we do know that Mechs and Armor is already being built on Space Stations. Away from earth.

I'm not questioning WHO build all that. I'm asking FROM WHAT. Arcturus Station wasn't build on earth, it wasn't build with Ressources form earth, but with Ressources from other Planets.

You don't make people strong by making them depend on you, you make them strong by letting them build their own world.
Take the US as an example. As a Colony everything they produced was send of to England, and nothing they could use came back.
Take modern Africa as example. If you want to make them strong, you need to let them build their own world. Instead, we sell them our stuff, so that they will always need us to survive.

I was always under the impression that colony ships were dismantled and served as the first buildings on a colony.  That explains, at least to me, the look of the buildings on young colonies you visit.

Really? The buildings always looked prefabricated to me. Which makes sense.

[Tleining]

@ jamesp81
"The resource wealth of a dozen settled colonies and a hundred industrial outposts flows back to Earth, fueling great works of industry, commerce, and art. "
like i've said several times. If the ressource wealth isn't flowing to earth, but directly to the Alliance, without needing to support the Nations on earth, the Alliance would have money for the maintenance. The Vehicles won't be build or maintained on Earth, there are Space Stations for that. If everything else fails, the Alliance would be under Martial Law. People woudn't get paid for the work, they would do it to support the current posiiton of the Alliance (military power).

@ Almostfaceman
it's the impression i got (again, maybe influenced by other sci-fi). See the quote above. If it's cost efficient to mine off-world, it doesn't make a lot of sense to deplete the limited ressources still left on earth (they ARE limited, that's a fact). Today, we feel the effects of ending ressources. Oil, Coal, it won't last for long. Same can be said for nuclear Power.
"Sea levels have risen two meters in the last 200 years, and violent weather is common due to environmental damage inflicted during the late 21st century."
to me, this damage hints at further violence and depletion of ressources in that timeframe.

In ME, humanity had to reach planets in the solar system depending on earths ressources. Fuel came from the Moon and other Planets in the system. But all that construction should have put a serious dent in the ressources on earth.

I'm not questioning how the things ARE in the ME-Universe. The question is, could they exist without earth. And i believe that it is possible. The Colony on Horizon proves that to me.

Yes, at first people from elsewhere were needed to start the colonies. But than the Colonies existed and felt that the UK were sucking them dry. So they wanted to be independent. And it worked.
In the ME-Universe, the Colonies exist. Why shouldn't they be able to continue to exist without earth?

[jamesp81]

Tleining wrote...

@ jamesp81
"The resource wealth of a dozen settled colonies and a hundred industrial outposts flows back to Earth, fueling great works of industry, commerce, and art. "
like i've said several times. If the ressource wealth isn't flowing to earth, but directly to the Alliance, without needing to support the Nations on earth, the Alliance would have money for the maintenance. The Vehicles won't be build or maintained on Earth, there are Space Stations for that. If everything else fails, the Alliance would be under Martial Law. People woudn't get paid for the work, they would do it to support the current posiiton of the Alliance (military power).

@ Almostfaceman
it's the impression i got (again, maybe influenced by other sci-fi). See the quote above. If it's cost efficient to mine off-world, it doesn't make a lot of sense to deplete the limited ressources still left on earth (they ARE limited, that's a fact). Today, we feel the effects of ending ressources. Oil, Coal, it won't last for long. Same can be said for nuclear Power.
"Sea levels have risen two meters in the last 200 years, and violent weather is common due to environmental damage inflicted during the late 21st century."
to me, this damage hints at further violence and depletion of ressources in that timeframe.

In ME, humanity had to reach planets in the solar system depending on earths ressources. Fuel came from the Moon and other Planets in the system. But all that construction should have put a serious dent in the ressources on earth.

I'm not questioning how the things ARE in the ME-Universe. The question is, could they exist without earth. And i believe that it is possible. The Colony on Horizon proves that to me.

Yes, at first people from elsewhere were needed to start the colonies. But than the Colonies existed and felt that the UK were sucking them dry. So they wanted to be independent. And it worked.
In the ME-Universe, the Colonies exist. Why shouldn't they be able to continue to exist without earth?

Though I don't subscribe the enviro-hysteria the dominates some modern thought, from a pure economic standpoint you do make some sense.

Once space travel is common and easy, why you would bother mining resources from inhabited worlds where you have to be careful to prevent environmental contamination?  Just mine asteroids, or lifeless worlds with noxious atmospheres and just not worry about environmental concerns.  Dumping toxic chemicals doesn't much matter on a lifeless world with an atmosphere methane, carbon monoxide, and flourine for example since that world's entire atmosphere is already toxic waste.

Asteroids are even better than lifeless worlds.  Less gravity means mining is easier.

However, economies are not built solely on raw materials mining.  Destruction of Earth would decimate the economy and make it impossible to maintain a fleet.  Yes, you need raw materials.  You also need labor and heavy industrial facilities to turn those raw materials into warship parts.  That means workers, large investment of capital, and large scale construction of said facilities.  This means PEOPLE.

Earth has much of the manufacturing.....that's why a lot of the raw materials go back to Earth.  Wipe out Earth and you have lots of raw material, but insufficient industry to make use of it.

Resources alone do NOTHING.  You need heavy industry to turn those resources into something.  Earth has that; the colonies don't (with the exception of Bekenstein).

Modifié par jamesp81, 08 avril 2011 - 05:23 .

[jamesp81]

Dave666 wrote...

jamesp81 wrote...

Tleining wrote...

@ Saphra Deden
The Ships that transported Colonists to Eden Prime also transported others to other Colonies. They didn't need to be build for each colony. One Freighter flying between Earth and one Colony would be enough to transport Ressources to Earth, and Colonists to the Colonies. That doesn't benefit the Colonies. If the Ressources were used there, they could build cities and grow.
We don't know where the houses and Refineries come from. But we do know that Mechs and Armor is already being built on Space Stations. Away from earth.

I'm not questioning WHO build all that. I'm asking FROM WHAT. Arcturus Station wasn't build on earth, it wasn't build with Ressources form earth, but with Ressources from other Planets.

You don't make people strong by making them depend on you, you make them strong by letting them build their own world.
Take the US as an example. As a Colony everything they produced was send of to England, and nothing they could use came back.
Take modern Africa as example. If you want to make them strong, you need to let them build their own world. Instead, we sell them our stuff, so that they will always need us to survive.

I was always under the impression that colony ships were dismantled and served as the first buildings on a colony.  That explains, at least to me, the look of the buildings on young colonies you visit.

Really? The buildings always looked prefabricated to me. Which makes sense.

Maybe they are pre-fabs.  You remember that building on Feros in ME1, where you could go inside and talk to the man and his sick wife; it's also the building the guy in charge of hunting Varren was standing in.  That thing looked an awful lot like a cannibalized ship to me.  I could be wrong, but the architecture of it matched those modular freighters that the Alliance seems to like.

[Almostfaceman]

jamesp81 wrote...

Maybe they are pre-fabs.  You remember that building on Feros in ME1, where you could go inside and talk to the man and his sick wife; it's also the building the guy in charge of hunting Varren was standing in.  That thing looked an awful lot like a cannibalized ship to me.  I could be wrong, but the architecture of it matched those modular freighters that the Alliance seems to like.

That was a freighter that had landed to supply the colony - then they all got Thorian'd and the Thorian made them use the freighter as a cover for the Thorian's hidey-hole.

Modifié par Almostfaceman, 08 avril 2011 - 05:33 .

[Zulu_DFA]

[quote]Arcian wrote...
[quote]Zulu_DFA wrote...

Renegade: take all the time to make all the possible preparations and strike only moments before the Reapers are fully done with Earth. The Alliance takes minimal damage and is back on on its path to galactic dominance in no time, but 11.4 billion of human lives are lost.[/quote]

[quote]Zulu_DFA wrote...

The Alliance takes minimal damage and is back on on its path to galactic dominance in no time, but 11.4 billion of human lives are lost.[/quote]

[quote]Zulu_DFA wrote...

minimal damage[/quote]

[quote]Zulu_DFA wrote...

11.4 billion of human lives are lost.[/quote]

[quote]Zulu_DFA wrote...

back on on its path to galactic dominance in no time.[/quote]

[quote]Zulu_DFA wrote...

11.4 billion of human lives are lost.[/quote]


[/quote]

I like the way you think. I need a minister of propaganda in my coming Galactic Empire of Man, want the job?


[quote]Arcian wrote...

How do you think humanity will enforce galactic domination with a good 95% of its entire population dead?
[/quote]
It's over 99.5% actually.


[quote]Arcian wrote...

Let's say the collective population outside of Earth lies between 200-600 million. That's 2-6% of Earth's population, which in actuality might be a significantly gross overestimation.
[/quote]
40 million, at most.


[quote]Arcian wrote...

Now, according to you, the entire Alliance infrastructure relies on this 2-6%, which supplies every colony everywhere, PLUS Earth - which, according to your thesis, cannot have any surplus production. In fact, your claim would mean they have a production deficit, which means the infrastructure of Earth relies partly on the colonies to sustain itself.
[/quote]
That's what I'm saying.


[quote]Arcian wrote...

This makes perfect sense, but not from the angle you play it. Neither Earth nor the colonies are entirely self-sustaining. Both Earth and the colonies satisfy and supply their own demands, but to greatly varying degrees. Their output and input is directly proportional to their size - the colonies doesn't have the same demand, but does not produce as much, either. Both rely on each other for support, which leaves either in a pickle if the other is somehow neutralized.
[/quote]
With the technology of the ME universe, most of the consumer goods can be manufactured locally with minimal amount of manual labor. The only limiting factor is Eezo and other rare (and therefore expensive) natural resources. Farming (food production) is somewhere in-between, but something tells me grain flows the same way as the "resource wealth" too. Earth probably exports all the "vintage" goods though.

Earth is pretty much strip-mined, and the Solar system already is not the only one developed in the Human Space. Earth simply has nothing it can supply the colonies with anymore, except the colonist bodies, but again, with all the available tecnology and and already established infrastructure in the colonies this problem can be circumvented and eventually dealt with.


[quote]Arcian wrote...

This must then mean that Earth stands for a significant percentage of Alliance social and military production,
[/quote]
I don't know what it "must" mean, but the Codex and the novels clearly state that it is the Arcturus station where the Alliance Navy is built and the personnel for it is trained. Sure the Alliance does use facilities in the Solar system, that probably date back to the pre-FCW times, but it's not yet a given that the Reapers are going to touch even the Lunar base, untill they are fully done with Earth, and if they do, it's a sacrifice that needs to be made.


[quote]Arcian wrote...

economical progress and human resource output, and that Earth is pretty ****ing important in the big picture. The last value is a bit tricky, because its an exponential value unlike the rest. Earth produces people at a rate thousand upon thousands of times faster than all colonies put together, which accounts not only for production and military roles, but also - you guessed it - new colonists. **** over Earth, and you **** over the colonists.
[/quote]
Not over the existing ones. If you lose the Alliance Navy, though, they are all Batarian slaves.


[quote]Arcian wrote...

Wars are fought by people.[/quote]
Drones. Mechs. AI.

We're smarter than the Krogans, you know. In general I mean. Or may be I shou say "I hope", because many people on this forum actually think like Krogans.


[quote]Arcian wrote...

People use the guns made, drive the vehicles and ships constructed and man the bases, stations and outposts built. If you knock out the big people-factory, you're going to have a hard time fighting a war.[/quote]
That's right. That's why you don't want to throw it all away paragon-style.


[quote]Arcian wrote...

This was the whole point with the genophage against the krogan, after all.
[/quote]
The whole point of the genophage was that the Krogans were to dumb to cure it or fight smart.


[quote]Arcian wrote...

Therefore, you could say Earth is the Alliance's biggest military asset, because a significant portion of new recruits and staff comes from Earth, not to mention the colonist enrollments.
[/quote]
What is the number ot the Alliance military anyway? I bet it's less than a million, counting all the planet-side garrisons. That would be about 3% of the colonies' population. No doubt the Alliance can even boost that percentage if need be.


[quote]Arcian wrote...

Now take a good moment and imagine what happens when you destroy the biggest producer of human resources in our airspace?
[/quote]
airspace?


[quote]Arcian wrote...

Here's a hint - you completely **** over ALL your chances to ever fight a war on realistic terms.

You won't have enough people to fill the vacated chunks in your army that the reapers is inevitably going to blow out.
[/quote]
That's what I'll be trying to avoid, by holding out till the last moment, since with the Reapers it'll be an "all in" one shot anyway.


[quote]Arcian wrote...

Production is going to hell, because the few factories left throughout the colonies will be SEVERLY undermanned.
[/quote]
Mmm... I remember that Hahne-Kedar experimental factory that kept churning out mechs even after becoming completely unmanned. It's the future we're talking about, dude.


[quote]Arcian wrote...

You can cite robotic production lines all you want, robots need supervision just as well as people, plus operators and repair servicemen.[/quote]
Well, maybe I'll have to temporarily extend the shifts for those kind of people. I think they won't be too upset seing how I'll be able to tripple their wages after most of the corporate shareholders and beneficiaries die on earth.


[quote]Arcian wrote...

Because you can no longer reliably fill those spots at a rate that will allow you to supply your front lines, your war starts to break down.[/quote]
Obviously, I'll have to pick my battles, so no saves for old worthess Asari hunk of junk they call dreadnoughs. Oh wait, it never was.


[quote]Arcian wrote...

With production down the drain,
[/quote]
How the production can go down the drain if the Reapers don't touch it?


[quote]Arcian wrote...

you suddenly face a very pressing combat materiel deficit.
[/quote]
No I don't, since the production is going to continue to grow at the same rate it was before the Reaper invasion, if those "dozen colonies and hundered industrial outpost" that the "resource wealth" flows to Earth from remnian inact.


[quote]Arcian wrote...

Those ships, weapons, tools and ground vehicles that the reapers keep destroying?
[/quote]
Reapers keep destroying?

Excuse me, but we have been haveing a misundertanding the whole time it seems. there isn't going to be a lasting war with the Reapers. It's either a one decisive success, or a total defeat.

Anyway, how do you intend to liberate Earth and not immediatly have another wave of Reapers, seeing how it's going to be their primary target because they sort of have a hard on for Humanity.


[quote]Arcian wrote...

You can no longer supply them faster than they are expended. Give or take a few years, you will no longer have an army to wage wars with. Good luck winning a war without an army. Even if you win against the reapers, GOOD LUCK usurping galactic rule with a tattered, undermanned, unarmed fleet made of cardboard, duct-tape and sweet dreams. This is not Battlestar Galactica. A single ship can't pwn an entire warring species a hundred times more capable and well-armed than you, let alone a whole club of them.[/quote]
Yes it can. If that ship is a Reaper technology. Say, aren't you riding one of those?

And just as I've said, I indend to win the war with the minimal possible damage to the Alliance Navy, taking all the available time for the preparations, which, given the hyper-advanced nature of the opposition, will either be utterly futile anyway, or involve some kind of newly developed super-weapon, which has a potential of minimizing my casualties in the general engagement to near zero.


[quote]Arcian wrote...

There's an extremely ****ing practical reason why we're supposed to save Earth in ME3, not just because sentimentality over the fact that it's the ancestral home of our species.[/quote]
The problem with that practical reason of yours is that Earth is not going to be any good for whatever it has be good, after the Reapers have their fun with it, even if they are interrupted only half-way through.


[quote]Arcian wrote...

I mean, seriously. Why do you think they decided to attack Earth first in the first place? Every other species have their infrastructure spread out over a lot of large, decently protected colonies, and they've taken the time to slowly, slowly build up every single important colony to a near-Earth size and production capability. They have evened their significant power over a large number of points - kicking one of them out of business won't do much to budge the grand whole.[/quote]
I suspect some kind of irrational motive, irrelevant to war strategy, since they don't seem to be expecting the Galaxy to mount a meaningful campaign anyway.


[quote]Arcian wrote...

But because humans decided that having a huge number of insignificant, undermanned and underproductive colonies makes their collective space penis super-large, we effectively paint our homeworld with a huge arrow that says, "Attack here, everything of importance is here."[/quote]
Calling my colonies insignificant, undermanned and underproductive is false, therefore my collective space dick is going to f*ck the Reaper's collective аsshole. And sinse the Galaxy is full of ******, it's not going to miss just the one that **** chose to sh*t all over first.


[quote]Arcian wrote...

This is also why I don't believe BioWare would go out of their way to blow Earth up. I believe that it can be one of the possible endings (super-worst game ending, like everyone plus Shepard dying in ME2), but I doubt they will enforce it, because it would make zero sense unless they're going for a dystopian ending where humans end up as a client species to the entire galaxy.

Whoopdie-****ing-doo.
[/quote]
And I think it'll be more like the abducted crew dying or not.

Of one thing I'm sure though. Whatever the case, it's going to be full the so called "awesome". And plot holes.

Modifié par Zulu_DFA, 08 avril 2011 - 05:50 .

[Tleining]

@ jamesp81
thanks for agreeing with me *yay*
i guess it all depends how those raw materials are processed. I think that purification and first stage processes are done off world. But the Profits from that go to Companies either located on earth or having facilities on earth, so that Earth is gaining something from that.
The Facilities to produce Starship Parts, again, from a cost-efficient standpoint, shouldn't be on earth. Then again, i don't know how difficult it is to transfer materials from a world with high gravity (earth) compared to one with low gravity (moon/mars)(with mass effect fields!! with current technology, it's pretty obvious).

I guess it all depends on how much damage the Fleet suffers in addition to loosing the 11 Billion people. If most of the Fleet makes it out unscathed, with good leadership, Humanity will recover. With a lot of damage, humanity would take a lot of time under Martial Law, trying to rebuild. In that time, any attack from the outside (batarians) could put humanity in a situation similiar to that of the Quarians.

Modifié par Tleining, 08 avril 2011 - 05:49 .

[James2912]

Arcian wrote...

James2912 wrote...

 it would be very unfair for us to suffer the most.

You're being very naive to expect fairness in a war.

Not in war but from a plot or story perspective. In real war I'd think we'd lose against the Reapers but this isn't real its a story written by Bioware staff. 

[jamesp81]

Tleining wrote...

@ jamesp81
thanks for agreeing with me *yay*
i guess it all depends how those raw materials are processed. I think that purification and first stage processes are done off world. But the Profits from that go to Companies either located on earth or having facilities on earth, so that Earth is gaining something from that.
The Facilities to produce Starship Parts, again, from a cost-efficient standpoint, shouldn't be on earth. Then again, i don't know how difficult it is to transfer materials from a world with high gravity (earth) compared to one with low gravity (moon/mars)(with mass effect fields!! with current technology, it's pretty obvious).

I guess it all depends on how much damage the Fleet suffers in addition to loosing the 11 Billion people. If most of the Fleet makes it out unscathed, with good leadership, Humanity will recover. With a lot of damage, humanity would take a lot of time under Martial Law, trying to rebuild. In that time, any attack from the outside (batarians) could put humanity in a situation similiar to that of the Quarians.

Actually, I don't agree with you.  It's natural for industrial facilities to be built closest to the resources they use, intially.  Resources and financing from Earth and nearby Earth built most of the fleet.  Most of the Alliance's heavy industry, therefore, will be in Earth space or very close to it.  You lose earth, and you lose the ability to maintain the fleet, regardless of how much access you have to raw materials.

Most of the shipyards probably are in space and not on Earth itself.  I'm pretty sure the Reapers are smart enough to identify strategic assets like shipyards and factories and blow them to hell on the way in to Reapify.

Modifié par jamesp81, 09 avril 2011 - 04:49 .

[jamesp81]

Arcian wrote...

Zulu_DFA wrote...

-huge-ass text purge-

I read your entire post, and like usual it's based mostly on speculation and asspulls, so therefore I'm not even going to bother replying to each segment - except the one about airspace. The term airspace is also used to describe interstellar territory, since "spacespace" sounds really stupid. For example, "Shepard entered batarian airspace in the Bahak system to bust out Kenson in Arrival." It's not actual air, but then again, it's just a goddamn term. Don't get hung up on semantics.

Back to business, your entire point, which I was arguing against in the first place, is that you can sacrifice Earth, all of its assets, all of its wealth, all of its factories and production facilities, AND its entire population (which you so hilariously described as 99.5 of the total human population in the entire galaxy) and still defeat the reapers PLUS the Council.

This is the epitome of bull****. It seems like you have no idea how wars are even fought. Post-Dead Earth and reaper defeat, you're going to sit on your theoretical 40 million people in the lowest bottleneck since the Toba cataclysm, with a production capacity down by a significant percentage with a fleet that will most likely be in complete tatters.

In contrast, the rest of the galaxy has over eight times the number of dreadnoughts you just lost fighting the reapers, plus a proportionally larger fleet of the other classes. They number in the trillions - twelve zeroes, compared to your seven. They can give their factory workers six days off every work week and still outproduce you by parsecs. They can throw away billions of people in a suicide rush against the remains of your fleet and still see nothing but an insignificant dip in their population. Even with the collector base or a human-only Council, what are you going to do? Seriously, what the hell are you going to do? Assail them with harsh language and rude gestures and hope they fall dead from the shock? They'll just overwhelm anything the base produces, and there is no way you can spread your little fleet so thin as to protect every single colony AND the human council on the Citadel, and come out strong enough to hold them.

It's not your idea of sacrificing Earth to win the day that's inherently wrong, it's your idea that you can do that and still have the gusto to take the galaxy by force. Or any other means, as a matter of fact. If Earth falls, your plan of galactic domination is ruined forever. That's the price for that sacrifice.

And if this still isn't an answer good enough for you, it just means you were never able to usurp galactic rule in the first place, making this entire discussion and every single of your arguments moot.

I bow before the accuracy and glory of your mighty rant