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[Ieldra]

This post was originally written in spring 2011, before we knew that Earth would be a central battlefield of the war. Post-ME3 it is now completely AU. I've brought it up again as a possible alternative ending, a "what could have been" scenario that might interest some people dissatisfied with how things turned out. This ending as outlined here and told in the flashbacks of Elyvern's story I consider in may ways superior to what Bioware presented us with, in spite of my personal preference among the options we got in the end.

This is a “we win” scenario Elyvern and I came up with when discussing the events of her post-Reaper fic Degrees Of Inheritance. I believe it is one of the most convincing scenarios put forward for the end of the Reaper War so far, featuring

*Shepard as a decisive actor
*Epic space battles
*No deus ex machina
*Hypotheses based on information from the games
*Highly adaptable to varying political scenarios and team combinations
*Highly adaptable to almost all imagineable levels of casualties

Summary – from the history books:
“Late in 2187, a strike team led by Commander Shepard entered the Citadel’s mass relay and reached the Reapers’ home base deep in intergalactic space. Using knowledge gained from the reintegrated Heretic faction of the geth and from the Collectors’ station in the galactic core, the team located the Reapers’ central communication hub, which the enemy had used to maintain contact among themselves and transmit their indoctrinating brain waves to the artifacts distributed over the galaxy. The hub was then programmed to deliver a high-energy pulse into the controlling minds of all Reapers, using its status as a trusted source to bypass the Reapers’ communication security.

As a result, almost all Reapers experienced a mental shock that incapacitated them for a limited time, temporarily disabling critical functions and rendering their insurmountable shields inactive. The forces of the allied species of Citadel civilization thus gained the time and opportunity to attack with the full force of their fleets. The resulting battles were by no means easy, since the Reapers retained use of their weaponry and not all of them could be located in time to make full use of the incapacitating strike. Space battles whose intensity was matched by nothing since the krogan rebellion raged for several weeks, but in the end almost all Reapers were destroyed. Intelligence later determined that but a handful escaped into the unknown reaches of the galaxy.

With the central hub destroyed by anti-matter bombs set by the strike team before their escape, indoctrination through Reaper devices ceased all over the galaxy, marking in a more than symbolic way that the cycle of destruction had been broken.”


Scenario details (for those interested in the why of it)

The strategic situation
The assumption is that the invasion consists of a force of several thousand Reapers. There need to be enough to project power in many places of the galaxy at once, but not so many that they could overrun the galaxy in no time at all. Every Reaper is like Sovereign in that it is practically invulnerable to everything but a Thanix cannon, and several of these are necessary to take one out. Unfortunately, only a very limited number of Thanix cannons have been built since the Reaper technology in them cannot be reproduced as yet. Occasionally a Reaper can be taken out by a strike team boarding it and overloading its ME cores, but that is a suicide mission and success depends on specific circumstances. In pure military strength, the allied species have no hope at all to win the war. 

A decisive strike that enabled the allied forces to win where they couldn’t before would have to affect a large majority of those Reapers at the same time, and affect them in a way that either destroyed them outright, or at least damaged them badly enough that they could be destroyed by conventional military means which had so far been ineffective.  Something is needed that would produce an effect similar to the way Sovereign was affected by the destruction of the part of its consciousness it had invested in Saren.

The Reapers are collective minds. “Each of us is a nation”. In that they are similar, perhaps, to the geth, where several or many individuals are present in one platform. It is not plausible that a Reaper would upload all of those minds into an indoctrinated slave. So if the death of a small subset of those minds can affect a Reaper like Sovereign was affected, these minds must have a special role within the collective. This subset is a kind of gestalt mind maintaining control over internal and external communication and coordinating the other countless minds needed to maintain Reaper functionality. If these controlling minds could be reached and disabled by some kind of weapon, then the Reaper would be temporarily incapacitated until a new controlling structure would emerge from the remaining minds. I’ll get to what kind of weapon that may be later. A slightly different hypothesis assumes that every Reaper is controlled by one central mind, and that the Reapers wanted an indoctrinated Shepard to be the controlling mind of a human Reaper.

Back to the strategic situation. The main problem with affecting many Reapers at once is that they are extremely unlikely to converge on one location. They are conquering a galaxy after all, and even 100 Reapers should be more than enough to deal with a highy industrialized and militarily powerful planet like Earth. Add a 100 or so if it was defended by the allied fleet. Any kind of Reaper-affecting weapon, then, absolutely must be able to reach Reapers distributed throughout the galaxy.

Indoctrination and the Reapers’ communication network
In ME:Retribution, Paul Grayson gets to communicate with Reapers through the objects implanted in his brain. This is the only time we get any insights into the workings of an indoctrinated – or soon-to-be indoctrinated - mind. Perhaps it is a stretch to draw the conclusion that any Reaper device that can indoctrinate (there are those that cannot) also enables communication to or from the Reapers, but it does make sense. In all instances of indoctrination we have witnessed, weird dreams and visions have been part of it that might as well have come from a Reaper directly. It is plausible to assume that Indoctrination and Reaper thought processes and communication are inextricably linked.

How that communication is realized, which technology they might or might not use for it, that remains unknown so far. Quantum entanglement has been put forward as a possibility. It would have to be a version far surpassing the likes of the device used on the SR2, but advanced as the Reapers are that is more likely than not. Regular FTL communication routed through a central location in the galaxy is a more intuitive possibility, but would have to overcome significantly greater obstacles.

Anyway, if we assume that all indoctrinating Reaper artifacts are communication devices, and that indoctrination is linked to their primary function (see below), we also have an explanation of why the Reapers left all those devices on remote planets where it would be implausible to place them were they just traps for organics. Since the Reapers communicate with their agents through the devices they left throughout the galaxy, it is plausible to assume that it would be no problem for them to maintain communication with each other while staging and executing their invasion.

The decisive strike
To get the Independence Day scenario out of the way: it should be impossible to hack a Reaper. Any one Reaper has the processing power of a score of geth nodes at the very least, and they have evolved for millions of years to be the ultimate predators, the highest in the food chain of both organic and synthetic life.

What could more plausibly be used is a kind of mind-overloading high-energy pulse delivered through the Reapers’ communication network, which, as established above, covers most of the known galaxy. Of course the Reapers’ controlling minds would be protected against such a pulse coming out of nowhere, so it would have to be delivered from a trusted device. It is plausible to assume that if such a device exists, it exists on the Reapers’ home base in intergalactic space. Which – as established by lore – can be reached through the Citadel relay.

So, if there is any way a small team can deliver a decisive strike against the Reapers, chances are it would be something like this: the team, which includes one individual able to interface with Reaper devices (EDI, or Legion augmented by incorporated Heretics knowledge) would reactivate the Citadel mass relay and enter it to reach the Reapers’ home base in intergalactic space. From examining the Collector base, the team has some idea of how things look on the other side so they’re not completely in the dark. The team would look for that central communication device that maintains the links to and between all Reapers, if necessary routed through the artifacts left throughout the galaxy. The team would hack the communication device and reprogram it to deliver a high-energy pulse into the physical structures maintaining the Reapers’ controlling minds. After that, they’d plant an antimatter bomb (at this point galactic conventions shouldn’t matter) and get the hell out of the place.

The outcome:
If the strike is successful, it should reach all Reapers with open Reaper-to-Reaper communication channels, which means, almost all of them. Results could vary between loss of shields and total temporary incapacitation. If the allied forces are prepared and know where all the Reapers are located, they should be able to take out most of them. Depending on the particulars of the results, the battles could vary between easy and very hard. After all, the Reapers’ weapons would be still intact, and reorganization of the controlling minds and repair could take more or less time. It would be a desperate race to reach all Reapers in time, and undoubtedly some would escape. But their home base including the central hub of their communication network and almost all of their invasion force would be destroyed. Finding and eliminating the rest would possible take several years, one or the other would escape into the unknown reaches of the galaxy, but the threat to galactic civilization would be gone.

Pseudoscientific excursion: Indoctrination as a side effect of Reaper thought processes and communication
One interesting idea that came up while discussing this is the idea that indoctrination is actually nothing more than the effect on organics of something like Reaper brain waves. Indoctrination is not a weapon, but a side effect. No doubt the Reapers are aware of their effect on organics’ minds, but it would suit their mindset if they hadn’t developed this a weapon, but just acknowledged it as an evolved trait, because for them, it would seem perfectly natural that lesser beings exposed to their presence would come to “see the truth”, excepting a few hard-headed individuals conditioned by previous dogma.

Recall the Cerberus Researchers recording on the derelict Reaper. It may sound like insane mumbling, but what if there was some truth in it: “A god – a true  god – is a verb. […] It’s a force. It warps reality just by being there. It doesn’t have to want to. It doesn’t have to think about it. It just does.”

This is perfectly compatible with the hypothesis that the indoctrinating agent is really Reaper thought processes, either in the vicinity of the Reapers themselves, or channeled through their artifacts. After all, in all known life, brain activity always exists as long as the organism is alive. One could speculate that even in ME2’s derelict Reaper some thought processes could remain active – not enough to control the Reaper (the devices needed for physical movement are destroyed anyway) but enough to cause slow indoctrination.

A beneficial side effect of this hypothesis for an after-the-Reapers scenario is this: once the Reapers are unable to communicate, unable to route their thoughts through their devices, these devices will cease to indoctrinate. The only danger of indoctrination left would be those Reapers that retained mental activity, whether physically mobile or not.

Modifié par Ieldra2, 21 septembre 2012 - 08:53 .

[AdmiralCheez]

You know what makes me mad?  When I get a really cool idea, then come on to these forums and find out that someone has already done it.  Damn it.

Really awesome work, Ieldra2. You guys put a lot of effort and thought into this, and deserve infinite cookies.  I like the bit about indoctrination especially.

Modifié par AdmiralCheez, 06 avril 2011 - 06:34 .

[Elyvern]

Weee...thanks for the endorsement, Ieldra. I gotta say the brainwave is still amazing, no matter which angle I look at it. The Indoctrination approach clicks so beautifully into place, I cannot imagine Bioware taking another approach at this point in time. Here are a few more details of how the decisive strike could take place. I post below an excerpt from my fic:


It was at this point when the sapient races realised throwing entire fleets at every Reaper was a war that could never be won. Pin-point strikes with the sole aim of landing a team onboard every Reaper to overload their mass effect cores was the only viable tactic. The only problem was once the Reapers became aware of the tactic, they sped up the rate of indoctrination, one of their most potent weapons, reducing organic troops to mindless drones in a matter of hours.


I think we can agree that the fight for the homeworlds will not take place right at the start, but rather, the entire reaping process will begin with the terminus systems, in which every Reaper can play lone ranger. Resistance will be scant at best, but once that is done and the drive to reap the various races' homeworlds begin, the Reapers will have to concentrate their forces to minimise casualties. That will give the various fleets tactical knowledge of where most of the Reaper forces will be concentrated.

Once they know for sure that a certain amount of percentage of the Reaper forces are inside human, turian, asari, and salarian homespace, then the killswitch will be activated, disabling large concentrations of them in specific areas of space, which will then allow strike forces to board them and destroy their mass effect cores (very much like what Shepard does inside the derelict Reaper).

If and when planned and timed correctly, a large number of Reapers will be eliminated that way.

Modifié par Elyvern, 06 avril 2011 - 07:27 .

[Rivercurse]

Just read the start of that fanfic and it seems pretty good. Might continue reading later.

before I do though, is the story complete?

Sorry OP haven't even got through your whole post yet

[jamesp81]

AdmiralCheez wrote...

You know what makes me mad?

When I get a really cool idea, then come on to these forums and find out that someone has already done it.

Damn it.

Really awesome work, Ieldra2. I like the bit about indoctrination.

+1.

I actually like this idea, although I'm sure someone will come along and call it deus ex machina in short order.  The enemy would be time; it would take time to find out how to operate the citadel relay.  Time pressure would be on the player to deliver the strike before Earth's population was completely exterminated.

I've also had some interesting thoughts about indoctrination.  My thoughts went something like this:

We don't know for sure why Reapers use organic smoothies to make more Reapers, but they do.  Going from there, I've wondered if the Reapers themselves are purely machine intelligences, and the organic components of a Reaper are indoctrinated.  If that's the case, then any method by which indoctrination could be broken would be a powerful tool against the Reapers.  Remember that on Feros we meet Shiala, the only person to have ever been indoctrinated by a Reaper and broke free of it.  I wonder if the Thorian did something that broke Sovereign's indoctrination.  Remember, the Thorian was very old, old enough to have known about the Reapers and smart enough to have avoided them.  And, perhaps, old enough to have devised a method to repel Reaper indoctrination.

I could be way off base, but I often wondered about all that.

[Ieldra]

@Rivercurse:
Just read the summary, that should give you the gist of it. If you want to know the details of why we came up with this and how it integrates the information from the games, that's in the details. But for how it goes, the summary is enough.

No, Elyvern's story won't be finished for a few months yet.

@jamesp81
Do we know that Shiala was indoctrinated? If so, how much? It isn't a on-or-off effect. But your hypothesis and ours has in common that indoctrination is central to the Reaper's life processes. I think that is very plausible.

Modifié par Ieldra2, 06 avril 2011 - 06:47 .

[CulturalGeekGirl]

jamesp81 wrote...

AdmiralCheez wrote...

You know what makes me mad?

When I get a really cool idea, then come on to these forums and find out that someone has already done it.

Damn it.

Really awesome work, Ieldra2. I like the bit about indoctrination.

+1.

I actually like this idea, although I'm sure someone will come along and call it deus ex machina in short order.  The enemy would be time; it would take time to find out how to operate the citadel relay.  Time pressure would be on the player to deliver the strike before Earth's population was completely exterminated.

I've also had some interesting thoughts about indoctrination.  My thoughts went something like this:

We don't know for sure why Reapers use organic smoothies to make more Reapers, but they do.  Going from there, I've wondered if the Reapers themselves are purely machine intelligences, and the organic components of a Reaper are indoctrinated.  If that's the case, then any method by which indoctrination could be broken would be a powerful tool against the Reapers.  Remember that on Feros we meet Shiala, the only person to have ever been indoctrinated by a Reaper and broke free of it.  I wonder if the Thorian did something that broke Sovereign's indoctrination.  Remember, the Thorian was very old, old enough to have known about the Reapers and smart enough to have avoided them.  And, perhaps, old enough to have devised a method to repel Reaper indoctrination.

I could be way off base, but I often wondered about all that.

I agree.

Also, I was so upset when I had to kill the Thorian. So very upset. Honestly, it bothers me more than the Batarians. The fact that there might be some remnant of it left, in those former colonists? Intriguing. Possibly sucky for them, but intriguing.

Then again, having the Thorian alive might be an example of one of those tools that are too powerful and warp the story. An eternal supply of galactic knowledge and history, that can resist indoctrination? Yeah.

[Barhador]

Good post. I've actually been working on a believable scenario based on reverse engineering Quantum Entanglement devices, dark energy and supernovae. It's nowhere near as detailed as yours though.

A couple of remarks.

Ieldra2 wrote...
*No deus ex machina
*Hypotheses based on information from the games

These two are the most important for me and hopefully the ME3 team agreed on this as well when they wrote the plot for ME3. Nobody likes deus ex machina.

Ieldra2 wrote...
“Late in 2187, a strike team led by Commander Shepard entered the Citadel’s mass relay and reached the Reaper’s home base deep in intergalactic space. Using knowledge gained from the reintegrated Heretic faction of the geth and from the Collectors’ station in the galactic core, the team located the Reapers’ central communication hub, which the enemy had used to maintain contact among themselves and transmit their indoctrinating brain waves to the artifacts distributed over the galaxy. The hub was then programmed to deliver a high-energy pulse into the controlling minds of all Reapers, using its status as a trusted source to bypass the Reapers’ communication security. 
As a result, almost all Reapers experienced a mental shock that incapacitated them for a limited time, temporarily disabling critical functions and rendering their insurmountable shields inactive. The forces of the allied species of Citadel civilization thus gained the time and opportunity to attack with the full force of their fleets. The resulting battles were by no means easy, since the Reapers retained use of their weaponry and not all of them could be located in time to make full use of the incapacitating strike. Space battles whose intensity was matched by nothing since the krogan rebellion raged for several weeks, but in the end almost all Reapers were destroyed. Intelligence later determined that but a handful escaped into the unknown reaches of the galaxy. 
With the central hub destroyed by anti-matter bombs set by the strike team before their escape, indoctrination through Reaper devices ceased all over the galaxy, marking in a more than symbolic way that the cycle of destruction had been broken.”

I like this, but I think incapacitating them and then making a star go supernova would be more fitting to the 'dark energy' and 'unstable stars' peeks we have heard from Tali. Or better yet, a combination of the two since the Reapers (as you mentioned) wouldn't all be within the same system.

 

Ieldra2 wrote...
The Reapers are collective minds. “Each of us is a nation”. In that they are similar, perhaps, to the geth, where several or many individuals are present in one platform. It is not plausible that a Reaper would upload all of those minds into an indoctrinated slave. So if the death of a small subset of those minds can affect a Reaper like Sovereign was affected, these minds must have a special role within the collective. This subset is a kind of gestalt mind maintaining control over internal and external communication and coordinating the other countless minds needed to maintain Reaper functionality. If these controlling minds could be reached and disabled by some kind of weapon, then the Reaper would be temporarily incapacitated until a new controlling structure would emerge from the remaining minds. I’ll get to what kind of weapon that may be later. A slightly different hypothesis assumes that every Reaper is controlled by one central mind, and that the Reapers wanted an indoctrinated Shepard to be the controlling mind of a human Reaper.

Geth are interdependent where as Reapers are independent, and thus "each a nation". Legion said that.  In a way Geth are like a federation where many states make up one nation (like USA) but Reapers are like a confederation - several nations banded together. Since each reaper is made by harvesting the essence of one species (one nation) it makes sense they are indepentent and not of the same mind.

Edit:
Another thing. I think it's pretty much confirmed Reapers communicate using Quantum Entanglement (isn't it mentioned in Arrival?) 

Modifié par Barhador, 06 avril 2011 - 06:51 .

[Ahriman]

Very well thoughts, Citadel really might be activated, one way or another. Indocriantion deserves it's own thread though. Still I didn't unserstand one thing, is Citadel captured by Reapers or not?

P.s. Such realistic view on strategic situation is very rare in our days.

[jamesp81]

Ieldra2 wrote...

@Rivercurse:
Just read the summary, that should give you the gist of it. If you want to know the details of why we came up with this and how it integrates the information from the games, that's in the details. But for how it goes, the summary is enough.

No, Elyvern's story won't be finished for a few months yet.

@jamesp81
Do we know that Shiala was indoctrinated? If so, how much? It isn't a on-or-off effect. But your hypothesis and ours has in common that indoctrination is central to the Reaper's life processes. I think that is very plausible.

If I remember her words correctly, Shiala said that she initially followed Benezia believing she could turn Saren aside from his evil path, but that Sovereign was too strong and she eventually became a willing servant.  Beyond that, though, I'm not too sure how one could quantify indoctrination.  How indoctrinated was Shiala?  Hard to say.  Enough that she followed Saren's and Sovereign's orders, apparently.  But how much indoctrination does that take?  I don't know.

[ADelusiveMan]

Hey guys, I have my own theory about all this too. Check out the link in my sig

[jamesp81]

CulturalGeekGirl wrote...

jamesp81 wrote...

AdmiralCheez wrote...

You know what makes me mad?

When I get a really cool idea, then come on to these forums and find out that someone has already done it.

Damn it.

Really awesome work, Ieldra2. I like the bit about indoctrination.

+1.

I actually like this idea, although I'm sure someone will come along and call it deus ex machina in short order.  The enemy would be time; it would take time to find out how to operate the citadel relay.  Time pressure would be on the player to deliver the strike before Earth's population was completely exterminated.

I've also had some interesting thoughts about indoctrination.  My thoughts went something like this:

We don't know for sure why Reapers use organic smoothies to make more Reapers, but they do.  Going from there, I've wondered if the Reapers themselves are purely machine intelligences, and the organic components of a Reaper are indoctrinated.  If that's the case, then any method by which indoctrination could be broken would be a powerful tool against the Reapers.  Remember that on Feros we meet Shiala, the only person to have ever been indoctrinated by a Reaper and broke free of it.  I wonder if the Thorian did something that broke Sovereign's indoctrination.  Remember, the Thorian was very old, old enough to have known about the Reapers and smart enough to have avoided them.  And, perhaps, old enough to have devised a method to repel Reaper indoctrination.

I could be way off base, but I often wondered about all that.

I agree.

Also, I was so upset when I had to kill the Thorian. So very upset. Honestly, it bothers me more than the Batarians. The fact that there might be some remnant of it left, in those former colonists? Intriguing. Possibly sucky for them, but intriguing.

Then again, having the Thorian alive might be an example of one of those tools that are too powerful and warp the story. An eternal supply of galactic knowledge and history, that can resist indoctrination? Yeah.

I was kind of conflicted about the Thorian.  I was angry at it for what it had done to the colonists, but I did Noveria before Feros, so indoctrination had already been introduced to my Shepard.  It immediately occurred to me that something valuable could be learned from it.

[Ieldra]

[quote]Barhador wrote...
I like this, but I think incapacitating them and then making a star go supernova would be more fitting to the 'dark energy' and 'unstable stars' peeks we have heard from Tali. Or better yet, a combination of the two since the Reapers (as you mentioned) wouldn't all be within the same system.[/quote]
The problem is that supernovae destroy everything within several light years (even though the shockwave takes a few years to get to the neighboring star systems). I admit we have not integrated the "dark energy/stars going unstable" angle. I believe that may be related to the Reapers's original purpose and it doesn't appear to reveal a hidden vulnerability that can be exploited.

[quote]Geth are interdependent where as Reapers are independent, and thus "each a nation". Legion said that.  In a way Geth are like a federation where many states make up one nation (like USA) but Reapers are like a confederation - several nations banded together. Since each reaper is made by harvesting the essence of one species (one nation) it makes sense they are indepentent and not of the same mind.[/quote]
Perhaps I should have said "Every Reaper is a collective mind". I think we are agreed that Reapers are independent from each other but incorporate many minds within every one.

[quote]Another thing. I think it's pretty much confirmed Reapers communicate using Quantum Entanglement (isn't it mentioned in Arrival?) [/quote]
I have to look that up.....


[/quote]

[aimlessgun]

I like the idea of reversing the use of the Citadel relay.

I don't know if the idea of using a high energy pulse would hold up, not sure if their communications would support such a thing, since it's not like they're electromagnetic waves or anything that you can crank up a dial on.

But the basic idea of sending some disruptive message seems reasonable. (maybe a choice of controlling the reapers and becoming galactic emperor? No? Fine!)

It is a little odd in terms of normal story structure since the destruction of the home base would be a climax of its own, so to top it you'd need the final fleet battle to be pretty goddamn epic, moreso than the smaller actions scattered around the galaxy. Feels like to properly do the Infiltration and then The War properly you'd have to make the game with a Part1 and a Part2.

Modifié par aimlessgun, 06 avril 2011 - 07:06 .

[Ieldra]

Wizz wrote...
Very well thoughts, Citadel really might be activated, one way or another. Indocriantion deserves it's own thread though. Still I didn't unserstand one thing, is Citadel captured by Reapers or not?

P.s. Such realistic view on strategic situation is very rare in our days.

In this scenario, the original relay switch has been destroyed along with most of the Citadel to keep it out of the Reapers' hands, but the relay itself is intact. This creates an additional obstacle to reactivating it but also explains why the Reapers aren't protecting the site. If they knew it was possible to reactivate the relay, they would not give anyone the opportunity.  

Modifié par Ieldra2, 06 avril 2011 - 07:07 .

[Tyrannosaurus Rex]

That's an awesome theory. I like that you managed to make a weapon that while powerful enough to weaken all the Reapers, is not pulled out of nowhere. And therefor won't seem like a cheap way to defeat a far supiorior enemy, or simply resort to make the Reapers far weaker than they should (which would be terrible).

[Elyvern]

Another point to note: notice we talk about the "slave mind" phenomenon? It would also perfectly justify the Collectors' interest in Shepard. Shepard is intended to be the slave mind of the new human Reaper, hence Collector interest in him because they are the workers for the Reapers, the ones that build new copies of them. 

Modifié par Elyvern, 06 avril 2011 - 07:23 .

[Ieldra]

aimlessgun wrote...
I like the idea of reversing the use of the Citadel relay.

I don't know if the idea of using a high energy pulse would hold up, not sure if their communications would support such a thing, since it's not like they're electromagnetic waves or anything that you can crank up a dial on.

But the basic idea of sending some disruptive message seems reasonable. (maybe a choice of controlling the reapers and becoming galactic emperor? No? Fine!)

We did think about controlling Reapers or sending one against the other. But I found that to be a cheap solution and considerably less epic than what we came up with in the end. As for the signal - the main idea was to exploit the vulnerability shown by Sovereign in the battle of the Citadel on a massive scale to circumvent the problem of how a small strike team could affect large-scale events. Details may vary.

It is a little odd in terms of normal story structure since the destruction of the home base would be a climax of its own, so to top it you'd need the final fleet battle to be pretty goddamn epic, moreso than the smaller actions scattered around the galaxy. Feels like to properly do the Infiltration and then The War properly you'd have to make the game with a Part1 and a Part2.

Actually, the destruction of the home base is almost an afterthought, for the really important part is how the Reapers themselves are defeated. You could destroy the home base and the Reaper invasion would by stymied for some time, but the Reapers would still exist and could reorganize. Protected by their insurmountable shields, time isn't really a factor for them.

Modifié par Ieldra2, 06 avril 2011 - 07:15 .

[Rekkampum]

Ieldra2 wrote...

The resulting battles were by no means easy, since the Reapers retained use of their weaponry and not all of them could be located in time to make full use of the incapacitating strike. Space battles whose intensity was matched by nothing since the krogan rebellion raged for several weeks, but in the end almost all Reapers were destroyed. Intelligence later determined that but a handful escaped into the unknown reaches of the galaxy.

Several weeks is still very deus ex machina, since their technology is still far more advanced than most of the other races and there probably are other weapons they've developed that we most likely will not understand. Plus there's the dark energy threat, which the Reapers most likely will be able to manipulate somehow. Months would be far more realistic. 

Also, if they are each a "nation", it seems rather anti-climatic for them to have a central base, though it is an attractive idea.

Modifié par Rekkampum, 06 avril 2011 - 07:14 .

[jojon2se]

For thousands of years you have been part of an enormous collective consiousness - there were never even a "you" - you were simply reaper_goo_generic_organism unnumerated. Then, suddenly, there is nothing, you are blind and all alone. If, through remaining primitive faculties, you can hear your immediate neighbours, it's only in sharing abandonment. Chilling thought.

[Cyanios]

Wel i'd be damned, someone got it right:D

[Ieldra]

Rekkampum wrote...

Ieldra2 wrote...

The resulting battles were by no means easy, since the Reapers retained use of their weaponry and not all of them could be located in time to make full use of the incapacitating strike. Space battles whose intensity was matched by nothing since the krogan rebellion raged for several weeks, but in the end almost all Reapers were destroyed. Intelligence later determined that but a handful escaped into the unknown reaches of the galaxy.

Several weeks is still very deus ex machina, since their technology is still far more advanced than most of the other races and there probably are other weapons they've developed that we most likely will not understand. Plus there's the dark energy threat, which the Reapers most likely will be able to manipulate somehow. Months would be far more realistic.

You are absolutely correct. My original idea was "years". It would be easy to extend the time frame, since it isn't really important for the core of the scenario. I only think that events in the ME universe are generally spaced much closer together in time than plausibility would indicate. I have adapted to that mindset though I do not really like it.

Also, if they are each a "nation", it seems rather anti-climatic for them to have a central base, though it is an attractive idea.

The constraints of the drama necessitate a central location. We need one team - in fact, one man - to deliver a decisive strike against a widely distributed force. If you can up with an idea that doesn't use something like a central hub, please don't hesitate to post it.

Modifié par Ieldra2, 06 avril 2011 - 07:22 .

[aimlessgun]

Ieldra2 wrote...

It is a little odd in terms of normal story structure since the destruction of the home base would be a climax of its own, so to top it you'd need the final fleet battle to be pretty goddamn epic, moreso than the smaller actions scattered around the galaxy. Feels like to properly do the Infiltration and then The War properly you'd have to make the game with a Part1 and a Part2.

Actually, the destruction of the home base is almost an afterthought, for the really important part is how the Reapers themselves are defeated. You could destroy the home base and the Reaper invasion would by stymied for some time, but the Reapers would still exist and could reorganize. Protected by their insurmountable shields, time isn't really a factor for them.

I was referring to the completion of the entire mission through the Citadel relay, including the signal. The scale and flow of that story, where Shepard is assembling this elite team and going in personally to accomplish this epic task, would feel very different than Shepard taking part in a general war. As far as shooter gameplay goes, boarding individual reapers and overloading their cores would pale in comparison to what you've already accomplished.

[Tyrannosaurus Rex]

The only bad thing about this theory is that some people might not like it for simply being the suicide mission on steriods.

[Ahriman]

[quote]Ieldra2 wrote...Another thing. I think it's pretty much confirmed Reapers communicate using Quantum Entanglement (isn't it mentioned in Arrival?) [/quote]

I have to look that up.....
[/quote]

They really do, it was mentioned in Redemption (or Ascension? In last novell anyway). But it actually doesnt' contradict your theory that much. Reapers were able to transport energy to their new toy via this connection. I have no idea how.

[quote]In this scenario, the original relay switch has been destroyed along
with most of the Citadel to keep it out of the Reapers' hands, but the
relay itself is intact. This creates an additional obstacle to
reactivating it but also explains why the Reapers aren't protecting the
site. If they knew it was possible to reactivate the relay, they would
not give anyone the opportunity.   [/quote]

Clear now. Still a bit jauntily for Reapers to leave main mechanism of their trap in such condition.

Modifié par Wizz, 06 avril 2011 - 07:45 .