jamesp81 wrote...
The problem is that dreadnoughts have no way to evade a Reaper's main weapons. From ME1, we know that a Reaper can literally blow a cruiser in half with a single shot. This does not bode well for the survivability of any ship that finds itself in weapons range of a Reaper. The Destiny Ascension never engaged Sovereign in ME1, so we don't have hard film of whether or not a dreadnought can take a hit from a Reaper. I think it's pretty obvious, however, from how powerful Reapers are portrayed to be that no dreadnought would last long against one.
Thanix cannons can be mounted to fighters, however. This gives a single fighter something like cruiser level firepower.
The Reaper's main weapon, so far, appears to be able to kill anything it can engage. However it also appears to be built for engaging other warships. The weapon has a relatively low rate of fire. I have no doubt that it could easily hit a maneuvering fighter. What I doubt is that it's rate of fire would be sufficient to destroy fighters quickly enough to function as an anti-fighter defensive weapon. If that battlefield is swarming with 2,000 fighters, even a Reaper is going to have a hard damned time destroying all of them. It will destroy any that it can engage; I do not believe it will be able to engage enough of them to stop them from completing a full squadron strike.
Survivability against a Reaper means being in a large group of small ships and hoping it doesn't target you. From what we know already, trying to armor and shield a warship so that it can withstand Reaper weapons fire looks to be a lot cause. Hell, Normandy destroyed that big assed collector ship with two shots from a Thanix cannon, and remember that a Thanix cannon is merely a human copy of the Reaper's main weapon. If a frigate armed with a copy of a Reaper weapon can face stomp a large ship like that so quickly, I don't see any dreadnought's survivability against a Reaper being measured in any unit of time greater than seconds.
The reason the reaper weapon is so superier is because its massive size is able to maintain a massive core for powering its weapons and shielding. Therefore a dreadnought is likely to have a similar edge over any other ships in terms of ability to sustain damage. The armor is likely to be thicker, the shields are likely to be able to take more damage, and its weapons can still pack a wallop. Reapers are basically just really advanced dreadnought-classed ships. While we can't expect ME's level of technology to go toe to toe with a reaper I think a dreadnought would be able to provide significant cover long enough to concentrate enough fire power on one with smaller ships and fighters supporting.
The thing about the core of the Normandy is that it was so large in order to maintain the stealth systems without additions to its firepower. The admiral wanted more fighters rather than a ship that could sneak around, basically. It still had the firepower equivilent of a normal ship its size.
The Thanix cannon can be mounted on fighters. But it is also a relatively new (and probably expensive) technology that is unlikely to be implemented wide-scale. The technolgy you implement on the Normandy is mostly PROTOTYPE. We don't know if it's just too new, too expensive, or resource limited. It could be all three. They were working with very advanced technology and an element zero core recovered from soverign. We don't know how much of that technology would be repeatable with current technology and resource levels.
The Collector Cruiser was just that, a cruiser. The cannon gave Normandy weaponry equivilent of the class of warship it was fighting which is what gave Joker the edge he needed to pilot it to victory.
It's also fair to assume the power output is limited to the core present in the ship. Which means fighters would still be extremely hampered by their small drive cores and not capable of the same cruiser killer level of fire.
It's also may not be easy to repurpose existing weaponry. Which means for the battle of the reapers, you still likely have the vast majoritly of your ships and fighters, with standard weaponry regardless.
Simply put I don't believe based on what knowledge we have, that small ships and fighters alone have enough firepower to break through reaper defenses on their own. A mix of ships is ideal and the smaller ships are preferably saved for once the shielding is down and they can provide actual hull damage.
Carriers also have similar size to a dreadnought and if a reaper manages to wipe out the carriers, the fighters would very quickly lose their ability to maintain combat long enough to do signicant damage.
Hell in the battle of the citadel a reaper plowered right through a cruiser without even slowing down. It might just do the same to the carriers.
Modifié par WizenSlinky0, 14 mai 2011 - 04:04 .
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