183 réponses à ce sujet

[Moiaussi]

Saphra Deden wrote...

The Council didn't do that out of any sense of benevolence and the Alliance and Turian Hierarchy are rivals. The turians are not indisputably supperior by any stretch of the imagination. Most especially in a Renegade universe.

Regardless, if they're superior then Anderson's betrayal is even more serious.

Really? I wasn't aware that any Turian worlds came under attack in ME1 or ME2. The Alliance lost fewer ships, but they had fewer ships to lose and have considerably less production capacity and economic strength.

Treating superior empires as hostile is very dangerous. Don't pick fights you can't win.

Moiaussi wrote...

...and when they finally got the vital intel they needed to crack the case Anderson ran to the turians with it.

They did so for the same reason that such things are done in RL. When there is high level infiltration, you cannot trust the agency infiltrated, so you need to bring in outsiders. That is simple pragmatism and actually is standard operating proceedure.

That's all just speculation, very practical speculation. Anderson played an extremely dangerous game.

Anyway, I'm done arguing this with you.

High level espionage is always a dangerous game. That doesn't mean it shouldn't be played.

Here's hoping you are done arguing period, but not holding my breath on that.

[Nathan Redgrave]

Saphra Deden wrote...

...and when they finally got the vital intel they needed to crack the case Anderson ran to the turians with it.

Because running to a species that's less likely to have Cerberus agents in its midst (Cerberus agents being human and all) is a surer way to actually make use of that vital intel. The enemy of your enemy, and all that jazz.

There wasn't really a happy middle-ground option, here. You go to the Alliance and maybe something gets done with the intel, but probably not fast enough to keep Cerberus from wising up and pulling out half of their cells before the strike teams hit. Or you go to the turians and take a risk in exchange for the surety that Cerberus will in fact be caught with their pants down. Hell, they got closer at that particular goal than they really should have because of TIM's little vengeance trip.

Treasonous, debatably--if you really work the angles you could probably get a treason charge out of this.

Risky, definitely--although I can't see the turian thought process looping around from "this is our chance to nail Cerberus!" to "this is our chance to nail the Alliance!"

Terrible thing to do, not so much--if you have to choose between an airtight course of action that does jack-all and a risky course of action that takes down the bad guys, there can't be any 100%-correct answer... it's just that your definition of "terrible" seems to be "possibly compromises the Alliance military," which seems a bit fuzzy as a definition of the word "terrible" to me.

[Nathan Redgrave]

Saphra Deden wrote...

I don't understand why the anti-Cerberus folks are so nice to their crew when their crew is still Cerberus.

Because the crew is made of up genuinely cool people--and horrible, horrible representations of what Cerberus actually is. Listen to Kelly's "But we don't hate aliens!" speech and then read a random Kai Leng scene in Retribution and you'll get an inkling of what I'm getting at.

Hell, Scotty and Gabby down in Engineering don't even know much about Cerberus beyond "We're stopping the Collectors with Commander Shepard!" The majority of the crew seems to have been assigned to the mission specifically for the mission and given minimal insight into Cerberus's larger nature. If you want to be honest about their own responsibility in anything, the only real "culpability" these people have is for the actions of the Lazarus Cell; their only crime is saving the galaxy. Can't expect the Alliance to see it that way (Jacob brings up that possibility at some point), but as far as I'm concerned the Normandy SR-2 crew deserves their due props.

[Nathan Redgrave]

Saphra Deden wrote...

...and also to grievously wound the Alliance in the process. The smart thing to do, would be to analyze the intel over a long period of time and gradually use it to crack down on Cerberus very gradually. This way you wouldn't expose the Alliance to its rivals and you wouldn't tip off Cerberus that you had the intel in the first place.

Are you insane?! Gradually?! Sure, why not?! Let's give Cerberus three goddamn years to get the hell out of Dodge, and maybe if we're lucky they'll leave behind an empty building to rub it in when we get to the third or fourth cell and they've already relocated! The fun thing about this intel is that it was too out-of-date to use the intel itself in the process of determining who's trustworthy or not, so how do you suppose Anderson is supposed to determine who to give it to and who to keep out of the loop? The more time goes by, the more likely another worm is being added to the Alliance to complicate matters. The more time goes by, the more out-of-date the intel becomes.

There was no reason to rush. Anderson could have sat on the info for months or years until he determined who it was safe to take it too. He could have even gone public with it. That would have been better than simply handling it over to a rival power.

Going public with vital intel is preferable to...? Okay, officially not taking you seriously anymore.

[Someone With Mass]

LorDC wrote...
I could have swallowed such excuse if they were serving on some cargo ship. But they are serving on frigate. That means you have good chance to get killed. Not to mention that Cerberus is known as criminal organization.
"They've tricked me! Bastards!" is plausible excuse for one man. But not for the whole ship crew.

Hey, I don't know what their reasons were, but I doubt anyone would join up if they knew the whole story behind Cerberus.

[Nathan Redgrave]

Saphra Deden wrote...

The point is to get them out of the Alliance. That other crap is not a priority. In fact, that other stuff you could justify working with the turians on. My beef isn't the turians raiding the Cerberus facilities as much as it is them arresting Alliance personnel.

And my beef is that those Cerberus agents could more easily have seen the Alliance coming.

You are too hysterical to have a debate with. I shouldn't be surprised. Your initial stance on this matter is telling.

You go to the turians, the turians get vital intel and Cerberus is none the wiser. You go public, the turians get that intel anyway and Cerberus knows it's out there. Maybe they lose some agents, but good luck with those research cells and shiz. Going public is the worst possible option: it blows the element of surprise completely out of the water.

Going public is something you do if you want to hurt Cerberus's image, not if you want to jump their lead researchers in a dark alley.

[Someone With Mass]

You know what might happen if corrupt Alliance personnel are arrested by the Alliance? People that don't want secrets to get out can have them killed, or pull a few strings with their contacts within the Alliance to release them before the interrogation.

If the turians arrests them, they won't have that privilege.

[Nathan Redgrave]

Someone With Mass wrote...

You know what might happen if corrupt Alliance personnel are arrested by the Alliance? People that don't want secrets to get out can have them killed, or pull a few strings with their contacts within the Alliance to release them before the interrogation.

If the turians arrests them, they won't have that privilege.

This was part of the logic Anderson was working with: the Turians are a known quantity in regards to Cerberus. Whatever else they'd do, they have absolutely no reason to aid and abet Cerberus or their agents. They were a surefire avenue to making sure Cerberus was taken down, or at least seriously hurt, with the intel Anderson had acquired.

[Someone With Mass]

Saphra Deden wrote...
Yes, that is all true. I don't dispute any of that. However the trade-off is that the Alliance is humiliated, made to look incompetent, its relations with the turians and the rest of the galaxy are harmed as a consequence, and Alliance secrets may be leaked to their military rivals.

I think they can recover from that little snag. 

Also, now that humanity is on the Council seat, it would just hurt everyone if the turians for some reason publicly revealed those secrets.

[Someone With Mass]

Why is it a big deal, anyway?

[khordlambert]

LorDC wrote...

Someone With Mass wrote...

LorDC wrote...
But Cerberus and TIM never ordered such twisted experiments. It was cell-leaders who were in charge who ordered torture of little children.

And TIM is in charge of the cells.

But he didn't knew.

True, but considering it's TIM himself telling you this you'd have to have the eyes of a bat to not question the accuracy of those claims.

[Mr. Gogeta34]

Shepard should know from personal experience that TIM has no control out in the field.

lol, and that's when TIM was giving his "own personal attention" to what Shepard was doing.

Modifié par Mr. Gogeta34, 17 mai 2011 - 06:16 .

[Someone With Mass]

Saphra Deden wrote...
Goodness gracious, never mind.

No, please enlighten me on what kind of military and tactical advantage the turians might gain on their allies that they for some reason would use by arresting a bunch of racists.

I'm all ears. 

[Nathan Redgrave]

Saphra Deden wrote...

Yes, that is all true. I don't dispute any of that. However the trade-off is that the Alliance is humiliated, made to look incompetent, its relations with the turians and the rest of the galaxy are harmed as a consequence, and Alliance secrets may be leaked to their military rivals.

The first two points can actually be turned to the Alliance's advantage if they play their cards right. The last point is a potential problem, but for the possibility of taking out Cerberus in one swoop or seriously hindering the organization as a whole (the former was the best-case result, the latter was the actual result), I contend that it was a risk worth taking. Sometimes you have to risk getting burned to put a fire out, and that's kind of what Anderson does. If he didn't do that kind of thing, Shepard would never have reach Ilos in time. Anderson isn't afraid to punch the human ambassador square in the face if it means doing what's right for everyone. So you could say he's a hero... but a horrible soldier.

[Nathan Redgrave]

Someone With Mass wrote...

No, please enlighten me on what kind of military and tactical advantage the turians might gain on their allies that they for some reason would use by arresting a bunch of racists.

I'm all ears. 

Potentially, they could gain some juicy intel. Suppose one of those agents knows about the fusion-bomb booby traps from the First Contact War? There is the point to remember, though, that the Alliance knows which people are privy to what intel and thus has the knowledge to counteract any theoretical advantages the turians might gain. Intel is most effective when the other side has no idea that you might have it.

[Nathan Redgrave]

Saphra Deden wrote...

Any Cerberus member who has infiltrated the Alliance will have done so presumably to learn things and spy on the Alliance. Thus they'll be privy to Alliance secrets. Operational details, research, expenditures, strategies, future plans, that sort of thing.

Once the turians have them they can gril lthese Cerberus operatives for these same secrets.

Yes indeed. But the disadvantage to that is that the turians have acquired these agents in a way that gives the Alliance full knowledge of when and where they acquired them, who they acquired, etc. It may be true that the Alliance could potentially be harmed, but on the same level as a person being told point-blank that a man is going to punch them in the face before the punch flies at them. They're equipped to deal with it. Cerberus, not so much. The difference between being caught with your pants down and getting a timely text message from your homie at Chora's Den that your wife's on the way home so you'd better get your asari-on-the-side outta there pretty fast... to use a rather crude metaphor.

[Nathan Redgrave]

Saphra Deden wrote...

Imagine if one of the secrets lost was the details of how the Normandy's stealth systems and drive core function?

Terrible example. The Normandy was co-developed with the Turians.