93 réponses à ce sujet

[ERJAK2]

Vengeful Nature wrote...

sp0ck 06 wrote...

I don't think their goal is necessarily the utter destruction of planets, but rather the systematic extermination of "advanced" life forms. Thus hitting Earth with a gravity bomb would not be in the Reapers interests. By destroying everything they remove the ability for new life to evolve, rendering the Reapers' own existence irrelevant

But they've done it to other planets. Plenty of them, in fact.

CommanderNuetral wrote...

Because they think like machines, and machines are stupid. They've been stuck in the same loop for their entire existence.

Simply put, they land because of bad programming.

Also, we wouldn't have much of a game if they did as you suggested. But you probably already knew that and were just flamebaiting. Why would you do that you say? Because you are a troll.

My intention is to have a debate about why the Reapers are landing.

The word 'troll' gets thrown around far too much these days.

I disagree with the highlighted statement. The urgency is still there if the Reapers are hanging above us pelting us with relativity bombs. Sure, we wouldn't have the bombastic, baysplosion intro, but I don't think that's a bad thing. Shepard escapes aboard the Normandy just the same, except the horror, impunity and cold efficiency of the Reapers is left intact.

The Reapers motivations HAVE NOT BEEN DETERMINED YET, the reproduction thing is part of it but not all. After all, why wait until they can fight back? There are 7 billion helpless sapient lifeforms on earth NOW, if they were to attack and use us to reprduce they could make dozens of reapers at minimum. The risk of waiting should not be worth the reward of a few more organics.

[Destroy Raiden_]

They don't want to destroy the planet they want to indoctrinate and or eat it's inhabitants. They want the planets intact they probably go to these worlds not to just eat people but to get minerals and other such things from the worlds they take.

[elitecom]

I thought of this as well, why land on Earth? Each Reaper(of Sovereign/Harbinger size) has a large spinal mounted mass accelerator that makes the Destiny Ascension's look like a small tube. They could just stay in orbit and orbital bombard Earth into a lifeless rock. However they probably want humans as slaves, seeker agents, and to use them to create more Reapers as they tried through the Collectors in Mass Effect 2. If you want them to create another Reaper, killing them all at once won't do any good. Therefore you need to do it the hard way, going planet side and take over. That's my explenation for it. Also the Reapers motive for their cycles of extinction has still not been deduced, but they obviously want the human population on Earth alive.

[Anacronian Stryx]

Plus the reapers "reap" more than bio-goo.. they harvest resources and technology as well as the goo of life.

Hell any idea of blowing up planets or utterly destroying them is archaic compared to what the reapers do.

They land, wipe out what little resistance there is and indoctrinate the planets own inhabitants into giving up their resources technology and finally their biomass.

It's insidious really.

[KiraTsukasa]

Vengeful Nature wrote...

Found those links I was looking for. The planets of Aphras, Etamis, Bothros, Joab and Tosal Nym all appear to have suffered from RKV bombardment.

And yet there is no evidence that the Reapers were the culprits on any of these planets.

[Vengeful Nature]

All Dead wrote...

You don't really care about the answer; you just want to nitpick.

Can we keep this civil, please?

It's not nitpicking, the entire Reaper thing hangs on this issue. It linked into why they're doing what they're doing.

In answer to your and other's questions, why wouldn't they be immortal? These are self-sustaining, mechanical machines. They are far beyond the technology level of current galactic civilisation, so I wouldn't expect wear and tear to be an issue.

As for the grey goo stuff, I'm not alone in saying that it doesn't make sense. There have been many threads about that issue. It's probably better to go to those in this case.

Modifié par Vengeful Nature, 07 juin 2011 - 05:36 .

[Vengeful Nature]

KiraTsukasa wrote...

Vengeful Nature wrote...

Found those links I was looking for. The planets of Aphras, Etamis, Bothros, Joab and Tosal Nym all appear to have suffered from RKV bombardment.

And yet there is no evidence that the Reapers were the culprits on any of these planets.

I'll concede that, but it's heavily hinted at. The fact that the same death crops up across the galaxy for 4 different spacefaring civilisations was clearly meant as an allusion to previous Reaper activity. What's the saying? Something about 2 being a coincidence, 3 being a clue, or something?

[sp0ck 06]

KiraTsukasa wrote...

Vengeful Nature wrote...

Found those links I was looking for. The planets of Aphras, Etamis, Bothros, Joab and Tosal Nym all appear to have suffered from RKV bombardment.

And yet there is no evidence that the Reapers were the culprits on any of these planets.

This.  Nothing to indicate it was the Reapers.  

[Ahriman]

Vengeful Nature wrote...

Found those links I was looking for. The planets of Aphras, Etamis, Bothros, Joab and Tosal Nym all appear to have suffered from RKV bombardment.

That actually gives a hint. Reapers harvest only large civilizations, if they meet minor races they just nuke it from orbit and move forward. I suppose harvesting planets for a resources is not one of their goals. If they wanted get resources they could just send army of drones on random planet and rip all minerals off.

[Anacronian Stryx]

All Dead wrote...

Vengeful Nature wrote...

But they need to reproduce, you say? Well, setting aside the fact that that whole human goo thing is stupid, you won't need to reproduce if you don't have any casualties...

They may not be immortal. Or reproducing for them is as much of a primal urge as it for organics. Or they must reproduce for a reason (perhaps yet) unknown. The answer to your question is harvesting. Which you find "stupid." So your argument is intellectually dishonest. You don't really care about the answer; you just want to nitpick.

Perhaps the reaper conscious(reaper larvae) is immortal but the shell isn't, the shells might only be good for a couple million years until the concious has to move to another new one?

As far as we know it's only the reaper larvae that's made from bio-goo - the shell could have been made from more ordinary materials with an finite longevity.

[Gorskijesih]

The bombarding of the planets that you listed doesn't necessarily need to be of reaper origin. It doesn't even have to be related to the reapers. I see a few possiblities:

1) Ancient civilisations from previous cycles warred with each other, using such weapons. The reapers probably came afterwards, when they were weakened.

2) It was the reapers who bombarded these planets, but they had good reason to do so. For example, whoever was on these planets may have been putting up too much of a fight, i.e. be too much effort to reap, so they just nuked them.

3) There was a reaper on said planet, and the ancient civilisations used the weapon to try and destroy it. We know that whoever came before us did try and sometimes succeed in defeating some reapers. The derelict reaper of ME2 is an example.

[sp0ck 06]

Vengeful Nature wrote...

KiraTsukasa wrote...

Vengeful Nature wrote...

Found those links I was looking for. The planets of Aphras, Etamis, Bothros, Joab and Tosal Nym all appear to have suffered from RKV bombardment.

And yet there is no evidence that the Reapers were the culprits on any of these planets.

I'll concede that, but it's heavily hinted at. The fact that the same death crops up across the galaxy for 4 different spacefaring civilisations was clearly meant as an allusion to previous Reaper activity. What's the saying? Something about 2 being a coincidence, 3 being a clue, or something?

Well as you said earlier, theres billions of planets to potentially support life.  If 4 or 5 show evidence of ancient orbital bombardment, it could be anything: wars between forgotten civilizations, charlie sheen's torpedo of truth, anything.

[Vengeful Nature]

ERJAK2 wrote...

The Reapers motivations HAVE NOT BEEN DETERMINED YET, the reproduction thing is part of it but not all. After all, why wait until they can fight back? There are 7 billion helpless sapient lifeforms on earth NOW, if they were to attack and use us to reprduce they could make dozens of reapers at minimum. The risk of waiting should not be worth the reward of a few more organics.

I agree. So why are some people (not necessarily you) hanging on the grey goo theory to explain Reaper activity as a whole, and their reason for disregarding good tactical sense in exchance for an bombastic, explosive action-movie esque intro.

[KainrycKarr]

Vengeful Nature wrote...

Some of you seem to misunderstand what I mean by bombarding a planet with these things. Your not destroying the actual planet a la deathstar, your bombarding the surface into lifelessness. The planet still exists after you've done it.

Yes, but they don't want lifelessness. They want the life, and they want it to continue for their next cycle.

The galaxy is basically a "field". Each "generation" of spacefaring civilizations is basically a "crop" that the reapers harvest every 50k years. If they destroy the "field" or otherwise make it unable to support life, then their resources are no longer renewable and the reapers would have to A) find a new galaxy, or become not so immortal, and die, or power down, or whatever it is that giant sentient spaceships do when they run out of food/energy.

[Tigerman123]

One reason would be that Reapers can indoctrinate from a fair distance, but they still need to land to do it. Some would also need to alight to release husks etc.

IMO they probably still want to go for a human reaper, landing allows them to harvest the raw materials, which they need to pick up themselves now that the collectors are gone, but that was always going to accompany the main Reaper attack, given that the Collectors couldn't have assaulted Earth alone

[Vengeful Nature]

Gorskijesih wrote...

The bombarding of the planets that you listed doesn't necessarily need to be of reaper origin. It doesn't even have to be related to the reapers. I see a few possiblities:

1) Ancient civilisations from previous cycles warred with each other, using such weapons. The reapers probably came afterwards, when they were weakened.

2) It was the reapers who bombarded these planets, but they had good reason to do so. For example, whoever was on these planets may have been putting up too much of a fight, i.e. be too much effort to reap, so they just nuked them.

3) There was a reaper on said planet, and the ancient civilisations used the weapon to try and destroy it. We know that whoever came before us did try and sometimes succeed in defeating some reapers. The derelict reaper of ME2 is an example.

1) Possibly, but again, I don't think they would have been put in if it wasn't a hint at previous Reaper cycles. Why devote so much writing to these planets if you aren't going to explain it, if it wasn't the Reapers doing their thing? These are clues left around to hint at the presense of the Reapers.

2) So Humanity isn't putting up a fight? Shepard has scuppered their plans from day one. You're obviously dropping the ball if you don't nuke his civilisation to atoms to get rid of a very real threat to this cycle/

3) I agree. But what does that have to do with the Reapers landing on Earth?

[Vengeful Nature]

sp0ck 06 wrote...

Vengeful Nature wrote...

KiraTsukasa wrote...

Vengeful Nature wrote...

Found those links I was looking for. The planets of Aphras, Etamis, Bothros, Joab and Tosal Nym all appear to have suffered from RKV bombardment.

And yet there is no evidence that the Reapers were the culprits on any of these planets.

I'll concede that, but it's heavily hinted at. The fact that the same death crops up across the galaxy for 4 different spacefaring civilisations was clearly meant as an allusion to previous Reaper activity. What's the saying? Something about 2 being a coincidence, 3 being a clue, or something?

Well as you said earlier, theres billions of planets to potentially support life.  If 4 or 5 show evidence of ancient orbital bombardment, it could be anything: wars between forgotten civilizations, charlie sheen's torpedo of truth, anything.

But the fact is that the vast majority of these planets won't be capable of supporting intelligent life. 4 or 5 terrestrial planets is a lot of prime real estate in the grand scheme of things. Take into account that these planets are all in the Terminus Systems. The rest of the galaxy is likely to hold more.

[Vengeful Nature]

KainrycKarr wrote...

Vengeful Nature wrote...

Some of you seem to misunderstand what I mean by bombarding a planet with these things. Your not destroying the actual planet a la deathstar, your bombarding the surface into lifelessness. The planet still exists after you've done it.

Yes, but they don't want lifelessness. They want the life, and they want it to continue for their next cycle.

The galaxy is basically a "field". Each "generation" of spacefaring civilizations is basically a "crop" that the reapers harvest every 50k years. If they destroy the "field" or otherwise make it unable to support life, then their resources are no longer renewable and the reapers would have to A) find a new galaxy, or become not so immortal, and die, or power down, or whatever it is that giant sentient spaceships do when they run out of food/energy.

I understand the general concept, but the fact is that the reason the Reapers want to harvest this life is still very unclear. The grey goo theory is shaky at best (I'll try and find some links to some good discussions about it, hang fire) and may well be a byproduct of the Reapers harvests, rather than the aim in total.

As for harvesting technology, the Reapers are far beyond the technology of the current galactic state of the art, even far beyond the Prothean's level. What use would they have of these comparative flint-tipped spears when they have access to far greater gizmos?

Edit: sorry for not answering all your points in turn, this thread is moving pretty fast, and my hands are pretty cold.

Modifié par Vengeful Nature, 07 juin 2011 - 05:51 .

[sp0ck 06]

Vengeful Nature wrote...

KainrycKarr wrote...

Vengeful Nature wrote...

Some of you seem to misunderstand what I mean by bombarding a planet with these things. Your not destroying the actual planet a la deathstar, your bombarding the surface into lifelessness. The planet still exists after you've done it.

Yes, but they don't want lifelessness. They want the life, and they want it to continue for their next cycle.

The galaxy is basically a "field". Each "generation" of spacefaring civilizations is basically a "crop" that the reapers harvest every 50k years. If they destroy the "field" or otherwise make it unable to support life, then their resources are no longer renewable and the reapers would have to A) find a new galaxy, or become not so immortal, and die, or power down, or whatever it is that giant sentient spaceships do when they run out of food/energy.

I understand the general concept, but the fact is that the reason the Reapers want to harvest this life is still very unclear. The grey goo theory is shaky at best (I'll try and find some links to some good discussions about it, hang fire) and may well be a byproduct of the Reapers harvests, rather than the aim in total.

As for harvesting technology, the Reapers are far beyond the technology of the current galactic state of the art, even far beyond the Prothean's level. What use would they have of these comparative flint-tipped spears when they have access to far greater gizmos?

Edit: sorry for not answering all your points in turn, this thread is moving pretty fast, and my hands are pretty cold.

The whole "harvesting" thing is up in the air.  We don't know for sure what they're after.  But what we can say with certainty is the cycle of destruction and growth matter very much to the Reapers.  Sovereign itself says "The cycle must not be broken" on Virmire.  This is the REapers sole purpose, seemingly the only reason they exist.  Rendering Earth lifeless could be seen as breaking the cycle.  If the REapers just wanted to destroy all life they would have done it millions of years ago.  They require a purpose to justify their existence.

[Gorskijesih]

Vengeful Nature wrote...

Gorskijesih wrote...
Snip.

1) Possibly, but again, I don't think they would have been put in if it wasn't a hint at previous Reaper cycles. Why devote so much writing to these planets if you aren't going to explain it, if it wasn't the Reapers doing their thing? These are clues left around to hint at the presense of the Reapers.

2) So Humanity isn't putting up a fight? Shepard has scuppered their plans from day one. You're obviously dropping the ball if you don't nuke his civilisation to atoms to get rid of a very real threat to this cycle/

3) I agree. But what does that have to do with the Reapers landing on Earth?

1) My explanation here did not include the motives of the developers, so that's true.

2) Humanity is putting up a fight, but they want to harvest humanity, not destroy it. We're too valuable. Maybe the civilisations on the bombed planets weren't fit for harvesting, so they were simply destroyed after being deemed too much trouble.

3) Nothing. It implies that the reapers didn't bomb the planets and never do.

[KainrycKarr]

I'm pretty sure Sovereign tells us as much in ME1, and the Termina-Human Reaper is a pretty big clue as well.

Either way, it's pretty safe to assume that whatever it is they're doing, it's more complex and long-term than just nuking the hell out of everything, which is what you're suggesting.

[Vengeful Nature]

KainrycKarr wrote...

I'm pretty sure Sovereign tells us as much in ME1, and the Termina-Human Reaper is a pretty big clue as well.

Either way, it's pretty safe to assume that whatever it is they're doing, it's more complex and long-term than just nuking the hell out of everything, which is what you're suggesting.

I hope you're right. What's clear is that reproduction is not their main goal and is just a byproduct of the process. I for one hope they don't get explained in full. I like my mysteries.

The point of this thread, however, has been to ask this question. I just think it's strange that we have evidence that they have been doing it before (bombarding, I mean), it is well within their means to do, and that their reason for not doing it is unclear at best.

[Purge the heathens]

I'll throw some guesses in.

Maybe the bombed worlds were just "crappy" in that life there tended to evolve traits either deemed undesirable by the Reapers or already widely distributed among them, if all or many of them adapt the best traits of a recent conquest. So, burn it all and let someone colonize it for eezo and whatnot.

Or it's necessary to keep the cycle at an interval approximating 50,000 years. So, there are some civilizations that have nothing at all to offer, but you can't just ignore them during the current harvest. If you do, they'll cook up the good stuff way too early, you'll have to micromanage and individually exterminate so much...
It's an administrative nightmare. Better to reset all of galactic civilization, so it can properly rebuild and revolve around the Citadel. If that means you have to destroy some worlds for good, so be it.

There's also the possibility that they can restore a world to garden status (though I suppose this would require a lot of effort). Or they let their victims do that before they fly in, it's never been said what terraforming can and can't do in ME. So that world's dead, but that one's lush and verdant now!

[Clonedzero]

they probably dont wanna nuke earth cus well, what if dolphins evolve into being the next race they harvest?

earth is stupidly rich with varied life, it'd be dumb to nuke it.