241 réponses à ce sujet

[Dexi]

Destr1er wrote...

The entirety of the Citadel races fleets, including the Quarians and everyone else will still be outnumbered by the Reapers.

From where the **** did you get that? 

The Quarians alone have 50.000 ships... 50.000! Of course, not every ship is a combat one, but you're saying numbers...
I'm guessing the true Geth faction will have comparable numbers, only that most will be battle equipped.

Thats lets say Quarian + Geth = 80.000 ships... Sheer number is amazing! 

Mobilized and refitted ships from the Council races +  Attican + maybe Terminus goes to 200.000 ships. 


With 200.000 ships it all reduces to TACTIC.  And no direct combat, because even if they are 200.000 ships a sole Reaper, in a formation would average 100-250 killed ships alone.

Of course, when picked up in much less numbers they are helpless against overwhelm tactics.  

[Destr1er]

The Quarians have 50,000 ships. But most of those house refugees and are not battle ships. They likely have a few hundred that are battle-ready.

The Geth are an unknown here, they could potentially be a game-changer.

The Council fleets were badly wounded during Sovereign's attack on the Citadel. They are still re-building.

The Terminus systems are not very populous and their military strength is unknown, but likely not very large.
They are comprised mostly of pirates that raid undefended colonies and flee before any military pushback.

More likely less than 20,000 combat ready ships.

Against how many thousands of Reaapers? They have huge numbers, and a massive tech advantage .

Keep in mind, they have done this before, to civilizations that were at least as advanced as the current Council species, and likely just as numerous.

Modifié par Destr1er, 28 juin 2011 - 07:16 .

[Kilshrek]

I think that one reaper (plus a small armada of geth, yes) just about wiped the metaphorical floor with the citadel fleet. Now, going by the number of reapers seen at the end of ME 2, one must hope that anti-reaper technology advanced by 50,000 years between the end of ME 2 and the start of ME 3, or it don't matter how many ships the combined galaxy has, the reapers had more time to work on the art of genocide before the protheans(and their predecessors, and theirs before them) discovered fire.

[Raygereio]

Dexi wrote...
The Quarians alone have 50.000 ships... 50.000!

It's amazing how often this has been brought up in this thread alone. That's akin to saying the Dutch have a huge army, because they've got over 16 million people. It doesn't quite work that way.
How many of those ships house non-combat people and thus shouldn't be anywhere near the front lines? How many have any combat capability at all? How many of those that do are combat ready?

Besides with the huge tech advantage of the reapers numbers don't mean anything. If you want to overcome the enemy with swarm tactics then - besides the fact that you're a terrible commander who's wasting lives - you need to be able to actually do damage.
It's been a while since I played ME1, but i remember Sovereign being completely unfaced by the Alliance's attacks. He even rammed through a Turian ship without sustaining any damage whatsover. The only reason Sov went down was because his shield went down when he sufferend a BSoD after Sarren MkII's demise.

Mind you, there have been tech upgrades following that incident. The Thanix canon for one, but we haven't yet seen how effective those are against reapers, so that's a great unknown. That and I raise my eyebrow at the notion every single ship would have been upgraded with that new tech. It hasn't been that long since the ME1.

Modifié par Raygereio, 28 juin 2011 - 08:40 .

[SkittlesKat96]

 People forget that there are a lot of Dreadnoughts in the galaxy that are nearly as powerful as the Ascension...

The Reapers no matter what we do are going to slaughter many humans and will wipe out a large part of the forces that attack it but I'm sure a unified attack with much much ships and fleets could still thwart the Reapers (just like the OP is saying I think)

EDIT: In the first ME 1 there was only one unprepared Dreadnought and most of the Citadel fleet was gone and not ready, it was an ambush attack and they were overwhelmed by many many Geth...not to mention the Reapers on Earth will hopefully be partially on Earth so they can send in powerful groundtroop units as well, its not a massive battle where all the forces are fighting each other right above Earth.

Modifié par SkittlesKat96, 28 juin 2011 - 10:13 .

[TornadoADV]

I think we had a discussion of this quite awhile back. Shame there isn't a post history past 5-10 posts or I'd copy-paste mine viewpoint. But the jist is we have weapons even today that are orders of magnitude more powerful then a Dreadnought's spinal weapon, combine that with Javelins and UV Lasers from the Salarians. Meaning that a localized sector of the Reaper's kinetic barrier emitters could be destroyed and followed up with at least a 25 megaton warhead.

Attacks would be quick, roving Frigate Wolfpacks using intel to FTL drop on a Reaper target, close to knife fight range, do the deed, FTL out and repeat.

[SkittlesKat96]

TornadoADV wrote...

I think we had a discussion of this quite awhile back. Shame there isn't a post history past 5-10 posts or I'd copy-paste mine viewpoint. But the jist is we have weapons even today that are orders of magnitude more powerful then a Dreadnought's spinal weapon, combine that with Javelins and UV Lasers from the Salarians. Meaning that a localized sector of the Reaper's kinetic barrier emitters could be destroyed and followed up with at least a 25 megaton warhead.

Attacks would be quick, roving Frigate Wolfpacks using intel to FTL drop on a Reaper target, close to knife fight range, do the deed, FTL out and repeat.

This too, the Reapers are still very powerful but there will still be some of the best technology up against them, maybe if you saved the Collectors base you can organize an emergency mission to fit some Cruisers and bigger ships with Thanix cannons and Reaper technology, or maybe the Salarians will provide you with their Javelins and etc.

Also wasn't there something in a novel about Krogans trying to make powerful ground warfare tanks or something?

[SalsaDMA]

Dexi wrote...

Destr1er wrote...

The entirety of the Citadel races fleets, including the Quarians and everyone else will still be outnumbered by the Reapers.

From where the **** did you get that? 

The Quarians alone have 50.000 ships... 50.000! Of course, not every ship is a combat one, but you're saying numbers...
I'm guessing the true Geth faction will have comparable numbers, only that most will be battle equipped.

Thats lets say Quarian + Geth = 80.000 ships... Sheer number is amazing! 

Mobilized and refitted ships from the Council races +  Attican + maybe Terminus goes to 200.000 ships. 


With 200.000 ships it all reduces to TACTIC.  And no direct combat, because even if they are 200.000 ships a sole Reaper, in a formation would average 100-250 killed ships alone.

Of course, when picked up in much less numbers they are helpless against overwhelm tactics.  

And let us not forget that the reapers ARE in fact spreading out, as witnessed by the released info. Yeah, sure, there's a lot of thme on earth, But we have confimred info so far of at least 2 "reaper incidents" outside of earths localization.
1) "The reaper base is an actual reaper!" footage with An orbital strike blasting through the shields of a reaper and still delivering enough of a punch to 'daze' it. (Incidently thereby being proof that reaper shields are not impenetrable).
2) The info released about Shepard being chased by a reaper on a Krogan world and a worm pulling down the reaper to fight with it underground.

From the sounds of it, the reaper fleet is focusing on earth, but sending 'recon' elsewhere to mess up things here and there or just do 'their thang'.

Cut away these extensions with precise calculated strikes of overwhelming force, using the doctrine of the Systems Alliance to slowly cut away at force the reapers consists of, before ultimately engaging the fleet on earth with the whole 'shebang'.

And I'm not even sure 200k ships is a big enough number when we consider ALL the races (Especially if we take a "battle of dunkirk" consideration and employ civilian ships as well to bolster numbers, even if the actual usage would differ somewhat from that historical battle)

[armass]

I think they can stand up to entire galaxy's fleet.

[luzburg]

well, find the massive acsilerator that took out the derelict reaper, and remember the thanix cannon a smaller versjon of sovergins main gun, outfitt every ship wit it then you get som serius firepower. it used only 2 shots on the collector cruser that probably used reaper sheilds, and outfit a dreadnught wit large thanix....

[sovereignsr2]

Dexi wrote...

Destr1er wrote...

The entirety of the Citadel races fleets, including the Quarians and everyone else will still be outnumbered by the Reapers.

From where the **** did you get that? 

The Quarians alone have 50.000 ships... 50.000! Of course, not every ship is a combat one, but you're saying numbers...
I'm guessing the true Geth faction will have comparable numbers, only that most will be battle equipped.

Thats lets say Quarian + Geth = 80.000 ships... Sheer number is amazing! 

Mobilized and refitted ships from the Council races +  Attican + maybe Terminus goes to 200.000 ships. 


With 200.000 ships it all reduces to TACTIC.  And no direct combat, because even if they are 200.000 ships a sole Reaper, in a formation would average 100-250 killed ships alone.

Of course, when picked up in much less numbers they are helpless against overwhelm tactics.  

[sovereignsr2]

I am the shadow broker you have to remember soveriegns threat "our numbers will black out the sky of every planet" the geth the 50k querians and 300k outher ships could not do that not to mention ME2 quote from shepherd " fighting soveriegn the alliance lost 8 crusiers turrians lost 20" they would have lost a lot more if you had not killed soveriegn and brought down its sheild it would take 1000 to 1 odds to take out the reapers or some virous my thought is that the racni and the geth will be working with you in mass effect 3 if you saved the racni queen in 1 you see her on illum in 2 and you reconform the geth in 2 he says in the future we may be able to work together to take out a common threat

[sovereignsr2]

Just remember all the quotes from me1 and me2 and you will find the anwser also do all the missions with paragon results even the assingments this is the secret to finding out the anwser to the question the shadow broker has spoken

[Dexi]

Destr1er wrote...

The Quarians have 50,000 ships. But most of those house refugees and are not battle ships. They likely have a few hundred that are battle-ready.

The Geth are an unknown here, they could potentially be a game-changer.

The Council fleets were badly wounded during Sovereign's attack on the Citadel. They are still re-building.

The Terminus systems are not very populous and their military strength is unknown, but likely not very large.
They are comprised mostly of pirates that raid undefended colonies and flee before any military pushback.

More likely less than 20,000 combat ready ships.

Against how many thousands of Reaapers? They have huge numbers, and a massive tech advantage .

Keep in mind, they have done this before, to civilizations that were at least as advanced as the current Council species, and likely just as numerous.

I never said they were battle ships. Just ships. But ships can be refitted. 

Someone said that saying that because the Quarians have 50.000 ships that doesnt mean blabla, its like saying the Dutch have a huge army cuz they got 16 million people.

WRONG. The right comparison would be:
You'd say its a huge army because there are 16 million people, each with a gun in their property. 
They have a gun, that doesn't mean much, loads of people have them. But if they are trained on how to use it, they can become a serious threat.

Same for the Migrant Fleet... 50.000  ships, big deal, not all are battle-ships. But they can easily be refitted for battle... at least you can strap bombs to them and send them kamikaze. 50.000 ships each straped with a nuclear bomb on its back, each launced at FTL speeds... not a nice sight, not a nice sight. 

Of course, that's a bit extreme, not suggesting that, but saying that the sheer number is important  as it's an indicator for the Fleet's potential, if nothing else. 

There isn't a "huge" tech superiority in the Reapers' favor.
Think of WW2. 
The King Tiger Tank... Germans built it, it was the biggest and most powerful tank used in the War ( but it entered in function in the last two years of war). It had the highest performance...
Thickest armor using slope design, to make it even more impenetrable, it had the 88mm gun also used by normal artillery ( just think of its power).

But it got busted heavily on the Eastern Front... why?
Simply, even though it would outclass the severly lower-tech russian T's, the T's outnumbered the Tigers sometimes during certain battles even by 5 to 1. 
Of course, from a longe range, it wouldn't have mattered, the Tiger could've easily took out more than 5 T's. But that's when tactic played in, russians used swarm, flanking and overwhelm tactics, avoiding immediate first contact. 


And it's not even that a huge gap between the Reapers and the Milky, I mean, they use lazer guns, we copied them and got the Thanix... 



I also don't get it from where people say that Sovereign and a small Geth fleet mopped the floor with the Citadel forces....

1) Only ONE dreadnought was present at the battle. It's presence was nullified anyway, because dreadnoughts do not engage to closer combat, but the Destiny Ascenion had no choice, it didn't even fire it's main gun.
2) Other Citadel forces were just a couple of cruissers and frigates... 
3) Even if the bulk of the Citadel fleet would've been at the Citadel, Sovereign did a surpise attack, hence having a huge advantage.
4) Watching a video with the battle, Sovereign was focused fired upon only by two Turian cruissers. One was destroyed by Sovy when he rammed into it on it's way into the closing Citadel. The rest of the battle was waged by the Geth. 
5) The day was saved when the Alliance came in. They didn't come with all their armada, just with the Fifth ( Arcturus) Fleet. 

TornadoADV wrote...

I think we had a discussion of this quite awhile back. Shame there isn't a post history past 5-10 posts or I'd copy-paste mine viewpoint. But the jist is we have weapons even today that are orders of magnitude more powerful then a Dreadnought's spinal weapon, combine that with Javelins and UV Lasers from the Salarians. Meaning that a localized sector of the Reaper's kinetic barrier emitters could be destroyed and followed up with at least a 25 megaton warhead.

Attacks would be quick, roving Frigate Wolfpacks using intel to FTL drop on a Reaper target, close to knife fight range, do the deed, FTL out and repeat.

I agree.

SalsaDMA wrote...

Dexi wrote...

Destr1er wrote...

The entirety of the Citadel races fleets, including the Quarians and everyone else will still be outnumbered by the Reapers. 

From where the **** did you get that? 

The Quarians alone have 50.000 ships... 50.000! Of course, not every ship is a combat one, but you're saying numbers...
I'm guessing the true Geth faction will have comparable numbers, only that most will be battle equipped. 

Thats lets say Quarian + Geth = 80.000 ships... Sheer number is amazing! 

Mobilized and refitted ships from the Council races +  Attican + maybe Terminus goes to 200.000 ships. 


With 200.000 ships it all reduces to TACTIC.  And no direct combat, because even if they are 200.000 ships a sole Reaper, in a formation would average 100-250 killed ships alone.

Of course, when picked up in much less numbers they are helpless against overwhelm tactics.  

And let us not forget that the reapers ARE in fact spreading out, as witnessed by the released info. Yeah, sure, there's a lot of thme on earth, But we have confimred info so far of at least 2 "reaper incidents" outside of earths localization. 
1) "The reaper base is an actual reaper!" footage with An orbital strike blasting through the shields of a reaper and still delivering enough of a punch to 'daze' it. (Incidently thereby being proof that reaper shields are not impenetrable).
2) The info released about Shepard being chased by a reaper on a Krogan world and a worm pulling down the reaper to fight with it underground.

From the sounds of it, the reaper fleet is focusing on earth, but sending 'recon' elsewhere to mess up things here and there or just do 'their thang'. 

Cut away these extensions with precise calculated strikes of overwhelming force, using the doctrine of the Systems Alliance to slowly cut away at force the reapers consists of, before ultimately engaging the fleet on earth with the whole 'shebang'.

And I'm not even sure 200k ships is a big enough number when we consider ALL the races (Especially if we take a "battle of dunkirk" consideration and employ civilian ships as well to bolster numbers, even if the actual usage would differ somewhat from that historical battle)

I agree. 

[lyleoffmyspace]

What if the Reapers run out of ammo?

[fett51]

Tornado ADV wrote...

Attacks would be quick, roving Frigate Wolfpacks using intel to FTL drop on a Reaper target, close to knife fight range, do the deed, FTL out and repeat.

Nuclear warheads are big and heavy, coupled with an engine they're nearly as large as fighters are - very easy to intercept. We also don't have any indication frigates are able to jump in close enough to a Reaper to minimize the time they'd be taking fire, and we do know stealth systems don't work against Reapers. Also very unlikely 4-6 frigates can pack enough punch to get through Reaper defenses (Bear in mind Sovereign had been worked over by the entire fifth fleet plus lingering damage from fighting the council fleet before Normandy was able to blow through it). You'd seemingly need to zerg rush to get this to work.

SalsaDMA wrote...

1) "The reaper base is an actual reaper!" footage with An orbital strike blasting through the shields of a reaper and still delivering enough of a punch to 'daze' it. (Incidently thereby being proof that reaper shields are not impenetrable).

2) The info released about Shepard being chased by a reaper on a Krogan world and a worm pulling down the reaper to fight with it underground.

That hit also did no visible damage to the Reaper, getting knocked on its ass is just physics. As for one getting pulled under by a thresher maw, it must be one of the small ones. Full size reapers (Sovereign anyway) are two kilometers long. One of their tentacles could stomp a thresher maw.

SalsaDMA wrote...

And I'm not even sure 200k ships is a big enough number when we consider ALL the races (Especially if we take a "battle of dunkirk" consideration and employ civilian ships as well to bolster numbers, even if the actual usage would differ somewhat from that historical battle)

Counting civilian ships I'm sure it's not enough. I wouldn't count on all those crap freighters to be anything more than cannon fodder/FTL bombs though. Same goes for pirate/Terminus vessels, per Pressley in ME1 one alliance Frigate was enough to kick the snot out of the Skyllian Blitz. Military vessels...dubious. The only hard number we have is 83 dreadnaughts for the council races, even assuming 100 cruisers and 400 frigates per one dreadnaught only gets us to about 40,000 ships.

Dexi wrote...

Same for the Migrant Fleet... 50.000 ships, big deal, not all are battle-ships. But they can easily be refitted for battle... at least you can strap bombs to them and send them kamikaze. 50.000 ships each straped with a nuclear bomb on its back, each launced at FTL speeds... not a nice sight, not a nice sight.

Assuming they're precise enough to hit and assuming the Reaper didn't dodge. If you're going to stand any chance of hitting them you're going to have to be in fairly close to aim properly (within a lightsecond probably) as they almost certainly will be moving. Given that the Reaper(s) will likely know what's coming which brings up another big problem - EDI was able to charge the Normandy's drive core and jump the ship within about a second, we should assume the Reapers are as fast or faster. Made worse if you consider the Collectors were able to FTL in right on top of the Normandy - they clearly can jump in wherever they want to. Like into ramming distance of the ships you're trying to launch (which would prevent them building up enough speed to do any real damage to the Reaper).

Modifié par fett51, 28 juin 2011 - 03:01 .

[Dexi]

"Assuming they're precise enough to hit and assuming the Reaper didn't dodge" I stopped reading there....

Launching at FTL means launching at Faster Than Light, means more or less insta hit....


Again, people are imagining a scenario in which the Reapers are in formation and they see a bunch of ships activating their FTL drive... FALSE.

If you're going to launch a ship at another ship, do it as a surprise assault... This way they won't know what hit them until it's too late...



People, think! But trully think! 

Modifié par Dexi, 28 juin 2011 - 04:40 .

[ZLurps]

Dexi wrote...

"Assuming they're precise enough to hit and assuming the Reaper didn't dodge" I stopped reading there....

Launching at FTL means launching at Faster Than Light, means more or less insta hit....


Again, people are imagining a scenario in which the Reapers are in formation and they see a bunch of ships activating their FTL drive... FALSE.

If you're going to launch a ship at another ship, do it as a surprise assault... This way they won't know what hit them until it's too late...



People, think! But trully think! 

Even galactic fleets can travel at FTL, they can't engage in combat at FTL speeds. So as soon as, let's say Turian fleet drops in sub-light speed to pick their targets, Reapers know they are there and then, Reapers are more manouverable than anything galactic races have.
Here is what the Codex says about manouverability and combat:
"In combat, speed and maneuverability make a frigate immune to the
long-range fire of larger vessels; in the time it take projectiles to
reach them, frigates are no longer where they were predicted to be."

Now Reapers are even more manouverable than frigates, what you think the result would be?

There are other problems. Using surprise element effeciently would require that attacking fleet would know exact locations of their targets and that they could go sub-light speed in formation that would allow them to fire at their targets at the very moment they drop in combat speed. Who is giving them coordinates? Is there any technology that would allow such communication without Reapers knowing exactly what is happening?

Also, regarding joint fleet operations. Surprise strike can't be done effeciently at all via mass relays. According to codex:

Any long distance and/or high mass jump will see "drift". That is, a
ship may be hundreds or millions of kilometers from its intended drop
point, in any direction from the relay.
... A commander has the option of moving his fleet as one large, coherent
formation that may be wildly off-position, or breaking it up into many
smaller formations that will be individually closer to the intended
attack point, but could be widely dispersed.


What comes to the Quarian fleet and their 50.000 ships, the point Raygereio made is very good. 16 million citizens doesn't mean anywhere near 16 million pair of hands at arms. Let's take his(?) example and study Dutch age demographics:
Age structure: 0-14 years: 17% (male 1,466,218/female 1,398,463)
15-64 years: 67.4% (male 5,732,042/female 5,624,408)
65 years and over: 15.6% (male 1,141,507/female 1,484,369) (2011 est.)

While ships aren't people, old ships with less effecient mass effect cores and weapons aren't up to task taking on Reaper fleet. Some are fitted in role of producing food, some are fitted for scientific research (like we see in ME2) etc.

I like Quarians as much as anyone and I see they will have a role also in military offence against Reapers, but I don't see that flotilla could match Reapers any better than Alliance or Turian fleets.

You mentioned German WW2 Tiger tanks earlier. There is also other things we could learn from WW2. Googling British Merchant Navy might be a good start.


That said, what you wrote about retrofitting suitable Quarians ships with better weapons, etc. to make them better suited for combat is close to how I see war against Reapers could be won.

I wrote earlier how the Geth would be important in manufacturing and gathering resources. Geth can't however do everything. Say there would be a way to enhance Alliance ships that survive from the first Reaper invasion. Where they can repair their ships and upgrade them?
I think the answer is Quarian flotilla. It's mentioned many times in games and books that Quarians are not only the most creative and talented engineers on board, they are also excellent when there is is need to work in Zero-G environment, AFAIK only second to Geth.

[Sheppard-Commander]

Judging by how Sovereign with a handfull of geth ships totally trashed the Turian ships protecting the Citadel...yeah...I would say the Reapers are more than a match.

Quarians? They may as well have a fleet of 1985 oldsmobile cutlasses.

[SalsaDMA]

ZLurps wrote...

Even galactic fleets can travel at FTL, they can't engage in combat at FTL speeds. So as soon as, let's say Turian fleet drops in sub-light speed to pick their targets, Reapers know they are there and then, Reapers are more manouverable than anything galactic races have.

I'll ignore your silly comment on maneuverability for this part and get back to it later, but here:
Yes, reapers know their enemy targets have arrived, and with their usual disregard for hostile forces what do you think they are going to do? Breeak off their assault on earth and start doing evasive maneuvers? Or just go to themselves: "hohum... primitive ships inbound. I'll wait till they get within close range since they seem obviously bent on their own destruction by engaging us anyway..."

Sovereign all but ignored Hostile ships during the battle of the citadel, yet you think the reapers will somehow treat other fleet with more respect? Riiiiiight....

Here is what the Codex says about manouverability and combat:
"In combat, speed and maneuverability make a frigate immune to the
long-range fire of larger vessels; in the time it take projectiles to
reach them, frigates are no longer where they were predicted to be."

Now Reapers are even more manouverable than frigates, what you think the result would be?

That's an interesting claim. What is your source? As from witnessing the normandy SR-1 in action it seems pretty agile. Much more so than anything we see from any of the reaper ships...

As for your quote, be aware that it talks about long range engagements. Short range engagements you can forget about 'dodging' shots. Hopefully your idea of a 'battleplan' doesn't constitue of setting up the entire fleet in one single line picking a number waiting for it to be their turn to engage the target. It IS quite possible to overburden defences by throwing enough targets at it, even a reapers defences (I might dare say, especially a reaper, since their arrogance seems to rely almost exclusively on their kinetic shields for protection)

There are other problems. Using surprise element effeciently would require that attacking fleet would know exact locations of their targets and that they could go sub-light speed in formation that would allow them to fire at their targets at the very moment they drop in combat speed. Who is giving them coordinates? Is there any technology that would allow such communication without Reapers knowing exactly what is happening?

You mean like.... There's alot of action going on at earth, with friendlies to supply info and hostiles to pick as targets? Yeah... That's gonna be a hard thing to predict.. oh wait... it's already happened at the start of ME3 and we know exactly where the majority of the reaper fleet is swinging their scythes...

Also, regarding joint fleet operations. Surprise strike can't be done effeciently at all via mass relays. According to codex:

Any long distance and/or high mass jump will see "drift". That is, a
ship may be hundreds or millions of kilometers from its intended drop
point, in any direction from the relay.
... A commander has the option of moving his fleet as one large, coherent
formation that may be wildly off-position, or breaking it up into many
smaller formations that will be individually closer to the intended
attack point, but could be widely dispersed.

So? It doesn't say anything about surprise attacks being impossible. It just states that the arriving point through a mass relay is not necesarily within a few klicks of where you originally intend to hit.
Move as one fleet. Get bearings once you're through. Move to position. Hit target.
Not exactly rocket science.

What comes to the Quarian fleet and their 50.000 ships, the point Raygereio made is very good. 16 million citizens doesn't mean anywhere near 16 million pair of hands at arms. Let's take his(?) example and study Dutch age demographics:
Age structure: 0-14 years: 17% (male 1,466,218/female 1,398,463)
15-64 years: 67.4% (male 5,732,042/female 5,624,408)
65 years and over: 15.6% (male 1,141,507/female 1,484,369) (2011 est.)

While ships aren't people, old ships with less effecient mass effect cores and weapons aren't up to task taking on Reaper fleet. Some are fitted in role of producing food, some are fitted for scientific research (like we see in ME2) etc.

I like Quarians as much as anyone and I see they will have a role also in military offence against Reapers, but I don't see that flotilla could match Reapers any better than Alliance or Turian fleets.

And given the state of the Quarian ships, there is no way in hell hostile forces will be able to tell which targets are unarmed or lesser armed (or even flying suicidebombs), and which ones are 'regular' combat vessels. It's still 50k targets they have to chew through while under fire and suffering attack runs by suicide ships.

Especially if you mix in the fleets of the other citadel races as well as civilian fleets undertaking same 'combat roles'.

Yeah, it's gonna be costly in lives. But nobody expected this battle to be easy. After all, it's the very survival of the galaxy we are talking about.

[Inquisitor Recon]

I believe the bulk of combat capable ships would belong to the human and turian fleets, as well as the other citadel races. The quarians probably have some, but many are likely outdated and the bulk of their "flotilla" probably consists of ships only useful as cannon fodder against the reapers.

Really it depends on how many reapers there are, and there is no clear estimates of this. Of course Sovereign would claim they'll block out the sun of every world, but that's probably a lie trying to intimidate Shepard.

[SalsaDMA]

Sheppard-Commander wrote...

Judging by how Sovereign with a handfull of geth ships totally trashed the Turian ships protecting the Citadel...yeah...I would say the Reapers are more than a match.

Quarians? They may as well have a fleet of 1985 oldsmobile cutlasses.

You have an odd way of viewing that cutscene. The Geth were more than "a handfull" and they did in fact do the majority of the battle.

Here's an idea. Let's do a simple youtube search to get a better idea...

Search string: "battle of the citadel"
I took second result, and got this video:

Already within the first 10 seconds of the video you see quite a few more Geth ships than "a handfull".
So much for that comment of yours. (0:15 gives a really good shot of Sovy alongside this "handfull" of Geth ships...)

Let's try and continue...
Let's keep an eye out on ships we actually see Sovy kill. Cause it certainly seems like the geth ships are pouring out molten death alot more than we see sovy fire his mean weapons...
1:47 - first kill by ramming a Turian cruiser
Citadel arms close and rest of battle with the geth fleet take place while Sovy isn't even there.
Citadel arms open again and sovy takes notice of the fleet that is shooting at him.
5:15 - Second kill, by using a beamweapon on an alliance cruiser.
5:21 - 3rd kill, by beamweapon, looks like an alliance cruiser again.
5:22 - 4th kill, by beamweapon, looks like an alliance cruiser again.
5:24 - 5th kill, if it can be called that, cause it looks really unclear on the video. More than anything, it looks like the ship rammed into at sovy slow speed. Thinks it is a frigate, but can't see it proper.

aaand...

That's about it.
Let's look at your comment: Trashed the Turian ships... Um.... Yeah, Sovy rammed one and then ignored the rest of them. The Geth, however, did a heck of a lot of pain on the turians. Looking at the video when The alliance saves the destiny ascension, it looks like the geth alone in that move kills just as many alliance ships as Sovy did.

The reapers are powerfull, no doubt. but let us not forget that the Geth played quite a large role in the battle of the citadel.

[SalsaDMA]

ReconTeam wrote...

I believe the bulk of combat capable ships would belong to the human and turian fleets, as well as the other citadel races. The quarians probably have some, but many are likely outdated and the bulk of their "flotilla" probably consists of ships only useful as cannon fodder against the reapers.

Really it depends on how many reapers there are, and there is no clear estimates of this. Of course Sovereign would claim they'll block out the sun of every world, but that's probably a lie trying to intimidate Shepard.

Tbh, depending on choices made by Shepard in previous games, Both the Geth and The Rachnii can end up being the major components of the unified galactic fleets 'modern' combat ships.

[ZLurps]

[quote]SalsaDMA wrote...

[quote]ZLurps wrote...

Even galactic fleets can travel at FTL, they can't engage in combat at FTL speeds. So as soon as, let's say Turian fleet drops in sub-light speed to pick their targets, Reapers know they are there and then, Reapers are more manouverable than anything galactic races have.
[quote]

I'll ignore your silly comment on maneuverability for this part and get back to it later, but here:
Yes, reapers know their enemy targets have arrived, and with their usual disregard for hostile forces what do you think they are going to do? Breeak off their assault on earth and start doing evasive maneuvers? Or just go to themselves: "hohum... primitive ships inbound. I'll wait till they get within close range since they seem obviously bent on their own destruction by engaging us anyway..."

Sovereign all but ignored Hostile ships during the battle of the citadel, yet you think the reapers will somehow treat other fleet with more respect? Riiiiiight....

[/quote]
Here is what the Codex says about manouverability and combat:
"In combat, speed and maneuverability make a frigate immune to the
long-range fire of larger vessels; in the time it take projectiles to
reach them, frigates are no longer where they were predicted to be."

Now Reapers are even more manouverable than frigates, what you think the result would be?
[/quote]

That's an interesting claim. What is your source? As from witnessing the normandy SR-1 in action it seems pretty agile. Much more so than anything we see from any of the reaper ships...

[/quote]

Source for Reaper agility is in ME1. Joker comments Sovereigns manouverabilitu to Shepard when leaving Eden Prime IIRC. "..took a turn that would shear any of our ships in half".

[quote]SalsaDMA wrote...
As for your quote, be aware that it talks about long range engagements. Short range engagements you can forget about 'dodging' shots. Hopefully your idea of a 'battleplan' doesn't constitue of setting up the entire fleet in one single line picking a number waiting for it to be their turn to engage the target. It IS quite possible to overburden defences by throwing enough targets at it, even a reapers defences (I might dare say, especially a reaper, since their arrogance seems to rely almost exclusively on their kinetic shields for protection)
[/quote]

While jump in the knife fight distance of Reaper fleet while overhelming their offensive and defensive capacity with.. well, flotilla, would buy time for actual warships to pound their targets, I don't see this working against large number of Reapers.
First It's not IMO plausible that they aren't seen this tactics before in 37 million years of reaping the galaxy and they are pretty much computers, they can analyse nature of the threat in less than fraction of seconds.

Then, our surprise attack fleet is there is poundering them... losing 6 cruiser class ships in a second per one Reaper. There are what... 84 dreadnoughts so obviously there are more cruisers as they support dreadnoughts, but how many?


[quote]
There are other problems. Using surprise element effeciently would require that attacking fleet would know exact locations of their targets and that they could go sub-light speed in formation that would allow them to fire at their targets at the very moment they drop in combat speed. Who is giving them coordinates? Is there any technology that would allow such communication without Reapers knowing exactly what is happening?
[/quote]

You mean like.... There's alot of action going on at earth, with friendlies to supply info and hostiles to pick as targets? Yeah... That's gonna be a hard thing to predict.. oh wait... it's already happened at the start of ME3 and we know exactly where the majority of the reaper fleet is swinging their scythes...
[/quote]

You misunderstood me. FTL communications work over ME relays, so Reaper tech. It's IMO plausible to expect that Reapers can monitor communications going over mass relays.
Then, how is guy in a bell tower going to spot Reaper fleet patrolling near the moon for example?


[quote]
Also, regarding joint fleet operations. Surprise strike can't be done effeciently at all via mass relays. According to codex:

Any long distance and/or high mass jump will see "drift". That is, a
ship may be hundreds or millions of kilometers from its intended drop
point, in any direction from the relay.
... A commander has the option of moving his fleet as one large, coherent
formation that may be wildly off-position, or breaking it up into many
smaller formations that will be individually closer to the intended
attack point, but could be widely dispersed.
[quote]

So? It doesn't say anything about surprise attacks being impossible. It just states that the arriving point through a mass relay is not necesarily within a few klicks of where you originally intend to hit.
Move as one fleet. Get bearings once you're through. Move to position. Hit target.
Not exactly rocket science.
[/quote]

Fleet arrives through relay and Reapers know where they are at the very moment. Fleet needs to move to position, no, not rocket science, but it all takes time. Like I have posted earlier and in this post (with source) Reapers are more manouverable and can respond, evade, take offence, whatever before attacking fleet is in position.

[/quote]
What comes to the Quarian fleet and their 50.000 ships, the point Raygereio made is very good. 16 million citizens doesn't mean anywhere near 16 million pair of hands at arms. Let's take his(?) example and study Dutch age demographics:
Age structure: 0-14 years: 17% (male 1,466,218/female 1,398,463)
15-64 years: 67.4% (male 5,732,042/female 5,624,408)
65 years and over: 15.6% (male 1,141,507/female 1,484,369) (2011 est.)

While ships aren't people, old ships with less effecient mass effect cores and weapons aren't up to task taking on Reaper fleet. Some are fitted in role of producing food, some are fitted for scientific research (like we see in ME2) etc.

I like Quarians as much as anyone and I see they will have a role also in military offence against Reapers, but I don't see that flotilla could match Reapers any better than Alliance or Turian fleets.
[/quote]

[quote]
And given the state of the Quarian ships, there is no way in hell hostile forces will be able to tell which targets are unarmed or lesser armed (or even flying suicidebombs), and which ones are 'regular' combat vessels. It's still 50k targets they have to chew through while under fire and suffering attack runs by suicide ships.

Especially if you mix in the fleets of the other citadel races as well as civilian fleets undertaking same 'combat roles'.
[/quote]
Again, it's not IMO plausible that they aren't seen this tactics before in 37 million years of reaping the galaxy and they are pretty much computers, they can analyse nature of the threat in less than fraction of seconds.

[quote]
Yeah, it's gonna be costly in lives. But nobody expected this battle to be easy. After all, it's the very survival of the galaxy we are talking about.
[/quote]

Well, maybe something like "let's sacriface Quarian fleet for dramatic effect" might work. You never know...

Modifié par ZLurps, 28 juin 2011 - 08:46 .

[Blacklash93]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but... [possible spoilers]





Hasn't the Turian homeworld been abandoned? That's what it says in the "Confirmed Features" thread. It doesn't say whether or not the Reaper invasion is behind it, but either way that doesn't bode well for the Turian Armada.

Modifié par Blacklash93, 28 juin 2011 - 10:03 .