49 réponses à ce sujet

[Sgt Stryker]

You don't seriously expect them to shove the bomb out the cargo bay while the Normandy swoops in like some dive bomber, do you?

Also, calling for reinforcements would not work for the same reason that Shepard was sent out there in the first place. Remember that the Citadel only received a garbled message from the STG team, because of jamming. Even if Shepard's team somehow managed to send a clear signal, it would still take time for a Council fleet to arrive, and that was not a luxury Shepard's team could afford. Clearly, the only logical course of action was the one depicted in the game.

[Eddo36]

There was no rush, Virmire wasn't going anywhere.

[Sgt Stryker]

On the contrary, there is a rush. Shepard had the element of surprise upon arriving at Virmire. If they chose to wait for additional reinforcements (which may or may not even be coming, because of jammed communications), there is a greater chance that Saren will discover their presence and launch an attack of his own. Between the geth and krogan forces, and Sovereign itself, Shepard and the salarians would be mince-meat in minutes. It was a better tactical decision to launch an infiltration-style attack immediately with what they had on hand, than to sit and wait.

[eternalnightmare13]

Modifié par eternalnightmare13, 16 juillet 2011 - 02:33 .

[Eddo36]

Sgt Stryker wrote...

On the contrary, there is a rush. Shepard had the element of surprise upon arriving at Virmire. If they chose to wait for additional reinforcements (which may or may not even be coming, because of jammed communications), there is a greater chance that Saren will discover their presence and launch an attack of his own. Between the geth and krogan forces, and Sovereign itself, Shepard and the salarians would be mince-meat in minutes. It was a better tactical decision to launch an infiltration-style attack immediately with what they had on hand, than to sit and wait.

Saren wouldn't attack until he found Ilos, though. Virmire's destruction didn't have a deadline.

Modifié par Eddo36, 16 juillet 2011 - 03:37 .

[Sgt Stryker]

I mean Saren's forces will go on the offensive against Shepard's team and the salarians, not the Citadel. I thought my previous post made that quite clear, but apparently that was not the case. Most curious....

[HappyHappyJoyJoy]

That explosion was pretty visible from space. Joker said "hang on!" as he sped away to outrun the blast wave. That couldn't have been dropped?

[sbvera13]

HappyHappyJoyJoy wrote...

That explosion was pretty
visible from space. Joker said "hang on!" as he sped away to outrun the
blast wave. That couldn't have been dropped?

You'd be amazed at how little a nuclear bomb can do to a fortified structure.  Hardened bunkers require pretty much a direct hit, and that's only with reinforcement technology around in the 1950's (aka steel and concrete) much less 200 years in the future.  Even civilian railway yards require a direct contact ground burst to have much of any effect at all.  Check this out, by Stuart Slade, a well known writer on nuclear weapons issues.

Modifié par sbvera13, 16 juillet 2011 - 07:14 .

[Eddo36]

The compound wasn't even underground, though. How can it be that fortified?

[HBC Dresden]

Eddo36 wrote...

Instead of planting a nuke on the ground, have one launched from a cruiser?

Normandy does not have that level of firepower and they do not have enough time to mess around waiting for a fleet to show up since Shepard was on a race against time to figure out the Conduit and stop Saren. Surprise was on their side and also, only the Normandy could slip through under the AA gun network and geth fleet in orbit. Anything else would have been a tough fight. And the stupid Council was already dragging their fleet (if a STG team disappeared, wouldn't you send a fleet to deal with whatever was strong enough to defeat a team of super crafty, battle-hardened salarians?).

[Eddo36]

I was thinking along the lines of: once Shep found out about Virmire, the Spectre's job there was finished and the Normandy could move on. Some bigger ship can be called in to destroy the base.

Modifié par Eddo36, 16 juillet 2011 - 11:00 .

[sbvera13]

As mentioned before, the council wasn't interested in sending anything bigger into the Terminus to prevent a war. This was the whole reason they made Shepard a Spectre in the first place, and refused to go after Saren later. It's kind of a big plot point.

As for being fortified, I'll grant the construction of the place doesn't look much like a bunker. I'd chalk that up to the level designers giving in to the Rule of Cool, because bunkers are pretty boring looking. Although just being made out of concrete would still mean a significant portion of the facilities would survive an indirect nuke hit... anything less then 100% precision (which you won't get by pushing a retrofitted reactor core out of a cargo bay) would leave a large portion of the facility standing.  Even the direct ground detonation we saw in game would probably have left most of the outlier buildings still standing.  And that's not accounting for futuristic technology and materials.

Modifié par sbvera13, 16 juillet 2011 - 02:49 .

[Eddo36]

Actually, why even destroy it? Capture the research with assault team.

[HappyHappyJoyJoy]

sbvera13 wrote...

HappyHappyJoyJoy wrote...

That explosion was pretty
visible from space. Joker said "hang on!" as he sped away to outrun the
blast wave. That couldn't have been dropped?

You'd be amazed at how little a nuclear bomb can do to a fortified structure.  Hardened bunkers require pretty much a direct hit, and that's only with reinforcement technology around in the 1950's (aka steel and concrete) much less 200 years in the future.  Even civilian railway yards require a direct contact ground burst to have much of any effect at all.  Check this out, by Stuart Slade, a well known writer on nuclear weapons issues.

That article is about a novel, and this claim:

Initiate a 1 megaton device over the
center of London and 95 percent of the cities assets and 80 percent of
the population will survive...

Try using the Federation of American Scientists tool to play around with a major US city - make sure to set the bomb to 1MT - and let us know how that 95% assets/80% population number works out for ya.

[sbvera13]

Neat tool. Doesn't automatically make that statistic invalid, though. The wording already accommodates what Stuart says about strike damage, by stating that homes (in America, typically made out of wooden frames, and specially identified in the article as the weakest against a blast) would be destroyed but larger buildings would suffer structural damage. Also, since there's no scale on the map, my best guess is about a 2 mile diameter blast zone of the blue circle, which would account for roughly 5% of a large city if you include the suburbs and surrounding area. Even so, I admit that I've always boggled at that London statistic though... I'm not so sure people would be so ready to move back into a blast zone and start rebuilding and all that, or able to with so much infrastructure destroyed, but at the least I havn't seen anything yet to suggest the Stuart's knowledge of blast mechanics is off.

Modifié par sbvera13, 16 juillet 2011 - 08:35 .

[Zaxares]

An orbital strike wasn't really feasible due to the fact that neither the Normandy nor the salarians' ship had weapons designed for orbital bombardment. (AFAIK, the Normandy simply has a mass accelerator cannon(s) and some disruptor torpedoes. Neither of which would really be sufficient to destroy a reinforced bunker, especially one that's likely to have high-strength kinetic barriers and AA-guns.)

Kirrahe also mentions that the bomb needed to be placed next to the geothermal taps, which suggests that the large explosion we see from space is not the ACTUAL explosion from the bomb, but a much larger explosion caused by the bomb destroying the facility's fusion power plant and thereby creating a much larger chain-reaction explosion.

Modifié par Zaxares, 16 juillet 2011 - 11:41 .

[eternalnightmare13]

Eddo36 wrote...

Actually, why even destroy it? Capture the research with assault team.

Why?

[Eddo36]

1) Genophage research.
2) etc

[Bogsnot1]

Eddo36 wrote...
2) etc

Such eloquence. Never before have I head such authorative, and yet concise reasoning.

[Mr Zoat]

Saren's indoctrination research? Inactive Geth platforms to study?

[eternalnightmare13]

Eddo36 wrote...

1) Genophage research.

Why would Shepard, The Council or anyone other then Saren/Soverign want to research Genophage?  The Council - primarily turian/salarians don't want the krogan population to increase.  They know all too well what type of problems that would caused - krogan rebellion ring any bells with you?

If talk to Wrex and make him realize what's going on there he wants nada to do with the research because he realizes they're not real krogan.

If Wrex doesn't realize this either you or Ash vent his head.


2) Etc.

You're on your high school debate team, aren't you?

Modifié par eternalnightmare13, 17 juillet 2011 - 03:17 .

[BlueStar13]

Hold on a moment. When the Normandy lands do drop off the nuke, couldn't the Normandy instead have went to pick up the AA tower squad member and the salarians, while Shepard and his team hold the bomb site. Then, Shepard and his team jump aboard the Normandy and the Normandy drops of the nuke with a fuse of approximately 30 seconds giving the Normandy time to fly away and not enough time for the geth to defuse it.

Modifié par BlueStar13, 17 juillet 2011 - 09:23 .

[Zaxares]

A better question would be, "What the heck are your other spare squadmates doing during this time?" If I took Tali and Liara with me, why didn't Wrex and Garrus back up Kirrahe and the non-VS in the interim? I bet if Wrex and Garrus had been with the diversion squad, they could easily have fought back the invading geth.