1939 réponses à ce sujet

[Raiil]

You're severely underestimating the kind of force humanity can bring to bear.

We are in a position of strenght, especially after ME1. It was humans who lead the counter attack on the geth after all. It's humans who now rule the Citadel.

If, if, if you killed the Council, you're correct. If you didn't, then your position doesn't stand.

And as badass as the humans might be, I really doubt that their entire naval fleet somehow trounces the combined forces of every other Citadel race. Plus the salarians can always offer to lift the genophage, which would bring the krogans around. The batarians are already looking for a reason to kick us. What does that leave? The quarians? Who probably won't get involved? The rachni, if they're alive and there's enough of them?

[In Exile]

Saphra Deden wrote...
The asari aren't desirable as allies. The more estranged from them we are the better.

The asari's method of reproduction is the most dramatic form of warfare they can wage against a species. Take advantage of every reproduce instinct... and then produce a child that is pure asari.

The salarians side with whoever is stronger. They are a weak people and need stronger allies to be their sword. That will be us. They're dangerous, but we've got all the advantages in technology. 

The salarians will stick with whatever works best for the salarians, and the status quo works very well for them. What deal would they get that's better than the Council?

Cerberus is not a concern. They're a fringe group and they're on our side anyway.

Cerberus does not have a pro-human agenda. They have a pro-Cerberus agenda, and they happen to all be human, so a human dominated galaxy works for them. But what they see as the next step in human evolution (e.g. genetic ubermensch and biotics like Jack) is something else entirely.

[Bluko]

Really "saving the base" is a good idea you think in light of recent information? Uhh alrighty then...

Dean_the_Young wrote...
Was it to destroy the corrupt knowledge and secrets, to 'preserve the soul of our species'? 

Even the Shadow Broker intended to cross the relay and learn as much as possible... and the Reapers arrival will mean Reaper tech for everyone (if we survive). Paragon Shepard wasn't keeping the technology from people, just delaying it.

That's pretty much why I did it. And guess what by destroying it I can make sure nothing worse happens then what I already know is inevitable. How is the Shadowbroker going to study the base if not only do I destroy the base, but kill him as well?

Keeping the base is a risk with an unknown outcome. It may pay-off or it may not (still remains to be seen by the way). In fact it may make things far worse. And I think it's assumed in most of the books and comics that Shepard more likely took Renegade options. Hence why such events tend to fit better with a Renegade Shepard past.

I think of it this way: the Collector Base is like a mysterious powerful sword left in a nearby cave. By using this sword it will be very easy to kill the demon attacking my village. However upon slaying the demon with the sword I am corrupted by it's unknown magic and hence forth become a demon myself. I slay the village anyways and return the sword to it's original resting place. And the vicious cycle continues... until of course an enterprising hero devises a way to kill the demon by ways it has not intended.

Dean_the_Young wrote...
Was it to deny Cerberus any Reaper technology? 

Regardless of the decision, enough Reaper and Collector technology exists for Cerberus to craft its own Reaper-technology experiment: the effects of Retribution, and the Grayson experiments.

This is somewhat troubling. Apparently Cerberus is still incompetent enough to get indoctrinated no matter what. Though I hardly see this being compelling for keeping the base. Makes about as much sense as handing the guy robbing you another gun.

Dean_the_Young wrote...
Was it to stop Cerberus from hurting other species with and for the technology inside? 

The upcoming comic Invasion features Cerberus unleashing a new creation from beyond the Omega 4 relay into the streets of Omega, a creation that may wipe out Aria herself.

I don't see how leaving them the potential to make Reapers makes this any better.

Dean_the_Young wrote...
Was it to stop Cerberus from indoctrinating itself?

Well, Mass Effect 3's E3 demos rather addressed how well that worked.

Yes unfortunately Cerberus is extremely clumsy.

Dean_the_Young wrote...
Was it because blown up Reaper technology is safe Reaper technology?

Yes in a manner of speaking. Were it up to me at the end of the war I would seek to dismantle/destroy anything made by the Reapers and replace it with our own technology at some point. That means creating our own Relays and Citadel even. Leaving them around seems like a bad idea. What if the Reapers have them all set to self detonate if proper Reaper maitainence is carried out every few hundred thousand years. Seems very likely to me.

Sure we kill the Reapers, but because we're stupid enough to keep using their stuff they end up wiping us out anyway. And then oh wait a few Reapers were left hidden in case of such a possibility and the cycle begins once more.


The only reason to even possibly think keeping the base is a good idea now is so that it meshes better with what happens in ME3 and spin-off material. It makes more sense for Cerberus to get indoctrinated from a functioning base rather then just the debris.

[In Exile]

Saphra Deden wrote...
I only meant it was our WWII in the sense that it would leave the aliens weaker and humanity stronger. You could apply this to the entire series really. 

I get what you mean, but the problem with the analogy was that the US was strong to begin with. Humanity in ME2 isn't in the same position, and we start with Earth burning under the reapers. Depending on were our major shipyards are and whether or not they're under attack, humanity could very well be dead in the water.

Dreadnoughts are not everything. We've got six of them and a roughly equal number of carriers. All total that puts us on par at least with the salarians as far as heavy firepower goes. 

That would put us two-thirds of the way there; the salarians outnumber us 3:1, and with that we'd be at 3:2. But the council as a whole have us at (11:2), if we assume our carries double our heavy class ships.

Then we've got things like the Normandy and we also have an intact fleet after the battle of the Citadel (and assuming you didn't destroy our fleet to save the Council). 

But we don't know how much of the Citadel fleet made up the total % of the asari & turian & salarian military. Even if it was 50% and it meant 100% losses, we're still outnumbered 5:2 by the Council races. 

Our military is state of the art, technologically advanced, and not even at full strength yet. 

We co-developed the Normandy with the turians. They have the plans.

Humanity has a very large and growing industrial base.

A "sleeping giant".

Compared to the volus or hanar or elcor, sure. But that says nothing about how we compare to the Council as a whole.

You're severely underestimating the kind of force humanity can bring to bear.

You're making stuff up. We honestly have 0 data on what humanity can do. But based on how ME1 starts out, humanity is getting slapped around. ME2 has us in a better position, with a more antagonistic galaxy that's arming up in a cold war against us. 

We are in a position of strenght, especially after ME1. It was humans who lead the counter attack on the geth after all. It's humans who now rule the Citadel.

The Council doesn't matter that much. It's all symbolic. The turians, asari and salarians all have their national governments, and we're a major threat to their hegemony. They outnumber us, and they can outbuild us. We aren't sitting pretty. 

[Raiil]

They're insideous invaders who weaken their neighbors from within.

And you're basing this on what, their cultural prevalence, or the fact that people like to sleep with them? What proof goes with this?

It's called the codex. Read it sometime.

I did. The salarians build strong relationships with stronger forces, but they have a very robust espionage unit and intelligence community to compensate for their fairly weak soldiering skills. They're not parasites who latch on to whomever have the biggest armies; they're partners and allies. The volus would be a better example of what you're looking for.

Politics. They're useful as boogeymen. In the meantime humanity benefits from their work.

I'm fairly certain that experimenting with Thorian creepers, capturing thresher maw survivors after unleashing the beasts on a unit and doing horrific tests on them, pumping little girls (TIM is well aware of the experiments being done to Gillian) full of drugs to push them to their biotic limit, sending an assassin to kill an operative and then pinning the death of the operative's lover on them, assassinating military personnel and turning people into husks goes well beyond the parameters of bogeymen. Or are you denying that any of these things happen?

[Raiil]

If you didn't then I'm not talking about your universe.

Then we can't continue half of this discussion, because we're dealing with separate sets of facts, and we'll have to end it here.

[In Exile]

Saphra Deden wrote...
My god, someone else gets it. That's why they are actually the greatest threat humanity faces. We need to fight them on a cultural level.

They creeped the hell out of me since ME1. 

The Council is humanity now, remember? The old status quo is gone. We're the new one. It's only been two years though. Give them some time.

Which makes our political situation even more volatile (in that cannon). We own the Council, and split the galaxy up. The volus are still a protectorate of the turians, and the asari and salarians have political allies they can call on. 

We're not an open war, but why would the salarians prefer the human Council to genophaged humans + the old Council back? Their outcomes are better without us. That's why tredding carefully is important.

Yes, they do. Their actions and history prove it beyond a doubt.

Their actions prove that they want to build the power-base of Cerberus, and undergo a dramatic eugenics project to alter the human race. What they want a race of ubermensch. 

[whywhywhywhy]

ThePwener wrote...

Destroying the base IS a stupid idea. As Dean clearly pointed out, there are going to be dead Reapers (obviously), and everyone will begin studying them in no time. Keeping the base just gives humanity a heads up, making sure we don't get pushed around by the Batarians and the Turians.

erased my post to point to JAmiecotc's post (the very next post after yours) I view the decision the same as JamieCOTC.  It's about TIM and what he'll do with it.

JamieCOTC wrote...

Without metagaming it comes down to a
choice. Do you trust TIM or not. Despite what everyone says, Shepard
does not keep the base. S/he gives it to TIM. There's even a great
sentimental paragon argument for keeping the base. If you destroy it,
then all those people who died, died for nothing. What paragon Shep
should do is download as much data from the base as possible and
transfer it to the Normandy, tell TIM to go to hell and blow the place.
One could argue, that's exactly what happened.

 excellent post I agree I always thought it was stupid that EDI admits to hacking the collector ship but wasn't hacking the collector base.  Though the pad Joker gives Sheperd at the end hints that it happened it would have been nice for it to be actively done while you go through the base.

Saphra Deden wrote...

Valentia
X wrote...


I'm fairly certain that experimenting with
Thorian creepers, capturing thresher maw survivors...

Yeah
I know, typical anti-Cerberus bleeding heart, shallow-minded crap. No
need to continue.

Here's a hint: saving humanity doesn't mean
saving every individual human.

Until it's you or yours that needs saving, right ? Or would you and your family happily die so Some rogue organization can treat you like lab rats ?

Modifié par whywhywhywhy, 17 juillet 2011 - 06:48 .

[In Exile]

Saphra Deden wrote...
Humanity is still strong, even at the start of ME1. That's why they're getting a Spectre. 

"Everyone knows it is only a matter of time before we get a seat on the Council."

If listen in to the conversations on the Presidium, the hanar are after us on the pecking order, then the elcor. 


We're strong, and we're not doormats like the Volus, so we can translate our strength into indepence. 

Humanity is undoubtedly taking a loss at the start of ME3, but so will the other races. The entire goal of the game is also to convince them to throw their forces into the furnace for our benefit. I won't pretend to know how Shepard is planning to pull that off, but think we can speculate on what the result is.

I would think the plan would be to control the battle lines. Easier said that done, though.

As long as Earth is saved humanity will recover in a short time. A few years is all it will take to rebuild and in that time everyone else will rebuilding too. We've also got the advances from the Collector operation which will help us reverse engineer Reaper tech faster than anyone else. 

We also need time to recover. 

As for the Collector tech... that's not a choice everyone makes. I think humanity needs to put itself first and protect its own interests (because no one else will) but repear tech is another can of worms.

No, but Ascension allows us to speculate. In it TIM states that the battle left the Alliance as the strongest military power in Council space. A little shocking and a little hard to believe, I know, but I didn't write it.

If that's true, that really changes things. 

The asari have totally given up their military obligations and the salarians were never heavy hitters in the first place. The turians are big, but also blunt.

That refers to Council fleets, though, right? It's the ME2 news reel. That sounded like the asari are pulling out to shore up their own domestic force as a counter-balance to us. And the turians are ramping up military production.

Also, remember this: we only need to be strong enough to not be worth fighting. The other races joined together could defeat us in a war, but what would the cost be to them? It would be huge. It isn't worth it. Wars are about money when it comes right down to it and going to war with humanity is only guaranteed to make you lose money.

That works for the salarians, and the asari (they're supposed to be the dilplomats of the galaxy) but I think that human supremacy will come down to war with the turians. They're not the types to surrender their role lightly.

Finally, dreadnoughts are NOT EVERYTHING. Cruisers and frigates fit in there as well. We've got plenty of those. The Council focused all of their military strategy on dreadnoughts, but humanity didn't. We don't need as many dreadnoughts as they do in order to be a capable military force.

I was using the dreadnoughts as represententative of the potential gap in military power. If we have the largest fleet by ME2, then that's irrelevant. We can use our fleet effectively as a counter-balance, and then it becomes a matter of separating the turians from the volus.

That's where the real victory lies. If the turians lose the volus, their economy is in a bad way.

It is also not a given that the turians have the full schematics for the Normandy. They designed the over all layout of the ship, but the meat, the guts, those are all human, baby. Stealth systems wouldn't make sense anyway because they don't fit the turian military doctrine which doesn't emphasize stealth or subterfuge. 

It was a Council ship. It would make sense that the Council made surrendering the blueprints a condition of the joint-effort.

No, it does say something about how we compare to the rest of the Council races because that is the entire point behind the statement!

Damn, man, you don't know what you're talking about. You really don't.

I don't know how you missed all this ****. It's right in your face the moment you start ME1.

\\

In ME1, we don't have the fleets or allies to stand up to the Council, and the hanar and elcor are next after us (says the convo on the Citadel Tower) in terms of who is up-next for a Council seat. 

I think you're underestimatin the size of the galactic community.

Wow. Nevermind. I'm not going to bother debating with someone this uninformed about the topic at hand. I haven't got the patience for it.

Good for you.

The Council isn't where the power lies. Anderson made it clear in ME1: its fleets, allies and economic might. Until the humanity dominates all 3, it doesn't matter if we have the Council. The former Council races can still easily stand up to us. 

[Someone With Mass]

Saphra Deden wrote...

The Collectors created something even nastier and thankfully Cerberus was given their base. If the aliens are stupid enough to attack our people with biological weapons we'll do the same.

Like I said, broken and dying.

The other races aren't that dumb though. A war with humanity isn't worth the trouble.

To give humanity the power without struggle is equally as stupid.

What the hell makes everyone believe that humanity can run this interstellar society better than the last Council when they can't even handle themselves?

They have to earn that place, not take it.

By the way. We've only heard about the other races' dreadnoughts, not that they're only focusing on building them and nothing else.

Modifié par Someone With Mass, 17 juillet 2011 - 07:28 .

[Dave of Canada]

Bluko wrote...

Really "saving the base" is a good idea you think in light of recent information? Uhh alrighty then...

A few of us don't do this.

[Someone With Mass]

Saphra Deden wrote...
When you take it you've earned it.

Right. It's not like they need to be capable to run any of it with some efficiency or anything. Like how C-Sec suffered from increased corruption and crime rates. And it started to happen around the same time humanity filled C-sec's ranks. I don't think that's a coincidence.

Not to mention that it causes unwanted consequences.

Like when the turians no longer feel bound by the rules of the Treaty of Farixen if you let the Council die. Presumably because they thought humanity is good for nothing and decides to take the matter in their own hands.

When you're just swooping in and claim everything for yourself, there will be consequences.

[Someone With Mass]

Dave of Canada wrote...

Bluko wrote...

Really "saving the base" is a good idea you think in light of recent information? Uhh alrighty then...

A few of us don't do this.

And a few of us don't care. Because it's just a game.

[Goneaviking]

Saphra Deden wrote...

Someone With Mass wrote...

They have to earn that place, not take it.

When you take it you've earned it.

Taking it is just the first step.

Keeping it would prove much harder, and this time you've revealed your hand to all your wouldbe rivals and no one has a particularly strong reason for wanting you to hold onto it.

[Dave of Canada]

Someone With Mass wrote...

And a few of us don't care. Because it's just a game.

Except metagaming can change an entire argument, you can pretend to not care though jumping into the argument without looking at it from the non-metagamer's point of view totally changes the views and discussion. This entire thread was written from a non-metagame view, therefor your "not care" attitude doesn't belong at all in this thread.

If you really didn't care, you wouldn't post.

Calling people idiots for their non-metagame view from your metagame point of view is irrelevant.

Modifié par Dave of Canada, 17 juillet 2011 - 07:50 .

[Inverness Moon]

Saphra Deden wrote...

You're still a traitor though and after we coronate the first emperor you'll be sold to the batarians as a slave with all the other useful idiots.

Oh wow, this made my day. I think I woke up half the house. 

[Goneaviking]

Saphra Deden wrote...

Goneaviking wrote...

Keeping it would prove much harder, and this time you've revealed your hand to all your wouldbe rivals and no one has a particularly strong reason for wanting you to hold onto it.

They may not want us to have it but they have no effective means of taking it from us. If they want access to the Citadel they have to work with our Council.

On what grounds would they justify a war anyway? Humanity never attacked them. On the contrary, it came to their aid and lead them (with their blessing) in war against the geth.

A war with humanity would be costly and even if the humans were defeated they could leave much of the galaxy in ruin in their death throws.

All that combined makes for a hard sell when it comes to war.

If war does come I think it will be with the turians and it will be after and possibly a result of the volus wanting to cut-ties with the Hierarchy and align with humanity.

I can easily see the turians trying to use force to stop them, their economy tanking, and then humanity sweeping in to "liberate" the volus. As the Hierarchy loses influence it may even break up. Beneath all that unity turians are still quite loyal to their individual home worlds. Economic hardship would be an excellent way to bring those feelings to the surface.

Especially if the human Council insists on recognizing the individual turian colonies as sovereign nations and negotiating with them.

Immediately after taking over we'll become vulnerable until it's secured. The other council races may be willing to quietly fade away if they're demolished militarily and economically, but unless the council is abolished or a dictator is set in place above it, there's going to be endless opportunities to hamstring the Alliance politically.

Even if they do accept obsolescence, there will be a sharp learning curve in regards to the administration of the newly acquired empire and unless important concessions are given then it'd be naive to assume that the other races will actually help us to step into the role comfortably; allowing us to adopt the lead chair could be a viable strategy to force us to overstretch our resources.

Will humans assume total responsibility for policing Citadel space? Having lost a meaningful influence over the governing body then why would Turians, or any other race really, step up and provide fleets outside of their own systems? That's bound to be a huge drag on resources for humanity, even pocketing a whole bunch of revenue the Alliance is going to be hard pressed to provide the necessary ships and manpower while rebuilding their own devastated worlds in the aftermath of the coming war.

As for justifications to act against the encroaching human empire? Pretexts are can always be found when needed, and deniable assets disrupting human endeavours and targetting human interests would likely serve as a cost effective way of siphoning off huge amounts of attention, effort and resources to chase down crazed individuals who may be acting alone or may be serving the will (directly or otherwise) of an unfriendly, or rival power.

Then, if all obstacles are overcome, what's to stop other races having a resurgence? Are we going to be actively undermining their recoveries so that we can hold onto power for ourselves? What if they just decide to go their own way and chart a course to independence?