310 réponses à ce sujet

[Boiny Bunny]

You make an interesting point OP.

I recall that in Halo 3, you are told early on that over 90% of the human population on Earth has been slaughtered. I wonder if ME3 will do the same (i.e. utterly regardless of how you play, the Reapers DO invade Earth and hold it for most of the game, thus it wouldn't be entirely unreasonable to assume they kill off most of the planet's population during that time, utterly regardless of what Shepard does).

Sounds kind of bleak - like humans are doomed to become an unimportant side species after the Reapers are dealt with.

[Boiny Bunny]

1136342t54 wrote...

The game is about Commander Shepard's story and journey through the Mass Effect Trilogy mostly. I have no doubt that humanity will be all but destroyed by the end of Mass Effect 3 effectively destroying it as a position of power for many many years. Abandoning Earth entirely would be stupid and the Alliance would have no choice but to try and evacuate as many people as possible.

Its likely that the Systems Alliance military would probably stay a power for a short while. Remember Humanity aren't the only ones getting attacked. The Turian homeworld have pretty much been turned to rubble. By the end of the game I seriously doubt the other races are going to come out unscathed. In fact they may be as wrecked as humanity will be.

I'm envisioning one of the endings as the Reaper's assault pretty much screwed up all the races to the point that we would have to hold off on any wars and conflicts to at least simply rebuild Galactic society. Hell their may not even be a Council in one of the endings simply because no one is strong enough to fill that seat. A new Galactic Government may have to be formed. Probably in a style similar to the Republic from Star Wars.

Could be a comic styled ending where the Volus take over the galaxy (lead by that irratated ambassador from ME1, Din I think his name was!) because there is nobody left to stop them 

[Arijharn]

Saphra Deden wrote...

Arijharn wrote...

Well, it is the harsh reality of military command. A military's job is to win an engagement first and foremost, if they keep on loosing shuttles, it's obvious that that strategy isn't a workable. Some point they just need to trust that the people can survive, not all of them certainly, but they can't just rush into the area essentially blind either.

The thing is, in the long run the military saving itself is what will be required to save everyone else.

It's why if you are exposed in a chemical spill and you are laying out in the street melting the police aren't going to rush up to you and pull you to safety. If they did the police would be writhing around on the ground melting like you are and now the other police have TWO people to save instead of just one.

If the Alliance gets destroyed nobody is going to be liberating Earth. It must save itself before it can save anyone else.

Same reason parents are instructed to put on their own oxygen masks on a plane before attending to their children's.

Yep. I'm sure that the Alliance expects reinforcements at some point courtesy of Shephard, but until then they're fighting essentially insurgents and trying to keep casualties to a minimum, but it's obvious any fighting will be guerrilla style warfare because they simply can't afford to actually gain the attention of an actual Reaper. I'm sure someone like Anderson will offer safe harbour to civilians (which could actually backfire if one or more are say... Indoctrinated) but the fleet has to withdraw from Earth at some point to re-arm, refit and rendevous with other naval assets for a push against the Reapers on Earth.

I think it should be obvious that the Alliance has some degree of duty to protect Earth, but that doesn't mean they have to keep their fleet assets in orbit all the time because whilst they're isolated, they're easy pickings.

[Arijharn]

Boiny Bunny wrote...

You make an interesting point OP.

I recall that in Halo 3, you are told early on that over 90% of the human population on Earth has been slaughtered. I wonder if ME3 will do the same (i.e. utterly regardless of how you play, the Reapers DO invade Earth and hold it for most of the game, thus it wouldn't be entirely unreasonable to assume they kill off most of the planet's population during that time, utterly regardless of what Shepard does).

Sounds kind of bleak - like humans are doomed to become an unimportant side species after the Reapers are dealt with.

You know, I actually want them to take it a step further by actually showing us the destruction on Earth. Maybe garbled video transmission like Ashley's unit at Eden Prime.

Say at the end of every 'major' mission in ME3, they play some degree of video file, perhaps where Anderson is 'reporting the status' of the war to Shephard where they stress that circumstances are ugly etc. Don't just tell us, show us imo.

[pabd13]

I think it would be stupid for shepard not to save earth, being a human....

As for the alliance not defending earth.... I think it would be stupid for them to go head to head with the reapers given the technological disadvantage. But the whole purpose of the allliance is to defend humanity and its interests. Humans are in danger and 99....% of humans are on earth I think its in their interests to help earth in whatever way possible (buying time, evacuation etc.)

I guess people would have a fun time repopulating if earth was destroyed...

Modifié par pabd13, 26 juillet 2011 - 02:14 .

[1136342t54_]

Arijharn wrote...
You know, I actually want them to take it a step further by actually showing us the destruction on Earth. Maybe garbled video transmission like Ashley's unit at Eden Prime.

Say at the end of every 'major' mission in ME3, they play some degree of video file, perhaps where Anderson is 'reporting the status' of the war to Shephard where they stress that circumstances are ugly etc. Don't just tell us, show us imo.

They've been doing that already. E3 pretty much showed us that Earth is getting pwned. Hell it seems that in ME3 that places like London and New York will be shown.

[Meatlocker]

Didn't humans excellerate to unheard of numbers after the first contact war? I'm not sure how losing earth would really harm out birth cycle.

[didymos1120]

Meatlocker wrote...

Didn't humans [accel]erate to unheard of numbers after the first contact war?

No. Don't know where you got that idea from.

I'm not sure how losing earth would really harm out birth cycle.

Very few people were even trying to make an argument along those lines.  That's not the reason for people pointing out that most humans still live on Earth.

Modifié par didymos1120, 26 juillet 2011 - 02:58 .

[Arijharn]

1136342t54 wrote...


They've been doing that already. E3 pretty much showed us that Earth is getting pwned. Hell it seems that in ME3 that places like London and New York will be shown.

Ya, but I'd like it to be 'continuously updated' to keep your vested interest in it. If someone says: "90% casualties in the first month" it becomes a faceless statistic imo. It's hard to 'picture.' If however, in a news report, or in Anderson's log we see droves of people getting cut down (some of those people could perhaps be people we've saved or affected earlier? How about the mother and daughter doctor/scientists from Feros?) then it doesn't just become a 'nameless faceless statistic', it becomes a gut punch in the sense that your character has had dealings with them, you know something of their story.

Isn't this game supposed to have emotional impact? I think that's plenty emotional impact right there imo, that's the sort of bleak reality I want to see, to give me that human connection that makes me think: "I have to stop this" and to give me the motivation and drive to do so.

[matt-bassist]

Destroy Raiden wrote...

BW better not make me give up the Earth as a para choice and doom it to reaper hood forever! I also don't want people saying how horrible I am for saving it yes it's my homeworld that trumps everyone else's because it's mine I don't want to nuke it or blow up the relay and destroy it so I can save all other races and doom my species to the dinosaurs I want to save Earth if for nothing else for those humans left out in the far reaches of the galaxy to be able to come back and recolonize it sense I'm fairly sure 99% of Earth originals will be dead by end game anyhow.

but this point of view is completely illogical and really just based on your emotions, not rational thinking.

to get the galaxy to unite against the Reapers and defeat them (which, come on, is the ONLY chance you have of surviving) you have to ensure that the different alien races are in control and in contact with each other. by saying "earth is priority number one" you're practically dooming the universe, because once the Citadel falls, we're all pretty f-ed. Which, if you recall was the Reapers original plan....

no, im not saying we just leave Earth to die, im saying *just* focusing on Earth is RENEGADE. it simply HAS to be. there's no logical way around it.

[stewie1974]

Simple answer if earth is unsavable is to flee and take the fleet with you somewhere and close the door firmly behind.

Run to fight another day.

This stratagy means sacraficing that 99% sure, but it's better to save 1% than to destroy 100%.

We already know mass effect relays can be destroyed
We already know that mass effect relays connect systems that would take thousands of years to get to even at FLT speeds.
We also know that a few thousand years ensures many generations of humans to come and go...

So take the fleet to a system
destroy the entry ME relay that leads to that system.

Colonise a world within the new system
when the reapers finally come a few thousand years later
the human numbers are signifigantly higher and hopefully technological advances not reliant on mass effect tech have come to the forefront of technology, something the reapers are not prepped for......because they can't counter tech that is non M.E based. Neccessity being the mother of invention the human race will survive and prevail , with a little sacrafice.... also the species as a whole will probablly be stronger by having more sturdy stock derived from survivalists and frontier types rather than politicians and bussiness execs..

[Sjaddix]

Yes that assumes u can put all humans in one system and that other Aliens will not drop in to wipe u out

Also 99% of the population is not a small loss. 

Modifié par Sjaddix, 26 juillet 2011 - 05:06 .

[dahoughtonuk]

If the paragon choice is losing Earth, then renegades should lose Earth ime,mdiatley no chance at recovery. Quite frankly humanity in general is always more important, even to a paragon. They just believe in showing a different face to the universe.

Losing Earth put's humans in at best the Quarian position, at worst the Krogan. Overexpanded, little genetic variability.

It's the one renegade choice even my Paragon's would make - Save Earth. It might be desperate, but losing the Alliance power would at best doom humanity to be the Quarians. following that slaves of an alien species, and finally the Krogan, without hope for recovory.

[stewie1974]

Sjaddix wrote...

Yes that assumes u can put all humans in one system and that other Aliens will not drop in to wipe u out

Also 99% of the population is not a small loss. 

Other aliens won't be dropping in with the mass relay to the galaxy sector destroyed.... you'd chose a place as far away from other aliens as possible... even today at faster than light speed it would take thousands of years to even find a solar system capable of sustaining carbon based life forms...given that the population of the universe is approximately zero ((according to douglous adams)) I think if you shut the door behind you, you won't be bothered for a few thousand years....

You don't need a huge amount of humans in one system to build up the human race again, just a viable gene pool of say a couple of thousand..... thats considerablly less than 1%

say 10 -20 thousand people .... over 2-5 k years ....with all the advances in medical science and healthcare available in the timeline.... your looking at a fairly large planetry population....

providing they don't war among themselves or fall prey to some plague which are usually the things that stunt population growth... should be fine.

yeah 99% is a lot.... but it's still less than 100%...

It's better that -something- of humanity survives rather than -nothing-

Don't get me wrong, if earth was saveable, I'd save it at the expense of the other galatic races.... self preservation first.

Modifié par stewie1974, 26 juillet 2011 - 07:07 .

[Goneaviking]

stewie1974 wrote...

Simple answer if earth is unsavable is to flee and take the fleet with you somewhere and close the door firmly behind.

Run to fight another day.

This stratagy means sacraficing that 99% sure, but it's better to save 1% than to destroy 100%.

We already know mass effect relays can be destroyed
We already know that mass effect relays connect systems that would take thousands of years to get to even at FLT speeds.
We also know that a few thousand years ensures many generations of humans to come and go...

So take the fleet to a system
destroy the entry ME relay that leads to that system.

If memory serves, destroying a relay also destroys the system it resides within. So I think your plan might not be as viable as you suspect.

Colonise a world within the new system
when the reapers finally come a few thousand years later
the human numbers are signifigantly higher and hopefully technological advances not reliant on mass effect tech have come to the forefront of technology, something the reapers are not prepped for......because they can't counter tech that is non M.E based.

Assuming the system survived the destruction of the relay without rendering all the worlds uninhabitable there is the small matter of finding a world that will prove viable for long-term habitation. Most known worlds that would meet that criteria will already have someone occupying them which would provide difficulties, the odds of finding an unidentified viable world are less encouraging.

There's also the problem of the assumption that the reapers can't counter non-M.E. based technology. It's true that the reapers encourage evolving species to develop their sciences in predictable ways, but it in no way guarantees that they will have an exploitable vulnerability to foreign technology. Particularly since they've had millions of years to develop their own.

Neccessity being the mother of invention the human race will survive and prevail , with a little sacrafice.... also the species as a whole will probablly be stronger by having more sturdy stock derived from survivalists and frontier types rather than politicians and bussiness execs..

I'm pretty certain that genetics doesn't work that way, and the social aspects of having survivalist ancestors will inevitably fade within the estimated time frame before enemies arrived. Although with the difficulties involved in accessing the system without a mass relay hooking them to the network there's a good chance that the reapers won't ever bother trying to reach such an isolated region of space. Especially since they're aware that blowing the relay would destroy everything in the system anyway.

[Candidate 88766]

Bourne Endeavor wrote...

Unfortunately, I do not, at least not unless I dug through some relatively old threads. Eventually, I would like to toss up my own rewrite of the plot, which serves to critique the existing one and offer an alternative. Of course, it would be meant entirely as fun while we wait the many months for ME3 to come out.

To touch on what I mentioned with regards to the SM. It was not so much a plothole, as it lacked exposition and essentially amounted to Shepard and crew bull rushing devoid oh at least attempting something different before hand. We had no idea whether or not the Collectors might have had an army on the other side, thus it should have been imperative we look to additional trial and error approaches before resorting to the worst case scenario of charging through. Probes is a good example of the aforementioned. Even if they ultimately did nothing, it shows we tried.

The SM could have been done better. I still enjoy it, and the first playtrhough was one of the most tense missions I've ever done in a game, but with hinsight there was a lot of opportunity for Bioware to make it even better. Having no idea what was beyond the Relay was kinda difficult to ignore. The Collectors themselves would've been so much better if they'd been foreshadowed, but there is potential for them if they end up playing a role in ME3. Seems a bit of a waste otherwise.

Also, to stray back on topic I think that if humanity lost Earth it would be a blow from which they would never recover. Population, economy, military and morale would take such a hit that it would be finished as a power regardless of whether it survived. Humanity hasn't had time to spread out form Earth enough to be able to afford its loss.

On topic, I tend to agree if Earth is destroyed the likelihood of humanity recovering borders between slim to nonexistent. They would inevitably be targeted by hostile races such as the Batarians, although being the galaxy's saviors. The other races may step in to assist. I would be content if large portions of Earth were left in ruin and/or it was even insinuated while a significant portion of the population did survive. They might have to abandon the planet for a time. Basically anything that does not undermine the Reaper threat or make humans "special" as I am tired of those plots.

I'm not too worried about the Batarians. I'm more concerned with the war itself - it won't be over quickly, and if humanity loses Earth in the initial attacks then humanity has very little hope of survival. The Alliance's ships are built in the Sol system, most of their personel are recruited from Sol and so the loss of Earth (and therefore undoubtedly the loss of the Sol system) would prevent humanity being able to fight for long in the war. Also, once Earth is lost they would have no hope of taking it back - not only can the Reapers fortify their position, but the only way into the system is the Relay so they can easily set up a bottleneck. The only hope to save at least some of the people is when the Alliance still has some control of Earth. The early stage is the only chance they have of defending it, and therefore the only chance they have of being a power both in the war and after.

[Ieldra]

Meatlocker wrote...
Didn't humans excellerate to unheard of numbers after the first contact war? I'm not sure how losing earth would really harm out birth cycle.

Read the Codex. Humanity consists of 11.4 billion humans on Earth, about a dozen established colonies with populations fo 3-5 million each, and a few hundred industrial outposts with unknown numbers but likely not amounting to not more than 10-20k apiece, if that. Codex links in the OP.

The problem with "restocking" population through normal procreation is that it takes time. Given current birth rates on Earth (which are likely high compared to what will happen in future), population would double in about 40 years if not limited by resource constraints. If 100 million human colonists are left, it will take humanity about 300 years to get to the pre-war levels. And that's a very, very best-case estimation and doesn't take into account that so many children cost resources not available for rebuilding the pre-war infrastructure.

There's no way around it: If most of humanity is sacrificed to save the rest of the galaxy, humanity will have lost its power base. The other species might be thankful enough to protect what remains from slavery or genocide. But you can bet on one thing: they won't let humanity get as powerful as themselves if they can prevent it. That's just the eternal reality of politics.

Edit:
Should Earth be lost but the war be won, then the best chance for humanity to regroup is to seek out an unknown garden world far away from the reach of Citadel civilization and make a new home there. Stay in isolation until you're powerful enough to play a part in galactic politics once more.

Modifié par Ieldra2, 26 juillet 2011 - 10:07 .

[Sylvianus]

I agree with the OP.

I do not understand those who think the earth destroyed, humanity will be fine.

Read the codex, it is very clear. There is no other possible interpretations.

The Alliance has what ? Dozens of settlements and outposts ?

Yeah cool.

Modifié par Sylvianus, 26 juillet 2011 - 10:06 .

[SandTrout]

I'm with the OP, but I'm not reading through 11 pages of Fixer's trolling in order to learn what has and hasn't been discussed.

[bucyrus5000]

Considering the perspectives of other scifi storylines, like firefly and cowboy bebop, humanity could easily endure the loss of earth if the colonies have plenty of resources, but ME doesn't seem to indulge the concept of a star system or interplanetary infrastructure. If the Alliance has a centralized terran military industrial complex and Earth has heavily invested in a system wide infrastructure involving lunar development, orbital elevators, solar power as a primary power supply, and similar on Mars and Venus, then the loss of the Solar System could throw the colonies into logistical military chaos.

[Ieldra]

bucyrus5000 wrote...
Considering the perspectives of other scifi storylines, like firefly and cowboy bebop, humanity could easily endure the loss of earth if the colonies have plenty of resources, but ME doesn't seem to indulge the concept of a star system or interplanetary infrastructure.

That's not the problem. The problem is that humanity is only 35 years past being a system-bound species and  colony population is consequently low. I don't know the other SF universes that well, but the impression I get is that their colonies are very much older, a few generations at least.

After 300 years with no cataclysmic events like the Reapers, and humanity will have a dozen old colonies with maybe 1 billion population each, a few hundred established colonies with a few million each, and a few thousand industrial outposts. The loss of Earth would still be catastrophic, but not as crippling as now.

Unfortunately, humanity has a history of only 30 years of colonization, not 300. And the Codex entries reflect that.

[dahoughtonuk]

Exactly humanity isn't spread out enough yet to be able to sacrifice Earth. The Asari could sacrifice Thessia, but they'd stay a power. Loss of Palaven could fracture the Turian empirebut would not necessarily do so, and for a different reason Sur'Kesh could cause extinction of Salarian's.

The two closest powers to Earth are the Krogan's and Quarian's. They were respected races apparently on the urge of getting a council seat. The Krogan's were reckless and lost theirs to the Turians.The Quarian's lost there homeworld and a large proportion of their military might.

[Fixers0]

Saphra Deden wrote...

Ieldra2 wrote...

Should Earth be lost but the war be won, then the best chance for humanity to regroup is to seek out an unknown garden world far away from the reach of Citadel civilization and make a new home there. Stay in isolation until you're powerful enough to play a part in galactic politics once more.

That is not at all practical.

True, they should regroup to arcturus station (Or C-base if you saved it). Most important of course be securing the larger colonies (Elysium, Terra Nova) and the resource rich planets.