Ok...just to bring this to a close...I'll take command of hte reaper forces. You take command of the resistance. I'll tell you the reaper attack strategy... let's see if you can win this.
1. Reapers will stike the infrastructure and power generation and food production first, starting with the biggest and most vital planets. Shipyards are the primary targets in space.
2. Reapers will move in force. At no point will any force/fleet consist of less than 50 reapers.
3. Should the kinetic barriers come in danger of collapsing, the reaper will disengage and FTL to another unguarded enemy asset or, if no scuh exists in the vicinity, to a pre-established rally point.
4. Destruction of key enemy infrastructure takes precedence over total anihilation of all resistance on a planet. Once all the primary objectives have been completed, the reapers are to move to the next planet/world. Possibly, leave a small force behind to bombard the planet from orbit and then follow.
5. The fleets will avoid any unencessry stops or delays - they are to be constantly on the move, using hit-and-run attacks.
6. Using precision relay jumps, jump into tacticly advantagous positions.
7. Send probes to sweep systems for bases and shipyards, and any supply convoys.
8. If the resitance sends fleet assests from somewhere else to reainforce a world under attack - disengage and FTL to the world from which the reinforcements came and hit it. Avoid getting unnecesarily tied down.
Challenge... accepted.
It's almost 30 minutes, but I did not feel like typing a wall of text. It is a detailed strategy that gives us a chance of beating the reapers (using your tactics).
My question is this:
When the reapers come to the decoy base, how is it possible for us to react quickly enough to ensure the reapers don't relay jump before you smash into it?
It could be a few minutes before we know they have came through the relay, which they probably would spend heading toward us, hacking our systems. The question now I suppose is whether they can intercept our comms quickly enough or even our on board computers to see where our planned destination is before we hit the relay?
Squee, you just made my night!
I'm also a little horrified, but I would like to point out that the loss of life may NOT be as high as you deem necessary.
How hard would it be to outfit those ships with a simple VI program to do exactly what the organic crew would have to do?
Just program it to go to a certain set of coordinates at FTL drive. Instant FTL missile, with no loss of organic life (or minimal loss), at least upon the ship.
Poor, Poor planet!
Ok...just to bring this to a close...I'll take command of hte reaper forces. You take command of the resistance. I'll tell you the reaper attack strategy... let's see if you can win this.
1. Reapers will stike the infrastructure and power generation and food production first, starting with the biggest and most vital planets. Shipyards are the primary targets in space.
2. Reapers will move in force. At no point will any force/fleet consist of less than 50 reapers.
3. Should the kinetic barriers come in danger of collapsing, the reaper will disengage and FTL to another unguarded enemy asset or, if no scuh exists in the vicinity, to a pre-established rally point.
4. Destruction of key enemy infrastructure takes precedence over total anihilation of all resistance on a planet. Once all the primary objectives have been completed, the reapers are to move to the next planet/world. Possibly, leave a small force behind to bombard the planet from orbit and then follow.
5. The fleets will avoid any unencessry stops or delays - they are to be constantly on the move, using hit-and-run attacks.
6. Using precision relay jumps, jump into tacticly advantagous positions.
7. Send probes to sweep systems for bases and shipyards, and any supply convoys.
8. If the resitance sends fleet assests from somewhere else to reainforce a world under attack - disengage and FTL to the world from which the reinforcements came and hit it. Avoid getting unnecesarily tied down.
Challenge... accepted.
It's almost 30 minutes, but I did not feel like typing a wall of text. It is a detailed strategy that gives us a chance of beating the reapers (using your tactics).
My question is this:
When the reapers come to the decoy base, how is it possible for us to react quickly enough to ensure the reapers don't relay jump before you smash into it?
It could be a few minutes before we know they have came through the relay, which they probably would spend heading toward us, hacking our systems. The question now I suppose is whether they can intercept our comms quickly enough or even our on board computers to see where our planned destination is before we hit the relay?
Easy enough to solve with quantum entanglement. Have a scout at the relay, we will know the second they make the jump. Depending on the distance, we can then slam FTL missiles into the relay before the Reapers can react... one would hope. As I said, it's not a guaranteed win. It's just a possible win
Squee, you just made my night! I'm also a little horrified, but I would like to point out that the loss of life may NOT be as high as you deem necessary. How hard would it be to outfit those ships with a simple VI program to do exactly what the organic crew would have to do? Just program it to go to a certain set of coordinates at FTL drive. Instant FTL missile, with no loss of organic life (or minimal loss), at least upon the ship. Poor, Poor planet!
Squee, you just made my night! I'm also a little horrified, but I would like to point out that the loss of life may NOT be as high as you deem necessary. How hard would it be to outfit those ships with a simple VI program to do exactly what the organic crew would have to do? Just program it to go to a certain set of coordinates at FTL drive. Instant FTL missile, with no loss of organic life (or minimal loss), at least upon the ship. Poor, Poor planet!
Very true, I did not think of that.
Part of what I love about the strategy is that it completely removes any fear we may have about planets' being "poisoned" by Eezo -- any planets attacked would presumably be destroyed!
I hope there is a scene in ME3 where you join some forces and they tell you to retreat and Grunt or Jack or something says "Retreat? Hell we just got here!"
Would be nice to hear from the nay-sayers,all these new arguments and we haven't gotten any feedback.
Modifié par Humanoid_Typhoon, 06 août 2011 - 03:59 .
Saphra Deden wrote... I haven't preserved humanity in its natural state. I have however preserved as much of it as a I can. It's legacy, it's 'essence', as best I can. It's not ideal, I've admitted that, but it is the best I can do.
So... you've preserved and strengthened another species at the expense of humanity? Right, glad we've got that one covered at least. That pretty much means you haven't preserved humanity ipsofacto, which means you have completely screwed up. Even if we have to continue to outrun the Reapers and live a nomadic space born existence (*cough*Quarians*cough*) we'd still be human, and even if we die, we're still human, because we fought (and loss -- which is bad, but you haven't 'preserved' us -- you've perserved the Reapers). You've exchanged one bleak ending for one even worse.
You've gambled on that somehow the Reapers gain our experiences and 'essence' when they mulch us, you have no reason to believe that. You know what sustains your decision? Faith. That's a pretty ****** poor argument to make to justify complete and utter genocide of your own species. Especially since your position is based off what should be the definition of hand-waving.
So 'what if' you're wrong? Not only have you capitulated, you've also systematically stuffed up any escape option we have. It's like you'd be even less successful than Starscream.
So your argument is that because we cannot beat the Reapers, submission is a logical choice, as it "preserves" the essence of humanity via a Human Reaper. This is fundamentally true. However, it becomes less practical when you consider the reach beyond humanity's interests.
If a Human Reaper were to come into existence, it would do nothing but strengthen the Reaper's forces. When you consider that Reapers are not immortal, this is an entirely baffling position to take. Why would you lend strength to a force that can be stopped? Perhaps not by the current galactic species, but already two generations in a row have been able to deflect Reaper plans - plans that have been apparently flawlessly executed for tens of thousands of years.
The Protheans were able to cut off the Reapers from their most important resource: the Citadel. And then in the generation immediately after, we were able to kill a Reaper and cease the birth of another one. Reapers can be outsmarted and outmaneuvered; after two generations of it, they'd certainly be more cautious, but it's not impossible.
Even if it were impossible to beat the Reapers, the most logical step would be to leave some sort of warning for the next generation of galactic life as the Protheans did for us. In the scale of all sentient life that has ever and will ever exist, submitting to the Reapers and giving them another unit for their force is immediately demoted from logical to genocidal sentimentality.
I think the problem with Squee's argument is that it relies on meta-game level knowledge (to paraphrase: "We can tell by the ME3 trailer that Reapers do not just orbital bombard, they must descend onto the planets surface") to some degree. The only way we'd know this for sure is to observe it in universe, by which point it may be too late.
I do agree though that the Reapers wouldn't necessarily know where everything is; however, Saren was at the Terminal for some period of time before Shep stumbled upon him, is it therefore not possible that Saren could have uploaded various census data? True, it wouldn't be 'uptodate' but then again, it's not as if the Turian homeworld is going to move from Palaven.
I think the problem with Squee's argument is that it relies on meta-game level knowledge (to paraphrase: "We can tell by the ME3 trailer that Reapers do not just orbital bombard, they must descend onto the planets surface") to some degree. The only way we'd know this for sure is to observe it in universe, by which point it may be too late.
I do agree though that the Reapers wouldn't necessarily know where everything is; however, Saren was at the Terminal for some period of time before Shep stumbled upon him, is it therefore not possible that Saren could have uploaded various census data? True, it wouldn't be 'uptodate' but then again, it's not as if the Turian homeworld is going to move from Palaven.
Still works towards some of the Reapers apparent goals. They (perhaps) want to spare the planet any uneccessary damage so that it would eventually sustain life again, and to do that they will have to be more methodical in their approach, then say just bombarding it from space.
In fact, it would support his argument to say that we would have to "sacrifice" planets, and probably more human planets then any other, because we are the Species actually being "reaped". They're DEFINITELY not going to take the chance of making us go extinct before harvesting our bodies, which in essence would require their battle tactics regarding human colonies to have a bit more finesse. Thusly, they will move in as close as possible to the surface.
I think that it is worth-while to note that meta-game data is applicable for this discussion. The debunked theory in question takes the place more as a prediction of what BioWare will do than as a choice available to the player. Because we are essentially predicting possible plot progress from an OOC perspective, we can, and should apply all available data that can reasonably be trusted.
Therefor, the OP is completely debunked by the developer statements that explicitly say that we can win. This makes the only rational discussion as to weather or not BW could write a story for ME that makes sense that allows for this known aspect of the plot. In this, the burden of proof lays on the OP to show beyond reasonable doubt that there is no way for BW to write a decent plot that involves the defeat of the Reapers. By that virtue, as long as those that wish to speak against the OP can produce reasonable possibilities that are not explicitly contradicted by available data, then the OP is null based on that principal. We know that we will have other options than surrender, and we have produced possibilities that could fit well within the context of ME.
This is more or less a recent realization on my part that I failed to reach earlier because of how the OP was rhetorically framed and the ensuing discussion.
I think that it is worth-while to note that meta-game data is applicable for this discussion. The debunked theory in question takes the place more as a prediction of what BioWare will do than as a choice available to the player. Because we are essentially predicting possible plot progress from an OOC perspective, we can, and should apply all available data that can reasonably be trusted.
Therefor, the OP is completely debunked by the developer statements that explicitly say that we can win. This makes the only rational discussion as to weather or not BW could write a story for ME that makes sense that allows for this known aspect of the plot. In this, the burden of proof lays on the OP to show beyond reasonable doubt that there is no way for BW to write a decent plot that involves the defeat of the Reapers. By that virtue, as long as those that wish to speak against the OP can produce reasonable possibilities that are not explicitly contradicted by available data, then the OP is null based on that principal. We know that we will have other options than surrender, and we have produced possibilities that could fit well within the context of ME.
This is more or less a recent realization on my part that I failed to reach earlier because of how the OP was rhetorically framed and the ensuing discussion.
This will most certainly incite Saphra. And yet it is all true and undebatable.
sos,the problem is,saphra didn't think of that so it isn't "rational or logical"
Nah. she (like a lot of people) is just frustrated that there isn't more information out there on exactly how the devs expect Shep to pull this Victory against a seemingly invincible race of machines out of his a**, and understandably so.
It really does at the moment feel like an impossible task, and it angers her that it would be something completely out of her control that would end up saving the day. I might be mad, too, considering all the gameplay hours I have invested into making this "my" story. It feels a bit like the developers are placing our victory upon a silver platter -- that none of our hard work will even matter.
I, however, have chosen that I will just ride out the story, and enjoy it in the same way I enjoy a good book. If the ending is a good, rational one (even if it lies outside of the scope of my control), then I will be satisfied. Just as long as our victory isn't because of a mcguffin. Then, I will be very upset.
I don't know if anyone knows this (I haven't been able to find anyone who does) but it is possible to see the Reapers from the Galaxy Map. In ME1, there are small points of light outside of the Milky Way in Dark Space.
In ME2, you can navigate further outside the Galaxy. The points of lights are closer to the galaxy. So I'm pretty sure these are the Reapers.
If there is enough Reapers to give off enough light as bright as lights from the galaxy, then there is ALOT of reapers.
Doesn't mean we will be destroyed in ME3. But that doesn't mean we will destroy the Reapers in ME3 either.
sos,the problem is,saphra didn't think of that so it isn't "rational or logical"
Nah. she (like a lot of people) is just frustrated that there isn't more information out there on exactly how the devs expect Shep to pull this Victory against a seemingly invincible race of machines out of his a**, and understandably so.
It really does at the moment feel like an impossible task, and it angers her that it would be something completely out of her control that would end up saving the day. I might be mad, too, considering all the gameplay hours I have invested into making this "my" story. It feels a bit like the developers are placing our victory upon a silver platter -- that none of our hard work will even matter.
I, however, have chosen that I will just ride out the story, and enjoy it in the same way I enjoy a good book. If the ending is a good, rational one (even if it lies outside of the scope of my control), then I will be satisfied. Just as long as our victory isn't because of a mcguffin. Then, I will be very upset.
I pretty much have the sentiment of your second paragraph. I kind of balk at ME3 in the sense that ME1 and ME2 were basically delaying the events of ME3. Well, ME3 starts with the Reaper invasion, which has successfully taken Earth and Palaven (and probably the other homeworlds too), and judging by the trailers, taken out a large chunk of the Alliance fleet.
So we spent two games delaying the events of the third, but the third game starts with the situation already decidedly on the "screwed" end of the scale. In other words, the only believable thing ME3 can offer, plotwise, to defeat the Reapers is a macguffin that has not even been hinted at in the past two games.
And no, that whole "dark energy" crap doesn't cut it. Good luck weaponizing an abstract energy with your infrastructure and production decimated and the entire damn galaxy in utter chaos.
I don't know if anyone knows this (I haven't been able to find anyone who does) but it is possible to see the Reapers from the Galaxy Map. In ME1, there are small points of light outside of the Milky Way in Dark Space.
In ME2, you can navigate further outside the Galaxy. The points of lights are closer to the galaxy. So I'm pretty sure these are the Reapers.
If there is enough Reapers to give off enough light as bright as lights from the galaxy, then there is ALOT of reapers.
Doesn't mean we will be destroyed in ME3. But that doesn't mean we will destroy the Reapers in ME3 either.
Dark space isnt completely dark. There are stars that, due to gravitational interactions, have been flung out of the galaxy, and instead either float free, or are trapped orbitting the galaxy the same way comets orbit the sun. There are also other galaxies off in the distance, so far away in fact, that they appear simply as points of light. Check out the Hubble Deep Field image to see how "empty" space really is.
Squee, you just made my night! I'm also a little horrified, but I would like to point out that the loss of life may NOT be as high as you deem necessary. How hard would it be to outfit those ships with a simple VI program to do exactly what the organic crew would have to do? Just program it to go to a certain set of coordinates at FTL drive. Instant FTL missile, with no loss of organic life (or minimal loss), at least upon the ship. Poor, Poor planet!
Very true, I did not think of that.
I did say that I would stop posting in this thread ,
but since some recent ideas are so similar to the originally crazy ideas that I had raised,
I ask, why not blast every primary mass relay between us and the reapers?
Nah. she (like a lot of people) is just frustrated that there isn't more information out there on exactly how the devs expect Shep to pull this Victory against a seemingly invincible race of machines out of his a**, and understandably so.
It really does at the moment feel like an impossible task, and it angers her that it would be something completely out of her control that would end up saving the day. I might be mad, too, considering all the gameplay hours I have invested into making this "my" story. It feels a bit like the developers are placing our victory upon a silver platter -- that none of our hard work will even matter.
I, however, have chosen that I will just ride out the story, and enjoy it in the same way I enjoy a good book. If the ending is a good, rational one (even if it lies outside of the scope of my control), then I will be satisfied. Just as long as our victory isn't because of a mcguffin. Then, I will be very upset.
I don't think they need one of those. Remember what the last thing Joker did in ME2 was? He handed you Reaper schematics. If we know their structural weaknesses... well, that's pretty good already. Maybe there's a very good reason why Cerberus' tech works against the Reapers. Maybe that Reaper IFF mission was a lot more important than it looked like, both to Cerberus and the Alliance. I always felt like ME2 was the Empire Strikes Back of the ME series, and maybe I didn't know how right I was.
That derelict Reaper may've held the key to defeating them. Tell me if I'm wrong.
Ok...just to bring this to a close...I'll take command of hte reaper forces. You take command of the resistance. I'll tell you the reaper attack strategy... let's see if you can win this.
1. Reapers will stike the infrastructure and power generation and food production first, starting with the biggest and most vital planets. Shipyards are the primary targets in space.
2. Reapers will move in force. At no point will any force/fleet consist of less than 50 reapers.
3. Should the kinetic barriers come in danger of collapsing, the reaper will disengage and FTL to another unguarded enemy asset or, if no scuh exists in the vicinity, to a pre-established rally point.
4. Destruction of key enemy infrastructure takes precedence over total anihilation of all resistance on a planet. Once all the primary objectives have been completed, the reapers are to move to the next planet/world. Possibly, leave a small force behind to bombard the planet from orbit and then follow.
5. The fleets will avoid any unencessry stops or delays - they are to be constantly on the move, using hit-and-run attacks.
6. Using precision relay jumps, jump into tacticly advantagous positions.
7. Send probes to sweep systems for bases and shipyards, and any supply convoys.
8. If the resitance sends fleet assests from somewhere else to reainforce a world under attack - disengage and FTL to the world from which the reinforcements came and hit it. Avoid getting unnecesarily tied down.
Challenge... accepted.
It's almost 30 minutes, but I did not feel like typing a wall of text. It is a detailed strategy that gives us a chance of beating the reapers (using your tactics).
Ahh...good one.
But allow me to make a few poitns of my own:
1) Assumptions reapers have no info. Sovereign did connect ot the citadel ,so it's highly likely he did get information he could have transmitted. Even assuming he didn't get info from there, Etiher He or Harbie could have gotten that info from all other sources - indoctriunated people, the Collectors (tehy have been around for a long time, even dealing with the Sahdow Broker), etc. Now while I don't think they now the locations of EVERYTHNGI, I do think they know most of it.
2) detecting FTL reinforcements: You got a point here. You cannot track FTL jumps. BUT, the reapers control the relays and only Normandy can really hide in sapce. Assuming the reinforcements come from in-system, there is only a limited number of locations from which those reinforcements could possibly come. If the reinforcement comes from outside, repers would detect the use of the mass realy and know from which system they come. then there is also the point of reaper drones and scouts. Eihter way, the point is to deny you inflicting losses. If they can't detect from where your reinforcements come at all, then the "fallback to rally point" rule applies.
3) Reapers landing on planet: They land on earth as they are reaping humans. I see no reason for them to land on planets if they don't want to reap. They might have some arcane reason for doing that, but I find it unlikely, as it's EXTREEMLY unefficient for anihilation. Reapers are uspposed to have intelligence, and deliberately handicapping themselves just doesn't fit. Your enitre strategy depends on most of the reapers landing on planets. I do agree FTL attack on a planet would devastate the planets and the reapers, and I also agree that the precision FTL strikes are impossible. There are no FTL sensors and at those speeds even the tiniest miss-aligment means you miss your target by thousands of kilometers. No way you can hit a reaper even if it's standing still, let alone if it's moving. But a planet? Yes.
Now, would a kamikaze attack on repaer work? Given that Sovereign plowed trough a cruiser at full speed wihout flinching...hard to tell. Then there's this:
I personally think it would. It's a amazing amount of power, but if such simple strategy worked, someone else would have used it on them by now.
4) supply fleet a secret: VERY unlikely. For one, you supply fleet would have to follow the combat-ready one around the unvierse for it to be of any use. Given the size of the fleet, the advanced reaper sensors, indoctrination and theri mastery of the mass relays hiding (they'd probably be able to detect any use of the relays, including the details of the ship that went trough - ergo it would be very difficult to fool them) such large fleet movements
5) entire fleet avilable for an attack: Again, highly unlikely that you would be able to bring in the whole fleet in system and have it ready and gatehred in time to strike..when you don't even know where they will be striking. We are talking about ships that are faster and more manouverable than yours, so you can't really win in the battle of mobility. You're also starting from the assumption that we weill know the location of all reaper fleets, yet they will not know the location of ours.
Not to mention it takes time for a fleet to transit into a system and the reapers would detect that. So they would have time to move away from he planet and FTL out of there or engange your fleet directly. That's assuming your fleet isn't already in-system when the reapers attack a planet, but if the reapers are trying to avoid direct confrontation, they wouldn't attack there in the first place.
the first 3 points are the cruical one tough.
Anyway, a good performance from you, congrats.
I was anticipating someone would try the kamikaze aproach, but I didn't think of ramming planets. Then again, I never considered reaprs would really land on planets anywhere except for Earth.
Modifié par Lotion Soronnar, 06 août 2011 - 09:37 .
Squee, you just made my night! I'm also a little horrified, but I would like to point out that the loss of life may NOT be as high as you deem necessary. How hard would it be to outfit those ships with a simple VI program to do exactly what the organic crew would have to do? Just program it to go to a certain set of coordinates at FTL drive. Instant FTL missile, with no loss of organic life (or minimal loss), at least upon the ship. Poor, Poor planet!
Very true, I did not think of that.
I did say that I would stop posting in this thread ,
but since some recent ideas are so similar to the originally crazy ideas that I had raised,
I ask, why not blast every primary mass relay between us and the reapers?
Well, in Squee's plan, the destruction of the relay is necessary because the resulting explosion would end up eradicating a humongous portion of the Reaper fleet - but you also have to remember that it'll wipe out everything else in the system. There's a chance that "every primary mass relay between us and the Reapers" will be located in areas with populated planets, and if destroyed, will result in any amount of casualties.
This would be acceptable if it actually did anything to stop the Reapers, but it doesn't. Reapers are capable of traveling through space just fine; all destroying relays between them and us would do is make the trip a little longer, as they would have to travel to another relay. That's what happened in Arrival: the relay we destroyed there was the Reapers' most tactically valuable tool because it served as a window throughout the galaxy. Even its destruction bought us little other than time.
Also, the species of the galaxy rely on relays just as much (if not more) than the Reapers do. Rapidly hashing up a list of relays to destroy for a quick fix is not strategically sound - we could very well cut ourselves off from important tactical positions, resources, or allies. The Reapers' whole original plan is based on isolating every cluster through the disruption of relay travel, and unless we're very picky about which ones we destroy, all we'd do is help them out with that very tactic.
Still works towards some of the Reapers apparent goals. They (perhaps) want to spare the planet any uneccessary damage so that it would eventually sustain life again, and to do that they will have to be more methodical in their approach, then say just bombarding it from space.
In fact, it would support his argument to say that we would have to "sacrifice" planets, and probably more human planets then any other, because we are the Species actually being "reaped". They're DEFINITELY not going to take the chance of making us go extinct before harvesting our bodies, which in essence would require their battle tactics regarding human colonies to have a bit more finesse. Thusly, they will move in as close as possible to the surface.
Unless a planet is completley devoid of ALL life, then in a few hundered years, life would flourish again. Bombarding a planet from orbit can only make it uncapable of supporting life if the atmosphere is gone or all bacterial life is gone. Then it also depends on what weapons you use.
If I were a reaper - bombard all cities and war infrastructure from orbit. Then release a virus tailored to kill that species. Leave a few probes to minotor the progress.
One more addendum - do we even know if destroying a mass relay could kill a repaer? We know a specific mass relay caused a supernoca-liek explosion, but that relay was specifc. Others would not create such a big kaboom.
Also, what's stoping the reapers from FTL-in away from the relay the second they jump in? Especially if they only send a small force trough, then that tactics would not work again.
Retour en haut
, 
