2463 réponses à ce sujet

[atheelogos]

Parion wrote...

Saphra Deden wrote...
Now there is the hard part. You have to get all of these ships in one place and fire them off at roughly the same time. That could be very difficult since even getting all the ships necessary through a mass relay could take several days. That's more than enough time for the Reapers to set up around the mass relay and start shredding anyone who comes through. You could take some of them out in the process, but it's an open question as to whether or not you can annihilate them before they annihilate you.

Yeah, this is definately the biggest difficulty. I think the best way would be to "shotgun" fleets into the system and having them imediately disengage, allowing them to scatter through the system. They'd lose a chunk each time, but a decent portion should get through.

Saphra Deden wrote...
One thing to remember though: FTL in Mass Effect works by reducing the mass of the ship. So you could wind up with freighters that don't impact with nearly the force you are predicting. There was a CDN story a while back about this happening to a turian colony. It has been a long time since I read it, but I recall that the devestation was limited to an area about the size of a city.

Afaik the mass is reduced but the average energy of the system remains constant, so the ship impacts with the same force as it would have without the FTL active. This isn't to say FTL has no effect; the force is concentrated on a very small are of the ship, meaning there's a chance of kicking off a fusion/fission reaction, and more importantly at FTL the ship can be neither detected nor intercepted.

Saphra Deden wrote...
It is actually the stuff killed in high orbit that is the problem. Anything killed on or near the Earth's surface won't spread its contamination very far, at least in most cases. The stuff in high orbit though can impact anywhere and cosidering you'll have a large area filled with the debris of hundreds of ships... I just don't think you can catch enough of it fast enough.

Imo the fact that it's in high orbit means it'll take a while before the contaminants bgin entering the atmosphere, I'd guess a few days to a couple of weeks. The higher the orbit the more time there is to put countermeasures in place.

Saphra Deden wrote...
That will cost time and money. Keep that in perspective. You'll be doing a lot of rebuilding on the Earth's surface, probably rebuilding the Alliance fleets too, and conducting Reaper salvage operations, as well as dealing with the fallout on Earth. You'll need to provide people with food and shelter.
That eezo isn't cheap and the human economy is probably going to be a hurting as a result of the injured Alliance fleet and devestated Earth. How are you going to pay for all of this?

Money yes, time not so much. These things needn't be especially complex, just sheets of armour around a mass core and a bit of altitude control. I doubt it'd take more than a day or two to rig a flying-car (I forget the proper name) factory to produce them by the dozen. I'd expect full coverage of major worlds within a week.
Worst comes to worst, they could use actual cars on autopilot. They'd only need to survive until satelite production gets going.
... Okay, maybe not cars. Shuttles would work though, and they seem to be almost as common.
Financing is a problem, but I feel the fact that they'll be scooping up significant amounts of element zero and/or inert reaper tech would create a significant decrease in cost after the initial outlay, maybe even to the point of them turning a profit.

Saphra Deden wrote...
I'd be careful with transplanting alien species. That could be just as bad as eezo contamination.

True. This should only really be considered if the existing ecosystem has been kneecaped anyway.

Lotion Soronnar wrote...

Why are you assuming the reapers will just stand there and LET you do that in the first place?
You think they wont' have any guards at the mass relay? The second your fleet starts jumping in, they'll react.
You're also assuming you'll be able to gather, modify and organize a sufficient number of ships in time.

Also, don't forget reaper ships are faster and a lot more manouverable than yours AND they can FTL as soon as they start taking losses, so hitting them won't be easy - especailly sicne cargo transports aren't known for their manouverabiltiy.

Do I think they'll let this happen? Of course not. This would be very difficult.
It's also why a single concerted strike is preferable. When the fleets first show up the reapers will begin to respond, but they have no way of knowing exactly what response is appropriate. If they stay back long enough, then there should be enough time to initate the strike. If not, then the fleet immediately disengatged and scatters to a pre-determined rally point far enough out so as to escape detection.
Once in-system, the reaper's manuverability is largely immaterial. If the reapers are indeed vunerable to huge great lumps of metal being rammed into them at 1.3% of C then there should be no real time for them to react. Sure, some may survive and disengage... but if they want to actually keep reaping then they're going to have to return to the planet, once again rendering them vunerable to being punched in the face with a spaceship.

Saphra Deden wrote...
The evidence is clear both on Ilos and on a nearby planet that the Reapers came through and devestated the Protheans there. I suppose it isn't explicitly stated it was the Reapers, but connect the dots.

Huh. Managed to miss that completely.
Okay, so they found Ilos, so planets are probably out. Interstellar space should still be okay though.

"When the fleets first show up the reapers will begin to respond, but they have no way of knowing exactly what response is appropriate"
They have supercomputers, possibly quantum computers, for brains and you think they wont be able to figure it out?

[TuringPoint]

I also want to see someone, anyone, cite exactly what the evidence is that the Reapers had visited and devastated Ilos.

Not that I don't believe that's the case. But people are taking this with absolutely no clearly delineated evidence

Starting to think there should be a post with indexed, factual Mass Effect universe information, with evidence cited on specific terms, and a separate index with ongoing speculation.

Modifié par Alocormin, 21 août 2011 - 02:24 .

[JGDD]

Saphra Deden wrote...

There is no explicit evidence, but if the Reapers didn't pulverize it, then who did?

Time. Only have to look here on Earth to know unattended structures succumb to the elements. South American, Egyptian, and many other ruins have been around a fraction of the time Ilos sat idle. Nature reclaims everything.

[Ashathor]

Saphra Deden wrote...

justgimmedudedammit wrote...

Time. Only have to look here on Earth to know unattended structures succumb to the elements. South American, Egyptian, and many other ruins have been around a fraction of the time Ilos sat idle. Nature reclaims everything.

The planetary descriptions mentions a catastrophe.

I ask you this: what happened to the Protheans who lived there?

Didn't the protheans that were there die in those life support capsules?

[Humanoid_Typhoon]

@Saphra,I'm certain Earth isn't the only planet with natural disasters,I.e. Seismic events,tsunamis,etc.

[Ashathor]

Saphra Deden wrote...

So the entire population of Ilos went into the capsules?

From what we've seen there were TONS of capsules along the walls so I wouldn't be surprised if that were the case. Or maybe they just ran out of food supplies and just died that way. I'm just going by what Vigil told us and what we saw in ME1.

[TuringPoint]

... 
Frankly, a lot of the problem within internet discussions is how touchy people are in them.

Saphra Deden wrote...

Alocormin wrote...

I also want to see someone, anyone, cite exactly what the evidence is that the Reapers had visited and devastated Ilos.

There is no explicit evidence, but if the Reapers didn't pulverize it, then who did? The description for Ilos states it was a ruined world. The sister planet in the system has downed Prothean aerostat colonies.

If you want to believe some other faction came through there and did it then that's fine, but you're inventing a totally new explanation without any real basis. My explanation is much simpler than yours.

Believe whatever you want.

I didn't come up with a new explanation, I was simply pointing out that you don't have any evidence of that.  

If we're going to go with evidence-based discussion, we can make this statement:  there is some implication that the Reapers may have visited the world.  Then you can make the assertion that the Reapers did visit, and annihilate the planet, but perhaps they did not have any awareness or way or reason to access the bunker.

Modifié par Alocormin, 21 août 2011 - 05:48 .

[TuringPoint]

LOL.  I don't care so much.  

Neither about the Ilos issue, nor the OP-based topic.  However, because I have previously noted how you were looking at evidence, I feel responsible for making it clear that I am not unconditionally supporting your opinions, which it seems like people have started doing, beginning with the evidence-based assumption that Ilos was annihilated by the Reapers.

If you think Ilos is so far from the topic of the thread, why did you bring it up yourself?

Modifié par Alocormin, 21 août 2011 - 06:12 .

[TuringPoint]

I think this is an interesting topic generally, that's the only reason I'm still saying stuff in it.

This is how you got into discussing Ilos.

atheelogos wrote...

Parion wrote...
It's already shown by Ilos that the reapers don't, or can't, inspect every inhabitable world, and a ship in interstellar space would be completely unnoticable.

It's already shown by Ilos that the reapers can do inspect ever world. The only reason Ilos was spared is because the records of it where destroyed in the Reapers initial attack on the Citadel. Had they known they would have gone there as well.

Saphra Deden wrote...

The Reapers did go to Ilos, they just didn't find the bunker.

Modifié par Alocormin, 21 août 2011 - 06:25 .

[Arkitekt]

Ilos was most probably destroyed by the Reapers. The text is a clear indication of this, since it was written in a very clear manner. Notice that "evidence" within stories, books, movies, etc., is something different from "evidence" in the real world. In the real world, if someone named "Shepard" were to read a Codex Entry which says something like:

In the golden age of the Protheans, Ilos was a verdant world, dotted with the spires and arches of magnificent cities. Even casual observation shows this is no longer the case. Ilos has been devastated by means unknown, its entire surface changed to the color of rust. The atmosphere shows heightened levels of oxygen. Wildfires, presumably ignited by lightning strikes, can be seen burning on the dark side. This indicates that most –— if not all — respiring animal life forms have died off.

... he would probably make the reasonable comment that justgimmedudedammit made, and he would question the amazing number of things that could have possibly happened a long long time ago in that far region of space. In the Mass Effect narrative (or in any other narrative) however, things do not work that way. The "holy book" that bioware keeps under wraps and that contains all the information about the world they created is not infinite as the real world, and more often than not, the same person who designed the "real" story of Ilos also designed the "Shepard POV" story of Ilos.

Considering other things like simplicity, lack of necessity to create different wild misteries that have nothing to add to the plot (only creating confusion, etc.), it's clear that these narratives coincide.

Ilos is designed to be a destroyed world, and Shepard gets to know this fact right after his trip to Virmire. Clearly, the description is designed for the player to connect the dots.

[Arkitekt]

About the tongue-in-sheek OP, that the author has already described as a "lie" in order to grab attention (and which by that reason makes me disincline to confront any of Saphra's posts, which ones are "true" which ones are just there to "grab attention" and "provoque debate"), I'd say that even the less ridiculous version of the argument is wrong.

Saphra speaks about how it is preferable to being "beamed up" by the Reapers than needlessly fight them, since at least we will continue to "be", in a way or another. Granting for the sake of argument and just for one moment the inevitability of the defeat, this has several problems unaddressed (I think, I may have skipped a lot of the discussion):

- Saphra did not produce the argument of why should we care about this new form of "post-human" beings. For all we know, (and is little) this life form would behave much like all the other Reapers, without any kind of enlightened exchange between other forms of being except for the other Reapers. Exploration ends, continuing just the optimization of the best way to cull organic civilizations, forever. Some people might find that fascinating, but myself am completely disinterested in investing my own freedom and surrender to this consequence. So, Saphra's reasoning would only be valid if this future was shown as something that we should care about. We are left only with the ridiculous "Something will continue", which is insufficient data. There is much about humans that I despise. There is much that I love. And Reapers don't appear "lovely";

- If the last point could be surmounted, I'd submit that we couldn't surrender to the Reapers for an entirely different reason, and it would have to do with that "Something" that would last inside a Reaper. It is different to willingfully submit to a Reaper, or to be indoctrinated to the fluid chambers. Saphra is proposing the first, forgetting the fact that humans who do willingfully surrender to this shameful state of affairs represent (if at least symbolically) the worst that mankind has to offer. Egotists, they will help the Reapers in order to help themselves in a "metaphysical" way far in the future. If mankind is the kind of race that submits to this annihilation willingfully, then it doesn't deserve the right to continue its existence in the universe, reaching as we see a contradiction (if it doesn't deserve the future, they shouldn't surrender willingfully). This is not an objective point, of course, it is rooted in my own morals and so I understand that Saphra may believe in a different morality although it doesn't look very nice;

- All knowledge is contingent, meaning that if we do not know the future, it is impossible to ascertain absolutes. Saphra states that it is impossible to win the Reapers, but this is just faith with some logical arguments behind it. However, Saphra does not have all the knowledge of future events and future discoveries, and in them some kind of hope may be found. We could metagame at this point and just say the obvious thing that we will clearly find these things, but I understand that metagaming is not the right thing to do here. But in real life, many surprising turn of events do appear. People have been found to survive falls of 10 km. If you would have had a conversation with that person while she was falling (I think it was a she), saying to her just kill yourself, you'll spare a lot of anxiety while skydiving would have been clearly a mistake. Most people will die in these conditions but if one counsels them all to suicide before they actually know, then all people will die in these conditions.

As a race, I think we have learned by now that many surprising things are always happening (reality always trumps fiction some say), and to discard them in an absolutist fashion, declare the fate of a war before it even starts and propose the absolute suicidal move is, as we've seen, hubristic, immoral and above all, simply not just happening!

[TuringPoint]

It would not be hard for Bioware to write up another explanation, and have as an odd twist of fate that Ilos was devastated by something other than the Reapers.

A few things make this explanation a little weaker. Not to suggest anyone is stupid, just to make an argument for discussion.

First of all, the Reapers needed an agent to work for them and find the conduit. Second, the bunker did not actually store or hide the conduit - the conduit was in fact quite openly displayed for the Reapers to find. This suggests they did not have an invasion fleet around that planet, meticulously destroying the Ilos colony as is their regular OP when devastating a planet. They left quite a bit intact.

Not to mention the whole premise of ME1 was to follow and stop Saren as he was trying to find and use the Conduit.

It is possible that the Reapers, sometime after the Protheans engaged their plan but before the Mu relay got knocked out of position by a supernova, the Reapers came by and investigated, perhaps decided it wasn't worth destroying the conduit, and "devastated" the Ilos colony in some way besides bombardment. Feros is an example of the Reapers doing this, although Feros isn't described as being devastated.

Also, Ark:  Your post just before this one basically restates what my arguments were.  Among the opposing arguments is that there is no intrinsic value in staying  "human" or "natural" and that all arguments for staying human and staying alive as human beings, if at all possible, and dying while trying if not possible,  are simply a result of religious beliefs.

Which is ironic, considering the only manner of existence the Reapers offer is metaphysical at best.

Modifié par Alocormin, 21 août 2011 - 07:25 .

[Arkitekt]

Yes, well all that is also worth noticing. Some lack of ultimate consistency between the writers and the game designers could also be at work. Clearly the reapers didn't know where the conduit was, and a thing so powerful as that would be noticed.

And I'm glad I'm restating the obvious . There's also another point regarding morality.

Compare what Saphra wants humans to do with what the Protheans did, passing a small torch for the following races to defeat the reapers. Then decide which race would make you feel more proud belonging to.

[Parion]

Lotion Soronnar wrote...
Given the reapers have superior sensors, drones and indoctrinated slaves, you seeing them before they can see you is..unlikely...to put it mildy.

Drones only help when they know where to look, and you having the best sensors in the world won't help if what they're looking for is a light-week out.
Indoctrinated servants are a problem. All you can really do there is be as careful as you can, and have VIs or Geth take care as much of it as possible.

Lotion Soronnar wrote...
Untrue. Manouverabiltiy is the most important aspect of space combat.
At the distances we're talking about, and the speeds reapers are capable, even a tiny deviation means your "shot" misses by hunderds of kilometers.

At the distances I'm talking about, the reapers going at maximum speed perpendicular to the angle of the shot means a cource correction of maybe a degree.
Targeting that accurate is a base requirement of space travel today. It's pretty clear that in the future ships will be at least that accurate.

Lotion Soronnar wrote...
"ramming" is such a simple tactiucs, that I find it unbelivable that no one tried it agaisnt them in all the cycles so far.

I don't. For it to be a valid tactic you need to be able to rally and co-ordinate a significant attack force, which means the relays have to be open.

atheelogos wrote...
When the fleets first show up the reapers will begin to respond, but they have no way of knowing exactly what response is appropriate"
They have supercomputers, possibly quantum computers, for brains and you think they wont be able to figure it out?

Nope. I think that, whilst it will occur to them, lack of data will result in an unacceptable margin of error.
The ships could be kamikaze-ships, but they could also be spewing nuclear mines into surrounding space, launching standard munitions at the world in order to saturate local space, be loaded with mass cores so that they detonate with relay-crushing force when they're destroyed, be there in order to evacuate the planet whilst another plan is enacted, carry experimental quantum-decoherance cannons or simply be decoys.
I expect the reapers to be smart. In other words, cautious.

[Lotion Soronarr]

Parion wrote...

Lotion Soronnar wrote...
Given the reapers have superior sensors, drones and indoctrinated slaves, you seeing them before they can see you is..unlikely...to put it mildy.

Drones only help when they know where to look, and you having the best sensors in the world won't help if what they're looking for is a light-week out.
Indoctrinated servants are a problem. All you can really do there is be as careful as you can, and have VIs or Geth take care as much of it as possible.

Which begs the problem. If they can't see you, you can't see them either.
If you are a light week out, how will you know where they are?

Not to  meniont that all reapers sem to have quantum entanglement technology readily avilable. Meaning they can share data in real-time, presumably even with their drones.

Lotion Soronnar wrote...
Untrue. Manouverabiltiy is the most important aspect of space combat.
At the distances we're talking about, and the speeds reapers are capable, even a tiny deviation means your "shot" misses by hunderds of kilometers.

At the distances I'm talking about, the reapers going at maximum speed perpendicular to the angle of the shot means a cource correction of maybe a degree.
Targeting that accurate is a base requirement of space travel today. It's pretty clear that in the future ships will be at least that accurate.

A degree is a helluva lot.
It's not merealy matter of calculating a course - you have to have accurate data, and your ships has to be manuverable enough to make such minute changes in a matter of miliseconds. Not that in space travel, this is not a requirement since you travel to rather static and predictable places (planets, stations) and you're genneraly trying NOT to hit them, not the other way around.

Lotion Soronnar wrote...
"ramming" is such a simple tactics, that I find it unbelivable that no one tried it agaisnt them in all the cycles so far.

I don't. For it to be a valid tactic you need to be able to rally and co-ordinate a significant attack force, which means the relays have to be open.

Even with the relays closed, military bases are bound to have a significant military force present.
You don't really need to gather all the ships in the universe to attmpt a ramming tactic anyway, so your point is moot.

[Arkitekt]

Saphra Deden wrote...

Arkitekt wrote...

- Saphra did not produce the argument of why should we care about this new form of "post-human" beings.

I have, but no one is willing to entertain the idea. They are too proud and the concept is too icky for them. Look up transhumanism sometime.

This is not an answer. "Transhumanism" is too vague for me, if you boil it really down, you'll see that it is just saying "post-mankind", well post mankind can be anything. It can be astonishingly good or incredibly evil or somewhere in between. And I'm distingushing them in moral terms because that's what is needed if we are to make a call on whether we should want it or not.

Look, you say "Humanity will be reborn, unified at last in a single form, many voices, but a single mind, a single will. "

but the truth is, all reapers seem hell bent creatures without inter-independence at all between them, and causing an holocaust every 50 000 years. So it could be true that this existence was phenomenal but to call it "human" would be presumptuous and missing the point, and also with little evidence. For all we know, they could just be using our own experiences and mannerisms without the will, or many other things. And for all things equal, I think that betting that these creatures are out there to destroy you and not to save you should be the standard preference for everyone.

[Humanoid_Typhoon]

So what happens when we save the Earth and beat the reapers?