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[knightnblu]

paul165 wrote...

>>Before you can board a Reaper you have to take down its shields or find a way through them. Otherwise, you won't set foot aboard a Reaper and if you can take out or bypass the shields, why board? <<

The scenario was you could hack a reaper briefly with enough AIs to lower shields - I feel it is unlikley at best you could manage to check the thing down long enough to kill it with a conventional battle - especially as seems likely the Reapers aren't going to be stupid enough to attack one by one.

Ah, now I get it. The boarding party is on a one way ticket. Hope it doesn't come to that, but clever.

[Iakus]

knightnblu wrote...

I disagree, I believe that waiting too long will doom us just as surely as an all out attack before we are prepared. For the record, the Reapers have reaped the galaxy 666+ times during the past 37,000,000 years. They have been fought, but never defeated.
 
The Reapers are tough, but they are not Gods. There is a reason that Alexander could pit 40,000 Greeks against 100,000 Persians and kick their asses in battle after battle. In fact, Alexander never fought a battle on equal terms. The same can be done to the Reapers. You just have to be smart about how you go after them. One of the cardinal traits of a great captain is boldness. Hesitancy, overly cautious, and being timid are not among the traits of great military leaders. You only win wars by killing the enemy and breaking his will to fight.
 
As for reversing indoctrination, there is likely a point at which this can be done. But once that point has passed, I believe that it is impossible to do so. One cannot unscramble scrambled eggs and attempting to do so will likely result in the death of the afflicted secondary to massive trauma to the central nervous system. In other words, reversing indoctrination will shred their brain.
 
Before you can board a Reaper you have to take down its shields or find a way through them. Otherwise, you won't set foot aboard a Reaper and if you can take out or bypass the shields, why board?

The question then becomes "how long is too long"?  For that we have no answer. We don't know how fast the Reapers are moving in ME3, how effective galactic defenses are or how we can shore them up.  I don't disagree that too much hesitation will be disasterous, but I also think too much boldness with decimate galactic military strength before it has a chance to properly fight back.  These are not batarians, a race with technology on par with humanity and a mad-on for them.  Nor are they geth, who are somewhat more advanced and are at best hostily indifferent to organics.  These are Reapers, who built the technology the current races don't even understand.    Not gods, but potenially Sufficiently Advanced.

re: reversing indoctrination.  If Shepard's brain can be unscrambled after going through suffocation and an orbital drop, reversing indoctrination ought to be a piece of cake.  I mean,at least  you still have a functioning brain to work with  

[Iakus]

paul165 wrote...

I'm not sure that there is anything left to reverse after a subject has been indoctrinated but I certainly agree detecting it should be one of the galaxy's highest priorities.

I'm not sure how far ahead of us the Protheans are/were after all they only had one prototype relay and the Asari bartender was advocating that they start developing their own centuries ago. Possibly they have a couple more tricks but it is unlikely they have anything as formidable as EDI or the Thanix (both reverse engineered front line Reaper tech rather than the 'export models' the Reapers leave around for people to find).

It appears to me that our greatest shot is the development and rapid deployment of AI tech to allow boarding and then cripple the Reapers from the inside rather than trying to punch through the barriers. EDI was after all able to hold off Harbinger (all be it with a significant distance advantage and with Harbinger working through a minion). 5 -10 EDI quality AIs should hopefully be enough to paralyise a Reaper long enough to board ground forces - at which point the ships run.

Hopefully before the Reapers slaughter all of them for the insult....

At which point the boarding teams attempt to destroy the mass effect core and it seems likely that we have better odds in ground strikes than we do in a conventionel fleet battle. Indoctrination is, as always, still an issue but hopefully the indoctrination cannot take the ground team out before they have destroyed the core.

Checking....

Although the codex is not explicit it appears that even accelerated indoctrination takes days and by that time the strike time will have succeeded or failed anyway.

The only big flaw I see here is it takes time to develop an AI, and even then, the personality type is not guaranteed.  AIs are "developed" rather than "programmed"  EDI being so friendly is as much a factor of dumb luck as Cerberus actually doing something right.  Mass producing AIs will probably be really inefficient.

Other potential problems are 

A) We don;'t know how much harder it might be to hack a Reaper than a Collector vessel.  Reapers are at least partially organic after all.

Reapers are capable of carrying ground forces inside them.  Saren used Sovereign as a warship after all, dropping off troops as needed, like on Eden Prime.  A boarding party better be very well armed...

[knightnblu]

“The essential thing is action. Action has three stages: the
decision born of thought, the order or preparation for execution,
and the execution itself. All three stages are governed by
the will. The will is rooted in character, and for the man of
action character is of more critical importance than intellect.
Intellect without will is worthless, will without intellect is
dangerous.”
 
—Hans von Seeckt
 
We can only afford to fight defensively until we are prepared to go on the offense. We will never have certainty because there is no such thing in war. Action is governed by the best guess at all times. I agree with you that the galaxy must walk a fine line in ME3 between waiting too long and acting too soon. I view both as pathways to destruction. But I would prefer to err on the side of action, if I must err.
 
If we act too soon, we will lose the battle. However, we will never the less gain valuable insight into our enemy. I can see no way to analyze the Reapers other than to engage them in battle. This is because that we need to know how they think. We have engaged Sovereign, we have engaged husks, and we have engaged the will of Harbinger through the Collectors and husks. With each step we have learned how to maneuver and overcome them and we acquired that knowledge at great expense, but we still are unaware of the Reaper's strategic doctrines and major tactics in open warfare.
 
In order to defeat an enemy, you must either destroy him or break his will to contest. The Reaper's will is fixed and can only be undone by death and that means that there can be no victory so long as even one of those things exist. We need to gather information and to analyze the Reapers tactics and strategies, but we have precious little time to do so.
 
Much of that information gathering will occur during engagements with the enemy during defensive operations. However, we will still need to test new tactics and strategies in battle with them in order to be sure that the new techniques work in the real world and there really isn't any getting around that. A similar process was done by the OSS in WWII where operatives conceived of new techniques and then deployed to the European and Pacific to test them against the enemy in real combat. Only those techniques that were battle proven were introduced to field personnel to insure that these methods were effective. As we improve our combat performance our losses will go down while the Reaper's will increase. That is how we will know it will be time to launch a counteroffensive.
 
Secondly, there will be many frictions throughout the entire war. The peoples of Council space are going to panic for one. A whole fleet of unidentified ships show up out of nowhere and nobody has any idea who they are or what they want, but wherever they go the worlds that they touch fall silent. It doesn't take a genius to figure out that death has arrived in the galaxy. Once that message gets around, there will be panic in the streets.
 
Remember the Batarian fruitcake that was going off about the end of the world on Omega? Yeah, there will be thousands of guys just like him fanning the flames of panic as the news about what is happening begins to spread. Some will do so from an honest belief that the end has arrived. Some will do so in order to spread the fires of panic so that they can hide their own dirty deeds.
 
Fear is contagious and when combined with ignorance you get panic as the mind desperately searches for a solution to an impossible problem. The peoples of the galaxy will blame their leaders for not seeing this coming and the old questions of what did they know and when did they know it will once again be asked. From this pool of emotions will come riots and looting and governments will be forced into harsh actions creating a second major friction and the process goes on. This process will take time, but as the days turn into weeks the situation will degenerate rapidly assisting our enemy by causing chaos on the worlds they have not yet arrived at by destabilizing governments and weakening resistance.
 
Regardless of whether Shepard is searching for a silver bullet against the Reapers or going with conventional warfare, the process will be the same and we will be working against the clock. The only way that we can turn the panic around and boost the morale of the remaining militaries is to score a victory against the Reapers. The morale boost from such a strike should not be underestimated. The Doolittle Raid was accomplished specifically for that purpose during WWII and that is why I advocate a retaliatory strike as soon as feasible in order to give hope to those left behind and to those who are frightened and worried across the galaxy in order to stave off panic and the social disorder which accompanies it. Additionally, we have a contact in the media with Emily Wong and I would bet you that she would love to take that story and run with it if we can manage a win.
 
As for the Geth they are no longer a threat to humanity, but the fact that they are building their very own Dyson sphere means that they now have an investment in real estate and can now be utterly destroyed by the Reapers. I find it ironic that as they near true unity their very survival becomes threatened by the achievement of their goal. The only saving grace is that they have diverged from the path of the Reapers technologically and may be able to assist on the research front helping us to put nails in the Reaper's coffin.
 
Regardless of how it goes in ME3, there will remain a place for the warrior.

[Iakus]

No particular disagreement with balance being needed.  However, Shepard is going to be operating on a razor-thin margin.  Errors will be unforgiving, possibly fatal.  Planets, entire races may die if Shepard chooses to act too soon.  As well as wasting resources that cannot be easily regained.
 
But the Reapers are coming to us.  We don't have to go out hunting.  We fought Sovereign because he attacked the Citadel.  We fought the Collectors because they attacked colonies.  Now the Reapers are attacking...everyone.I have no objection to engaging Reapers.  Such is inevitable.  But I don't think Shepard should go on the offensive until he knows he can go on the offensive.
 
A victory would be good for morale.  But a failed offensive that leads to the loss of a fleet and the death of a planet would be even worse.

Modifié par iakus, 29 décembre 2011 - 12:48 .