318 réponses à ce sujet

[ZLurps]

Welsh Inferno wrote...

The Angry One wrote...

Anderson says the Reapers systematically destroyed all the old nuclear silos.
Quite why these silos weren't immediately activated and launched at the Reapers is anyone's guess.

Fear. If our response to an unknown was always to fire nuclear war heads at it we'd all be dead now 

Actually I think viable reason for Reapers to destroy them would be to prevent humans performing mass suicide via nukes. Cycle were been only partial success, because they weren't be able to harvest humanity in that scenario.

[The Angry One]

ajm317 wrote...

I hate the Thanix cannon.

Not so much it's inclusion in the game, but the way fans took it and ran with it.

The Thanix cannon is never described in the game as some kind of wonder weapon that can slice and dice Reapers like a light saber.  It's described as putting cruiser firepower on a frigate.  It's an evolution in weapons technology, not a revolution.  Even in ME2 it wasn't THAT important.  You destroy the Collector ship with or without it, you just lose a crewmember if you don't have it.

And to be honest, it would have been pretty silly if the devolopers answer had been "Thanix cannon FTW."  Why is our cycle the only one to have reverse engineered Reaper weapons?  The Protheans were at war with the Reapers for centuries.  Why didn't they make a Thanix cannon?  Besides, even if the Thanix cannon is all that and a bag of chips, the Reapers have them too.  And theres are bigger, on bigger ships with bigger Element Zero cores that move faster and have more armor.

So I would have been very dissapointed if that was how Bioware had gone with things.

Because Citadel trap. Personally I hate it when people downplay the importance of the Citadel trap and pretend that the Reapers weren't forced into a backup plan of a backup plan in order to get here.

[Mriswith911]

Two things:

1) This is the first cycle that did not have its leadership and central government immediately destroyed by the Reapers. Even the Protheans had this happen (per Javik). This is also the first cycle that had as much advance warning as it did. The fact that the Reapers couldn't use the Citadel alone gives this cycle a huge advantage over past ones.

2) Javik talks about his people's war with the Reapers. Per him, they managed to hold out for over a century. His cycle saw all peoples united, but they were united through forced slavery (basically) rather than simply working together. He stated that it was this fact that eventually made their war strategy too inflexible to cope with changes in tactics the Reapers were making. Also, the Reapers were eventually able to indoctrinate agents that took the Protheans apart from within. If they had been more flexible and hadn't been betrayed then they would have won. He says as much himself by describing how they were making in-roads and winning the fight initially, sacrificing entire planets to do so if need be.

Based on these two things alone it seems very possible that the current galaxy could win against the Reapers conventionally. The only downside is that this cycle is not quite as advanced as the Prothean cycle was.

[Sugaki]

Hudathan wrote...

If they did that then people would just be up in arms about how it's a Hollywood Independance Day ending. Do you honestly think the same people complaining about the current endings wouldn't rip right through a Reaper-power-button?

ME1 and ME2 are pretty much Hollywood endings and people loved them. Doubt they'd be at an uproar.

[Sangheili_1337]

Hudathan wrote...

Sangheili_1337 wrote...

What they could have done is have the Crucible cripple the Reapers in some way. Maybe frenzy them so they attack each other. The united galaxy fleet would then finish off the stragglers. Would have been a hell of a lot better than what we got.

If they did that then people would just be up in arms about how it's a Hollywood Independance Day ending. Do you honestly think the same people complaining about the current endings wouldn't rip right through a Reaper-power-button?

Maybe have the outcome depend on the EMS. If the EMS is too low the Reapers still win. Have it so even with the highest EMS possible, the Reapers would still cripple the galaxy for many years at the cost of their own defeat. Im not advocating a fairy tale ending at all.

[Subject9x]

I think ME3 forgot actual military tactics completely. 2km machines start walking on ground? oh lol Earth blue ocean navy is gonna have a FIELD DAY!
-off-field artillery?
-field guns?
-missile silos - nuclear and non-nuclear?
-infiltration teams?
-Defense of Earth? history has proven that nationally, humans are an aggressive and paranoid lot, I fully expect Earth to be bursting with orbital and ground defense systems and weapons.


and that's just on the ground.

space?
-quantity is a quality all its own - Stalin, reapers can only kill so much.
-greater numbers = greater strategic moves. Hell the Turians pulled a daring in-system FTL jump that took the Reapers off guard.
-more numbers = more focus fire
-javelin missiles
-scaled up M90 cains
-infiltration teams ( i want to see zaeed lead a badass merc group into a reaper and blow that gorram ship to hell)

I agree with OP, we're told from day one that the reapers can't be fought conventionally, yet each scenario has you besting their ground forces and raising a massive armada to sweep their space forces.

in terms of a tabletop game, the Reapers are a 'Gimmick' army, they have one gimmick: complete surprise and lockdown of relay network. Guess what was neutralized by the Protheans to even give us a chance? their one gimmick.

Modifié par Subject9x, 26 mars 2012 - 05:36 .

[Welsh Inferno]

ZLurps wrote...

Actually I think viable reason for Reapers to destroy them would be to prevent humans performing mass suicide via nukes. Cycle were been only partial success, because they weren't be able to harvest humanity in that scenario.

That would be the other reason yeah. One of the colonies did that in ME3 didnt they. But they also didnt want Nukes fired at them left right and center.

[Pottumuusi]

The Angry One wrote...

What irks me is that the tactics used in cutscenes are terrible.
They never use Thanix cannons, they never missile spam, they never focus fire.

Why couldn't they, say, tie in all their targetting VIs to EDI who then directs the whole fleet to massacre individual Reapers with focused fire one by one?

That would imply using logic, which of course the space magic field around the Citadel interferes with.

[Welsh Inferno]

The Angry One wrote...

Because Citadel trap. Personally I hate it when people downplay the importance of the Citadel trap and pretend that the Reapers weren't forced into a backup plan of a backup plan in order to get here.

Even though I dont think we can defeat them conventially I agree. The Citadel trap is HUGE. If it works for them It doesnt matter what the races do. Its the Reapers insta-win device as they just shut the relays off. We managed to force them into like Plan D by the time they hit Earth.

I think if we were capable of destroying them conventionally it should be established that forcing them into backup plan after backup plan after backup plan has drained them a lot. Its a long damn way from dark space.

Modifié par Welsh Inferno, 26 mars 2012 - 05:40 .

[Hudathan]

Sugaki wrote...

Hudathan wrote...

If they did that then people would just be up in arms about how it's a Hollywood Independance Day ending. Do you honestly think the same people complaining about the current endings wouldn't rip right through a Reaper-power-button?

ME1 and ME2 are pretty much Hollywood endings and people loved them. Doubt they'd be at an uproar.

Killing one Reaper and blowing up Harbinger's lackies is not the same as facing thousands of Reapers at the same time.

[Litany of Fury]

ajm317 wrote...

Litany of Fury wrote...

ajm317 wrote...

Personally I think that defeating the Reapers conventionally would have been an even worse ending to the story than the one we got. Civilizations have been trying the "use more guns" approach to beating the Reapers for 10's of millions of years to no success. It would have been pretty silly if the current cycle succeeded using that strategy without some extensive in game explanation that we never got.

Yes we are shown beating the Reapers on multiple occasions, but I actually think all those incidents serve to reinforce the Reapers power, not degrade it. Every time we kill a Reaper we have an overwhelming advantage in numbers or surprise. What's more it is always A Reaper. We never take out a Reaper fleet or even 2 Reapers. Maybe when the entire Quarian Migrant Fleet takes out a single destroy Reaper after multiple volleys the OP takes that as some sort of validation that conventional tactics would work. Personally I see it as confirmation that such tactics are futile against the dozens and dozens of Reapers we see orbiting Earth, to say nothing of the countless Reapers also located at Thessia, Palaven etc.

The thing is though,  our cycle uses the 'shoot moar' tactic, yes - but using the Reaper's capital ship weapons instead of traditional mass effect projectiles. Thanix cannons were fitted to pretty much everything after their initial trial run on an Alliance cruiser, and they are reverse-engineered versions of Sovereign's weapons. Not to mention that Dreadnoughts have had massively scaled-up models of the gun fittted to them that replace their main gun - an already fearsome weapon replaced with something even scarier.

I for one don't think that the Reapers planned for their own massively destructive weapons to be deployed against them en masse, as I reckon there's a fair chance that the other cycles never managed to defeat their version of Sovereign (or maybe Sovereign himself) during peacetime so that they had plenty of time and resurces to revers-engineer weapons from it.

I hate the Thanix cannon.

Not so much it's inclusion in the game, but the way fans took it and ran with it.

The Thanix cannon is never described in the game as some kind of wonder weapon that can slice and dice Reapers like a light saber.  It's described as putting cruiser firepower on a frigate.  It's an evolution in weapons technology, not a revolution.  Even in ME2 it wasn't THAT important.  You destroy the Collector ship with or without it, you just lose a crewmember if you don't have it.

And to be honest, it would have been pretty silly if the devolopers answer had been "Thanix cannon FTW."  Why is our cycle the only one to have reverse engineered Reaper weapons?  The Protheans were at war with the Reapers for centuries.  Why didn't they make a Thanix cannon?  Besides, even if the Thanix cannon is all that and a bag of chips, the Reapers have them too.  And theres are bigger, on bigger ships with bigger Element Zero cores that move faster and have more armor.

So I would have been very dissapointed if that was how Bioware had gone with things.

I never said it was some kind of 'wonder weapon'. Think of it this way: if it puts the firepower of a cruiser onto a frigate, then more, or larger versions, on a cruiser would bump it up to the next level, and so on and so forth. Then you get to dreadnoughts, which fit absolutely collossal versions of this thing. That's probably given you around twice as much firepower on your fleet compared to before them.

Since the Reapers intended galactic civilisation to go down the 'mass effect for EVERYTHING' route, it is entirely possible that their ships are designed solely to resist mass-accelerator weaponry, not the molten beam/laser/death ray tech used in the Thanix series. The codex also mentions them being effective against Reaper shields, and we've all seen what happens to a Reaper with no shields. It gets roflpwnt by a single torpedo launched from a frigate, of all things.

[Positronics]

The Reapers cannot be defeated by conventional methods. Period.

Just because you -think- they can doesn't mean that it's true. Admiral Hackett has 10x the military knowhow flushing down the toilet from his morning dump than any of you could ever muster, and he said flat out that even with the galactic fleet they could only buy time. And that, by the way, is just against the Reaper forces orbiting Earth.

Paraphrase from WilliamDracul88: "OMG where was Earth's nuclear silos that we have today!"

Seriously? First off, the are no 100 megaton bombs, there's nothing even close, and if there were, one could definitely not fit on a conventional ICBM. With a mass effect field, they might be feasable, but there are far more efficient explosive tech available in ME than fission.

They've destroyed thousands of advanced spacefaring civilizations,and you think throwing nukes at them are going to bring them down? You don't think that other civilizations in other cycles have tried? Obviously, Reaper barriers would shrug off a nuke, just like they do normal kinetics, which is why things like thanix had to be developed.

I just wanted to reiterate how wrong the OP is, and anyone who agrees with him. For anyone who has an inkling of how warfare actually works, consider this:

Reapers have no need for supply lines. They have no need to eat or sleep. They don't get scared or exhausted. When they kill your planet, they grow in numbers while you take irreversable losses.

Strategic depth is completely irrelevant to them, because the size of your population works against you. They will patiently go planet by planet until your entire species is destroyed.

Consider Sword, the task force charged with striking the Reapers. Given that this cycle was different and there was advanced warning, this was probably the largest attack fleet ever assembled against the Reapers. The entire assault was blunted in a matter of minutes. Sword was losing hard, and Shield was getting destroyed. And this wasn't against the entire Reaper armada, no, this was just against the large -Earth- group of Reapers.

So many people in the game tell you, the player, flat out, that they can't be beaten conventionally because they can't. Get over it.

Oh and btw, the old nuclear silos were destroyed as an afterthought. Nuke = barely worth the Reapers' attentions.

[prizm123]

Aspex wrote...

Highly doubtful that you could face off solo against something like Harbinger. Even more doubtful that a conventional fleet, no matter how big, could face off against several hundred Reapers at a time.

i am Commander Shepard, give me my full squad from all the games, and I will punch a hole through goddam Harbinger.... WITH MY GODDAM OMNITOOL

Modifié par prizm123, 26 mars 2012 - 05:42 .

[WilliamDracul88]

Finally, a more fitting signature...

[moater boat]

The Angry One wrote...

ajm317 wrote...

I hate the Thanix cannon.

Not so much it's inclusion in the game, but the way fans took it and ran with it.

The Thanix cannon is never described in the game as some kind of wonder weapon that can slice and dice Reapers like a light saber.  It's described as putting cruiser firepower on a frigate.  It's an evolution in weapons technology, not a revolution.  Even in ME2 it wasn't THAT important.  You destroy the Collector ship with or without it, you just lose a crewmember if you don't have it.

And to be honest, it would have been pretty silly if the devolopers answer had been "Thanix cannon FTW."  Why is our cycle the only one to have reverse engineered Reaper weapons?  The Protheans were at war with the Reapers for centuries.  Why didn't they make a Thanix cannon?  Besides, even if the Thanix cannon is all that and a bag of chips, the Reapers have them too.  And theres are bigger, on bigger ships with bigger Element Zero cores that move faster and have more armor.

So I would have been very dissapointed if that was how Bioware had gone with things.

Because Citadel trap. Personally I hate it when people downplay the importance of the Citadel trap and pretend that the Reapers weren't forced into a backup plan of a backup plan in order to get here.

THIS

The reapers were already at a huge disadvantage by losing the element of surprise. The fact that the war began with an intact galactic governement is a HUGE boon to organics that should not be ignored. The Thanix cannons are certainly going to help, but the real reason a conventional war could have been won is the simple fact that the Reapers lost their biggest advantage at the end of ME1.

[ajm317]

The Angry One wrote...

ajm317 wrote...

I hate the Thanix cannon.

Not so much it's inclusion in the game, but the way fans took it and ran with it.

The Thanix cannon is never described in the game as some kind of wonder weapon that can slice and dice Reapers like a light saber.  It's described as putting cruiser firepower on a frigate.  It's an evolution in weapons technology, not a revolution.  Even in ME2 it wasn't THAT important.  You destroy the Collector ship with or without it, you just lose a crewmember if you don't have it.

And to be honest, it would have been pretty silly if the devolopers answer had been "Thanix cannon FTW."  Why is our cycle the only one to have reverse engineered Reaper weapons?  The Protheans were at war with the Reapers for centuries.  Why didn't they make a Thanix cannon?  Besides, even if the Thanix cannon is all that and a bag of chips, the Reapers have them too.  And theres are bigger, on bigger ships with bigger Element Zero cores that move faster and have more armor.

So I would have been very dissapointed if that was how Bioware had gone with things.

Because Citadel trap. Personally I hate it when people downplay the importance of the Citadel trap and pretend that the Reapers weren't forced into a backup plan of a backup plan in order to get here.

That post doesn't have anything to do with the Citadel trap.  I'm not sure how this response is supposed to make sense.  All I said there was that the Thanix cannon is not a good enough explanation for how the Reapers could be defeated.

At any rate, in response to the issue of the Citadel trap, I think people aren't really thinking this through.  The Reapers are better than us in every way.  They're more advanced than us, stronger than us, they outnumber us, and they're smarter than us.

So yeah.  The Citadel is a trap.  The Reapers are smart.  I'm not sure why people made the jump that because they are smart they must be weak.  They're never shown as weak.

During Desert Storm the U.S. led coalition forces used a feint by two Marine divisions straight into Kuwait to pin the Iraqi army while the main force launched a surprise attack into the Iraqi rear area, cutting off the Iraqi retreat.

Does that mean that the coalition forces couldn't possibly have beaten the Iraqi's without the ruse?  Good god no.  However just because you can bulldoze the other guy doesn't mean you have to shut your brain off.  The strategy employed by the coalition cut casualities considerably.

So just because the Reapers employ a trick to make things easier and limit their exposure to danger doesn't mean they can't take us in a slug fest.  Even in ME1 this is very clear.  Soveriegn was almost impossible for an entire human fleet to take down using conventional weapons, and according to him the Reaper forces come in numbers that will "darken the skies".  This is reinforced at the end of ME2 where we see a Reaper fleet that contains, at minimum, hundreds of vessels.

[cebo7590]

admiral hackett said at the very begining that if you had enough troops or ships he would take whatever you have got. besides during the shroud it was stated that hammerheads and gunship groups can take out a destroyer, plus in the codex its stated that enough gunships can take out a destroyer. even the god child stated that no other organic civilazation has gotten this far agianst the reaper.

[Mandemon]

There are few things to consider:

-Conventional here means that each race fights separably, when you unite the galaxy everyone pretty much agrees that it is unconventional
-Until this cycle, Reapers have just waltzed in, cut the galactic government and communication, not to mention transportation. To me, this is the first cycle where Reapers actually had to fight on all fronts at the same time, instead of taking their time, stretching their numbers.

[Sugaki]

Positronics wrote...

Just because you -think- they can doesn't mean that it's true. Admiral Hackett has 10x the military knowhow flushing down the toilet from his morning dump than any of you could ever muster, and he said flat out that even with the galactic fleet they could only buy time. And that, by the way, is just against the Reaper forces orbiting Earth.

Admiral Hackett? What are you talking about? How does an imaginary character have more know-how about imaginary space strategies tha us?

It has to do with how the story is set up. The Thanix cannon was pretty much set up as a pwnage cannon in ME2, yet in ME3 they don't even really use it. Even if it's not enough to turn the tide, they didn't even show or try to explain that away. Has nothing to do with military strategy, it's just poor writing.

[malakim2099]

WilliamDracul88 wrote...

Finally, a more fitting signature...

Support has 2 'p's.

Just sayin'. And I thought the whole point of the Crucible/War Assets was to possibly BEAT the Reapers. I mean, you probably are the first entity to have the entire galaxy united against the Reapers. Aria's Mercs, The Geth, the Quarians, the Turians, the Krogan, Salarian Observers (sorry, I cured the genophage), the Alliance, the Asari, the Citadel fleet, what's left of the Batarians...

The whole strategy of the Reapers has been watching galactic civilization grow up around the Citadel, and then they use the mass relay in the Citadel to bamf out of dark space and do a quick strike to chop the head off galactic civilization. From there, it's just mopping up as the galaxy is too divided and confused to know what's happening.

Now, that strategy was turned on its head. And the Reapers have to actual improvise just as much as the Galaxy does. So I think, without the massive advantage of surprise, the Reapers have to try and strike everywhere to keep the galaxy from uniting (which is why you see small Reaper fleets all over, but no real concentration of forces until the end at Earth).

I think in a straight up fight, between all the forces you can muster (100% Readiness, every war asset you can grab) and the Reapers? I think it might be a pyrrhic victory, but you CAN win. And I think that fits in perfectly with the theme of the first two games. Unification and sacrifice.

[lyravega]

I guess OP didn't listen around. The war won't end in a day with conventional methods. For protheans, it lasted a century for them to be completely "assimilated". And this cycle isn't unified, their technology is far behind, and as stated in the game, the galactic economy will fail within a year.

Reapers are fighting an attrition-based war, and it is certainly not affecting theirselves in any way. Turning their foes against them, while building more of theirselves. As each day/month/year passes, their enemy (current cycle) weakens more and more. What is a century for them, when they are capable of waiting in deep space for 500 centuries? Nothing.

That said, I still don't understand why Reapers didn't capture citadel first, then locked the mass relays to isolate the galaxy in pockets, like they did in all previous cycles as mentioned in the game(s) over and over. They forget about the citadel then all of a sudden decide to go after it. Think about it: reapers capture citadel, lock mass relays, no fleet to bother with. The Reaper IFF from ME2 could've been used in this scenario...

[Mandemon]

ajm317 wrote...

The Angry One wrote...

ajm317 wrote...

I hate the Thanix cannon.

Not so much it's inclusion in the game, but the way fans took it and ran with it.

The Thanix cannon is never described in the game as some kind of wonder weapon that can slice and dice Reapers like a light saber.  It's described as putting cruiser firepower on a frigate.  It's an evolution in weapons technology, not a revolution.  Even in ME2 it wasn't THAT important.  You destroy the Collector ship with or without it, you just lose a crewmember if you don't have it.

And to be honest, it would have been pretty silly if the devolopers answer had been "Thanix cannon FTW."  Why is our cycle the only one to have reverse engineered Reaper weapons?  The Protheans were at war with the Reapers for centuries.  Why didn't they make a Thanix cannon?  Besides, even if the Thanix cannon is all that and a bag of chips, the Reapers have them too.  And theres are bigger, on bigger ships with bigger Element Zero cores that move faster and have more armor.

So I would have been very dissapointed if that was how Bioware had gone with things.

Because Citadel trap. Personally I hate it when people downplay the importance of the Citadel trap and pretend that the Reapers weren't forced into a backup plan of a backup plan in order to get here.

That post doesn't have anything to do with the Citadel trap.  I'm not sure how this response is supposed to make sense.  All I said there was that the Thanix cannon is not a good enough explanation for how the Reapers could be defeated.

At any rate, in response to the issue of the Citadel trap, I think people aren't really thinking this through.  The Reapers are better than us in every way.  They're more advanced than us, stronger than us, they outnumber us, and they're smarter than us.

So yeah.  The Citadel is a trap.  The Reapers are smart.  I'm not sure why people made the jump that because they are smart they must be weak.  They're never shown as weak.

During Desert Storm the U.S. led coalition forces used a feint by two Marine divisions straight into Kuwait to pin the Iraqi army while the main force launched a surprise attack into the Iraqi rear area, cutting off the Iraqi retreat.

Does that mean that the coalition forces couldn't possibly have beaten the Iraqi's without the ruse?  Good god no.  However just because you can bulldoze the other guy doesn't mean you have to shut your brain off.  The strategy employed by the coalition cut casualities considerably.

So just because the Reapers employ a trick to make things easier and limit their exposure to danger doesn't mean they can't take us in a slug fest.  Even in ME1 this is very clear.  Soveriegn was almost impossible for an entire human fleet to take down using conventional weapons, and according to him the Reaper forces come in numbers that will "darken the skies".  This is reinforced at the end of ME2 where we see a Reaper fleet that contains, at minimum, hundreds of vessels.

Citadel trap is so key component to Reaper plans, that after it they fell back to back-up plan(which prrofs they aren't idiots, everyone needs plan and after that to another failsafe plan.

The fact it that untill now Reapers have never fought head-on agains tentire galactic community. That implies that they do not think they can do it without heavy losses. Even now, Reapers take heavy losses as do allied forces. After uniting the galaxy, Reapers not only face full war-time economy of the galaxy but also a united fleet. Something that has never happened and somethign they took measures to prevent.

Also, once Reaper loses his shields, he is pretty much no-better than average dreadnought without shields.

Modifié par Mandemon, 26 mars 2012 - 05:52 .

[Humanoid_Typhoon]

The Angry One wrote...

What irks me is that the tactics used in cutscenes are terrible.
They never use Thanix cannons, they never missile spam, they never focus fire.

Why couldn't they, say, tie in all their targetting VIs to EDI who then directs the whole fleet to massacre individual Reapers with focused fire one by one?

Lol Halo 2

[WilliamDracul88]

Positronics wrote...

Oh and btw, the old nuclear silos were destroyed as an afterthought. Nuke = barely worth the Reapers' attentions.

Yes, because a device the size of a car that can literally end all human life in a city like London, in a few seconds, that only requieres XX century tech is probably not worth mentioning.
All those marines running toward Harbingers War of the Worlds ray seemed quite more dangerous.

[WilliamDracul88]

malakim2099 wrote...

WilliamDracul88 wrote...

Finally, a more fitting signature...

Support has 2 'p's.

Damn! Back to Powerpoint again...

Edit: Powerpoint? I mean PAINT. I'm drunk or something?

Modifié par WilliamDracul88, 26 mars 2012 - 05:55 .