318 réponses à ce sujet

[Subject9x]

Also, Reapers have supply lines, they have ships to ferry ground troops. A reaper on the ground is like a tank, if it has no infantry support, then it can be surrounded and shot from behind. So its feasible to picture raiding the hell out of Reaper troop convoys which I'd imagine are not as heavily defended because Reapers don't care about casualties. In fact I think the Blue Suns turned to raiding these convoys and causing general mayhem for Reapers when you recruit them as assets.

[Sepharih]

Positronics wrote...

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.

Admiral Hackett is a fictional character in a videogame played by an immensely talented actor named Lance Henriksen.

Remember that in story telling show, don't tell.  Pointing out that the lore says "x" or that in real life "x" would happen doesn't mean as much as what the story directly shows us.
If the story shows you overcoming impossible odds at every turn and defeating the enemy conventionally then regardless of the lore or reality it's still out of tone to end with the note that "yeah...it was always impossible to defeat them conventionally despite everything you were shown."

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

[cebo7590]

Positronics wrote...

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.

Nukes kinda are a big deal. if you think about what mass effect shields are weak against one of the things is heat. nukes are heat. lots of heat. and once shield goes down/ overloaded they are easy pickings for the fleets.

just saying

[Silhouett3]

Why does this thread assumes Reapers never fought a galactic war conventionally before and organic races never before get the chance to use Reaper technology like Thanix guns?

What I mean is: there was a "long forgotten species" that somehow created a gun strong enough to create a Great Rift which is visible even after 37 million years on planet Klendagon and destroy a Reaper in the process. See my point?

In other words, this thread is full of speculation

[garf]

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.

I'm one of 'those people' and I tell you NO. Mass Effect has been fun and enthralling but 2001 it ain't let alone the original russian version of Solaris or something by Stanislaw Lem. Yes I read real sci fi. Try not to believe everything IGN tells you about those who hate the endings.

Sorry quoted the wrong post. Was responding to Hudathan

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

[HBC Dresden]

Titan_HQ wrote...

Not to mention Thanix cannons, Javelin torpedo launchers and other technical upgrades that they neglected to use for some incomprehensible reason.

The Codex explains that these weapons are effective... if ships are able to get into firing range. Problem is, Reaper ship guns have longer effective range than the other races. (I believe this is in the Reaper War Codex entries, all of which are excellent bits of lore.)

To OP:

We are also shown conventional methods to defeat the ENTIRE Reaper Armada are not effective enough for the causalities that will ensue. For example, we are shown that Sovereign was able to take on the Fifth Fleet single-handedly and only that whole feedback loop thing with Saren was what brought its barriers down.

To those noting how Sovereign died: the SR-1 did not simply torpedo it, Joker fired a torpedo in Hollywood fashion after the Fifth Fleet pounded it without its barriers. Joker pretty much stole the Fifth Fleet's kill.

We are shown that the only times Shepard killed a Reaper was through unconventional methods and it took immense and heroic effort, usually requiring plot devices, not in a conventional, straight up fight.

Sovereign: the entire Fifth Fleet but more importantly, Saren's death
Reaper in orbit around the brown dwarf: it was crippled by the gun that shot it and the pressures of the brown dwarf. Also, Shep went after its core, allowing the gas giant to finish it off.
Human-Reaper: going after it before it was finished.
Reaper Destroyer on Tuchanka: needed the mother of all thresher maws and if you hear Liara after the battle on the Normandy, she notes how the Destroyer became inactive underground. Technically, it did not die, only went into hibernation.
Reaper Destroyer on Rannoch: required bombardment by the Migrant Fleet--the largest fleet in the galaxy not including the Reapers--and even then, they had to aim at the eye for it to be effective.

These are not conventional means. The space battle over Palaven is conventional. These are not.

Modifié par HBC Dresden, 26 mars 2012 - 05:56 .

[Litany of Fury]

WilliamDracul88 wrote...

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.

My brother explained to me once why nukes wouldn't do so well against the Reapers in space. I can't remember why now, but it's something to do with how they work. At least, if they had good EM shielding, anyway. If they didn't one'd probably shut down most of its systems, which would be lulzy. But if they were properly shielded (not talking kinetic barrier shields here) then they'd be useless.

[Subject9x]

Silhouett3 wrote...

Why does this thread assumes Reapers never fought a galactic war conventionally before and organic races never before get the chance to use Reaper technology like Thanix guns?

What I mean is: there was a "long forgotten species" that somehow created a gun strong enough to create a Great Rift which is visible even after 37 million years on planet Klendagon and destroy a Reaper in the process. See my point?

In other words, this thread is full of speculation

Reaper tactical doctrine is by definition non-conventional: decentralized command network, no need for morale, less emphasis on supply lines, immune to infantry tactics, etc

So their way of fighting will be different, but whos to say its perfect? remember, their gimmick was citadel/relay trap; and that has been robbed from them. This war is as much outside their comfort zone as it is ours. 

[garf]

HBC Dresden wrote...

Titan_HQ wrote...

Not to mention Thanix cannons, Javelin torpedo launchers and other technical upgrades that they neglected to use for some incomprehensible reason.

The Codex explains that these weapons are effective... if ships are able to get into firing range. Problem is, Reaper ship guns have longer effective range than the other races. (I believe this is in the Reaper War Codex entries, all of which are excellent bits of lore.)

To OP:

We are also shown conventional methods to defeat the ENTIRE Reaper Armada are not effective enough for the causalities that will ensue. For example, we are shown that Sovereign was able to take on the Fifth Fleet single-handedly and only that whole feedback loop thing with Saren was what brought its barriers down.

To those noting how Sovereign died: the SR-1 did not simply torpedo it, Joker fired a torpedo in Hollywood fashion after the Fifth Fleet pounded it without its barriers. Joker pretty much stole the Fifth Fleet's kill.

We are shown that the only times Shepard killed a Reaper was through unconventional methods and it took immense and heroic effort, usually requiring plot devices, not in a conventional, straight up fight.

Sovereign: the entire Fifth Fleet but more importantly, Saren's death
Reaper in orbit around the brown dwarf: it was crippled by the gun that shot it and the pressures of the brown dwarf. Also, Shep went after its core, allowing the gas giant to finish it off.
Human-Reaper: going after it before it was finished.
Reaper Destroyer on Tuchanka: needed the mother of all thresher maws and if you hear Liara after the battle on the Normandy, she notes how the Destroyer became inactive underground. Technically, it did not die, only went into hibernation.
Reaper Destroyer on Rannoch: required bombardment by the Migrant Fleet--the largest fleet in the galaxy not including the Reapers--and even then, they had to aim at the eye for it to be effective.

These are not conventional means. The space battle over Palaven is conventional. These are not.

Fair enough. but I still think a more mundane citidel-crucible as the alliance 'deathstar' would have been better than the Star Child.

[ZLurps]

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.

Actually one of the things that doesn't make sense in ME3 is, that Reapers, once they gained control over the Citadel didn't shut down the Charon relay in Sol and left galactic fleet sitting outside.

If we expand the topic to using Citadel, basically galactic forces (if we can call what happened to) won because of a plot hole.

[Sangheili_1337]

Mandemon wrote...

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.

The Citadel trap simply makes things easier. Without it, the Reapers can still rely on their superior numbers, firepower, FTL, and not having to refuel their ships or feed their population. There is less than 100 dreadnaughts in the galaxy right. The Reapers have thousands of ships with far greater firepower.

[Anacronian Stryx]

If the game actually didn't forget that by the end of ME 1 the council had control over the relay master control unit(hell shep even use it to let the fifth fleet though) it would be conceivable to use the reapers tactics against themselves -IE isolate them in smaller groups by control over the relay system and pounce them by vastly superior numbers like 1000/1.

By doing a story like this you could still have the reapers come off as mega though bastards that took enormous sacrifice to take down - hell with this kind of all out warfare you could have many planets laid waste and still come out with a bittersweet victory.

Modifié par Anacronian Stryx, 26 mars 2012 - 06:00 .

[Humanoid_Typhoon]

cebo7590 wrote...

Positronics wrote...

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.

Nukes kinda are a big deal. if you think about what mass effect shields are weak against one of the things is heat. nukes are heat. lots of heat. and once shield goes down/ overloaded they are easy pickings for the fleets.

just saying

Doesn't the codex say something about the Thanix being effective against reapers because they are heat based?

[Aimi]

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.

Well stated.

---

Anyway. Even if an Alliance dreadnought were equal in armament to a Reaper dreadnought, bringing all the Thanix cannons it wants - superficially untrue, backed up by a token visual comparison if you're too lazy to look at the damned Codex - galactic civilization still loses because the number of Reaper dreadnoughts is so much immensely higher than the number of dreadnoughts that the united galaxy has even at the beginning of ME3 - you know, minus the colossal destruction that the Reapers inflict on the various fleets of the galaxy in the initial strikes. While the OP does not make his argument on the grounds of lore - indeed, the whole claim is specifically structured to ignore lore wherever possible - the most basic knowledge of it would pretty much destroy his theory. So there's that.

But in a meta-storytelling sense, I agree with the previous statement that the encounters with the Reapers before the battle for Earth in ME3 only reinforce, not diminish, the Reapers' general and uncontestable superiority in conventional space-naval combat. In all scenarios, an immense amount of combat power is expended to destroy just a single Reaper. The mere fact that individual Reapers can be destroyed does not mean much when discussing the fleets at large.

When the Germans crushed the Herero and Nama insurgencies in what is now Namibia in the early 1900s, more than a few individual Germans died. But it was still a well-led army corps armed with modern, bolt-action rifles, machine guns, and heavy artillery, backed up by an excellent logistical commissary system, fighting against African tribesmen who were lucky if they had firearms. Of course the Germans were going to win.

Or take the 1991 Gulf War, in which, theoretically, the Iraqi military had decent quality arms and munitions, purchased from both NATO powers and the Warsaw Pact, and was well-trained and experienced from the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq War. But the Iraqis, even though they stood a decent chance of destroying individual Coalition planes or killing individual Coalition tanks, were definitely going to lose the war, and badly. Hell, General Scales' combination after-action report and institutional history of the US Army, written immediately after the Gulf War, was entitled Certain Victory.

The war scenes in the Mass Effect games can be easily compared to Gulf War images and stories. When the turian fleet was more or less wiped out over Palaven near the beginning of the game by what appeared to have been seven or so Reapers, that was basically the equivalent of the Battle of 73 Easting: an American armored cavalry troop laying waste to the better part of a regiment of Iraq's finest Republican Guard armor. Showing the Battle of the Citadel or the destruction of the Reaper destroyer on Rannoch would be like showing a lone M1 Abrams, its tread knocked out by gunfire, surrounded by smoking hulks of destroyed Iraqi T-72s. These are not images that inspire confidence in Iraq's military, or the military of galactic civilization.

Modifié par daqs, 26 mars 2012 - 06:01 .

[WilliamDracul88]

Litany of Fury wrote...

My brother explained to me once why nukes wouldn't do so well against the Reapers in space. I can't remember why now, but it's something to do with how they work. At least, if they had good EM shielding, anyway. If they didn't one'd probably shut down most of its systems, which would be lulzy. But if they were properly shielded (not talking kinetic barrier shields here) then they'd be useless.

Even if for some reason that was the case (and I don't know), let's just use them when they enter in our skies.
After all, if everybody is going to die at reapers hands (tentacles), at least we could die in our own terms xD.

Modifié par WilliamDracul88, 26 mars 2012 - 06:03 .

[ajm317]

Sepharih wrote...

Positronics wrote...

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.

Admiral Hackett is a fictional character in a videogame played by an immensely talented actor named Lance Henriksen.

Remember that in story telling show, don't tell.  Pointing out that the lore says "x" or that in real life "x" would happen doesn't mean as much as what the story directly shows us.
If the story shows you overcoming impossible odds at every turn and defeating the enemy conventionally then regardless of the lore or reality it's still out of tone to end with the note that "yeah...it was always impossible to defeat them conventionally despite everything you were shown."

What the story directly shows us is that it is extremely difficult to kill even a single small Reaper.  It also directly shows us that the fleet around Earth has dozens of these things, at least.  Every Reaper death we have seen reinforces the idea that the Reapers are extremely powerful, not that they are weak.

You and I seem to be taking entirely different messages from these scenes.  When you see the entire Quarian Migrant Fleet require several volleys to kill a sitting duck destroyer you think "these guys aren't very tough", I guess.  When I see that, and then connect it with the entire fleet of these things around Earth, I get the impression that fighting them conventionally is futile effort.

[Statulos]

Let's think for a second. If quarians managed to jury-rig guns on civilian ships, in around six months, imagine what they could do with the help of the Geth who can work in extreme environments, don't need to eat and can work non-stop.

Simply think about the amount of thanix gun you can put on those things and the firepower they can deliver...

[Subject9x]

I don't think the rannoch reaper fight is conclusive. We don't know how many ships it takes to kill 1 reaper because all the quarian ships are there it's not like Shepard says: ok I'll use half of the fleet to kill this thing.

if the entire fleet is there , s/he's gonna use it.

[Sepharih]

HBC Dresden wrote...
To OP:

We are also shown conventional methods to defeat the ENTIRE Reaper Armada are not effective enough for the causalities that will ensue. For example, we are shown that Sovereign was able to take on the Fifth Fleet single-handedly and only that whole feedback loop thing with Saren was what brought its barriers down.

To those noting how Sovereign died: the SR-1 did not simply torpedo it, Joker fired a torpedo in Hollywood fashion after the Fifth Fleet pounded it without its barriers. Joker pretty much stole the Fifth Fleet's kill.

We are shown that the only times Shepard killed a Reaper was through unconventional methods and it took immense and heroic effort, usually requiring plot devices, not in a conventional, straight up fight.

Sovereign: the entire Fifth Fleet but more importantly, Saren's death
Reaper in orbit around the brown dwarf: it was crippled by the gun that shot it and the pressures of the brown dwarf. Also, Shep went after its core, allowing the gas giant to finish it off.
Human-Reaper: going after it before it was finished.
Reaper Destroyer on Tuchanka: needed the mother of all thresher maws and if you hear Liara after the battle on the Normandy, she notes how the Destroyer became inactive underground. Technically, it did not die, only went into hibernation.
Reaper Destroyer on Rannoch: required bombardment by the Migrant Fleet--the largest fleet in the galaxy not including the Reapers--and even then, they had to aim at the eye for it to be effective.

These are not conventional means. The space battle over Palaven is conventional. These are not.

Actually you make a good point, so I've added the following to my first post:
Point of clarification.  Admitedly "conventional" is something of a misnomer on my part.  As has been pointed out, most of the times Shepard has succeded has been through decidedly unconventional methods.
What I really mean by "conventional" is actually over the top hollywood style heroics that employ "conventional" means and weapons....not a plot device which may or may not be a deus ex machina.

ajm317 wrote...
What the story directly shows us is that it is extremely difficult to kill even a single small Reaper.  It also directly shows us that the fleet around Earth has dozens of these things, at least.  Every Reaper death we have seen reinforces the idea that the Reapers are extremely powerful, not that they are weak.

You and I seem to be taking entirely different messages from these scenes.  When you see the entire Quarian Migrant Fleet require several volleys to kill a sitting duck destroyer you think "these guys aren't very tough", I guess.  When I see that, and then connect it with the entire fleet of these things around Earth, I get the impression that fighting them conventionally is futile effort.

We do.  I get the impression from the story that beating these things would be 'against all odds'...but that with enough will...it can be done.

Modifié par Sepharih, 26 mars 2012 - 06:08 .

[AlexMBrennan]

There are few problems with that:
1) The numbers are really not in our favour - the examples you listed were of Reaper capital ships destroyed while massively outnumbered (e.g. one grounded Reaper was killed by the quarian fleet while it was shooting at something else). The codex says that it takes concentrated fire from four allied dreadnoughts to take down one capital Reaper, so given that there are fewer than 100 dreadnoughts we could manage a total of 25 Reapers. There are 250 shown at the end of ME2 (some of them may be smaller Reaper destroyers and such, though)

2) The Reapers knew about allied fleet numbers. If there had been any risk of them not being able to achieve victory by conventional means (barring any deus-ex-machina) they would not have attacked.

3) Most importantly, a conventional victory for Sword at the 2nd Battle of the Citadel would have made everything Shepard did completely pointless - it would have made the Crucible a very expensive diversion; all those Engineers, scientists, dry docks, etc could have done something to actually help the war effort, and waiting for it to be completed (charitably assuming that the turian/krogan and geth/quarian conflict still had to be addressed) means that the war could have been ended right after the mission to Rannoch; but instead, Shepard would have gone on a wild goose chase to for the Catalyst and Cerberus which would have wasted weeks and hundreds of millions of lives.

Modifié par AlexMBrennan, 26 mars 2012 - 06:10 .

[Silhouett3]

Subject9x wrote...

Silhouett3 wrote...

Why does this thread assumes Reapers never fought a galactic war conventionally before and organic races never before get the chance to use Reaper technology like Thanix guns?

What I mean is: there was a "long forgotten species" that somehow created a gun strong enough to create a Great Rift which is visible even after 37 million years on planet Klendagon and destroy a Reaper in the process. See my point?

In other words, this thread is full of speculation

Reaper tactical doctrine is by definition non-conventional: decentralized command network, no need for morale, less emphasis on supply lines, immune to infantry tactics, etc

So their way of fighting will be different, but whos to say its perfect? remember, their gimmick was citadel/relay trap; and that has been robbed from them. This war is as much outside their comfort zone as it is ours. 

Still assumption. How do you know Reapers did not experience or plan for the "out-of-comfort-zone" situation before? Do they even have one doctrine?

[WilliamDracul88]

Just... If the Reapers are a plot device, then no, they can't be destroyed.
If the Reapers are made of something more than magic and bad intentions, then yes, everything that has be made can be broken. Everything. Also, for a so-powerful race of Gods that have an indestructible plot armor, their weapons are FAR from efficient in the fight aganist... well... everyhting. A ray beam? Really? Why don't use virical weapons to decimate the worlds even before they know they are being attacked?
And they forgot to protect their vulnerable eye because in those millions of cicles they haver never seen Star Wars: Episode IV (A New Hope, tm)?

Modifié par WilliamDracul88, 26 mars 2012 - 06:13 .

[Rocktel]

What they've shown is a single reaper is a threat to an entire fleet. They've shown that the reapers are stronger than everyone else and outnumber everyone else. They've shown that defeating the Reaper fleet conventionally is impossible.

Modifié par Rocktel, 26 mars 2012 - 06:14 .

[ZX12r Ninja]

Barbarossa2010 wrote...

Also, we're told, then shown, that the Reapers possess a vulnerability when they power up to fire their lasers. This is how Shepard defeats the Reaper on Rannoch. I thought this was going to be a significant theme for conventional warfare against the Reapers. Then, as usual, with many introduced themes, it goes nowhere.

Discovered vulnerability + Thannix Cannons = some sort of rough parity, that would have pushed us closer and closer to the victory column with a united galaxy and more collected assets.

You used this method to take down the anti-air Reaper and you also use it to take down the Reaper which is guarding the spire. The same technique is probably used by other groundforces as you can see in the cutscene just before you arrive at the spot where you are asked to defend the missiles.

When it comes to spacewarfare, with the distances involved it would be pretty much impossible to time such a shot so you're left with the bruteforce method of pounding on the shield untill they go down and then take the Reaper out. That's why you need to rally the galaxies fleets, you need to firepower.

[Positronics]

WilliamDracul88 wrote...

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.

Reaper barriers specifically defeat normal kinetics, which would include a nuclear explosion.

Those marines weren't meant to defeat a Reaper. They were meant to clear ground forces so Shepard could make it to the beam. 

And btw OP, thanix cannon was never sold as a Reaper-killer. It was sold as a Collector-ship killer. Two very different things.

Please explain to all of us how specifically the Reapers could be defeated conventionally, as it takes at least 4 dreadnoughts per 1 Reaper to make par tactically, and there are so few dreadnoughts as compared to Reapers.

Please explain how something with no need for supply lines andsomething that turns your strategic depth against you can be defeated without the Crucible killswitch.

An attrition stratgey won't work, because as said before, Reapers have no need for supply lines and thus no need for most resources. A battle of annihilation won't work, because as said before, the largest fleet ever assembled got trounced by the Earth-based Reapers.

The entire galactic economy collapses in one year, and the production bases of all the major races are already gone. So what do you propose?