205 réponses à ce sujet

[Baronesa]

Vromrig wrote...

Fdmatt wrote...

Reapers were quoted in the thousands IIRC, but irregardless, the Sovereign class ships only make up a small portion of that and Turians were able to down several of those at Palaven on their own just with superior tactics.

Not efficiently.  Protracted engagement not likely feasible.

Even if, let's say... 90% of the total fleet is destroyed and we triumph, getting rid of all the Reapers... it would be far better than the destruction brought by the destruction of the Relays... EVEN THAT is better than what we got

[Fdmatt]

Vromrig wrote...

Fdmatt wrote...

Reapers were quoted in the thousands IIRC, but irregardless, the Sovereign class ships only make up a small portion of that and Turians were able to down several of those at Palaven on their own just with superior tactics.

Not efficiently.  Protracted engagement not likely feasible.

Define efficiently. The only reason they couldn't hold the Relay is that destroyers broke through and started bombing Palaven. In an all in scenario like taking back Earth where the only goal would have been destruction I have to believe they'd have a shot.

Since most of the Reaper forces had pulled back to Earth it's not like there'd be a war of attrition left afterwards, just mopping up the remaining systems with Reapers in them.

[BigM3atL3gacy]

Fdmatt wrote...

Reapers were quoted in the thousands IIRC, but irregardless, the Sovereign class ships only make up a small portion of that and Turians were able to down several of those at Palaven on their own just with superior tactics.

But that wasn't even the whole Reaper fleet. A sizable portion of the Reaper fleet went through, what, two human fleets on the way to Earth? Also, if anyone remembers, Sovereign was only destroyed when its weapons and shields were disabled (rendering it a giant metal target).

[Vromrig]

Even if, let's say... 90% of the total fleet is destroyed and we triumph, getting rid of all the Reapers... it would be far better than the destruction brought by the destruction of the Relays... EVEN THAT is better than what we got

Crossing arguments then.

Not debating point of ending. Ending terrible.

Ending not terrible because Reapers are strong, however.

[PARAGON87]

Personally, I think the Sword and Shield fleets were no match for the Reapers.

While they did do damage to the Reapers on and around Earth; they're ravaging the entire galaxy. It would take a tremendous amount of manpower to even fight them off Earth, and even if we did win, what's to stop the rest of the Reapers from coming for the fleets' remnants to lay the final dagger?

Even if we did destroy the Reapers at Earth, it would have been a feeble effort. They've been doing this for millions of years, fought countless species (who might have been a lot tougher than the current alliance of races), really we are just accelerating the extinction cycle by giving everything to them at once.

Modifié par PARAGON87, 29 mars 2012 - 12:33 .

[Balek-Vriege]

You can't beat the Reapers conventionally because of their numbers Thanix cannons or not. I used to believe that was possible until the debates about how many Reapers there would actually be and it was finally confirmed there's thousands in ME3. Based on the number of cycles alone over at least 37 million years, making 1 Reaper each time (more like 10) is enough for there to be a massive Reaper fleet to take on anything the races throw at it.

By the time Shepard gets to the Crucible it pretty much looks likes the final battle has fallen apart. Even if the Galactic fleets did win, they would have to chase down the hundreds, if not thousands of Reapers not at Earth keeping the pressure up on other homeworlds and colonies. With all their resources depleted, logistics down the tube and communications going down, that's not going to happen.

Nope, a Crucible Superweapon that deals with all of them at the same time is definitely needed, or else the plot wouldn't match previous lore about how unstoppable the Reapers are.

[Fdmatt]

Previous lore as in what?

The Protheans gave them centuries of war and they lost the Citadel from the get-go per the cycle.

Shepard stopped the Citadel invasion, bought the galaxy 4 years to reverse engineer their technology, and blew up the Alpha Relay to stop them from spreading so quickly. He also gathered the largest and most diversely skilled military force ever assembled.

[Lord Stark]

The Angry One wrote...

This has irked me. The Geth fleet is extremely powerful, they've made more dreadnaughts than the Turians due to being unbound by treaties.
Even if the heretics are a fraction of all Geth they still brought a powerful fleet against the Citadel.

Hell, the damage to the fleets in ME3 is directly based on saving the Destiny-Ascension or not, a fight that involved the Geth and the Geth alone (because Sovereign was already inside the Citadel).

Almost as many actually.  The Turians have the most powerful starfleet in the Galaxy bar the Reapers.  This is repeapeated multiple times.   The Quarian jury-rigged fleet is stated to have strength enough to "even give the Turians pause", so probably as strong as maybe the Asari navy
1. Turians
2. Geth 
3. Asari/ Quarians
4. Salarians
5. Humans

[Giantdeathrobot]

All this talk about beating the Reapers assumes they are few in numbers. Which they definitely are not. Sovereign was just one Reaper, with no support at the point where it was destroyed, and it still seemed to hold its own. We don't know how many they are. but the cycles have been going on for something like millions of years. If each cycle produces a Capital Reaper, that's a hell of a lot of capitals. And the galaxy has, what, 30 dreadnoughts maximum? And it takes 4 of these to reliably take down a Sovereign-class. Not to mention it took a significant portion of the Migrant Fleet just to kill one isolated Destroyer, and the Turians took massive losses when they destroyed a couple ships at the beginning of the invasion.

''We can't beat them conventionally'' doesn't mean we can't inflict casualties on them. They are not invincible. But they are an overwhelming force that can't be beaten head-on and against which guerilla tactis are pointless since they don,t care about casualties and have no suppliy lines. Not to mention the galaxy's economy will crash in a year, certainly shorter if the Citadel is taken.

But yeah, the Alliance being the most powerful military force was a bit weird. I can get the Turians, Asari, and Salarian not giving as much Assets because they don't completely commit (some of their forces must stay to defend their own worlds) but the Migrant Fleet and the mighty Geth counting for less than them? War Assets screen flat out states that the Geth have the best infantry and navy, yet they are worth less assets than the Krogans, who only have boys on the ground. 5% of the Geth fleet was enough to give (a big chunk of) the Council fleet a run for its money. Massed, they should be the most formidable navy in the galaxy along with the Quarians.

[SaltyWaffles-PD]

katamuro wrote...

heretic geth were half of the whole geth. Plus their ships were quite numerous. And alliance has way more than 200 ships. Also if you forget geth ships upgraded with reaper code are much better at combat than normal geth. From what we can see in games there is no number assigned to how many ships there were in any fleets, but we know that humans had 6 dreadnoughts at me1 and turians 36(or something like that) if you include that some of the sapce have to be patrolled then only a certain portion of ships can be used for swift strikes like the fifth fleet led by Hackett.
Basically what I am trying to say is that the fleets are much bigger in numbers than we know, and its not stated anywhere how many of them exactly anyone has. For all we know a fleet is from several dozen cruiser/frigate combination to several hundred.

...no, they were about 5% of the whole geth.

Humans had 9 dreadnaughts by the time of ME3. Turians had 39.

Please go back over the codex/lore if you want to argue against the issue.

[SaltyWaffles-PD]

Well, I found something of a solution. I edited the coalesced.bin file and modified the war asset values.

That way, a single Volus dreadnaught is not worth more than half of an entire human fleet (complete with at least 1 dreadnaught and 1 carrier, not to mention dozens of cruisers and frigates).

And I can make the geth fleet (complete with Reaper upgrades) actually worth what they should be.

[BigM3atL3gacy]

Fdmatt wrote...

Previous lore as in what?

The Protheans gave them centuries of war and they lost the Citadel from the get-go per the cycle.

Shepard stopped the Citadel invasion, bought the galaxy 4 years to reverse engineer their technology, and blew up the Alpha Relay to stop them from spreading so quickly. He also gathered the largest and most diversely skilled military force ever assembled.

The Protheans were more widespread and technologically advanced than any species in the current cycle, and knew about the Reapers prior to their invasion as well. But, nothing is known about how powerful the Prothean military was, or of its capabilities, so they would be an unfair comparison.

The current cycle, however, refused to believe that the Reapers were real (only the Turians made a decent effort to reverse-engineer Reaper technology). Even Sovereign only fell in battle because his shields and weapons were knocked offline, allowing a free shot by the Alliance Navy.

It can be fair to assume that their are thousands of Reaper ships, which would probably put them on equal ground with the Organic's fleets or even be larger than them. Even if Earth was retaken conventionally, you still have the Reapers in other systems to worry about (Reapers that were able to obliterate the Batarians extremely quickly, ravage Thessia and Palaven, and devestate other worlds).

[BigM3atL3gacy]

Giantdeathrobot wrote...

All this talk about beating the Reapers assumes they are few in numbers. Which they definitely are not. Sovereign was just one Reaper, with no support at the point where it was destroyed, and it still seemed to hold its own. We don't know how many they are. but the cycles have been going on for something like millions of years. If each cycle produces a Capital Reaper, that's a hell of a lot of capitals. And the galaxy has, what, 30 dreadnoughts maximum? And it takes 4 of these to reliably take down a Sovereign-class. Not to mention it took a significant portion of the Migrant Fleet just to kill one isolated Destroyer, and the Turians took massive losses when they destroyed a couple ships at the beginning of the invasion.

''We can't beat them conventionally'' doesn't mean we can't inflict casualties on them. They are not invincible. But they are an overwhelming force that can't be beaten head-on and against which guerilla tactis are pointless since they don,t care about casualties and have no suppliy lines. Not to mention the galaxy's economy will crash in a year, certainly shorter if the Citadel is taken.

But yeah, the Alliance being the most powerful military force was a bit weird. I can get the Turians, Asari, and Salarian not giving as much Assets because they don't completely commit (some of their forces must stay to defend their own worlds) but the Migrant Fleet and the mighty Geth counting for less than them? War Assets screen flat out states that the Geth have the best infantry and navy, yet they are worth less assets than the Krogans, who only have boys on the ground. 5% of the Geth fleet was enough to give (a big chunk of) the Council fleet a run for its money. Massed, they should be the most formidable navy in the galaxy along with the Quarians.

I can see the Geth being worth almost as much as the Alliance fleet, but not the Quarians. Many of the Quarian ships are full of civilian ships (hence the civilian fleet). If anything, the Turians and the Alliance now have the strongest navies (especially considering the devestating war just fought between the Quarians and Geth).

[SaltyWaffles-PD]

BigM3atL3gacy wrote...

Giantdeathrobot wrote...

All this talk about beating the Reapers assumes they are few in numbers. Which they definitely are not. Sovereign was just one Reaper, with no support at the point where it was destroyed, and it still seemed to hold its own. We don't know how many they are. but the cycles have been going on for something like millions of years. If each cycle produces a Capital Reaper, that's a hell of a lot of capitals. And the galaxy has, what, 30 dreadnoughts maximum? And it takes 4 of these to reliably take down a Sovereign-class. Not to mention it took a significant portion of the Migrant Fleet just to kill one isolated Destroyer, and the Turians took massive losses when they destroyed a couple ships at the beginning of the invasion.

''We can't beat them conventionally'' doesn't mean we can't inflict casualties on them. They are not invincible. But they are an overwhelming force that can't be beaten head-on and against which guerilla tactis are pointless since they don,t care about casualties and have no suppliy lines. Not to mention the galaxy's economy will crash in a year, certainly shorter if the Citadel is taken.

But yeah, the Alliance being the most powerful military force was a bit weird. I can get the Turians, Asari, and Salarian not giving as much Assets because they don't completely commit (some of their forces must stay to defend their own worlds) but the Migrant Fleet and the mighty Geth counting for less than them? War Assets screen flat out states that the Geth have the best infantry and navy, yet they are worth less assets than the Krogans, who only have boys on the ground. 5% of the Geth fleet was enough to give (a big chunk of) the Council fleet a run for its money. Massed, they should be the most formidable navy in the galaxy along with the Quarians.

I can see the Geth being worth almost as much as the Alliance fleet, but not the Quarians. Many of the Quarian ships are full of civilian ships (hence the civilian fleet). If anything, the Turians and the Alliance now have the strongest navies (especially considering the devestating war just fought between the Quarians and Geth).

The quarians have numbers on their side. Remember, even their civilian fleet is armed (to the point of being armor-less light frigates, basically). However, 50,000 of those ships would be HUGE in a big battle--the Reapers are poorly suited to fight a zerg rush (relying on their durability to fight it one at a time), and Reaper destroyers are vulnerable to them with sufficient numbers (say 20-30?).

[Fdmatt]

BigM3atL3gacy wrote...

Fdmatt wrote...

Previous lore as in what?

The Protheans gave them centuries of war and they lost the Citadel from the get-go per the cycle.

Shepard stopped the Citadel invasion, bought the galaxy 4 years to reverse engineer their technology, and blew up the Alpha Relay to stop them from spreading so quickly. He also gathered the largest and most diversely skilled military force ever assembled.

The Protheans were more widespread and technologically advanced than any species in the current cycle, and knew about the Reapers prior to their invasion as well. But, nothing is known about how powerful the Prothean military was, or of its capabilities, so they would be an unfair comparison.

The current cycle, however, refused to believe that the Reapers were real (only the Turians made a decent effort to reverse-engineer Reaper technology). Even Sovereign only fell in battle because his shields and weapons were knocked offline, allowing a free shot by the Alliance Navy.

It can be fair to assume that their are thousands of Reaper ships, which would probably put them on equal ground with the Organic's fleets or even be larger than them. Even if Earth was retaken conventionally, you still have the Reapers in other systems to worry about (Reapers that were able to obliterate the Batarians extremely quickly, ravage Thessia and Palaven, and devestate other worlds).

If the Protheans knew about the Reapers before the invasion why did they loose the Citadel in the initial attack. And whilst we can't speculate on the strength of the Prothean military all that well Javik does state that this cycle is different, perhaps better because we are not as homoginzed as they were. Different species can fill different and unique roles in combat. I.E. Human carriers being almost as strong as dreadnaughts.

[Fdmatt]

SaltyWaffles-PD wrote...

BigM3atL3gacy wrote...

Giantdeathrobot wrote...

All this talk about beating the Reapers assumes they are few in numbers. Which they definitely are not. Sovereign was just one Reaper, with no support at the point where it was destroyed, and it still seemed to hold its own. We don't know how many they are. but the cycles have been going on for something like millions of years. If each cycle produces a Capital Reaper, that's a hell of a lot of capitals. And the galaxy has, what, 30 dreadnoughts maximum? And it takes 4 of these to reliably take down a Sovereign-class. Not to mention it took a significant portion of the Migrant Fleet just to kill one isolated Destroyer, and the Turians took massive losses when they destroyed a couple ships at the beginning of the invasion.

''We can't beat them conventionally'' doesn't mean we can't inflict casualties on them. They are not invincible. But they are an overwhelming force that can't be beaten head-on and against which guerilla tactis are pointless since they don,t care about casualties and have no suppliy lines. Not to mention the galaxy's economy will crash in a year, certainly shorter if the Citadel is taken.

But yeah, the Alliance being the most powerful military force was a bit weird. I can get the Turians, Asari, and Salarian not giving as much Assets because they don't completely commit (some of their forces must stay to defend their own worlds) but the Migrant Fleet and the mighty Geth counting for less than them? War Assets screen flat out states that the Geth have the best infantry and navy, yet they are worth less assets than the Krogans, who only have boys on the ground. 5% of the Geth fleet was enough to give (a big chunk of) the Council fleet a run for its money. Massed, they should be the most formidable navy in the galaxy along with the Quarians.

I can see the Geth being worth almost as much as the Alliance fleet, but not the Quarians. Many of the Quarian ships are full of civilian ships (hence the civilian fleet). If anything, the Turians and the Alliance now have the strongest navies (especially considering the devestating war just fought between the Quarians and Geth).

The quarians have numbers on their side. Remember, even their civilian fleet is armed (to the point of being armor-less light frigates, basically). However, 50,000 of those ships would be HUGE in a big battle--the Reapers are poorly suited to fight a zerg rush (relying on their durability to fight it one at a time), and Reaper destroyers are vulnerable to them with sufficient numbers (say 20-30?).

Hate to double post, but THIS^

Tens of thousands of ships providing combined fire would exhaust the Reapers. They can't move as quickly as our ships and simply couldn't target them fast enough. Plus people are forgetting the ground battle as well. Either the Reapers abdicate all ground support and the allied species overwhelm the husks pretty much unnatested or they sacrifice forces in space which would swing the battle even more in our favor.

This is all in addition to the fact that on Illium in ME2 a representative of the Rachni Queen says she's building a fleet to support you when the time comes, there's even a news report of Rachni ships being spotted, yet we never see this come to fruition because they decided to run with the Crucible as a stupid plot device.

[Zardoc]

BigM3atL3gacy wrote...

Fdmatt wrote...

Previous lore as in what?

The Protheans gave them centuries of war and they lost the Citadel from the get-go per the cycle.

Shepard stopped the Citadel invasion, bought the galaxy 4 years to reverse engineer their technology, and blew up the Alpha Relay to stop them from spreading so quickly. He also gathered the largest and most diversely skilled military force ever assembled.

The Protheans were more widespread and technologically advanced than any species in the current cycle, and knew about the Reapers prior to their invasion as well. But, nothing is known about how powerful the Prothean military was, or of its capabilities, so they would be an unfair comparison.
 

Where the hell did you hear that? Nothing I've seen throughout the games indicates that the protheans knew about the invasion.

[alberta]

The strength of the Reapers is not their numbers, never was, their strength lies in their shields. And the only thing I've seen to this point in time that bypassed shield completely was Thresher Maw spit. You can have full shield and died at full shields facing one of those monsters. I wonder would that work bypassing the Reaper shields.

[Zardoc]

alberta wrote...

The strength of the Reapers is not their numbers, never was, their strength lies in their shields. And the only thing I've seen to this point in time that bypassed shield completely was Thresher Maw spit. You can have full shield and died at full shields facing one of those monsters. I wonder would that work bypassing the Reaper shields.

Thanix cannons. They are the answer to everything.

Modifié par Zardoc, 29 mars 2012 - 01:16 .

[Fdmatt]

But that's because Bioware only let you see that. In the codex it states that 4 dreadnaughts can take down a capitol ship no problem. Now best case scenario we only have like 100 dreadnaughts left but we also have tens of thousands of carriers, cruisers and frigates. Most of the Turian and Human ships have Thanix cannons which have greater success bypassing their shields as well.

[Butcher_of_Torfan]

Councilor Oraka wrote...

The Angry One wrote...

This
has irked me. The Geth fleet is extremely powerful, they've made more
dreadnaughts than the Turians due to being unbound by treaties.
Even if the heretics are a fraction of all Geth they still brought a powerful fleet against the Citadel.

Hell,
the damage to the fleets in ME3 is directly based on saving the
Destiny-Ascension or not, a fight that involved the Geth and the Geth
alone (because Sovereign was already inside the Citadel).

Almost
as many actually.  The Turians have the most powerful starfleet in the
Galaxy bar the Reapers.  This is repeapeated multiple times.   The
Quarian jury-rigged fleet is stated to have strength enough to "even
give the Turians pause", so probably as strong as maybe the Asari navy
1. Turians
2. Geth 
3. Asari/ Quarians
4. Salarians
5. Humans

I would say that Geth Dreadnoughts are superior to turian ones. They have superior targeting and coordination due to the instant communication and hivemind nature of geth processes, they're equiped with ultraviolet lasers, and they don't have to worry about life support,artificial gravity, inertial dampening to keep crew from getting squished or thrown around, hull breaches, explosive decompression or heat buildup from weapons.

Modifié par Butcher_of_Torfan, 29 mars 2012 - 01:18 .

[BigM3atL3gacy]

Fdmatt wrote...

BigM3atL3gacy wrote...

Fdmatt wrote...

Previous lore as in what?

The Protheans gave them centuries of war and they lost the Citadel from the get-go per the cycle.

Shepard stopped the Citadel invasion, bought the galaxy 4 years to reverse engineer their technology, and blew up the Alpha Relay to stop them from spreading so quickly. He also gathered the largest and most diversely skilled military force ever assembled.

The Protheans were more widespread and technologically advanced than any species in the current cycle, and knew about the Reapers prior to their invasion as well. But, nothing is known about how powerful the Prothean military was, or of its capabilities, so they would be an unfair comparison.

The current cycle, however, refused to believe that the Reapers were real (only the Turians made a decent effort to reverse-engineer Reaper technology). Even Sovereign only fell in battle because his shields and weapons were knocked offline, allowing a free shot by the Alliance Navy.

It can be fair to assume that their are thousands of Reaper ships, which would probably put them on equal ground with the Organic's fleets or even be larger than them. Even if Earth was retaken conventionally, you still have the Reapers in other systems to worry about (Reapers that were able to obliterate the Batarians extremely quickly, ravage Thessia and Palaven, and devestate other worlds).

If the Protheans knew about the Reapers before the invasion why did they loose the Citadel in the initial attack. And whilst we can't speculate on the strength of the Prothean military all that well Javik does state that this cycle is different, perhaps better because we are not as homoginzed as they were. Different species can fill different and unique roles in combat. I.E. Human carriers being almost as strong as dreadnaughts.

They knew that the Reapers were an all powerful machine race that wiped out the previous dominant species, but probably didn't even expect to encounter them. Its all speculation as to how they were caught off guard though or the extent they were aware of the Reapers.

The Reapers, however, still managed to bull rush through two Alliance fleets and wipe out Arcturus Station (the capital of the Alliance) before taking Earth, nearly send the Batarians into extinction, and launch a successful assault on Palaven (which was only countered by Krogan support).

Does anybody know if the Salarian homeworld is later besieged by the Reapers, or did they go through this whole conflict relatively unscathed?

[Butcher_of_Torfan]

Salarians were almost completely unscathed, right up to the battle for earth there were no reapers in their home system. At worst, a few colonies got attacked by a destroyer or two.

[Tovanus]

I said it earlier, but it seems like people are still ignoring the fact that Sovereign only fell to the fleet when Saren died. They pretty explicitly connect the two events. Sovereign took full control of Saren's corpse, the corpse was completely destroyed, Sovereign experienced some kind of feedback shock from this, his shields dropped, the fleet was able to finally kill him.

It doesn't really help the notion that the Reapers could have been conventionally defeated.

[Elyiia]

The entire "We can't win conventionally" is purely to make the Crucible have a place.

We're told that an Alliance cruiser can destroy a Destroyer in a 1v1 situation. We have more cruisers than the Reapers have destroyers. In terms of Dreadnoughts vs Capital ships, the best estimate we have for Capital ships is about 70. We know a full strength galactic force has around 80. While we're told a Capital ship is stronger than an Alliance Dreadnought we don't know how well they fare against a Geth Dreadnought, of which there are around 30.

Of course had they used their brains instead of building the Crucible and created anti-matter based weaponry the entire Reaper force at Earth would have been destroyed in the first 10 seconds.