205 réponses à ce sujet

[sargon1986]

"It took multiple fleets, AND the Destiny Ascension, to bring Sovereign..."

God.. NO!

It was only FIFTH FLEET, no one else. Destiny Ascension was too badly damage, did not participate.

[Butcher_of_Torfan]

Just did some more math. The 152 Kiloton shield limit is assuming the reaper dies on the first volley. Thats the lower limit. Lets go for an upper limit. Assuming a reaper can take 30s of continuous focus fire from the 4 dreadnoughts before its shields crack, that would give it a 4.56 megaton limit. You'd need 104.7 grams of antimatter to produce that.

[Elyiia]

sargon1986 wrote...

"It took multiple fleets, AND the Destiny Ascension, to bring Sovereign..."

God.. NO!

It was only FIFTH FLEET, no one else. Destiny Ascension was too badly damage, did not participate.

Not to mention they were using kinetic based weaponry, not Thanix or antimatter based weaponry.

[Robhuzz]

Megachaz wrote...

Yep. He keeps saying "We can't beat the Reapers conventionally." I don't really understand why that we be the case. Just stop acting like a nitwit and it wouldn't be that hard.

I feel he took this idea from his experience dealing with sovereign. It did take an entire fleet to deal with Sovereign, and he was only vulnerable after the whole 'Saren dies' stuff caused his shields to fail. If Shepard had taken any longer, Sovereign would've destroyed the rest of the fleet as well.

Judging from that battle, Hacket might have figured all the reapers were as powerful. If this were the case, conventional war would not have worked. In ME3 however, it seems most of the Reapers are a far weaker than Sovereign was (maybe excluding Harbinger) so I think a conventional battle would've been possible, with the right tactics.

[Elyiia]

Until someone comes along to disprove my assumptions/math, I'm going to say if they hadn't wasted time on the Crucible and had instead made antimatter weaponry, we'd have won the conflict over Earth rather easily.

[Glitched]

Because Mass Effect 3 was a rushed sloppy mess made for mass market appeal.

Quantity over quality right? Let's keep pumping out those games! People seem to love them!

[Butcher_of_Torfan]

I hate the endings with a passion, for a multitude of reasons. But please try to keep ending discussion out of the thread. There's hundreds of threads for that. This is the one good thread for number crunching and codex diving to explore alternate methods of fighting the reapers. Thanks.

Modifié par Butcher_of_Torfan, 29 mars 2012 - 01:44 .

[Versidious]

Part of the problem is that the description of the 'Sovereign class' reapers in the ME3 codex do not actually match Sovereign's capabilities in ME1. In ME1, for example, it's described as 'executing a turn that would shear any of our ships in half'. That does not sound like it's got inferior mobility to me! Sovereign clearly outpaces the Geth ships in acceleration. It is stated in ME1, incidentally, that the size of a ship is not directly proportional to manoeuvrability, as larger ships can generate a more powerful mass effect field and reduce their mass accordingly. I always found that Turians-do-alright-at-first entry in the ME3 codex ridiculous, as it pretty much clashes with all other tech-lore.

It's also worth bearing in mind (because everyone seems to be forgetting this) that the Reapers' technological advantage is not purely shield-based. Their weapons all but ignore existing kinetic barriers, allowing them to carve up a dreadnought like it's a delicious ham. They are faster than us, with the ability to use a sequence of mass relays without exiting between jumps, and an FTL that outpaces anything 'we've' got by a huge margin, ensuring that picket fleets are next to useless. I'm not saying that individually, engagements cannot be won against the Reapers using clever tactics, but the Reapers are not stupid, they're highly advanced AIs, and as Jaavik says, they adapted to Prothean strategies, and so it was all over for the Protheans. Yes, we have an advantage in the variety of our tactics, but we are also less technologically advanced than the Protheans were. Maybe the Reapers *could* be beaten conventionally, though if the Citadel really is a Reaper-breeding machine, then I suspect we would soon have seen them popping out lil' baby Reapers to replace their losses. Once they had the Citadel, they had, theoretically, the option to shut down the mass relay network, as well. One wonders why they didn't, of course...  Either way, they have the ability to outmaneuvre us strategically - even if we accept that we really can outmaneuvre them tactically. We expel them from one planet, suffering heavy losses of course, and move on to tackle them somewhere else? They can just pop back to our barely-defended planet and shaft it again, making our efforts ultimately fruitless as they continue to destroy our population and manufacturing centres with ease.

And finally, numbers aside, the Reapers really do have a strategic advantage, which is that they are quite happy to kill a planet's entire population. Ultimately, even when we 'attack', we damage ourselves as well, as our stray shots will harm our planets (If we want to be able to conveniently penetrate a Reaper's shields, we have to use our weapons at full power, which, if the Reapers force us to approach the planet, means we essentially will be nuking our own colonies and homeworlds, whilst either way around they can shoot wildly like maniacs and not worry).

Edit: Some elaboration and clarifications.

Modifié par Versidious, 29 mars 2012 - 01:54 .

[SaladinDheonqar]

It was obviously to setup the crucible/catalyst business. I would've been perfectly fine with overwhelming (at least some of) the reapers by firepower & strategy. It's like people writing sci-fi stories are compelled to use deus ex machinas and superduperultraweapons. Sigh...

[Elyiia]

Versidious wrote...

Part of the problem is that the description of the 'Sovereign class' reapers in the ME3 codex do not actually match Sovereign's capabilities in ME1. In ME1, for example, it's described as 'executing a turn that would shear any of our ships in half'. That does not sound like it's got inferior mobility to me! Sovereign clearly outpaces the Geth ships in acceleration. It is stated in ME1, incidentally, that the size of a ship is not directly proportional to manoeuvrability, as larger ships can generate a more powerful mass effect field and reduce their mass accordingly. I always found that entry in the codex ridiculous, as it pretty much clashes with all other tech-lore.

It's also worth bearing in mind (because everyone seems to be forgetting this) that the Reapers' technological advantage is not purely shield-based. Their weapons all but ignore existing kinetic barriers, allowing them to carve up a dreadnought like it's a delicious ham. They are faster than us, with the ability to use a sequence of mass relays without exiting between jumps, and an FTL that outpaces anything 'we've' got by a huge margin, ensuring that picket fleets are next to useless. I'm not saying that individually, engagements cannot be won against the Reapers using clever tactics, but the Reapers are not stupid, they're highly advanced AIs, and as Jaavik says, they adapted to Prothean strategies, and so it was all over for the Protheans. Yes, we have an advantage in the variety of our tactics, but we are also less technologically advanced than the Protheans were. Maybe the Reapers *could* be beaten conventionally, though if the Citadel really is a Reaper-breeding machine, then I suspect we would soon have seen them popping out lil' baby Reapers to replace their losses. Once they had the Citadel, they had, theoretically, the option to shut down the mass relay network, as well. One wonders why they didn't, of course...

One of the main problems that the Protheans had was that because of their empire, they had a single strategy. Once the Reapers figured out that they were boned.

However, we have in our cycle multiple species colaborating and developing strategies, allowing us to avoid this particular weakness.

[wotmaniac]

Instead of building the Crucible, they should have jsut built a ****ton of cruisers and frigates, manned them with skeleton crews\\VI\\EDI's\\Geth and swarmed the reapers.

Building dreads is actually worse, since the reapers one shot everything.
But with tens of thousands of ships spread all over the place, how the hell are you going to kill them all? Zerg tactics win.

Repears do have supreme manouverability, but only if they lower their shielding to unacceptable levels.
It also seemed to me that in all games, the reapers 'one-hit kill beams weapons' are close range.

Plus, people forget that the reapers never faced a united galaxy before.
The Protheans took hundreds of years to eliminate and they were leaderless.

[Mandemon]

wotmaniac wrote...

Instead of building the Crucible, they should have jsut built a ****ton of cruisers and frigates, manned them with skeleton crewsVIEDI'sGeth and swarmed the reapers.

Building dreads is actually worse, since the reapers one shot everything.
But with tens of thousands of ships spread all over the place, how the hell are you going to kill them all? Zerg tactics win.

Indeed. Quantity has Quality of its own.

[Elyiia]

Build lots and lots of fighters, with either VI's or kamikaze pilots flying them.
Load up about 110g of antimatter based explosives on the fighters.
Fly into Reapers.
????.
Profit.

In a nutshell.

[Butcher_of_Torfan]

Sovereign: "Your civilization is based on the technology of the mass relays, our technology. By using it, your society develops along the paths we desire"

We cant FTL freighters into reapers as kamikaze's because we use easy, conveniant reaper FTL tech, which has built in safety's to prevent that.

Even though lasers bypass kinetic barriers, they're not developed and relegated to fighter/missile defense and secondary weapons because Mass Effect weapon tech is right there, and already destructive enough

We dont seriously research FTL travel because the Mass Relays are there, leaving us vulnerable to relay network shutdown and chokepoints, and insuring that colonies are close to relays and easy to find.

Antimatter tech is largely neglected outside of propelling warships because Mass Effect technology is safer and conveniently available

We sink all our resources and hope into building the catalyst, like every other cycle, because its there and conveniantly easy to understand

Breaking the pattern and moving outside the path they set is the key to beating them. Uniting all the races, mass produced ships with joint organic and AI crews, use of antimatter weaponry and thannex cannons instead of just mass accelerators, things like that are how you beat the reapers

Modifié par Butcher_of_Torfan, 29 mars 2012 - 02:03 .

[Tleining]

Butcher_of_Torfan wrote...

Every 5 seconds a main gun of an Everest class fires a 20 kilo slug that hits with the force of a 38kiloton hydrogen bomb, 3xs hiroshima. It takes 4 dreadnoughts to reliably kill a Reaper dreadnought, so if we figure out how long it takes those 4 dreadnoughts to kill the reaper we can calculate the strength of a reaper's shields

uhm, not to rain on your parade. But where did you get the "4 Dreadnoughts can reliably kill a Reaper Dreadnought" bit from?

If this is referring to Sovereign, at that time the Alliance had 6 Dreadnoughts. And i very much doubt that 4 of those 6 would be in the battle of the Citadel.

For the record: I do agree that the War could have been won with conventional warfare. The Problem is that the game is too inconsistent to make any clear calculations on that.
The Thanix Cannon rivals the firepower of a Cruiser. The Gardian Towers on Horizon couldn't put a dent into the Collector Vessel (Cruiser). A Turian Cruiser didn't stand a chance against that same Vessel. Yet the Normandy was able to completely destroy the Vessel with two shots.

So either the Thanix is a lot more powerful, or you need to hit a vulnerable Spot (glowing red Spot on Reaper Destroyer, Main Gun on Collector Vessel) to make it count. Which would mean that a Cruiser should be able to take down a Destroyer, wich doesn't happen. ugh, inconsistency.

[Versidious]

Elyiia wrote...

Versidious wrote...

Part of the problem is that the description of the 'Sovereign class' reapers in the ME3 codex do not actually match Sovereign's capabilities in ME1. In ME1, for example, it's described as 'executing a turn that would shear any of our ships in half'. That does not sound like it's got inferior mobility to me! Sovereign clearly outpaces the Geth ships in acceleration. It is stated in ME1, incidentally, that the size of a ship is not directly proportional to manoeuvrability, as larger ships can generate a more powerful mass effect field and reduce their mass accordingly. I always found that entry in the codex ridiculous, as it pretty much clashes with all other tech-lore.

It's also worth bearing in mind (because everyone seems to be forgetting this) that the Reapers' technological advantage is not purely shield-based. Their weapons all but ignore existing kinetic barriers, allowing them to carve up a dreadnought like it's a delicious ham. They are faster than us, with the ability to use a sequence of mass relays without exiting between jumps, and an FTL that outpaces anything 'we've' got by a huge margin, ensuring that picket fleets are next to useless. I'm not saying that individually, engagements cannot be won against the Reapers using clever tactics, but the Reapers are not stupid, they're highly advanced AIs, and as Jaavik says, they adapted to Prothean strategies, and so it was all over for the Protheans. Yes, we have an advantage in the variety of our tactics, but we are also less technologically advanced than the Protheans were. Maybe the Reapers *could* be beaten conventionally, though if the Citadel really is a Reaper-breeding machine, then I suspect we would soon have seen them popping out lil' baby Reapers to replace their losses. Once they had the Citadel, they had, theoretically, the option to shut down the mass relay network, as well. One wonders why they didn't, of course...

One of the main problems that the Protheans had was that because of their empire, they had a single strategy. Once the Reapers figured out that they were boned.

However, we have in our cycle multiple species colaborating and developing strategies, allowing us to avoid this particular weakness.

Well, yes, but, as I said, they also had an advantage in technology that we do not. Bear in mind that a lot of what Jaavik says is, by his own almost-admission, just stuff he doesn't believe himself, but thinks will pep us up allowing us to hit the Reapers hard. Yes, the Reapers took down the Protheans with deception etc, but bear in mind that they've been doing this for millions of years, and countless cycles. Are we really the first cycle where diversity has been the prevailing order of things? Simply having more varied doctrines will not win us a war against a force that has the ability to strike where and how it wishes, and is composed of ultra-intelligent artificial intelligences.

Of course, perhaps I'm just an indoctrinated agent trying to sap your will to fight? Or maybe you are, trying to get us to follow tactics that the Reapers will inevitably defeat? Or even WE COULD ALL BE BRAINWASHED TO DISAGREE AND DEADLOCK OUR STRATEGIC DECISIONS!!!  

[Elyiia]

Butcher_of_Torfan wrote...

Sovereign: "Your civilization is based on the technology of the mass relays, our technology. By using it, your society develops along the paths we desire"

We cant FTL freighters into reapers as kamikaze's because we use easy, conveniant reaper FTL tech, which has built in safety's to prevent that.

Even though lasers bypass kinetic barriers, they're not developed and relegated to fighter/missile defense and secondary weapons because Mass Effect weapon tech is right there, and already destructive enough

We dont seriously research FTL travel because the Mass Relays are there, leaving us vulnerable to relay network shutdown and chokepoints, and insuring that colonies are close to relays and easy to find.

Antimatter tech is largely neglected outside of propelling warships because Mass Effect technology is safer and conveniently available

We sink all our resources and hope into building the catalyst, like every other cycle, because its there and conveniantly easy to understand

Breaking the pattern and moving outside the path they set is the key to beating them. Uniting all the races, mass produced ships with joint organic and AI crews, use of antimatter weaponry and thannex cannons instead of just mass accelerators, things like that are how you beat the reapers

This would have made far more sense, as we learned more of the Reapers we should have realised that to follow their technology was a bad idea. It would have been a far more satisfying ending.

[Butcher_of_Torfan]

@ Tleining

Says in the ME3 codex

[Versidious]

Butcher_of_Torfan wrote...

Sovereign: "Your civilization is based on the technology of the mass relays, our technology. By using it, your society develops along the paths we desire"

We cant FTL freighters into reapers as kamikaze's because we use easy, conveniant reaper FTL tech, which has built in safety's to prevent that.

Even though lasers bypass kinetic barriers, they're not developed and relegated to fighter/missile defense and secondary weapons because Mass Effect weapon tech is right there, and already destructive enough

We dont seriously research FTL travel because the Mass Relays are there, leaving us vulnerable to relay network shutdown and chokepoints, and insuring that colonies are close to relays and easy to find.

Antimatter tech is largely neglected outside of propelling warships because Mass Effect technology is safer and conveniently available

We sink all our resources and hope into building the catalyst, like every other cycle, because its there and conveniantly easy to understand

I agree. I thought at first that perhaps the designers of Project Crucible had been indoctrinated Protheans laying a trap for the next cycle, but the moment the Prothean VI told us that it hadn't even been designed by the Protheans, and noone really knew what it did, alarm bells *really* started ringing!

[Butcher_of_Torfan]

I know, right? The crucible sounds like the final, ultimate trap to keep the cycles stuck on the path they intend, wasting resources instead of coming up with something unforseen

[Versidious]

Butcher_of_Torfan wrote...

I know, right? The crucible sounds like the final, ultimate trap to keep the cycles stuck on the path they intend, wasting resources instead of coming up with something unforseen

I was really disappointed that it in fact wasn't. Or maybe it was, and Bioware will reveal that in a week's time?

[Elyiia]

Versidious wrote...

Elyiia wrote...

Versidious wrote...

Part of the problem is that the description of the 'Sovereign class' reapers in the ME3 codex do not actually match Sovereign's capabilities in ME1. In ME1, for example, it's described as 'executing a turn that would shear any of our ships in half'. That does not sound like it's got inferior mobility to me! Sovereign clearly outpaces the Geth ships in acceleration. It is stated in ME1, incidentally, that the size of a ship is not directly proportional to manoeuvrability, as larger ships can generate a more powerful mass effect field and reduce their mass accordingly. I always found that entry in the codex ridiculous, as it pretty much clashes with all other tech-lore.

It's also worth bearing in mind (because everyone seems to be forgetting this) that the Reapers' technological advantage is not purely shield-based. Their weapons all but ignore existing kinetic barriers, allowing them to carve up a dreadnought like it's a delicious ham. They are faster than us, with the ability to use a sequence of mass relays without exiting between jumps, and an FTL that outpaces anything 'we've' got by a huge margin, ensuring that picket fleets are next to useless. I'm not saying that individually, engagements cannot be won against the Reapers using clever tactics, but the Reapers are not stupid, they're highly advanced AIs, and as Jaavik says, they adapted to Prothean strategies, and so it was all over for the Protheans. Yes, we have an advantage in the variety of our tactics, but we are also less technologically advanced than the Protheans were. Maybe the Reapers *could* be beaten conventionally, though if the Citadel really is a Reaper-breeding machine, then I suspect we would soon have seen them popping out lil' baby Reapers to replace their losses. Once they had the Citadel, they had, theoretically, the option to shut down the mass relay network, as well. One wonders why they didn't, of course...

One of the main problems that the Protheans had was that because of their empire, they had a single strategy. Once the Reapers figured out that they were boned.

However, we have in our cycle multiple species colaborating and developing strategies, allowing us to avoid this particular weakness.

Well, yes, but, as I said, they also had an advantage in technology that we do not. Bear in mind that a lot of what Jaavik says is, by his own almost-admission, just stuff he doesn't believe himself, but thinks will pep us up allowing us to hit the Reapers hard. Yes, the Reapers took down the Protheans with deception etc, but bear in mind that they've been doing this for millions of years, and countless cycles. Are we really the first cycle where diversity has been the prevailing order of things? Simply having more varied doctrines will not win us a war against a force that has the ability to strike where and how it wishes, and is composed of ultra-intelligent artificial intelligences.

Of course, perhaps I'm just an indoctrinated agent trying to sap your will to fight? Or maybe you are, trying to get us to follow tactics that the Reapers will inevitably defeat? Or even WE COULD ALL BE BRAINWASHED TO DISAGREE AND DEADLOCK OUR STRATEGIC DECISIONS!!!  

According to the game, every single cycle before us has had the Citadel and Relays hijacked by the Reapers at the very start. Because of the Protheans we don't have this disadvantage and we're able to field a fully unified galactic force.
As for technological superiority, we have the capability to destroy the Reapers with the current tech, we just had to look outside of what the Reapers left for us.
Not to mention that a loss of a Reaper ship is far more dear than a loss of a galactic forces ship because they cannot create a Reaper without the processing of organics which takes time.
They may be smart, but from what we're lead to think they use logic to make decisions, while us organics can throw logic out the window and make crazy strategies that work
There's a lot of advantages for us over other cycles, if we capitalise on it a military victory is possible.

[Ticonderoga117]

Or better yet, a giant freakin' worm took down one of the smaller reapers.
What should've happened with the crucible was that we get a focusing lens on that bad boy and start frying reapers like ants. Or use it as a bomb somehow.

[Versidious]

Elyiia wrote...

Versidious wrote...

Stuff I said

According to the game, every single cycle before us has had the Citadel and Relays hijacked by the Reapers at the very start. Because of the Protheans we don't have this disadvantage and we're able to field a fully unified galactic force.
As for technological superiority, we have the capability to destroy the Reapers with the current tech, we just had to look outside of what the Reapers left for us.
Not to mention that a loss of a Reaper ship is far more dear than a loss of a galactic forces ship because they cannot create a Reaper without the processing of organics which takes time.
They may be smart, but from what we're lead to think they use logic to make decisions, while us organics can throw logic out the window and make crazy strategies that work
There's a lot of advantages for us over other cycles, if we capitalise on it a military victory is possible.

Well. The trouble is, as I said, that the Reapers still have the major advantage of strategic maneuverability. For proof of this, take the fact that they were able to overwhelm the heavily defended Citadel in the very short space of time it took for us to kick Kai Leng in his stupid Thane-murdering face, without any warning. They knew we knew about it, and that they had a strategic weakness, so they took it. They had been able to *all along*. Perhaps there was time for evacuation, and recovery of some resources, but neverthless, a serious victory for the Reapers! And we have no idea how long it would take for them to start replacing losses (especially using the citadel), or if only their capital ships require lengthy processing.

Again, WE can't churn out dreadnoughts over night - the construction of a real-life modern warship, for example (and let us assume that it is comparatively hard for us to make), will take several years. Even with heavy focus of resources and economies, you're not going to be able to replace a dreadnought over night. And antimatter itself, which everyone here is excited about, takes a very long time to reproduce (We can make it now, and it would take a very long time to make even one gram, even assuming that it's faster in a future, which hasn't specialised in making anti-matter, you cannot overnight create an anti-matter arsenal). Returning to how I started this response, remember, the Reapers can attack when and as they wish without warning. Got yourself some nice shipyards? BOOM! Reaper****ed. Oooh, that's a cunning secret manufacturing plant embedded in a secret asteroid which only people can... BOOM! Indoctrinated infitration and Reaper****ed! In a war of attrition, the Reapers could very quickly start hitting our means of materiel replacement - and, of course, let's say that in a pinch, we're training even child soldiers, it would still take at least 9-10 years to get a human capable of carrying a gun without falling over, more for Turians, Asari, and Krogan, who all age slower than us (Even without the genophage, it will still take a while before the ADULT Krogan population picks up again, and in the meantime they will be dying in battle with the Reapers) - and our replacement of population. And remember that, every time a tactic is successfully used, the Reapers are able to inform each other of it, and that they themselves are not static, but rather dynamic opposition, capable of taking their own initiative, and conceiving of creative solutions (They are artificial intelligences, but still intelligences).

Using current statistics, it takes FOUR dreadnoughts working in concert to take down a SINGLE Sovereign class without it having time to 'overwhelm them' (Which says nothing about not damaging, impairing them, or even not destroying individual dreadnoughts in the group). Let's assume that Reapers are aware of this (Why wouldn't they be, they are aware of our technology, and they've certianly fought several engagements where they've ripped dreadnoughts apart). How many opportunities with those odds are they really going to give us, especially once they realise we've cottoned onto how much we need to hurt them. With even odds, say, four on four, what would happen? Because I don't think that it would turn out all that well for the dreadnoughts, even knowing the Reapers' weaknesses.

Just because we can hurt them, doesn't mean we can *beat* them. My cat could make me bleed, but in a fight to the death, I would still win.

PS. No cats were harmed to test this theory, nor will they be. You'll just have to take my word for the fact that I *could* totally take Morgoth in a fight.

[Versidious]

sargon1986 wrote...

"It took multiple fleets, AND the Destiny Ascension, to bring Sovereign..."

God.. NO!

It was only FIFTH FLEET, no one else. Destiny Ascension was too badly damage, did not participate.

Didn't they call it 'The entire Arcturus fleet' in ME1? Could be that that was three entire fleets, given that Arcturus station is/was the Alliance capital. Or have I missed a codex entry somewhere?