213 réponses à ce sujet

[ZLurps]

DeinonSlayer wrote...

ZLurps wrote...

DeinonSlayer wrote...

Elyiia wrote...

Or alternatively, they could just outfit every ship with antimatter based ammunition (you know, the kind they use on space stations over Noveria). 110g of antimatter would destroy a Reaper capital ship in a single shot, and would at the very least strain the shields of nearby Reapers.

As I understand it, a collision at the speeds we're discussing with FTL drives would be enough to trigger a mass-to-energy conversion between the colliding bodies, which is exactly what antimatter does. There are multiple ways to approach this problem.

Instead...

Totally unusual piece of ME lore.

I admit I'm "uninitiated." Mass Effect is the only Bioware series - to date, the only RPG - that I've ever played. I was first introduced to it a few months ago, and I was instantly hooked. Should I have expected this? Have they done something like this before?

It's like most popular sci-fi. It requires some magic to to work at all.

[Elyiia]

ZLurps wrote...

DeinonSlayer wrote...

ZLurps wrote...

DeinonSlayer wrote...

Elyiia wrote...

Or alternatively, they could just outfit every ship with antimatter based ammunition (you know, the kind they use on space stations over Noveria). 110g of antimatter would destroy a Reaper capital ship in a single shot, and would at the very least strain the shields of nearby Reapers.

As I understand it, a collision at the speeds we're discussing with FTL drives would be enough to trigger a mass-to-energy conversion between the colliding bodies, which is exactly what antimatter does. There are multiple ways to approach this problem.

Instead...

Totally unusual piece of ME lore.

I admit I'm "uninitiated." Mass Effect is the only Bioware series - to date, the only RPG - that I've ever played. I was first introduced to it a few months ago, and I was instantly hooked. Should I have expected this? Have they done something like this before?

It's like most popular sci-fi. It requires some magic to to work at all.

Magic is just technology without sufficient explaination. Still doesn't make sense why you would rely on an ancient device that you have no idea if it would work when you have tactics on hand that would have assured a military victory.

[ZLurps]

Elyiia wrote...

ZLurps wrote...

DeinonSlayer wrote...

ZLurps wrote...

DeinonSlayer wrote...

Elyiia wrote...

Or alternatively, they could just outfit every ship with antimatter based ammunition (you know, the kind they use on space stations over Noveria). 110g of antimatter would destroy a Reaper capital ship in a single shot, and would at the very least strain the shields of nearby Reapers.

As I understand it, a collision at the speeds we're discussing with FTL drives would be enough to trigger a mass-to-energy conversion between the colliding bodies, which is exactly what antimatter does. There are multiple ways to approach this problem.

Instead...

Totally unusual piece of ME lore.

I admit I'm "uninitiated." Mass Effect is the only Bioware series - to date, the only RPG - that I've ever played. I was first introduced to it a few months ago, and I was instantly hooked. Should I have expected this? Have they done something like this before?

It's like most popular sci-fi. It requires some magic to to work at all.

Magic is just technology without sufficient explaination. Still doesn't make sense why you would rely on an ancient device that you have no idea if it would work when you have tactics on hand that would have assured a military victory.

What I was trying to say was more in general sense.

[Vormaerin]

This argument assumes that the reapers are actually stupid enough to sit around and let it happen. It also ignores the in game testimony that the reapers are present in huge numbers. "Seemingly endless" in the attack on Taetrus even as they swarmed Earth.

Ramming is a great tactic when the other guy can't get away. But why couldn't the reapers just move? You'd need time to accelerate your suicide units. Even if it wasn't very much, you can be sure that the superior processing power and sensors of the reapers would project your trajectory possibilities and apply the Miyagi Defense: "No be there." They can FTL micro jump far better than we can.

You are also ignoring the fact that a space battle is almost assuredly won by electronic warfare since there's no other way to see or target your foes. It seems pretty likely that most alliance vessels wouldn't even get good targeting locks on the reapers

The Turians completely foxed the reapers and still got their teeth kicked in. They just did some damage first. There's no evidence that the alliance fleets did any significant damage at all when they got blown out of the reaper's path.

Yeah, the space battle cutscenes were designed to look dramatic. They don't resemble a real space battle at all. Its fairly safe to assume you are watching the hollywood reconstruction the old man talking at the end saw, not what actually happened.

Its all well and good to say "hey, 4 DNs can kill a reaper." But its only theoretically true. It assumes that the 4 DNs actually get to take on just one reaper. If there's two reapers, its quite possible that all four DNs would be dead without killing anything.

[lonedude73]

If you were a pilot.
will you do it

[DeinonSlayer]

lonedude73 wrote...

If you were a pilot.
will you do it

I've stated several times that VI-piloted shuttles would be ideal. Human reaction time is simply inadequate - you do not "eyeball" an FTL jump.

That said... a guaranteed kill against an enemy dreadnaught? If there were no other alternative, yes.

Modifié par DeinonSlayer, 30 mars 2012 - 03:56 .

[AlanC9]

If this would work, why didn't the Protheans try it? Or the cycle before the Protheans? Or the cycle before that? Or the cycle....... (repeat ad infinitum).

Yes, I know I'm repeating myself. I'm just trying to figure out what the point of the thread is. To prove that the whole series makes no sense? Congratulations, DeinonSlayer, you win the internet.

I agree that Bio's answer isn't great. They should have just used some doubletalk physics to get around this. Since FTL is impossible without magic physics anyway, they should have said that ships colliding at FTL bounce off each other harmlessly. Mass effect drives are basically a ripoff of "Doc" Smith's Lensman novels, and that's how the drives worked there.

(Edit: Come to think of it, Frederik Pohl's Heechee novels had mass-cancellation drives too, and an alien foe that wanted to wipe out all technological life. Hell, the cut "dark matter" plotline was right out of Pohl. I don't recall if Pohl ever addressed the collision issue, though)

Modifié par AlanC9, 30 mars 2012 - 04:14 .

[hunter71485]

Actually this has been addressed in the in-game codex, under "Desperate Measures". The Reapers made sure that the mass-effect technology they're lending to the younger races has fail-safe mechanisms designed to prevent said scenario: If the targeting computer determines something will be obstructing its path on FTL speeds, the mass effect core wouldn't even start up.

[DeinonSlayer]

AlanC9 wrote...

If this would work, why didn't the Protheans try it? Or the cycle before the Protheans? Or the cycle before that? Or the cycle....... (repeat ad infinitum).

Yes, I know I'm repeating myself. I'm just trying to figure out what the point of the thread is. To prove that the whole series makes no sense? Congratulations, DeinonSlayer, you win the internet.

I agree that Bio's answer isn't great. They should have just used some doubletalk physics to get around this. Since FTL is impossible without magic physics anyway, they should have said that ships colliding at FTL bounce off each other harmlessly. Mass effect drives are basically a ripoff of "Doc" Smith's Lensman novels, and that's how the drives worked there.

And so their "sampling" continues... 

Why did everyone have the plans for the crucible, but nobody ever finished it? Best answer I can come up with for your question is that previous cycles had no idea what they were dealing with. Truthfully, the characters were the main draw of the series to me. There were plotholes from beginning to end (Ah, yes, "Reapers"...), but I was willing to put up with them. I really wanted to see where they went with Dark Energy after ME2, but that plotline got dumped. Disappointing. As far as the rest goes, I guess it boils down to Magic A is Magic A. So long as the writer follows the rules they themselves made up, an audience is willing to suspend disbelief. That's part of why the end is so jarring. The break finally went too far.

Edit: Besides, they wanted "speculation," didn't they? Better possible ways to beat them falls under that umbrella.

Modifié par DeinonSlayer, 30 mars 2012 - 04:34 .

[DeinonSlayer]

hunter71485 wrote...

Actually this has been addressed in the in-game codex, under "Desperate Measures". The Reapers made sure that the mass-effect technology they're lending to the younger races has fail-safe mechanisms designed to prevent said scenario: If the targeting computer determines something will be obstructing its path on FTL speeds, the mass effect core wouldn't even start up.

That's been a topic of discussion for several pages, actually...

[legionaireshen]

just make a alot of thanix cannon, it's basically the reaper beam weapon, should cause a lot of damage to reapers

[spychi]

Legionaire-Shen wrote...

just make a alot of thanix cannon, it's basically the reaper beam weapon, should cause a lot of damage to reapers

Almost all alliance ships, small ones big ones have them installed, most of alien ships have them installed too
hell Volus have a dreadnought with a thanix cannon soo much powerful it can destroy a planet according to the codex

but hey

Modifié par spychi, 30 mars 2012 - 04:40 .

[Wildecker]

AlexMBrennan wrote...

OK, fair enough, except for one detail: Such a strategy was never mentioned in the game - and we see turian ships ramming Sovereign in ME1, so it's obvious that they will have considered ramming at relativistic speed and rejected it for some reason. Thus it's a plot hole in ME1, rather than ME3 and conventional victory remains impossible.

Sorry Sir. What you see is Sovereign simply running over/through a defending Turian cruiser without as much as slowing down while the Turian breaks up.

[Petrikles]

The theory of space combat is really interesting. It is far away from what we see in Star Wars and the like. BSG tried to incorporate some elements, but only very few.

In PC games, the good old I-War was a honorable attempt to get it a bit more correct; and indeed, the savy player discovered soon that the deadliest attack was ramming.

But imo it is moot to discuss realities of space combat in Mass Effect. This universe setting still sticks to cliché star wars like space combat, which in itself resembles to a mix of naval and aerial combat.

[Nefla]

I wonder if you could somehow take tiny and fast ships and board the reaper, taking the shields down from within like in ME2? It would obviously be a one way trip for the boarding party but...

[Quotheraving]

DeinonSlayer wrote...

Quotheraving wrote...

A standard UT-47 Kodiak drop shuttle is equipped for faster-than-light travel, and weighs considerably more than twenty kilos. Properly directed, it would pack a bigger punch by far than any mass accelerator round.

That is assuming FTL doesn't involve a change in the inertia of the ship.

Clearly the effective kinetic energy of an Everest class dreadnought's shell depends upon it being accelerated in normal space-time. A Kodiak shuttle on the other hand must alter the normal rules of space-time in order to achieve FTL therefore we cannot use the same metric to compare the two.

We don't need to go faster than light. If we accelerate that shuttle to 1.8% light speed, we've already matched the velocity of a mass accelerator round, but we're capable of far more than that. The shuttle's mass effect field allows this degree of acceleration, but if that field collapses, the result is a lethal pulse of Cherenkov radiation as the ship's normal mass is restored and the speed of light returns to c in E=mc^2. You couldn't hit your target at full mass traveling faster than light, but velocities approaching it is very doable.....

..

All that matters is the mass and velocity of the impact.

The highlighted sentence is exactly my point, if the shuttles inertia is being changed by the mass effect field then it's real world inertia may be far below the Dreadnought's shell. The former is strongly implied in the Codex entry :
"A true contragravitic vehicle, the Kodiak's substantial element zero
core allows flight by entirely countering the vehicle's mass".

As the shuttles mass is being temporarily reduced it's real world inertia minus the mass effect field is vastly lower than would be suggested by it's apparent velocity.. Which is what I meant by there being no equivalent between the two metrics... The space-Time in the mass effect field behaves differently to normal space time.

Conservation of energy demands that the energy you put into making the shuttle move is conserved, if the shuttles engines provide more energy for acceleration than the dreadnought's main cannon don't you think missiles would be used instead?

BTW in Mass Effect Cherenkhov radiation is the result of a FTL ship dropping out of ftl in an uncontrolled manner, a shuttle travelling at a fraction of the speed of light that lost it's mass effect field does not produce it.

Modifié par Quotheraving, 30 mars 2012 - 08:01 .

[Elk Cloner]

It's interesting that the Protheans managed to replicate Mass Relay (although on a smaller scale), but nobody even came on idea to use it as a weapon.

[KennyAshes]

Actually... you don't need to send shuttles at FTL speed at the reapers... just have capital ships make small jumps at FTL speed and shoot while in FTL... or when near FTL speed.
The projectile will be a heck of a lot faster than 4000km/sec.
You don't lose ships and you hit harder than a truck hits a pigglet at topspeed.

Don't actually know if it would be possible to shoot a rocket at FTL speed. But because there is nothing to slow it down except physicslaws that I do not know it should still hit at a fairly incredible speed.

That leads me to another point: all spaceships are stationary when shooting or moving slowly (I think). If they'd move at topspeed their projectiles would get their speed + the projectile speed and thus hit way harder.

[AkiKishi]

Wildecker wrote...

AlexMBrennan wrote...

OK, fair enough, except for one detail: Such a strategy was never mentioned in the game - and we see turian ships ramming Sovereign in ME1, so it's obvious that they will have considered ramming at relativistic speed and rejected it for some reason. Thus it's a plot hole in ME1, rather than ME3 and conventional victory remains impossible.

Sorry Sir. What you see is Sovereign simply running over/through a defending Turian cruiser without as much as slowing down while the Turian breaks up.

Things have moved on since then. Remember the number the collector ship did on the old Normandy ? The rebuilt one has no poblems with it even without the game upgrades you still win.

It's a very similiar curve to X-com but one the game ignores in favour of Deus Ex Machina and space magic.

[ZLurps]

spychi wrote...

Legionaire-Shen wrote...

just make a alot of thanix cannon, it's basically the reaper beam weapon, should cause a lot of damage to reapers

Almost all alliance ships, small ones big ones have them installed, most of alien ships have them installed too
hell Volus have a dreadnought with a thanix cannon soo much powerful it can destroy a planet according to the codex

but hey

Actually if you play ME2 Collector cruiser battle without upgrading Normandy's weapons to Thanix cannon, it takes four shots to destroy it (in comparison to two shots with Thanix).

Galactic races version of Thanix cannon never was a 10 x firepower upgrade over the old ones to begin with. It just gives galactic races a chance to stay in fight a bit longer.

Thanix cannons are used in ME3, it's mentioned in ME3 codex at least. I'm not totally up with lore since I'm not that excited to play the game again, but IIRC the difference is that taking down a single (isolated) reaper dread without Thanix would take 4 dreads concentrated fire and attacking dreads would lose some ships. With Thanix it takes 3 dreads concentrated fire and there is a chance that there wouldn't be losses. Difference is actually huge, just not enough to win against Reaper fleet.

I think the thought that Thanix cannons aren't used comes up every now and then because:
1. People who haven't played ME2 Collector cruiser battle without Thanix cannon don't have a comparison point and expect it to be much more powerful than it really is.
2. In space battle cinematics people expected it to be a beam weapon. However, using beams would have made battle look utterly ridiculous if you think of it for a while.

[ZLurps]

BobSmith101 wrote...

Wildecker wrote...

AlexMBrennan wrote...

OK, fair enough, except for one detail: Such a strategy was never mentioned in the game - and we see turian ships ramming Sovereign in ME1, so it's obvious that they will have considered ramming at relativistic speed and rejected it for some reason. Thus it's a plot hole in ME1, rather than ME3 and conventional victory remains impossible.

Sorry Sir. What you see is Sovereign simply running over/through a defending Turian cruiser without as much as slowing down while the Turian breaks up.

Things have moved on since then. Remember the number the collector ship did on the old Normandy ? The rebuilt one has no poblems with it even without the game upgrades you still win.

It's a very similiar curve to X-com but one the game ignores in favour of Deus Ex Machina and space magic.

Collector cruiser is nowhere near actual Reaper when it comes to shields / defences. It takes only 4 shots for Normandy to destroy it even wihout Thanix cannon upgrade.

I think it's visual appearance even hints that it's more like a stealth vessel that need element of surprise on it's side to win, than actual battle ship meant to frontlines.

Modifié par ZLurps, 30 mars 2012 - 09:29 .

[Nathan Redgrave]

DeinonSlayer wrote...

And yet Dreadnaughts can accurately target vessels tens of thousands of kilometers away? These are the systems they depend on not to drop them in the middle of the nearest star. If this is true, it honestly sounds like a writing cop-out to discount an obvious solution, more than anything else. At the ranges seen in the final battle, I refuse to believe that no one would be able to pull it off.

It's too impractical to put more effort into making it work. Ships cost a lot of time, money, and resources to build. No one's going to throw that away on hit-or-miss FTL suicide ramming.

Mass Accelerator rounds are aimed accurately at a much shorter distance than a suicide ram would be done, and fire at slower speeds. Even then they do have to take more care in picking their shots when there's a high risk of something in the background taking damage; ships attacking in the direction of a planet are typically at a disadvantage to those who're firing with the planet at their backs.

[GODzilla]

SalsaDMA wrote...

Homing missiles are possible with todays technology. [smilie]../../../images/forum/emoticons/wink.png[/smilie]

A funny note, because I'm pretty sure that these are used in the game. [smilie]../../../images/forum/emoticons/joyful.png[/smilie] Though I prefered not to speak it out loud I always knew that basically this was were this topic was going. From manned suicide fighters to drones to cruise missliles.

I just wanted to wait until the topic starter figured it out by himself. *g*

It even started already:

DeinonSlayer wrote...
What about "unmanned shuttles" is so hard to remember? I do recall using the words "abandon ship" in the original post.

I must've missed this, or maybe I was confused because later you said, in a direct quote of one of my posts, to turn around and try again. At which point do you think it would be safe to abandon ship and be sure it will hit with 100% certainty? If you wanna make sure you get out in the last possible moment...and then what? Flying in space, waiting till someone picks you up? A rescue capsule maybe? Can be shoot down, too. Just a moving target.

So...now that we're at unmanned (which we were before, I might have missed it, granted)...why not go the last step and use rail guns, missiles and cruise missiles instead? You know, the things that are designed to hit targets instead of those things designed to rescue and evacuate people.

Modifié par GODzilla_GSPB, 30 mars 2012 - 09:49 .

[DoctorAwesome91]

It's mentioned somewhere in game that the first targets the Reapers go for are manufacturing centres, eezo mining facilities, and He3 facilities. The price of Eezo and He3 go up and if you wanted to make the eezo core for 1000 suicide fighters, your going to pay a massively inflated price.
I think nukes work on Reapers, the 'Miracle at Palaven' codex entry mentions that Turians were strapping nukes to themselves and walking into Reaper capital ship/processors/destroyers and blowing them up. Not sure if a missile would work, Anderson mentions the Reapers went after the nuke silos on Earth first so they obviously saw it as a threat.

[Facialmatters]

I started a similiar topic before. Ships in ME would be capable of accelerating way faster than 1.8% light to be able to get around anywhere as fast as they do in game. To go from earth to pluto at 1.8%... it would take, well, months? Maybe years? Ships must be capable of a much more significant fraction of light speed. 20%, 40%? someone work it out, cant be bothered.
This includes the combat cockroach, which at the beginning of ME2 boosts away from the Lazarus project to take you to TIM.

Reapers aren't able to shoot them down as they are too far away, and travelling too fast. Even if they did, the molten slag (hit by thanix guns) or thousands of debris (hit by spinal cannons) would continue on roughly the same trajectory at a significant speed. You'd either get a realitivistic shotgun blast or a shower of realitivistic self-forging fragments. Also, if it is possible to engage while either you or the target is at mass effect speed, how come nobody does it? It must not be possible, otherwise battles would take place in millions of kilometres instead of tens of thousands as per codex.

If they can build the fething crucible in that time, they can certainly rewire, hell even redesign and install all the mass effect nav box doohickeys to remove the failsafe. And aiming is not a problem. If you can routinely jump to within a thousand kilometres of an uncharted planet from the other side of a system (millions of kilometres) without tearing apart, then aiming at a reaper at 100,000km (out of dreadnought range) is easy. Or you could just get close enough to eyball it, if the final battle for earth was anything to go by.

Edit: oh yeah, where are the nukes? Reapers can't survive a sun being birthed a few dozen kilometres away from them, can they? Mate those 20th century badboys to mass accelerators/Kodiak shuttles, and let them do their stuff.

Modifié par Facialmatters, 30 mars 2012 - 10:19 .