913 réponses à ce sujet

[the slynx]

iiTzCyAniiDe wrote...

With high enough EMS i can see this being a good option.

Generally agree, except the EMS isn't a great system.

On my playthrough, I imported a character from the first two titles with all companions loyal, the Rachni saved, Council saved, Wrex alive; did about 80 per cent of all planets and side quests (a few glitched on me), got the support of almost everyone except the Quarians (couldn't broker peace, for some reason), did all the former companion storylines, finished all N7 missions, and ended up with a bit more than 3000 EMS.

I know people who did about half of what I did, ending up with a much smaller fleet and almost no Crucible resources, but played 20 or so rounds of multiplayer, and the multiplier made their EMS surpass my own. That's just confusing on a narrative level.

I have trouble placing too much faith in that system determining the campaign outcome.

[phantomdasilva]

Yes, the EMS should have been catagorised to make it more logical

Sort of EMS for fleets, EMS for people or "heroes" character, EMS for the crucible, EMS for ground soliders.

They all should affect separately on how the game progress instead of a lump sum number that makes no sense when you combine it as one number

[CakesOnAPlane]

I would say yes only if it came at a great personal cost to the player, ie they lost the Normandy/squad mates/something like that.

[Daedalus1773]

Solmanian wrote...

You keep thinking of thanix cannons as a trump card, that allows frigate to destroy reaper capital ships. Yes they are better than what they had before, but the protheans had better weapons (the particle cannons). And unless you think the galaxy can make hundreds of cruisers in hours, there's nothing to prevent the reapers from stomping your forces at earth and go about their bussiness. And the thanix cannon definitely doesn't stop the reaper ships from oneshoting your ships, especialy since codex says they have twice the range. Don't forget thanix also needs lodicrus amount of ez0 (they had to salvage soveriegn core to build them), and ez0 mininig/refining (or whatever they it's produced) operation or probably aren't at full swing... And using a gun that uses superheated alloys as ammunition, will generate tremendous amount of heat; thus reducing the battle endurance of every ship that uses it (which is determined by how much heat the ship produces, and how long it will take it to melt your system and cook your crew).

No, I don't think of them as a trump card. I think of them as a (potentially) equalizing card. We know a Reaper ship w/ a Thanix cannon can 1-shot a Dreadnought. Before Thanix cannons, it took 4 Dreadnoughts to kill 1 Reaper. How many Dreadnought shots does it take to kill a Reaper now, with Thanix cannons?

Unfortunately, we don't know. Because they were never put into the ending, despite dialogue earlier in the game(s) indicating many Turian and Human ships are now equipped with them. Perhaps a Dreadnought with a Thanix cannon can now 1-shot a Reaper capital ship too. Perhaps not. I guess we'll probably never know.

And yes, it takes time to build Cruisers & Dreadnoughts. All I'm alluding to is that if 100,000 allied ships drop into higher Earth orbit, and many of them have Thanix cannons, and they're able to decimate the however-many thousands of Reaper ships that are currently attacking Earth ... that would force the Reapers to adjust their strategy dramatically (current strategy being to simple spread out as much as possible to hit as many targets as possible because their ships are nearly invulnerable to non-Thanix weapons).  At that point ... the galaxy is a big place, and if the Reapers are limited in where and when they can strike any given species because they must make smaller numbers of fleets with more ships, a long war of attrition suddenly suddenly swings in favor of the allied forces, if the weaponry playing field is level.

Now we don't know how long it takes to "grow" a Reaper ship.  But if the trillions of souls still alive in the galaxy that are capable of fighting back put their minds to it, they could FLOOD the skies with ships.  At the end of WW2 in 1945, the United States was dropping a new warship into the ocean every 7 hours.  Imagine this happening on a galactic scale, if the trillions of souls in the galaxy had time to re-tool their industrial might for war once they fully appreciated the scale of the danger.

[a.m.p]

CakesOnAPlane wrote...

I would say yes only if it came at a great personal cost to the player, ie they lost the Normandy/squad mates/something like that.

Does having to continue fighting the war for an unknown period of time, all the casualties that brings and the fact that you'll never be sure there aren't more out there count as a great personal cost?

[CakesOnAPlane]

a.m.p wrote...

CakesOnAPlane wrote...

I would say yes only if it came at a great personal cost to the player, ie they lost the Normandy/squad mates/something like that.

Does having to continue fighting the war for an unknown period of time, all the casualties that brings and the fact that you'll never be sure there aren't more out there count as a great personal cost?

Yea something like that ha

[a.m.p]

CakesOnAPlane wrote...

a.m.p wrote...

CakesOnAPlane wrote...

I would say yes only if it came at a great personal cost to the player, ie they lost the Normandy/squad mates/something like that.

Does having to continue fighting the war for an unknown period of time, all the casualties that brings and the fact that you'll never be sure there aren't more out there count as a great personal cost?

Yea something like that ha

Well then. That's what we're proposing.

[Solmanian]

Elyiia wrote...

While all evidence points to the Protheans being completely wiped out by
the Reapers, this was not the case. The Reapers are believed to have
attempted harnessing the genetic material from millions of Protheans to
create a new Reaper. It is speculated by EDI
that this attempt failed and so the Reapers decided to repurpose this
substantial number of captive Protheans to suit the needs of the
Reapers.

If they can't turn them into a Reaper they seem to rewrite them so they still exist.
masseffect.wikia.com/wiki/Prothean

In game speculation is not considerably better than fan speculation. This doesn't make it cannon.

Modifié par Solmanian, 12 avril 2012 - 08:03 .

[a.m.p]

Some more stuff to discuss.
Several pages back this codex entry was brought up:

The Reaper War/Desperate measures
Faced with utter annihilation, military planners have considered extreme solutions in their quest to stop the Reapers. The two most plausible are the destruction of mass relays and the use of starships as suicide weapons.

Destroying a mass relay to stop the Reapers' advance is infeasbile. Although it has recently been proven that mass relays can be destroyed, a ruptured relay liberates enough energy to ruin any terrestrial world in the relay's solar system. It would take too long to evacuate the millions or billions of people living near each relay, and
the Council is unwilling to sacrifice that many lives when combat stands a chance of saving them. Even if a garden world were to survive the relay's destruction, the Reapers have infinite patience. They traveled out of dark space using conventional FTL--travel within galaxy is not an insurmountable barrier.

Meanwhile, starships are too costly to be used as projectiles, given that it would take many collisions to seriously harm a Reaper. Some armchair admirals suggest that a single starship traveling faster than light could obliterate a Reaper capital ship, but all ships based on mass effect technology possess hardwired safety features to prevent  FTL collisions. If a ship's FTL plotter finds a significant object in the path of a planned jump, the FTL drive refuses to fire in the first place. This is not a perfect safety feature--the sensors can only scan for objects within a reasonable distance at light speed, and a navigator must plot he rest of the course--but it is so inherent to the FTL warm-up process that removing it is nigh impossible. Cynical intelligence analysts note that the secret of mass effect technology, including that safety system, has always been attributed to the Protheans--just as the mass relays were.

That last paragraph creates more questions than it answers. What exactly does 'inherent to the FTL warm-up process' mean? It's not a software feature, or it could be reprogrammed, right? How ignorant are this cycle's engineers of how their drive cores work if they can't disable a safety feature?

But wait. There's more.

Taetrus

Taetrus is a turian colony in the Mactare system. In 2185, Taetrus fell into crisis when a turian separatist group known as Facinus reprogrammed the FTL plotter of a starship and rammed the ship at near-FTL speeds into the heart of Vallum, the colony's capital city, killing tens of thousands of people. This terrorist attack prompted the Turian Hierarchy and Taetrian colonialist forces to invade Facinus' strongholds and systematically eliminate the separatists in a short, decisive conflict called the War on Taetrus.

That is from Cerberus Daily News dated 2010. So technically that first codex entry is a retcon, although the more realistic theory would be that whoever wrote the entry missed that one little piece of info.

In-universe this could be attributed to clever terrorist hackers. And one would think that the Turian Hierarchy facing a reaper invasion would try and find out how those clever hackers did what they did.

Modifié par a.m.p, 12 avril 2012 - 07:53 .

[Solmanian]

a.m.p wrote...

CakesOnAPlane wrote...

I would say yes only if it came at a great personal cost to the player, ie they lost the Normandy/squad mates/something like that.

Does having to continue fighting the war for an unknown period of time, all the casualties that brings and the fact that you'll never be sure there aren't more out there count as a great personal cost?

No. there's nothing personel about it. You have people here saying they rather the entire galaxy would parish rather than sacrificing a single squadie (even though you've allready lost several: like legion, thane, mordin). Unless people will come to terms with no perfect ending that doesn't force you to compromise (and yes, you can't even refuse the catalyst without compromising with yourself.). People keep throwing that shepard shouldn't except the catalyst word, and that maybe true, the question is what does shepard has to lose? The idea that the reapers came with an ultra elaborate scheme, just so they could give shepard 3 ways to kill himself is more than paranoid. If you don't think the catalyst is simply trying to kill shepard but is trying to use the crucible in some master plan that win the war for the reapers: why would they need shepard for it? there realy isn't anything he can do that they can't send some indoctrinated fellow like TIM to do for them...

[Solmanian]

a.m.p wrote...

This is sad.
Am I correct that there are several versions of the leaked script? If so how old is this one?

I don't think I ever actualy seen a "leaked" script on this site that wasn't a complete fake. You should probably consider that it's very probably a concoction of a "fan" trying to raise the flames on the day 1 DLC issue.

[Heimdall]

a.m.p wrote...

That is from Cerberus Daily News dated 2010. So technically that first codex entry is a retcon, although the more realistic theory would be that whoever wrote the entry missed that one little piece of info.

In-universe this could be attributed to clever terrorist hackers. And one would think that the Turian Hierarchy facing a reaper invasion would try and find out how those clever hackers did what they did.

That quote says near FTL.  So it was not actually using FTL.

[a.m.p]

Solmanian wrote...

a.m.p wrote...

CakesOnAPlane wrote...

I would say yes only if it came at a great personal cost to the player, ie they lost the Normandy/squad mates/something like that.

Does having to continue fighting the war for an unknown period of time, all the casualties that brings and the fact that you'll never be sure there aren't more out there count as a great personal cost?

No. there's nothing personel about it. You have people here saying they rather the entire galaxy would parish rather than sacrificing a single squadie (even though you've allready lost several: like legion, thane, mordin). Unless people will come to terms with no perfect ending that doesn't force you to compromise (and yes, you can't even refuse the catalyst without compromising with yourself.). People keep throwing that shepard shouldn't except the catalyst word, and that maybe true, the question is what does shepard has to lose? The idea that the reapers came with an ultra elaborate scheme, just so they could give shepard 3 ways to kill himself is more than paranoid. If you don't think the catalyst is simply trying to kill shepard but is trying to use the crucible in some master plan that win the war for the reapers: why would they need shepard for it? there realy isn't anything he can do that they can't send some indoctrinated fellow like TIM to do for them...

Well, I guess that depends on your Shepard. To my Shepard that's very personal. Whether choosing an option like this should be paid for with also killing some squadmates or Shepard themselves is up for debate. On one hand I don't particularly like this, since I'm as attached to the characters as anyone else here, on the other hand, if that was part of the the price, I would still pick this option.

As for elaborate schemes, it's true, that any elaborate scheme including starchild falls apart at first attempt of analysis. Including the "countless cycles built this device without knowing what they were building". That's starchild's main function, it seems. He breaks things.

Now excuse me, I have to get up early tomorrow, so I'm out for the night.

[a.m.p]

Lord Aesir wrote...

a.m.p wrote...

That is from Cerberus Daily News dated 2010. So technically that first codex entry is a retcon, although the more realistic theory would be that whoever wrote the entry missed that one little piece of info.

In-universe this could be attributed to clever terrorist hackers. And one would think that the Turian Hierarchy facing a reaper invasion would try and find out how those clever hackers did what they did.

That quote says near FTL.  So it was not actually using FTL.

That quote says "reprogrammed the FTL plotter".

[Capeo]

They've stated repeatedly they are not adding choices. Won't happen.

[Heimdall]

a.m.p wrote...

Lord Aesir wrote...

a.m.p wrote...

That is from Cerberus Daily News dated 2010. So technically that first codex entry is a retcon, although the more realistic theory would be that whoever wrote the entry missed that one little piece of info.

In-universe this could be attributed to clever terrorist hackers. And one would think that the Turian Hierarchy facing a reaper invasion would try and find out how those clever hackers did what they did.

That quote says near FTL.  So it was not actually using FTL.

That quote says "reprogrammed the FTL plotter".

Which, as it was not using FTL, would not have encountered the same problem suggested by the Mass Effect 3 codex entry.

[Ingvarr Stormbird]

OP, I suggest tweaking thread name slightly to "option to try fighting conventionally".
It seems that "option for conventional victory" causes issues with a lot of people.

Personally I would be satisfied if ending only allows me to continue to fight. I am even fine with people telling in epilogue that "it will be impossible to win, etc, etc" (though I am sure my squadmates will be far more understanding and most will support my decision whatever it will be).
I am totally fine as long as this ending by itself does not show that "you've totally lost 3 years later!". This way I could believe I could win, people who disagree could believe I could never win - and we all will be fine

Modifié par Ingvarr Stormbird, 12 avril 2012 - 09:01 .

[Ingvarr Stormbird]

Jeb231 wrote...

Thing is it is a retcon which completely goes against the intention behind the endings.

consider this:

Starchild says the truth... No 4rth option is needed.
Starchild lies...Red ending is the way out.

Did you read my thread referenced in first post? It shows how Starchild lie could totally invalidate the choice. In fact this thing alone makes "proper choice" impossible, at least Mordin and/or Liara would definitely yell at you for it 

Modifié par Ingvarr Stormbird, 12 avril 2012 - 09:16 .

[a.m.p]

Lord Aesir wrote...

a.m.p wrote...

Lord Aesir wrote...

That quote says near FTL.  So it was not actually using FTL.

That quote says "reprogrammed the FTL plotter".

Which, as it was not using FTL, would not have encountered the same problem suggested by the Mass Effect 3 codex entry.

Which brings us to the qestion what exactly near-FTL is. Is it 0,5c? is it 0,95c? What propulsion means do we use to achieve it, if not the FTL drive core that as we are told, refuses to work when something is in the way?

Let's go back to the codex

1) From the FTL drive codex entry

Faster-than-light drives use element zero cores to reduce the mass of a ship, allowing higher rates of acceleration. This effectively raises the speed of light within the mass effect field, allowing high speed travel with negligible relativistic time dilation effects.

Starships still require conventional thrusters (chemical rockets, commercial fusion torch, economy ion engine, or military antiproton drive) in addition to the FTL drive core. With only a core, a ship has no motive power.

2) From the Starships:Thrusters codex entry

A mass effect drive core decreases the mass of a bubble of space-time around a ship. This gives the ship the potential to move quickly, but does not apply any motive power. Ships use their sublight thrusters for motive power in FTL. There are several varieties of thruster, varying in performance versus economy. All ships are equipped with arrays of hydrogen-oxygen reaction control thrusters for maneuvering.

Looks like to achieve near FTL we need the FTL core and the FTL plotter after all.

That's one of the things I love about Mass Effect. Details. Rules about how stuff works, that can be combined to create all kinds of crazy scenarios. Except not in ME3, because no, we aren't allowed to beat reapers.

Example of the same approach from a different media. Stargate.
Early on it's established a wormhole between two gates can be maintained for 38 minutes. Then it's established that if one of the gates is falling into a black hole, the wormhole can be maintained indefinitely. And that if you blow up a bomb near an active gate, the other side of the wormhole jumps to the next nearest gate.
So when they need to stop an extragalactic invasion of superpowerful aliens, they go to a nearby galaxy, throw a gate into a black hole, fire some nukes at it and thus plug the supergate used for the invasion.

Modifié par a.m.p, 13 avril 2012 - 04:41 .

[a.m.p]

Ingvarr Stormbird wrote...

OP, I suggest tweaking thread name slightly to "option to try fighting conventionally".
It seems that "option for conventional victory" causes issues with a lot of people.

I've thought about it. On the other hand I have a poll attached to this thread and I want people to keep voting, so I shamelessly left the sensational title to draw attention and have some debate.


Also the more people keep telling me I can't win, the more ways to fight I discover, see post above this.

While I do like your idea of an uncertain future, I suspect that many of those wanting closure would be dissatisfied with such an approach, and part of my suggestion is to make the ending in the long run (hundreds of years) functionally similar to the existing ones, in case Bioware means to continue telling the story of the universe. Which requires to be able to win. So there.

[webhead921]

I really DO NOT want an option for conventional victory, I think it sort of undermines the threat of the reapers. Also, we spend the entire game gathering forces to help build the Crucible, which is sort of a last ditch attempt to begin with. Why would shepard spend the entire game trying to get this thing built when she could have been gathering forces to fight conventionally?

I think having an option to have a failed attempt to fight conventionally, or maybe for a conventional victory with larger sacrifices than the sacrifices that we would get if we chose one of the three options.

[Sangheili_1337]

Having the Reapers lose conventionally without the Crucible doing something to even the odds would be even worse than the current endings. It would completely defy logic.

[a.m.p]

webhead921 wrote...

I really DO NOT want an option for conventional victory, I think it sort of undermines the threat of the reapers. Also, we spend the entire game gathering forces to help build the Crucible, which is sort of a last ditch attempt to begin with. Why would shepard spend the entire game trying to get this thing built when she could have been gathering forces to fight conventionally?

That's a question I very much want to ask the writers. Why put a nonsensical mcguffin, that was never foreshadowed, into a story that didn't need one?

I think having an option to have a failed attempt to fight conventionally, or maybe for a conventional victory with larger sacrifices than the sacrifices that we would get if we chose one of the three options.

That last one is exactly what I am proposing. It's not an instant victory, it's just a way to break the tide of the war. The war itself would go on for an unknown period of time, with countless more casualties and whether all reapers are eventually killed, or they at some point retreat, there will never be a certainty that there aren't more out there. Some of the proposed scenarios on the first page include Shepard themselves having to die. Some people say it should cost us our squad. The price is up for debate.

Modifié par a.m.p, 13 avril 2012 - 07:15 .

[a.m.p]

Sangheili_1337 wrote...

Having the Reapers lose conventionally without the Crucible doing something to even the odds would be even worse than the current endings. It would completely defy logic.

Well, we have plenty examples on the first page of how the crucible can be used to do something to even the odds.

[Solmanian]

a.m.p wrote...

While I do like your idea of an uncertain future, I suspect that many of those wanting closure would be dissatisfied with such an approach, and part of my suggestion is to make the ending in the long run (hundreds of years) functionally similar to the existing ones, in case Bioware means to continue telling the story of the universe. Which requires to be able to win. So there.

For it to be functionally similar, it means no more relays. But the realays survival seems to be the main motive for most of the people who insist on a conventional victory. So what are you planning to tell them? Considering an ending where the relays aren't destroyed would never be canon.

Also we, and maybe even the writers, don't know what the time frame for ME4 will be. It could be the near future, a few decades down the road, or maybe a milenia. If we choose the centuries long ending, we tie it down, forcing something in ME4 plot that should be loose for optimal development. I also think most players would like to meet their squadies in ME4, see how they turned out, maybe even recruit one or two, I personally want to meet garrus and get his "eyepatch of power". If the game will be set centuries down the line, most of them will be dead. You'll be lucky to encounter grunt the battlemaster, or liara the matriach, or maybe some of them went the javik way and went into stasis for whatever reason...