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[varteral6162]

Lopez23 wrote...

sf0749 wrote...

Cerberus Daily News, January 31, 2010

It is the highest honor awarded to a military unit and recognizes gallantry above and beyond those of the Palladium Star, awarded to all Citadel and Fifth Fleet units who fought in the battle.

This article is about the 24th Fighter Group being awarded the Galactic Unit Citation for their actions in the Battle of the Citadel.

If the First and Third Fleets were involved in this battle, why weren't they given the same recognition as the Citadel Fleet and the Alliance Fifth Fleet?

cuz they werent there Bioware retconed the 1st and 3rd fleet there even though its clearly stated in ME1 that its the 5th Fleet and only the fifth fleet that reinforces the citadel fleet

Also the Destiny Ascension appeared to be the only Asari ship in the battle of the Citadel, the rest of the Council Fleet in the battle were Turian Cruisers.
Yet in ME3 the Asari Cruiser Nefrane was also there (it says it on the Nefranes war asset).

[sf0749]

As to what all this means, I know that the Reapers were nearly a billion years old.

Bioware was deliberately vague about the number of ships in each fleet. The points assigned to each fleet is meaningless and adds confusion.

The Sixth Fleet, which according to the war assets, never fought the Reapers had 90 war points.

The First Fleet, which had lost a half of its ships in the initial engagement and lost a further tenth of its ships in covering the fleet, had 90 war points. With the addition of two frigates, the fleet's war points are increased by 30, to 120 war points. However, if the fleet had engaged in the Battle of the Citadel, the fleet loses 25 war points to 95 points, and, finally, if the player completes the Citadel: Chemical Treatment, the fleet gains 8 points for a total of 103 points.

So, a badly damaged fleet has more points than an intact fleet. And as the losses incurred in the Battle of Citadel are roughly equivalent to two frigates, does that mean that the First Fleet lost two ships in this earlier battle?

If there were eight ships lost in the Battle of the Citadel, as no other Alliance ships were mentioned as being destroyed in the battle, does this mean that each fleet lost two ships each?
If one does the math, as I did, using the figure given for a frigate as 15 points, there are six ships in each fleet. (90 divided by 15)

Here are the war assets for each unit in a fleet:

15 points for frigates (the SSV Agincourt, the SSV Leipzeig, the SSV Trafalgar, the SSV Hong Kong)
25 points for a state-of-the art cruiser (the SSV Nairobi)
40 points for an older cruiser (the SSV Shanghai)
50 points for a Normandy-class frigate (the SSV Normandy)
65 points for a fleet that lost a third of its ships in an earlier engagement (the First, the Third, the Fifth)
75 points for the Naval Exploration Flotilla
90 points for a fleet (the First, the Third, the Fifth, the Sixth)
115 points for an advanced Normandy-class frigate (the SSV Normandy)

And what else does it mean? Bioware couldn't keep their facts straight, and decided to keep both accounts in the game. This is like wherein the Bible the writers included different accounts - two stories of creation, two stories of Noah's loading of the Ark, two stories of who killed the Philistine giant Golitath, four stories of Jesus Christ, etc. In this case, the First Fleet was either destroyed or severly damaged and reduced in numbers. In another case, the Sixth Fleet engaged the Reapers and lost ships, or held back in reserve until called in action by Admiral Hackett for a final battle in the Sol system.

[Commdor]

varteral6162 wrote...

Ajosraa wrote...

lillitheris wrote...

The Reaper count is simple (someone did a more accurate calculation, but roughly): they’ve been around at least 1 million years, they do a cycle every 50 000 years, and they create one new Reaper every cycle, that means that even at an attrition of 50%, they’d have at least 2000 of them.

Hummm... the derelict Reaper in ME2 was 37 million years old.... And the Leviathan of Dis is said to be 1 billion years old.

Thats a lot of Reapers

74,000 - 2000000 Reapers. Yikes.  And if these are all Soverigns...

remember Sovereign "our numbers will darken the sky in every world"

Keep in mind that a Capital Ship-class Reaper may not be produced every cycle. EDI mentioned during the Collector Ship mission in ME2 that the Reapers tried to make a Prothean Reaper, but were seemingly unsuccessful.

[Zkyire]

Another point.

The Geth Heretics send around 30-odd ships to attack the Citadel. They supposedly represent only 5% of the total Geth forces.

Meaning the rest of the Geth Fleet is around 700 or so ships.

And they're supposed to be a major threat.

[lillitheris]

I really just can’t make the numbers make any sense. What I think I’m going to end up doing is using the minimum viable opposing force number of galactic alliance ships vs. the 2000 + 20 000 reapers.

We could assume that for the battle for Earth, there are some 25% of Reaper forces up in space initially, maybe 33% total if they call up reinforcements (there were obviously still lots on Earth itself, and probably some that never made it to Sol for whatever reason).

To maintain parity with 500 + 5000 reapers, the total fleets should number 15 000 + 10 000, and since there’s < 100 dreadnoughts, the figures come closer to Ds + 35 000. We’ll give some bonus points for the carriers, more fighters, and some random vessels so maybe 30 000. This is for parity.

Since we only need to survive a while, 1-2 h, we can drop from parity to something like 2/3. In conclusion, the allied fleets should have around 15 - 20 000 non-fighter ships to have any chance of successfully defending the Crucible against the reapers. (Total number, divided between the species.)

Does this sound like a reasonable proposition?

[Zkyire]

Nah that'd be way too high.

4 Dreadnoughts to take down 1 Reaper means, since Dreadnoughts are 2.5X bigger than cruiser that it takes 10 Cruisers to take down 1 Reaper.

There were around 100 Reapers shown in Priority Earth in orbit*.

10:1 means 1000 cruisers would be required. Double that to ensure victory.



* - Though more were shown on the surface, but we're not sure if they were already there, or if they dropped down when the battle started.
** - When the Crucible detonates, a couple more Reapers are shown dropping down to the surface, so either the battle was going well for the Reapers and they could spare a few dropping down, or they got reinforcements during.

Modifié par Zkyire, 15 mai 2012 - 01:10 .

[Zolt51]

There's a way to estimate the number of cruisers, at least in the Alliance fleets who participated in the Citadel battle in ME1. The alliance lost 8 cruisers that day (if you saved the Council). I don't remember exactly by what percentage that decreases the war assets value, but you have it: 8 cruisers = X % of the fleet's so you can infer the total number.

I don't have the exact numbers in mind, can someone find them?

Still seems very low. Would be hard to make it a fight against even 500 reapers.

By the way. The Crucible is obviously designed to take hits. It's whole sperical shape is in fact discardable armour, which is jettisoned when it docks with the Citadel.

Modifié par Zolt51, 15 mai 2012 - 03:26 .

[Zolt51]

Zkyire wrote...
* - Though more were shown on the surface, but we're not sure if they were already there, or if they dropped down when the battle started.
** - When the Crucible detonates, a couple more Reapers are shown dropping down to the surface, so either the battle was going well for the Reapers and they could spare a few dropping down, or they got reinforcements during.

At the start of operation Hammer all Reaper capitals have left Earth to join the space battle. Harbinger and a few others later break off from the main group once they notice Hammer troops approaching the conduit. I imagine those are the ones we see in the ending scene: rather than droping from orbit, they may just be moving from area to area, trying to finish off Hammer forces.

I imagine that once the Allied forces are in control of the Citadel, driving them back would be the first priority and they would forget about Hammer. Unless the Catalyst is telling them to hold back for now or something.

[Raynulf]

lillitheris wrote...

It must be at least 330 million, given population of Earth alone. At any rate, 5% of 300 million is 15 million, not 3 million, so I assume you meant the 1%. A couple hundred thousand here or there is inconsequential.

I ran the numbers with 95% infantry/support, 5% fleet crew, then switched to 99% and 1% to cut it back - and while I remembered to edit the 95% to 99% and 15 million to 3... I missed the 5% -> 1%. So yes, it was a typo

lillitheris wrote...

3) "So why all the crew?" Dreadnoughts function as mobile command centers and as suck are filled with people you don't want to die. For that reason, you would up the engine size and barrier capacity through the whazoo, and stick all your support crews on there, while keeping the minimum operating crews on your nowhere-near-as-tough cruisers

I have mostly considered dreadnoughts as primarily offensive ships. Their attack power is significantly higher (as you noted in the snipped part), but I’m not certain their defensive capabilities scale equally. In this sense, I’d think it would make far more sense to distribute the essential functions with redundancies between cruisers. They’re more agile, disproportionately more defendable, and there’s more of them.

But, you may be right.

I based it on a combination of what you see in the Battle for the Citadel, and the explanation of how capital ship weapons work in the Codex: Namely that while cruisers one-shot each other with a direct hit, the Destiny Ascension weathers a barrage from multiple cruisers without its barriers failing.

- Mass Accelerator power increases linearly with slug size and barrel length (and thus ship length).
- Barrier strength increases with ship power generation, which in turn increases linearly (at least) with ship tonnage - which increases with the cube of the ship length.

Okay. So lets go with something like this:

Frigate: 200m
Cruiser: 600m (According to the codex, that's what the Alliance builds)
Dreadnough: 900m (Everest class)

The Dreadnought has 1.5 x 1.5 x 1.5 = 3.4 times the mass and power generation of a cruiser and 1.5 times the barrel length. Assuming that it can then fire a slug 3.4 times the mass of a cruiser, this makes its main gun... 5 times as powerful as a cruisers, give or take, with triple the barriers.

If we bring the Destiny  Ascension up to 1200m and arbitrarilly throw on +25% engine power (for superior Asari tech and weird design), we work out at 2^3 x 1.25 = 12 times the barriers (about right) and 8 x 2 = 16 times the main gun strength of a cruiser (triple that of an everest class dreadnought).

And that... would produce something like the commentary (on ME1 first approach to the Citadel) and cutscene of the battle for the citadel.


But I'm just speculating withnumbers here

[incinerator950]

Speculation abound.

[Zolt51]

I've been thinking about this some more, and I have a formula which should work, at least in theory.
Where:
M is the number of male (straight) crew members
F the number of femail straight crew.
G the number of gay males.
L .. You get the picture.
X the number of bisexual females
Y the number of bisexual males

Number of possible ships = (M+Y) * (F + X) + (G+Y)*(G+Y-1) + (L + X)*(L+X-1)

Of course this may not correctly account for human-alien ships, or forced slashfic ships. However it should be good enough for the purpose of this thread.

Applying this formula to the Normandy crew should be easy enough. For the whole alliance fleet it should be doable given proper access to personnel files.

[incinerator950]

Is that an attempt at a joke about speculating fleet numbers?

[tobynator89]

I can guarantee you that only a small minority of alliance personell serve on combat vessels.

[Zolt51]

incinerator950 wrote...

Is that an attempt at a joke about speculating fleet numbers?

I just couldn't pass up the dreadfully bad pun . Didn't mean to troll.

By the way, from the interview with Al-Jilani in ME2 (Saved the council in ME1 and you heroically refrain from punching her), we know that the Alliance lost 8 cruisers in the battle of the Citadel. Then from ME3 war assets we know that this represents a third of the Alliance's 1st, 3rd and 5th fleets. So each of these fleets should have 8 or 9 cruisers when at full strength. Which they aren't in ME3.

So that means at the most we've got around 20-25 cruisers on the Alliance side. Probably a whole bunch of frigates and a few dreadnoughts too. The Turians have more, but taking on even 100 Reapers with these numbers doesn't look very promising.

The Turians lost 20 cruisers btw, but I don't know how much of their total force that represents.

So much for conventional victory.

Modifié par Zolt51, 15 mai 2012 - 08:02 .

[shodiswe]

Robhuzz wrote...

arial wrote...

i remember in ME1 after the Admiral dude inspects the Normandy, when addressing the drive core he says "for the same price we could have had a heavy cruiser". would have been interesting if they had replaced cruisers with a Fleet of SR1s

Those numbers are ridiculous though. Reviving Shepard cost 4 billion credits. Apparently a huge amount of money that's barely affordable for Cerberus judging from both Wilson and Miranda.. Yet they also built the SR2. Let's assume it's more expensive but not outlandishly so (if they can barely afford 4 billion, the SR2 can't cost something like 50 billion) yet that admiral dude in ME1 says the drive core for the Normandy SR1 alone costs 120 billion credits. Enough to build drive cores for 12.000 fighters he said.

I always assumed that was a misstake and that he was supposed to say 120 millions... The whole ship woudl still cost a lot mroe than that with all it's tech and materials and labour.

[shodiswe]

lillitheris wrote...

Bravery wrote...

acording to the wiki the alliance has 8 known fleets, now in ME: Revelations it is stated that as of the first contact war 2157 the alliance had 200 ships, considering that in ME 1 joker says that the fleets were built on Arcturus station wich was started to built as early as 2152 it seems the alliance was able to built 200 ships in a period of 5 years which is relativly small, mass effect 3 takes place 29 years later, so my best guest could be that the alliance fleet could number between 1000 and 3000 ships of all clases, its just a theory and I could be wrong though

Yeah, excluding fighters, 1000-3000 is something that would feel right gut-level. My only problem is that it would leave us with something like 0.5% of all military serving on ships. Where’s everyone else?

Army grutns gettign shot at on the ground...

[Zolt51]

shodiswe wrote...

Army grutns gettign shot at on the ground...

- Building said ships
- Manning space stations, comm arrays, military outposts
- Defending colonies
- All manners of support personnel.

If you look at the US Navy (+ Marines) today, that's over 500.000 people, for 283 ships active.
Although most of them would know their way around a ship, only a small minority is on board at any given time.

[tobynator89]

shodiswe wrote...

lillitheris wrote...

Bravery wrote...

acording to the wiki the alliance has 8 known fleets, now in ME: Revelations it is stated that as of the first contact war 2157 the alliance had 200 ships, considering that in ME 1 joker says that the fleets were built on Arcturus station wich was started to built as early as 2152 it seems the alliance was able to built 200 ships in a period of 5 years which is relativly small, mass effect 3 takes place 29 years later, so my best guest could be that the alliance fleet could number between 1000 and 3000 ships of all clases, its just a theory and I could be wrong though

Yeah, excluding fighters, 1000-3000 is something that would feel right gut-level. My only problem is that it would leave us with something like 0.5% of all military serving on ships. Where’s everyone else?

Army grutns gettign shot at on the ground...

Logistics, supply, the total armed forces of all earth nations and colonies. I mean one F22 takes a total of 30 hours of maintenance per flighthour.  Imagine what it takes to support a fully functional hightech fleet.

[Zolt51]

[quote]Bravery wrote...

acording to the wiki the alliance has 8 known fleets, now in ME: Revelations it is stated that as of the first contact war 2157 the alliance had 200 ships, considering that in ME 1 joker says that the fleets were built on Arcturus station wich was started to built as early as 2152 it seems the alliance was able to built 200 ships in a period of 5 years which is relativly small, mass effect 3 takes place 29 years later, so my best guest could be that the alliance fleet could number between 1000 and 3000 ships of all clases, its just a theory and I could be wrong though [/quote]

Yeah, excluding fighters, 1000-3000 is something that would feel right gut-level. My only problem is that it would leave us with something like 0.5% of all military serving on ships. Where’s everyone else?
[/quote]

1000-3000 sounds about right indeed including frigates and up. As of the ME3 final battle, given the losses sustained so far, 1000 sounds like an upper limit.

[lillitheris]

Zolt51 wrote...

shodiswe wrote...

Army grutns gettign shot at on the ground...

- Building said ships
- Manning space stations, comm arrays, military outposts
- Defending colonies
- All manners of support personnel.

If you look at the US Navy (+ Marines) today, that's over 500.000 people, for 283 ships active.
Although most of them would know their way around a ship, only a small minority is on board at any given time.

If we were to scale directly from the 500 000 / 283, that’d still come out to 28300 ships (remember, the SA military can be as large as 500 million). Call it 22 k for population rate, and peg it down to 15 000, even 10 000 because of reduced crew needs and higher proportion of ground troops with no separate army left.

Also remember, that the fleet is the most important part of the armed forces, hence the consolidation to Navy + Marines. 0.5% of the entire military?

Modifié par lillitheris, 15 mai 2012 - 10:23 .

[tobynator89]

lillitheris wrote...

Zolt51 wrote...

shodiswe wrote...

Army grutns gettign shot at on the ground...

- Building said ships
- Manning space stations, comm arrays, military outposts
- Defending colonies
- All manners of support personnel.

If you look at the US Navy (+ Marines) today, that's over 500.000 people, for 283 ships active.
Although most of them would know their way around a ship, only a small minority is on board at any given time.

0.5% of the entire military. If we were to scale directly from the 500 000 / 283, that’d still come out to 28300 ships (remember, the SA military can be as large as 500 million). Call it 22 k for population rate, and peg it down to 15 000, even 10 000 because of reduced crew needs and higher proportion of ground troops with no separate army left.

Also remember, that the fleet is the most important part of the armed forces, hence the consolidation to Navy + Marines.

gross overestimate of population. the total human pop is about 12 billion and its not certain if every nation under the alliance contribute to the armed forces. Secondly the majority of personell is not on the ships, they are largely automated, the vast majority would go to servicig the fleet or serve as regular soldiers which is by far the task that requires the most . (servicing a dreadnought alone would probably require up towards a 100000 specialists and technicians given the technological immensity of the thing, again compare to a F22 raptor that requires 30 manhours of maintenance per flight hour.) Also I suspect that the 3% of the human population reflects ALL alliance personell, from bueraucrats (managing a population of 12 billion) to police forces. In other words anything that can't be done by a VI (which does just about everything on the larger ships),

[Zolt51]

Guys, I don't think we'll go anywhere by trying to ballpark the number of people in the Alliance Navy. We just have no basis translate that into actual ships.

Better stick to what info we have about actuall Alliance ships: frigates, cruisers and so on.

[Zolt51]

sf0749 wrote...
25 points for a state-of-the art cruiser (the SSV Nairobi)

If Kaidan is worth as much as an entire cruiser, I don't think we'll get anywhere with this. Also, Kaidan is worth as much as Grunt.

[lillitheris]

tobynator89 wrote...

lillitheris wrote...

Zolt51 wrote...

shodiswe wrote...

Army grutns gettign shot at on the ground...

- Building said ships
- Manning space stations, comm arrays, military outposts
- Defending colonies
- All manners of support personnel.

If you look at the US Navy (+ Marines) today, that's over 500.000 people, for 283 ships active.
Although most of them would know their way around a ship, only a small minority is on board at any given time.

0.5% of the entire military. If we were to scale directly from the 500 000 / 283, that’d still come out to 28300 ships (remember, the SA military can be as large as 500 million). Call it 22 k for population rate, and peg it down to 15 000, even 10 000 because of reduced crew needs and higher proportion of ground troops with no separate army left.

Also remember, that the fleet is the most important part of the armed forces, hence the consolidation to Navy + Marines.

gross overestimate of population. the total human pop is about 12 billion and its not certain if every nation under the alliance contribute to the armed forces. Secondly the majority of personell is not on the ships, they are largely automated, the vast majority would go to servicig the fleet or serve as regular soldiers which is by far the task that requires the most . (servicing a dreadnought alone would probably require up towards a 100000 specialists and technicians given the technological immensity of the thing, again compare to a F22 raptor that requires 30 manhours of maintenance per flight hour.) Also I suspect that the 3% of the human population reflects ALL alliance personell, from bueraucrats (managing a population of 12 billion) to police forces. In other words anything that can't be done by a VI (which does just about everything on the larger ships),

Did you actually read what I wrote at all?

Also, it’s 3%. Of humanity. In the military.

[lillitheris]

Zolt51 wrote...

Guys, I don't think we'll go anywhere by trying to ballpark the number of people in the Alliance Navy. We just have no basis translate that into actual ships.

Better stick to what info we have about actuall Alliance ships: frigates, cruisers and so on.

1. We don’t have any information; and
2. The information we do have is obviously completely infeasible.



But on the whole, I think the minimum viable number is the better basis for estimating. Like, if the SA fleet was actually 200 ships, 20 Reapers would destroy them all. And there’s 2000 Reapers.

Modifié par lillitheris, 15 mai 2012 - 11:17 .