215 réponses à ce sujet

[Jassu1979]

Now, people have talked a lot about the destruction of the relays, pondering whether their destruction would obliterate the systems they were in, hypothesizing about the potential of re-building them, arguing about whether or not the fleet in Sol system can return home, etc.

But I think few people have actually considered what cutting the supply lines like that actually means: it doesn't really matter whether the species of the galaxy will eventually be able to invent a technology that fills the gap - right there and then, it means that billions throughout the war-torn galaxy WILL die, even if the explosions were harmless.

No relays - no interstellar traffic. No interstellar traffic - no supply lines. No supply lines - billions of casualties. The worst thing that can happen to a disaster area is being cut off - and that is exactly what happens to pretty much every planet in the Mass Effect universe.

[Omanisat]

Yep, it's a bad scene.

[lordofdogtown19]

But it's art

[The Angry One]

Typical responses you can expect:

"But it was necesarry to stop the Reapers! What, did you expect to win or something? You just wanted an ending with puppies, ponies and Krogan birthday cakes!!"

"What's important is the Normandy crew survived to be the founders of a colony of ignorant, inbred fools!"

"People will use FTL! They didn't use fast FTL before because they had relays!"

"They will just build new relays. Building new relays is easy because I say so."

"The Reapers can be salvaged for their supertechnology! Indoctrination? What's that?"

[Cypher_CS]

Aren't at least most of these systems self sustaining?

[NoUserNameHere]

Cypher_CS wrote...

Aren't at least most of these systems self sustaining?

Prior to a destruction of their infrastructure and a culling of their population? Some of the larger ones may be.

[Obadiah]

It is a pretty bleak ending, but this is the cost of stopping the Reapers.

However, aside from the massive body count, a decade or two after this we would be left with thousands of isolated smaller civilizations across the galaxy. This is ending is rife with possibilities for more stories. In addition, now the we explore without the Relays, we may discover new resources, technology, and non-relay accessible systems.

If you choose the Control ending, you also get the help/competition of the existing AIs to survive and rebuild, with the added bonus of a possible Reaper attack if Shep's immortal will fails.

[Taboo]

NoUserNameHere wrote...

Cypher_CS wrote...

Aren't at least most of these systems self sustaining?

Prior to a destruction of their infrastructure and a culling of their population? Some of the larger ones may be.

Then everyone else dies.

That isn't art Walters.

That's morbid.

[The Angry One]

NoUserNameHere wrote...

Cypher_CS wrote...

Aren't at least most of these systems self sustaining?

Prior to a destruction of their infrastructure and a culling of their population? Some of the larger ones may be.

How self-sustaining would they be anyway? Farm worlds exist for a reason.
The major worlds have high populations with large metropolises.

ME1 Earthborn description: "You were an orphan raised on the streets of the great megatropolises covering Earth."

Yeah that doesn't leave much room for farmland, does it?

[Jenonax]

Obadiah wrote...

It is a pretty bleak ending, but this is the cost of stopping the Reapers.

Then i would argue that its too high.  The galaxy is so deeply screwed.  Dammit, Walters, give us another way out!

However, aside from the massive body count, a decade or two after this we would be left with thousands of isolated smaller civilizations across the galaxy. This is ending is rife with possibilities for more stories. In addition, now the we explore without the Relays, we may discover new resources, technology, and non-relay accessible systems.

 

We don't have endless amounts of resources.  The odds of us finding anything useful in the now limited range we all have are pretty low.  Not impossible, but very, very unlikely.

If you choose the Control ending, you also get the help/competition of the existing AIs to survive and rebuild, with the added bonus of a possible Reaper attack if Shep's immortal will fails.

True that.

[Cypher_CS]

The Angry One wrote...

NoUserNameHere wrote...

Cypher_CS wrote...

Aren't at least most of these systems self sustaining?

Prior to a destruction of their infrastructure and a culling of their population? Some of the larger ones may be.

How self-sustaining would they be anyway? Farm worlds exist for a reason.
The major worlds have high populations with large metropolises.

ME1 Earthborn description: "You were an orphan raised on the streets of the great megatropolises covering Earth."

Yeah that doesn't leave much room for farmland, does it?

It would be stupidly costly to rely solely on farm worlds OUTSIDE your Cluster ONLY.

Great Megatropolises Covering Earth does not imply lack of farmland or lack of other farming solutions, like hydroponics within such megatropolises.
So, sure, while that statement was meant to say that more of the world is a metropolis than it is farmland, your argument itself is lacking.

Again, farming solutions within such magatropolises - hell, even today people are getting more and more aware of the environment and are starting to grow their own vegetables and the likes - orbital solutions, or just farming worlds within the Cluster.
All solutions which do not necessitate Mass Relay travel.

Jenonax wrote...

Obadiah wrote...

It is a pretty bleak ending, but this is the cost of stopping the Reapers. 

Then i would argue that its too high.  The galaxy is so deeply screwed.  Dammit, Walters, give us another way out!

 

Sorry, that's not a valid complaint.
There's a difference between saying "I don't like the ending, cause it's sad" (i.e. a valid feeling about it), and saying "The Ending is Bad, cause it's sad" (i.e. not a valid complaint on the artistic value).

Jenonax  wrote... 
We don't have endless amounts of resources.  The odds of us finding anything useful in the now limited range we all have are pretty low.  Not impossible, but very, very unlikely. 

What limited range?
Almost every Cluster we entered with the Mass Relay has at least one additional system in it. With many planets and resources.

[The Angry One]

Cypher_CS wrote...

It would be stupidly costly to rely solely on farm worlds OUTSIDE your Cluster ONLY.

What you mean like having your political capital outside your home cluster?
The Alliance seems to have run with that for the past few decades just fine.

Great Megatropolises Covering Earth does not imply lack of farmland or lack of other farming solutions, like hydroponics within such megatropolises.
So, sure, while that statement was meant to say that more of the world is a metropolis than it is farmland, your argument itself is lacking.

Again, farming solutions within such magatropolises - hell, even today people are getting more and more aware of the environment and are starting to grow their own vegetables and the likes - orbital solutions, or just farming worlds within the Cluster.
All solutions which do not necessitate Mass Relay travel.

These farm worlds still exist for that purpose though.
Of course some of it would be supplimented by hydroponics, vat grown meat and some farmland on Earth, but not enough for the entire population.
Also, while that population has just been lowered substantially... so has all the infrastructure, and the enviroment has just been outright destroyed. So no, Earth is not getting anywhere without external help.

[Cypher_CS]

Look, I'm a Logistics Officer by training. Naval Logistics at that.

It doesn't matter where your capital is - that doesn't take physical resources and time resources and storage resources to move. It matters that the food is both viable (solved, really, by freezing) and the cost of shipping it doesn't exceed... certain limits.

So, by that reasoning, there would be hydroponics in orbit, there would be farm worlds in the cluster. Especially, considering the fact that the MRs were just relatively recently discovered yet the building of these megatropolises was started earlier. So these solutions existed before MRs.

[Omanisat]

I'm sure many of these worlds WERE self-sustaining, at least in terms of the basics. but like NoUserNameHere said, the Reapers have utterly destroyed the infrastructure and transport of these worlds, to say nothing of the actual food stores themselves.

[Taboo]

I'm an artist by training, I look at the world as it is. I'm not taking into account your math. I care about the people today, right now, which is why I choose Destroy. People forget that living for today is just as important.

And quite a few people are going to die if Bioware doesn't pull a rabbit out of their hat.

[FS3D]

It's not that difficult to imagine the consequences of destroying the infrastructure of a world though... Destroy the planetary infrastructure (e.g. water piping, electricity generation, fuel distribution, and so on), and you destroy the population. There's a reason why bombing people back to the stone-age is an effective means of winning battles, and that's because the stone age cannot support the kind of population sizes that a technological infrastructure can support.

For example, the UK has a population of almost 70 million people. If you set off a bunch of nukes in the primary civilian population centres in the country, it's estimated that about a million will die from the initial blasts, another 2-10 million from radiation sickness and associated effects, and another 55-60 million from the loss of the country's infrastructure (the destruction of the water distribution network, the National (electrical) Grid, the gas pipelines, the sewerage treatment facilities, the roads, and all of the logistics that support such a large population in the relatively small space we have in this country.

Something similar would have happened across much of the surface of the Earth in the Mass Effect 3 game, only this time it's not nukes destroying the infrastructure... It's Reaper beams and weapons.

Multiply this by the number of Reaper invasions across the galaxy, and without the Mass Relays, you're left with no means of re-supplying these planets from other clusters, and with the destruction that has occurred throughout the galaxy, there's no reason to think that farmland planets have fared better, since the Reapers will already know of organics reliance on foodstuffs for survival, and will take steps to destroy that resource too.

[Cypher_CS]

Taboo-XX wrote...

I'm an artist by training, I look at the world as it is. I'm not taking into account your math. I care about the people today, right now, which is why I choose Destroy. People forget that living for today is just as important.

And quite a few people are going to die if Bioware doesn't pull a rabbit out of their hat.

Ah... Taboo, this isn't about what you choose - cause those things they talk about, Relays and infrastructure - are all casualties of the wars.

[Taboo]

Cypher_CS wrote...

Taboo-XX wrote...

I'm an artist by training, I look at the world as it is. I'm not taking into account your math. I care about the people today, right now, which is why I choose Destroy. People forget that living for today is just as important.

And quite a few people are going to die if Bioware doesn't pull a rabbit out of their hat.

Ah... Taboo, this isn't about what you choose - cause those things they talk about, Relays and infrastructure - are all casualties of the wars.

They aren't destroyed in Control.

They are however, in Synthesis and Destroy. Said destruction will have impact on how things run. In Destroy, I'm going to assume we can harvest some sort of technology from the dead Reapers to rebuild the relays.

It's very much how you choose and the math involved is very important. How long will it take to rebuild? How long can everyone last? That's the issue.

[Cypher_CS]

Sure, but these guys have veered off the talk about Mass Relays into talk about infrastructure.
I'm saying, Mass Relays? Oh well...

As for Infrastructure - all three endings had a war that had Reapers mass murdering and mass destroying stuff. So it's a common ailment for all three.

[Ramus Quaritch]

Jassu1979 wrote...

Now, people have talked a lot about the destruction of the relays, pondering whether their destruction would obliterate the systems they were in, hypothesizing about the potential of re-building them, arguing about whether or not the fleet in Sol system can return home, etc.

But I think few people have actually considered what cutting the supply lines like that actually means: it doesn't really matter whether the species of the galaxy will eventually be able to invent a technology that fills the gap - right there and then, it means that billions throughout the war-torn galaxy WILL die, even if the explosions were harmless.

No relays - no interstellar traffic. No interstellar traffic - no supply lines. No supply lines - billions of casualties. The worst thing that can happen to a disaster area is being cut off - and that is exactly what happens to pretty much every planet in the Mass Effect universe.

We don't actually know the extent of the damage or explosions of the mass relays because Bioware doesn't show it, nor do they give us any inkling of the state of galactic civilization.  
[rant]  "Lots of speculation for everyone!" after all.  What was Mac Walters thinking?  What boggles my mind is that Casey Hudson and company approved of Walters' writing!!
[/rant]

I'd still choose destroy over control or synthesis because control and synthesis are what the Reapers have said throughout the series that they want of organics.  Plus the AI controlling the Reapers was practically begging you to pick control or synthesis.  I find that suspect.  I don't like control and synthesis because they completely go against every theme and everything you are fighting for in the trilogy.  

[Taboo]

Which is why people are upset. You're not going to farm on the land I see. I live in Montana, soil doesn't grow things when it's covered in ash and debris. Furthermore the amount of ash in the air will blot of sunlight and change the temperature.

It doesn't matter what ending you choose, what matters is how people are going to perform basic tasks to survive.

[Ramus Quaritch]

Taboo-XX wrote...

Which is why people are upset. You're not going to farm on the land I see. I live in Montana, soil doesn't grow things when it's covered in ash and debris. Furthermore the amount of ash in the air will blot of sunlight and change the temperature.

It doesn't matter what ending you choose, what matters is how people are going to perform basic tasks to survive.

I see exactly what you are saying.  But if science fiction followed the logic of collateral damage to planets after batles, the Ewoks would be extinct.  

[Jassu1979]

How did this become a discussion about which ending is "better"? The relays are shut down in *every* despicable ending scenario, not just in Destroy.

Oh, sure, they may not literally explode if you pick "Control", but (according to the catalyst and the cinematics), it's pretty clear that they won't work any longer, either.

The damage caused by the explosions is (as I pointed out in the OP) irrelevant to the problem on hand. Whether the relays go "boom" or just power down - what matters is that interstellar travel is shut down, at a time when pretty much every inhabited world throughout the galaxy has been devastated by war.

Imagine that it had been impossible to transport any significant aid to Ground Zero on 9/11 and the subsequent days, and you may get a slight idea of what we're talking about here.
Imagine that New Orleans was completely cut off from the outside world when Katrina hit, with no help getting through at all.

We're talking about an apocalyptic "end of the world"-scenario here.

[MisterJB]

The Angry One wrote...
"But it was necesarry to stop the Reapers! What, did you expect to win without sacrifices or something? You just wanted an ending with puppies, ponies and Krogan birthday cakes!!"

And yet, it is the correct answer. Stopping the Reapers forever completely changed the fundamental way the galaxy worked. The destruction of the Relay System served to simbolize this change.
Unless Synthesis does something espectacular that lessens our need for food and medicine, millions will die, maybe billions. But those who survive will be stronger for it and the new galactic community will be better than the one that came before.

The krogan really are in a bit of a pickle tough. Their females probrably were all left on Tuchanka whose soil is, pretty much, barren and there is going to be billions of babies soon enough if Shepard cured the Genophage. I wonder how long until they resort to cannibalism.

"The Reapers can be salvaged for their supertechnology! Indoctrination? What's that?"

Radiation is also very harmful to...well, pretty much everything but w have learned to safely use nuclear energy to power our cities.

Modifié par MisterJB, 03 juin 2012 - 09:09 .

[Cypher_CS]

Jassu1979 wrote...

How did this become a discussion about which ending is "better"? The relays are shut down in *every* despicable ending scenario, not just in Destroy.

Oh, sure, they may not literally explode if you pick "Control", but (according to the catalyst and the cinematics), it's pretty clear that they won't work any longer, either.

The damage caused by the explosions is (as I pointed out in the OP) irrelevant to the problem on hand. Whether the relays go "boom" or just power down - what matters is that interstellar travel is shut down, at a time when pretty much every inhabited world throughout the galaxy has been devastated by war.

Imagine that it had been impossible to transport any significant aid to Ground Zero on 9/11 and the subsequent days, and you may get a slight idea of what we're talking about here.
Imagine that New Orleans was completely cut off from the outside world when Katrina hit, with no help getting through at all.

We're talking about an apocalyptic "end of the world"-scenario here.

No we're not.
Each of those Mass Relay-less worlds has a System it resides, and a Cluster that system resides in.
The wider the circle, the more self sustaining it is.

Your examples of 9/11 and Catrina don't exactly fit, because of the lack of self sustainability.

Sure, there would be some worlds that would be cut off from all external help, even from in system - then again, those worlds would be the ones which are in small systems, with a single habitable world. So, those worlds would be both self sustaining, small and relatively untouched by Reapers cause of their insignificance at this early stage of the war.