419 réponses à ce sujet

[Warrior Craess]

rev1976 wrote...

given time? i didnt think it through? seriously my sides hurt from laughing, whats with your fascination with ground troops?
you totally miss the point of asymmetric warfare

here i'll clue you in a lil
example = palavin (this takes into account your own words "Given time enough, Capitol ships ravage a planet"

the turians and krogan are slowing the reaper destruction - as stated in game (hell the turians alone were slowing it considerably)
a small to medium fleet of citadel alliance vessels need only sit outside the system and target lone or small groups of reaper forces (especially when theyre on the ground) done right citadel alliance forces win by simple attrition of the reapers in that system. they dont need to face all the reapers there at any one time in a single battle - that is CONVENTIONAL warfare which would be stupid. they just need to choose their battles and use a force small enough to escape after mission completion yet large enough to deal with the force theyre sent to destroy (1 or 2 reapers at any one time) that is ASYMMETRIC warfare and it works regardless of groudnd based, naval, or air based warfare. in fact it works extremely damned well in a 3d environment like air based warfare just google "Carl Gustav von Rosen" and the "Biafra Baby Fleet"

and im ever so sorry for my "arrogance" in providing proof to support my statements that ASYMMETRIC warfare is possible via numerous citations of historical REAL precident when obviously i should be listening to your be all and end all exclaimation based on what? 2, maybe 3 refrences where CONVENTIONAL warfare is stated to be unwinable in a make believe context in a computer game.
your right, MY arrogance is obviously astounding in its fathomless depths. i would bow before your obvious magnificance in supplication but i dont think youd be able to see my penitential musings past your ego.

sorry top burst your bubble, but winning an asymmetrical war requires 2 things (at the least).

1 war weariness on the part of your opponent. 
2 it requires the asymmestrical force to be well supplied (usually by outside forces), and to have high mobility. 

we're not suggesting that we can not inflict casualties on the reapers. We simply can not win. 

We have vital areas that we MUST protect, these vital areas, are not mobile, and they can not hide.  They are called planets, and they contain our ability to produce food, and water, medical supplies, weapons and armor. 

Lets even grant that some of this in obital, around planets or suns not realted to high polutation densities.  They are still easy to find (especially for an enemy who can provide an unlimited amount of insider information.) and they also and not very mobile.    "Hey herb, just found out where that maunfacturing facility in delta 9 is at, it's pretty big, but mostly automated,  you ok with an asteroid strike on it"?  "sure thing, glass it."  rinse repeat until there is no infrastructure left.

Your also forgeting that there is no indigenous popoluation for us to hide in.  

The list goes on and on.  but it the end it's fairly simple, 
We have places that must be protected and we can not do so. 

[savionen]

Grifman1 wrote...

savionen wrote...

Seems like a lot of people forget one key weakness of the Reapers. Building their fleet is an extremely slow process. It could potentially take billions of humans to create a human reaper. They have a finite amount of ships.

Kind of irrelvant when:

1) You have an overwhelming advantage in numbers
2) A number of major production centers are under Reaper control (Earth, Thessia, Palaven).  No reinforecments will be built in those systems.  And given that building ships takes time, no quick reinforcements for the good guys either.

The point was that a war of attrition is potentially plausible. The Reapers can't be everywhere at all times, especially if 2/3s of their fleet was already decimated in the first major series of battles.

The Geth could also set up automated mining stations and shipyards in the middle of nowhere. Space is HUGE. Its illogical to think there's nowhere to hide from the Reapers. Sure, they'll eventually find you, but it could take years, or decades, but if the war against the Reapers is stretched out into centuries, or even millenia, the Reapers would eventually lose, because they can't recouperate their losses.


Regardless though, the real reason "conventional victory is impossible" is because the writers say so. We're not talking about a real war here. All the Alliance had to do was learn how to hack the Reapers, or find a few extra weaknesses or pieces of Reaper technology.

Modifié par savionen, 28 juin 2012 - 03:55 .

[Grifman1]

Horaciuss wrote...

Although clearly technologically superior to the Citadel forces, the
Reapers have experienced casualties in the battles across the galaxy.
This indicates that, theoretically, with the right intelligence,
weapons, and strategy, the Reapers could be defeated.

No, all it means is that they will take some losses.

Using your logic, just because the Poles inflicted some losses on the Germans invading in 1939, it means that the Poles actually could have defeated Germany in 1939 with the "right intelligence, weapons, and strategy".  Except that the Poles had none of that in 1939.

[Grifman1]

savionen wrote...
The point was that a war of attrition is potentially plausible. The Reapers can't be everywhere at all times, especially if 2/3s of their fleet was already decimated in the first major series of battles.

Attrition only works for the side with a numerical advantage.  Oops, sorry, that's the Reapers!

The Geth could also set up automated mining stations and shipyards in the middle of nowhere. Space is HUGE. Its illogical to think there's nowhere to hide from the Reapers. Sure, they'll eventually find you, but it could take years, or decades, but if the war against the Reapers is stretched out into centuries, or even millenia, the Reapers would eventually lose, becuase they can't recouperate their losses.

You have yet to show that you could inflict that level of loss on the Reapers.

[CaliGuy033]

Some pretty embarrassing logic in this thread. Just because I beat Tiger Woods in one hole of golf doesn't mean I can beat him in a 4-day tournament.

Anyway, to the OP, you only need one reason why conventional victory isn't possible: Mass Effect isn't real, and the writers who created it told you that conventional victory isn't possible. That's the end.

[savionen]

Grifman1 wrote...

The Geth could also set up automated mining stations and shipyards in the middle of nowhere. Space is HUGE. Its illogical to think there's nowhere to hide from the Reapers. Sure, they'll eventually find you, but it could take years, or decades, but if the war against the Reapers is stretched out into centuries, or even millenia, the Reapers would eventually lose, becuase they can't recouperate their losses.

You have yet to show that you could inflict that level of loss on the Reapers.

That whole argument is pointless, since nobody can even agree on how many Reapers there are. How do you want me to try and prove this?

[ArchDuck]

If we are going to be all "Nu uh you can't do that because its not realistic!". Then please explain the "realism" in shooting a tube to turn something on one way, electrocuting yourself to turn it on another way and jumping into a disintegrating beam of energy to turn it on a third way. And while your at it explain how these long lost plans have been the only piece of information successfully passed down from one cycle to the next. Then explain the "realism" in the effects on the galaxy when those magic buttons on the magic machine are used.

To illustrate my previous post's point:

Hackett: No, no, of course you can't destroy Reapers with tactics and technology like we have already seen. You must use the magic boomstick that we are building and do not understand.

Scientist #1: Are you sure we should be investing all of our resources into building this? Imagine the amount of destroyer class thanix weapons we could produce. And I think I can see a way to use the plans to provide enough power to even smaller ships so they can fire those class of weapons.

Military Guy #2: Yeah and the turian tactics sound like something we could definitely exploit. They managed to take out some of the large Reapers with no losses!

Former Cerberus Operative #3: And TIM was working on a way to scramble Reaper communications and even subvert it in the case of the husks.

Military Guy #2: Oh really? Man that would be useful. They wouldn't be coordinated in space battles and we would nullify there primary ground forces!

Scientist #1: We could really win this!

Hackett: No it is impossible.

Former Cerberus Operative #3: No I think they are right, we can do it!

Hackett: SO BE IT! *shoots them all*

Modifié par ArchDuck, 28 juin 2012 - 04:04 .

[Grifman1]

savionen wrote...

Grifman1 wrote...

The Geth could also set up automated mining stations and shipyards in the middle of nowhere. Space is HUGE. Its illogical to think there's nowhere to hide from the Reapers. Sure, they'll eventually find you, but it could take years, or decades, but if the war against the Reapers is stretched out into centuries, or even millenia, the Reapers would eventually lose, becuase they can't recouperate their losses.

You have yet to show that you could inflict that level of loss on the Reapers.

That whole argument is pointless, since nobody can even agree on how many Reapers there are. How do you want me to try and prove this?

If you don't know how many Reapers there are, then how can you even begin to argue that attrition would work?  It's your argument, not mine, it's up to you to provide evidence to support your argument., not me.

[MuckrakerElder]

Here's where I think a conventional victory could have worked or at least what I would have liked to have seen....

You get to the Catalyst and are given the usual three options. Anything less than a perfect game and you only get the refusal option.

However, if you did everything right, and got your EMS to the maximum level, the refusal option would not automatically result in losing, but let the odds of victory reach 50/50.

In essence, the player is given the choice to leave everything to chance, as it were, and let the game simply flip a coin and give the player a defeat ending, or a victory ending. So basically, you have to decide if you feel luck is on your side. Anything less, and you don't deserve the chance.

[Malditor]

If I remember correctly in London there was an officer listening to reports of losses and they ranged from 60%-100% on the squads being reported on. How can you see a possiblity of conventional victory when these types of losses are being sustained and no significant losses are being inflicted on the enemy? This is with massive support from all our allies as well, not just humans.

[Grifman1]

ArchDuck wrote...

If we are going to be all "Nu uh you can't do that because its not realistic!". Then please explain the "realism" in shooting a tube to turn something on one way, electrocuting yourself to turn it on another way and jumping into a disintegrating beam of energy to turn it on a third way. And while your at it explain how these long lost plans have been the only piece of information successfully passed down from one cycle to the next. Then explain the "realism" in the effects on the galaxy when those magic buttons on the magic machine are used

Once again, someone believes that just because some of us don't believe that a conventional victory is realistic, that we have to believe in "space magic".  Sorry, hate to tell you, I don't like/believe in space magic either.  Disbelieving in one (conventional victory)  does not logically lead to a required belief in the other (space magic).

I really wish people would stop making this illogical argument.  But I see it all the time, it's almost the argument of last resort.

[CaliGuy033]

MuckrakerElder wrote...

Here's where I think a conventional victory could have worked or at least what I would have liked to have seen....

You get to the Catalyst and are given the usual three options. Anything less than a perfect game and you only get the refusal option.

However, if you did everything right, and got your EMS to the maximum level, the refusal option would not automatically result in losing, but let the odds of victory reach 50/50.

In essence, the player is given the choice to leave everything to chance, as it were, and let the game simply flip a coin and give the player a defeat ending, or a victory ending. So basically, you have to decide if you feel luck is on your side. Anything less, and you don't deserve the chance.

This kind of stuff doesn't really work in video games.  If people coin flipped to the "bad" refusal ending, they'd just play it again until they got the "good" one.  No real point in putting it in there.

[Malditor]

savionen wrote...

Grifman1 wrote...

savionen wrote...

Seems like a lot of people forget one key weakness of the Reapers. Building their fleet is an extremely slow process. It could potentially take billions of humans to create a human reaper. They have a finite amount of ships.

Kind of irrelvant when:

1) You have an overwhelming advantage in numbers
2) A number of major production centers are under Reaper control (Earth, Thessia, Palaven).  No reinforecments will be built in those systems.  And given that building ships takes time, no quick reinforcements for the good guys either.

The point was that a war of attrition is potentially plausible. The Reapers can't be everywhere at all times, especially if 2/3s of their fleet was already decimated in the first major series of battles.

The Geth could also set up automated mining stations and shipyards in the middle of nowhere. Space is HUGE. Its illogical to think there's nowhere to hide from the Reapers. Sure, they'll eventually find you, but it could take years, or decades, but if the war against the Reapers is stretched out into centuries, or even millenia, the Reapers would eventually lose, because they can't recouperate their losses.


Regardless though, the real reason "conventional victory is impossible" is because the writers say so. We're not talking about a real war here. All the Alliance had to do was learn how to hack the Reapers, or find a few extra weaknesses or pieces of Reaper technology.

Why do you say they can't recouperate their losses? They can make new reapers as evidenced  in ME2 and they obviously can make ground troops easily enough considering their ability to make husks/marauders/banshees/brutes etc.... They can recoup losses much easier in fact.

[Jat371]

Everyone is forgetting that being unable to defeat the Reapers is inconsistent with the Mass Effect series.

Mass Effect has always been about doing the impossible. Throughout ME1 and 2 you are told by many different people, many of them your friends, that what you're trying to do is beyond you or simply impossible. Everyone tells you how Saren is such a slippery bastard and how the Alliance is totally outmatched by the Geth but you win. Everyone tells you that the Mu Relay has been totally lost to time but you find it. You orchestrate the defeat of a Reaper, something almost no one in the universe comprehends.

In Mass Effect 2 it's hammered into your head that getting through the Omega 4 Relay is impossible, no one has come back, and it's a suicide mission. But then you go and do it. Not only do you get through the relay but you survive all the Oculi, a damned Collector ship, a baby Reaper, and then neutralize a base full of unimaginable horrors. Everyone tells you the Collectors have vastly superior technology and are highly dangerous and yet you plow through scores of them.

Hackett telling you that the Reapers are impossible to defeat by conventional means is no different from being told getting through the Omega 4 Relay is impossible.

You're told all these times that the Reapers are insanely strong and everyone who isn't a Krogan is full of doubts about defeating them. This is a classic Mass Effect setup for beating impossible odds.... then it just falls flat.

[savionen]

ArchDuck wrote...

If we are going to be all "Nu uh you can't do that because its not realistic!". Then please explain the "realism" in shooting a tube to turn something on one way, electrocuting yourself to turn it on another way and jumping into a disintegrating beam of energy to turn it on a third way. And while your at it explain how these long lost plans have been the only piece of information successfully passed down from one cycle to the next. Then explain the "realism" in the effects on the galaxy when those magic buttons on the magic machine are used.

To illustrate my previous post's point:

Hackett: No, no, of course you can't destroy Reapers with tactics and technology like we have already seen. You must use the magic boomstick that we are building and do not understand.

Scientist #1: Are you sure we should be investing all of our resources into building this? Imagine the amount of destroyer class thanix weapons we could produce. And I think I can see a way to use the plans to provide enough power to even smaller ships so they can fire those class of weapons.

Military Guy #2: Yeah and the turian tactics sound like something we could definitely exploit. They managed to take out some of the large Reapers with no losses!

Former Cerberus Operative #3: And TIM was working on a way to scramble Reaper communications and even subvert it in the case of the husks.

Military Guy #2: Oh really? Man that would be useful. They wouldn't be coordinated in space battles and we would nullify there primary ground forces!

Scientist #1: We could really win this!

Hackett: No it is impossible.

Former Cerberus Operative #3: No I think they are right, we can do it!

Hackett: SO BE IT! *shoots them all*

Pretty much.

There's no way to have a logical discussion about this topic. They writers could have done anything they wanted.

Personally I felt a conventional victory was believable and possible, well, not 100% conventional. Mix in finding some new tech, the Crucible being a big gun that helped you win and a few other things. Shepard makes the impossible possible, you're told your mission is impossible a dozen times in ME1 and ME2, but suddenly this, suddenly conventional victory is impossible 90% through ME3. The only reason it is "impossible" is to force the Starkid into the story.

If the end cutscenes played out based upon your EMS, and if you finished the Crucible it added a certain amount of EMS, then it would have been completely believable IMO.

Malditor wrote...

Why do you say they can't recouperate
their losses? They can make new reapers as evidenced  in ME2 and they
obviously can make ground troops easily enough considering their ability
to make husks/marauders/banshees/brutes etc.... They can recoup losses
much easier in fact.

Ground forces don't really matter in a space battle.

Creating a new Reaper requires hundreds of millions or perhaps billions of "samples". After culling EVERYONE they only create 1-6 Reapers per cycle.

Modifié par savionen, 28 juin 2012 - 04:20 .

[CaliGuy033]

Jat371 wrote...

Everyone is forgetting that being unable to defeat the Reapers is inconsistent with the Mass Effect series.

Mass Effect has always been about doing the impossible. Throughout ME1 and 2 you are told by many different people, many of them your friends, that what you're trying to do is beyond you or simply impossible. 

No it is not.  The specific outweighs the general.  One general theme of the game has to do with overcoming odds, and that's great, but you are specifically told at several points, by several people, that you can't defeat them conventionally.  That specific point of information outweighs any general "theme."

And while you are told by Hackett that Omega is a suicide mission, it's clear that there are people (including Shepard himself) who doubt that.  There are plenty of times that some sort of quiet confidence is expressed about the Omega mission.

On the other hand, nobody in the game ever expresses doubt that the Reapers can't be beaten conventionally.  There isn't a single specific (rather than general, thematic) plot point where somebody says, "Hey, you know what, I think we might be able to do it conventionally!"  The topic is never broached at all.

Modifié par CaliGuy033, 28 juin 2012 - 04:19 .

[NM_Che56]

Conventional Warfare would not include

1) Using THE MOTHER OF ALL Thresher Maws to take down a Reaper Destroyer
2) Going into the Geth Consensus
3) Pulling a Richard Attenborough (old rich dude from Jurassic Park) with Kakliosaur DNA

Suffice it to say that "conventional warfare" exited stage left WAY before you encountered the Catalyst.

Modifié par Master Che, 28 juin 2012 - 04:20 .

[MuckrakerElder]

CaliGuy033 wrote...

MuckrakerElder wrote...

Here's where I think a conventional victory could have worked or at least what I would have liked to have seen....

You get to the Catalyst and are given the usual three options. Anything less than a perfect game and you only get the refusal option.

However, if you did everything right, and got your EMS to the maximum level, the refusal option would not automatically result in losing, but let the odds of victory reach 50/50.

In essence, the player is given the choice to leave everything to chance, as it were, and let the game simply flip a coin and give the player a defeat ending, or a victory ending. So basically, you have to decide if you feel luck is on your side. Anything less, and you don't deserve the chance.

This kind of stuff doesn't really work in video games.  If people coin flipped to the "bad" refusal ending, they'd just play it again until they got the "good" one.  No real point in putting it in there.

That could still be said for the way it is right now. Don't like destroy, go back and choose control. Don't like refusal option, go back and choose synthesis.  People should pick an ending and stay with it, but that is unrealistic, so why not have it in there anyway? I thought we were for more choice?

[NM_Che56]

OH!

And conventional warfare does not include VISIONS FROM AN MONOLITH CONSTRUCTED BY AN ADVANCED RACE OF ANCIENT BEINGS THOUGHT TO BE EXTINCT...THEN USING ONE AS A SQUADMATE!!!

RFLMAO!!! You passed conventional 1 hour into ME 1.

[savionen]

Master Che wrote...

OH!

And conventional warfare does not include VISIONS FROM AN MONOLITH CONSTRUCTED BY AN ADVANCED RACE OF ANCIENT BEINGS THOUGHT TO BE EXTINCT...THEN USING ONE AS A SQUADMATE!!!

RFLMAO!!! You passed conventional 1 hour into ME 1.

I believe conventional warfare victory, for the prupose of argument with ME3 basically includes "Anything involving the Catalyst not being a god kid or deus ex machina"

Modifié par savionen, 28 juin 2012 - 04:23 .

[ArchDuck]

Grifman1 wrote...

Once again, someone believes that just because some of us don't believe that a conventional victory is realistic, that we have to believe in "space magic".  Sorry, hate to tell you, I don't like/believe in space magic either.  Disbelieving in one (conventional victory)  does not logically lead to a required belief in the other (space magic).

I really wish people would stop making this illogical argument.  But I see it all the time, it's almost the argument of last resort.

My argument is not illogical. I am saying that if the basis for saying "conventional" war is unwinnable (conventional as in "not the crucible" not as in "actually conventional redcoat style tactics") is because it isn't "realistic" then you must apply that standard to the other endings as well and realise that the Crucible itself and its effects are not "realistic".

[Grifman1]

ArchDuck wrote...

Grifman1 wrote...

Once again, someone believes that just because some of us don't believe that a conventional victory is realistic, that we have to believe in "space magic".  Sorry, hate to tell you, I don't like/believe in space magic either.  Disbelieving in one (conventional victory)  does not logically lead to a required belief in the other (space magic).

I really wish people would stop making this illogical argument.  But I see it all the time, it's almost the argument of last resort.

My argument is not illogical. I am saying that if the basis for saying "conventional" war is unwinnable (conventional as in "not the crucible" not as in "actually conventional redcoat style tactics") is because it isn't "realistic" then you must apply that standard to the other endings as well and realise that the Crucible itself and its effects are not "realistic".

And how do you know we haven't?

[ArchDuck]

Grifman1 wrote...

ArchDuck wrote...

Grifman1 wrote...

Once again, someone believes that just because some of us don't believe that a conventional victory is realistic, that we have to believe in "space magic".  Sorry, hate to tell you, I don't like/believe in space magic either.  Disbelieving in one (conventional victory)  does not logically lead to a required belief in the other (space magic).

I really wish people would stop making this illogical argument.  But I see it all the time, it's almost the argument of last resort.

My argument is not illogical. I am saying that if the basis for saying "conventional" war is unwinnable (conventional as in "not the crucible" not as in "actually conventional redcoat style tactics") is because it isn't "realistic" then you must apply that standard to the other endings as well and realise that the Crucible itself and its effects are not "realistic".

And how do you know we haven't?

I don't. But certainly some of the posters haven't applied the same standards to all their own arguments.

[NM_Che56]

savionen wrote...

Master Che wrote...

OH!

And conventional warfare does not include VISIONS FROM AN MONOLITH CONSTRUCTED BY AN ADVANCED RACE OF ANCIENT BEINGS THOUGHT TO BE EXTINCT...THEN USING ONE AS A SQUADMATE!!!

RFLMAO!!! You passed conventional 1 hour into ME 1.

I believe conventional warfare victory, for the prupose of argument with ME3 basically includes "Anything involving the Catalyst not being a god kid or deus ex machina"

Understood, but to me that only means that the argument is flawed.

[DMWW]

Jat371 wrote...

Everyone is forgetting that being unable to defeat the Reapers is inconsistent with the Mass Effect series.

Mass Effect has always been about doing the impossible. 

It has also always been about the return of thousands of gigantic robotic killing machines with superadvanced technology that are overwhelmingly stronger than the Galaxy's conventional forces. It's been pretty obvious ever since the chat with Sovereign on Virmire that we've been living on borrowed time.