274 réponses à ce sujet

[Tritium315]

spiriticon wrote...

Tritium315 wrote...

What space magic and plot holes do the Turian Bomb or the Klendagon cannon entail?

Not to mention all the fan endings were created by FANS over the course of probably a lunch break as opposed to supposed professional writers over the course of 2 ****ing years while being paid very well for said writing. 

Friendly fire, big **** off destructive power is used and the galaxy is meant to be OK? You gonna stop friendly fire with Space magic?

The ONLY ship that is capable of outmaneuvring the Reapers is the Normandy. That is why they are the point of the arrow. You fire a turian bomb at a reaper, the resulting explosion will take all the other dreadnoughts in the vicinity down.

The Reapers have collective intelligence, like the geth. You may outsmart one but the same plan won't work twice.

Like I said earlier, but apparently you wanted to ignore that post, friendly fire can be mitigated by ensuring there are no directly lines of fire to any major planets behind the Reaper. Hell, Since the Milky Way is disc shaped you can attack the Reaper from above or below you stand a good chance of not hitting any major planets even if you don't check for them. In a 3d galaxy there are an infinite number of angles of attack; you don't have to just unload onto the Reapers with Earth directly behind them.

Additionally, even Turian Dreadnaughts are capable of outmaneuvering Reapers, as evidenced in the Battle of Palaven. Small frigates could be loaded with Turian Bombs, make precision jumps into the middle of Reaper fleets, and then kamikazed into the nearest Reaper.

Either of these ideas are far less plot hole filled and require a great deal less space magic than the Crucible and Catalyst do.

[v TricKy v]

The Angry One wrote...

spiriticon wrote...

The Angry One wrote...

Then again we don't see any ships do much except for Alliance cruisers randomly throwing shots everywhere like it was a fireworks display.
Oh and remaining perfectly motionless so Reapers can fly up and hug them.

While it's perfectly ok for a Reaper to remain motionless while you fire a Turian bomb or Klendagon Cannon at them....

ugh...

Since Reapers move slowly and can't turn for ****, what is the problem exactly?
Makes more sense than cruisers just sitting there and not firing their thanix cannons even when Reapers are right in front of them.

It looks like the Normandy is the only ship in the galaxy that can actually move. Every other ship just sits there and thinks "Oh s**t" while getting blasted by a big capital ship that is only 100 meters away from them.

[spiriticon]

Tritium315 wrote...

Like I said earlier, but apparently you wanted to ignore that post, friendly fire can be mitigated by ensuring there are no directly lines of fire to any major planets behind the Reaper. Hell, Since the Milky Way is disc shaped you can attack the Reaper from above or below you stand a good chance of not hitting any major planets even if you don't check for them. In a 3d galaxy there are an infinite number of angles of attack; you don't have to just unload onto the Reapers with Earth directly behind them.

Additionally, even Turian Dreadnaughts are capable of outmaneuvering Reapers, as evidenced in the Battle of Palaven. Small frigates could be loaded with Turian Bombs, make precision jumps into the middle of Reaper fleets, and then kamikazed into the nearest Reaper.

Either of these ideas are far less plot hole filled and require a great deal less space magic than the Crucible and Catalyst do.

I din't ignore it. It was silly since so then you can't fire the weapon unless you have a perfect line of sight. Your odds are not good.

[The Angry One]

v TricKy v wrote...

It looks like the Normandy is the only ship in the galaxy that can actually move. Every other ship just sits there and thinks "Oh s**t" while getting blasted by a big capital ship that is only 100 meters away from them.

You know, even War of the Worlds (the book) which is all about the hopeless struggle and survival against vastly superior technology has the Thunderchild scene, where the ship manages to take down a Martian tripod before being instantly sunk.
Now in that case, it's a hopeless battle and you feel the hopelessness because that ship and it's crew did their best and it still wasn't enough.

That's not the feeling when I watch ME3's battles. I don't feel they're doing they're best. I feel they're being incompetent idiots. Hell, the one Sovereign they manage to take down looks more like it was destroyed by sheer luck and even then it manages to kill another cruiser that's, of course, just sitting there doing nothing.

[Aloren]

Naerivar wrote...
I'm not saying that there is a very large chance to win. Hell, I don't even know if it would be possible. But you can't just put all the numbers of both sites together and then cross out the same values. One thing all these people seem to forget is that not all Reapers are in the same place. You hardly fight them with 20,000 at a time.

As long as you can make use of the Relay Network (and we could in ME3) you can go to places where the Reaper density is low. I'd figure that a group of 20 dreadnoughts could easily take out 3 or 4 Reapers without too much counterdamage.

That is not even thinking about alternate strategies, making use of the Reapers inability to turn fast and keep up their shields. Hiding in asteroid fields, fling said asteroids at Reapers, invent new types of warfare that is better suited to get through a Reapers shield (when sovereign's  shield was down he was pretty much ended by a single shot of the Normandy).

I can even give you a way to guarentee that there will be a hell of a lot survivors for the next cycles. People who have a reasonable chance of immediatly starting preparing for the next invasion.

I'm not saying it's easy or even possible to beat the Reapers. but you shouldn't just stare blindly onto the numbers.

Well, maybe the reapers are not all in the same place, but we basically are when we attack those above Earth, and yet it didn't look like a victory at all... We broke 2 arms on one of them (that still shoots afterwards) and with luck destroyed a few offscreen with all our firepower combined. Most of them were still intact, not to mention the rest of them still destroying the rest of the galaxy.

Now, let's say you're right and that our Dreadnoughts could easily outmanoeuver capital Reapers (which remains to be seen) and hide in Asteroid fields to surprise small group of reapers and manage to do it with few casualties. How many groups of Dreadnoughts could we make ? How long would it take for the Reapers to start avoiding asteroid fields? How many times would it work before reapers start regrouping in larger groups ? How would our dreadnought escape the swarms of small reaper fighters in an asteroid field ? How many hundred additional dreadnoughts would we need to build in emergency to even stand a chance ? How long could we hide the spaceyard that's building them before an endoctrinated scientist reveals its position ? (you could say we managed to build the crucible, but maybe it is part of the cycle, and they let us build it)

I agree it would have been nice if the game gave us a chance to defeat them conventionally, but it would need a lot more than a clever strategy 
(though they could have at least given us a better cinematic in the refuse ending) . As of today, giving us a chance to defeat them conventionally with what we have would be a lot less coherent than the crucible some of you hate so much. You don't sink an aircraft carrier with a bunch of Toyota Prius.

Now if the Leviathan DLC is a full expansion that allows us to build reaper-like dreadnoughts while being concealed from the other reapers thanks to Leviathan's own separate indoctrination, dreadnoughts we could use later as part of Sword to destroy the lot (or most) of them in a refuse ending (including the Citadel and Shepard, so that BW can keep their destroy canon ending) that would be great. But until then, I really don't see how a conventionnal victory would be possible.

[Tritium315]

spiriticon wrote...

Tritium315 wrote...

Like I said earlier, but apparently you wanted to ignore that post, friendly fire can be mitigated by ensuring there are no directly lines of fire to any major planets behind the Reaper. Hell, Since the Milky Way is disc shaped you can attack the Reaper from above or below you stand a good chance of not hitting any major planets even if you don't check for them. In a 3d galaxy there are an infinite number of angles of attack; you don't have to just unload onto the Reapers with Earth directly behind them.

Additionally, even Turian Dreadnaughts are capable of outmaneuvering Reapers, as evidenced in the Battle of Palaven. Small frigates could be loaded with Turian Bombs, make precision jumps into the middle of Reaper fleets, and then kamikazed into the nearest Reaper.

Either of these ideas are far less plot hole filled and require a great deal less space magic than the Crucible and Catalyst do.

I din't ignore it. It was silly since so then you can't fire the weapon unless you have a perfect line of sight. Your odds are not good.

That makes literally no sense. In space you have nothing but line of sight; you can approach from any angle you want.

[Baronesa]

spiriticon wrote...

The Angry One wrote...

Since Reapers move slowly and can't turn for ****, what is the problem exactly?
Makes more sense than cruisers just sitting there and not firing their thanix cannons even when Reapers are right in front of them.

They move at FTL speeds dude.

The only time they are slow is when they are nearing a planet ready to do some harvesting, and in that situation you can't fire planet destructing weapons at them without hitting the damn planet.

They can't move fast when they have the shields up. As long a they have the shields up, their mobility is worse than that of our ships.

Codex entry:

Reaper Vulnerabilities

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.

Unlike the mass effect relays that they created, Reapers do not have quantum shields. Locking itself down at a quantum level would leave a Reaper unaware of its surroundings until the shielding deactivated. Instead, Reapers rely on kinetic barriers.

In the case of a Reaper capital ship, these kinetic barriers can hold off the firepower of two dreadnoughts simultaneously, but three clearly causes strain, and four typically results in destruction. Weapons designed to maximize heat damage, such as the Thanix series, show better results against the Reapers than pure kinetic impacts.

The barriers of a Reaper destroyer are less formidable than those of a capital ship. It is possible for a single cruiser or many fighters to disable or demolish a destroyer if they can get within range before they are themselves destroyed.

The Reapers' energy sources are not infinite. For example, to land on a planet, a Reaper must substantially reduce its mass. This transfer of power to its mass effect generators leaves the Reaper's kinetic barriers at only partial strength.

Sovereign was destroyed while assuming direct control over Saren. The feedback from Saren's death seemed to entirely overload Sovereign's shields. Current Reapers do not seem to suffer from this design flaw.

Reaper capital ships can turn faster than Citadel dreadnoughts, but to do so, they must lower their mass to a level unacceptable in combat situations. Consequently, it is possible for a dreadnought to emerge from FTL travel behind a capital ship, then bring its guns to bear faster than the Reaper can return fire. This is a poor tactic, however, against Reapers flying in proper formation.

Modifié par Baronesa, 13 juillet 2012 - 12:36 .

[Shaigunjoe]

Before the end, I don't think there is nearly enough data to say either way, conclusively, whether or not conventional ending is possible. Hackett seems to not think so, and he is running the show apparently.

The only data we have is the refusal ending, which seems pretty clear that you can't win conventionally.

[spiriticon]

Tritium315 wrote...

spiriticon wrote...

Tritium315 wrote...

Like I said earlier, but apparently you wanted to ignore that post, friendly fire can be mitigated by ensuring there are no directly lines of fire to any major planets behind the Reaper. Hell, Since the Milky Way is disc shaped you can attack the Reaper from above or below you stand a good chance of not hitting any major planets even if you don't check for them. In a 3d galaxy there are an infinite number of angles of attack; you don't have to just unload onto the Reapers with Earth directly behind them.

Additionally, even Turian Dreadnaughts are capable of outmaneuvering Reapers, as evidenced in the Battle of Palaven. Small frigates could be loaded with Turian Bombs, make precision jumps into the middle of Reaper fleets, and then kamikazed into the nearest Reaper.

Either of these ideas are far less plot hole filled and require a great deal less space magic than the Crucible and Catalyst do.

I din't ignore it. It was silly since so then you can't fire the weapon unless you have a perfect line of sight. Your odds are not good.

That makes literally no sense. In space you have nothing but line of sight; you can approach from any angle you want.

In a space war there's literally billions of things in 3D. Not too mention planets, and the planets behind it, and moons and the stars behind it.

To fire a round that would basically travel the universe for an eternity and hit nothing of note you would need to be in a very special place, at a very special time.

Not only that. You need the reaper to be in that special place and special time. Hell you need all of them to be in situtation to beat them.

[Shaigunjoe]

spiriticon wrote...

Tritium315 wrote...

spiriticon wrote...

Tritium315 wrote...

Like I said earlier, but apparently you wanted to ignore that post, friendly fire can be mitigated by ensuring there are no directly lines of fire to any major planets behind the Reaper. Hell, Since the Milky Way is disc shaped you can attack the Reaper from above or below you stand a good chance of not hitting any major planets even if you don't check for them. In a 3d galaxy there are an infinite number of angles of attack; you don't have to just unload onto the Reapers with Earth directly behind them.

Additionally, even Turian Dreadnaughts are capable of outmaneuvering Reapers, as evidenced in the Battle of Palaven. Small frigates could be loaded with Turian Bombs, make precision jumps into the middle of Reaper fleets, and then kamikazed into the nearest Reaper.

Either of these ideas are far less plot hole filled and require a great deal less space magic than the Crucible and Catalyst do.

I din't ignore it. It was silly since so then you can't fire the weapon unless you have a perfect line of sight. Your odds are not good.

That makes literally no sense. In space you have nothing but line of sight; you can approach from any angle you want.

In a space war there's literally billions of things in 3D. Not too mention planets, and the planets behind it, and moons and the stars behind it.

To fire a round that would basically travel the universe for an eternity and hit nothing of note you would need to be in a very special place, at a very special time.

Not only that. You need the reaper to be in that special place and special time. Hell you need all of them to be in situtation to beat them.

There is also gravity in space, things do not move in a straight line once you fire them.

[v TricKy v]

The arguing about casualties is a mood point anyways. So who cares if that shot impacts in 10.000 years on a remote planet? If the reapers succeed most people will be dead so its only logical to take the risk.

[spiriticon]

So you're OK with mass genocide in this case? But when BioWare kills off EDI and the geth you're going "OH THE HORRORS"?

It doesn't even make sense.

[Naerivar]

Aloren wrote...

Well, maybe the reapers are not all in the same place, but we basically are when we attack those above Earth, and yet it didn't look like a victory at all... We broke 2 arms on one of them (that still shoots afterwards) and with luck destroyed a few offscreen with all our firepower combined. Most of them were still intact, not to mention the rest of them still destroying the rest of the galaxy.

Now, let's say you're right and that our Dreadnoughts could easily outmanoeuver capital Reapers (which remains to be seen) and hide in Asteroid fields to surprise small group of reapers and manage to do it with few casualties. How many groups of Dreadnoughts could we make ? How long would it take for the Reapers to start avoiding asteroid fields? How many times would it work before reapers start regrouping in larger groups ? How would our dreadnought escape the swarms of small reaper fighters in an asteroid field ? How many hundred additional dreadnoughts would we need to build in emergency to even stand a chance ? How long could we hide the spaceyard that's building them before an endoctrinated scientist reveals its position ? (you could say we managed to build the crucible, but maybe it is part of the cycle, and they let us build it)

I agree it would have been nice if the game gave us a chance to defeat them conventionally, but it would need a lot more than a clever strategy 
(though they could have at least given us a better cinematic in the refuse ending) . As of today, giving us a chance to defeat them conventionally with what we have would be a lot less coherent than the crucible some of you hate so much. You don't sink an aircraft carrier with a bunch of Toyota Prius.

Now if the Leviathan DLC is a full expansion that allows us to build reaper-like dreadnoughts while being concealed from the other reapers thanks to Leviathan's own separate indoctrination, dreadnoughts we could use later as part of Sword to destroy the lot (or most) of them in a refuse ending (including the Citadel and Shepard, so that BW can keep their destroy canon ending) that would be great. But until then, I really don't see how a conventionnal victory would be possible.

Well, attacking them full force above earth was really ludicrous. If we didn't have the crucible it would have been senseless.

Most of all, I'd like to get rid of the notion that only dreadnoughts have a chance against Reapers. Sure, you'd need a lot of cruisers, but they are far more manouverable.

The questions you ask are all good ones. And I won't say that I know the answer to all of them. there are however a few things to note.
- pull everybody in the war. Put refugees to work, stop usless jobs like store clerics etc.
- built as many ships as you can, size is not really important, as long as it can carry a thanix gun.
- as soon as the Reapers evade a system, get the hell out of there. preferably before.

Start pilfering off Reapers that are solitary and in small groups. When this start working they will pull together, of course. But there is a problem. If they all group together they can't control all the systems. And if they want to control all the systems they're too thinly spread (of course, this depends on the number of systems. If the Reaper's numbers are enough to put 50 Reapers in every system, then we're pretty much toast).

Flood the Reapers with information, sent beacons to every planet you can find, duplicate messages from real shipyards/mining facilities/fuel centres. Set traps, set traps in traps in traps. Find ways to exterminate a lot of Reapers are the same time. hell, blow up the Charon relay if you want. Try the same with every other Relay in a system with more than a certain amount of Reapers.

Create minefields of magnetic nukes near Relays (if the mines merely float they'll pass the Reapers shields, since kinetic barriers only stop things at high enough speeds). I'm reasonably sure that a Reaper wouldn't like a nuclear explosion upon its hull.

The Quarian fleet managed 300 years without any solid base. This means that it's possible to manouver fueling stations. Do that. Always be on the move, don't let yourself be pinned down and don't plan for more than a jump ahead.

These are only a few examples I can come up with. I'm sure that people can find others that have atleast a chance of working. The strength of the Reapers is their lack of supply lines. This also means that they're stuck at fighting one way. They are to arrogant to evolve, to start using new weapons, tactics. Once you find tactics to minimalize their damage (e.g. flying BEHIND the Reaper as you shoot it). and find ways to maximize your own damage (There is no friction in space guys, any weapon fired will continue with the same speed until it hits something or gets caught in a gravity well.). Due to our manouverability we can dance outside their effective weapon range (e.g. we can evade pretty much anything they shoot at us), while their slow manouvers keep them in ours. Use that to seperate them, or even those occuli from the rest.

There is so much possible in space, so much can be achieved when everybody pulls their weight and tries their best. Do you know what the Allies did in WW II? They wanted to land on several places in France, but of course all harbours were taken over by the Germans. What did they do? They created special ships and managed to make their own portable harbour at a French beach.
The logistic horror behind that makes me shiver. But it's possible.

Shaigunjoe wrote...
There is also gravity in space, things do not move in a straight line once you fire them.

That's why you have targeting computers for calculating the optimal trajectory. We humans think way to linearly. Computers do not.

spiriticon wrote...
So you're OK with mass genocide in this case? But when BioWare kills off EDI and the geth you're going "OH THE HORRORS"?

It doesn't even make sense.

Your reply doesn't make sense either. We're talking about two different situations. Either you built the crucible, meet the catalyst and get to choose.
Or you don't built it, have no clue about the Catalyst and accept that in a war there will be casualties. There is a large difference between RISKING a group of lives or ABSOLUTELY terminating them.

Modifié par Naerivar, 13 juillet 2012 - 01:19 .

[BDelacroix]

You know, it was once thought that nobody could defeat the **** war machine. (does that invoke Godwin's law?)

The crossbow was once said to be the ultimate weapon of mass destruction once that would bring down civilization.

The armored knight was nigh impossible to defeat (at one time).

Imagine the thoughts going through the minds of the soldiers in the trenches during world war 1 when the tank first arrived on the scene.

Very difficult is not the same as impossible.

[spiriticon]

Naerivar wrote...

spiriticon wrote...
So you're OK with mass genocide in this case? But when BioWare kills off EDI and the geth you're going "OH THE HORRORS"?

It doesn't even make sense.

Your reply doesn't make sense either. We're talking about two different situations. Either you built the crucible, meet the catalyst and get to choose.
Or you don't built it, have no clue about the Catalyst and accept that in a war there will be casualties. There is a large difference between RISKING a group of lives or ABSOLUTELY terminating them.

Before meeting the catalyst, the Crucible was nothing more than a risk too. Only upon meeting the Catalyst do you know that Edi and the Geth are Terminated.

You either risk that you can come up with a solid counterattack plan, or you risk that the Crucible could indeed do it's job.

Keep in mind the Reapers made the first move of ambushing the galaxies. They have blindsided us.  That's their MO.  You need a plan which does not require centuries of preparations. You need the fastest option that is available to you.

[Naerivar]

spiriticon wrote...

Naerivar wrote...

spiriticon wrote...
So you're OK with mass genocide in this case? But when BioWare kills off EDI and the geth you're going "OH THE HORRORS"?

It doesn't even make sense.

Your reply doesn't make sense either. We're talking about two different situations. Either you built the crucible, meet the catalyst and get to choose.
Or you don't built it, have no clue about the Catalyst and accept that in a war there will be casualties. There is a large difference between RISKING a group of lives or ABSOLUTELY terminating them.

Before meeting the catalyst, the Crucible was nothing more than a risk too. Only upon meeting the Catalyst do you know that Edi and the Geth are Terminated.

You either risk that you can come up with a solid counterattack plan, or you risk that the Crucible could indeed do it's job.

Keep in mind the Reapers made the first move of ambushing the galaxies. They have blindsided us.  That's their MO.  You need a plan which does not require centuries of preparations. You need the fastest option that is available to you.

And the most reliable, which is not using age old plans for a supposed superweapon, of which we do not know if it works or what it does. But of which we do know that it didn't work for the protheans, who were more advanced than we were.

We also know that what we assumed was prothean often came out as Reaper made (Mass effect drives, Citadel, Relays, Omega). So using a new and unkown object that could do basically everything, that could be Reaper tech, is completely insane.

[spiriticon]

Naerivar wrote...

And the most reliable, which is not using age old plans for a supposed superweapon, of which we do not know if it works or what it does. But of which we do know that it didn't work for the protheans, who were more advanced than we were.

We also know that what we assumed was prothean often came out as Reaper made (Mass effect drives, Citadel, Relays, Omega). So using a new and unkown object that could do basically everything, that could be Reaper tech, is completely insane.

It didn't work for the Protheans because they didn't complete it. Not because they tried the complete version and failed.

I'm not a big fan of the Catalyst plot device, I've said it many times before. But I'm not a believer of the conventional victory either without the use of a superweapon.

What is known is that beating the Reapers is near impossible when everything is prepared. Beating them when everyone is in a flying panic cause they've blindsided us and destroyed a part of our forces already is, IMO, impossible.

So i'd take a chance at the Crucible. It's the most sensible thing.

Modifié par spiriticon, 13 juillet 2012 - 01:39 .

[Tritium315]

spiriticon wrote...


In a space war there's literally billions of things in 3D. Not too mention planets, and the planets behind it, and moons and the stars behind it.

To fire a round that would basically travel the universe for an eternity and hit nothing of note you would need to be in a very special place, at a very special time.

Not only that. You need the reaper to be in that special place and special time. Hell you need all of them to be in situtation to beat them.

Except you don't need to avoid everything, you just need to make sure you don't hit any important planets. Who cares if you hit a star or some random moon or gas giant. There are maybe 100 planets in the entire galaxy with sizable populations, and even that's stretching it.

It's basically the exact opposite of what you said. The Reaper would have to be in a very special place, at a very special time, for there to be literally no safe angles of attack.

[BloatedStew]

These Turian bombs are not as impressive as many seem to believe. If you let the bomb blow on Tuchanka it kills off everything in a 500 kilometer diameter from its detonation point. It does not even come close to destroying a planet. Considering Tuchanka has a radius of 8,293 km, or a surface area of 104160 km (surface area of a sphere is 4 pi r squared) This "planet killer" bomb only destroyed .4% of Tuchanka. These "planet destroying" bombs are a little exaggerated. It must also be understood that the atmosphere of a planet would help increase the over-pressure of such a bomb, space being a vacuum would seriously decrease the "effective" range of this explosion. Seeing as an Everest class dreadnoughts main gun hits with a force of 38 kilotons these bombs would be a waste unless a massive number of them could be deployed at once and the reapers shields were down. Now if the reapers have no shields and are not bothering to employ evasive maneuvers it would probably be easier to just shoot them with the cannons that are part of most military ships in the Mass Effect universe.

[spiriticon]

Tritium315 wrote...


Except you don't need to avoid everything, you just need to make sure you don't hit any important planets. Who cares if you hit a star or some random moon or gas giant. There are maybe 100 planets in the entire galaxy with sizable populations, and even that's stretching it.

It's basically the exact opposite of what you said. The Reaper would have to be in a very special place, at a very special time, for there to be literally no safe angles of attack.

The round doesn't stop at the end of the galaxy.

A shot fired from Earth could obliterate some asari colony near Thessia. A round fired from Thessia could hit Earth.

You are basically limiting yourself to when you can fire the bullet at 'certain angles'. Say this gun could be fitted onto a ship (which it can't because the round needed to disable the reaper is bigger than the ship in the first place, unless space magic), then your angles would constantly be changing while you are maneuvring the ship inside out, upside down and what have you.

The window of opportunity of firing the weapon is small. And the Reapers would eat you alive.

[Brovikk Rasputin]

BDelacroix wrote...

You know, it was once thought that nobody could defeat the **** war machine. (does that invoke Godwin's law?)

The crossbow was once said to be the ultimate weapon of mass destruction once that would bring down civilization.

The armored knight was nigh impossible to defeat (at one time).

Imagine the thoughts going through the minds of the soldiers in the trenches during world war 1 when the tank first arrived on the scene.

Very difficult is not the same as impossible.

The difference is that all of that was real life, and Mass Effect is a videogame created by Bioware. They make the rules.

[DistantUtopia]

just goes to show there's a huge disconnect between the writers. One guy says "Oh, we can't beat them." Another says "3-1 can do it."

So who's right?

[Tritium315]

spiriticon wrote...

Tritium315 wrote...


Except you don't need to avoid everything, you just need to make sure you don't hit any important planets. Who cares if you hit a star or some random moon or gas giant. There are maybe 100 planets in the entire galaxy with sizable populations, and even that's stretching it.

It's basically the exact opposite of what you said. The Reaper would have to be in a very special place, at a very special time, for there to be literally no safe angles of attack.

The round doesn't stop at the end of the galaxy.

A shot fired from Earth could obliterate some asari colony near Thessia. A round fired from Thessia could hit Earth.

You are basically limiting yourself to when you can fire the bullet at 'certain angles'. Say this gun could be fitted onto a ship (which it can't because the round needed to disable the reaper is bigger than the ship in the first place, unless space magic), then your angles would constantly be changing while you are maneuvring the ship inside out, upside down and what have you.

The window of opportunity of firing the weapon is small. And the Reapers would eat you alive.

Like I said, there are only so many planets that would have to be avoided in the whole galaxy. Even if there were a thousand it would be easy enough to program it into a targeting computer to figure safe firing angles. If the round makes it out of the galaxy is it possible it will **** up someone's day in a different galaxy? Yea, but **** happens. You can't really worry about intergalactic matters in a story centered around one galaxy; just like you can't worry about aliens in a story based in medieval Europe.

As for the size of the weapon; all we know is that the rounds it fires are a great deal more desctructive than conventional ones. It's entirely possible that whatever ancient civilzation created the gun had developed mass effect fields that were capable of projecting rounds at far greater velocities. If they could figure out a way to fire a shell at just 10 times the speed it would have 100 times the destructive force.

Concerning whether that's space magic or not; no more so than the concept of mass effect fields in general. Since the mass effect has already been established in the ME universe one could hardly equate it with the space magic presented by Synthesis (how exactly do you make a PROGRAM organic).

Finally, in relation to the constant need to maneuver; that wouldn't be as large an issue as you suggest. As the codex has shown us, Dreadnoughts are capable of FTLing near Reapers and hitting them before the Reapers can turn around. With a weapon that one shots said Reapers I'm sure even you can see how that'd spell bad news for them. Not to mention these guns would have astronomical effective ranges of engagement, especially if they benefit from greater velocities.

[spiriticon]

DistantUtopia wrote...

just goes to show there's a huge disconnect between the writers. One guy says "Oh, we can't beat them." Another says "3-1 can do it."

So who's right?

It might be possible if there were centuries of preparations and you got a huge slice of luck.

Unfortunately nobody even believed the Reapers were real until the **** hit the fan in ME3. There's a lot of retconning to be done if a meticulously planned conventional victory is possible.

[DistantUtopia]

spiriticon wrote...

DistantUtopia wrote...

just goes to show there's a huge disconnect between the writers. One guy says "Oh, we can't beat them." Another says "3-1 can do it."

So who's right?

It might be possible if there were centuries of preparations and you got a huge slice of luck.

Unfortunately nobody even believed the Reapers were real until the **** hit the fan in ME3. There's a lot of retconning to be done if a meticulously planned conventional victory is possible.

No argument there.  I"m just giving examples why the "Reaper shields are impervious" isn't necessarily true; poor communication between BW's writers.