173 réponses à ce sujet

[Ticonderoga117]

RussianZombeh wrote...

The fact that ONE REAPER (Sovereign) was able to nearly completely desimate the Citadel fleets, and cripple the Alliance shows that conventional victory is impossible.

You can even see throughout ME3, over the course of a month or two - the Reapers take over HALF THE GALAXY. Their lasers can tear through a dreadnought in SECONDS. Their shields are near-indestructable.

I honestly don't know how you people can believe a conventional victory is possible. The Reapers can cripple the Galaxy in a month, and you believe conventional victory is possible?

THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS CONVENTIONAL VICTORY YOU FOOLS.

Oh, and it totally wasn't the large Geth fleet doing all the damage.
Nor did the Alliance only lose 8 ships. (A pitance)
Nor did we get better weapons.
Nor did we find out thier one main advantage in space.

Conventionaly victory is only not possible because BioWare's lead writer decided that he didn't care about ME1 and ME2.

[ZLurps]

Ticonderoga117 wrote...

RussianZombeh wrote...

The fact that ONE REAPER (Sovereign) was able to nearly completely desimate the Citadel fleets, and cripple the Alliance shows that conventional victory is impossible.

You can even see throughout ME3, over the course of a month or two - the Reapers take over HALF THE GALAXY. Their lasers can tear through a dreadnought in SECONDS. Their shields are near-indestructable.

I honestly don't know how you people can believe a conventional victory is possible. The Reapers can cripple the Galaxy in a month, and you believe conventional victory is possible?

THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS CONVENTIONAL VICTORY YOU FOOLS.

Oh, and it totally wasn't the large Geth fleet doing all the damage.
Nor did the Alliance only lose 8 ships. (A pitance)
Nor did we get better weapons.
Nor did we find out thier one main advantage in space.

Conventionaly victory is only not possible because BioWare's lead writer decided that he didn't care about ME1 and ME2.

Nor you read the thread.

[JShepppp]

I made a post a while back about why it isn't possible, and it's not just because we're told that. It's hardwired into the game.

It's not just because the Reapers have a track record or whatnot, nor it is because Hackett said so. I've copied and pasted what I wrote because it's long and I'm too lazy to type it all up again.

JShepppp wrote...

UPDATE: This is a post
that I made before the EC came out discussing the impossibility of
conventional victory and why the Crucible was the only option. Due to a
lot of "conventional victory" threads popping up after the EC came out,
rather than repeatedly quote this (as I've been doing), I've bumped it
for visibility and judgment in the wake of the Refusal Ending.

Many
people say the Refusal Ending should've allowed for conventional
victory given a high enough EMS. In this post I wrote some time back, I
would humbly like to suggest that such is impossible, and NOT just
because the writers tell us. It is in the game lore, Codex, and
everything.

It is a long read, but I put some time and effort
into researching, analyzing, and extrapolating, so I believe you may
find it worth the time.

This thread used to be named "Why the Crucible may really be the only way to defeat the Reapers".

This OP remains unedited besides what's in white text (in this box) from the time it was originally posted.

TL;DR: The Crucible is the only way to defeat the Reapers.

Hi
everyone. I've seen a lot of posts and threads over the forums
discussing defeating Reapers without the Crucible, either with
conventional (ship-to-ship) or unconventional ("creative") warfare. I've
been in touch with a few people on the forums and have read through a
few different threads that I'll link. These threads have great ideas in
them and go to some lengths to adequately prove their ideas, so check
them out if you have time. I will be drawing upon them in a
comprehensive way. 

For the purposes of discussion, I will try to
look at everything assuming that the state of the galaxy is the "best"
to fight the Reapers. This means that the Geth and Quarians are united,
and the Turians, Krogan, and Salarians (*gasp* genophage sabotage) are
with you, and the Asari too. And of course the other non-Council races
such as the elcor, hanar, volus, etc. to the degree of information we
have about them. 

I will be
liberal with Allied Fleet numbers and conservative with Reaper numbers,
resulting in comparisons that will be inflated in the Allied Fleet's
best interests. If the Reapers can't be defeated with such inflated numbers, then they can't be defeated with the "real" numbers.

The
crux of the thread is that the Reapers are an unconventional force that
cannot be defeated in any kind of warfare save the deus ex machinima
that is the Crucible. In my usual fashion, I will split this OP into
sections. I've now included a TL;DR after each section title so you can
just read up here if you'd like. If you disagree, however, please read
the entire section to see where I'm coming from. 

Contents (TL;DR too):

I. The Moron Premise: We will assume in this thread that Reapers are not as moronic as they seem in ME3. 
II. The Allied Fleet: Organics, at most, have the effective capability of 170 dreadnoughts. 
III. The Reaper Fleet: The Reapers, at a minimum, have 295 Sovereign-class ships. 
IV. Non-Capital Ships: Cruisers/destroyers and figheters/occuli will be considered negligible.
V. Reapers Defeated: We've been lucky in our successes so far. 
VI.
Reaper Weaknesses: The Reapers have zero conventional weaknesses; in
order to hurt the Reapers' war efforts, we simply must kill Reapers. 
VII. Conventional Warfare: We will lose this way. 
VIII.
Unconventional Warfare: These tactics will either not work or will hurt
us more than they hurt the Reapers and are not viable tactics. 
IX. The Crucible: The Crucible is the only way to defeat the Reapers. 
X. Links: Links to other threads, Codex entries, sources, etc.

WARNING: This thread will be very long and may be "technical" to the point of overkill.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I. The Moron Premise

Despite
ME1 and ME2 and what common sense may dictate, we see, on the surface,
something in ME3 that I would like to call the Moron Premise for obvious
reasons. 

The Moron Premise: This is the premise that all Reapers are, in-game, morons. 

Part
of this is due to the purposes of plot, gameplay, etc., but there are
some disturbing instances here and there. The Tuchanka Reaper could have
simply lifted off ground for a better angle and scorched the dirt until
it was glass. The Rannoch Reaper could at least have angled its laser
horizontally versus vertically. The Reaper Fleet at Earth could have
targeted the Crucible simultaneously with their
hyper-accurate-long-distance-molten-metal-beam-guns and destroyed it
before it was game over. We can create a list on and on of how "smart"
Reapers would have obliterated the resistance effort at several
instances.

One of the most baffling things is not taking control
of the Citadel at all until they learn that the Crucible is nearly
complete. They could have taken the Citadel after the Batarians,
Arcturus, Earth, Palaven, Thessia, etc. by storming it with just a few
capital ships (we don't see any actual Citadel defense fleets, but we
know the fleets are already spread thin at homeworlds). 

Then they could arguably turn the relays on/off. That would give a Game Over screen pretty fast. 

The
reason for the experimental validity of the Moron Premise is for
gameplay and story reasons. For the sake of discussion, however, it
would be better to assume the Reapers are at least as smart as us.
Trying to predict smarter-than-human tactics is almost oxymoronic for
our efforts. 

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

II. The Allied Fleet

I'm
going to attempt to calculate the "effective dreadnought capability" of
the Allied Fleet for the purposes of battling Sovereign-class Reapers.
This section will be devoted to coming up with a number that we see will
be grossly inflated in the face of ambiguity. 

We have a Codex entry that gives us the amount of Council dreadnoughts before the Reaper invasion:

Turian = 39
Asari = 20
Salarian = 16
Human = 9
Volus (but under Turian command) = 1

Together,
this gives us 85 dreadnoughts. The Elcor and Hanar are never said to
have any dreadnoughts. The Geth and Quarians, however, are very capable
fighting forces we must take into account. 

We know from the
in-game description of the War Assets that the Geth "built almost as
many dreadnoughts as the Turians". Let's give them the benefit of the
doubt here and assume they built exactly as many - 39 dreadnoughts.

Now
for the Quarians. While there are 50 000 ships, the Civilian Fleet is
unequipped for fighting really and remains back at Rannoch after the
priority mission. Only the Patrol Fleet and Heavy Fleet are sent around.
Sending the Civilian Fleet into battle is a desperate last-ditch
attempt; we will treat them as civilians in war here and will assume
that they, like other civilians, won't really be fighting. The numbers
will end up being inflated anyways to overcompensate. 

So we have the Patrol Fleet and Heavy Fleet. The Patrol Fleet has only "light frigates and fighters" while the Havy Fleet has "heavy frigates and advanced fighter squadrons". There are no dreadnoughts. 

But
clearly they are effective in battle. We should try to come up with an
equivalent number of dreadnoughts that their fleet "effectively" has.
The Rannoch Reaper fight will be ignored here because it does not fit in
with Reaper lore (more on that in Part IV). 

I know War Assets
are heavily flawed, but I don't see a better way to infer the Quarians'
capability here. From the ME Wiki, the War Assets of the Heavy Fleet +
Patrol Fleet can be at a maximum of around 525. The Geth Fleet is at
about 450. Now the Geth Fleet is a "pure" measure of military capability
as it contains the entire fleet (versus "2nd Fleet", "6th Fleet",
"Person X", etc.) so for the sake of getting a number let's use a
conversion rate. 

Geth Dreadnoughts / "Effective" Quarian Dreadnoughts = Geth Fleet War Assets / Quarian Fleet War Assets

39 / Q = 450 / 525 --> Q = 45.5. 

Let's
round up to 46. Notice how inflated this number is - it implies the
Quarians are vastly superior to the rest of the organics in terms of
military capability. But for the purposes of discussion, I'm going to go
with it because showing Allied Forces can't win with inflated numbers
means they can't win with their "real" numbers. 

So we have a total of 170 "dreadnoughts" in the Allied Fleet at maximum. This does not include dreadnoughts already lost, which I don't have specific numbers for. 

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

III. The Reaper Fleet

Determining
the number of Sovereign-class ships (hereafter referred to as Sovvys)
will be an intellectual exercise. Our sanity's saving grace, however, is
that we merely need to take the minimum number. There are 3 main ways
to estimate this based on "facts", and all give differing results. a.m.p. has a thread that discusses this more in depth, and so does A0170.
I won't be going as in-depth as they did (please visit their threads
too, some great discussion there) but will draw a bit upon their
conclusions and give some of my own two cents.

1. In-Game Quotes:
Garrus said that one thousand Reaper ships exist. Sovereign said that
"we are legion". These could, taken literally, imply that there are 1
000 Sovvys. However, these quotes are kind of random and may not be that
reliable. 

2. Backwards Induction: This is based entirely on lore and relies on the Leviathan of Dis, Harbinger, and the Codex entry on Sovvy creation. 

First,
note that the Codex says that a single species is used to produce these
"massive ships". I don't mean to be overly nitpicky, but it never said
that only one Sovvy was created per cycle. It just said one species was
used. One species could perhaps create more than one Sovvy. If the
Reapers need, for example, 1 billion organics to create one Sovvy, then
population (and to some degree resistance; i.e. Reapers killing instead
of harvesting) would be variables that could result in multiple Sovvys
per cycle. But rather than guess around, let's be conservative with
Reaper numbers and say that only one Sovvy is created on average per
cycle. 

The Leviathan of Dis gives a Reaper history of
approximately 1 billion years, or 20 000 cycles. More cycles occurred
due to Harbinger's age (the "oldest" in the "Reaper armada") but again,
we'll be conservative and just leave it at 20 000 cycles. This would
initially make it seem like there are that many Sovvys. 

But the
number must be less than that due to two reasons: (A) Sovvy ships
destroyed in the past and ( some cycles fail to produce Reapers. 

For
(A), we only know of one case where it absolutely happens (Derelict
Reaper in ME2) and one probable case (Leviathan of Dis). The Protheans
never mentioned destroying any of them. Of course, due to the Moron
Premise, we end up destroying some. But it basically seems like dead
Sovvys in the past are random occurrences - in the big picure of 20,000
they would make a relatively small difference. 

( is a little
more interesting. Reapers would not be able to create new Sovvys if the
given race is incompatible with the genetic-mush process, like the
Protheans. Humans are compatible; we've just stopped them temporarily.
If the Reapers win/won, they'd have no difficulty going around and
getting a new human Reaper. 

We do not know if the Insuannon, the race before the Protheans, were formed into Reapers are not.

We
have an observable 50% compatibility ratio. But this can't be taken as
fact because it's just two cycles out of 20 000 (not statistically
significant) - yet we can make allowances for plot/story significance.

We really get a range of 10 000 - 20 000 Sovvys. Not a very friendly number. 

3. Mass Effect 2 Ending Cutscene:
Believe it or not, someone who I shall call The Number One Mass Effect
Fan Of All Time actually counted the number of (faded in the background)
Reapers seen at the end of ME2. The number is 295 (see the Trivia section). Nothing more to this train of thought. 

4. Battle of Earth: a.m.p. has generously counted
and told us there are about 200 Reapers at Earth. But this is just at
Earth - there are clearly others throughout the galaxy. She concludes
that there are thousands of Reapers in the galaxy. The main crux here is
that there must be more than 200 Reapers, and the number 200 will not
work for our purposes because Reapers do exist elsewhere for sure. 

So from all of this, I will go forward with the idea that the Reapers have at least 295 Sovvys. 

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

IV. Non-Capital Ships

We
have no numbers for cruisers and fighters (Allied) or for destroyers
and occuli (Reapers). We are given indications by the Codex that they
can match each other theoretically 1v1. We also know their numbers are
greater than capital ships, but we don't know by how much.

There is so much uncertainty here that for the sake of the bigger picture, I will not be including non-capital ships in this analysis.
If anyone has an idea of how to approximate it well (hopefully not
arbitrarily) that would be great and I would definitely welcome the
ideas. 

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

V. Reapers Defeated

The Reapers we've defeated have been in extremely lucky situations. Here are the TL;DR versions of some reasons why. 

Sovereign: Killing Saren disabled its shields. 

Tuchanka: Never lifted off the ground. 

Rannoch: Never fired its laser from side to side. 

Also,
remember that on ground, Reapers have to lower their defenses
substantially. Also, Tuchanka and Rannoch (not capitals) were fights in
which Shepard had some definite plot immunity. Epic for gameplay,
cutscenes, and storytelling, but out of touch with "lore" in a strict
sense. The Moron Premise allowed for their defeat. 

During the
attack on Palaven, the Turians were lucky and FTL-ed into the midst of
Reapers and killed "several capital ships". But the Reapers shrugged it
off and FTL-ed straight to Palaven (why didn't they do that first?). In
large groups of Reapers, such tactics, as the Codex notes, are suicide
because Reapers will obliterate the dreadnoughts easily. 

Remember,
according to the Codex, no dreadnought has survived a direct hit from a
Sovvy weapon. Disregarding the Moron Premise, this automatically makes
current victories more luck than anything. 

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
 
VI. Reaper Weaknesses

Typically,
in asymmetric warfare, we'd try to find some way to weaken the enemy's
structure or something rather than fight them outright because in
outright battle we might lose. Wars in the past could be heavily
influenced by weak points other than random soldiers. 

However,
the Reapers require no resources. The Codex tells us that they actually
end up destroying refineries as they move through. They are completely
self-sufficient and do not even need planets to discharge static
buildups from FTL travel. We cannot destroy "food" and starve the
Reapers. Even something as drastic as Halo's strategy against the Flood
would not work. 

There are no "high value targets" in terms of
locations and people. They do not have any homeworlds or critical
positions they must defend other than the Citadel (which they ignored
due to the Moron Premise). While Harbinger is decided to be the oldest
and most powerful, and the Rannoch Reaper's reference of him indicates
that he at least holds some respect, we know that the Catalyst is the
one in control. But we only know that in retrospect; we need the
Crucible to discover that. Otherwise, killing any supposed "high value
target" Reapers will, in reality, not accomplish much. Reapers are
perfectly capable of operating in groups and alone (again, ignoring the
Moron Premise we see on Tuchanka/Rannoch for gameplay reasons). 

The
Reapers also can survive in space whereas organics need specific
environments to survive. This includes spaceships' self-contained
environments as well. 

Destroying harvestation camps and other similar structures will only have the Reapers rebuild them with time. 

Lastly,
there is no internal political structure within the Reapers that we can
exploit. There is no one "back home protesting the war", so to speak,
and no one second-guesses the Reaper goals as a Reaper. No Reaper will
turn. They pursue their goal with a single-mindedness that makes sowing
dissent an impossible and irrelevant strategy. 
 
Hackett said
that he wanted to find holes in the Reapers' (plot?) armor and hit them
hard there. But there are no crippling weak spots or pressure points. 

In
addition to their scope of time, the Reapers have a level of technology
that far outclasses us (but more on this later). So what are the weak
spots? Are there any?

Analyzing this question leads me to a single conclusion. There are no weak spots. We must kill each and every Reaper completely.
Tactics that would apply in organic situations don't apply. There is no
way to get around the hard part of finding ways to actually kill
Reapers. 

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

VII. Conventional Warfare

Now we know we can't defeat Reapers 1v1. But here, I'm going to try to analyze the question in a little more detail.

First
off, no ship has yet survived a direct hit from a Sovvy. The Reapers
therefore have the powerful ability to one-shot any of our ships. Due to
their superior targeting computers, they can shoot both from farther
away and with greater accuracy. On average, the Codex tells us that
about 4 dreadnoughts can equal 1 Sovvy in a straight-up fight. Better
results happen with Thannix, but we'll come back to that later. 

Let's
do straight-up fights. I'm going to measure fleet strength in terms of
Sovvys. Obviously, this refers to the military capability of a Reaper
capital class ship in battle. As is the case when dealing with
statistics, this will all be based on averages. The numbers may play out
differently at different times, but on average, I'm going to trust the
Codex's "exchange rate" of 4 dreadnoughts for 1 Sovvy. 

Now take
the 170 dreadnoughts from earlier (remember, a super generous estimate).
Basic math means that, rounding up, the Allied Fleet has the military
capability of 43 Sovvys. 

We have a minimum of 295 Sovvys on the Reapers' side. 

43 <<< 295.

Okay,
we knew that it was a long shot. But Thannix canons might be better.
Surely we should incorporate this idea to get a better picture. I'm
going to try to bring Thannix canons back into the equation (literally).
Rather than guess as to how much better Thannix canons make
dreadnoughts, let's look at how much better dreadnoughts would have to
be to defeat the Reapers and then see if the Thannix canons can give
this level of improvement. Bear with me for a bit please, because I know
that previous sentence may have sounded confusing. 

Let's
introduce "T", a multiplier that indicates how much amplified
effectiveness per dreadnought is needed to match the minimum capability
of the Reapers. Since we're using very broad-based numbers, this is
simple math:

T ( 170 / 4 ) = 295

Rounding to single digits, T = 7. 

This
means that Thannix canons need to amplify the power of dreadnoughts by a
factor of 7 for them, at best (with our INFLATED numbers), to be on
equal footing with the absolute minimum Reaper strength. When the
Codex says that Thannix canons can give "better results", I doubt that
means seven times as powerful. That's a huge differential. 

For example, if we decide the Reaper number based on popular vote (thread by A0170, corresponding poll),
we'd guess there'd be around 20 000 Reapers. In fact, 70% believed
there are over 1 000 Reapers. If we take just 1 000 Reapers, we're
looking at a Thannix multiplier of about 24. Are Thannix canons really
that effective? Again, this is with our inflated Allied Fleet numbers.
Basically, while Thannix weapons will help, I do not think they will
help us defeat the Reapers. We are looking, again, at a huge required
differential. 

The idea that conventional means can't defeat the
Reapers has been hammered into us in the game, but beyond the
negativity, if we just look at straight up numbers, we cannot win. 

We are clearly outclassed in a straight-up fight. 

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

VIII. Unconventional Warfare

This
is where things can get interesting and even a bit speculative. We
basically have to come up with creative ways to possibly kill Reapers.
Remember, Reapers are the only targets in the Reaper War. There are no
supply lines, VIPs, homeworlds, etc.; it's just the Reapers. 

Warning: This part will be LONG. 

A. FTL Collisions:

a.m.p. has a thread that discusses this more in detail. Also, A0170's thread
touches upon this. Basically, slamming a ship in FTL is impossible
because of the safety mechanisms that are embedded in FTL drives.
However, there was an attack on a Turian colony named Taetrus where
terrorists reprogrammed the FTL drive of a ship to create a devastating
crash. We are not told how devastating it was (tens of thousands were
killed, but doesn't a nuke do that too?), but still. Basically, though,
the idea was retconned - as of ME3, the "official" Codex idea is that
it's impossible.

Let's suggest that somehow EDI or an
equivalently powerful and free AI can somehow rearrange the FTL safety
protocols to allow for collisions, however. How effective would it be?
Remember, all we know from the Codex is that some starship admirals have
"suggested" that an FTL kamikaze run "could" obliterate a Sovvy. But
let's look at this in a little more detail for the sake of academic
interest. 

The basic intuition is that things moving at higher
speeds have higher energies due to higher velocities. Such higher
energies would be "transferred" through collisions via explosions.
Higher energies naturally give stronger impacts. We can look at this
situation (very basic physics) through kinetic energies or momentum. 

The
latter, from what I understand, may pose a problem here. ME3 does not
disprove Einstein's special relativity; that is, the theory of special
relativity is accepted as science in the ME universe along with FTL.
Now, I know this is science fiction, so that's fine, but this creates a
conundrum when we consider momentum at superluminal (FTL) velocities.
There are probably some super smart physics people here who can discuss
this further. 

Basically, p = m v , where p is momentum, m is
mass, and v is velocity. A high enough velocity can offset a low mass to
create high momentum. This is the basic idea of using "useless"
transport ships and turning them into deadly weapons as bombs,
essentially, by moving them quickly.

But the special relativity equation applies a Lorentz factor. This changes the equation to the following:

p
= ( m v ) / sqrt ( 1 - v^2 / c^2 ) , where c is the speed of light. We
see two immediate side effects of this equation just from the math:

1.
To travel at the speed of light, an object would have to have an
infinite momentum; i.e. an object cannot travel at the speed of light. 

2.
If an object travels faster than the speed of light, it has an
"imaginary" mass in the sense that the mass will be a factor of "i", the
square root of negative 1. 

What does this mean in the scifi
universe of ME? It means that we cannot always increase velocity, even
beyond the speed of light, and expect this to result in collisions
greater in energy than subluminal velocities. The only asset FTL
collisions would have would be that the Reapers would be unable to see
them coming (for obvious reasons). 

We also can see that lowering mass via mass effect fields
is a bit of an oversimplification (as mass must not be lowered but must
actually somehow become "imaginary"; it must become a factor of the
square root of negative one in order to have "true" FTL), but that's
fine because this is, after all, scifi. That's a different thread of
discussion. 

Basically, FTL
speeds wouldn't matter because we are not given anything close to a
solid statement on how momentum in FTL transfers to momentum outside of
the "ME field bubble" generated. We are given vague generalizations. What we really need are speeds as close to the speed of light as possible. 

Let's discuss the pros and cons of that. 

The obvious pro is that it can generate huge amounts of energy, near-infinite, that would overpower the Reapers.

The
con is that we can't get there. Again, this is special
relativity-based. Since space is empty, if you give something an initial
push and wait long enough, it will accelerate without bound (assuming
it doesn't hit anything, no gravitational forces, etc. etc.) and
eventually reach fast speeds. The problem though is that once you get to
"relativistic speeds" (sizable fractions of the speed of light), it
will take more and more energy to get the same level of acceleration.
Eventually, just like momentum becomes infinite, the amount of force
needed to continue to accelerate will increase and increase until it
reaches infinity. 

We'd have to feed so much energy into the
process that it would be self-defeating. Also, the Reapers would see the
slower-than-light-ship coming and could FTL out of the way. We also
need a big enough room and long enough line to begin the acceleration as
it will take time to accelerate to the desirable speeds. 

So accelerating ships to near-light speeds for high-energy collisions also seems unfeasible. 

B. Supernova / Relay Explosions:

The Codex states that it's unfeasible to Relays as "nukes" against the Reapers (link).
Basically, it'd destroy the worlds and kill the people you're trying to
save while the Reapers probably don't give a crap. Also, disregarding
the Moron Premise, Reapers can FTL to escape it and can FTL around the
galaxy until they get to another relay. Essentially, all this would do
is delay them.

Let's assume the Reapers are for some reason in a
system that holds no value to us, or we pull a Prothean and consider
such a system a possibly necessary sacrifice. Academically speaking, how
much would it delay them?

MyChemicalBromance has a great thread
where he discusses space travel without the relays. He notes a Codex
entry gives Reaper FTL speeds at about 30 light years per day (ly/day).
Before we use that number, let's check to see if it can describe Reaper
speeds through Dark Space.

Let's be super nice and round up the Reapers' travel time to 4 years.

(30)(365)(4) = 43 800 ly in 4 years

How
big is this relevant to intergalactic space? Intergalactic distances
are greater than interstellar distances by a magnitude of 10^6 (one million times as big). The Andromeda galaxy, for example, is 2.6 million light years away.

Does
it make sense for the Reapers to be so close to the galaxy that they
aren't even really in Dark Space? The end of ME2 makes it difficult to
extrapolate their distance from the cutscene. But it seems like the
Reapers aren't really in Dark Space; the number seems kind of small. But
the fact they can "view" the entire galaxy means they aren't really in
the middle but are actually close (in the middle, the view of the galaxy
would be much smaller). 

But we'll take it for the purposes of
discussion. Taking the speed at face value, let's apply it to
interstellar travel as that's the relevant thing here. The Reapers don't
have to discharge or get fuel, so we can approximate their travel as a
straight line.

a.m.p. has a great thread
where she talks about distances between relays. She kindly counted and
decided there are 47 relays at the end of ME3 on the galaxy map. We know
the radius of the Milky Way is about 50 000 ly. Lets crudely find the
mass relay density. Again, this will be a smaller number than the real
number because many relays have not been activated, and the Reapers know
the entire network and may find closer relays much more easily.

Sparing
some ugly numbers (someone else can see if they come up with something
different), I got that from a given point in the galaxy, on average, you
will find a relay (at a radius of) in 12 924 ly in all directions. This
is approximately one-fourth of the generous number that Reapers can
travel in 4 years.

Basically, destroying the relays would, on average, only delay the Reapers that specific system by a little over a year. 

The
Reapers also have instant communication and are not collected in one
system. Other Reapers would pick up the slack if there's anything left
somehow. You're essentially delaying a fraction of the Reapers for a
year, on average, if you destroy a system. 

You'd have to do
simulatenous relay destructions to delay all the Reapers. Ignoring the
obvious massive organic casualties, it's still just delaying. The
Reapers are patient. Even if they have to FTL around the entire galaxy,
they know where to go based on their maps of the relays, and they will
eventually get there. 

Also, remember, without the resources of
the more important systems, mounting real defenses against Reapers would
be even more problematic.

So relay destruction isn't the most viable option. 

C. Lasers:

This is something I haven't seen much discussion of in the forums. It tuns out that kinetic barries do not block lasers.

That
is something astonishing. The Reapers' weapons aren't lasers (molten
metal shot out at a sizable fraction of the speed of light), nor are
Thannix weapons. We know the Reapers' huge shields obviously are a big
factor in their decisive conventional military capability. 

But
lasers can go right by them. Lasers also get shot at the speed of light,
so it's impossible to dodge unless they hack our computers. 

The
cons of lasers listed in the Wiki/Codex are basically that they
overheat, require so much maintence that they're low powered, and are
only short-range. 

Basically, they're inefficient and we wouldn't
be able to get into position to fire them (Reapers would obliterate us
with their numbers). 

We also don't know how effective/quickly
lasers would kill the Reapers. Remember, no ship (not even dreadnoughts)
have survived a single hit from a Sovvy. If we FTL-ed in (assuming our
technology is that precise), we'd have to be able to kill them before
they could get off a single shot. 

Theoretically, powerful enough
lasers could help obliterate the Reapers, but we're given indications
that, unfortunately, the technology has inefficiencies and side effects
that undermine their military effectiveness, and tactics that utilize
them are amongst the most daring/dangerous. We're not given a lot of
info, but it seems that lasers won't work. 

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

IX. The Crucible

Any
tactic that could possibly weaken the Reapers (virus, etc.) would have
to be done simultaneously. There is no way to defeat them
conventionally. Unconventional options seem to have side effects or
difficulties (not to mention ambiguities) that make them difficult to be
viable. 

So we get the Crucible, the deus ex machinima plot
device that kills the Reapers. It's pretty much the only way that we can
do it. Sure, it seems a little cheap to be introduced in the last hour
(i.e. ME3; where was it when humans first discovered Mars and why was it
only found when Earth got attacked?), but, unfortunately, I do not
think the Reapers can be defeated any other way. 

A lot of it has
to do with their technology. A lot of it also has to do with them being
simply an unconventional enemy without supply lines, homeworlds,
high-value targets, or resource needs. A lot of it also has to do with
abandoning the Moron Premise. 

Arguing away the Reapers is
difficult because we've seen their single-mindedness with which they
pursue their goal. Organics' main "goal" is to ensure the continuation
of their species. For Reapers, it is the cycle, which the Catalyst views
as the Mandate From Heaven.

Remember that all the numbers and discussion preceding this was using numbers that are heavily inflated in organics' favor. The
"real" numbers are likely much more in the Reapers' favor and therefore
the Reapers are probably much more relatively powerful than discussed
here.

I'm not going to argue about the Crucible itself
(how it got built, how the Reapers didn't stop it, how it works, why
it's activated that way, why the Catalyst helps Shepard, etc.) but
rather I'm trying to show that a superweapon was really the only way to
defeat the Reapers.

Basically, the
only way the Reapers could have been defeated was with a
massive/super-weapon that affected them effectively all at once. This is
the Crucible. 

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

X. Links

UPDATE: As of today, these links may be "oudated", but they are still great reads and have relevant information.

If
you have made it this far, you deserve a cookie or a beer depending on
your age. Thanks for reading. I hope you enjoyed. I'm going to include
here a few links to other threads that I believe are relevant and
catagorize them by the people who wrote them.

BSN Threads

A0170:

- Discussion of how many Reapers there are (includes poll)
- Why the Codex says defeating the Reapers conventionally is impossible 

a.m.p.:

- Discussion of how many Reapers there are
- FTL collisions
- Distances between systems/relays in the galaxy

MyChemicalBromance:

- Spacefaring without mass relays
- Discussion of technological improvements that may be within our reach

Codex/Wiki Links:

(It'll
take me some time to compile these but I'll update when I do; sorry -
but for now I hope you take my word that I've been faithful to sources
when I talk about them)

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

There
are a lot of unknowns here. In making guesses/approximations, I've
tried to repeatedly inflate the numbers as much as possible for the
Allied Fleet and be as conservative as possible about Reapers. I
disregarded destroyers/cruisers and occuli/fighters because that would
have been much too complicated, I think.

I know the numbers are open to interpetation. But what I was trying to show was that even with the most liberal interpretations, we still cannot defeat the Reapers.
If the Reapers are truly not morons, then the Crucible really is the
only hope. Perhaps the writers wrote themselves into a wall in that
case.

This is not to say that it wouldn't be more poetic to have
conventional victory versus the Crucible or vice versa seeing as the
Crucible is a symbolic manifestation of organic defiance throughout all
the cycles. That's a judgement that I view to be opinion and don't think
it'd be fair to make a case in this OP, though I will happily discuss
my opinion in subsequent posts. 

I know I may not be 100% right. I welcome feedback, discussion, and criticism in any form.
Cheers. [smilie]http://social.bioware.com/images/forum/emoticons/smile.png[/smilie]

[Ticonderoga117]

ZLurps wrote...

Nor you read the thread.

Does it matter when I'm poking holes in someone else's arguement?

[MacNasty]

Someone put the thread I was referencing above. Also an argument against it. One thing I have in relation to it, is what if it's possible to remove the mass effect field for FTL, directly before it reaches it, so it does not have time to completely screw up. I know I'm making a bit of a stretch here, especially since once the ME field is removed, the results aren't exactly great. But if you do manage to do that, while it's going towards a reaper, manage to take off the safeties as well... Could it be possible to use it as a weapon? The way I see it, current victory is near impossible conventionally, unless we get a string of extremely great victories, but if the galactic community had done something like that before, I think it may have been possible. Also, one more question... Does anyone know the size of the Crucible in relation to the standard dreadnought? Or average?

[ZLurps]

Ticonderoga117 wrote...

ZLurps wrote...

Nor you read the thread.

Does it matter when I'm poking holes in someone else's arguement?

Numbers have been posted in this already, just saying.

[ZLurps]

@JShepppp

* applauses *

[Ticonderoga117]

ZLurps wrote...

Numbers have been posted in this already, just saying.

Numbers based on what? A guess? Reaper numbers are a COMPLETE unknown. Proclaiming otherwise is silly.
Also, we only know the number of dreadnoughts, and the Flotilla for friendly forces. Guessing any thing else there is also silly.

[Urdnot Amenark]

shannonrw wrote...

 I'm getting really irritated at seeing everyone complaining that we couldn't win by conventional methods, and that we should've been able to win that way, etc.

Okay...listen. The reapers have been doing this for millions of years with hundreds or thousands of civilizations. If no other civilization has been able to do it that way, well why the hell would we be able to? What makes US so special?

This is the umpteenth thread about this topic. Please do a search before posting. And if you'd like to know what makes "us" so special, ask Javik.

[ZLurps]

Ticonderoga117 wrote...

ZLurps wrote...

Numbers have been posted in this already, just saying.

Numbers based on what? A guess? Reaper numbers are a COMPLETE unknown. Proclaiming otherwise is silly.
Also, we only know the number of dreadnoughts, and the Flotilla for friendly forces. Guessing any thing else there is also silly.

They are not unknow in any meaning that makes any relevance in conventional victory scenario. Just look couple of posts up, it collects stuff up better than I do.

[Ticonderoga117]

ZLurps wrote...

They are not unknow in any meaning that makes any relevance in conventional victory scenario. Just look couple of posts up, it collects stuff up better than I do.

Doesn't matter. It's a GUESS. It may be a good guess, but a guess is a guess is a guess.
Unless the writers come out and say:
The Alliance has X number of ships broken down like this...
The Turians have Y
The Geth Z
Etc
Etc

It's all a guess and you can't say "This defiantly isn't possible due to this evidence." Why? Because there is no evidence, just speculations!

[De1ta G]

Sheesh, I wonder how many posts were made while I trying to scroll down to here. Giant post made my scroll bar tiny, dang.... Looks like I need to go back a few pages.

[De1ta G]

Stornskar wrote...

De1ta G wrote...
Hated the catalyst as well. Everything up to that part I thought was great. (Except Kai Leng but that's besides the point by a mile)

The reapers to me always seemed so much more than being impossible odds. They were on a much higher level anything. They said getting to Illos was impossible but it didn't appear to be that hard. Just needed a advanced stealth system and a good pilot. Sucide Mission, eh. Once you found out how to successfully get through the relay all that was needed was a few upgrades and a super squad that wasn't distracted. Those two things don't even come close to what the reaper threat was.

Well I'm with you, then - I enjoyed it up until that glowing brat stepped out. Still, what the heck is the point of war assets? I mean ... gathering all of these military assets led me to believe as I was playing that there WAS going to be one huge conventional battle. You have no idea how awesome I thought it was going to be to see Aria's mercs fighting alongside Krogans and Turians. I was excited as hell to see something like that as I was gathering assets. 

I get that the Reapers were an invincible enemy - in my initial play-through I suspected that the Crucible was going to maybe lower their shields, or override some of them so they fought for us, or just outright blasted some to bits randomly with a giant laser beam; something that would tip the scale of a conventional battle. It would have been cool if we could have unlocked capabilities of the Crucible while we were playing - say devote our scientists to researching a 'control' capability vice having researchers investigate a high-powered beam that temporarily brought down their shields ... hell, I don't know anything but that damn Catalyst at the end

I think what you just wrote is the case for many players, including myself. Especially about thinking the Crucible would take down their shields. That's excactly what I thought.

[silentassassin264]

Am I alone in thinking the Crucible was going to be pretty much the destroy ending minus killing the Geth and EDI?

**crickets**

[De1ta G]

silentassassin264 wrote...

Am I alone in thinking the Crucible was going to be pretty much the destroy ending minus killing the Geth and EDI?

**crickets**

Actually, I would think that would be the majority thought on the Crucible. I thought it would either take down the reapers shields or flat out destroy them. Preferred the reaper's shields idea better.

[Ticonderoga117]

silentassassin264 wrote...

Am I alone in thinking the Crucible was going to be pretty much the destroy ending minus killing the Geth and EDI?

**crickets**

Nope. I was thinking the same thing. So much for that.

[Wayning_Star]

SwobyJ wrote...

It's not that conventional victory is possible. IT ISN'T.

However, with even just one leg up, WE CAN WIN.

In ME1, it was the Conduit aka help from the Prothians. It allowed Shep to enter the Citadel, and stop Saren. This forced Sovvy to 'assume direct control', which seems to take resources from its body, in order to activate the Citadel. We defeat Sovvy-Saren, *conventionally*, and then destroy Sovvy's ship body, *conventionally*.

In ME2, we require the Reaper IFF to get anywhere close to a victory in conventional battle. We know for a fact that facing a Collector Ship, head on, even with the new cannons and armor, is a death sentence... but if we can strike FIRST...

The thing about ME3 is that it allows no big battle of victory. We struggle to get to the Crucible, and then we activate it, and then...nothing. Or rather, everything - happens after we use it. No big battle to really take down the Reapers. No final struggle after you deactivate the Reapers' defenses. Just a form of 'insta-win', only one of which actually destroys the Reapers.

There's something VERY off about that.

One theory in my head, which relates to IT (I know, SIGH), is that the Crucible is actually a mass indoctrinator, or something related to that. A true victory (only with DLC!! $$$$...) involves turning their greatest weapon against them, and weakening the Reaper will by a huge amount, or eliminating their OWN 'indoctrination' put onto them.

This is just AN example of how organics could 'conventionally' win. We're still fighting the Reapers, but Shepard does something remarkable that completely turns the tide. Like how killing the Emperor in Star Wars weakened the Force-based-resolve in the whole Empire army enough that the Rebels completely turned the tide of battle in their favor.

there isn't any way to actually understand the crucible,the codex or other data hasn't caught up with the actions. But, what ever it is, I doubt it's for indoctrination, as it was designed by the builders of the reapers/catalyst. I think it's just too powerful a device/tool designed for simple, but extremely advanced exploration. Maybe to collect/control dark matter,and/or harvest the stuff from within black holes, that really dense material that dwells within. I also think it's something that the reapers/catalyst make themselves aware of, as the reason for the cycle, as a the signpost for it. That being that organics,with the help of synthetics of that cycle, are even 'able' to read the designs, and then have the tech to actually build the thing. Also, they know it's origin and history, an mainly, that it contains properties of their greatest enemy, their builders. It all comes back to that/them. The original builders battle with the catalyst/reapers.It has the power to manipulate matter on a scale unknown anywhere in the MEU or beyond. It wouldn't 'inodtrinate' it would either erase you or send you to another place, unaccessable or completely rearrange your structure according to it's program parimiters. Apparently the protheans figured out how to program it somewhat, with the instructions to permit the catalyst to entertain 'other actions', but it could, if incorrectly detonated, completely wipe out known space,who knows how far the effect might be,as it seems to be able to feed on star energies, including black holes,etc, as it goes. The catalyst wasn't even interested in what the organics were doing over time,until the crucible comes into existance, that really gets their attention. Setting around oh the citadel, was insignificant. Remember the catalyst is completely old, it's builders even older. From what I can surmise from the story of it all, is that they still remain somewhere out in space, waiting..for something. Maybe they wait for the developement of humans into the mix, maybe they tinkered with them, in their everwar with their creation of the catalyst/reapers. We can rest assured though, that the crucible is directly linked to the cycle,reapers and catalyst. Because the builders designed it that way.

Edit: crap, I just had a terrible thought, the crucible isn't a weapon,tool for exploration. It is the vehicle for the return of the builders, a type of transporter/gate to where they are. The crucible didn't alter the catalyst to make choices, the original builders did. It was their idea, and that they will now return. The "blast/Beam" didn't just alter matter that relates to us/the MEU, it did it to open something, far out in space, all the hooplah over the 'decisions' are moot. If the crucible was detonated, space time was altered. We wouldn't have a first clue as to what that meant, what actually occured.. wtf just happens.

Modifié par Wayning_Star, 27 juillet 2012 - 03:33 .

[darthoptimus003]

the prothean ai said that the vass magoriy of the reaper fleet was at earth protecting the ciadel
the crucible should have been a weapon to take down the sheid but instead we got bs spacemagic starbrat bs
and convientianl victory is poosible look at the codex sometime and see how the galaxy is really doing

[Wayning_Star]

darthoptimus003 wrote...

the prothean ai said that the vass magoriy of the reaper fleet was at earth protecting the ciadel
the crucible should have been a weapon to take down the sheid but instead we got bs spacemagic starbrat bs
and convientianl victory is poosible look at the codex sometime and see how the galaxy is really doing

AI's have a very limited perspective, governed only by organic programmers bias, based on their 'knowlege' of input, there is no way to know what is what in the MEU, as there are forces at work beyond or intellect/knowlege base. Besides everyone forgets there are millions/billions of reapers out messing around in the MEU, if the crucible is made known, they would undoubtedly  be alerted and make their way to earth to, well.... insurmountable odds, the reapers rely on brute force. It works for them..for, oh about a billion+ years.. not good odds for direct control.

[Goneaviking]

Ticonderoga117 wrote...

RussianZombeh wrote...

The fact that ONE REAPER (Sovereign) was able to nearly completely desimate the Citadel fleets, and cripple the Alliance shows that conventional victory is impossible.

You can even see throughout ME3, over the course of a month or two - the Reapers take over HALF THE GALAXY. Their lasers can tear through a dreadnought in SECONDS. Their shields are near-indestructable.

I honestly don't know how you people can believe a conventional victory is possible. The Reapers can cripple the Galaxy in a month, and you believe conventional victory is possible?

THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS CONVENTIONAL VICTORY YOU FOOLS.

Oh, and it totally wasn't the large Geth fleet doing all the damage.
Nor did the Alliance only lose 8 ships. (A pitance)
Nor did we get better weapons.
Nor did we find out thier one main advantage in space.

Conventionaly victory is only not possible because BioWare's lead writer decided that he didn't care about ME1 and ME2.

The geth weren't doing all of the damage in the attack at the Citadel, Sovereign was knocking ships down with a single blast. Though it would be dishonest to discount their impact it's also dishonest to pretend that Sovereign was a passive observer in the battle of the citadel.
Without going back through the EMS screens didn't anyone who saved the council wind up losing a third of their fleets in the fight with Sovereign?
Apparently not big enough weapons to match the Reapers' one hit one kill  ability, nor do their appear to have been drastic improvements to armour and shielding (or the time to install them on a significant proportion of the various fleets) to negate that capacity.
The Reapers had a number of significant advantages that we were unable to counter and simply closing the backdoor to the galaxy's collective government wouldn't begin to undo the one hit one kill, the drastically superior shielding, the much faster travelling speed, superior co-ordination, their apparent ability to remain active for long periods of time without refueling, their long running knowledge of the layout of the galaxy and intimate understanding of the relay network (presumably they would be able to open and move through those dormant gates that caused the first contact war which would allow them to blindside other forces), not to mention their demonstrated ability to cross vast distances between systems without accessing the relays (also allowing opportunities to blindside adversaries).

Face it, conventional victory was impossible because the Reapers were constantly put forward as though they were galactic deities. Eternal, unknowable and as close to as unkillable as it gets. They couldn't plausibly give us a conventional win without empowering our side to a level the defies plausibility and threatens to undermine any sense of challenge.

[Conniving_Eagle]

Conventional victory is impossible when a developer says it is. Even then, it was only made impossible in Mass Effect 3.

[Conniving_Eagle]

Wayning_Star wrote...

darthoptimus003 wrote...

the prothean ai said that the vass magoriy of the reaper fleet was at earth protecting the ciadel
the crucible should have been a weapon to take down the sheid but instead we got bs spacemagic starbrat bs
and convientianl victory is poosible look at the codex sometime and see how the galaxy is really doing

AI's have a very limited perspective, governed only by organic programmers bias, based on their 'knowlege' of input, there is no way to know what is what in the MEU, as there are forces at work beyond or intellect/knowlege base. Besides everyone forgets there are millions/billions of reapers out messing around in the MEU, if the crucible is made known, they would undoubtedly  be alerted and make their way to earth to, well.... insurmountable odds, the reapers rely on brute force. It works for them..for, oh about a billion+ years.. not good odds for direct control.

Lol millions of Reapers? No, the universe isn't old enough for that to be possible.

[AlanC9]

De1ta G wrote...

silentassassin264 wrote...

Am I alone in thinking the Crucible was going to be pretty much the destroy ending minus killing the Geth and EDI?

**crickets**

Actually, I would think that would be the majority thought on the Crucible. I thought it would either take down the reapers shields or flat out destroy them. Preferred the reaper's shields idea better.

Taking down Reaper shields wouldn't work unless you could immediately blow them up with conventional weapons. They're much faster than Citadel ships, and if their shields fail they've got no reason to stick around in the battle.

Anyway, when people spend a lot of time talking about how they don't really know what some gadget is going to do, you can usually bet that it's going to do something that isn't what you expect and probably isn't exactly what  you want.

Modifié par AlanC9, 27 juillet 2012 - 03:58 .

[AlanC9]

SwobyJ wrote...
This is just AN example of how organics could 'conventionally' win. We're still fighting the Reapers, but Shepard does something remarkable that completely turns the tide. Like how killing the Emperor in Star Wars weakened the Force-based-resolve in the whole Empire army enough that the Rebels completely turned the tide of battle in their favor.

If you want to talk about conventional victory, you really don't want to bring the Force into it.