DecCylonus wrote...
A conventional victory may not be impossible, but it is very, very unlikely. The Reaper war is a war of attrition, and the Reapers hold a distinct advantage there. Even if it "only" takes four dreadnoughts or sixteen fighters to take down a Reaper dreadnought, there is no gaurantee that your forces will come through that battle intact. It is already stated that the Reapers have superior numbers. Therefore, they can afford losses more than the Citadel races. When you combine that with their superior weaponry and ability to one-shot Citadel capital ships, winning a war of attrition becomes very unlikely.
It is established in the codex that the Reaper ships have powerful point defense systems to deal with smaller ships that attack at close range. They also have the Occuli fighters. Since they have effective defenses against a fighter attack, the outcome of the battles is not gauranteed. The Reapers might win and kill all the fighters. They might lose. Or they might lose but still do a lot of damage to Citadel forces. Again, they can better absorb the losses.
The codex entries on the space battles fought with the Reapers make it clear that they do use tactics. Therefore, we can expect them to adapt to fighter swarms. The easiest way to defeat fighters is to target the carriers. Fighters aren't FTL capable, so if the carriers are destroyed the fighters can longer be used as offensive weapons. The carriers are capital ships and not easily replaced, so a concentrated effort to wipe them out would pretty much end the fighter threat. Also, in order for Citadel forces to win, that four-to-one ratio has to be maintained. Because the Reapers have superior numbers, they can concentrate their forces and deny the Citadel forces a chance to fight with the numbers in their favor. The Reapers can then force a decisive battle by attacking vital resources like major production centers with their massed fleet. The Citadel fleets must then either fight or lose the resources that allow them to keep fighting. The Reapers could also attempt to ambush Citadel forces with a massed fleet. The Citadel forces can always flee, but ships cannot instantly go to FTL when the Reapers appear. Any losses they take as they try to disengage still turn the war more in the Reapers' favor.
In short, Shepard's cycle isn't prepared to fight the Reapers in a conventional war. Unconventional tactics or superweapons are the best options.
Superior numbers in dreadnoughts, yes, in ground troops, well yeah, probably. ships in general though? No. Unless the Reapers somehow have more than several hundred thousand ships(which would mean they basically predate the creation of the milky way), they got nothing in regards to numbers.
They actually can't afford that many losses. It takes a bloody long time just to make a single reaper. Replacing their losses is not an easy thing, where it takes a fraction of the time to build a cruiser or dreadnought.
Yeah, its also stated they have longer range and better accuracy. What we see though says otherwise. As to the point defenses, they don't seem to have them. Otherwise the normandy would have been shredded while going past them.
Occuli are pieces of junk, glass cannons better suited against heavier ships than fighters.
1 Reaper takes something like a century to build. Those losses stay lost while a war is going.
Really, well all the things regarding Reaper space battles basically say that the galaxies tactics are working far better. The Asari used guerilla tactics, the Turians used trickery. The reapers just barge through, they don't have a strategy beyond "IMA FIRIN MAH LAZOR".
All well and good, but carriers are not right there in the line of fire, they hang back and resupply said fighters. To get to them you would have to go through an entire fleet(s). You're neglecting the fact that Reapers have horrible aim from range, only up close can they seem to hit anything. Unless they're harbinger, who can shoot a single person relatively easy while spamming his laser.
Again, they do not have supeior numbers in ships. You are a horrible mathematician.
While that would be the smart thing to do, its not the reaper thing to do. Having the entire Reaper fleet roll over each civilisation at a time would have been far more effective than spreading their forces thin. Especially while the politics kept the Council squabbling. Reapers and ambushing...yeah, no. The Reapers ambush exactly once per cycle, if they can't they don't seem to bother.
Actually they can. The second the crucible activates, hackett gives the order and bam, everyone is gone in under 20 seconds. Unless the Reapers had the exact location, they would be unable to effectively get them.
Initially they are unprepared. As of ME3, with the unity and if they fired hackett and had a turian general leading, or shepard, they would do far better in space warfare.
Yes unconventional tactics do work, that is certain. As for super weapons...there aren't any. The crucible is not a weapon. Its a god damn battery with a 0% success rate.
Retour en haut
