1098 réponses à ce sujet

[dreman9999]

BerzerkGene wrote...

dreman9999 wrote...

BerzerkGene wrote...

dreman9999 wrote...

You need to talk to a Garrus more...

Note; winning one battle does not mean winning the war.

Thats actually before the miracle at palaven.

This conversation is after that.
 The mirecle of palven happens before rennock is resolved. The conversation with Garrus is after rennoch.

Chronologically it happens after the fall of thessia, which is after rannoch.

No,it does not. I just check with my character who is still doing the rennoch mission. The mericle of palven already happen.  It happens before the end of the rannoch stage of the game. Not after.

Modifié par dreman9999, 01 août 2012 - 03:09 .

[incinerator950]

BerzerkGene wrote...

incinerator950 wrote...


The specifics are mulled, but the homeworlds contain the largest population centers of the various races.  Few colonies have over a few million, and I don't believe there are any colonies with a billion in population.  So yeah.

Lusia. Population: 2.2billion.
Digeris. Population: 1.9 billion
Talis Fila. Population: 3.8 billion.
These are all colonies.

Oh nice.  For a while I thought the Devs were still downplaying numbers like the rest of the background material.

[BerzerkGene]

Father_Jerusalem wrote...

BerzerkGene wrote...

For starters, the civilian ships aren't numbered in 40k... Its divided between civvies, the heavy fleet, the patrol fleet and research vessels.
Destroyers have a massive weakness, oculi can be taken down with one shot. the Dreadnoughts are the real threat to the shace ships.
I'm not overcounting the Quarians, they do not make up he bulk of your avaliable fleet, the geth and quarians together, however, do.

That is a horrible comparison. You're worse than a religious nutter.

First off, the Civlian ships ARE numbered in the 40k. That's the ENTIRE Quarian fleet, not the Heavy fleet, not the Light fleet, the ENTIRE FLEET. So if you're saying that the Quarians "alone" have 40,000 ships... congratulations, you just counted a bunch of busted ass freighters as warships.

Second, a "massive" weakness? Yeah, by shooting at the eye with pinpoint targeting with an entire fleet can take out a destroyer. Yup. They sound like giant ****** to me. I mean, they'll just sit there and let you target the eye no problemo... what? They won't do that? Because they're not idiots? Omgnowai.

Third, Oculi can be taken down with one shot? So can fighters. If you're counting fighters, you're counting Oculil. It's that simple. You don't get to dismiss their fighter force as inconsequential because you want to. Full. Freaking. Stop. 

Fourth, you are overcounting the Quarians and we've already covered this. But combining the Geth and Quarian fleets? Sure... supposing you saved the Geth. Supposing the war between the Geth and the Quarians didn't decimate both fleets. Supposing you didn't help destroy their giant super-dreadnought... oops.

Fifth, if you're going to pull the "religious nutter" card, pull it on the person who's ignoring facts and logic and is clinging to his faith in a messiah figure. That ain't me.

"Driven from their home system by the geth nearly three centuries ago, most quarians now live aboard the Migrant Fleet, a flotilla of fifty thousand vessels ranging in size from passenger shuttles to mobile space stations."
Anything with a gun counts as a military asset. Whether they're glass cannons or not, they're fitted with thanix cannons, that gives them significant firepower. It helps they stay back and basically provide covering fire too.

*sigh* It was not an entire fleet. An entire fleet would have completely decimated the area Shepard was in. It was about 2 dozen ships. The bulk of the fleet was still fighting the geth. After you find said weakness, its basically one giant co-ordinated shot at its face. Shepard managed to pinpoint it while running around on the ground, an advanced targetting computer of a ship would be vastly superior.
They're not idiots, yeah they kind of are. If you were the Rannoch destroyer, would you sweep your laser vertically at shepard, or horizontally? one offers Shepard the chance to dodge, another does not. The Reapers intelligence was completely nerfed as soon as Harbinger was no longer their boss.

Fine, but Oculi don't have the same amount of firepower as a thanix armed fighter. If they did there would be no need to even have reapers as a defending force, just have a fleet of oculi, they shred the enemy, problem solved. I think you see perhaps a dozen of them take out a turian cruiser above palaven.

Why would you not save the geth? Personally the only Quarians i liked were Tali, Kal'Reegar, Veetor and that Qwib Qwib guy. The rest are too selfish. The Quarian Geth war didn't decimate both fleets, but it took a chunk out of them, for sure. The geth were initially losing until the Reaper took over.
Yeah that dreadnought. Why would there only be one? Thats the first geth dreadnought we've seen. The have as many as the Turians.

You're ignoring facts. You won't even admit that the hades cannon is a reaper. You just say it isn't, giving no reasons as to why the thing that looks like exactly like a reaper, has the power of a reaper and dies like a reaper, isn't a reaper.
Honestly i don't care that much about Shepard. He/she is one person. While as my avatar, i do care, but Shepard still does a lot of things that i completely disagree with, no matter what i do. Could i do a better job? With speeches and organisation, yeah. As a leader and soldier? Hell no.

[BerzerkGene]

incinerator950 wrote...

BerzerkGene wrote...

incinerator950 wrote...


The specifics are mulled, but the homeworlds contain the largest population centers of the various races.  Few colonies have over a few million, and I don't believe there are any colonies with a billion in population.  So yeah.

Lusia. Population: 2.2billion.
Digeris. Population: 1.9 billion
Talis Fila. Population: 3.8 billion.
These are all colonies.

Oh nice.  For a while I thought the Devs were still downplaying numbers like the rest of the background material.

They probably are. The codex is a bit like the pirate code in Pirates of the Carribean. More like guidelines, or a loosely enforced suggestion to the devs.

[BerzerkGene]

dreman9999 wrote...

The crucilbe is an example of putting together something that was aready design, planned, refined, and caluculated. The crucible took less work to make.

That no one wrote down what it did. They also had to have an entirely new production facility because of its incredible size.

[Wayning_Star]

NS Wizdum wrote...

Gruntburner wrote...

Wayning_Star wrote...

I found there to be as many as 50000 known reapers, maybe more...ulp

the oldest reaper found to be almost a billion years old, one maybe two reapers per cycle 50000 years between cycles,maybe less sometimes, races depending.... do the math, I'm too lazy.. :^]

Lets just say there are alot.

You are assuming a total loss of 0 ships in 1 billion years, thats a hell of an assumption.

no, but we're hard pressed to figure out IF the reapers don't stash other stuff out in dark space, who knows what tricks such an ancient race is capable of. I wouldn't know how to out think a billion years old race, muchless play chess with them, even on one dimension..gak. How could we know if they have built tons of geth platforms and hid them, just in case. They would have to prepare for any contingency. Why would they permit us to 'copy' it down in our trusty codex? They have tabs on our swiped, er borrowed reapers tech, hech we don't even know what a keeper is? The do rely on brute force to win battles so it'd be playing their hand to commit to such as a form of offensive defense?

just say'n

edit: had another awful thought, they're pretty arrogant, there's probably a good reason for that. If we go hammer on them and they get the idea that we might actually give them a hard time. Then they might pull out some old collector items even they forgot about, never needed'em before, even with the Prothians, who owned just about everything in the MEU..at one time, now the reapers got it... a couple of  million vigil guided geth war ships,even bigger than what the tame geth produced...all built like reaper tough.. I'd bet they'd have quite the stash of cool old weapons just lying around...for plinking rodents.(they think of us in less than that..)

Modifié par Wayning_Star, 01 août 2012 - 03:38 .

[incinerator950]

BerzerkGene wrote...

You're ignoring facts. You won't even admit that the hades cannon is a reaper. You just say it isn't, giving no reasons as to why the thing that looks like exactly like a reaper, has the power of a reaper and dies like a reaper, isn't a reaper.

As an advocate of the Giant Gun Association of Jackasses, I take offense to this.  The Reaper is clearly using a large, Energy-based Surface to Orbit Cannon.  Its obvious that they rigged the Standard Destroyer to do this by sacrificing several parts, and even Kinetic Barrier Strength.  As we see the normal Destroyer has to be hit with several Thanix missiles, followed by a salvo of Hydra/Cain projectiles. 

[incinerator950]

BerzerkGene wrote...

dreman9999 wrote...

The crucilbe is an example of putting together something that was aready design, planned, refined, and caluculated. The crucible took less work to make.

That no one wrote down what it did. They also had to have an entirely new production facility because of its incredible size.

Actually, Drydock Ships. 

[NS Wizdum]

Wayning_Star wrote...

NS Wizdum wrote...

Gruntburner wrote...

Wayning_Star wrote...

I found there to be as many as 50000 known reapers, maybe more...ulp

the oldest reaper found to be almost a billion years old, one maybe two reapers per cycle 50000 years between cycles,maybe less sometimes, races depending.... do the math, I'm too lazy.. :^]

Lets just say there are alot.

You are assuming a total loss of 0 ships in 1 billion years, thats a hell of an assumption.

no, but we're hard pressed to figure out IF the reapers don't stash other stuff out in dark space, who knows what tricks such an ancient race is capable of. I wouldn't know how to out think a billion years old race, muchless play chess with them, even on one dimension..gak. How could we know if they have built tons of geth platforms and hid them, just in case. They would have to prepare for any contingency. Why would they permit us to 'copy' it down in our trusty codex? They have tabs on our swiped, er borrowed reapers tech, hech we don't even know what a keeper is? The do rely on brute force to win battles so it'd be playing their hand to commit to such as a form of offensive defense?

just say'n

edit: had another awful thought, they're pretty arrogant, there's probably a good reason for that. If we go hammer on them and they get the idea that we might actually give them a hard time. Then they might pull out some old collector items even they forgot about, never needed'em before, even with the Prothians, who owned just about everything in the MEU..at one time, now the reapers got it... a couple of  million vigil guided geth war ships,even bigger than what the tame geth produced...all built like reaper tough.. I'd bet they'd have quite the stash of cool old weapons just lying around...for plinking rodents.(they think of us in less than that..)

How does any of that apply to my comment? We took out quite a few Reapers in this cycle, and they could only make 8 new ones. Over 1 billion years, the Reapers should be getting weaker. Even if the other cycles had less luck than us, a loss of 10 Reapers in one cycle means they now have fewer than they started with.

Edit: The Reapers are arrogant. They believe themselves to be Gods, why would they hold anything in reserve? They win by overwhelming force, it makes no sense for them to be hiding anything.

Modifié par NS Wizdum, 01 août 2012 - 03:45 .

[Wayning_Star]

the reapers have forgotten about more weapons than current organics/sythetics will ever know how to use..in the time given.. Heck they even know how to operate a crucible, who really knows what the heck that thing was origionally used for.. They could probably just invoke a black hole right in the middle of our system..just to prove a point..it just keeps get'n worse for me here..gak

[BerzerkGene]

dreman9999 wrote...

BerzerkGene wrote...

dreman9999 wrote...

BerzerkGene wrote...

dreman9999 wrote...

You need to talk to a Garrus more...

Note; winning one battle does not mean winning the war.

Thats actually before the miracle at palaven.

This conversation is after that.
 The mirecle of palven happens before rennock is resolved. The conversation with Garrus is after rennoch.

Chronologically it happens after the fall of thessia, which is after rannoch.

No,it does not. I just check with my character who is still doing the rennoch mission. The mericle of palven already happen.  It happens before the end of the rannoch stage of the game. Not after.

Yeah, you're right, it happens right after the dreadnought. That conversation with garrus happens at the same time, which makes it seem again like gameplay ans story segregation So we took back palaven for...5 minutes? That seems pretty inconsistent.

[Wayning_Star]

NS Wizdum wrote...

Wayning_Star wrote...

NS Wizdum wrote...

Gruntburner wrote...

Wayning_Star wrote...

I found there to be as many as 50000 known reapers, maybe more...ulp

the oldest reaper found to be almost a billion years old, one maybe two reapers per cycle 50000 years between cycles,maybe less sometimes, races depending.... do the math, I'm too lazy.. :^]

Lets just say there are alot.

You are assuming a total loss of 0 ships in 1 billion years, thats a hell of an assumption.

no, but we're hard pressed to figure out IF the reapers don't stash other stuff out in dark space, who knows what tricks such an ancient race is capable of. I wouldn't know how to out think a billion years old race, muchless play chess with them, even on one dimension..gak. How could we know if they have built tons of geth platforms and hid them, just in case. They would have to prepare for any contingency. Why would they permit us to 'copy' it down in our trusty codex? They have tabs on our swiped, er borrowed reapers tech, hech we don't even know what a keeper is? The do rely on brute force to win battles so it'd be playing their hand to commit to such as a form of offensive defense?

just say'n

edit: had another awful thought, they're pretty arrogant, there's probably a good reason for that. If we go hammer on them and they get the idea that we might actually give them a hard time. Then they might pull out some old collector items even they forgot about, never needed'em before, even with the Prothians, who owned just about everything in the MEU..at one time, now the reapers got it... a couple of  million vigil guided geth war ships,even bigger than what the tame geth produced...all built like reaper tough.. I'd bet they'd have quite the stash of cool old weapons just lying around...for plinking rodents.(they think of us in less than that..)

How does any of that apply to my comment? We took out quite a few Reapers in this cycle, and they could only make 8 new ones. Over 1 billion years, the Reapers should be getting weaker. Even if the other cycles had less luck than us, a loss of 10 Reapers in one cycle means they now have fewer than they started with.

it's just that math of brute force vs sneaky sneak..they've already got the jump on the MEU. We're building a super weapon that they/well somebody they harvested designed. How could we know anything about their fleet strength, when we don't even know where they're from in the MEU, or outside it?? Too many unknowns to assemble with.

[incinerator950]

BerzerkGene wrote...

dreman9999 wrote...

BerzerkGene wrote...

dreman9999 wrote...

BerzerkGene wrote...

dreman9999 wrote...

You need to talk to a Garrus more...

Note; winning one battle does not mean winning the war.

Thats actually before the miracle at palaven.

This conversation is after that.
 The mirecle of palven happens before rennock is resolved. The conversation with Garrus is after rennoch.

Chronologically it happens after the fall of thessia, which is after rannoch.

No,it does not. I just check with my character who is still doing the rennoch mission. The mericle of palven already happen.  It happens before the end of the rannoch stage of the game. Not after.

Yeah, you're right, it happens right after the dreadnought. That conversation with garrus happens at the same time, which makes it seem again like gameplay ans story segregation So we took back palaven for...5 minutes? That seems pretty inconsistent.

Nothing is.

[Wayning_Star]

NS Wizdum wrote...

Wayning_Star wrote...

NS Wizdum wrote...

Gruntburner wrote...

Wayning_Star wrote...

I found there to be as many as 50000 known reapers, maybe more...ulp

the oldest reaper found to be almost a billion years old, one maybe two reapers per cycle 50000 years between cycles,maybe less sometimes, races depending.... do the math, I'm too lazy.. :^]

Lets just say there are alot.

You are assuming a total loss of 0 ships in 1 billion years, thats a hell of an assumption.

no, but we're hard pressed to figure out IF the reapers don't stash other stuff out in dark space, who knows what tricks such an ancient race is capable of. I wouldn't know how to out think a billion years old race, muchless play chess with them, even on one dimension..gak. How could we know if they have built tons of geth platforms and hid them, just in case. They would have to prepare for any contingency. Why would they permit us to 'copy' it down in our trusty codex? They have tabs on our swiped, er borrowed reapers tech, hech we don't even know what a keeper is? The do rely on brute force to win battles so it'd be playing their hand to commit to such as a form of offensive defense?

just say'n

edit: had another awful thought, they're pretty arrogant, there's probably a good reason for that. If we go hammer on them and they get the idea that we might actually give them a hard time. Then they might pull out some old collector items even they forgot about, never needed'em before, even with the Prothians, who owned just about everything in the MEU..at one time, now the reapers got it... a couple of  million vigil guided geth war ships,even bigger than what the tame geth produced...all built like reaper tough.. I'd bet they'd have quite the stash of cool old weapons just lying around...for plinking rodents.(they think of us in less than that..)

How does any of that apply to my comment? We took out quite a few Reapers in this cycle, and they could only make 8 new ones. Over 1 billion years, the Reapers should be getting weaker. Even if the other cycles had less luck than us, a loss of 10 Reapers in one cycle means they now have fewer than they started with.

Edit: The Reapers are arrogant. They believe themselves to be Gods, why would they hold anything in reserve? They win by overwhelming force, it makes no sense for them to be hiding anything.

better question, why would we?

[JShepppp]

Skirata129 wrote...

it struck me that a method of overhwelming the Reaper fleet has already been exploited in a modern military excercise to great effect. In an exercise pitting a low tech force against a carrier battlegroup, the Opfor commander achieved victory by swarming the carrier with PT boats armed with rocket launchers.

Could not this same idea be extrapolated to the mass effect universe? Take many small, lightly armored and fast fighters and frigates, arm them with thanix cannons and mob the Reapers. Sure many of them would be shot down, but the Reaper capital ships would be swarmed with the effective firepower of several hundred dreadnaughts, without being presented with the relatively slow and large target a dreadnaught usually displays.

Other methods could be viable of course. Opinions on this and other conventional victory suggestions?

EDIT : fixed typos and posting link to wargame where this technique was used. funny, the Admiral in charge's position lines up pretty well with certain defeatists in the game and on these forums... en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millennium_Challenge_2002

See the thread in my sig about conventional victory that I wrote a long time back. I discussed Thannix cannons. The main problem is that you have to rely on (a) Reapers being moronic and ( a Thannix cannon "multiplier" (how much stronger Thannix is versus normal dreadnought weapons) that would have to be so large that it would be put into the deus ex machinima category. 

Reapers can FTL in and out of fights at will, something no modern engagements can have either party do. That alone, combined with better sensors (they can sense us and fire farther away than we can), along with jamming technology, their presence of greater numbers (more sovvy ships than dreadnoughts, more destroyers than cruisers, more occuli than fighters), their 100% knowledge of the relay network, and instantaneous communication (aka communicating by "snail mail" versus "email") give them a huge advantage.

[Femlob]

Taboo-XX wrote...

Dude.

This will not, and never can, apply to the Reapers.

You cannot win conventionally. You are told this twice before going to the Citadel for the first time.

You either use the Crucible that you have permission to use, or you die.

It's really ****ing simple.

"You know we can't win this conventionally."
"Why the f*ck not?"
"Because reasons."
"No, seriously. Why the f*ck not?"
"It is not a thing you can comprehend."

You know what pisses me off? People who accept shit at face value without questioning its validity. Isn't anybody else bothered by the fact that NOBODY in the ENTIRE F*CKING GAME bothers to explain exactly WHY conventional victory isn't possible?

And we have "permission" to use the Crucible, now? I'll admit it, seeing a two-game defy-the-odds hero reduced to a witless pawn to be exploited and tossed away after use certainly brings my ****** to a f*cking boil.

Modifié par Femlob, 01 août 2012 - 03:51 .

[Father_Jerusalem]

BerzerkGene wrote...

"Driven from their home system by the geth nearly three centuries ago, most quarians now live aboard the Migrant Fleet, a flotilla of fifty thousand vessels ranging in size from passenger shuttles to mobile space stations."
Anything with a gun counts as a military asset. Whether they're glass cannons or not, they're fitted with thanix cannons, that gives them significant firepower. It helps they stay back and basically provide covering fire too.

*sigh* It was not an entire fleet. An entire fleet would have completely decimated the area Shepard was in. It was about 2 dozen ships. The bulk of the fleet was still fighting the geth. After you find said weakness, its basically one giant co-ordinated shot at its face. Shepard managed to pinpoint it while running around on the ground, an advanced targetting computer of a ship would be vastly superior.
They're not idiots, yeah they kind of are. If you were the Rannoch destroyer, would you sweep your laser vertically at shepard, or horizontally? one offers Shepard the chance to dodge, another does not. The Reapers intelligence was completely nerfed as soon as Harbinger was no longer their boss.

Fine, but Oculi don't have the same amount of firepower as a thanix armed fighter. If they did there would be no need to even have reapers as a defending force, just have a fleet of oculi, they shred the enemy, problem solved. I think you see perhaps a dozen of them take out a turian cruiser above palaven.

Why would you not save the geth? Personally the only Quarians i liked were Tali, Kal'Reegar, Veetor and that Qwib Qwib guy. The rest are too selfish. The Quarian Geth war didn't decimate both fleets, but it took a chunk out of them, for sure. The geth were initially losing until the Reaper took over.
Yeah that dreadnought. Why would there only be one? Thats the first geth dreadnought we've seen. The have as many as the Turians.

You're ignoring facts. You won't even admit that the hades cannon is a reaper. You just say it isn't, giving no reasons as to why the thing that looks like exactly like a reaper, has the power of a reaper and dies like a reaper, isn't a reaper.
Honestly i don't care that much about Shepard. He/she is one person. While as my avatar, i do care, but Shepard still does a lot of things that i completely disagree with, no matter what i do. Could i do a better job? With speeches and organisation, yeah. As a leader and soldier? Hell no.

A freighter with a gun on it does not count as a "warship". Once again, you're ludicrously suggesting that the Quarian fleet is omgsobadass with their thousands upon thousands of barely held together ships, and utterly dismissing the Destroyers of the Reaper armada as inconsequential. That is utterly hypocritical of you, and it's just WRONG. 

The Rannoch Reaper was about gameplay functionality. Not stupidity. They wanted to give you an "zomg badass" moment and, had they realized that it would have lead to idiotic comments, they probably wouldn't have put it in. "Reaper Destroyers are so easy to defeat"... yeah, it took how many direct hits from HOW many ships while the Destroyer was planetbound, not firing at the ships, and had its barriers down because of the gravity? Please. PLEASE. 

Once again, you ignore the fact that Thanix cannons are based off the eezero core of the ship they're mounted on.. fighters with Thanix cannons would be little more dangerous than fighters without Thanix cannons, simply because their cores aren't big enough to make the Thanix mean a damn thing. And there are still more Oculi than there are fighters, so... 

Why would you not save the Geth? Because not every Shepard is YOUR FREAKING SHEPARD. Other people may actually make different choices than YOU did. But by all means, feel free to punish them for not being your carbon copy.

And the Hades cannon is not a Destroyer. It's not. Just stop with this asinine line. For chrissakes. Just because it has the chassis of a Destroyer does NOT MEAN it has the same capabilities as a Destroyer. God. Just stop it. It's ridiculous.

[JShepppp]

Femlob wrote...

Taboo-XX wrote...

Dude.

This will not, and never can, apply to the Reapers.

You cannot win conventionally. You are told this twice before going to the Citadel for the first time.

You either use the Crucible that you have permission to use, or you die.

It's really ****ing simple.

"You know we can't win this conventionally."
"Why the f*ck not?"
"Because reasons."
"No, seriously. Why the f*ck not?"
"It is not a thing you can comprehend."

You know what pisses me off? People who accept shit at face value without questioning its validity. Isn't anybody else bothered by the fact that NOBODY in the ENTIRE F*CKING GAME bothers to explain exactly WHY conventional victory isn't possible?

And we have "permission" to use the Crucible, now? I'll admit it, seeing a two-game defy-the-odds hero reduced to a witless pawn to be exploited and tossed away after use certainly brings my ****** to a f*cking boil.

I'm copy and pasting from a thread I started some time back on why conventional victory is impossible. Apologies if formatting come out wrong; the thread is in my sig. Please click here for the actual thread.

Consider this my "explanation" as to why conventional victory is impossible. It may not be enough, but I hope it is a start.

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. 

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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. 

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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]

[Wayning_Star]

Femlob wrote...

Taboo-XX wrote...

Dude.

This will not, and never can, apply to the Reapers.

You cannot win conventionally. You are told this twice before going to the Citadel for the first time.

You either use the Crucible that you have permission to use, or you die.

It's really ****ing simple.

"You know we can't win this conventionally."
"Why the f*ck not?"
"Because reasons."
"No, seriously. Why the f*ck not?"
"It is not a thing you can comprehend."

You know what pisses me off? People who accept shit at face value without questioning its validity. Isn't anybody else bothered by the fact that NOBODY in the ENTIRE F*CKING GAME bothers to explain exactly WHY conventional victory isn't possible?

And we have "permission" to use the Crucible, now? I'll admit it, seeing a two-game defy-the-odds hero reduced to a witless pawn to be exploited and tossed away after use certainly brings my ****** to a f*cking boil.

Yeah, reapers are a pain in the assets. But you have to know what the opposition has for sure, or you plainly don't know what your opposition has. The friggen game never donates that info for the conventional battle folk, so they're haveing to piece together enough 'stuff' to even head canon such a feat. The game is really arbitrary about reapers being pretty much if not straight up the undefeatalbe champion of the MEU. Swatted the protheans like a bug..they were the most powerful race known, who know what other races they whipped in the billion or so years they were in action. Heck they even thumped their creator race. That right there is a tell as to their military strength. I'm sure they didn't go down without a conventional fight...

edit: aw crap, just had a though while thinking about conventional fights'n reapers and their creators. The catalyst didn't have any reapers till it harvested its own creators. How did the catalyst defeat the original creators, with conventional war stuff? hmmm another friggen MEU mistery. (if some one says the butler did it, I'm gonna ...actually do nothing

Modifié par Wayning_Star, 01 août 2012 - 04:05 .

[NS Wizdum]

Father_Jerusalem wrote...

BerzerkGene wrote...

"Driven from their home system by the geth nearly three centuries ago, most quarians now live aboard the Migrant Fleet, a flotilla of fifty thousand vessels ranging in size from passenger shuttles to mobile space stations."
Anything with a gun counts as a military asset. Whether they're glass cannons or not, they're fitted with thanix cannons, that gives them significant firepower. It helps they stay back and basically provide covering fire too.

*sigh* It was not an entire fleet. An entire fleet would have completely decimated the area Shepard was in. It was about 2 dozen ships. The bulk of the fleet was still fighting the geth. After you find said weakness, its basically one giant co-ordinated shot at its face. Shepard managed to pinpoint it while running around on the ground, an advanced targetting computer of a ship would be vastly superior.
They're not idiots, yeah they kind of are. If you were the Rannoch destroyer, would you sweep your laser vertically at shepard, or horizontally? one offers Shepard the chance to dodge, another does not. The Reapers intelligence was completely nerfed as soon as Harbinger was no longer their boss.

Fine, but Oculi don't have the same amount of firepower as a thanix armed fighter. If they did there would be no need to even have reapers as a defending force, just have a fleet of oculi, they shred the enemy, problem solved. I think you see perhaps a dozen of them take out a turian cruiser above palaven.

Why would you not save the geth? Personally the only Quarians i liked were Tali, Kal'Reegar, Veetor and that Qwib Qwib guy. The rest are too selfish. The Quarian Geth war didn't decimate both fleets, but it took a chunk out of them, for sure. The geth were initially losing until the Reaper took over.
Yeah that dreadnought. Why would there only be one? Thats the first geth dreadnought we've seen. The have as many as the Turians.

You're ignoring facts. You won't even admit that the hades cannon is a reaper. You just say it isn't, giving no reasons as to why the thing that looks like exactly like a reaper, has the power of a reaper and dies like a reaper, isn't a reaper.
Honestly i don't care that much about Shepard. He/she is one person. While as my avatar, i do care, but Shepard still does a lot of things that i completely disagree with, no matter what i do. Could i do a better job? With speeches and organisation, yeah. As a leader and soldier? Hell no.

A freighter with a gun on it does not count as a "warship". Once again, you're ludicrously suggesting that the Quarian fleet is omgsobadass with their thousands upon thousands of barely held together ships, and utterly dismissing the Destroyers of the Reaper armada as inconsequential. That is utterly hypocritical of you, and it's just WRONG. 

The Rannoch Reaper was about gameplay functionality. Not stupidity. They wanted to give you an "zomg badass" moment and, had they realized that it would have lead to idiotic comments, they probably wouldn't have put it in. "Reaper Destroyers are so easy to defeat"... yeah, it took how many direct hits from HOW many ships while the Destroyer was planetbound, not firing at the ships, and had its barriers down because of the gravity? Please. PLEASE. 

Once again, you ignore the fact that Thanix cannons are based off the eezero core of the ship they're mounted on.. fighters with Thanix cannons would be little more dangerous than fighters without Thanix cannons, simply because their cores aren't big enough to make the Thanix mean a damn thing. And there are still more Oculi than there are fighters, so... 

Why would you not save the Geth? Because not every Shepard is YOUR FREAKING SHEPARD. Other people may actually make different choices than YOU did. But by all means, feel free to punish them for not being your carbon copy.

And the Hades cannon is not a Destroyer. It's not. Just stop with this asinine line. For chrissakes. Just because it has the chassis of a Destroyer does NOT MEAN it has the same capabilities as a Destroyer. God. Just stop it. It's ridiculous.

While I would normally agree with you about the Quarian glass cannons, the Reapers can 1-shot our dreadnoughts, so is there really that much difference between a dreadnought, and a cargo ship with dreadnought class cannons?

[BerzerkGene]

incinerator950 wrote...

BerzerkGene wrote...

You're ignoring facts. You won't even admit that the hades cannon is a reaper. You just say it isn't, giving no reasons as to why the thing that looks like exactly like a reaper, has the power of a reaper and dies like a reaper, isn't a reaper.

As an advocate of the Giant Gun Association of Jackasses, I take offense to this.  The Reaper is clearly using a large, Energy-based Surface to Orbit Cannon.  Its obvious that they rigged the Standard Destroyer to do this by sacrificing several parts, and even Kinetic Barrier Strength.  As we see the normal Destroyer has to be hit with several Thanix missiles, followed by a salvo of Hydra/Cain projectiles. 

I have not heard of the GGAJ. Yeah you're right, it is, mainly cause its normal weapon basically sucks for that kind of thing. It appears to have the exact same amount of parts though, they just added the cannon. It would still need the eezo core to move and fire. Barrier strength i am unsure of, as on the ground Reaper barriers appear to be completely negated. The one taken out before the citadel beam...I find that very odd. From the dialogue it sounds as though the missiles you have are the only ones that made it into firing position. How the thanix cannon technology is even applied to a missile seems strange.
The supposed cains that are shot at it...apparently required no charge time. But thats more likely an oversight than anything.

But the hades cannon one, if you fire it anywhere except at the cannon itself, the shot will actually fly up to it, unaided. The cannon is probably a weak point, but the reaper actually cries out. So if its a specialised jury rigged reaper, that does make sense. But simply saying its outright not a reaper doesn't. The hades cannon itself probably caused massive damage when it blew up. So targetting the laser when its powering up would probably work, although you might need 2 shots instead of 1.

incinerator950 wrote...

BerzerkGene wrote...

dreman9999 wrote...

The
crucilbe is an example of putting together something that was aready
design, planned, refined, and caluculated. The crucible took less work
to make.

That no one wrote down what it did. They also had to have an entirely new production facility because of its incredible size.

Actually, Drydock Ships. 

Thats a crapload of drydock ships to house all those people, rachni, volus etc etc. Theres still the issue of where they're getting the resources, if its nearby, then they could have build like 50 decent sized ships instead. Itf its not, then the supply lines were holding wtrong.

[3DandBeyond]

Femlob wrote...

Taboo-XX wrote...

Dude.

This will not, and never can, apply to the Reapers.

You cannot win conventionally. You are told this twice before going to the Citadel for the first time.

You either use the Crucible that you have permission to use, or you die.

It's really ****ing simple.

"You know we can't win this conventionally."
"Why the f*ck not?"
"Because reasons."
"No, seriously. Why the f*ck not?"
"It is not a thing you can comprehend."

You know what pisses me off? People who accept shit at face value without questioning its validity. Isn't anybody else bothered by the fact that NOBODY in the ENTIRE F*CKING GAME bothers to explain exactly WHY conventional victory isn't possible?

And we have "permission" to use the Crucible, now? I'll admit it, seeing a two-game defy-the-odds hero reduced to a witless pawn to be exploited and tossed away after use certainly brings my ****** to a f*cking boil.

I do agree.  I can't conceive of all the pre-synthesis people in the galaxy suddenly turning all robot and not questioning the crucible at all.

Everyone gets hung up on the word conventional when what is always meant is unconventional.  The game should just have 1 level of difficulty-full idiot mode.  Not the players as idiots but the characters.  It's impossible-oh so why are we always running head on at them with assault rifles and pistols?  Oh and why is the conduit run made out in the open directly toward a reaper that is shooting at you?  Because using big guns and maybe that apparently invisible Normandy to even distract Harby is impossible.

It makes real sense to me when the question is full blown extinction or survival that great leaders morale boosting words are, "it's impossible".  Ok say it's probably impossible, the hardest thing ever, but damn it we are going to beat them back or die trying. 

[Femlob]

Wayning_Star wrote...

Femlob wrote...

Taboo-XX wrote...

Dude.

This will not, and never can, apply to the Reapers.

You cannot win conventionally. You are told this twice before going to the Citadel for the first time.

You either use the Crucible that you have permission to use, or you die.

It's really ****ing simple.

"You know we can't win this conventionally."
"Why the f*ck not?"
"Because reasons."
"No, seriously. Why the f*ck not?"
"It is not a thing you can comprehend."

You know what pisses me off? People who accept shit at face value without questioning its validity. Isn't anybody else bothered by the fact that NOBODY in the ENTIRE F*CKING GAME bothers to explain exactly WHY conventional victory isn't possible?

And we have "permission" to use the Crucible, now? I'll admit it, seeing a two-game defy-the-odds hero reduced to a witless pawn to be exploited and tossed away after use certainly brings my ****** to a f*cking boil.

Yeah, reapers are a pain in the assets. But you have to know what the opposition has for sure, or you plainly don't know what your opposition has. The friggen game never donates that info for the conventional battle folk, so they're haveing to piece together enough 'stuff' to even head canon such a feat. The game is really arbitrary about reapers being pretty much if not straight up the undefeatalbe champion of the MEU. Swatted the protheans like a bug..they were the most powerful race known, who know what other races they whipped in the billion or so years they were in action. Heck they even thumped their creator race. That right there is a tell as to their military strength. I'm sure they didn't go down without a conventional fight...

"They're powerful. That means there's no way for us to win without a magical weapon. We have no facts to back up this assertion other than the fact that they're powerful."

Sounds legit.

[dreman9999]

BerzerkGene wrote...

dreman9999 wrote...

BerzerkGene wrote...

dreman9999 wrote...

BerzerkGene wrote...

dreman9999 wrote...

You need to talk to a Garrus more...

Note; winning one battle does not mean winning the war.

Thats actually before the miracle at palaven.

This conversation is after that.
 The mirecle of palven happens before rennock is resolved. The conversation with Garrus is after rennoch.

Chronologically it happens after the fall of thessia, which is after rannoch.

No,it does not. I just check with my character who is still doing the rennoch mission. The mericle of palven already happen.  It happens before the end of the rannoch stage of the game. Not after.

Yeah, you're right, it happens right after the dreadnought. That conversation with garrus happens at the same time, which makes it seem again like gameplay ans story segregation So we took back palaven for...5 minutes? That seems pretty inconsistent.

We never took back palvin at all. Just some parts. We lost it agian after.

[incinerator950]

JShepppp wrote...

Skirata129 wrote...

it struck me that a method of overhwelming the Reaper fleet has already been exploited in a modern military excercise to great effect. In an exercise pitting a low tech force against a carrier battlegroup, the Opfor commander achieved victory by swarming the carrier with PT boats armed with rocket launchers.

Could not this same idea be extrapolated to the mass effect universe? Take many small, lightly armored and fast fighters and frigates, arm them with thanix cannons and mob the Reapers. Sure many of them would be shot down, but the Reaper capital ships would be swarmed with the effective firepower of several hundred dreadnaughts, without being presented with the relatively slow and large target a dreadnaught usually displays.

Other methods could be viable of course. Opinions on this and other conventional victory suggestions?

EDIT : fixed typos and posting link to wargame where this technique was used. funny, the Admiral in charge's position lines up pretty well with certain defeatists in the game and on these forums... en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millennium_Challenge_2002

See the thread in my sig about conventional victory that I wrote a long time back. I discussed Thannix cannons. The main problem is that you have to rely on (a) Reapers being moronic and ( a Thannix cannon "multiplier" (how much stronger Thannix is versus normal dreadnought weapons) that would have to be so large that it would be put into the deus ex machinima category. 

Reapers can FTL in and out of fights at will, something no modern engagements can have either party do. That alone, combined with better sensors (they can sense us and fire farther away than we can), along with jamming technology, their presence of greater numbers (more sovvy ships than dreadnoughts, more destroyers than cruisers, more occuli than fighters), their 100% knowledge of the relay network, and instantaneous communication (aka communicating by "snail mail" versus "email") give them a huge advantage.

Wargames have always been ****ing stupid.  I can't believe anyone would want to use that as an example.