304 réponses à ce sujet

[Cheesesack]

Just to give you an idea, by my calculations, there are actually about 265,000 Reaper capital ships. This is based off the age of the universe (and how long it has been in a state where organic life could develop), the length of each cycle, and the fact Leviathan states that one large Reaper is made per cycle. The number is theoretically much less than that, sine the cycles were originally longer and undoubtedly some Reaper ships were lost in previous cycles (we know at least two were).

That's obviously a huge number, but bear in mind that if we were able to win the fight on Earth, we could theoretically use the reapers own tactics against them and shut off the relay network, isolating them and allowing us to deal with much smaller numbers with our entire combined fleet (plus giving us more time to develop new weapons etc.).

[Dav3VsTh3World]

 

OP Usually I'd be one to agree with those saying that I agree with all the others here in saying that a conventional victory is not possible, however I'm willing to at least hear you out, mainly because you haven't detailed an important piece of information,

How?

I'd like to bring up a handful of points set up by the lore of Mass Effect

1. You Mentioned the Leviathan's could bring galactic victory, the problem is that there's only 3 of them and anytime they have defeated a Reaper there has only been one alone, If they could outpower the reapers with just the 3 then they obviously wouldn't be in hiding for millions of years.

2. The Reapers still outnumber the sapient fleets 5 to 1 and that's not even subtracting the ships destroyed in the initial invasion, not to mention severly outpowered.

3. The Reapers aren't stupid, they have the knowledge of thousands of cultures, even if the fleets could take Earth not only would they sustain heavy losses but the Reaper forces outside the Sol System would know how to hurt them next, They would regroup outside the Arcturus relay which is the only relay that is connected to the Sol Relay as per the wikia info. The fleets would be bottlenecked coming out of the relay and would be slaughtered by the army of Reapers waiting there, The fleets took a heavy risk focusing every single force on Earth since they were THAT desperate to get the relay running.

4. Say conventional victory does happen, on what terms would they be? what losses would there be? and what would be the aftermath of the Galaxy?

[Fixers0]

Damn straigt it should be.

Modifié par Fixers0, 01 septembre 2012 - 05:50 .

[Rommel49]

Pitznik wrote...

The crucible plot and alliance's willingness to go with it establishes conventional victory as impossible. It could be possible, but before the Crucible, the whole plot would have to be removed entirely to give everyone's actions at least an illusion of reason.

Except it really doesn't. The codex establishes this in the entry on Reaper Vulnerabilties, that defeating the Reapers is atleast theoretically possible simply by virtue of the fact they've taken casualties in the battles across the galaxy. Even at that point in time, conventional victory wasn't tabled as being completely impossible to achieve.

There's also what Legion says: "With these upgrades, our fleet could retake Earth". I think it's safe to say that Legion and the Geth have a reasonable grasp of Reaper capabilities.

Hell, Hackett's chosen example of the nuclear bombs dropped on Japan during WWII actually undermine the idea there was no other way to win. Fat Man and Little Boy weren't used because it was impossible to defeat Japan without them, we were fully capable of invading and occupying Japan. It was just that actually invading and occupying it likely would've been more costly for everyone involved.

That doesn't mean a conventional victory would necessarily be the "best" option, just like invading Japan wouldn't have necessarily been the "best" option to end WWII. It'd just be another option with its own major drawbacks, like the Crucible is.

[MegaSovereign]

The oldest Reaper corpse in the Mass Effect universe is nearly 1 billion years old.

That means the harvesting cycle has been going on for at least that long. We know that a new Sovereign-class Reaper is created every cycle. We know that a new cycle starts every 50,000 years.

Let's do the math. That means there are at least 20,000 Sovereign-class Reapers. The Codex says that it takes the combined power of 4 Dreadnaughts to take down 1 Reaper. For the galaxy to even have a chance at defeating the Reapers conventionally they would need ~80,000 Dreadnaughts.

Not to mention the Destroyer class Reapers....

[Necrotron]

Well, I'm always game for anything that changes the ending, but really the problem with the ending lies in the premise of it, the fact that Shepard is forced to kill himself at the behest of the main villain to achieve one of the villain's solutions to their imaginary problem of organics vs. synthetics that they actual illogically perpetuate themselves in order to keep the cycle going.

But again and again and again Bioware has stated that there will be no new endings, ever.

[Rommel49]

MegaSovereign wrote...

The oldest Reaper corpse in the Mass Effect universe is nearly 1 billion years old.

That means the harvesting cycle has been going on for at least that long. We know that a new Sovereign-class Reaper is created every cycle. We know that a new cycle starts every 50,000 years.

Let's do the math. That means there are at least 20,000 Sovereign-class Reapers. The Codex says that it takes the combined power of 4 Dreadnaughts to take down 1 Reaper. For the galaxy to even have a chance at defeating the Reapers conventionally they would need ~80,000 Dreadnaughts.

Not to mention the Destroyer class Reapers....

The beginning cycles were also longer than the current 50,000 year timeframe due to the absence of the relay network and the Reapers didn't begin a harvest until a species was sufficiently advanced. It also means the original harvests would've taken far longer without instant transit the relays provided and the fact that the original cycles had far lower numbers of Reapers than the current ones.

The number given for conventional Reaper speeds is 30 light-years per day, or about 11,000 LY per year. The Milky Way is between 100,000 - 120,000 LY in diameter. Without the relay network, just crossing from one end of the galaxy to the other would've taken them about a decade without stopping... unfortunately however, that's just diameter, cutting a straight path through it, they can't harvest the galaxy doing that, and the Milky Way isn't a two-dimensional circle, it's a three-dimensional disk. The total volume of the milky way? It's in the trillions of cubic light years.

Just harvesting the galaxy without relays would've taken longer than the time between the current cycles, far longer, simply due to the time the Reapers would have to spend in transit.

Dreadnoughts are also pretty much the least effective way to deal with Reapers, due to the fact a Dreadnought's main gun deals its damage through kinetic energy which is what the Reapers are best protected against.

As I've already covered, those four dreadnoughts are only dishing out about 150 kilotons total - a single warhead (out of several) on a current-day Minuteman III ICBM packs more destructive energy than that. The Tsar Bomba detonated by the Soviets in the 60's? That was a 50 Megaton weapon, or 50,000 Kilotons, enough to kill a Reaper about 300 times over. The Reapers lock down missile silos for a reason - realistically, conventional victory would be as simple as opening up Earth's silos or building and deploying new nukes (and considering the state of Earth and other planets, we no longer have any real reason not to deploy them).

Modifié par Rommel49, 01 septembre 2012 - 08:01 .

[Brovikk Rasputin]

It shouldn't and hopefully never will become a proper ending.

[eye basher]

The reapers can kill any ship in the galaxy in one shot once you lose the fleet the wars over.

[WhiteKnyght]

Pitznik wrote...

I hope it won't happen. If something would ever happened to the ending to create some sort of super uber happy ending, make it some high EMS destroy or even new function of the Crucible. Throwing the Crucible away would be moronic, and replacing it with just normal conventional victory would be even worse.

I personally wouldn't mind a higher tier result with Destroy. Having its energy constrainted to the Reapers and being able to save EDI and the Geth.

Or more survival options with Shepard. I can see why control would require his death, but he could always be spit back out after jumping into the Crucible's energy stream to add some of his essence.

And EDI romancing!!!! (Sorry Joker)

I have no problems working with my enemy to find a solution that stops the Reaper cycle. I wouldn't call the options "his forced choices" but rather new solutions that became possible with the Crucible.

[Fixers0]

eye basher wrote...

The reapers can kill any ship in the galaxy in one shot once you lose the fleet the wars over.

Multiple instances in the game disprove your statement.

[dreman9999]

Fixers0 wrote...

eye basher wrote...

The reapers can kill any ship in the galaxy in one shot once you lose the fleet the wars over.

Multiple instances in the game disprove your statement.

Show one instance in the game a ship we have can servive a hit from a reaper.

[Foolsfolly]

I always thought a conventional victory would be possible.

Why?

Because of how the Reapers attack.

Through intermediaries.

In ME1 you had geth, krogan clones, and rachni as the bulk of the Reaper forces. In ME2 you had the Collectors. The Collectors weren't even an invasion force. They had a simple role (collect material to build a Reaper) and that's all they did. They pulled double duty of "Kill Shepard" because Reapers aren't stupid and can see a threat when one shows itself.

But they lost all that.

And even with their force Vigil tells you they shut off relays and systematically wiped out all life. That means they likely couldn't have taken the Prothean Empire in a stand up fight. They had to take the Citadel, shut off the relays, and slowly over centuries of conflict wipe them out.

By the end of ME2 and Arrival we'd stop their invasion plan, stopped their collecting plan, stopped their back-up invasion plan, and completely taken out their force of intermediaries.

All they had left was to give us a straight up fight. And dammit. Why couldn't we win that fight? No other cycle had such odds. They always attacked through agents, subterfuge, and by isolating and destroying hold-outs.

[WhiteKnyght]

Fixers0 wrote...

eye basher wrote...

The reapers can kill any ship in the galaxy in one shot once you lose the fleet the wars over.

Multiple instances in the game disprove your statement.

You might be able to take out a few reapers in a short battle. But in a war of attrition, the Reapers will win every single time.

They don't need to rest, refuel, or recharge.

They're almost impervious to any kind of assault, save combined dreadnoguht fire(dreadnoughts are too few in number thanks to the Treaty of Farixen) and an FTL jump tactic that they actually began copying after its first use.

They outnumber the combined galactic fleet.

They specifically targeted industrial centers to debilitate your resources.

The only way to defend against one reaper fleet property is to amass forces, which leaves other fronts open for assault, and you open to be hit from all sides when they're done.

Also shutting down the relays is just another debilitation tactic. It's not because they HAVE to. But because the Catalyst's goal is preservation, so they take all oppourtunities to minimize losses to their own numbers. Losing a reaper is like losing a preserved race.

Modifié par The Grey Nayr, 01 septembre 2012 - 08:38 .

[grey_wind]

Foolsfolly wrote...

I always thought a conventional victory would be possible.

Why?

Because of how the Reapers attack.

Through intermediaries.

In ME1 you had geth, krogan clones, and rachni as the bulk of the Reaper forces. In ME2 you had the Collectors. The Collectors weren't even an invasion force. They had a simple role (collect material to build a Reaper) and that's all they did. They pulled double duty of "Kill Shepard" because Reapers aren't stupid and can see a threat when one shows itself.

But they lost all that.

And even with their force Vigil tells you they shut off relays and systematically wiped out all life. That means they likely couldn't have taken the Prothean Empire in a stand up fight. They had to take the Citadel, shut off the relays, and slowly over centuries of conflict wipe them out.

By the end of ME2 and Arrival we'd stop their invasion plan, stopped their collecting plan, stopped their back-up invasion plan, and completely taken out their force of intermediaries.

All they had left was to give us a straight up fight. And dammit. Why couldn't we win that fight? No other cycle had such odds. They always attacked through agents, subterfuge, and by isolating and destroying hold-outs.

Because that would have required writing a plot that needed more than 5 minutes of thinking put into it.

And RGB wouldn't have been possible without our lovely Deus ex Machina.....

[Fixers0]

dreman9999 wrote...

Show one instance in the game a ship we have can servive a hit from a reaper.

Here you go

[Dharvy]

Me personally I won't mind if Refuse, with enough EMS could win the war, but the cost is the extinction or near extinction of upwards of 2 or more races, with the death toll to be catastrophic to the galaxy. So those who feel so morally conflicted could have their die trying to win feeling and the people more pragmatic and reasonable can still have their reasonable choices still. Also so the Refuse and win conventionally wouldn't become the better ending just a feel better ending.

But if Shepard was to live through a Refuse and ever go through a debrief and it gets out what s/he did that the war could have possibly been over however many years it takes to win conventionally, they'll probably become hated and hunted and have nightmares far greater than what they was having before with the dead crying "why didn't you save me?"

If it could become cannon it could probably work a ME4 into it. That'll be interesting.

But personally I'm not invested either way.

[Dharvy]

Fixers0 wrote...

dreman9999 wrote...

Show one instance in the game a ship we have can servive a hit from a reaper.

Here you go

Lol, isn't that the part where if you walk forward the scene takes place and the ships explode? Isn't someone just halting a scene? Not realistically what happens or will happen.

[Fixers0]

Dharvy wrote...

Fixers0 wrote...

dreman9999 wrote...

Show one instance in the game a ship we have can servive a hit from a reaper.

Here you go

Lol, isn't that the part where if you walk forward the scene takes place and the ships explode? Isn't someone just halting a scene? Not realistically what happens or will happen.

No the event is position triggered rather then timed.

[Dharvy]

Fixers0 wrote...

Dharvy wrote...

Fixers0 wrote...

dreman9999 wrote...

Show one instance in the game a ship we have can servive a hit from a reaper.

Here you go

Lol, isn't that the part where if you walk forward the scene takes place and the ships explode? Isn't someone just halting a scene? Not realistically what happens or will happen.

No the event is position triggered rather then timed.

Isn't that what I just said? walk forward (position) halting the scene by not moving into position perchance?

[Fixers0]

Dharvy wrote...

Fixers0 wrote...

Dharvy wrote...

Fixers0 wrote...

dreman9999 wrote...

Show one instance in the game a ship we have can servive a hit from a reaper.

Here you go

Lol, isn't that the part where if you walk forward the scene takes place and the ships explode? Isn't someone just halting a scene? Not realistically what happens or will happen.

No the event is position triggered rather then timed.

Isn't that what I just said? walk forward (position) halting the scene by not moving into position perchance?

Yes, a such we can determine that Alliance cruisers only get destroyed when the narative wants them to be (and not because of the Reaper's firepower).

[AlexMBrennan]

TL;DR: The possibility exists that Bioware will/should add the ability to win 'cinventionally' as a result of choosing the refusal ending. Such an ending should be implemented, and fits with the existing lore and gameplay in ME3.

No. Having a full scale Reaper invasion was a mistake (because it requires a deus ex machina solution to win at all) . Adding a way to win conventionally doesn't make it better.

Modifié par AlexMBrennan, 01 septembre 2012 - 09:59 .

[Kabraxal]

AlexMBrennan wrote...

TL;DR: The possibility exists that Bioware will/should add the ability to win 'cinventionally' as a result of choosing the refusal ending. Such an ending should be implemented, and fits with the existing lore and gameplay in ME3.

No. Having a full scale Reaper invasion was a mistake (because it requires a deus ex machina solution to win at all) . Adding a way to win conventionally doesn't make it better.

Simply have the crucible overload the sheilds and poof... convential victory.  Not that much of a stretch.

[Fixers0]

Kabraxal wrote...

AlexMBrennan wrote...

TL;DR: The possibility exists that Bioware will/should add the ability to win 'cinventionally' as a result of choosing the refusal ending. Such an ending should be implemented, and fits with the existing lore and gameplay in ME3.

No. Having a full scale Reaper invasion was a mistake (because it requires a deus ex machina solution to win at all) . Adding a way to win conventionally doesn't make it better.

Simply have the crucible overload the sheilds and poof... convential victory.  Not that much of a stretch.

The problem here is that the Crucible is inherently a contrived plot device.

[MythicalStick]

There can be no conventional victory against the Reapers, because the developers made them far too powerful to be defeated conventionally.  That is the way the developers wanted it, so that is the way they presented them.  You need the superweapon/magic feather to defeat the Reapers.  I have no problem with that.  It actually makes more sense to me then a conventional victory against a superior foe, ala Pandora.  Even in Pandora they needed the animal kingdom to "rise up". 

Presenting a conventional victory against the Reapers after building them up to be such a superior foe, would be ridiculous to me. 

I'm still not sure why some people are stuck on the conventional victory possibility anyways, except that they hate the choices that the cruicible presents to them.