[quote]DeinonSlayer wrote...
Both fleets have to repair and re-stock before they can send aid into the wider galaxy. I imagine they were making preparations to disembark before the fighting itself was over. The whole point of going to war, as established in ME2, was to have a place to shelter their civilian populace while the fleet went out to aid the wider galaxy.[/quote]
Was it? I thought that was Gerrel's excuse, not actual quarian policy. Xen wanted mastery over the geth, Rhaan kinda went where the wind blew - or seemed to - Zal'Koris wanted peaceful cooperation - the general goal of Shepard in the end, we would assume, since you have the option of pushing for that at Tali's trial. From the sounds of things, only the Heavy Fleet is the main-purpose combat arm of the quarian fleet. I could be wrong on this, however.[/quote]The codex tells us the Quarians have 50,000 ships, almost all of which are armed but only a few hundred of which are actually military - and no dreadnoughts among them (unless you count the converted Liveships). Before retaking Rannoch, their dependency on the Liveships for food necessitated that the fleet stay together. They require daily shipments to keep everyone fed - this and the fact that they're packed to the rafters with civilians prevents the fleet from dividing itself to provide logistical support to others before they have a planet to offload themselves on.
There's also the consideration that they're physiologically dependent on Rannoch's native plant life - according to the planet's codex entry, that dependency is the reason their immune systems have weakened. They've been denied access to them for generations. Think of it like the human dependency on Vitamin D, and what would happen over time if we were deprived of it. On their world, plants depend on large animals to propagate seeds and pollen; the animals, in turn, are dependent on something in the plants. We're told in ME2 that if they were to try to colonize a different planet, it would take genetic engineering (which is outlawed by the Council) over a period of six hundred years for them to once again live without suits. So, really, it's a matter of their survival as a species - unless there's a Turian colony out there somewhere which is A) not under Reaper attack, and
willing and able to accept an influx of millions of high-maintenance refugees, retaking Rannoch is their only option after the Reapers invade. If they're caught in space, the Reapers would just blockade the relay (as they have their Geth thralls do) and whittle them down to nothing. They stalled as long as they could, and launched the invasion after the Reapers arrived because they had no other choice.[quote]JakeMacDon wrote...
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The thing is, the Quarians have to cannibalize much of that fleet to use as building materials for reconstruction.
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I think you're forgetting that the geth regard Rannoch as a graveyard, and have preserved a great deal of the planet - including the cities. Direct quote from the wiki (if you can trust it): "Although Rannoch is now largely uninhabited, the geth have acted as caretakers, working to repair the planet's ecology, restore ancient structures, and cultivate some farmland."
Not much cannibalization needed.[/quote]After the peace outcome, if I remember correctly, we're told they're still cannibalizing ships, but the Geth are making the process go faster.
[quote]JakeMacDon wrote...
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They won't be going on a "crusade of revenge" even if they wanted to for the same reason they could never take a Turian colony to settle by force - they lack the numbers to do so.
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Considering the pounding the turians are/would have taken, the quarians might not have to work too terribly hard - were they so inclined.[/quote]Which they aren't, so it really isn't a consideration. The Vallum Blast I mentioned before (from Cerberus Daily News) was an incident where a Turian city on Taetrus was destroyed by a Turian separatist faction. While other races made grand symbolic gestures of support for the survivors, the Quarians instead sent dozens of freighters of emergency supplies from their own stores to help them out.
[quote]JakeMacDon wrote...
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As the Peace outcome shows, they care more about survival than revenge. Historically, the Geth they were up against had the mindset of the VI, which offers the Quarians no quarter. The Quarians attacked because they thought it the only way they could survive, and if you have the VI with you, they're absolutely right.
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Well, Legion says that in his experience - which is the experience of all geth - the quarians have attacked "100% if the time". They've never tried to negotiate. The war was never actually necessary, if the quarians had just listened for once. The hawks had their way, the rest gotta pay.[/quote]From Mass Effect: Revelation, page 116:
The quarians had neither the numbers nor the ability to stand against their former servants. In a short but savage war their entire society was wiped out. Only a few million survivors-less than one percent of their entire population-escaped the genocide, fleeing their home world in a massive fleet, refugees forced to live in exile.
The Geth killed anyone who couldn't secure passage off-world, and only relented when the last survivors were driven off and no longer recognized as a threat (and they deemed the entire species a threat, as the Geth VI will do a second time - it doesn't even recognize the Quarians who died defending Geth in the Morning War).
Since the war, the Geth have shot down every organic to enter their space on sight (including emissaries sent to make contact with them) for three hundred years without so much as responding to a radio hail, and started walling off Rannoch's sun in a dyson sphere. Not the best foundation for trust. We can't be sure exactly when the Geth stopped communicating with organics, but if it happened during the war itself, it would mean that any attempt to surrender would have been ignored - if the Geth considered Quarian attempts to defend themselves to be an "attack," then I guess it would be a true statement (the Codex describes waves of thousands of Geth platforms being used to overrun Quarian positions, and dialogue with Legion suggests the Geth made extensive use of chemical warfare - they're still cleaning up "toxins" three centuries later). Legion is the first that the Quarians and Geth have communicated since then, but he severed communication with Tali before the Quarians actually invaded. Neither side made any progress.
[quote]JakeMacDon wrote...
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When it's communicated to them, however, that the Geth are willing to accept a cease-fire for the first time in their entire history, they make the smart move and stand down.
[/quote]Couldn't the geth letting the quarians leave Rannoch in the first place be considered a kind of ceasefire? We can assume the Morning War technically never ended. It's implied that the geth could have easily pursued them, but didn't because they didn't know what genocide would entail. It was not desire, just uncertainty. For the most part, quarian history since has been nothing but the desire for genocide (if you consider the geth potentially people). The quarians - at least their leadership and public opinion - is not remotely guiltless. The war, AFAIK, was to the extinction of the geth, not co-habitation. Shepard, if s/he's lucky - forces it on them but making it possible for the geth individually and independantly intelligent.[/quote]If Skynet wiped out the entire human race, but left the International Space Station and a pilot colony on Mars alone...
To be fair, Council law dictated that the Geth be shut down. There would have been ramifications for the Quarians if they hadn't complied - look at what the Turians did on Shanxi because humans tried to open a mass relay. The Quarians were evidently right to fear the Geth's capabilities - over 99% of their population was exterminated in a single year, after all. Their error was in their judgement of the Geth's motives - and, according to EDI, not making the Geth enough like them. The Geth saw their creators as a fellow collective, and deemed the entire collective a threat to be destroyed. They only stopped killing when the "threat" ceased to be a threat.
I'd recommend playing around with the dialogue options on Tali's loyalty mission. If, while speaking at the console, you argue against retaking Rannoch and then ask why the Quarians haven't tried to do so, she says a big part of it is that the Quarians feel guilty over what was done to the Geth - the Codex says they don't like to talk about it with outsiders, but privately acknowledge that their own hubris cost them their homeworld.
[quote]JakeMacDon wrote...
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The only way the Quarians die is if Shepard encourages the upload and doesn't even bother to tell the Quarians about it - for all they know, another Reaper backup came on-line, in which case ceasing fire wouldn't spare them anyway.[/quote]
Not telling them is a rather dickbag move, no matter how you look at it.[/quote]That it is. So is shooting Legion. Shooting the VI? Not so much.
[quote]JakeMacDon wrote...
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If one side or the other, or both, are intent on some sort of "crusade of revenge" a la Wreav (which there is little reason to suspect - see Quarian aid provided in the wake of the Vallum Blast), wouldn't it be better to preserve the fleet which would be weaker in such combat?
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Well, I doubt public opinion would sway that way, but in the flush of victory, with the hawks in charge...? It's not completely impossible. Implausible, yes, but not impossible.[/quote]...nah. If that crazy-ass Xen re-took control of the Geth Collective, maybe, but aside from her, the Quarians never display aggression towards any other species.
[quote]JakeMacDon wrote...
[quote]I think we can agree on this point. I would say the same for my distain for the Geth. I've said many times that those who choose Destroy specifically so Shepard has a shot at survival are doing so for the wrong reasons.
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As I said, Destroy is an actual choice, it takes guts - the others are capitulation - in my opinion, of course.[/quote]Synthesis certainly is - in my opinion, of course. Control... I don't think anyone should have that kind of power, no matter how blue their morality meter is.
[quote]JakeMacDon wrote...
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You might be interested in the alternate Rannoch campaign I wrote up. I took Reaper code out of the equation (a major source of distrust) and tried to be balanced to both sides.
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Pass me a link and I'll have a look.[/quote]I'll dig it up and send you a PM.
[quote]JakeMacDon wrote...
[quote]Quite, thank you very much. We would never have seen antagonism in the discussion had you led your argument in this fashion.
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I gotta be me. I also have to regulate my sugar rushes more efficiently, as well, I think.[/quote]I knew a guy who tried to drink twenty Red Bulls on a bet. He stopped with the seventeenth after having a mild heart attack.
...I should go.
Modifié par DeinonSlayer, 16 mars 2013 - 02:25 .
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simply because I like Tali, Xen, and the gang.
