642 réponses à ce sujet

[MegaSovereign]

You saw Destroyers getting destroyed.

[zakdillon]

Of course we can! it just requires one small DLC cinematic before the next trilogy.

*crosses fingers*

Essentially, it would make the current refuse ending equal to the Low EMS version. Then after playing the subsequent trilogy, you could get a new "high EMS" version, where the refusal paid off and we won. Its fiction - they can write anything they want.

Make it so the next protagonist goes on a Hail Mary run through unknown relays in an attempt to find another species that could help. Eventually, the council, together with other new species, is able to repel the reapers. We could even have 2 trilogies going - one following Shepard, Normandy, and the war, and the other protagonist exploring the relays with reapers in hot pursuit.

I'm just spitballing here. Point is, conventional victory is possible if they wanted it to be.

[Phatose]

tickle267 wrote...

Phatose wrote...

Ramming, I believe, is actually covered in the Codex.  It doesn't work.  Mass effect drives shut down if you try to ram them into a solid object.  Nobody can figure out how to stop them from doing it - another little reminder that the technology is actually Reaper tech, and we only mostly understand it.

yeah that explaination was a load of sh*t, especially since cerberus news reports a story where some turians rebels launched a ship at ftl into a planet. basically they added that [very weak] explanation just to remove something that could actually help during the war.

I tend to agree, but arguing against word of god doesn't actually get us anywhere.

[AlanC9]

Phatose wrote...


The nuke has some additional problems.  First off, it's not directed like the slug is - it detonates spherically.  Which means if you detonate a nuke on the surface of a reaper, fully 50% of the energy is lost because it's going away from the reaper.  If it's not on the surface, it drops off real fast - cube of the distance from detonation.  

Plus the Reaper occupying a smaller fraction of the detonation arc

At relativistic speeds, how close could a nuke even be reliably detonated? You don't need to be as accurate with disruptor torpedoes since the field isn't instantaneous.

[remydat]

The reality is the Reapers count on organics not working together. Thus, they attack systems simulataneously spreading their resources thing. It allows them to harvest faster. If they thought all organics would unite then they would not attack all these different systems. They would simply have one large army going system by system one at a time and eradicating everything. They don't do that because it is time consuming.

[AlanC9]

Phatose wrote...

I tend to agree, but arguing against word of god doesn't actually get us anywhere.

We can certainly argue about the quality of the rationale, but the ME universe has to be one where dreadnaughts work or the Reapers wouldn't organize themselves as a race of dreadnaughts.

[robertthebard]

Argolas wrote...

robertthebard wrote...

There's the problem with this codex entry.  While you're getting your 4 dreadnaughts in position, 3 capital ships are shooting at them.  Not to mention any destroyers and the occuli(?).  So unless you're going to catch the estimated 20,000 capital ships 4 on 1 every time, you don't have enough ships, and you can't rebuild them fast enough to keep up.  According to a report on the Spectre terminal, it's estimated that the galaxy can only hold out for about another year, and they are out of resources.  This is, of course, compounded by the fact that the Reapers are taking out manufacturing hubs anywhere they find them.  I linked an article earlier that shows it takes 7 years to build a modern aircraft carrier, which are the largest ships in our Navy.  How long does it take to build a dreadnaught?  It won't be very long until that's not an issue, since you won't have the resources to build them anyway.

If you get into a war of attrition with the Reapers, you're going to lose because they can and will cut your supply lines, but they can replenish their ground troops on every planet, with the people they harvest.  They're not running out of troops until you run out of people.  Beginning to see the problem here?

I didn't say conventional victory is possible for this cycle. I disagree with the number of 20k capital ships, that is an insane number that makes absolutely no sense. With that kind of force, the galaxy would be taken before you know it. There are less than 100 dreadnoughts in total, that matches the firepower of, let's be generous, 25 capital ships (ignoring that the superior defensive capabilities of reapers makes even that unrealistic). They could just send, say, 50 capital ships to every significant world in the galaxy and have already won. I ignore smaller ships here, I doubt the balance gets better with cruisers vs. destroyers etc. inbound.

I estimate there are about 150-200 capital ships. That number still matches the firepower of at least 600 dreadnoughts, so conventional victory is still impossible, but it would justify the fact that the reaper forces were stretched thin, especially by the Turians. Why aren't there 20k capital ships? Two simple reasons: Not every cycle produces a capital ship, and more importantly, casualties. If every cycle was able to destroy a single capital ship, the number of reapers would even be decreasing.

Conventional victory is possible- theoretically. It may have worked if the prothean plan that Javik was in charge of succeeded and the galaxy had spent the whole cycle preparing, awaiting the Reapers with hundreds of dreadnoughts and ready for anything the reapers would do. But it didn't happen.

Since they make at least one Sovereign class ship almost every cycle, and we guess they've been doing it for a billion years, that's 20 ships every million years, give or take, with some lost during cycles, we know of two that predate our cycle in game, I'd say your math is a bit off.  The fact is, if they wanted to just fly in and kill everyone, they could.  They don't, they want to harvest as many people as they can.  It is scary to think about, but it's also probably pretty close to the truth.

[Astartes Marine]

Phatose wrote...
The nuke has some additional problems.  First off, it's not directed like the slug is - it detonates spherically.  Which means if you detonate a nuke on the surface of a reaper, fully 50% of the energy is lost because it's going away from the reaper.  If it's not on the surface, it drops off real fast - cube of the distance from detonation. 

It'd be better in formations of Reapers admittedly. 

Also the slugs are purely kinetic.  No electromagnetic pulse, far less heat from impact, and you're still limited to single targets.

Phatose wrote...
Which means you need to get your
missile pretty close to the Reaper to have it work.  Then you have a
real problem with getting it in there - the first time it might work,
but after that they're going to aggressively shoot down missiles.  Or
worse, hack them.

They didn't seem to be doing alot of shooting down of the slow moving shots (assuming Thanix missiles/torpedo) in the final battle cutscene.

Also we still wouldn't know how the side effects would affect the Reapers.  The heat from the Tsar Bomba produced third degree burns at around 62 miles from the center of the blast and buildings up to 34 miles away were obliterated.  The shockwave measured a 5.52 on it's third passage around the Earth.  Something like that, detonating even in space?  I cannot fathom the possibility that the Reapers could just shrug that off.

[Reorte]

I simply wouldn't buy it that we could do straightforwardly what every other cycle was unable to. It's stupid to say we're that special, even with the advantage of not having the Citadel taken straight away (and it seems to only be plot convenience that stops the Reapers from heading straight to it). So if you ask why we could win conventionally you also have to come up with an explanation of why no-one else could - and make it seem probable, too.

[Reorte]

Astartes Marine wrote...

Also we still wouldn't know how the side effects would affect the Reapers.  The heat from the Tsar Bomba produced third degree burns at around 62 miles from the center of the blast and buildings up to 34 miles away were obliterated.  The shockwave measured a 5.52 on it's third passage around the Earth.  Something like that, detonating even in space?  I cannot fathom the possibility that the Reapers could just shrug that off.

Detonating in space it would do far less damage, with no atmosphere and ground as an energy propagation medium. You'll get the EMP, radiation blast, and impact from any bits of the bomb that weren't vapourised. There's nothing for a shockwave to propagate through, other than the very small amount of vapourised bomb.

[Artifex_Imperius]

The real question is what if the reapers wised up. pretty scary scenario. Remember they did not start with that many ships to begin with.

And if Reapers start to sense a stiffer resistance. they're is nothing stopping them from upping the anti. Reapers are machines they can match any strategy and tactic one for one. They will adapt. no need to harvest a cycle that causes more harm.

Reapers don't age. this is where their advantage begins they will fight a war of attrition. question do the races have the stomach to fight a war lasting 1000's of years. reapers will match you one for one. you make nukes they make nukes. you make super weapon they make super weapon.

in the end you will have to transform yourself into something like the reapers to defeat them. a machine capable only of one thing wagging war. and when that apex is reached you have lost your humanity and have become them.

reaper have no limits. i like to be open minded about reaper capabilities.

And the ultimate weapon never truly exploited "indoctrination".

how about i match your nuke! and drop a 15km long celestial body "asteroid" on your home planet. didnt take a few km rock to vaporize earth and kill the dinos. how long do you think organics can last with out a planet.

lets face it reapers are simply holding back every cycle.

destroying a reapers? hoping you held that ground they can easily repair they're ships. build 1 ship a cycle whats stopping them from building a 1000 ships a month absolutelty nothing their machines. people like to put reapers into a small box with limitations.

wow a 1000 reaper capitalships a month. is time to **** bricks?

Modifié par Artifex_Imperius, 16 avril 2013 - 09:33 .

[Argolas]

robertthebard wrote...

Since they make at least one Sovereign class ship almost every cycle, and we guess they've been doing it for a billion years, that's 20 ships every million years, give or take, with some lost during cycles, we know of two that predate our cycle in game, I'd say your math is a bit off.  The fact is, if they wanted to just fly in and kill everyone, they could.  They don't, they want to harvest as many people as they can.  It is scary to think about, but it's also probably pretty close to the truth.

No, they don't make at least one capital ship per cycle. They attempt 1 capital ship per cycle and sometimes that works, sometimes it does not. The prothean cycle, for example, didn't produce any capital ship.

I know the Reapers don't kill everyone in order to harvest, but there is no reason to hold back in their conquest. Why allow the Turians to successfully defend their fuel supply if the reapers could just crush it with 20 capital ships? Why wait so long before hitting Thessia or Sur'Kesh? Why not send a few ships in every single Relay system so they can control all space traffic? The answer is: They aren't that many. If they send capital ships in every Relay system, they will split up in fleets that are so small that they could be picked out one by one.

Besides the failure rate in creating reapers, you highly underestimate casualties. As I said, one capital ship downed in every cycle and they run out of reapers eventually. This cycle alone took at least about 10. That's 500,000 years of successful harvest free of casualties that our cycle destroyed there and there will be at best 1 capital ship produced, the human reaper.

[robertthebard]

Argolas wrote...

robertthebard wrote...

Since they make at least one Sovereign class ship almost every cycle, and we guess they've been doing it for a billion years, that's 20 ships every million years, give or take, with some lost during cycles, we know of two that predate our cycle in game, I'd say your math is a bit off.  The fact is, if they wanted to just fly in and kill everyone, they could.  They don't, they want to harvest as many people as they can.  It is scary to think about, but it's also probably pretty close to the truth.

No, they don't make at least one capital ship per cycle. They attempt 1 capital ship per cycle and sometimes that works, sometimes it does not. The prothean cycle, for example, didn't produce any capital ship.

I know the Reapers don't kill everyone in order to harvest, but there is no reason to hold back in their conquest. Why allow the Turians to successfully defend their fuel supply if the reapers could just crush it with 20 capital ships? Why wait so long before hitting Thessia or Sur'Kesh? Why not send a few ships in every single Relay system so they can control all space traffic? The answer is: They aren't that many. If they send capital ships in every Relay system, they will split up in fleets that are so small that they could be picked out one by one.

Besides the failure rate in creating reapers, you highly underestimate casualties. As I said, one capital ship downed in every cycle and they run out of reapers eventually. This cycle alone took at least about 10. That's 500,000 years of successful harvest free of casualties that our cycle destroyed there and there will be at best 1 capital ship produced, the human reaper.

The only cycle that we have any knowledge of, and that vague at best, is the Prothean cycle though.  We don't even know, for sure, how many capital ships we took out, and how many we see defeated are actually just destroyers.  I know the one on Earth with the cannon was a Destroyer, as was the one we took out with the missiles going to the beam.  I have always assumed the Rannoch Reaper was a capital ship though.

However, to estimate that they are only successful in one out of every 10 cycles is pushing it.  It could be accurate, but looking around the galaxy by the end, I'm pretty sure there's more than what you're guessing at.

[damoose1]

Nukes don't work so well in space. The impact, heat and radiation would mostly dissipated without an atmosphere. Lots of wasted energy. Plus, Uranium and Plutonium are rare elements, and probably used in fusion reactors for power and other medical type reasons. Diverting the supplies to make weapons could significantly diminish you support. Any evolved species would not have a stockpile of nukes since they are more dangerous than useful.

Second, radiation will be of little effect to Reapers. It only affects organic tissue severely, and I am sure they are shielded from gamma rays of deep space and radiation venting from their ezzo cores.

Heat is also a very inefficient form of energy. A Reaper's armour can easily withstand that. You saw with many of the destroyers. They were unaffected by heat based weapons, until they opened their armour to fire their main guns. Capital ships don't have that weakness.

Remember, Reapers have "kinetic" barriers, so that is obviously their weakness. Nukes would not be effective. If they were, Reapers would have coated in aluminium, and have magnetic field shielding.

Your saw in the final battle, the Reapers hit with Thanix weapons were torn apart. They rely on super heated metal fired at near the speed of light (kinetic impacts). That is how you beat them.

Problem is, the energy such weapons would use would not give a ship many rounds to fire, thus you need many ships to take out a Capital Ship. But, the Reapers out-number Citadel forces (been said many times). Not enough ships to go around (plus not all ships have the fancy cannon). This would also prevent you from slamming ships into them at FTL. Just not enough of them. They need to be big ships too. Not just frigates. In the battle for Earth, that Reaper was still functional after having its arms blown off. So you need a ship big enough severely cripple it (Cruiser at least). Again not enough.

Next, Capital ships have more than their main gun. They also have guns on each arm, and can fire quite quickly. Look at what Harbinger did on the ground. So, they can fire more rapidly if they need to, but don't to obviously conserve energy.

There are significantly more than just a few hundred Capital ships. Remember, every time you scanned a system, a squadron of ships would swarm you. And those are just the ones that were near those far flung outposts which detected you. We went to many systems, and that did not scratch the system. Plus, do the math. If Reapers were around for billions of years (some sapient races were that old, and they were not the first), and created 1 Capital ship every 50 000 years, with dozens more Destroyers, you are left with enough to "blanket the sky of every world". That is even including a few cycles where maybe a host species was not available or a few ships get destroyed. That is also not including indoctrinated forces. They have ships too.

Guerilla warfare would not work in a battle of survival. You would lose out eventually. Once they have harvested enough, they could easily bombard every habitable planet and let survivors starve. Best, is to wait it out like the Protheans tried. However, Reapers harvest races before they develop the means of creating power sources to sustain life for that long, which would not be detected. Last resort is a plan that was maybe millions or billions of years in the making (that type of time could create super advanced technology) and build a weapon: the crucible. It uses the most abundant and powerful force in the universe - Dark Energy - to wipe them out. The Crucible just controls it's focus on particular matter/energy forms.

It is impossible to stop a force like that, unless you squash it at it's source. But, it is easy to hide the plans in a galaxy with trillions of planets. The Reapers would not have the resources to terminate all the sources before the next cycle. It is an inevitable solution, evolved from the fastest motivator: survival - survival of the fittest.

[sH0tgUn jUliA]

Argolas wrote...

The codex provides clear answers about the possibility of conventional victory.



Reaper Vulnerabilities


Although clearly technologically superior to the Citadel forces, the Reapers have experienced casualties in the battles across the galaxy. This indicates that, theoretically, with the right intelligence, weapons, and strategy, the Reapers could be defeated.

Unlike the mass effect relays that they created, Reapers do not have quantum shields. Locking itself down at a quantum level would leave a Reaper unaware of its surroundings until the shielding deactivated. Instead, Reapers rely on kinetic barriers.

In the case of a Reaper capital ship, these kinetic barriers can hold off the firepower of two dreadnoughts simultaneously, but three clearly causes strain, and four typically results in destruction. Weapons designed to maximize heat damage, such as the Thanix series, show better results against the Reapers than pure kinetic impacts.

The barriers of a Reaper destroyer are less formidable than those of a capital ship. It is possible for a single cruiser or many fighters to disable or demolish a destroyer if they can get within range before they are themselves destroyed.

The Reapers' energy sources are not infinite. For example, to land on a planet, a Reaper must substantially reduce its mass. This transfer of power to its mass effect generators leaves the Reaper's kinetic barriers at only partial strength.

Sovereign was destroyed while assuming direct control over Saren. The feedback from Saren's death seemed to entirely overload Sovereign's shields. Current Reapers do not seem to suffer from this design flaw.

Reaper capital ships can turn faster than Citadel dreadnoughts, but to do so, they must lower their mass to a level unacceptable in combat situations. Consequently, it is possible for a dreadnought to emerge from FTL travel behind a capital ship, then bring its guns to bear faster than the Reaper can return fire. This is a poor tactic, however, against Reapers flying in proper formation.

Yes, the Current Reapers can FTL at 2000 ly/day from darkspace for almost three years without running out of fuel. They have no design flaws, because if they had any design flaws it would have screwed up the Red, Green, or Blue ending. Nor after playing Leviathan does anyone do the smart thing and try to find the "Intelligence" on the Citadel and blow up the damned thing. Why? Because it would screw up the Red, Green, or Blue ending.

What is inside the reapers is organic marmalade. It is of no value. It is "preserves." If it had any value at all the catalyst would not be putting it in harms way. It would be preserving it. Protecting it. But since it doesn't it has no value. There is only the harvest. There is no war. Is Fire at war when it burns? Is it in conflict? Or is it simply doing what it was created to do? The Reapers were created to harvest. Nothing more.

The codex implies conventional victory was possible, and the refuse ending implies that "we fought a terrible war" meaning we did not go quietly into to the night. We took out a lot of them before we went down. From the looks of grandma, some Asari survived, and they kicked the crap out of the reapers.

[damoose1]

Nukes don't work so well in space. The impact, heat and radiation would mostly dissipated without an atmosphere. Lots of wasted energy. Plus, Uranium and Plutonium are rare elements, and probably used in fusion reactors for power and other medical type reasons. Diverting the supplies to make weapons could significantly diminish you support. Any evolved species would not have a stockpile of nukes since they are more dangerous than useful.

Second, radiation will be of little effect to Reapers. It only affects organic tissue severely, and I am sure they are shielded from gamma rays of deep space and radiation venting from their ezzo cores.

Heat is also a very inefficient form of energy. A Reaper's armour can easily withstand that. You saw with many of the destroyers. They were unaffected by heat based weapons, until they opened their armour to fire their main guns. Capital ships don't have that weakness.

Remember, Reapers have "kinetic" barriers, so that is obviously their weakness. Nukes would not be effective. If they were, Reapers would have coated in aluminium, and have magnetic field shielding.

Your saw in the final battle, the Reapers hit with Thanix weapons were torn apart. They rely on super heated metal fired at near the speed of light (kinetic impacts). That is how you beat them.

Problem is, the energy such weapons would use would not give a ship many rounds to fire, thus you need many ships to take out a Capital Ship. But, the Reapers out-number Citadel forces (been said many times). Not enough ships to go around (plus not all ships have the fancy cannon). This would also prevent you from slamming ships into them at FTL. Just not enough of them. They need to be big ships too. Not just frigates. In the battle for Earth, that Reaper was still functional after having its arms blown off. So you need a ship big enough severely cripple it (Cruiser at least). Again not enough.

Next, Capital ships have more than their main gun. They also have guns on each arm, and can fire quite quickly. Look at what Harbinger did on the ground. So, they can fire more rapidly if they need to, but don't to obviously conserve energy.

There are significantly more than just a few hundred Capital ships. Remember, every time you scanned a system, a squadron of ships would swarm you. And those are just the ones that were near those far flung outposts which detected you. We went to many systems, and that did not scratch the system. Plus, do the math. If Reapers were around for billions of years (some sapient races were that old, and they were not the first), and created 1 Capital ship every 50 000 years, with dozens more Destroyers, you are left with enough to "blanket the sky of every world". That is even including a few cycles where maybe a host species was not available or a few ships get destroyed. That is also not including indoctrinated forces. They have ships too.

Guerilla warfare would not work in a battle of survival. You would lose out eventually. Once they have harvested enough, they could easily bombard every habitable planet and let survivors starve. Best, is to wait it out like the Protheans tried. However, Reapers harvest races before they develop the means of creating power sources to sustain life for that long, which would not be detected. Last resort is a plan that was maybe millions or billions of years in the making (that type of time could create super advanced technology) and build a weapon: the crucible. It uses the most abundant and powerful force in the universe - Dark Energy - to wipe them out. The Crucible just controls it's focus on particular matter/energy forms.

It is impossible to stop a force like that, unless you squash it at it's source. But, it is easy to hide the plans in a galaxy with trillions of planets. The Reapers would not have the resources to terminate all the sources before the next cycle. It is an inevitable solution, evolved from the fastest motivator: survival - survival of the fittest.

[capn233]

There is no "EMP" (at least in the commonly applied usage of that term) for a nuclear bomb detonated in space, unless it is detonated within a magnetic field, which essentially means relatively close to a planetoid or whatever else.

If you detonated a nuclear bomb on Mars, for example, there would basically be no EMP whatsoever (Mars has no appreciable magnetic field). Nor would there be much in the way of the thermobaric effect since the atmosphere is so thin.

Modifié par capn233, 16 avril 2013 - 09:42 .

[AlanC9]

robertthebard wrote...
Since they make at least one Sovereign class ship almost every cycle, and we guess they've been doing it for a billion years, that's 20 ships every million years, give or take, with some lost during cycles, we know of two that predate our cycle in game, I'd say your math is a bit off.

So his math is a bit off if we assume that the percentage of cycles that produce a reaper is fairly high, and that Reaper losses are a very low percentage.

Sure. But Bio is permitted to set either of those percentages at whatever number they want them to be.

The fact is, if they wanted to just fly in and kill everyone, they could.  They don't, they want to harvest as many people as they can.  It is scary to think about, but it's also probably pretty close to the truth.

Except that the Reapers don't seem to have established space superiority over the entire galaxy in a matter of days, and with 20,000 they certainly could do so. Laziness? Arrogance?

And I I suppose it's conceivable that the Reapers were too lazy or arrogant to defend the Citadel with more than a few hundred Reapers. But since the Reapers are acting like there are only a few hundred capital-class Reapers, isn't it less troublesome to assume that's their real strength?

[AlanC9]

capn233 wrote...

There is no "EMP" (at least in the commonly applied usage of that term) for a nuclear bomb detonated in space, unless it is detonated within a magnetic field, which essentially means relatively close to a planetoid or whatever else.

If you detonated a nuclear bomb on Mars, for example, there would basically be no EMP whatsoever (Mars has no appreciable magnetic field). Nor would there be much in the way of the thermobaric effect since the atmosphere is so thin.

And even if there was EMP in space, or if the Reapers parked close enough to Earth for it to work, EMP isn't magic. We can shield against it now if we want to spend the money.

Modifié par AlanC9, 16 avril 2013 - 09:43 .

[Argolas]

robertthebard wrote...

The only cycle that we have any knowledge of, and that vague at best, is the Prothean cycle though.  We don't even know, for sure, how many capital ships we took out, and how many we see defeated are actually just destroyers.  I know the one on Earth with the cannon was a Destroyer, as was the one we took out with the missiles going to the beam.  I have always assumed the Rannoch Reaper was a capital ship though.

However, to estimate that they are only successful in one out of every 10 cycles is pushing it.  It could be accurate, but looking around the galaxy by the end, I'm pretty sure there's more than what you're guessing at.

We don't know how many capital ships exactly have been destroyed, but...

"Knowing that the Reapers' weapons had a longer effective range than any of his own, Coronati made a short, daring FTL jump--landing his dreadnoughts in the middle of the Reaper fleet. The dreadnoughts then turned to line up their main guns on the Reapers, which also needed to turn to fire on the turians. This ploy used the Reapers' size against them--because they could turn faster, and their concentrated firepower downed several Reaper capital ships. "

-Codex/The Reaper War: The Battle of Palaven-


"In simultaneous strikes across the globe, Reaper ships began to explode. Turian resistance members had managed to smuggle the bombs inside when the Reaper processing ships, troop transports, and even destroyers and capital ships had opened their structures to indoctrinated turian leaders. "

-Codex/The Reaper War: The Miracle at Palaven-


So we have "several" capital ships once and multiple others again that were destroyed in the battles for Palaven. There is also Sovereign. These losses may not be too bad for the reapers in the current war, but on long terms they are devastating. As I said, a single capital ship destroyed ruins their progress of an entire cycle. They will need who knows how many cycles without any casualty to at least make up for this cycle's casualties.

I'm not saying that only 1 out of 10 cycles succeed in building a reaper, the exact ratio doesn't matter. The critical point is whether or not they can keep up with their casualties. I believe that there may have been thousands of capital ships over time, but many of them have been destroyed by fairly successful cycles.

Destroyed capital ships are rare, but not unheard of. We visit one in ME2, and the Batarians have found one as well as we learn in Leviathan DLC.

[Argolas]

AlanC9 wrote...
But since the Reapers are acting like there are only a few hundred capital-class Reapers, isn't it less troublesome to assume that's their real strength?

Exactly. When I say that there aren't more than that, people often think I was trying to say conventional victory for this cycle is possible, but even just 100 capital ships and the respective number of destroyers, oculi and transporters with thousands of husks is a force the galaxy could never ever defeat conventionally. There is no need to assume astronomic numbers that just don't make any sense.

Modifié par Argolas, 16 avril 2013 - 09:50 .

[robertthebard]

AlanC9 wrote...

robertthebard wrote...
Since they make at least one Sovereign class ship almost every cycle, and we guess they've been doing it for a billion years, that's 20 ships every million years, give or take, with some lost during cycles, we know of two that predate our cycle in game, I'd say your math is a bit off.

So his math is a bit off if we assume that the percentage of cycles that produce a reaper is fairly high, and that Reaper losses are a very low percentage.

Sure. But Bio is permitted to set either of those percentages at whatever number they want them to be.

The fact is, if they wanted to just fly in and kill everyone, they could.  They don't, they want to harvest as many people as they can.  It is scary to think about, but it's also probably pretty close to the truth.

Except that the Reapers don't seem to have established space superiority over the entire galaxy in a matter of days, and with 20,000 they certainly could do so. Laziness? Arrogance?

And I I suppose it's conceivable that the Reapers were too lazy or arrogant to defend the Citadel with more than a few hundred Reapers. But since the Reapers are acting like there are only a few hundred capital-class Reapers, isn't it less troublesome to assume that's their real strength?

Yeah, I'm going to assume I didn't see the rest of the Galaxy map, or any of the slideshows after the ending.  Maybe they weren't really fighting there, I could say that it fits into the flow of the story that they saw the Crucible dock, and flew away to try to hide from it on other planets, I mean, it's logical, and fits the flow of the narrative, so it can't be head canon, right?

Every Reaper controlled system has Reapers in it.  I'm sure that they aren't all in one place.  The slide shows show us Tuchanka, Thessia, Earth and Palaven for sure.  But every relay system shows as occupied when we go to Earth.  It's more logical to assume that there are ships all over the galaxy going about the Harvest, based on the slideshows, than they are all focused on the Crucible, which goes against what we are shown.  I don't know what's shown on Refuse, never watched that video.

[JasonShepard]

I direct you to: Why Conventional Victory is NOT Possible

Quick Version:
          There are at minimum 295 Sovereign class Reapers. Since we need 4 Dreadnoughts in order to take out a single Sovereign Reaper, we'd need roughly 1200 Dreadnoughts for a straight fight. We've got 85 confirmed in Council Space, and being generous to Geth and Quarian numbers, we can maybe bump that to 170 dreadnoughts in the allied fleets. 200 if the Terminus System Pirates and Aria have been hiding some.

          So the Reapers outnumber our dreadnoughts with theirs, and their dreadnoughts are 4 times better than ours. So tell me, what's your plan?

Modifié par JasonShepard, 16 avril 2013 - 09:58 .

[Ledgend1221]

JasonShepard wrote...

I direct you to: Why Conventional Victory is NOT Possible

Quick Version:
          There are at minimum 295 Sovereign class Reapers. Since we need 4 Dreadnoughts in order to take out a single Sovereign Reaper, we'd need roughly 1200 Dreadnoughts for a straight fight. We've got 85 confirmed in Council Space, and being generous to Geth and Quarian numbers, we can maybe bump that to 170 dreadnoughts in the allied fleets. 200 if the Terminus Systems have been hiding some.

          So the Reapers outnumber our dreadnoughts with theirs, and their dreadnoughts are 4 times better than ours. So tell me, what's your plan?

I can't begin to tell you how incredibly stupid it is to try and debunk conventional victory using an incredibly stupid arguement like that.