236 réponses à ce sujet

[Village_Idiot]

David7204 wrote...

That's even assuming such a thing is possible. We're talking about a planet. Lots of places to hide, lots of very resourceful people. It's not all about fleets. Ground assets matter. A lot.

Ground assets don't kill Reapers. If their infrastructure is removed, they can't build fleets that can kill Reapers.

Sure, people won't be killed today. They can hide on their planets whilst the Reapers roam around destroying military targets rather than civilians. But once the galaxies navies are decimated and any chance of conventional victory is gone, all that's left is a very large population on the ground that can feasibly defend against Husks, but doesn't have the attritional advantage of an army that replenishes itself as it exterminates people. Cue the Reaping.

And your suggestion seems to be analogous to the Germans bombing the airfields, then abandoning England entirely on the assumption that everyone left is just going to nod and smile. 

Understand that at this point, the UK was pretty much entirely dependent on its air-force, since its armies were effectively disarmed after the Dunkirk evacuation. If the UK lost its ability to counter air-attacks, bombing of civlian targets would then subsequently have continued unimpeded until either capitulation or a humanitarian
 disaster took place.

Modifié par Shadrach 88, 29 avril 2013 - 12:41 .

[Reorte]

Anything that's handed to you on a plate to solve a problem that you've no hope of solving otherwise and couldn't expect to reasonably find is pretty much a DEM, even if there's a gap between the finding and the using of it. Whilst it may not fit the strict definition of a DEM it's bad, lazy writing for the same reasons so to all intents and purposes might as well be considered one.

[Reorte]

David7204 wrote...

And your suggestion seems to be analogous to the Germans bombing the airfields, then abandoning England entirely on the assumption that everyone left is just going to nod and smile.

That's even assuming such a thing is possible. We're talking about a planet. Lots of places to hide, lots of very resourceful people, lots of technology that makes manufacturing and construction likely a hell of a lot easier and quicker than it is now. It's not all about fleets. Ground assets matter. A lot.

Ground assets matter a lot for keeping control, mostly once you've destroyed the heavy military equipment. Ignoring the main forces is complete and utter stupidity unless you're so powerful that they're irrelevent, and even then prudence would say eliminate them as early as you can - don't leave your enemy anything they can hit you back with.

[David7204]

Shadrach 88 wrote...

David7204 wrote...

That's even assuming such a thing is possible. We're talking about a planet. Lots of places to hide, lots of very resourceful people. It's not all about fleets. Ground assets matter. A lot.

Ground assets don't kill Reapers. If their infrastructure is removed, they can't build fleets that can kill Reapers.

Sure, people won't be killed today. They can hide on their planets whilst the Reapers roam around destroying military targets rather than civilians. But once the galaxies navies are decimated and any chance of conventional victory is gone, all that's left is a very large population on the ground that can feasibly defend against Husks, but doesn't have the attritional advantage of an army that replenishes itself as it exterminates people. Cue the Reaping.

The Reapers can't just bomb every planet from space. They'd either be spread too thin, making them sitting ducks for the fleets to overwhelm them one or several at a time, or they'd spend an impractical amount of time per planet, giving the rest of the galaxy opportunity to build and prepare. The galaxy is too big. Too full of people willing and able to fight and build. Trillions.

Ground assets matter. They matter today, in an age of B2s and F-35s, and they'll matter in the future.

Modifié par David7204, 29 avril 2013 - 12:39 .

[Reorte]

David7204 wrote...

Ground assets matter. They matter today, in an age of B2s and F-35s, and they'll matter in the future.

And how succesful do you think anyone attacking (assuming that they had in general sufficient military power) would be if they ignored the B2s and F-35s, even if they did somehow manage to get their soldiers on the ground without taking them out first?

[Megaton_Hope]

Morlath wrote...

You knew I meant at the beginning of ME3 and not the beginning of the trilogy.

And I've continued to say that what the Catalyst IS and what it DOES are two completely different things and people are mixing the two in order to fit the DEM argument. I've not called it Starchild after all.

Yes, I know that you mean the beginning of ME3. I can't agree with viewing the story that way, as none of the Mass Effect games is self-contained. The villain of the first game is not, of course, Saren. After Virmire it is clearly apparent that he is the servant of a more powerful being, who will be coming with his fleet of buddies to wipe out all life. Ostensibly this ends with Sovereign dead and his fleet of buddies stalled temporarily.

The second game does nothing with this over-arching threat established and unresolved in the first game. Arrival touches on the continuing inevitability of the extinction of all organic life, and pushes up the timetable for the Reapers to begin their attacks.

The third game picks up where the FIRST game left off. This is not a new storyline concocted out of the blue. This is the first game's main storyline continued in another game.

As for what the Catalyst IS and DOES, neither of those things is important for purposes of the argument you're having. What a Deus Ex Machina IS is when a story can only be resolved by some extraordinary event being introduced from nowhere, so that's what happens. What it DOES is insult the audience, who were waiting to see how the hero manages to pull himself out of this difficult new impasse. The Crucible's construction from plans discovered fortuitously at the moment the Reapers arrived within driving distance of Earth is such an extraordinary event. Because there's no reason for such plans to exist, no reason for their discovery to wait so long, and no reason for the resulting construction to have the effects it does.

[David7204]

It's not a question of whether they do but whether they can. And they can't.

[Village_Idiot]

David7204 wrote...
The Reapers can't just bomb every planet from space. They'd either be spread too thin, making them sitting ducks for the fleets to overwhelm them one or several at a time, or they'd spend an impractical amount of time per planet, giving the rest of the galaxy opportunity to build and prepare. The galaxy is too big. Too full of people willing and able to fight and build. Trillions.

 

This is self-contradictory. Infrastructure is easier to destroy than a civilian population.

When the Reapers roll in and occupy Earth, they could quite feasibly annihilate the infrastructure from orbit or otherwise and move on. The population remains and can rebuild, but this takes time, during which the Reapers are elsewhere doing exactly the same to the next planet, and the next. The fact is, a Sovereign-class Reaper is firing weaponry that eclipses dreadnoughts' main guns, the ones that are packing kilotons of energy. A Reaper orbital bombardment would cause a nuclear holocaust very quickly (evidence of this exists on planets you encounter in ME2). They don't go to this extreme (usually) since they need to harvest populations rather than incinerate them, but precision bombardments could quite quickly destroy any significant military installations whilst leaving civilian populations largely intact.

Instead however, they sit on Earth in force and harvest it. Earth is an economic write-off, but Reapers are now tied down on Earth rather than being used elsewhere. And elsewhere, infrastructure still stands, ships are being made, fuel produced, yada yada yada.

Ground assets matter. They matter today, in an age of B2s and F-35s, and they'll matter in the future.

Lore on Mass Effect's military doctrines contradict this. Military operations in ME's universe on a planetary scale are based upon orbital superiority. First Contact war? Turians occupied Shanxi until a fleet counterattack removed them. It's hard to fight a ground war when you're having highly destructive rocks thrown at you from orbit whenever you so much as move.

Modifié par Shadrach 88, 29 avril 2013 - 01:13 .

[David7204]

It's not contradictory at all. The Reapers spend more time harvesting then they would bombing, but in doing so they acquire millions or billions of husks to be used elsewhere, which are really doing the real work.

You're overestimating the efficacy of bombing and underestimating the efficacy of everything else. Shanxi was one colony. Many worlds are inevitably going to be destroyed and many people inevitably are going to be killed. And so they are. That doesn't make the galaxy as a whole helpless.

Modifié par David7204, 29 avril 2013 - 01:18 .

[Village_Idiot]

David7204 wrote...

It's not contradictory at all. The Reapers spend more time harvesting then they would bombing, but in doing so they acquire millions or billions of husks to be used elsewhere, which are really doing the real work.

You're overestimating the efficacy of bombing and underestimating the efficacy of everything else.

It's hard to overestimate the efficacy of a multi-kiloton cannon versus a zombie horde. The former reduces a fuel depot to a large smoking crater in a single shot, can be fired accurately from orbit, and needs no supplies. The latter takes time to create, transport, and capture/destroy said objective.

Husks are very useful for harvesting when the Reapers get around to it, but it shouldn't be their priority until the more valuable targets are ash.

[Megaton_Hope]

If the Reapers only wanted to destroy advanced organic life, bombing from orbit would be extremely effective. You don't even need bombs, just big rocks. You don't even need to be in orbit, just have good aim. Speed and mass do the rest.

[Village_Idiot]

Megaton_Hope wrote...

If the Reapers only wanted to destroy advanced organic life, bombing from orbit would be extremely effective. You don't even need bombs, just big rocks. You don't even need to be in orbit, just have good aim. Speed and mass do the rest.

Any race could. The Reapers don't have exclusivity, just the biggest sticks on the market.  I'm just making the point that once the Reapers gain orbital superiority, blowing up a few installations is child's play.

Modifié par Shadrach 88, 29 avril 2013 - 01:25 .

[David7204]

Great. One fuel depot. In a galaxy full of how many fuel depots? Meanwhile, those millions of husks are doing quite a good job overwhelming a few thousand soldiers.

And say you have a few Reapers bombing in orbit. A few dozen Alliance ships move in, blow them to bits, and suddenly that colony is now an active asset. Sounds to me like it's now just a matter of moving from one colony to the next. Or alternatively, the Reapers are sticking together and going nice and slow, taking a few days per colony, meaning they'll reach the homeworlds in only about 5 years, by which time the turians, salarians, and asari are armed to the teeth.

The colony overwhelmed by husks is still getting torn to pieces, and there's not much anybody can do about it.

That's not even considering all the fancy electronic warfare defenses and whatnot that will inevitably exist but are beyond the scope of anyone alive today.

Modifié par David7204, 29 avril 2013 - 01:32 .

[Megaton_Hope]

David7204 wrote...

Great. One fuel depot. In a galaxy full of how many fuel depots? Meanwhile, those millions of husks are doing quite a good job overwhelming a few thousand soldiers.

And say you have a few Reapers bombing in orbit. A few dozen Alliance ships move in, blow them to bits, and suddenly that colony is now an active asset. Sounds to me like it's now just a matter of moving from one colony to the next. Or alternatively, the Reapers are sticking together and going nice and slow, taking a few days per colony, meaning they'll reach the homeworlds in only about 5 years, by which time the turians, salarians, and asari and armed to the teeth.

The colony overwhelmed by husks is still getting torn to pieces, and there's not much anybody can do about it.

That's not even considering all the fancy electronic warfare defenses and whatnot that will inevitably exist but are beyond the scope of anyone alive today.

I'd be using mass drivers from the Kuiper belt, myself. Or I suppose that if you slap an element zero core on a sufficiently large asteroid, you can get it to quite a speed before impact.

The great thing about space is that if you get something going on the right trajectory, it will continue under its own power without further guidance.

[David7204]

Making it easy to target with anti-ballistic defenses, which we have today? Assuming you could acquire a target at all. And of course the Reapers would actually have to build these things.

That does bring up an interesting point, through. The Reapers have to draw their power from somewhere; that's certainly a very justified weakness, if it could be discovered and exploited somehow.

[Village_Idiot]

David7204 wrote...

Great. One fuel depot. In a galaxy full of how many fuel depots? Meanwhile, those millions of husks are doing quite a good job overwhelming a few thousand soldiers.

Promptly followed by several dozen more depots, shipyards etc. since these cannons are firing several times per minute. One Sovereign-class Reaper can pretty much terminate the economic potential of a planet within a few hours.

And say you have a few Reapers bombing in orbit. A few dozen Alliance ships move in, blow them to bits, and suddenly that colony is now an active asset. The colony overwhelmed by husks is still getting torn to bits, and there's not much anybody can do about it.

I believe said Reapers wouldn't simply sit idly by whilst the Alliance ships engaged them. Any ship-to-ship combat with Reapers is liable to go badly unless attacked in overwhelming force, or with dreadnoughts which are very limited and very valuable assets. Even in the event that said counter-attack did destroy or drive off the Reapers, as I've stated prior, an orbital bombardment would need very little time to neutralise key targets. If the Reapers truly thought they were outgunned, they could simply run away, seeing as they're faster than any equivalent organic ship.

That's not even considering all the fancy electronic warfare defenses and whatnot that will inevitably exist but are beyond the scope of anyone alive today.

True. But isn't Reaper tech meant to be even further beyond the scope of understanding and advancement?

In any case, I'm off to bed. Thanks for the debate. :happy:

Modifié par Shadrach 88, 29 avril 2013 - 01:45 .

[David7204]

I don't believe for one minute a single Reaper could decimate a planet in hours. I just don't think you're at all grasping the sheer size of how big Earth is.

Modifié par David7204, 29 avril 2013 - 01:52 .

[Megaton_Hope]

David7204 wrote...

Making it easy to target with anti-ballistic defenses, which we have today?

Good luck with that. The thing that makes those effective, when and if they are (generally they are assumed to be more effective than they would be during a thermonuclear exchange), is that a ballistic missile incorporates a warhead, whose detonation is the real danger. You reduce the warhead to slag, the missile's no more dangerous than any other piece of metal hurtling through the air at high speed.

What makes an asteroid dangerous is that it's an enormous rock. An asteroid or comet colliding with our atmosphere at the right angle will explode, with significantly more force than a tactical nuke. (This has happened two documented times in Russia, the last time very recently over Chelyabinsk.) Shooting it won't alter this outcome significantly, unless it's deflected from its trajectory at a great distance from impact.

Mass Effect does have planetary defenses, of course. Presumably there are some that would operate against space rocks. Though nothing is foolproof.

[Morlath]

Megaton_Hope wrote...

Yes, I know that you mean the beginning of ME3. I can't agree with viewing the story that way, as none of the Mass Effect games is self-contained. The villain of the first game is not, of course, Saren. After Virmire it is clearly apparent that he is the servant of a more powerful being, who will be coming with his fleet of buddies to wipe out all life. Ostensibly this ends with Sovereign dead and his fleet of buddies stalled temporarily.

The second game does nothing with this over-arching threat established and unresolved in the first game. Arrival touches on the continuing inevitability of the extinction of all organic life, and pushes up the timetable for the Reapers to begin their attacks.

The third game picks up where the FIRST game left off. This is not a new storyline concocted out of the blue. This is the first game's main storyline continued in another game.

I agree that the overarcing story is one piece. My point is that it is in the story-telling of each "act" which matters. The third act is a Quest, Shepard is actively seeking the Catalyst and knows it will do something to the Crucible to (hopefully) defeat the Reapers. As such the entire concept of it being a Deus ex Mechina - That is a surprise unknown quantity brought in at the last minute to save the day - cannot apply to this story telling.

As for what the Catalyst IS and DOES, neither of those things is important for purposes of the argument you're having. What a Deus Ex Machina IS is when a story can only be resolved by some extraordinary event being introduced from nowhere, so that's what happens. What it DOES is insult the audience, who were waiting to see how the hero manages to pull himself out of this difficult new impasse. The Crucible's construction from plans discovered fortuitously at the moment the Reapers arrived within driving distance of Earth is such an extraordinary event. Because there's no reason for such plans to exist, no reason for their discovery to wait so long, and no reason for the resulting construction to have the effects it does.

Whilst the Cruible isn't out of the realms of believabilty, the way it was found was badly done. It would have been a much better delivery if the plans were found on Ilos or a similar hidden base. Or at the very least pieces of the puzzle were that only made sense if connected to information on Mars. The delivery of the weapon was poor, the idea that the Protheans (who were on the verge of fully understanding Mass Relays and the Citadel at the end) couldn't come up with a design for something similar to the Crucible is not out of the realm of possibilty.

The weakness and timing of the discovery does push the entire thing close to the Deux ex Machina concept but it doesn't MAKE it one. Liara hasn't found the weapon itself but the potential for one that needs to be built AND needs a part that is uknown at the beginning of the third act. This isn't an alconquoring weapon, it's not something that is suddenly going to solve the Reaper threat instantly. It is the potential of a weapon with a vague understanding of the results. Even without the Catalyst part there was no guarentee that whoever activated it on the Citadel (putting aside the AI) wouldn't be destroyed in the activation of the weapon.

The badly written introduction of the blueprints themselves do play at the Deus ex machina concept but in the end they don't qualify. The reveal isn't at the very end, the reveal doesn't automatically save the hero from certain death and the reveal doesn't promise a happy ending. We only know the outcome of using the weapon weeks/months after the discovery is made.

[AlanC9]

David7204 wrote...


The Reapers can't just bomb every planet from space. They'd either be spread too thin, making them sitting ducks for the fleets to overwhelm them one or several at a time, or they'd spend an impractical amount of time per planet, giving the rest of the galaxy opportunity to build and prepare. The galaxy is too big. Too full of people willing and able to fight and build. Trillions.

Wait, what? The Reapers can concentrate in whatever strength they wish ; there's no key point they actually have to defend.

And if the Reapers can't bomb planets from space because it would take too long per planet, fighting ground wars on those planets won't make the problem better. Bombing can't be slower than fighting a ground war.

[Morlath]

Let me put it this way.

The Martians dying because they catch a cold? DEM. The Crucible/Catalyst being brought in towards the end of ME3? DEM.

Scientist speculating that Martians might be vulnerable to Earth diseases and so work towards creating a "killer bug" throughout the story? Not DEM. The Galactic races building the Crucible and Shepard searching for the missing key throughout ME3? Not DEM.

[David7204]

As I've said, fighting on the ground allows the Reapers to harvest husks in the billions. The husks are the weapon doing the real work.

[AlanC9]

David7204 wrote...

I don't believe for one minute a single Reaper could decimate a planet in hours. I just don't think you're at all grasping the sheer size of how big Earth is.

Destroy the whole biosphere? Maybe not. But wreck the planetary economy?

A human dreadnought can fire one round every two seconds. Each round is equal to 2-1/2 Hiroshima nukes. 

In ten minutes that's 300 hits. At one per city that takes us down to Tijuana. 

[David7204]

You're not going to convince me that a dreadnought can destroy every city on Earth in 10 minutes.

[AlanC9]

Morlath wrote...



The Martians dying because they catch a cold? DEM. The Crucible/Catalyst being brought in towards the end of ME3? DEM.

But the Crucible's introduced an hour into ME3, not at the end.