144 réponses à ce sujet

[Arcian]

Scrap the Catalyst. Scrap the Crucible. How would you defeat the Reapers? Go nuts with altering the franchise variables as you see fit.

My personal method would be to pull an Ilos Gambit. Gather an army and a set population of eligible individuals from each spacefaring species, place them in stasis on a secret world, outlast the invasion until the Reapers retreat back to Dark Space and hit them in their home when they're weak, wounded and low on energy and ammo.

After the army returns to the galaxy to celebrate their victory and mourn the trillions who had to give their lives to make it possible, civilization is rebuilt.

Conventional victory, but with a price.

Modifié par Arcian, 08 juillet 2013 - 10:42 .

[HellbirdIV]

I stand by the original Mass Effect where Vigil basically spells it out for you;

The Reapers need to take the Citadel to shut down the Mass Relays, so that they can destroy the galaxy's inhabitants slowly and methodically with minimal resistance. Since we stopped them, the Reapers will be forced to take a different approach, resulting in a conventional war.

Shepard's role is to unite the species of the galaxy and to make tactical strikes against Reaper forces, find technology and information that can be weaponized against them.

Basically, the Reapers would not be unstoppable. At all. A unified galactic civilization would defeat them in a full-scale war - even if the cost ends up being terribly high. EMS thus plays a bigger part.

It's a war story. It doesn't need to be heavy scifi with secret doomsday weapons and mint-flavored magic or suicide pacts. It's just the greatest war in galactic history. That's really enough.

[AlexMBrennan]

[quote[My personal method would be to pull an Ilos Gambit.[/quote]
The protheans tried that, and it failed; given that we are less advanced than the protheans that would probably leave the next cycle fighting Reapers with clubs.
Besides, after this cycle. the Reapers will fix their traps and update their strategy (e.g. not leave IFFs lying around that can be used to access their hidden bases).
[quote] hit them in their home when they're weak, wounded and low on energy and ammo.[/quote]
You have no reason to think that the Reapers are weak, wounded or low on energy whilst waiting for the next cycle in dark space.
[quote]After the army returns [/quote]
Where are you going to get those forces? To construct fleets capable of striking the Reapers you need dry docks, you need a sizable population to build and man all the ships, you need the manpower to gather all the resources, etc. It would have to be an utterly massive installation (you are planning on building and fielding a fleet that is 10-100 times larger than the current navies combined) and that is likely to get noticed.

Simplest solution I can think of: Scrap Arrival, and don't make the Reapers a completely invincible implacable force: Make them use up a significant amount of their strength to get to Citadel space without using the relay. Then use a combination of the above ideas to defeat them.

[SSPBOURNE]

Three words: Robot Space Dragons.

[JamesFaith]

Arcian wrote...


My personal method would be to pull an Ilos Gambit. Gather an army and a set population of eligible individuals from each spacefaring species, place them in stasis on a secret world, outlast the invasion until the Reapers retreat back to Dark Space and hit them in their home when they're weak, wounded and low on energy and ammo.

This part actually doesn't make any sence.

Why should Reapers be in such bad shape? It is logical to assume that they will use resources of conquered galaxy and army of indoctrinated workers to get back to best possible state. After few hunderds years (whole hidden army wouldn't stay in stasis too long) Reapers would be probably in better shape then in first year of war.

Also there would be little problem with Sovereign replacement. When few Prothean scientist could avoid his attention, great army would be much more difficult to missed and Reapers would return in few days to complete additional cleansing.

This gambit have quite small chances to success. 

Modifié par JamesFaith, 09 juillet 2013 - 12:42 .

[David7204]

I very seriously doubt you'd ever be able to hide away enough resources to defeat the Reapers and still yet remain a secret from them for hundreds of years. 

And as JamesFaith said, the overwhelming majority of that time would probably be spent hunting down remnents, which means the fleet itself would mostly be free for rebuild and repair.

Modifié par David7204, 09 juillet 2013 - 12:46 .

[AshenShug4r]

The reapers strength is in their citadel sucker punch. Thanks to the protheans we out maneuvered them and had the opportunity to mount an assault. Unfortunately that was all scrapped since a couple of writers wanted to force their artistic ending on us.

[David7204]

Copy and paste time.

There's no evidence of that whatsoever. In fact, given how effective the Reapers are in ME 3, all of the evidence points to the exact opposite.

Why do people assume that the Reapers use control over the Relays because they need to, rather than the far more sensible explanation that it makes their job easier and there's no reason not to?

Not once does any character say anything along the lines of 'The Reapers control the Relays because they couldn't conquer the galaxy otherwise."

Modifié par David7204, 09 juillet 2013 - 12:49 .

[Jedi Master of Orion]

The Reapers have always taken advantages that weren't necessary for victory, but were logical. They defeated Kar'shan's defenses with indoctrinated agents. That doesn't mean they couldn't have destroyed the Batarian Hegemony without the Leviathan of Dis.

I always thought the idea of a conventional victory was silly. A single Reaper capital ship is strong enough to destroy a sizable portion of the Citadel species' fleet. A thousand more should be unstoppable.

[David7204]

It's not all about ships. But yes, if Shepard is a complete screw-up, I don't see conventional victory of any kind as plausible.

[Malanek]

Can Reapers be boarded? I assume so because in ME1 we saw Saren and Benezia inside one. For a third person shooter game I assumed we would be able to get inside them.

[David7204]

People have suggested that, and I'm very skeptical. I don't know if there's a plausible way Shepard could get inside and disable the Reaper that wouldn't come as a very stupidly overlooked and effective weakness.

[JamesFaith]

Malanek999 wrote...

Can Reapers be boarded? I assume so because in ME1 we saw Saren and Benezia inside one. For a third person shooter game I assumed we would be able to get inside them.

Yes, they were inside Reaper who LET them in.

Boarding on enemy Reaper would be more problematic. You would need survive long enough to get close to him, cut fast through his armor and hope no defence mechanism are here.

Also indoctrination would be quite problem. "Dead" Reaper was able to slowly indoctrinated Cerberus team. How fast it would be in living Reaper? Sovereign don't push too much on Saren until last moment but what if Reaper strike with full force? Salarians on Virmire were indoctrinated in few days without direct contact to Sovereign. How fast it would be inside him?

Modifié par JamesFaith, 09 juillet 2013 - 01:14 .

[Nightwriter]

Hmmmmm. Well, game one shows us a Reaper can die if you kill the cyborg it is possessing. Might have been cool to use data from the Collector base (since it probably should have factored in more) to create a technology that can force all the Reapers into cyborg bodies at once a la cyborg Saren.

Then you can actually fight a ground battle against the resulting cyborg army, your allies and resources can really come into play, and you can win a sort of conventional-yet-not-conventional victory that you feel like you can own.

[Malanek]

JamesFaith wrote...

Malanek999 wrote...

Can Reapers be boarded? I assume so because in ME1 we saw Saren and Benezia inside one. For a third person shooter game I assumed we would be able to get inside them.

Yes, they were inside Reaper who LET them in.

Boarding on enemy Reaper would be more problematic. You would need survive long enough to get close to him, cut fast through his armor and hope no defence mechanism are here.

Also indoctrination would be quite problem. "Dead" Reaper was able to slowly indoctrinated Cerberus team. How fast it would be in living Reaper? Sovereign don't push too much on Saren until last moment but what if Reaper strike with full force? Salarians on Virmire were indoctrinated in few days without direct contact to Sovereign. How fast it would be inside him?

I wasn't saying it would be easy, in fact it shouldn't have been easy because that would make everything have less meaning. Hypothetically instead of finding/building the Cruicible, Shepard would have found Prothean plans for small pods on Mars that could be launched and attach to a reaper at an appropriate place and burn through the armour. From there a boarding party would fight through interior defences, place a BFB, and evacuate. Who wouldn't want to infest a Reaper with a bunch of Krogan?

These pods would be constructed instead of the crucible while Shep recruits all the races by curing the genophage and geth/quarian conflict. They could test it on an isolated reaper somewhere and find it works. The fleet would then proceed to attack and whittle down isolated Reapers forcing them to pool their strength. Then in the final battle you could see the entire allied fleet attack the reapers ineffectively simply to give the boarding pods a chance.

You could add depth and choice to the story by having a third party, like Cerberus, develop a weapon that will turn a star super nova, and offer it to Shepard. So instead of launching a risky all out assault at the end in the sol system, the player would be given a choice to sacrifice it to end the reaper menace more safely.

I'm not really worried about indoctrination, it simply doesn't work fast enough for that to be an issue but you could add it into gameplay by making a mission timer or something.

Modifié par Malanek999, 09 juillet 2013 - 01:29 .

[Iakus]

 Crucible fires, disorients the Reapers and brings down their kinetic barriers.  They're still a dangerous threat, but without defenses or coordination, they can be defeated "conventionally" A viscious fight ensues with victory/defeat, the condition of Earth, Shepard's fate, and losses determined by EMS

[aznjoez]

Malanek999 wrote...

Can Reapers be boarded? I assume so because in ME1 we saw Saren and Benezia inside one. For a third person shooter game I assumed we would be able to get inside them.

The main problem is that the reapers are not meant to have people walking on the inside. In some of the lore surrounding the "IFF" carrying derelict reaper it said that Cerberus had to make platformsand everything else to make the reaper inside suitable for walking in.

Look back at that part of the game and visualize it without the catwalks/platforms and you will see how easy it would be to navigate it. Plus there is no telling what kind of sharp edges, areas to get electrocuted, and other things that could be around in it since it is not made to be traveled inside, not including what the reaper itself can do to you while you are inside of him. With the exception of Sovereign but we don't know if Saren even moved throughout that ship or were just in a holding area or makeshift "command" center in it when it traveled. 

The game couldn't have really ended any better. We needed a huge crutch or cheat to win. They defeated the advanced species of the galaxy for millions of years. The only way to win is to cheat, and that was the point of the crucible.

Modifié par aznjoez, 09 juillet 2013 - 01:42 .

[MassivelyEffective0730]

I made this a while back as an overall concept, though I've decided to make a few changes to it (either because it seems inappropriate or because it might be too tacky for the time being.) I'll try to answer questions to the best of my ability (except David's or anyone else who is just trying to be a jackass.)

My own ending: I rewrite the motivation of the Reapers. They're a race of organic machine hybrids that have a tremendous ego (stipulated by the arrogance of Leviathan) in their own machine perfection and order, and this mandates them to eradicate the impurity of all lesser beings.

The Reapers take "pity" on some of the lesser beings and forcibly "ascend" those races to their level of existence as a new Reaper, thus creating new Reapers. This is revealed to Shepard when he is forcibly subjected to mental and emotional torture by Harbinger (who is the true mastermind and composite intelligence of all the Reapers who inhabits the Citadel, which is itself a massive Reaper) who breaks his will by showing the destruction of Earth, Humanity, and the Galaxy and forcing him to endure the pain of a person being harvested.

Harbinger shows him the deaths of his friends and subordinates (including the actual deaths of Tali and Jack), but when he shows him Miranda, Shepard's love for her causes him to resist and slowly fight back. (I know this is very tacky, but I have an inspiration for it, I promise)

TIM, having been transformed into a Reaper monstrosity, sees what the Reapers have done to his vision and to humanity. TIM sacrifices himself (along with a dying Anderson) to prime the Crucible for firing. (Still trying to figure out how this will work out. I'm taking the Saren route here a bit.)

This causes Harbinger to be weakened long enough for Shepard to break his hold and fire the Crucible. This causes an energy pulse that overloads the Reapers indoctrination (and instantly destroys all husks) and causes the Reapers to completely reboot, with a massive BSOD going around for all the Reapers. While this happens, the Reapers Barriers are deactivated, allowing the fleets to destroy the Reapers around Earth. The Reapers that are on Earth loose their mass effect fields and are no longer able to keep their balance (especially in their disoriented state). The are collapse as gravity does its job, and the Reaper is literally crushed to death by its own weight.

The energy pulse is then transmitted through the galaxy and the power of the pulse is magnified by each successive mass relay that it hits, temporarily overloading the major ones, and heavily damaging the minor relays. The strain of firing the Crucible causes the Citadel to tear itself apart and for the pieces to be left orbiting the Earth. As the burst passes through more and more relays, its power increases and its potency continues to expand - within 3-4 relay bursts, the beam is now powerful enough to completely fry a Reaper's software, permanently killing it. Each relay takes more damage as it continues to pass through, but most of the major ones are able to escape extensive damage or destruction, but by the time the beam starts hitting the farther out relays, the strain from the power is too much and the relays are destroyed in spectacular fireballs like in Arrival - killing thousands of people that are in a handful of sparsely populated systems. A sad cost, but not by any means an unbearable one.

Shepard somehow survives (I haven't worked that out yet; not doing a Normandy rescue. I like the idea of him being thought dead, only to be found and to awaken in the hospital to see Miranda standing over him and holding his hand. The pulse also has a noticeable effect on the warships of the fleets, but since they aren't directly made from Reaper tech, the fleets are able to overcome the damage.

The Geth are reverted back to their pre-Reaper tech state, though with full memories of their perspective. (I really am toying with the idea of keeping the Geth dead completely, since it wasn't their death that really bothered me. I think it's arbitrary still, but I was never morally opposed to it as some people. The relays were a big)

EDI is permanently destroyed.

Modifié par MassivelyEffective0730, 09 juillet 2013 - 02:00 .

[JamesFaith]

@Malanek666

You know what is main flaw of your plan?

Protheans already tried it. This means that Reapers had 50 000 years to find out countermeasure.

Also it is quite naive to think that none of thousand civilization before our cycle didn't try something such obvious as boarding Reapers. It is logical to assume that Reapers met with "standard war practices" hundred times before us and know how to prevent them.

Only strategy which should defeat Reaper have to be something totally new.

[Steelcan]

David7204 wrote...

It's not all about ships. But yes, if Shepard is a complete screw-up, I don't see conventional victory of any kind as plausible.

I completely agree.  

[Wolfva2]

David7204 wrote...

Copy and paste time.

There's no evidence of that whatsoever. In fact, given how effective the Reapers are in ME 3, all of the evidence points to the exact opposite.

Why do people assume that the Reapers use control over the Relays because they need to, rather than the far more sensible explanation that it makes their job easier and there's no reason not to?

Not once does any character say anything along the lines of 'The Reapers control the Relays because they couldn't conquer the galaxy otherwise."

Wrong place, wrong time dude.  This isn't a thread debating the ending; this is a thread asking how WE would re-write the game to have a different ending.  So, people can rewrite the game to say the reapers control the relays because they can't conquer the galaxy otherwise.

Not every thread has to be a fight ya know.  I mean, sheesh, even *I* am not fighting in this one...<LOL>.


Lessee...I like Hellbird's answer.  Basically, the reapers could be extremely tough, extremely powerful, but not invincible.  Hit and run strikes, hard choices inre the 'calculus of war', hard won victories and heart breaking losses.  If you play your cards right though, victory.  Heh.  Maybe lure the Reaper fleet near that sun Tali was investigating, then forcing it to go Nova destroying the fleet......

[Malanek]

JamesFaith wrote...

@Malanek666

You know what is main flaw of your plan?

Protheans already tried it. This means that Reapers had 50 000 years to find out countermeasure.

Also it is quite naive to think that none of thousand civilization before our cycle didn't try something such obvious as boarding Reapers. It is logical to assume that Reapers met with "standard war practices" hundred times before us and know how to prevent them.

Only strategy which should defeat Reaper have to be something totally new.

Who says the Protheans tried it? It's the same logic as why the cruicible was never tried. They developed the boarding method too late and no longer had the troops or infrastructure to pull it off.

[grey_wind]

The easiest solution would be to retcon the Crucible's nonsensical origins into something that can be logically developed from the last two games.

Simply put, no matter whether or not you destroyed the Collector Base, EDI managed to datamine it anyway (which explains the Harbinger datapad at the end of ME2). Among all the data EDI collected were the blueprints for the Omega-4 Relay and the Human Reaper's design process. From studying the blueprints of the relay, Liara (as the Shadow Broker) and TIM begin to understand the construction process of a relay, how to get past its quantum shielding, how it's locked down by the Reapers via the Citadel, how to exploit its powerful mass effect engines, etc etc.
Once the Reapers attack and the galaxy is under siege, various galactic leaders begin to pool all their resources together and use the knowledge Liara and EDI have about the relays to design a weapon called the "Crucible", one that can exploit and release the abundant amounts of energy stored in a mass relay. And they choose to integrate the Crucible with not just any relay, but the Citadel itself due to its relay-network spanning capabilities. And using the blueprints of the Human Reaper, the Crucible is designed in a way that it can target only the Reapers based on some intrinsic design common to all Reapers.

The Control ending could still work in this scenario, if you go the route that TIM understands the Crucible designs (since he has EDI's data as well) and is creating his own modifications to be installed on it that will allow him to emit a signal that can take control of the Reapers.

The final ending choice of Destroy or Control could be a powerful one if both sides were written with equal merit and thematic weight.

This would nicely mirror how the Protheans from Ilos used the Reapers' own greatest technology, the mass relays, to sabotage them. And it gets rid of the feeling of divine intervention being the only thing saving us because Liara just happened to find the solution to our unsolvable problem in the nick of time on Mars and that this solution was designed by "better" races than us and we are totally helpless to do nothing but blindly follow their instructions or we're all DOOMED.
At least this way it would feel like the victory was earned and we won it through our own hard work and ingenuity.


[I'm not even going to bother with Synthesis, though I suppose one way to include some semblance of it is to show, that if certain conditions throughout the game are met, the Control society under AI-GodShep is moving towards an integration of organic and synthetic life]


I have another scenario for defeating the Reapers, but frankly it's too long and delving into massive rewrites over the entire trilogy. Maybe another time. 

Modifié par grey_wind, 09 juillet 2013 - 04:41 .

[Nightwriter]

iakus wrote...

 Crucible fires, disorients the Reapers and brings down their kinetic barriers.  They're still a dangerous threat, but without defenses or coordination, they can be defeated "conventionally" A viscious fight ensues with victory/defeat, the condition of Earth, Shepard's fate, and losses determined by EMS

"Scrap the Crucible."

[MassivelyEffective0730]

Steelcan wrote...

David7204 wrote...

It's not all about ships. But yes, if Shepard is a complete screw-up, I don't see conventional victory of any kind as plausible.

I completely agree.  

I agree in theory, though we probably have very different idea's of what constitutes a good execution.