144 réponses à ce sujet

[dreamgazer]

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

So ... Independence Day.

[RadicalDisconnect]

Reapers need to be rewritten in terms of their capabilities. You can't pay to make me believe that a sapient race of technologically superior warships with every possible advantage in warfighting capabilities, superior technology, and little logistics footprint will lose in a total war. Before you mention "unconventional tactics" or "guerrilla warfare," who's to say the Reapers can't do the same? IMO, a lot of people who thinks that a non-Crucible victory is possible is going by the assumption that the Reapers are somehow incompetent, inept, and can't adapt or think of countermeasures. Not that I am supporting the Crucible in any way, but the Reapers need to be significantly rewritten.

Modifié par RadicalDisconnect, 09 juillet 2013 - 08:34 .

[Indy_S]

RadicalDisconnect wrote...

Reapers need to be rewritten in terms of their capabilities. You can't pay to make me believe that a sapient race of technologically superior warships with every possible advantage in warfighting capabilities, superior technology, and little logistics footprint will lose in a total war. Before you mention "unconventional tactics" or "guerrilla warfare," who's to say the Reapers can't do the same? IMO, a lot of people who thinks that a non-Crucible victory is possible is going by the assumption that the Reapers are somehow incompetent, inept, and can't adapt or think of countermeasures. Not that I am supporting the Crucible in any way, but the Reapers need to be significantly rewritten.

I'd like to say that there is a conventional charge at the end of the game and the Reapers don't seem to employ any tactics at all. The biggest thing would be calling in reserves behind Shield fleet. For all we know, the Reapers really are somehow incompetent, inept and can't adapt or think of countermeasures. Even as it is, the Reapers need to be significantly rewritten.

[AlexMBrennan]

I'd like to say that there is a conventional charge at the end of the game and the Reapers don't seem to employ any tactics at all

Thing is though, ME is a video game and thus there are always two possiblities
1) the writers meant for the Reapers to be incompetent OR
2) the writers themselves are incompetent

Given that the writers are by and large writers and not experts in, say, security engineering (Reaper IFF) or biology (Grunt the "pure" krogan), I'm more inclined to go with the latter.

And to be fair, the Reapers are just that strong that they don't have to bother with tactics - unless the plot demands it (notably Priority: Earth - remember the gunny in ME2 going on about the firepower of lowly Alliance dreadnoughts? The Reaper fleet in Sol could easily have turned everything within a mile of the beam into a glass crater with a single volley), they have won every engagement.

[dorktainian]

10,000 cains set to fire, attached to a huge electromagnet, thrown at harbie by megatron.

Boom!!!

[HellbirdIV]

RadicalDisconnect wrote...

You can't pay to make me believe that a sapient race of technologically superior warships with every possible advantage in warfighting capabilities, superior technology, and little logistics footprint will lose in a total war.

Two words; Numerical superiority.

You know how the under-equipped, untrained Soviet Red Army defeated the Wehrmacht mostly through superior numbers and the ability to replenish lost materiel through their war factories?

The Reapers can't build new Reapers while the war in ongoing - let's at least assume this to be the case for the purposes of this rewrite - and can only really swell their infantry ranks, whereas the galactic civilizations can build as many gunships, frigates and cruisers as they like to keep the war going.

There's another reason I'm drawing the Red Army/Wehrmacht comparison;

In repelling the invasion of the Soviet Union, the Red Army and its allies, partisans and other forces, suffered over ten million military casualties killed in action. Over ten million - that's more people than everyone who lives in my country right now - and another thirty million civilians.

As I said in my original post... The whole point is that it is the greatest war the galaxy has ever seen. The casualties would be staggering - likely in the multitudes of billions.

We'd win, but just barely.

Modifié par HellbirdIV, 09 juillet 2013 - 09:24 .

[nos_astra]

iakus wrote...

Nightwriter wrote...

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."

D'oh, forgot that part.

Okay, without the Crucible, I'd exploit the organic component to the Reapers. Toxins, diseases, something like that.  

Hello, War of the Worlds deus ex machina.

Makes me wonder why the Reapers decided to use organic materials to begin with. Because they're so deliciously squishy, they rot away beautifully under the right circumstances and the smell is breath-taking?

Face it people, the Reapers aren't suitable for a simple kick-my-enemy's-butt story.

You have  to accept that an enemy like this can't be defeated in any way, shape or form without very obvious contrivances and either write a story about how the galaxy struggles to survive and ultimately fails (which would be quite the twist) or you accept it and embrace a badly written, simple escapist fantasy that includes enemies blinded by stupidity whenever convienent and a deus ex machina.

Modifié par klarabella, 09 juillet 2013 - 09:55 .

[JamesFaith]

HellbirdIV wrote...

RadicalDisconnect wrote...

You can't pay to make me believe that a sapient race of technologically superior warships with every possible advantage in warfighting capabilities, superior technology, and little logistics footprint will lose in a total war.

Two words; Numerical superiority.

You know how the under-equipped, untrained Soviet Red Army defeated the Wehrmacht mostly through superior numbers and the ability to replenish lost materiel through their war factories?

The Reapers can't build new Reapers while the war in ongoing - let's at least assume this to be the case for the purposes of this rewrite - and can only really swell their infantry ranks, whereas the galactic civilizations can build as many gunships, frigates and cruisers as they like to keep the war going.

Actually Red army didn't win thanks to numerical superiority, Soviet were winning thanks to their two biggest generals - general Freeze and his brother Mud. Soviet started winning only after Germans were cutted from supplies - same case as Napoleon's invasion hunderd years ago.

But in our case Reapers don't need supplies lines. In fact it is them who disrupting our supplies lines and destroying our sources. Just look at some planetary descrtiptions - war just started and we already lost many of our crucial sources of starship fuel. So your comparison don't truly work here because Reapers are using both German and Soviet advantages - technical superiority + tactic of burned ground.

Also when they can't build new Reaper they can use inoctrinates crews on our own ships so even their space fleet numbers aren't so limited as it seems.  

[Ridwan]

"Shepard, you did it! You united the galaxy!"

"Damn straight!" *puts on sunglasses* "now let's kick some Reaper ass!"

*explosions*

"Well, those bastards put up a fight, but we showed them who's the boss. Let's all drink and honour the dead." *looks at Liara* "excuse me folks, I'm suddenly reminded that I have a duty to repopulate the galaxy."

The end.

Modifié par M25105, 09 juillet 2013 - 11:32 .

[Kataphrut94]

Considering the biggest complaint about the ending was people imagining that none of their choices mattered, I'd like to create an alternate ending where everything comes down to the most obscure choices possible. Like the Conrad Verner thing taken up to 11.

In order to defeat the Reapers, you must:

* Give Cerberus data to the Shadow Broker rep.
* Kill no more than 7 Feros colonists and no less than 2.
* Punch out Al-jilani in every odd-numbered game, verbally abuse her in every even-numbered game.
* Don't give Veetor to Cerberus. You don't get anything out of it anyway, so what's the point?
* Trick the krogan on the Citadel into believing there are fish in the Presidium.
* Allow Niftu Cal, biotic god, to smell his greatness!
* Level up Garrus to max in shotgun training.
* Destroy the non-geth heretics.
* Oh, you should probably not give Legion to Cerberus either. As a matter of fact, don't give anything or anyone to them ever.
* Cure the genophage without anyone finding out about the sabotage plan. Kill Mordin/Padok to ensure they don't blab.
* Do whatever on Rannoch.
* Beat Kai Leng without using the Overload power.

If you did all that, congratulations! You defeated the Reapers.

[AlexMBrennan]

The Reapers can't build new Reapers while the war in ongoing

Except that isn't even remotely true - Reaper reproduction is only a side effect of the cycles, not the goal. Unless you want to argue that the Reapers never discovered ranching (do you wait for pigs to evolve from single-cell goo when you want a ham sandwich?), the assumption that this is the only way for them to reproduce is absurd.

In repelling the invasion of the Soviet Union, the Red Army and its allies, partisans and other forces, suffered over ten million military casualties killed in action. Over ten million - that's more people than everyone who lives in my country right now - and another thirty million civilians.

Do you think that the outcome would have been the same if Hitler hadn't decided to declare war on everyone at once? You can't exactly claim that superior numbers single-handedly won the war when e.g. it was America's industry that (first indirectly, later directly) kept the Luftwaffe busy in the West.

[katamuro]

First of all lets address the nerfing of Citadel and Alliance's fleets.
In ME2 Shepard clearly states that Turians lost 20 cruisers and Alliance lost 8 cruisers. Thats 28 ships in total.
Considering that even human race numbers around 15 to 20 billion a System Alliance fleet should number in thousands of ships.
Then add Asari, Turian and Salarian ships and we get one huge fleet.

So lets add the Thanix cannon which reportedly was put into mass production at around 2184-85. We know its one hell of a gun and even on a destroyer class ship like SR2(I call it destroyer because it is smaller than cruiser and almost twice as big as frigates) can destroy a Collector cruiser from a few shots.

So I would expand the choices making the conventional victory possible if Crucible is used as a Reaper only EMP.
Basically would make a timing thing based on the amount of forces you have. To disable reapers Shepard needs a certain amount of time based to do it properly.

So high ems high would end up in total disabling of Reapers. Happy ending.
A mid ems would get you enough to cripple them. Fleet and ground battle we see some characters dying.
A low ems would disable the shields but that it. Shepard dies when Citadel is swarmed by Reapers.

Then of course variations based on certain choices you did.

[Wayning_Star]

actually, you cannot "defeat" reapers, as they're not the enemy/foe, etc.

Maybe that's why folks post their disappointment about the method to/that did defeat reapers..

[Grand Admiral Cheesecake]

Wayning_Star wrote...

actually, you cannot "defeat" reapers, as they're not the enemy/foe, etc.

Maybe that's why folks post their disappointment about the method to/that did defeat reapers..

Of course the Reapers were the enemy you crazy crazy person.

It just turns out that they had a boss and guess what, you can kill him aaaaand his cuttlefish pets!



(Seriously though I'm a huge fan of your crazy work, please keep it up!)

[Ravensword]

Wayning_Star wrote...

actually, you cannot "defeat" reapers, as they're not the enemy/foe, etc.

Maybe that's why folks post their disappointment about the method to/that did defeat reapers..

Auldie, are you on your alt?

[Triforce Hermit]

Creation of a super weapon made by a race that came before the Protheans that uses the Mass Relays to create a super powered beam that will pierce the Reaper's Core. The Protheans discovered this plan also and the Conduit was the beginning of it before, well you know. Shepard unites the galaxy in an attempt to study the Relays and in the end they discover how to do it. The Reapers begin creating the human Reaper on Earth. Relays fire and kill all Reapers except the human one. TIM fuses with it and starts indoctrination that has been perfected, affecting everything withing range of Earth. Shepard resists and blows up the human Reaper and himself.
*Cut to the forest where he chases that child thing*
Shepard is greeted by different people, depending on his decisions. Saren, TIM, or Anderson first. Mordin and Legion (along with other dead teammates). And depending on who you love relation was, the third person will be related to them (Thane's wife, Garrus's mother, Liara's mother, Tali's father, etc). Shepard either dies or miraculously survives. He will be found by either Krogan, Geth, Quarians, etc depending on you decisions.

Some relays have been destroyed but not all. The galaxy is now more familiar with the Relay tech. The Asari Matriarch in the bar on Illium was right.

[Uncle Jo]

[Arcian]

I've always liked the idea of turning the Mass Relays into powerful mass accelerator weapons. They seem to already have the hardware for it, all you need to do is adjust the mass reduction to give their payloads sufficient punch while retaining most of the speed. They obviously have some kind of tracking system to detect other relays, as they aren't stationary objects and move (if only in orbit around stars). Turning this tracking system against the Reapers through whatever ansible system they use to communicate and track each other should allow the Mass Relays to home in on and snipe away at them with impunity.

Gives another dimension to the importance of the Reapers taking the Citadel at the start of each invasion - it controls the Mass Relay Network which, in the wrong hands, could be turned against them. Bonus points because the Mass Relays are Mass Effect's most iconic objects and symbolize the dark energy phenomenon for which the series was named. More bonus points for the irony of the Reapers being defeated by the technology they invented to make the extinctions faster and more efficient.

Thoughts?

Modifié par Arcian, 09 juillet 2013 - 06:37 .

[HellbirdIV]

Arcian wrote...

snip

Thoughts?

I like it. It also kind of validates Aethyta's argument that the Citadel species really should try to study and understand the Mass Relays, not just use them.

[Purge the heathens]

We convince the Catalyst that organics and synthetics can coexist by having Shepard and Legion make out in front of it. The Reapers are so moved, they leave to terrorize another galaxy.

[DarthLaxian]

MrFob wrote...

Can we scrap ME2 as well?
I think I'd have gone down with a mixture of a modified Dark Energy plotline and a Babylon 5 kind of scenario. Not the most original, I know but seriously, this was how I imagined the story might play out before ME2 (and after reading Ascension).
Basically the main idea is that naturally occurring eezo has an adverse effect on the structure of the space time continuum, warping and distorting it, therefore endangering our galaxy as a whole in the long run. There are two very old races who try to combat this trend, the reapers and the collectors. They have radically different ways of attempting to solve the problem. The reapers believe the answer lies in technology. Being a post singularity race themselves, they think that with the right technology, they can build a machine that will stabilize the eexo effects.
The collectors on the other hand believe in a biological solution, thinking that the perfect biotic species will be able to control eezo and save the galaxy. They experiment with evolution to finally create this race.

The collectors and the reapers are in an a cold (intermittently hot) war for millions of years already. They both need to maintain the cycle for their "projects", the reapers to study variances in technological development of the races and the collectors to reset and study different permutations of organic evolution. But they hate each other, whether that is just because they disagree on the eezo issue or because of other reasons as well is unknown.
In ME1 Shepard learned mainly about the reapers and their part in the cycle.

In ME2, s/he'd learn mainly about the collectors and find out that it wasn't just the reapers who wiped out the protheans but also the collectors. In fact, at the demise of the prothean empire, the main war was not fought against the protheans but the reapers clashed with the collectors (as they do at the culmination of every cycle).
Vigil on Illos had no idea about this. The reapers started the invasion
first and later on Illos isolated it self too much to get the entire
picture.
Shep also learns that human (and possibly also asari) genetic material is very valuable to the collectors since it represents a huge step towards a biotic race that could solve the eezo problem.
Also in ME2, Shepard would learn more about the protheans themselves. The conduit got studied after ME1 and it turns out that the mass relay the protheans built works differently than the old ones. This plot line is left hanging for ME3.

After learning about the second faction in ME2, the invasion begins in ME3. Shepard's goal is still to secure the alliance between the races of this cycle but at the same time, s/he has to do some crucial missions in order to channel the war into a direction where reaper and collector forces clash against each other a lot rather than wiping out planets of our cycle (I think this would even have made for a good gameplay mechanic where Shepard can actually fail in missions without a game over but the player would be punished by loosing planets instead).
At the same time, the alliance of races that Shepard builds works on a secret project. The idea is to build a new mass relay from the template of the conduit on illos (the continuation of that plotline from ME2). The idea is that they want to build at least one new relay which the reapers and collectors know nothing about. In a worst case scenario, they could then save a certain percentage of the population by sending them to a remote location off the reaper's and collector's relay network (mind you, I would have stuck to the ME1 setup where traveling between star clusters without relays was barely possible, even for the reapers). This project will also find out that the different technology, used in the prothean conduit relay could on a very large scale (with a new relay network) have a stabilizing effect on eezo (i.e. be what the reapers were looking for).
In the end, there are three scenarios how ME3 can end:
1. Worst case: The player did really badly and this cycle looses and gets wiped out (it would be like Shepard's death in ME2, you basically have to specifically play for that outcome in order to get it, with a little bit of common sense, you can avoid this.
2. If the player lost a lot of worlds and didn't do particularly well, the war will be lost but the current cycle manages to save some people in a colony that escaped the reapers and the collectors. In an epilogue it is implied that the descendants of this colony will eventually defeat them.
3. If the player did well and channeled the war cunningly, the reapers and collectors will be lured to send the bulk of their forces into a final stand off. While they fight each other, The allied fleet of the current cycle comes in a plays their trump card. They have both, the genetic material the collectors want and technology the reapers want. Shepard is in a position where it is left to him/her to decide. They can ally with the collectors or the reapers, wipe out the other side and get on to solve the eezo problem. In each of these cases Shepard would have to sacrifice himself, either by joining with a reaper or by giving hmself up to the collectors but the cycles would be ended and the current one would be allowed to continue while the reapers/collectors (which ever was chosen) would vanish into the depth of the unexplored parts of the galaxy, trying to fix the eezo problem..
With a high paragon score, Shepard even has the option to broker a piece. Collecotrs, reapers and the current cycle would live, Shep wouldn't have to die and they all would persue both avenues to fix the eezo problem..
With a high enough renegade score, Shepard also has the option to manipulate both sides into wiping most of each others forces out so that the allied fleet can actually win against the remaining forces (although taking heavy losses in the process but Shep would live). Both the reapers and the collectors would go extinct this way and the current races are left to deal with the eezo problem themselves (although there would be time).

Sorry for the wall of text. That's what I'd have done though.

nicely done IMHO  (and way better then what we have...hell, changing everything after ME1 is more drastic then everything i have been thinking up so far (keeping ME2 in place, but doing a lot of stuff during the happenings and not surrendering yourself to the Alliance...what's Shep doing sitting in a PRISON?...nothing, that's wasted TIME!) and that's why i like it

greetings LAX

[Dubozz]

 step one. find the prothean, then unfinished broken prothean device - obtain blueprints/cerberus confrontation, reapers hit earth 

step two. citadel council - krogans/salarians arc - cerberus coup 

step three. geth/quarian arc - 

step four. thessia, meaningful conversation with the illusive man (someone controls the reapers)- point of no return. 
-joining cerberus- infiltration of the crucible(explanation how it works) - citadel under the reapers attack(shep will stay on the citadel while reapers are transporting it) - Opening the wards(suicide mission 2.0)(TIM will stay sane and w/o implants)

-stay true to the alliance- horizon - cronos station- priority earth(suicide mission 2.0)

step five- somewhere after final mission starts and before the ending-CLIFFHANGER- crucible blueprints were created by teh reapers (created will always rebel agains creators LMAO) to get rid of their master (should stay unknown)-In the end control(you/illusive man)/destroy.(without this crazy **it like shooting the tube of something like that) Also NO STAR**** and synthesis nonsence.

Modifié par Dubozz, 09 juillet 2013 - 07:56 .

[TheMyron]

M25105 wrote...

"Shepard, you did it! You united the galaxy!"

"Damn straight!" *puts on sunglasses* "now let's kick some Reaper ass!"

*explosions*

"Well, those bastards put up a fight, but we showed them who's the boss. Let's all drink and honour the dead." *looks at Liara* "excuse me folks, I'm suddenly reminded that I have a duty to repopulate the galaxy."

The end.

MaleShep will probably be in every position within the first few days.

[SinerAthin]

I'd just turn the Catalyst into super weapon.

"Press to activate las0rs of doom. Target the Reapers?"

BWOOOOM

*Plot Twist*

"Press to target the non-human fleets & claim the galaxy for humanity?"

...