I'm a machine in that I have my own hardware and software. My own processing system. I think. I require power and energy. How am I not a machine?
And what are you defining as a machine then? Sentience? Any organism less sophisticated than a dog would qualify as a machine then.
Machines don't sweat
It is good from a business perspective. It's telling people to but they other two games. It's basically advertisement, but free.
You would be discouraging sales of a full-price product in order to sell games that are sitting in bargain bins or floating through the second hand market.
I don't care if "99%" is included, I just don't think it was a failure that is was NOT included. To discuss the Geth/Quarian presentation on the level you are is similar to discussing the romances by the time spent on the love scenes - its an incredibly petty way to look at the presentation. The player has to understand these two factions and eventually decide on one or to resolve the conflict. One of them, the Geth, has already joined or become enslaved by the Reapers, an enemy that the player actively fights against. And the player has to trust that this faction won't become enslaved by the Reapers later on, as the Rachni may have earlier.
Players already understand that the Geth almost wiped out the Quarians, 99% dead or war over within a year will not change their perception.
BUT, if you're going to advocate for clarity, ie. 99% and "slaughter" on the Quarian side, to be intellectually honest you should be arguing for percentages and descriptions on the Geth side. Otherwise, you're advocating for a bias.
Way ahead of you.
ME2 codex, Geth culture:
The most remarkable aspect of geth culture is that it may not exist at all. Geth are a network intelligence; a single entity in myriad bodies. They share data with one another, whether discrete facts or "memories": audiovisual recordings of experiences and logs of thought-processes. Any event experienced by one geth is uploaded to the group mind, so that all geth, everywhere, "remember" such an event as if they'd experienced it themselves.
No one knows whether the geth develop personalities as organic-created AIs do. If an organic-designed AI is transferred into another quantum bluebox, its personality is reset. Most geth programs transfer from one hardware platform to another constantly; if a geth needs to travel to another star, it downloads into a starship body. If it needs to replace a piece of malfunctioning hardware, it downloads into a small body with hands. If geth are reset at transfer, it would make development of individual personalities unlikely.
Records of the quarian war suggest the geth have no concept of self-preservation. They do not flinch from gunfire, and do not hesitate to sacrifice themselves if it allows their fellows an advantage. Thousands of mobile platforms were expended assaulting quarian positions, but file-sharing between platforms ensured their memories and experience would not be lost. Geth are therefore immortal; if their hardware is destroyed, archival copies of their programs and databases can be downloaded into a new body.
With the gap in contact between the quarian war and the arrival of Sovereign, the only proven fact about the geth is that they were isolationists for centuries. They never ventured outside the Perseus Veil, but no organic ship that entered their territory ever returned.
They didn't see fit to package this codex entry in ME3 for whatever reason...
While we're at it, maybe we could add dialogue addressing the impact of their centuries of isolationism on prospective peace talks and two years of inaction against the heretics instead of tucking the only mention of the former away on the map description of Haestrom and barely acknowledging the existence of the latter at all.
I know you're trying to draw an equivalency, but the loss of Geth runtimes or hardware really cannot be directly compared to the death of individually-sapient organics. One experiences total, permanent loss of functionality with all information stored in memory irrevocably destroyed; the other experiences reduced functionality until additional hardware is added to the network and possible memory loss based on what's archived where. It's only with the complete destruction of their network that the latter truly dies. Did that ever happen during the Morning War?
You would be discouraging sales of a full-price product in order to sell games that are sitting in bargain bins or floating through the second hand market.
They already own they game if they're seeing the message.
@DeinonSlayer
I'm aware of the entry. It refers to Geth assaulting a position. But what about Geth residing on a server that the Quarians assaulted/bombed/shut down, where the backups are stored? The Geth don't have unlimited indefinite hardware - as in the attack on the Dyson Bubble, some runtimes/memories would have been permanently lost or destroyed during the Morning War.
Also, your description for valuing Geth losses basically plays into Legion's statement about how the Quarian's feel about Geth losses during their attack in ME3 - "they likely do not care." You're advocating a position of not counting Geth losses until the Consensus is completely destroyed, which I would say is just wrong.
First off, the Geth never cared. Even if they erroneously viewed the Quarians as a collective (seems more likely they knew better and simply didn't give a damn given the VI's behavior and EDI's commentary on it), they eradicated 99% of that collective.
Secondly, "this is like destroying a city, isn't it?" I never said this reduction of capability and permanent loss incurred when a server is destroyed is dismissible. I simply said you can't make a direct comparison between the two because they are utterly different. The nature of Geth sapience is fluid; difficult to quantify. 100 runtimes in a standard combat chassis has the intellect of a varren. It cannot even decide for itself whether shooting at you is right or wrong; it just does it. Put enough together in a network, and they attain self-awareness. Putting 1183 runtimes on a single platform gives you Legion; clearly intelligent, but tell those same 1183 runtimes to operate a cruiser on their own and I'd bet we're back down to varren intelligence, if they can run the ship at all.
I doubt you could slap a percentage on their losses in the war, and given the fluidity I just described, a number of runtimes lost wouldn't provide a very clear picture either - how long does it take to copy/paste a runtime anyway? A single runtime could very well "fill" whatever hardware it moves into as soon as it moves into it, like a rapidly-multiplying microorganism filling a petri dish. We were never told exactly how Geth "reproduce." Do we count the runtimes who are constantly downloading into new bodies for Zerg rushes among the casualties, over and over again? You could claim they were reduced to varren intellect as a whole due to Quarian activities in the war, aimlessly lashing out, but I question if they'd be smart enough to succeed at all in that state - I don't find it credible.
Long story short, you can't look at Geth losses, divide it by X and say that's equal to Y number of Quarians killed - it's more complicated than that. You sure as heck can't say X = Y straight across when each individual X has the intellect of a worker ant. So, how do we convey this? I'd be curious how you would present it.
Chris E'toile truly came up with something brilliant in how the Geth mind works. They should have explored that. The Pinocchio code made them boring.
The other thing that gets me is why didn't the Quarians simply nuke the damned site on Rannoch where the Reaper signal was originating from orbit? Yes the thing was in a hardened target, but by 2186 and with pinpoint accuracy they could have easily hit it or near it with a 1 MT nuke and easily destroyed that reaper, and taken out a s***load of Geth, too, via EMP and shock wave.
We rescue Koris, then
The other thing that gets me is why didn't the Quarians simply nuke the damned site on Rannoch where the Reaper signal was originating from orbit? Yes the thing was in a hardened target, but by 2186 and with pinpoint accuracy they could have easily hit it or near it with a 1 MT nuke and easily destroyed that reaper, and taken out a s***load of Geth, too, via EMP and shock wave.
We rescue Koris, then
Geth Jamming Towers. No way to decently target with them active without someone being on the ground with the targeting device made by Xen. I dont think anyone ever would be willing to suicide like that.
Saturation bomb the entire area.
Or just start dropping asteroids and turn the Reaper base into a lake.
Geth Jamming Towers. No way to decently target with them active without someone being on the ground with the targeting device made by Xen. I dont think anyone ever would be willing to suicide like that.
Almost counts with horseshoes, hand grenades, and nukes. Remember when you're rescuing Koris you're taking out the jamming towers first. 
I win.
Geth Jamming Towers. No way to decently target with them active without someone being on the ground with the targeting device made by Xen. I dont think anyone ever would be willing to suicide like that.
Still seems like a handwave to me. How exactly do jamming towers prevent visual targeting from orbit? The Quarians aren't firing laser-guided missiles at the thing, they're shooting metal slugs (which, according to the codex, are being slingshot around Rannoch's sun with Quarian fighters relaying targeting data - which is pretty damned impressive accuracy, though come to think of it, it would probably take an hour or more for a round moving at 1.8% of light speed to travel that distance after being fired 
).
Rolling around on a cliffside pointing a laser at that thing (while epic) was probably one of the dumbest parts of the trilogy.
Why would you even need to drop it from orbit? Just put a couple of nukes in a shuttle and have Shepard push them out from a couple of miles above.
It's a generally accepted fact that nukes need not be precision. That kinda beats the point.
OK, got curious.
It takes 8.317 minutes for light to travel from the sun to the Earth.
The codex tells us Rannoch's orbital distance is 0.72 AU, meaning it takes light 5.988 minutes to get there from Tikkun.
We don't know the angle at which the shots are being fired to slingshot around the sun, but if we were to pretend it was a straight line and they were firing from Rannoch's L3 Lagrangian point, take that 5.988 and double it. 11.976 minutes for light to travel that distance in a straight line. Arcing around the sun, it'd take notably longer.
Divide that 11.976 minutes by 0.018, the percentage of light speed of a round fired from an Everest-class dreadnought. 665.36 minutes.
It would take eleven hours for a slug fired on the far side of Rannoch's sun to reach a target on the planet, going straight through the sun. Longer depending on the angle used to slingshot around it.
OK, got curious.
It takes 8.317 minutes for light to travel from the sun to the Earth.
The codex tells us Rannoch's orbital distance is 0.72 AU, meaning it takes light 5.988 minutes to get there from Tikkun.
We don't know the angle at which the shots are being fired to slingshot around the sun, but if we were to pretend it was a straight line and they were firing from Rannoch's L3 Lagrangian point, take that 5.988 and double it. 11.976 minutes for light to travel that distance in a straight line. Arcing around the sun, it'd take notably longer.
Divide that 11.976 minutes by 0.018, the percentage of light speed of a round fired from an Everest-class dreadnought. 665.36 minutes.
It would take eleven hours for a slug fired on the far side of Rannoch's sun to reach a target on the planet, going straight through the sun. Longer depending on the angle used to slingshot around it.
Well, they could park their ships close to the sun and use the slingshot to drastically increase the velocity of the shots.
Well, they could park their ships close to the sun and use the slingshot to drastically increase the velocity of the shots.
Pretty sure projectiles would need thrust as they were approaching to achieve an increase in velocity through the slingshot. Any object without it would slow down as it was leaving as much as it sped up as it approached.
That'd be a hell of a slingshot to reduce a transit time of hours to anything that could hit a moving target. 
OK, got curious.
It takes 8.317 minutes for light to travel from the sun to the Earth.
The codex tells us Rannoch's orbital distance is 0.72 AU, meaning it takes light 5.988 minutes to get there from Tikkun.
We don't know the angle at which the shots are being fired to slingshot around the sun, but if we were to pretend it was a straight line and they were firing from Rannoch's L3 Lagrangian point, take that 5.988 and double it. 11.976 minutes for light to travel that distance in a straight line. Arcing around the sun, it'd take notably longer.
Divide that 11.976 minutes by 0.018, the percentage of light speed of a round fired from an Everest-class dreadnought. 665.36 minutes.
It would take eleven hours for a slug fired on the far side of Rannoch's sun to reach a target on the planet, going straight through the sun. Longer depending on the angle used to slingshot around it.
Doesn't the Codex claim that they're shooting at Geth ships that would be, you know, moving around?
Pretty sure projectiles would need thrust as they were approaching to achieve an increase in velocity through the slingshot. Any object without it would slow down as it was leaving as much as it sped up as it approached.
I'll admit, I'm don't have much experience with that kind of science. I was just pointing out that they could be firing from a much closer distance.
Pretty sure projectiles would need thrust as they were approaching to achieve an increase in velocity through the slingshot. Any object without it would slow down as it was leaving as much as it sped up as it approached.
That'd be a hell of a slingshot to reduce a transit time of hours to anything that could hit a moving target.
But then:
@DeinonSlayer
1) We know the Geth cared, otherwise they wouldn't defend themselves. But even if the Geth didn't care, we should.
2) I would value the percentage of runtimes permantently destroyed, possibly with hardware. If you said 99% of the Geth were destroyed, it sounds about as equivalent as 99% of the Quarians. I'm pretty sure if you asked the Geth they could come up with some pretty specific numbers on loses.
1) I said the Geth didn't care about the damage they were inflicting to the Quarians during the Morning War. They care about themselves, obviously, but why would they expect the Quarians to care the damage they inflicted to them? They're experiencing now through the loss of the sphere exactly what the Quarians experienced at their hands. Back in the Morning War, the Quarians as a whole did not want to fight them, nor did they have the means to do so, but they were targeted anyway. You'll forgive me if I can't dredge up much sympathy for Legion.
But... we've been over that, and won't change each others' minds. Backing off.
2) If 99% of the Geth were destroyed in the Morning War, they'd be reduced in intellect beyond non-sentience to non-functionality. They'd have no chance of winning. The losses the Geth took were not comparable to those sustained by the Quarians - if they were, they would have lost.
It really is difficult to express Geth losses in such figures. Loss of total hardware may be a way to explore that, but they treated their own platforms as highly expendable since they could simply download into a new one. May limit it to servers (Primes and probably Armatures count as mobile ones, I'm sure ships and even dropships do too). I wonder what that would come out to. It'd have been nice to have something definitive regarding how Geth runtimes multiply and (potentially) purge themselves. Is there a distinction between processing and data storage with Geth? Minds may be lost, but memory is intact; memory may be lost, but minds remain?
Like I said, they should have explored that instead of "reaper code makes me a real boy."
Is destroying machines genocide? No
Is killing the Quarians genocide? Yes.
Oh please. The geth are equally sapient and alive as the quarians are. Trying to exterminate any living, sapient species counts as genocide.
For me there is no line. Machines/robots or whatever name you want to give them, I don't care. If I destroy them, I will rebuild them if I choose. I can't do that with organics.
This is the reason the Catalyst exists in the MEU. Just sayin'.
Also, I see we've gotten closer to this formatting while I was sleeping:
You don't miss Silverexile's special contribution to debate here?
You've changed my argument; For one, I'm not saying anything about any other posters. I'm saying that your attempt to subject judgement on the topic is inappropriate based on justifications for said judgement off of a document that has no application in this setting. I am critiquing your usage of the document. You're changing my own words to say that I am calling for a halt to an anthropocentric view on a macro-scale and again arguing to hypocrisy against me and others. We aren't doing the same thing as you. The hypocrisy is entirely on you, as is the illogical implication for appealing to such hypocrisies. You have provided no counter-argument so to speak as to why it is relevant to involve a document that I have already broken down as unrelated and unconcerned with the issue. Your point is broken. Shifting the blame to me does not fix your point. It is a failed point, and in absence of justification, a failed argument, and an irrational perspective. It is ignored as irrelevant and irrational.
No, you haven't made one rational argument, that supports your claim, that it is wrong to use anthropocentric views in a human discussion of human views on a fictional alien event.
No argument other than, you think it's wrong. Which is hypocritical and ironic.
And yes, everyone else here is doing the same thing.
You would have, somewhat of an argument, if we were in the fictional universe and had to judge according to some specific morale principle or legal code, but we are not.
PS: You also don't have to say anything about other posters. You either think using an anthropocentric point of view in this debate is wrong, and thus you think that every poster here is wrong or you don't think it.
So it's either hypocrisy and/or the inability to stick to ones own principles, or a poorly thought out personal attack, since you're only criticising me for it.
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