170 réponses à ce sujet

[DeinonSlayer]

Ah, but you see, Cerberus has "reaper tech." What can the combined Asari fleets do against that?

...Angry letter? I'm gonna go with "angry letter." Then hide behind the Turians or whoever the Salarians uplift next.

[AlanC9]

Actually worked? Given the parameters present it absolutely should work. KBs only defend against things with mass traveling at fast speeds, so the heat should be able to melt through the Reaper, given that heat given off is as hot as the the surface of the sun. One kg of Antimatter reacting with one kg of matter results in an energy output equivalent to a 43 megaton bomb, or 2150 Hiroshima nukes. The Reapers would be toast. 

Also, they both work, but with carriers, the fighters need to saturate and burn out the point-defense laser system used. 

 

 

Arguing about what techs should do in the MEU is silly. Tech in the MEU does whatever Bio needs it to do. They can invent any kind of phlebotinum the Reapers need in order to counter whatever you come up with. (There's an old PnP RPG saying : the GM always has more character points on hand than you do.)

 

Anyway, I guess I wasn't clear about what counts as working.  The point is that if everybody starts tossing around antimatter weapons dreadnoughts are no longer an efficient weapons system. Big anything wouldn't work if it can be targeted, since if you can hit it you can kill it, which means that the bigger your ship is, the more you lose when it's taken out. You want to go small and disposable. Carriers could still work because you're not going to let enemies shoot at the carrier anyway.

 

And since the Reapers have fought either several hundred or maybe thousands of cycles, and they're still dreadnoughts....

 

Put another way, if you can think of this, why haven't the Reapers?

[AlexMBrennan]

Please tell me this is hyperbole. All we'd really need is the knowledge of how to shoot nuclear and/or antimatter warheads through mass accelerators. 

I'd say everyone is to blame for sheer stupidity.

Simple: the are about 250 reapers, and it takes 4 dreadnoughts to kill a reaper making a total of 1000 (meaning we need to build an extra 900 by next week) to win in a straight up battle, assuming they all line up and keep fighting to the death in a battle they know they can't win. If you want to defend the home worlds from a guerrilla force, better go for 10k dreadnoughts (each garrison has to be large enough to hold off the entire reaper fleet because by the time reinforcements can get there your planet will be a smoking ruin and the reapers will have disappeared again).

As for nuclear warheads, you did listen to the gunny in ME2 explaining that our ships fire kinetic weapons with more destructive energy than nukes several times per minutes? And I trust you also read the codex entry explaining that GARDIAN batteries destroy all incoming missiles?
As for antimatter, no matter what buzzwords you can throw around if the scientists and engineers in the ME universe don't come up with it, it isn't possible - never mind the problem that the Reapers will figure out what you are doing, retreat to dark space where we can't follow and refit their ships to also use dark matter weapons which still leaves us horribly outgunned. Stop assuming that the Reapers will just stand in line while you slaughter them with your brilliant awesome new weapons.

[ImaginaryMatter]

Simple: the are about 250 reapers, and it takes 4 dreadnoughts to kill a reaper making a total of 1000 (meaning we need to build an extra 900 by next week) to win in a straight up battle, assuming they all line up and keep fighting to the death in a battle they know they can't win. If you want to defend the home worlds from a guerrilla force, better go for 10k dreadnoughts (each garrison has to be large enough to hold off the entire reaper fleet because by the time reinforcements can get there your planet will be a smoking ruin and the reapers will have disappeared again).

As for nuclear warheads, you did listen to the gunny in ME2 explaining that our ships fire kinetic weapons with more destructive energy than nukes several times per minutes? And I trust you also read the codex entry explaining that GARDIAN batteries destroy all incoming missiles?
As for antimatter, no matter what buzzwords you can throw around if the scientists and engineers in the ME universe don't come up with it, it isn't possible - never mind the problem that the Reapers will figure out what you are doing, retreat to dark space where we can't follow and refit their ships to also use dark matter weapons which still leaves us horribly outgunned. Stop assuming that the Reapers will just stand in line while you slaughter them with your brilliant awesome new weapons.

 

It's more to do with how the energy from a nuclear device is emitted differently, one that can't be blocked by kinetic barriers. As for the Reaper version of GUARDIAN defense systems, maybe. We do know that they can be overwhelmed if you throw enough stuff at them and we don't know if a nuclear weapon can be detonated outside of their operating range and still hit the Reaper. As for the anti-matter weapons they do exist in the Mass Effect universe, as they are listed on whatever treaty that bans such weapons, the technology certainly exists as the ships are propelled by anti-matter.

 

My main reason for wanting to use nukes is so we can see a melting Reaper ship (how cool would that look?). I can understand that they weren't used from narrative point of view. I just wished the game or the Codex at some point addressed why such weapons weren't viable, because as it stands right now it seems like the organics were fighting with one hand tied behind their backs because they weren't using such powerful weaponry.

[TheOneTrueBioticGod]

Simple: the are about 250 reapers, and it takes 4 dreadnoughts to kill a reaper making a total of 1000 (meaning we need to build an extra 900 by next week) to win in a straight up battle, assuming they all line up and keep fighting to the death in a battle they know they can't win. If you want to defend the home worlds from a guerrilla force, better go for 10k dreadnoughts (each garrison has to be large enough to hold off the entire reaper fleet because by the time reinforcements can get there your planet will be a smoking ruin and the reapers will have disappeared again).

As for nuclear warheads, you did listen to the gunny in ME2 explaining that our ships fire kinetic weapons with more destructive energy than nukes several times per minutes? And I trust you also read the codex entry explaining that GARDIAN batteries destroy all incoming missiles?
As for antimatter, no matter what buzzwords you can throw around if the scientists and engineers in the ME universe don't come up with it, it isn't possible - never mind the problem that the Reapers will figure out what you are doing, retreat to dark space where we can't follow and refit their ships to also use dark matter weapons which still leaves us horribly outgunned. Stop assuming that the Reapers will just stand in line while you slaughter them with your brilliant awesome new weapons.

First off, there are things called cruisers. Line up 20 cruisers and a single salvo should be enough to take down a Reapers shields. 

The Gunny said that a dreadnought's main gun fires a slug that, when it's kinetic energy is transferred when in-atmosphere has a yield of 38 kilotons, which is as a matter of fact only two times that of the bomb used on Hiroshima. The warheads used mainly on minutemen missiles have a yield of around 335-500 kilotons. One kilogram of antimatter reacting with one kilogram of matter results in an explosion equivalent to a 43 megatons of TNT. So even if KBs could block the heat that would melt the ships hull, they would be overpowered. One does not need to use a missile to get a warhead from point A to point B. A mass accelerator, like the ones equipped on frigates and every other ship, can also move a warhead from point A to point B. 

Dark matter weapons? What? You mean biotics? And how? And what points to this? And why haven't they anyway if they could? And how would this make their KBs any more effective?

[AlanC9]

Simple: the are about 250 reapers, and it takes 4 dreadnoughts to kill a reaper making a total of 1000 (meaning we need to build an extra 900 by next week) to win in a straight up battle, assuming they all line up and keep fighting to the death in a battle they know they can't win. If you want to defend the home worlds from a guerrilla force, better go for 10k dreadnoughts (each garrison has to be large enough to hold off the entire reaper fleet because by the time reinforcements can get there your planet will be a smoking ruin and the reapers will have disappeared again).

Heh. Remember when we had all those clowns on the board talking about how the Alliance could win by using guerrilla tactics?

Since I've already played the meta-interpretation card I suppose I shouldn't bother getting involved with TOTBG's argument; no point pretending that I take MEU techs seriously anymore. It's all yours.

[AlanC9]

My main reason for wanting to use nukes is so we can see a melting Reaper ship (how cool would that look?). I can understand that they weren't used from narrative point of view. I just wished the game or the Codex at some point addressed why such weapons weren't viable, because as it stands right now it seems like the organics were fighting with one hand tied behind their backs because they weren't using such powerful weaponry.

Well, if they were used in the MEU we'd mostly see organics' ships melting. But yeah, since antimatter weapons were mentioned they should have been used. From the start. By the Reapers.

[TheOneTrueBioticGod]

It's less of something I want, since the whole story would be made mute, but a gaping plot hole. 

[Han Shot First]

The Asari don't seem to know anything about the Reapers, so I don't think they had managed to unlock all of the beacon's secrets. They probably never managed to activate the Prothean V.I. portion of it. After all the activation of the V.I. destroys part of the interior of the temple, and it only activates because 1) Shepard is present and had interacted previously with a Prothean beacon, or 2) an actual Prothean (Javik) is present.

[Ryriena]

I'm somewhat on the impression that using nukes is the best idea as they have little defensive techniques against these weapons. Kentic Barriers don't last too long and still don't understand how we could not use the combine fleets in battle against them.

[Argentoid]

Reading all this Prothean Beacon stuff gave me the munchies...

 

[sH0tgUn jUliA]

I'm approaching this from a no-meta perspective. Those are the facts on the ground.

 

Even with a well-placed mole, they'd still have the entire Asari fleet to get through on the way back out. Good luck with that.

 

Unless...

 

 

"Target the Reapers. Target the Reapers! Someone FIRE!!!"

 

But they're also dealing with the ulitmate nemesis... the writing of Super Mac.

[themikefest]

I guess its safe to say that the Asari are the leading experts in the study of the Protheans?

 

I'm just wondering why they didn't send anyone to Eden Prime to see if there was more than just the beacon? And why didn't anyone go to Mars to help the humans study all the Prothean data that was uncovered long before T'soni went to Mars?

[Farangbaa]

I guess its safe to say that the Asari are the leading experts in the study of the Protheans?

 

I'm just wondering why they didn't send anyone to Eden Prime to see if there was more than just the beacon? And why didn't anyone go to Mars to help the humans study all the Prothean data that was uncovered long before T'soni went to Mars?

 

Unwillingness on humanity's part, is my best bet.

 

'Here, have full access to our colony Eden Prime and do some digging' is just not gonna happen.

Same goes for the Mars archives.

[themikefest]

Unwillingness on humanity's part, is my best bet.

 

'Here, have full access to our colony Eden Prime and do some digging' is just not gonna happen.

Same goes for the Mars archives.

If that's the case, why would Anderson, at the beginning of ME1, say retrieving the beacon would help with relations with the council? If sharing the information found on Mars and allowing the other species to study it would improve relations, then why not have them there helping the humans?

[Vortex13]

At least I'm consistent. I'm not holding the entire Asari people, nor the entire Asari government accountable for this problem since they may not be. It's just like the entire Quarian race can't be held accountable for the actions of Admiral Gerrel. You can also blame the humans as well with most of the admiralty sitting with their fingers up their asses and keeping Shepard in lockup for six months doing absolutely nothing -- thank you Anderson for capturing Shepard (in the Foundation comics) -- like Shepard is going to cooperate now. Then you can also blame the Turians, and the Salarians. There's plenty of blame to go around. I think the only ones you can't blame are the Elcor and the Drell.

 

And the Hanar.

 

At least they were up front with Enkindler (Prothean) activity on their home world.

 

 

On a side note, I think that the Asari, Salarians, and Krogan are responsible for missing a potentially huge 2,000 + year headstart advantage in the Reaper war, namely in their destroying of the entire Rachni species during the Rachni wars.

 

Obviously, the various races where fighting for their survival when the Rachni first showed up, but once the Krogan were uplifted; and most certainly after they had forced the Rachni back to their home world; the fact that no one attempted to even discern why the Rachni were attacking just reeks of immense stupidity.

 

No one thought to cordon off the Rachni home worlds, to try and study the Rachni's organic form of quantum entanglement communication? No one thought to try and establish communication with the Rachni once they were beaten back? At the very least they could have established that the Rachni were being controlled by some immensely powerful alien creatures (the Leviathans), which could have lead them to seeking them out and learning of the Reapers 2,000+ years before ME 1.

 

But no, let's kill the creepy space bugs because they are weird and different from us.

[Mordokai]

But no, let's kill the creepy space bugs because they are weird and different from us.

 

I guess entomophobia is universal

[TheOneTrueBioticGod]

But no, let's kill the creepy space bugs because they are weird and different from us.

Supposedly, the Council tried to negotiate in the beginning, but found it impossible to make contact with the hive queens. 

[Ryriena]

Yeah, because anyone showing poltical leaders as helping would be a no no in mass effect. I would've written them in a way to show that the poltical leaders were in fact helping you on the down low to avoid panic. That's would be reasonable enough for me as to the denile in public its like what they do with the UFO's cases of today. They would deny something that could enter their airspace undetected to avoid panic from the public and too allow them to steel the tech....They put out the ass pull theory that Sovergin was a new Geth ship design but those that found pieces of it after the attack were saying other wise. Yeah, kind of like the lol it was a weather ballon or swamp gas ass pull dismissal claim. You know those old press release after the Phoenix lights incidents where a whole god damn city saw those oh and was seen twenty or so miles from Phoenix. It's turns out it was just planes in formation yeah the air traffic controls people said nothing was in the area at the time.but yeah let pull the the ass pull theory as correct. Face palms.

It's basically that they needed something too show off those new guns of theirs to prove something instead of being diplomatic. Or you know studying the enemy to learn about them or something like that.

[TheOneTrueBioticGod]

IIRC, it was Mac Walters who made the Council into a bunch of idiots in ME2. 

Though, it seems some of the smaller writers managed to sneak in some evidence to the contrary. 

Salarians outfitted all their dreadnoughts with stealth systems. 
Turians developed the Thanix. 
Asari.... I guess retrofitted their Dreadnoughts like they did with the Ascension
Humans built two new dreadnoughts and I'm guessing built fleets to accompany. 
Volus built a dreadnought, the Kwunu, which has all of its weapons, including the broadside ones, outfitted with Thanix systems.

 

[Vortex13]

Supposedly, the Council tried to negotiate in the beginning, but found it impossible to make contact with the hive queens. 

 

I can understand the communication failure during the beginning of the Rachni Wars; when they were pouring out of the Relay; but why wouldn't they try to make contact after they had pushed the Rachni back to their home world?

 

Making contact would have been a lot more plausible seeing as how the Rachni were up against the wall, and even if the Queens were too enthralled to not seek a measure of ceasefire in the name of self preservation (the fact that they sent out the lone Queen kinda bucks the notion that they were mindless slaves), then why wouldn't the Council races simply cordon off the planet and study the Rachni rather then systematically wipe them out?

[TheOneTrueBioticGod]

I can understand the communication failure during the beginning of the Rachni Wars; when they were pouring out of the Relay; but why wouldn't they try to make contact after they had pushed the Rachni back to their home world?

 

Making contact would have been a lot more plausible seeing as how the Rachni were up against the wall, and even if the Queens were too enthralled to not seek a measure of ceasefire in the name of self preservation (the fact that they sent out the lone Queen kinda bucks the notion that they were mindless slaves), then why wouldn't the Council races simply cordon off the planet and study the Rachni rather then systematically wipe them out?

Just to paraphrase from the Codex, while such destruction would've normally been opposed by the Council, after 300 years of war, total destruction seemed like the only option. 

My guess is that there were too many unknowns, and in order to ensure the future safety of civilians, they had to exterminate the Rachni. It's not like they knew the Rachni were being controlled by the Leviathans. 

[Vortex13]

Just to paraphrase from the Codex, while such destruction would've normally been opposed by the Council, after 300 years of war, total destruction seemed like the only option. 

My guess is that there were too many unknowns, and in order to ensure the future safety of civilians, they had to exterminate the Rachni. It's not like they knew the Rachni were being controlled by the Leviathans. 

 

It's true that the Council would have been unaware of the Leviathans involvement, but what was evident was that the Rachni were sentient; or at the least intelligent enough to use a Mass Relay and keep the Council races on the defensive for the better part of the war. I don't see why a cordon of the Rachni home world wasn't implemented, especially when the Krogan had their home world cordoned off at the end of the Krogan Rebellions. 

[Tyrannosaurus Rex]

I'm sorry, but I don't think so. The only reason Cerberus was able to insert forces to capture the beacon at all was because the Asari were tied up dealing with the Reaper presence on their planet. If Shepard had been told before the Reapers hit Thessia, Cerberus would have had to contend with a planet which was on high alert, bunkered down in preparation for a coming invasion, instead of actively being torn apart by one and thus unable to mobilize a response.

 

That wouldn't matter. Remember Sur'Kesh? Cerberus just walzted through their defences.

 

Cerberus can accomplish anything until the very end of the third act because Cerberus is Mac's little villain sue creation.

[TheOneTrueBioticGod]

That wouldn't matter. Remember Sur'Kesh? Cerberus just walzted through their defences.

 

Cerberus can accomplish anything until the very end of the third act because Cerberus is Mac's little villain sue creation.

"Reaper Tech"

 

It's true that the Council would have been unaware of the Leviathans involvement, but what was evident was that the Rachni were sentient; or at the least intelligent enough to use a Mass Relay and keep the Council races on the defensive for the better part of the war. I don't see why a cordon of the Rachni home world wasn't implemented, especially when the Krogan had their home world cordoned off at the end of the Krogan Rebellions. 

Petty vengeance? Probably a combination of bloodthirsty Krogan, eaten Salarian colonies, 300 years of war, and severe animosity toward the Rachni. The Krogan ran in and detonated Nukes in the underground caves of the Rachni Queens; it's unlikely to have survivors in that case. 

It was wrong, but understandable.