72 réponses à ce sujet

[Vazgen]

Yeah. It's like a fire tearing through a library, yet somehow only burning the books that have the words "Artificial Intelligence" written in them.

 

Whatever Destroy is targeting, it's not words on a page. And when you get right down to it, code is little more than very tiny words for a computer to read.

Yet it's precisely what happens during high EMS destroy. When it leaves humans safe but destroys the husks. My theory is that the wave is an energy burst that destroys the nanites Reapers use to turn organics into troops like husks, Marauders etc. As we can see from the cutscene, Reapers themselves are not disintegrated, they simply fell dead without any explosions on them which can only mean that it's something internal, like the code. 

As for whether the blast destroys all synthetics, I go with what I see. I see geth die with their Reaper code upgrades and EDI, with her Reaper basis. We had never seen an AI without Reaper code being affected by the beam. All we have is Catalyst's words "All synthetics will die" which raises the question of what does the Catalyst consider "synthetic". Obviously it includes Reapers, geth and EDI but who else. He says "even you are partly synthetic", does that mean that he considers implants and simple tech without "mind" as synthetic? If that's the case, he's lying, as evidenced by the cutscenes. If by "synthetic" he means the same as us - there are no other synthetics like that in the galaxy. Virtual aliens can completely possess organic bodies - something only Reapers can do to a degree (and Leviathans could). As for other AIs, EDI puts it best "Other AIs are experiments only. Tightly controlled".

[themikefest]

When the crucible was mentioned, the first thing that came to mind was that it fires some kind of pulse that weakens the reapers

[Reorte]

It didn't necessarily mean deus ex machina, either. I was personally hoping that they'd find a way to bring the Reapers down to our level - maybe manage to make the entire fleet vulnerable in the same way that Sovereign was made vulnerable. (Would have presumably involved hijacking the indoctrination signal - which would have allowed the entire thing to pivot on Shepard.)

I think the end of the Reapers should've involved Sovereign. I could just about swallow the Prothean interference (still would've preferred fewer cycles though) meaning that this was the first time an individual Reaper had to go it alone, so was the first time a cycle had a chance to thoroughly examine a recently destroyed one. Could've learned all sorts of essential knowledge from that.

[Arcian]

In Star Wars the Alliance equipped its large MC Cruisers with ion cannons to disable Star Destroyers and other Imperial cruisers. I know this is not Star Wars, but an ion shot should do the same thing in any galaxy, right? Reapers are... mostly machines. If the opposing force just fired a lot of ion shots at it, would its eyes not flash then stop working? No shields mean they could easily destroy it, right?

Star Wars is not a good reference for scientific accuracy. Real life ions are nowhere as dangerous as uninformed sci-fi writers would have you believe. However, if your goal is to assassinate individual cells in someone's body, they are the best weapon for the job.

[AlanC9]

I'm fairly sure that the laws of physics work differently in the Star Wars 'verse compared to the Mass Effect 'verse. Which means that whether or not it would work is pretty much down to author's discretion. In other words - take your pick.

Actually, since it's author's discretion, we know that the answer is "no, they would not work." Either they couldn't be built, or the Reapers would be immune.

There's a reason for this. Conventional victories tend to be kinda dull in the endgame. Ever go for a conquest win in a 4X game?

[ImaginaryMatter]

I liked the line. A lack of a conventional victory had been obvious since ME1 and Vigil - or at least, I felt it had been.

 

It didn't necessarily mean deus ex machina, either. I was personally hoping that they'd find a way to bring the Reapers down to our level - maybe manage to make the entire fleet vulnerable in the same way that Sovereign was made vulnerable. (Would have presumably involved hijacking the indoctrination signal - which would have allowed the entire thing to pivot on Shepard.)

 

Unfortunately, whoever wrote the Crucible plot had other ideas.

 

I thought a conventional victory was out of the question in ME1; however, ME3 is what threw that into doubt for me. Suddenly, the Reapers were held up by things like 15 minute plans, guerrilla tactics, and smuggling bombs onto ships (plus cutscenes that make every space battle look like a stalemate); not to mention that Shepard fights one on foot and another is taken out by a giant worm snake. Despite being told that a conventional fight was out of the question by our superiors, those superiors then turned around and ordered us to spend more than half the game doing exactly that. Considering so little time was spent on the Crucible despite labeling it as humanities last hope, I thought the big twist would reveal that the Crucible was a dud, then Shepard would give a speech about unity, sneak aboard Harbinger, and the whole thing would be settled through a conventional victory.

[JasonShepard]

Actually, since it's author's discretion, we know that the answer is "no, they would not work." Either they couldn't be built, or the Reapers would be immune.

 

Well, I deliberately didn't specify who the author of this hypothetical cross-over would be. If fanfic, it could go either way. I'm also a proponent of "What you decide to be canon, is." (TIM having a name, a history, and a First Contact War encounter with the Reapers? Nah.) So that's why I equated 'author's discretion' with 'make your own mind up'.

[JasonShepard]

I thought a conventional victory was out of the question in ME1; however, ME3 is what threw that into doubt for me. Suddenly, the Reapers were held up by things like 15 minute plans, guerrilla tactics, and smuggling bombs onto ships (plus cutscenes that make every space battle look like a stalemate); not to mention that Shepard fights one on foot and another is taken out by a giant worm snake. Despite being told that a conventional fight was out of the question by our superiors, those superiors then turned around and ordered us to spend more than half the game doing exactly that. Considering so little time was spent on the Crucible despite labeling it as humanities last hope, I thought the big twist would reveal that the Crucible was a dud, then Shepard would give a speech about unity, sneak aboard Harbinger, and the whole thing would be settled through a conventional victory.

 

I see your point, but for me it's the difference between being able to fight them and being able to beat them. ME3 showed that, yes, we could fight them and win smaller engagements, but I never saw anything that made me think the Reapers could be beaten as a whole through pure military strength. Especially considering that an early codex entry established that they only needed around 40 Sovereigns to beat every dreadnought in the galaxy.

 

ME3 would have been a very different, and probably less fun, game if we couldn't even fight the Reapers.

[Reorte]

If we stood much of a chance of beating them in a straightforward fight it would scream "problem!" everywhere. We're the first cycle able to do that? Far too unconvincingly unlikely. I hate the "we're special" message enough as it is.

[Killdren88]

If we stood much of a chance of beating them in a straightforward fight it would scream "problem!" everywhere. We're the first cycle able to do that? Far too unconvincingly unlikely. I hate the "we're special" message enough as it is.

 

If the VIs are to be believed, there was always a Cerberus like group in each cycle which screwed everyone over.

[Mister J]

I don't know about Ion cannons, but what about antimatter based weapons?

 

Even if the Reapers barriers or hull could withstand the blast from the annihilation, the antimatter would eat the very matter they're made from...

 

Though if the writers would have thought about this I'm pretty sure they could come up with some reason why it wouldn't work

[Killdren88]

I don't know about Ion cannons, but what about antimatter based weapons?

 

Even if the Reapers barriers or hull could withstand the blast from the annihilation, the antimatter would eat the very matter they're made from...

 

Though if the writers would have thought about this I'm pretty sure they could come up with some reason why it wouldn't work

 

I'm pretty sure they went out of their to ensure there is no way to win without dealing with Star brat...even though some of their reasons are BS...

[von uber]

What do the Reapers use as an energy source?

[Arcian]

What do the Reapers use as an energy source?

Astrosorcery.

[JasonShepard]

I don't know about Ion cannons, but what about antimatter based weapons?

 

Even if the Reapers barriers or hull could withstand the blast from the annihilation, the antimatter would eat the very matter they're made from...

 

Though if the writers would have thought about this I'm pretty sure they could come up with some reason why it wouldn't work

 

You'd need to manufacture a *LOT* of antimatter for that to work. It's not like the stuff is just hanging around.

 

But yeah, if you've got a decent energy source, and a method of creating it on a large scale, there's no reason why antimatter weaponry wouldn't wipe out the Reapers.

[Kantr]

When the crucible was mentioned, the first thing that came to mind was that it fires some kind of pulse that weakens the reapers

It's rather a shame that wasnt the case

 

You'd need to manufacture a *LOT* of antimatter for that to work. It's not like the stuff is just hanging around.

 

But yeah, if you've got a decent energy source, and a method of creating it on a large scale, there's no reason why antimatter weaponry wouldn't wipe out the Reapers.

They've got fusion right? You could do it the in-efficient way and use fusion to power a collider. Or build one say on mercury using solar power.

[Iakus]

You'd need to manufacture a *LOT* of antimatter for that to work. It's not like the stuff is just hanging around.

 

But yeah, if you've got a decent energy source, and a method of creating it on a large scale, there's no reason why antimatter weaponry wouldn't wipe out the Reapers.

According to the codex, warship thrusters actually operate on matter-antimatter reactions. So yeah, they can already produce it.

 

And the energy release of such a reaction would cut right through kinetic barriers like they're not even there.

 

Still, it wouldn't work, because THEY CANNOT BE DEFEATED CONVENTIONALLY!!! OH NOES!!!

[JasonShepard]

Hmmm... So the codex does establish that the galaxy has some pretty huge antimatter production facilities. (Here - thanks Iakus.) Big enough to provide propulsion for their warships. Which *might* be big enough to make antimatter warheads - I'm not sure of the relative costs, though my gut feeling is that weaponising it would be the higher cost. (The reason being that the energy of a ship in motion is going to be substantially less than the energy that you're hoping to pack into a single warhead.)

 

We can already build nukes, so antimatter warheads would need to be at a level above that to be worth making. Weaponry in Mass Effect is said to have impacts of around 40 kilotons (the Newton speech). That's... about what you'd get out of 1 gram of antimatter. Huh.

 

Okay. It's a decent package for making large explosions on Reaper ships, but if you're planning to eat away at the hull of a Reaper using this, you're going to need a LOT of antimatter.

 

You're also going to need a delivery system, which means an inexpensive way of transporting antimatter (since your method of transporting it is going to have to go into each torpedo - which means you're not getting it back). Essentially you need to invent disposable antimatter containers...

 

Advantages? Antimatter is essentially a brilliant battery. If you can contain it and make it, you can store as much energy as you like within antimatter, and unleash it all in one go. Depending on production methods, it might also be more energy efficient than making nukes - in which case, making this is better than making H-bombs (it all depends on production costs though, and I don't want to guess at what production is like in the 22nd century).

 

Disadvantages? At the end of the day, it's still just a bomb. One way or another, you have to get that antimatter onto the Reaper and allow the reaction to take place. Which means you still have to get past the kinetic barriers and the GARDIAN-esque lasers. Secondly, the stated aim of eating away at the Reaper's hull via annihilation... isn't really going to work. By the time that you're putting in enough energy to really do that, you're putting in enough energy to just blow the Reaper up.

 

Is it a silver bullet?

In my opinion... Not really, sadly. The problem of getting it onto the hull is the big one, for me. We already have large nukes, after all - remember Virmire? That bomb probably could have killed a Reaper at point blank range - the problem is getting it to point blank range.

[Reorte]

If they're that easy to make they're as easy or easier for the Reapers too, so then you'd have to come up with implausible nonsense or totally overlook (i.e. fit in with ME3) the fact that the Reapers could use them against everyone else too.

Since they've been around for so long it's rather difficult to come up with any anti-Reaper method that the Reapers wouldn't already know about and have a counter-measure to, or simply the ability to use the same thing against us, only faster and stronger, or that a previous cycle wouldn't have already successfully used to defeat them. That's why they're a badly thought out enemy.

[Iakus]

Hmmm... So the codex does establish that the galaxy has some pretty huge antimatter production facilities. (Here - thanks Iakus.) Big enough to provide propulsion for their warships. Which *might* be big enough to make antimatter warheads - I'm not sure of the relative costs, though my gut feeling is that weaponising it would be the higher cost. (The reason being that the energy of a ship in motion is going to be substantially less than the energy that you're hoping to pack into a single warhead.)

 

We can already build nukes, so antimatter warheads would need to be at a level above that to be worth making. Weaponry in Mass Effect is said to have impacts of around 40 kilotons (the Newton speech). That's... about what you'd get out of 1 gram of antimatter. Huh.

 

Okay. It's a decent package for making large explosions on Reaper ships, but if you're planning to eat away at the hull of a Reaper using this, you're going to need a LOT of antimatter.

 

You're also going to need a delivery system, which means an inexpensive way of transporting antimatter (since your method of transporting it is going to have to go into each torpedo - which means you're not getting it back). Essentially you need to invent disposable antimatter containers...

 

Advantages? Antimatter is essentially a brilliant battery. If you can contain it and make it, you can store as much energy as you like within antimatter, and unleash it all in one go. Depending on production methods, it might also be more energy efficient than making nukes - in which case, making this is better than making H-bombs (it all depends on production costs though, and I don't want to guess at what production is like in the 22nd century).

 

Disadvantages? At the end of the day, it's still just a bomb. One way or another, you have to get that antimatter onto the Reaper and allow the reaction to take place. Which means you still have to get past the kinetic barriers and the GARDIAN-esque lasers. Secondly, the stated aim of eating away at the Reaper's hull via annihilation... isn't really going to work. By the time that you're putting in enough energy to really do that, you're putting in enough energy to just blow the Reaper up.

 

Is it a silver bullet?

In my opinion... Not really, sadly. The problem of getting it onto the hull is the big one, for me. We already have large nukes, after all - remember Virmire? That bomb probably could have killed a Reaper at point blank range - the problem is getting it to point blank range.

 

The energy from antimatter comes from bringing it into contact with regular matter.  It destroys both and releases a LOT of energy as a result.  A few grams of antimatter and a few grams of matter suspended in mass effect fields (or even old school magnetic fields, perhaps) until you're ready to blow it up is all you'd need.

 

And this being a bomb, close counts.  Kinetic barriers do nothing against energy attacks.  You don't have to get it onto a Reaper.  Just near it.  And depending on how big a boom we're going for, maybe not even all that near it.

[JasonShepard]

The energy from antimatter comes from bringing it into contact with regular matter.  It destroys both and releases a LOT of energy as a result.

 

Half of the energy comes from the antimatter mass. Which means, sure, you technically get twice as much energy as was stored within the antimatter, but a factor of 2 doesn't count for much when we're already in the kilo-tons. (Although it is something I'd forgotten about.)

 

Also, the efficiency of energy input to antimatter creation is likely to be far below 50%, meaning that you're still probably putting in more energy than you're getting out. (Energy storage is always low efficiency, because you have to work against entropy - which is fine so long as you have a good source of energy, like stars. It does, however, drive up production time.)

 

 

And this being a bomb, close counts.  Kinetic barriers do nothing against energy attacks.  You don't have to get it onto a Reaper.  Just near it.  And depending on how big a boom we're going for, maybe not even all that near it.

 

Bombs in space are tricky.

 

I was considering blowing up the bomb on the surface of the Reaper in order to get a structural shockwave, which would parse most of the bomb's energy into the Reaper, and do considerable damage. Since you don't get shockwaves in vacuums, I considered that this would only work at direct contact.

 

****

 

You're suggesting what is essentially a radiation bomb. Radiation obeys an inverse square law - it gets notably weaker the further away you get, so, yeah, you'll want to be close. It gets emitted in all directions, so you can't target it at the Reaper. Radiation does ignore kinetic barriers - but the Reapers have radiation shielding and heavy armour. And since you can't focus the damage, the result will be a large area surface burn.
 

One disadvantage is that your input energy costs for an effective radiation bomb are going to be much higher than that of an effective shockwave bomb (ie, you'll have to make more anti-matter). This is because a substantial amount of the energy from a radiation bomb completely misses the Reaper, and the rest has to get through the armour.

 

A second disadvantage is that you need a perfect 1-to-1 matter anti-matter mix. Otherwise, a large amount of the energy will go into whatever matter or antimatter remains and you'll get a fragmentation bomb instead, which the Reaper's kinetic barriers will be able to handle.

 

****

 

While I was writing this post up and figuring out the mechanics of a radiation bomb, I realised there's a third option, a kind of mix between the radiation bomb and the shockwave bomb.

 

The initial reaction of a radiation bomb will generate a shockwave through the matter and antimatter fuel. This shockwave will be HUGE, blowing the fuel and bomb apart into a cloud of gas, but the antimatter will continue to react with anything it touches, setting off more shockwaves within the gas. If you've built the bomb right, this means that you get an expanding cloud of matter-antimatter plasma that continues to react even as it expands. If the bomb went off close enough to the Reaper's kinetic barriers, I'm... genuinely not sure what would happen. The difference between kinetic energy (which is blocked) and radiation energy (which isn't) gets rather fuzzy at that level.

 

Although, considering you need a LOT of energy just to make a single gram of antimatter, if you're planning to manufacture enough to create a cloud of gas, it's going to be a very expensive bomb. That's only expensive in terms of time though, considering that we have stars to tap.

 

****

 

Of course, as Reorte pointed out, whatever we can do the Reapers can do too. And there's more of them than us. So I'm still not holding out hope for a conventional victory coming out of all this antimatter-think.

[StarcloudSWG]

You do realize, you've just reinvented the Photon Torpedo, right?

[Terca]

Bombs in space are tricky.

 

I was considering blowing up the bomb on the surface of the Reaper in order to get a structural shockwave, which would parse most of the bomb's energy into the Reaper, and do considerable damage. Since you don't get shockwaves in vacuums, I considered that this would only work at direct contact.

 

No air, no compression wave, no shockwave. Unless an explosion occurs on the ship there is no pressure wave to batter it. Sure, it could get ungodly hot but that's pretty much all you are working with. And you would need a lot of ungodly hot.

 

That and all the other blah of getting past guardian lasers etc.

 

Stuff like Thanix cannons or other heat-based tech works well because the kinetic barrier might make the kinetic impact negligible but the fact you have metal-plasma sticking to your hull still sucks.

[Iakus]

Half of the energy comes from the antimatter mass. Which means, sure, you technically get twice as much energy as was stored within the antimatter, but a factor of 2 doesn't count for much when we're already in the kilo-tons. (Although it is something I'd forgotten about.)

 

Also, the efficiency of energy input to antimatter creation is likely to be far below 50%, meaning that you're still probably putting in more energy than you're getting out. (Energy storage is always low efficiency, because you have to work against entropy - which is fine so long as you have a good source of energy, like stars. It does, however, drive up production time.)

 

 

 

While true, It's pretty clear that efficient, or at least cost-effective long-term containment of some sort must exist in the Mass Effect universe, since this is used for ship propulsion.  

 

 

 

Bombs in space are tricky.

I was considering blowing up the bomb on the surface of the Reaper in order to get a structural shockwave, which would parse most of the bomb's energy into the Reaper, and do considerable damage. Since you don't get shockwaves in vacuums, I considered that this would only work at direct contact.

****

You're suggesting what is essentially a radiation bomb. Radiation obeys an inverse square law - it gets notably weaker the further away you get, so, yeah, you'll want to be close. It gets emitted in all directions, so you can't target it at the Reaper. Radiation does ignore kinetic barriers - but the Reapers have radiation shielding and heavy armour. And since you can't focus the damage, the result will be a large area surface burn.

One disadvantage is that your input energy costs for an effective radiation bomb are going to be much higher than that of an effective shockwave bomb (ie, you'll have to make more anti-matter). This is because a substantial amount of the energy from a radiation bomb completely misses the Reaper, and the rest has to get through the armour.

A second disadvantage is that you need a perfect 1-to-1 matter anti-matter mix. Otherwise, a large amount of the energy will go into whatever matter or antimatter remains and you'll get a fragmentation bomb instead, which the Reaper's kinetic barriers will be able to handle.

****

While I was writing this post up and figuring out the mechanics of a radiation bomb, I realised there's a third option, a kind of mix between the radiation bomb and the shockwave bomb.

The initial reaction of a radiation bomb will generate a shockwave through the matter and antimatter fuel. This shockwave will be HUGE, blowing the fuel and bomb apart into a cloud of gas, but the antimatter will continue to react with anything it touches, setting off more shockwaves within the gas. If you've built the bomb right, this means that you get an expanding cloud of matter-antimatter plasma that continues to react even as it expands. If the bomb went off close enough to the Reaper's kinetic barriers, I'm... genuinely not sure what would happen. The difference between kinetic energy (which is blocked) and radiation energy (which isn't) gets rather fuzzy at that level.

Although, considering you need a LOT of energy just to make a single gram of antimatter, if you're planning to manufacture enough to create a cloud of gas, it's going to be a very expensive bomb. That's only expensive in terms of time though, considering that we have stars to tap.

****

Of course, as Reorte pointed out, whatever we can do the Reapers can do too. And there's more of them than us. So I'm still not holding out hope for a conventional victory coming out of all this antimatter-think.

Using the explosion to power an x-ray laser would be a more efficient use of the energy,yes.  THis is actually something that's been researched in our own fairly recent past:  Nuclear-pumped laser  Of course, the tech for it doesn't really exist yet, not to a workable degree.  But a couple hundred years from now?  And with eezo in the mix?

 

Also keep in mind the Reapers would likely not be expecting weapons based purely or mostly on energy.  They've seeded their tech and the relays through the galaxy to make people dependent on their own technology, which they are the undisputed masters.  Most weapons are based on using mass effect fields to create powerful kinetic attacks.  Energy weapons are different, outside-the-box...

 

...and dare i say, "unconventional" 

 

No air, no compression wave, no shockwave. Unless an explosion occurs on the ship there is no pressure wave to batter it. Sure, it could get ungodly hot but that's pretty much all you are working with. And you would need a lot of ungodly hot.

 

That and all the other blah of getting past guardian lasers etc.

 

Stuff like Thanix cannons or other heat-based tech works well because the kinetic barrier might make the kinetic impact negligible but the fact you have metal-plasma sticking to your hull still sucks.

The codex says the exhaust from fusion and antiproton drives is measured in millions of degrees Celsius. I'd say that's a lot of ungodly hot 

 

Getting the weapon close enough is always going to be a sticky issue.  But I'd say if you can get one to impact on their kinetic barriers, it should be close enough.  Heat does transfer across a vaccum

[Terca]

The codex says the exhaust from fusion and antiproton drives is measured in millions of degrees Celsius. I'd say that's a lot of ungodly hot 

 

Getting the weapon close enough is always going to be a sticky issue.  But I'd say if you can get one to impact on their kinetic barriers, it should be close enough.  Heat does transfer across a vaccum

 

Yeah, I didn't mean to imply that the heat needed a contact source, sorry about that. Yeah, you just need the heat source to be close enough. The heat from the impact of the Mass Accelerators on Dreadnaughts is around 22 billion degrees C (it was an 11ktonne warhead right?) so as long as a Reaper without Kinetic Barriers takes damage from an accelerated round you're golden.

 

Going back to Thanix I don't know what the yield of that was supposed to be. Superior to Frigate when introduced, inferior to Dreadnaught. I think?