362 réponses à ce sujet

[Ashevajak]

I usually leave because I have terrible latency or my back is aching.

 

That's not a commentary on having to carry pugs, I mean my back literally aches because this seat isn't that comfortable and after a while you really get some neck pain going.

[Deerber]

Just decent? The GI Claymore has the 3rd highest dps capability in the game slightly behind the AIU Claymore and the almighty GI Javelin being #1. It's beyond decent. It's OP

Dps capability. It does not mean what you think it means

[Marksmad is waving goodbye]

Railguns have friction, there isn't a way to make anything frictionless in the real world.

 

Also ME projectiles are supposed to be ground off a metal block.  Plastic is not a good rail gun projectile since it is a poor conductor and also doesn't typically respond to a magnetic field.

 

edit: you can of course use an armature to propel the projectiles, but that isn't mentioned in the codex.

 

Yeah, you know what to do with the real world...this is BSN....

 

Apart from all the other reasons why plastic isn't great, is the low melting point of most plastic shards. The air friction would heat them so that they distorted and changed their aerodynamic characteristics.

 

I'd also expect that a significant amount of the thermal energy dissipated in the weapon would come from the shaving process, the energy of working required to tear pieces off a steel block is quite significant.

[DaemionMoadrin]

Yeah, you know what to do with the real world...this is BSN....

 

Apart from all the other reasons why plastic isn't great, is the low melting point of most plastic shards. The air friction would heat them so that they distorted and changed their aerodynamic characteristics.

 

I'd also expect that a significant amount of the thermal energy dissipated in the weapon would come from the shaving process, the energy of working required to tear pieces off a steel block is quite significant.

 

I remembered incorrectly, yeah. It's metal and not plastic. I actually started up ME to read the Codex and... ugh. 1280x1024 is the highest resolution available. The game doesn't look as good as I remembered it...

 

If you shave "bullets" from a block according to range, impact etc then you end up with different sizes. Bullets generally have to fit the barrel, so I assume that they are suspended in a Mass Effect field, so there would be little to no friction.

 

When I was talking about railguns, I didn't think about the ones the US military is using already, I was thinking about the classic version: Several rings in a row, generating magnetic fields to accelerate iron ore rich asteroids towards a planet.

Ideally your bullet shouldn't touch the barrel of your railgun, I know we have the technology to lift even heavy trains with the help of magnetic fields (EMS/EDS), so I am pretty sure that's a goal of the weapon designers, too. Hence, no friction.

 

The point I was trying to make was: Even with all the technology in the ME universe, a weapon with actual ammo would still make a lot more sense. The only exception would be particle based weapons and even there I am not sure, because of the law of conservation of mass and energy.

The same law would make weapons like the Scorpion, Venom or Falcon impossible, you would need actual ammo for those.

[Deerber]

Okay so Daemion, I'll try to make it easier for you to quote me after. I'm putting a number next to each "section"

 

Just Daemion, please. And now I can't quote you properly, awesome. ^^

 

"That is, assuming the damage the Protheans did was reversible and that Sovereign, and Saren, knew how to do that. That is likely not the case, otherwise the galaxy would have been overtaken years ago, yeah."

 

What do you think almost happened at the end of Mass Effect? Or finally at the end of ME3? The Reapers and their allies fixed the Citadel and turned it against the council races. 1

 

"Now you're just drifting away into ME2/3, aren't you? ME1 had a heat mechanic which actually made quite sense, I think."

 

According to Mass Effect lore, all the weapons have an internal block of plastic which is shaved into small splinters as you shoot. Those are your bullets, propelled forward with Mass Effect fields. Of course there is still some friction as you shoot (although in RL, a railgun has no friction), so your weapon produces heat which it has to vent before you can shoot again. That block of plastic? That's ammo. Even if those splinters are tiny, you'd still need to reload after a while. 2

The problem was that in ME you could mod your AR so all heat was vented immediately, allowing you to shoot indefinitely. With Polonium rounds. They never really explained how the ammo mods are supposed to work either. It's not like you have actual bullets you can load into your gun, the effect is added to a piece of plastic in a mass effect field. 3

In the end BioWare recognized that this mechanic didn't work and switched to thermal packs with ME2/3. Which is basically ammo. But not ammo. The internal mechanism is supposed to be the same as in ME1... so, what's up with the Typhoon? ^^ 4

 

Yeah, I saw this thread had reached its end and felt like having a bit of smalltalk.

 

 

I remembered incorrectly, yeah. It's metal and not plastic. I actually started up ME to read the Codex and... ugh. 1280x1024 is the highest resolution available. The game doesn't look as good as I remembered it...

 

If you shave "bullets" from a block according to range, impact etc then you end up with different sizes. Bullets generally have to fit the barrel, so I assume that they are suspended in a Mass Effect field, so there would be little to no friction.

 

When I was talking about railguns, I didn't think about the ones the US military is using already, I was thinking about the classic version: Several rings in a row, generating magnetic fields to accelerate iron ore rich asteroids towards a planet.

Ideally your bullet shouldn't touch the barrel of your railgun, I know we have the technology to lift even heavy trains with the help of magnetic fields (EMS/EDS), so I am pretty sure that's a goal of the weapon designers, too. Hence, no friction. 5

 

The point I was trying to make was: Even with all the technology in the ME universe, a weapon with actual ammo would still make a lot more sense. The only exception would be particle based weapons and even there I am not sure, because of the law of conservation of mass and energy.

The same law would make weapons like the Scorpion, Venom or Falcon impossible, you would need actual ammo for those. 6

 

1. What happens at the end of ME1 is that Saren tries its best to open the Citadel's arms and let Sovereign "install" into the Citadel, as that would likely be a way for Sovereign to fix the damage the Protheans did, or bypass it. It is pretty clear to me though, that he/it needs direct access to the Citadel to do that, which in turn requires all the complex plan that required Saren and other help (the Geth), for what I have said earlier that a direct attack was nigh impossible. Otherwise Saren would have never tried to open the arms of the Citadel and would have just fixed the Prothean damage, no?

What happens with the Citadel at the end of ME3 is some pretty awful stuff from a logic point of view, and represents one of the biggest plot holes in the entire series in my opinion. I was like "Are you serious?". Still, that's a fault with ME3 and not ME1. Besides, what we see is that the Reapers manage to move and change the purpose of the Citadel, but we are not sure that they can revert the damage the Protheans did (although it's likely), as that would be pointless by then.

 

2. Actually, no. A simple relativistic computation shows you that, assuming the ME fields are capable of accelerating the new projectiles to 90% of the speed of light, which I feel is a relatively safe assumption, then the mass the new projectiles should have in order to hit with the same amount of energy of a modern day projectile (for which I assumed values of 0,1 kg of mass and 1000 m/s of speed, so the ME ones would actually still hit a lot harder than any modern projectile) is of the order of 10^-11 kg. Which means that, if Shepard carries one kg of metal to turn into projectiles and fires 100 rounds/minute non-stop, 24/7, it will take him more than 2000 years to run out of ammo.

 

3. I don't see anything wrong in the block of metal being made of polonium, or being enhanced with different materials which produce different effects upon impact.

 

4. Ah I see your point now, I didn't understand before. Of course, the shells coming out of the Typhoon shouldn't be there if the guns work that way. But, again, that's a problem with ME3... Not ME1.

 

5. Apart from the fact that with current technologies, achieving no friction at all in a railgun is utterly impossible. While you can remove the friction with the metal the gun is made of (and you would be wise doing so, if you accelerate a projectile so fast...), you cannot remove the friction with the air, which would release quite a considerable amount of heat if the projectile is fired at 90% the speed of light (and lots of other nasty effects...). Of course, one can think that ME fields are somehow able to avoid that, or that the heat is disharged towards the head of the gun. But, there can still be sources of heat inside the gun, like for example ME field generators: who's to say they don't produce a considerable amount of heat every time they fire a projectile?

 

6. Yes, you are probably right. But still, those guns were introduced only in ME3. No ME1 gun behaved like that as I recall...

[KrrKs]

Ideally your bullet shouldn't touch the barrel of your railgun

Err, the bullet always touches the barrel in a railgun. Otherwise your Powerloss due to the need to produce an arc discharge between the rails and the projectile is (depending on surrounding medium) larger than the loss due to friction.

 

What you mean are probably Gauß- or Coil guns.

 

Edit:

I love that this transformed into a lore discussion thread now

 

Edit2:

I actually started up ME to read the Codex and... ugh. 1280x1024 is the highest resolution available. The game doesn't look as good as I remembered it...

There is a Monitor-ratio field somewhere, enabling different (and higher) resolutions. I play ME1 at 1920*1080 for example.

Modifié par KrrKs, 06 décembre 2014 - 04:25 .

[J. Peterman]

What the hell are you nerds talking about now?

[Caineghis2500]

What the hell are you nerds talking about now?

30.1?

[J. Peterman]

30.1?

 

That went over my head.

[LemurFromTheId]

A weapon that shoots extremely small projectiles at exreme velocities would be infeasible in reality. Such a projectile would have very small momentum relative to its kinetic energy, so it wouldn't have a particularly stable trajectory, and it would have a very high surface area relative to its mass, so it would burn and vaporize in atmosphere at near-relativistic speeds.

 

ME1 makes the most sense of all the games in the series, but it's still space opera, not hard science fiction.

[capn233]

A weapon that shoots extremely small projectiles at exreme velocities would be infeasible in reality. Such a projectile would have very small momentum relative to its kinetic energy, so it wouldn't have a particularly stable trajectory, and it would have a very high surface area relative to its mass, so it would burn and vaporize in atmosphere at near-relativistic speeds.

 

ME1 makes the most sense of all the games in the series, but it's still space opera, not hard science fiction.

 

Yes, it would probably have a poor ballistic coefficient and bleed off speed very rapidly as well as have poor target penetration as a result.  Nevermind that the massive KE of these projectiles should have some dramatic interactions with atmosphere.

 

Also happy to see someone point out that the projectile (or armature) riding directly on the rails is fundamental to the definition of a railgun.

 

There aren't any in service because they aren't practical at current levels of materials engineering.  There is too much degradation of the rails to allow a decent service life.  That won't stop them for putting one on a ship by 2016 as a technology demonstrator.

 

ME universe has magic, err exotic, materials made with the help of mass effect fields.

[DaemionMoadrin]

1. What happens at the end of ME1 is that Saren tries its best to open the Citadel's arms and let Sovereign "install" into the Citadel, as that would likely be a way for Sovereign to fix the damage the Protheans did, or bypass it. It is pretty clear to me though, that he/it needs direct access to the Citadel to do that, which in turn requires all the complex plan that required Saren and other help (the Geth), for what I have said earlier that a direct attack was nigh impossible. Otherwise Saren would have never tried to open the arms of the Citadel and would have just fixed the Prothean damage, no?

That is incorrect. The Citadel's arms were always open and Saren closed them to protect Sovereign from the fleets currently engaged and distracted by the Geth attack.

The Protheans arrived on the Citadel through the Conduit and then changed/sabotaged the Keepers, so they wouldn't listen to Sovereigns transmission in which he ordered them to activate the Citadel relay to dark space. The station itself was fine and probably couldn't have been sabotaged permanently considering that the Star Brat AI was controlling it the entire time. Which raises the question: Why do the Reapers need to activate anything, if their boss is already in place to throw the switch? (I guess the ME3 nonsense even affected ME1...)

 

If I was Sovereign in that scenario and already had control of a respected Matriarch and the top Spectre, then I wouldn't use brute force as plan A. It would be much easier to get my highly placed agents to open the relay for me, after all... I know which buttons to push. Actually connecting with the Citadel had never been necessary... the original plan was to have lifeforms in place to do it for the Reapers... it doesn't really matter if those are a slave race (Keepers) or indoctrinated agents (Saren).

 

Everything else... taking the Geth out of their space, trying to recreate the Rachni, cloning Krogans, going around the galaxy to look for Prothean artifacts... was just drawing attention and was an unnecessary risk.

 

If you look at the actions of the Reapers across the entire trilogy, then they weren't very clever. And not even remotely efficient. Which doesn't fit the image of hyper intelligent AIs who can access the entire knowledge of countless civilisations.

But that's okay, because the Council races were dumb, too.

I mean, who thought it was a good idea to set up the galactic government in an ancient space station run by a mysterious servant race that self destructs when being scanned? A space station no one has explored fully, with hidden sections and functions? A space station that would turn out to be at least 10 times older than the Prothean race which supposedly built it if anyone ever analyzed it?

 

If Mass Effect (the trilogy) was a strategy game and you had someone competent play the Reaper side, then you would have no chance at all to win. They trump you in every regard.

[DaemionMoadrin]

2. Actually, no. A simple relativistic computation shows you that, assuming the ME fields are capable of accelerating the new projectiles to 90% of the speed of light, which I feel is a relatively safe assumption, then the mass the new projectiles should have in order to hit with the same amount of energy of a modern day projectile (for which I assumed values of 0,1 kg of mass and 1000 m/s of speed, so the ME ones would actually still hit a lot harder than any modern projectile) is of the order of 10^-11 kg. Which means that, if Shepard carries one kg of metal to turn into projectiles and fires 100 rounds/minute non-stop, 24/7, it will take him more than 2000 years to run out of ammo.

 

3. I don't see anything wrong in the block of metal being made of polonium, or being enhanced with different materials which produce different effects upon impact.

 

4. Ah I see your point now, I didn't understand before. Of course, the shells coming out of the Typhoon shouldn't be there if the guns work that way. But, again, that's a problem with ME3... Not ME1.

 

5. Apart from the fact that with current technologies, achieving no friction at all in a railgun is utterly impossible. While you can remove the friction with the metal the gun is made of (and you would be wise doing so, if you accelerate a projectile so fast...), you cannot remove the friction with the air, which would release quite a considerable amount of heat if the projectile is fired at 90% the speed of light (and lots of other nasty effects...). Of course, one can think that ME fields are somehow able to avoid that, or that the heat is disharged towards the head of the gun. But, there can still be sources of heat inside the gun, like for example ME field generators: who's to say they don't produce a considerable amount of heat every time they fire a projectile?

 

6. Yes, you are probably right. But still, those guns were introduced only in ME3. No ME1 gun behaved like that as I recall...

 

2. Did you calculate the energy necessary for that, too? 90% of light speed... ouch. Simply using normal ammo would be much more efficient.

 

3. I have trouble imagining a block of explosive ammo or how shavings of that would explode properly. You know, without blowing up your gun.

 

4. True. Still part of the same lore.

 

5. Hm, not the kind of railgun I mean... if mass effect fields allow you to turn off gravity, then there would be no friction. Similiar to the way the relays accelerate space ships when used. You can even see the arc discharge in the cutscene. I think.

Btw... at those speeds the air wouldn't heat because of friction but because it would be compressed in front of the projectile. Relatively speaking, from the viewpoint of the bullet, the air would appear solid. I think you can observe that effect during the re-entry of space craft into the atmosphere.

 

6.

 

Err, the bullet always touches the barrel in a railgun. Otherwise your Powerloss due to the need to produce an arc discharge between the rails and the projectile is (depending on surrounding medium) larger than the loss due to friction.

 

What you mean are probably Gauß- or Coil guns.

 

Edit:

I love that this transformed into a lore discussion thread now

 

Edit2:

There is a Monitor-ratio field somewhere, enabling different (and higher) resolutions. I play ME1 at 1920*1080 for example.

 

Yes! Gauß/Coil guns! That's what I meant. The only mass effect fields (outside of biotics) we see in action during the game are the mass relays... and those accellerate ships without physical contact, all you see is the arc discharge. I assumed the weapons work the same, considering that they use the same technology.

 

I managed to change my resolution in ME to 1920x1080 after I located the near invisible scroll bar in the menu. And then I was surprised by the loading speed of the entire game. Not even a second to load a planet map. I might have to play it again soon...

 

 

A weapon that shoots extremely small projectiles at exreme velocities would be infeasible in reality. Such a projectile would have very small momentum relative to its kinetic energy, so it wouldn't have a particularly stable trajectory, and it would have a very high surface area relative to its mass, so it would burn and vaporize in atmosphere at near-relativistic speeds.

 

ME1 makes the most sense of all the games in the series, but it's still space opera, not hard science fiction.

 

Yup. Exactly.

 

Yes, it would probably have a poor ballistic coefficient and bleed off speed very rapidly as well as have poor target penetration as a result.  Nevermind that the massive KE of these projectiles should have some dramatic interactions with atmosphere.

 

Also happy to see someone point out that the projectile (or armature) riding directly on the rails is fundamental to the definition of a railgun.

 

There aren't any in service because they aren't practical at current levels of materials engineering.  There is too much degradation of the rails to allow a decent service life.  That won't stop them for putting one on a ship by 2016 as a technology demonstrator.

 

ME universe has magic, err exotic, materials made with the help of mass effect fields.

 

If your "bullet" travelled at relativistic speed, then you would probably turn the air into plasma. Reminds me a little of the calculations they did before the first nuclear bomb tests, "Would we ignite the atmosphere with this?".

 

I don't follow military developments much anymore but I remembered that they had at least a working prototype of a railgun. Such a weapon is self limiting though because you can't apply maximum force/power without ripping your gun apart and the current limit of it places it below conventional weapons. The only advantage is that your ammo can't explode... but since they need to power it with a nuclear reactor, I'm not sure if that even counts. ^^

[capn233]

I don't follow military developments much anymore but I remembered that they had at least a working prototype of a railgun. Such a weapon is self limiting though because you can't apply maximum force/power without ripping your gun apart and the current limit of it places it below conventional weapons. The only advantage is that your ammo can't explode... but since they need to power it with a nuclear reactor, I'm not sure if that even counts. ^^

 

It's been almost 10 years ago but I got to see what was at the time the most powerful railgun in the world.  It had a massive bank of capacitors for the 1,000,000 A that were pushed through when fired.  That is why it was impractical to put it on anything other than a ship.  You don't need a nuclear reactor really, just a way to bank electricity for the high draw when you fire.

 

The last thing I read was they planned on mounting one on a ship by 2016.  Some paper I saw claimed the Navy wants the guns to go 3000 shots in between maintenance of the rails / barrel, but that is not close to achievable right now.

 

Interestingly enough, the goal for this system is to fire some sort of gps guided projectile on high arcing suborbital trajectory, not just a ferrous dart type kinetic energy penetrator deal like you might do if this was a tank gun.  Which is why it will use an armature to push this projectile.

[ClydeInTheShell]

 

See, even Cain is here. 

 

Clearly a Thunderdome is necessary. 

 

 

it is the only way.

[RustyBuckets02]

See, even Cain is here.

Clearly a Thunderdome is necessary.



it is the only way.

1v1 me, scrub. Blunderdome or death!

[LemurFromTheId]

That is incorrect. The Citadel's arms were always open and Saren closed them to protect Sovereign from the fleets currently engaged and distracted by the Geth attack.
The Protheans arrived on the Citadel through the Conduit and then changed/sabotaged the Keepers, so they wouldn't listen to Sovereigns transmission in which he ordered them to activate the Citadel relay to dark space. The station itself was fine and probably couldn't have been sabotaged permanently considering that the Star Brat AI was controlling it the entire time. Which raises the question: Why do the Reapers need to activate anything, if their boss is already in place to throw the switch? (I guess the ME3 nonsense even affected ME1...)
 
If I was Sovereign in that scenario and already had control of a respected Matriarch and the top Spectre, then I wouldn't use brute force as plan A. It would be much easier to get my highly placed agents to open the relay for me, after all... I know which buttons to push. Actually connecting with the Citadel had never been necessary... the original plan was to have lifeforms in place to do it for the Reapers... it doesn't really matter if those are a slave race (Keepers) or indoctrinated agents (Saren).

 

You're inventing you own lore here. Whether or not there was an AI controlling the Citadel, it still wasn't capable of opening the relay on its own. It had to be done by the keepers or Sovereign himself.

 

Sovereign needed physical access to the station and some time to work. Therefore he needed someone to close the Citadel arms to protect him from the defence fleet.

 

You're suggesting that Sovereign's agents like Saren and Benezia and their minions could've simply gone to the council chambers and taken control, but the fact is that we have no idea how feasible that would really be - but as it's not what happened, we can assume it wasn't a viable option. We don't know what and for how long Saren had to work in there to get access to the console, and supposedly the council (and presidium) has security in place. Saren needed a substantial force with him to secure the area, but it's not like he could march to the Presidium and further to the Citadel Tower with a battalion of people in tow - thus he took geth and krogans along with him through the Conduit.

 

It was actually a very good plan with a very high chance of success. Shepard and Vigil were the only reason it didn't work, and honestly, Shepard was going against some overwhelming odds and only survived and succeeded because of being the main character of a video game.
 

A space station that would turn out to be at least 10 times older than the Prothean race which supposedly built it if anyone ever analyzed it?

 

How, exactly, would you "analyze" it? How do you tell the age of, say, a lump of metal?

[Jeremiah12LGeek]

 

 

 

[Marksmad is waving goodbye]

 

How, exactly, would you "analyze" it? How do you tell the age of, say, a lump of metal?

 

I know it's younger than the average Pop II star.

[DaemionMoadrin]

You're inventing you own lore here. Whether or not there was an AI controlling the Citadel, it still wasn't capable of opening the relay on its own. It had to be done by the keepers or Sovereign himself.

 

Sovereign needed physical access to the station and some time to work. Therefore he needed someone to close the Citadel arms to protect him from the defence fleet.

 

You're suggesting that Sovereign's agents like Saren and Benezia and their minions could've simply gone to the council chambers and taken control, but the fact is that we have no idea how feasible that would really be - but as it's not what happened, we can assume it wasn't a viable option. We don't know what and for how long Saren had to work in there to get access to the console, and supposedly the council (and presidium) has security in place. Saren needed a substantial force with him to secure the area, but it's not like he could march to the Presidium and further to the Citadel Tower with a battalion of people in tow - thus he took geth and krogans along with him through the Conduit.

 

It was actually a very good plan with a very high chance of success. Shepard and Vigil were the only reason it didn't work, and honestly, Shepard was going against some overwhelming odds and only survived and succeeded because of being the main character of a video game.
 

 

How, exactly, would you "analyze" it? How do you tell the age of, say, a lump of metal?

 

I am not inventing my own lore here. At most you can disagree with my interpretation of what happened in ME1 but I am not adding to it or changing anything.

 

How difficult is it for a Spectre to enter the council chambers? Not difficult at all, Shepard runs through there twice a day, looking for Keepers to scan.

 

Sovereign originally didn't need physical access. Every cycle it (or another Reaper) sent a signal to the Keepers who then activated the relay. In this cycle, the Keepers didn't respond. That doesn't mean Sovereign had to dock with the Citadel, in fact that action gave the entire game away. Why not send its agents in first to look for the problem? If Vigil can give Shepard a data file that gives temporary access to the Citadel, then Sovereign could do the same for Saren. In fact, it should be able to do better since it belongs to the race that built the station in the first place.

 

No one knew what the Conduit was until they arrived on Ilos. Shephard and the council believed it was a weapon Saren wanted to use but we have no idea why Sovereign and Saren would go looking for it in such an obvious manner. They didn't need a weapon. And if they knew it was a backdoor into the Citadel, then they surely wouldn't have drawn attention to it.

 

In the end Saren sabotaged himself, starting with Eden Prime. We could say that he subconciously worked against the Reapers and that's why things played out this way... but that would mean the Reapers are stupid.

 

 

How do I find out the age of an object in space? Well, since it is most likely anorganic I can't use carbondating. But I can measure the radiation. That station is close to at least one sun, so over time the outer hull should show signs of weathering the solar wind. There should also be tiny craters all over, from micro impacts. I am sure that metal would change if exposed to solar radiation long enough. Since this is very relevant for space travel, we can assume that the council races have instruments to analyze the deterioration of their ship hulls. Or we say that every vessel and every station is shielded and there is no way to tell how long ago the Citadel was built.

It's still a bad idea to use it, there are too many unknowns. No one knew why the Protheans vanished, so using any of their stuff might lead to your own extinction.

 

There are too many story elements that only work because it's a game and you only look at things from the perspective of the protagonist.

Another example: One of your first missions is about the Geth sightings on Noveria. Leaving aside that Geth were just involved in the attack on Eden Prime and that such an issue should have a much higher priority, no one on Noveria has actually seen a Geth. Benezia smuggled them in and until you tell the authorities about it, no one there has a clue. At first they don't really believe you, it takes actual Geth to attack for them to acknowledge the truth.

Soooo.... if no one on Noveria knew about the Geth, how can there be Geth sightings? Even better: Benezia only went there to get the information about the missing relay from the Rachni queen. She had her Asari commandos with her, what did she need Geth for? Completely unnecessary risk.

 

The story allows for a much easier introduction of Noveria without the Geth. You are hunting Saren, so it makes sense to investigate the huge company he runs on Noveria, Binary Helix. On arrival you'd be informed that Benezia is on site, so it would be a good lead for completing your mission. But I guess that's too rational.

[J. Peterman]

Seriously. WTF is going on?

[Marksmad is waving goodbye]

Seriously. WTF is going on?

 

Just hum and pretend you're looking at animated kitten GIFs and everything will seem like the usual BSN ME3MP forum.

[KrrKs]

How difficult is it for a Spectre to enter the council chambers? Not difficult at all, Shepard runs through there twice a day, looking for Keepers to scan.

 

Sovereign originally didn't need physical access. Every cycle it (or another Reaper) sent a signal to the Keepers who then activated the relay. In this cycle, the Keepers didn't respond. That doesn't mean Sovereign had to dock with the Citadel, in fact that action gave the entire game away. Why not send its agents in first to look for the problem? If Vigil can give Shepard a data file that gives temporary access to the Citadel, then Sovereign could do the same for Saren. In fact, it should be able to do better since it belongs to the race that built the station in the first place.

It is not difficult to enter the council chambers, but entering it and starting some process that no one previously knew about is something else.

Especially if that process of starting the Citadel relay takes significant time -> which it did. At least long enough for Shepard to fight his/her way along the outer tower-hull toward the council room.

Neither the council nor C-sec (or whoever is responsible for security up there) would allow Saren to continue.

So Saren had to show up with a sizeable force in the first place. Transporting that force to the council chambers from the outside (with ships) or from the inside would likely result in a fight (nobody like to be 'invaded' by a shady armed gang, even if the leader is a spectre) -making even more troops or ships necessary.

-So one way or another we end with a situation similar to what happened in the game.

 

About Sovereign docking. It likely did not know what the Prothean scientist changed exactly, so maybe (weak, I know) it had to dock to ascertain the Citadel's system state. Another reason the conduit was used; this way Saren could disable/take control over the citadel's external defence systems.

 

 

There are too many story elements that only work because it's a game and you only look at things from the perspective of the protagonist.

Absolutely!

 

I likely screwed up formatting and/or sentence structure, but I don't have much time right now.

[LemurFromTheId]

I am not inventing my own lore here. At most you can disagree with my interpretation of what happened in ME1 but I am not adding to it or changing anything.
 
How difficult is it for a Spectre to enter the council chambers? Not difficult at all, Shepard runs through there twice a day, looking for Keepers to scan.
 
Sovereign originally didn't need physical access. Every cycle it (or another Reaper) sent a signal to the Keepers who then activated the relay. In this cycle, the Keepers didn't respond. That doesn't mean Sovereign had to dock with the Citadel, in fact that action gave the entire game away. Why not send its agents in first to look for the problem? If Vigil can give Shepard a data file that gives temporary access to the Citadel, then Sovereign could do the same for Saren. In fact, it should be able to do better since it belongs to the race that built the station in the first place.
 
No one knew what the Conduit was until they arrived on Ilos. Shephard and the council believed it was a weapon Saren wanted to use but we have no idea why Sovereign and Saren would go looking for it in such an obvious manner. They didn't need a weapon. And if they knew it was a backdoor into the Citadel, then they surely wouldn't have drawn attention to it.
 
In the end Saren sabotaged himself, starting with Eden Prime. We could say that he subconciously worked against the Reapers and that's why things played out this way... but that would mean the Reapers are stupid.

 
You choose to interpret the game in a way that it doesn't make sense. And you keep assuming things. You should be asking why things play out the way they do instead of looking for contradictions arising from your own specific interpretations.

Vigil gave Shepard the file, but didn't explain how to find, enable and access the master console, he only told Shepard that it's in the council chambers and that Shepard should follow Saren to it. For all we know it's a complicated and time-consuming operation, which is why Saren had to secure the area so he and/or the geth could work on it. Yes, presumably a spectre could easily access the area, but that doesn't mean one could bring a significant amount of people along and start pulling machinery apart. Or whatever it is that's required.

Also, why do you think Sovereign already hasn't sent agents there to check for the problem long ago? It's quite possible he knows perfectly well what the problem is, but that brings us back to where we started: he takes a risk in order to dock with the Citadel Tower, so obviously he needs physical access.
 

How do I find out the age of an object in space? Well, since it is most likely anorganic I can't use carbondating. But I can measure the radiation. That station is close to at least one sun, so over time the outer hull should show signs of weathering the solar wind. There should also be tiny craters all over, from micro impacts. I am sure that metal would change if exposed to solar radiation long enough. Since this is very relevant for space travel, we can assume that the council races have instruments to analyze the deterioration of their ship hulls. Or we say that every vessel and every station is shielded and there is no way to tell how long ago the Citadel was built.
It's still a bad idea to use it, there are too many unknowns. No one knew why the Protheans vanished, so using any of their stuff might lead to your own extinction.

Please. We already have self-healing nanomaterials. Citadel was designed to last millions of years and to hide its origins, you think it can't deal with simple wear and tear? Besides, we have no idea what the Reapers do to it after each harvest. Presumably they and the keepers keep it in good shape. It's possible that Citadel was analyzed and that the results suggested that it's not significantly older than 50,000 years.

As for whether it was a good or bad idea to use the Citadel - well, we weren't there. We're in no position to make that call. We don't know what the situation was back then. In fact, the people who made the call weren't even human, so how could you possibly understand their reasoning? The only thing you have is pure, arrogant hindsight.

[capn233]

There are a few things that are unclear in ME1, but they don't particularly have a large bearing on whether the story makes sense.  Reaper motivation, for instance, is one topic that seems like it might be a big question, but it is basically irrelevant to the main plot.

 

I don't find it a leap to suppose that Sovereign requiring direct interface with the Citadel was necessary.  Vigil knows what the scientists from his team did to disrupt the station and hands Shepard the data file.  It is unlikely that Sovereign had figured this out before the game starts, or even before the final act.  While it is interesting to speculate if he does indeed know the specific problem, it actually doesn't matter much to the plot as a whole.  Sovereign needs to dock to accomplish his mission.  The main reason to claim this is because it is supported by the plot and makes the narrative more logically consistent.

 

If you want to take a plot point from a narrative, claim the opposite is true in reality, and this invalidates the narrative, then you will be disappointed with every story ever written.