123 réponses à ce sujet

[GrandAdmiralThrawn]

OK, so the Reapers can't be beaten with conventional means in a single cycle, and I'm willing to buy that most cycles are easier.  That being said, it seems like there's a better option.  This has probably already been discussed, but wouldn't an exploding Mass Relay be enough to destroy Reapers?  If so, why not just throw an asteroid at the Sol relay and wipe out like 70% of them?  Sure, hardly a perfect solution, but it seems like the Protheans at least would have been down to try that (maybe the Turians too).

[bunch1]

OK, so the Reapers can't be beaten with conventional means in a single cycle, and I'm willing to buy that most cycles are easier.  That being said, it seems like there's a better option.  This has probably already been discussed, but wouldn't an exploding Mass Relay be enough to destroy Reapers?  If so, why not just throw an asteroid at the Sol relay and wipe out like 70% of them?  Sure, hardly a perfect solution, but it seems like the Protheans at least would have been down to try that (maybe the Turians too).

Moving an astroid is a very time consuming thing and the reapers would see it coming long before it hit the relay and either simply leave the system and let you just kill your own people or intercept the astroid and stop the plan either through ground units sizing the thruster controls or moving it off course themselves.

[Valmar]

@Bunch

 

You have a short memory then. God, the user, has already pointed that out to you in the last page. I'm not the only one who is referring to it. I'm not the first to bring it up. God brought it up. Twice. Here you have someone pointing out that the director of the Mass Effect trilogy specifically clarified something that counters your assertions... you just argued against it. Your direct words were "I prefer action to words and when the game show us and what dev tells don't match up I go with what the game showed."

 

The argument I was making that you took such offense to was me pointing out how ridiculous it is for someone to come in and dismiss the word of the Mass Effect director because it goes against their personal headcanon desire. People who assert their fanfiction as lore and discredit and handwave away the devs (or director or writer) of the actual story as not being valid absolutely baffle me.

 

Now though that seems to have changed into "oh, if the devs said it then okay." So that's good. You've made progress. You did good, son. I'm proud of you.

 

 

OK, so the Reapers can't be beaten with conventional means in a single cycle, and I'm willing to buy that most cycles are easier.  That being said, it seems like there's a better option.  This has probably already been discussed, but wouldn't an exploding Mass Relay be enough to destroy Reapers?  If so, why not just throw an asteroid at the Sol relay and wipe out like 70% of them?  Sure, hardly a perfect solution, but it seems like the Protheans at least would have been down to try that (maybe the Turians too).

 

Blowing up a relay will wipe out the system aswell, far as we know. It would be suicide. Also, like Bunch said,  moving an asteroid is not easy. Add in the fact the reaper presence in the system... you're going to have a hard time actually getting to that point. Even if you strapped rockets to a rock and sent it at the relay you have to stop the thousands of reapers from blowing it up before it gets there. Assuredly they'd consider it a priority. Alternatively I suppose it is possible that the reapers could even disable the relay. An inactive relay may not cause any massive explosion. They might even disable the relay after the swarm their armada in to ensure no one can leave. Though that's just speculation.

 

Another consideration is that, apparently, most people think the relays are indestructible. Kenson was a fringe case. No one else believed they could be harmed. Indeed, looking at the lore provided for them (they can survive supernova's unharmed) it actually looks like a bit of a plothole, imo, that Arrival was able to blow one up with a space rock. At anyrate, it seems no one really considered blowing up the relay or thought it possible. The suggestion would likely have the same absurdity as saying "lets blow up our planet to stop the invaders!"

[themikefest]

The reapers have been around for at least a billion years which would mean they have at least 20 000 capital ships. That's only if the 50 000 year cycle happened from the beginning.

 

How much time passed from when Harbinger was built to when the 50 000 year cycle started? How long were those cycles? 

 

Leviathan mentions the intelligence directed the reapers to build the relays. How long did that take? 

 

With the numbers they have, no cycle would have any chance of winning unless the crucible is built and used before the reapers enter the galaxy. If they were to leave a hundred reapers at each relay to prevent anyone from leaving the system, it would be a very short game. The Normandy would never of been able to leave the Sol system and most likely been destroyed

[Iakus]

The reapers have been around for at least a billion years which would mean they have at least 20 000 capital ships. That's only if the 50 000 year cycle happened from the beginning.

 

 

And the billion years is a minimum.  THe Leviathan of Dis is estimated at a billion years old, and it is definitively not the first Reaper.  Meaning they are actually more than a billion years old.  We just don't know how much older.

 

20,000 Sovereign class Reapers is actually a lowball estimate.  It's potentially significantly higher   

[themikefest]

And the billion years is a minimum.  THe Leviathan of Dis is estimated at a billion years old, and it is definitively not the first Reaper.  Meaning they are actually more than a billion years old.  We just don't know how much older.

 

20,000 Sovereign class Reapers is actually a lowball estimate.  It's potentially significantly higher   

Without knowing how long the 50 000 year cycle has been happening and how many cycles there were before the relays were built, the numbers they have is only a guess

[God]

OK, so the Reapers can't be beaten with conventional means in a single cycle, and I'm willing to buy that most cycles are easier.  That being said, it seems like there's a better option.  This has probably already been discussed, but wouldn't an exploding Mass Relay be enough to destroy Reapers?  If so, why not just throw an asteroid at the Sol relay and wipe out like 70% of them?  Sure, hardly a perfect solution, but it seems like the Protheans at least would have been down to try that (maybe the Turians too).

 

Because you're destroying humanities homeworld and killing 11 billion people to stop an indeterminate amount of Reapers (not even close to 70%) while losing habitable worlds.

 

Why not just destroy with the Crubcible and kill all the Reapers while leaving plenty of room and ability to rebuild?

[God]

This is only true if every 50,000 year cycle produces a race that's capable of becoming a capital-class Reaper. Do we know this to be the case?

I don't see how a force of 20,000 large Reapers is consistent with the course of the war we see. That's what, 250 times the combat power of the combined organic fleets?

 

Well, we have established that there is a trend of around 50,000 years. And a capital ship Reaper is created every cycle, with a handful of smaller ones.

 

As well, we see that they have been going at it for, at the very least, 1 billion years. Assuming a 50,000 year average between cycles (which would be a relatively reasonable average I think), the Reapers would have a conservative estimate of 20,000.

 

And this is where I will invoke the argument of incredulity: You not being able to envision how 20,000 Reapers could exist given the known time scales and trend of activity does not mean that is inconsistent (you'll have to explain how you think it's inconsistent). 

 

I couldn't tell you how much more powerful it is than the combined organic fleets, without knowing figures for weapon yield and raw numbers of both. 

 

That said, the Reapers are indeed far, far, far more powerful than the combined organic fleets. Is the Reapers being 250 times more powerful unbelievable?

[Iakus]

Without knowing how long the 50 000 year cycle has been happening and how many cycles there were before the relays were built, the numbers they have is only a guess

Still a fairly reasonable guesstimate.

 

And it illustrates just how ridiculous the Reaper numbers are.  Because even if you cut the number in half, and leave the destroyers out of the equation entirely, that's still 10,000 Reapers, give or take.

 

The entire galaxy is seriously bones even with that comparatively tiny number.  How stacked the deck was. 

[themikefest]

Still a fairly reasonable guesstimate.

 

And it illustrates just how ridiculous the Reaper numbers are.  Because even if you cut the number in half, and leave the destroyers out of the equation entirely, that's still 10,000 Reapers, give or take.

 

The entire galaxy is seriously bones even with that comparatively tiny number.  How stacked the deck was. 

Until someone from Bioware says how long the 50 000 year cycle has been going on, any number that the reapers have is guesswork

[Vazgen]

The Reapers should've arrived near the end of the game, when the galaxy is already united and has the Crucible. Of course, it would've required less space Schwarzenegger and "Ah, yes, Reapers" and more preparations for the Reaper arrival.

[ImaginaryMatter]

The Reapers should've arrived near the end of the game, when the galaxy is already united and has the Crucible. Of course, it would've required less space Schwarzenegger and "Ah, yes, Reapers" and more preparations for the Reaper arrival.

 

My idea was that the Reapers arrive at the end of ME2. However, due to *plot stuff that happens in ME2* the organics build a Relay virus that prevents any travel between them. The story of ME3 is Shepard racing against time to find the final McGuffin.

[GrandAdmiralThrawn]

Well consider that Shepard already blew up a system with a Mass Relay, and that just slowed the Reapers down.  Plus we know that annother race sacrificed their own homeworld to kill a Reaper a bunch of cycles ago.  As such, we can't discount the possibility of organics using Mass Relays to kill Reapers.

 

Besides, you don't need an asteroid to blow up a Relay.  If hitting it with an asteroid is enough, surely a couple nuclear bombs would to the trick, right?  And while I'm not saying that we would sacrifice Earth, I can definetly see, say, the Turians choosing to sacrifice Palevan if they were doomed to lose anyways.  Since the Reapers tend to concentrate in a few key systems you could potentially wipe out upwards of 80% of them with a few well-timed explosions, while leaving the bulk of your fleets in safe areas.  Sure, the Crucible is a better option, but its somewhat surprising that nobody even considered this option beforehand when they didn't even know of the Crucible would work.  I mean, 11 billion dead on Earth, maybe annother 20 billion from Palevan and Thessia.  Sure that's bad, but all things considered it could be much worse.

[Valmar]

Well consider that Shepard already blew up a system with a Mass Relay, and that just slowed the Reapers down.  Plus we know that annother race sacrificed their own homeworld to kill a Reaper a bunch of cycles ago.  As such, we can't discount the possibility of organics using Mass Relays to kill Reapers.

 

In fairness no reapers were in the system at the time. Hence, it only slowed them down. If reapers were in the system it might have destroyed them.

 

I can see the turians sacrificing their planet. They have the mindset of "as long as one survivor is left standing it was worth it". Still the mindset of the people doesn't seem to favor it. Like I said destroying a relay is viewed as impossible by many and doesn't even come up as an option.

 

 

Besides, you don't need an asteroid to blow up a Relay.  If hitting it with an asteroid is enough, surely a couple nuclear bombs would to the trick, right? 

 

I'm not sure. Relays can survive supernovas.

"The relays are made of an unknown but incredibly resilient material, the same material that the Citadel is built from, and are protected by a quantum shield that renders them nearly impervious to damage by locking their structure in place at the subatomic level. They are even capable of surviving a supernova's wake without being damaged."

 

 

I mean, 11 billion dead on Earth, maybe annother 20 billion from Palevan and Thessia.  Sure that's bad, but all things considered it could be much worse.

 

Considering how much offense some people on the forum take to just the destroy ending because it kills the geth I can only imagine how well they'd take to such an ending.

[Vazgen]

From the codex

 

Desperate Measures

Faced with utter annihilation, military planners have considered extreme solutions in their quest to stop the Reapers. The two most plausible are the destruction of mass relays and the use of starships as suicide weapons.

 

Destroying a mass relay to stop the Reapers' advance is infeasible. Although it has recently been proven that mass relays can be destroyed, a ruptured relay liberates enough energy to ruin any terrestrial world in the relay's solar system. It would take too long to evacuate the millions or billions of people living near each relay, and the Council is unwilling to sacrifice that many lives when combat stands a chance of saving them. Even if a garden world were to survive the relay's destruction, the Reapers have infinite patience. They traveled out of dark space using conventional FTL--travel within galaxy is not an insurmountable barrier.

 

Meanwhile, starships are too costly to be used as projectiles, given that it would take many collisions to seriously harm a Reaper. Some armchair admirals suggest that a single starship traveling faster than light could obliterate a Reaper capital ship, but all ships based on mass effect technology possess hardwired safety features to prevent FTL collisions. If a ship's FTL plotter finds a significant object in the path of a planned jump, the FTL drive refuses to fire in the first place. This is not a perfect safety feature--the sensors can only scan for objects within a reasonable distance at light speed, and a navigator must plot the rest of the course--but it is so inherent to the FTL warm-up process that removing it is nigh impossible. Cynical intelligence analysts note that the secret of mass effect technology, including that safety system, has always been attributed to the Protheans--just as the mass relays were.

[AlanC9]

Besides, you don't need an asteroid to blow up a Relay. If hitting it with an asteroid is enough, surely a couple nuclear bombs would to the trick, right? And while I'm not saying that we would sacrifice Earth, I can definetly see, say, the Turians choosing to sacrifice Palevan if they were doomed to lose anyways. Since the Reapers tend to concentrate in a few key systems you could potentially wipe out upwards of 80% of them with a few well-timed explosions, while leaving the bulk of your fleets in safe areas. Sure, the Crucible is a better option, but its somewhat surprising that nobody even considered this option beforehand when they didn't even know of the Crucible would work. I mean, 11 billion dead on Earth, maybe annother 20 billion from Palevan and Thessia. Sure that's bad, but all things considered it could be much worse.

How do you actually catch the Reapers in the explosion? They can escape the blast in FTL as long as they're not right next to the Relay. Unless the Reapers are very stupid and don't monitor the local relays, but since Arrival is canonical in all playthroughs they're certain to be aware of the possibility.

[Display Name Owner]

EDI speculated that it'd take millions of bodies to create 1 Reaper, so even accounting for the ones that are lost through war, there should be enough leftovers to make at least a good few Reapers from each species. So in theory they could replace their losses by the time it's over. And that's in this cycle, where their invasion went much less smoothly than usual. But that's assuming they're practical enough to make more than one Reaper per species, it's implied that they don't, but again that's possibly because in the past they haven't had to. Other cycles didn't have Thanix cannons or anything, and the Reapers pulled off the Citadel trap with them.

[teh DRUMPf!!]

 Okay, I'm just gonna say it...

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

... REAPRODUCTION AMIRITE AMIRITE???

[fhs33721]

Are people still arguing that the Reapers could not possibly have that much numbers?

Consider this:  the current cycle is the most well prepared one ever and has a f*ckton of advantages other cycles never had. Despite all this the Reapers completely and utterly wipe the floor with them every time they show up.

 

Sovereign single-handedly tanks the fire of an entire fleet while dealing out death and destruction all around him until he suddenly flops over like a dead spider because the plot demands it.... Uhm I mean... because Shepard kills his #1 Husk.

Earths defenses are wiped out within minutes and humnity is reduced to guerilla warfare on their homeworld immideately.

Palaven puts up a better fight but NPC's comment that he Reapers are still basically steamrolling them because they shrug off everything their armada can throw at them and just advance nontheless. Palaven is already a buring wreck once Shepard arrives on it's moon.

The Destroyer on Tuchanka has zero problems to fend off the attacking fighters and only get's defeated once a giant monstrosity of aTresher maw decides to eat it.

The Destroyer on Rannoch takes quite a heavy beating from an entire fleet until it goes down.

Thessia is overwhelemed in short time once the Reapers invade it.

At the battle over and on earth the combined forces of the galaxy throw everything they have left at a fraction of the Reapers forces (Because no way that's all Reapers. The ending cinematic even shows Reapers still harvesting on other planets at the same time) and they get their asses handed to them.Only about 50% of the ground forces even make it to the surface. The fleet is decimated and if Shepard refuses to use the handy superweapon everyone to the last man dies.

And of course when Harbinger makes his one appearance in person he wrecks the groundforces so hard that there are literally only two survivors afterwards (four if you count the squad mates that get evacuated).

 

And as said before this cycle had a way better starting point than every other one before (No element of surprise, still functioning communications and infrastructure, central galactic government still alive...etc). So I'd say it's safe to assume that the Reapers never really had many losses in previous cycles where nobody could even have gathered big fleets and every star system was basically on their own without reinforcements or any form of help from other systems.

[Daemul]

OK, so the Reapers can't be beaten with conventional means in a single cycle, and I'm willing to buy that most cycles are easier.  That being said, it seems like there's a better option.  This has probably already been discussed, but wouldn't an exploding Mass Relay be enough to destroy Reapers?  If so, why not just throw an asteroid at the Sol relay and wipe out like 70% of them?  Sure, hardly a perfect solution, but it seems like the Protheans at least would have been down to try that (maybe the Turians too).

 

This is actually directly addressed in the codex

 

EDIT:

 

Damn you Vazgen!!!!!! 

[Daemul]

Anyway, the Reapers far outnumber the Galactic fleet, people need to stop being in denial about this. Even with all the good work the Turians did and with their alliance with the Krogans, they still got absolutely wrecked and had to eventually abandon Palaven so that they could have some semblance of a fleet left to help deliver the Crucible. 

 

This cycle had a far greater advantage than any that came before and still got schooled. The cycle should be thanking it's lucky stars that they had the Protheans helping them from beyond the grave with their sabotage of the Citadel and the beacons that they left behind. 

[Undead Han]

OK, so the Reapers can't be beaten with conventional means in a single cycle, and I'm willing to buy that most cycles are easier.  That being said, it seems like there's a better option.  This has probably already been discussed, but wouldn't an exploding Mass Relay be enough to destroy Reapers?  If so, why not just throw an asteroid at the Sol relay and wipe out like 70% of them?  Sure, hardly a perfect solution, but it seems like the Protheans at least would have been down to try that (maybe the Turians too).

 

If the particles and debris from an exploding Mass Effect relay are travelling at or slower than the speed of light the Reapers would be able to outrun it. 

[Iakus]

Anyway, the Reapers far outnumber the Galactic fleet, people need to stop being in denial about this. Even with all the good work the Turians did and with their alliance with the Krogans, they still got absolutely wrecked and had to eventually abandon Palaven so that they could have some semblance of a fleet left to help deliver the Crucible. 

 

This cycle had a far greater advantage than any that came before and still got schooled. The cycle should be thanking it's lucky stars that they had the Protheans helping them from beyond the grave with their sabotage of the Citadel and the beacons that they left behind. 

 

Yep.  And even with Prothean help with sabotaging the CItadel and the beacon warning, the galaxy is still getting schooled.  Nothing they did mattered.  Not without the space magic.

[ImaginaryMatter]

If the particles and debris from an exploding Mass Effect relay are travelling at or slower than the speed of light the Reapers would be able to outrun it. 

 

The speed of light seems to be more of an arbitrary number in the MEverse, like if you have enough energy you can easily match or surpass it, it just happens to be the speed at which light travels. I assume a Relay blowing up would provide enough energy, we might have even already seen it. At the end of  the Arrival DLC Shepard watches an image on the galaxy map where the Relay blast, in a matter of seconds, consumes all the planets in the system. Of course it could be a rendering of some sort but the tone always made it seem like it was happening in real time.