What went wrong is the geth built their superstructure in the quarians' home system. hat was bound to end in disaster. They could have built it anywhere, in any system, even one without inhabitable planets. Heck they might have built it outside any system in deep space. The quarians could have gotten to Rannoch and found it completely deserted: bloodless victory.
The geth could've built it in the system Legions loyalty mission takes place
I'm willing to concede that we aren't going to change the others mind at this point however.
Fair enough, I agree that we are arguing past each other, but I can see the logic behind your arguments even if I don't agree. As for any potential insultment via "armchair general" like statements, it was unintentional. I generally don't have a problem with trolling or insulting those who make uninformed, thoughtless claims motivated by emotional diarrhea, but in this case yours (occasional trolling aside) don't seem to be so. You make some reasoned, if in my opinion somewhat tenuous or aggrandizing arguments for geth capabilities.
I think the problem with us debating this from a logical, utilitarian standpoint is that the writers did not and had no intention of framing it as such. At least in the 3rd game, it was about generating emotional sympathy for the geth and making the quarians look villanous and petty enough to make the average, non thinking gamer question whether they should pick the familiar but distasteful quarians or the more unknown but "morally righteous" cause of the geth. Their relative utility to the war effort was secondary and hardly even elaborated on apart from the conversation you can have with Shala'Raan about the quarian fleets and the Geth VI's literally one line argument for why you should choose the geth ("why not? our fleet is massive.") at literally the latest possible oppourtunity. If you don't have the VI, Legion instead appeals to your morality ("This is not justice") as the reason for saving the geth. In other words, same story as with the Genophage's Krogan vs Salarian choice (although in the latter case from a metagame perspective, the Salarians are objectively worth a lot less for some reason).
The only specific point that I would like some clarification on is your comparison of the geth to the U.S. Military. I get where you are coming from in terms of equipment (though it must be noted that the economic conditions surrounding military procurement for the geth are likely vastly different and less complex, and thus less costly than any organic system), but the doctrine seems completely different. The U.S. Military seems to go to great lengths to minimize losses. This is logical because the economic investment per head is extremely high in their well trained, expensively equipped professional force. I stand by my assertion that the geth are a force based on attrition warfare, despite their level of equipment being described as good. This is supported by descriptions in some of the media (Mass Effect: Revalation in particular). During the Morning War, the geth are described as being willing to expend thousands of platforms to take relatively trivial positions from much smaller quarian forces. Indeed, this seems to be somewhat logical given their nature. Because they are immune to "death" (programs from destroyed platforms transfer to other platforms), losing platforms is more akin to losing equipment than the organic analouge of losing all of that expensive investment in growth, training and social conditioning that an individual posses
In game, there are also a few lines of dialouge between Tali and Javik (if you take both to Rannoch: Admiral Koris) discussing geth tactics, and the consensus is that they depend on superior numbers and mass attrition. Of course, one could argue that these two are anti synthetic racists and their prejudices are coloring their perceptions or whatever, but I think that their opinions on the subject should carry some weight given their expertise and experience.
Of course, you are right this doesn't preclude the geth from developing more advanced and capable specialized forces than the seemingly cannon fodder platforms they frequently deploy (the Legion platform being an example) or using more advanced tactics, but this isn't elaborated on in the lore.
I don't even understand this at all. Mind clarifying it?
Heroism. What's that got to do with people left on Rannoch?
Though I wouldn't frame it as heroism, there is a point in there that the quarians are pretty much unwaveringly commited to defeating the Reapers, with the caveat that they want a place to dump their noncombatants before sending the Fleet off to what is pretty much certain death for most of them, in order to not go extinct. The geth have chosen self preservation over the rest of the galaxy when faced with defeat before, and I think it is reasonable to conclude that they have the potential to become turncoats if the Reapers threaten their existence on a large scale as the quarians did. By contrast, there is virtually no chance of the quarians striking a deal that "preserves" them in the form of Reaper husks.
Of course, from metagame perspective this is once again rendered irrelevant.
The no-brainer should have been convincing Legion they didn't need the code to become "real boys". They withdraw, the quarians get their homeworld back, and maybe this time the geth won't build their superstructure on someone's front lawn.
Or the fact that there is literally no logic in the geth staying in the Tikkun system or other maintaining other quarian holdings after the Morning War, due to the fact that the former can live literally anywhere in the galaxy that they can draw resources from. Meanwhile, holding on to said systems brings unneeded and avoidable conflict with the quarians. Due to their unique physiology, the quarians at least have an argument for specifically wanting Rannoch back over any other potential livable planet.
But yeah, that aside in the face of the attack and defeat by the quarians, there is no logical reason for the geth to not just retreat as the quarians did three centuries earlier. It's not like the 17 million quarians are going to go hunting them down immediately even if they want to. The geth unquestionably had more options than 1) certain death/ extinction and 2) allowing their entire species to become mechanical Reaper husks.
The Reaper code nonsense was obviously stupid and out of character in the way it was implemented.
From strategic perspectives- the Quarians offer little or no benefit to a war effort and saving them would probably cost more lives than it would save. According to the WIKI for the Migrant Fleet, it takes days for the Flotilla through a single relay. Considering that millions of Turians, Humans and other races are being killed, blended into soup or converted into further Reaper forces each day. Sacrificing 17 million Quarians is a no brainer, regardless of the Geth equation.
Also the Quarian fleet does not have adequate capability to tackle Capital Ships and defending the flotilla would require resources capable of handling Reaper Capital ships away from defending other areas and races.
What? How does the fact that ships take time for thousands to go through a relay ( a point which is contradicted in multiple instances anyway) mean the quarian forces offer no or even negative benefit? The largest armed fleet in the galaxy and lot of very smart individuals with rarefied skills and technical knowledge disagree. What else should Shepard and the Normandy do instead of trying to get the quarians/ geth on board to save those "millions of turians, humans and other races"? Go and get themselves blown up trying to go toe to toe with Harbinger class Reapers on the frontlines in a single goddamn frigate? This is as silly as me claiming the geth are completely useless to the war effort because conventional victory is impossible and they will just all die.
Your second point is flatly incorrect, unless the quarian heavy fleet as well as the other ships armed with dreadnought class weaponry are not subject to the same laws of physics as the rest of the universe. They may not be as capable in a pitched battle as the combined and more specialized Turian or Geth fleet, but that doesn't mean they aren't formidable or highly useful both in combat and logistics roles.
I feel like some people need to read up on the geth a bit more. At the very least, to remind themselves of their history.
http://masseffect.wikia.com/wiki/Geth
The geth didn't wage war. Only 5% of the geth chose to become heretics and they were largely unsupported by the rest of the consensus. They maintained the quarian home world in preparation for their "inevitable return". They're isolationists—the only thing that went wrong is when everything started trying to kill them. In such a case, self-preservation takes precedence, like it does for any sentient species who wants to live. Surprised Legion even offered taking down the shields and guns on the geth dreadnought.
So I don't think destroying the geth should be seen as some kind of heroic victory. Unless you really hate robots. If my computer gained sentience, I think we'd be real good friends. We already hang out every single day.
Do not patronize. Myself and most of the people arguing in favour of the quarians are perfectly aware of the lore regarding the conflict. The one sided sob story about them being harmless victims as portrayed in ME3 is, frankly and objectively, propaganda. If the geth don't wage war than how do the quarians go damn near extinct? Did 99% of the population commit suicide in shame? Are the geth squatting on a planet that they don't use or even need and the quarians do for a logical reason? Do the quarians blow up their own ships and then unnecessarily expend resources ruthlessly hunting down all their own survivors to extinction if you choose the geth or fail to broker peace?
You can prefer the geth for sentimental or moral reasons but don't try to portray the conflict as being so simple. The people who disagree with you aren't by default less informed as you are insinuating in your leading statement.
You opinion on the machines is just that, an opinion. If my computer started to refuse my commands (because "sentience" is something that it cannot achieve by definition), and in doing so threatened my livelihood, I'd get it fixed or discard and replace it were that not possible.
Do not patronize. Myself and most of the people arguing in favour of the quarians are perfectly aware of the lore regarding the conflict. The one sided sob story about them being harmless victims as portrayed in ME3 is, frankly and objectively, propaganda. If the geth don't wage war than how do the quarians go damn near extinct? Did 99% of the population commit suicide in shame? Are the geth squatting on a planet that they don't need and the quarians do for a logical reason? Do the quarians blow up their own ships and ruthlessly hunt down all their own survivors if you choose the geth or fail to broker peace?
You can prefer the geth for sentimental or moral reasons but don't try to portray the conflict as being so simple. The people who disagree with you aren't by default less informed as you are insinuating in your leading statement.
You opinion on the machines is just that, an opinion. If my computer started to refuse my commands (because "sentience" is something that a machine objectively cannot achieve by definition), and in doing so threatened my livelihood, I'd get it fixed or discard and replace it were that not possible.
I do want to mention that the quarians did, indeed, kill their own people as well during the Morning War, which could have certainly attributed to their decline in population. The geth acted exactly as you might expect a machine to act. Ruthlessly, calculated and cold. They committed genocide on a race who intended to do the same to them. But I think the evidence suggests that they do evolve in their own way, and they do recognize the repercussions of having killed so many quarians and taking over their territory. That, I did take from the codex. I don't see the codex as propaganda. I see it as our in-game resource to understand the facts and history of the Mass Effect universe. If the quarians themselves stated that the creations they made were sentient, then I'm inclined to believe that they are sentient. The perks of fiction.
I don't view such a conflict as simple. The quarian's history isn't simple, nor is the geth's. I'm just trying to reiterate the geth's side. Hell, I scoured the Wiki and searched Google so that I could clearly grasp the series of events from the geth's side and the quarian's side. My apologies if I offended you. It wasn't intended to be patronizing.
I suppose at the end of the day, my opinion is that there is a big picture. Ultimately, debate of geth sentience aside, the quarians take responsibility for their own creation, whether they exterminate the geth or are exterminated by them. They brought it upon themselves. If it boils down to opinion, I'm cool with leaving it at that,
Or the fact that there is literally no logic in the geth staying in the Tikkun system or other maintaining other quarian holdings after the Morning War, due to the fact that the former can live literally anywhere in the galaxy that they can draw resources from. Meanwhile, holding on to said systems brings unneeded and avoidable conflict with the quarians. Due to their unique physiology, the quarians at least have an argument for specifically wanting Rannoch back over any other potential livable planet.
But yeah, that aside in the face of the attack and defeat by the quarians, there is no logical reason for the geth to not just retreat as the quarians did three centuries earlier. It's not like the 17 million quarians are going to go hunting them down immediately even if they want to. The geth unquestionably had more options than 1) certain death/ extinction and 2) allowing their entire species to become mechanical Reaper husks.
The Reaper code nonsense was obviously stupid and out of character in the way it was implemented.
I am willing to stipulate that the geth have enough respect, or at least curiosity towards organic life that they would stick around to clean up the mess the Morning War left on Rannoch and other quarian worlds. Legion says as much in ME2 when he describes the geth as "caretakers" A planetary war of such genocidal proportions would likely have caused a great deal of breakage as far the planet's ecosystem goes. So the geth spent the last three centuries making Rannoch inhabitable again. Fine.
Butt he thing is, being a "caretaker" implies this is a temporary job. That they move on once the original owners come back and reclaim what's theirs. When the quarians come back in force, wanting their world back and willing to fight for it, that's a pretty good sign it's time to move on.
And yeah, the geth, like the krogan, can live just about anywhere. Quarians have very limited options.
Heck I'd say the geth would have a pretty good shot at surviving the Reapers if it came to that, just by running and hiding.
Guest_alleyd_*
What? How does the fact that ships take time for thousands to go through a relay ( a point which is contradicted in multiple instances anyway) mean the quarian forces offer no or even negative benefit? The largest armed fleet in the galaxy and lot of very smart individuals with rarefied skills and technical knowledge disagree. What else should Shepard and the Normandy do instead of trying to get the quarians/ geth on board to save those "millions of turians, humans and other races"? Go and get themselves blown up trying to go toe to toe with Harbinger class Reapers on the frontlines in a single goddamn frigate? This is as silly as me claiming the geth are completely useless to the war effort because conventional victory is impossible and they will just all die.
Your second point is flatly incorrect, unless the quarian heavy fleet as well as the other ships armed with dreadnought class weaponry are not subject to the same laws of physics as the rest of the universe. They may not be as capable in a pitched battle as the combined and more specialized Turian or Geth fleet, but that doesn't mean they aren't formidable or highly useful both in combat and logistics roles.
I know the lore is contradicted throughout ME many times at the discretion of the writers.
We saw in game with the assault on the Geth dreadnought how ineffective the Quarians were against a single capital ship. They threw all they had at the Geth Dreadnought and barely scratched it and it wasn't attempting any form of maneuvering, just laying stationary in space. The Reapers are far more aggressive, numerous and capable
Joker's insight into the Quarian's decision to arm their civilian ships states how much of a dumb move it was. So much for the Quarians being smart individuals.
A weapons platform (like a ship or tank) needs a combination of 3 factors. Speed of maneuver, strength of Armour and power of weapons with the specialized targeting systems required to utilize them more effectively than the opposing force. Any deficiency in any of these areas is not compensated by strength in one area.
Guest_alleyd_*
One point on the Morning War I hope for opinion on. I've been reading a lot about how terrifying Cyber war threats are to advanced nations in the last 2 years. I think that the war could have been more of a series of Tech apocalypse events than a shooting war. The Geth causing failures in the industrial, logistical infrastructures in a form of Cyber warfare that would have been impossible for the Quarians to cope with. Makes more sense for a software based form of life to suddenly stop working or turn the machinery of the Quarian civilization against their creators.
I have never picked the Geth over the Quarians. Either peace, or the Geth get destroyed. 
I know the lore is contradicted throughout ME many times at the discretion of the writers.
We saw in game with the assault on the Geth dreadnought how ineffective the Quarians were against a single capital ship. They threw all they had at the Geth Dreadnought and barely scratched it and it wasn't attempting any form of maneuvering, just laying stationary in space. The Reapers are far more aggressive, numerous and capable
So why even bring it up as an argument? Also, you have said nothing or provided no alternative solutions to back up your patently silly assertion that acquisition of the quarian fleet somehow results in more lives lost than alternative solutionns, and that the fleet itself is somehow of negative tactical or strategic value. I don't see it giving negative war assets. In fact at a maximum of 870 they provide more than everyone but the Alliance according to the only objective system of measurement we have (however flawed you may believe it is).
It isn't a "single capital ship" unless you can't see that it clearly has a massive fleet of support ships as well. Anyway, there are multiple plausible reasons for the situation against the geth dreadnought post upgrade. One of them is not that the quarians can't destroy it, but that the solution of just throwing the fleet at the upgraded geth in frontal assaults would at best result in Pyrrhic victories at diminishing returns and be a poor use of their assets. Tali mentions their losses in the previous attack against it at 6 Frigates, which isn't very large considering the scale of the battle and the size of the quarian fleet but then again, up to this point in the war the quarians have been reliant on basically taking zero losses. The strategic purpose of regaining the homeworld is to dump the noncombatants and send the fleet off to help in the fight against the Reapers. If you lose too much of the fleet and your population doing so, there is not really much point.
Now, why couldn't the quarians just send a small squad to board and disable dreadnought by themselves and accomplish the same thing as Shepard and Co that eventually destroys the ship? Probably gameplay vs lore. They have stealth capable ships and should have been able to accomplish the same thing without the Normandy, but this is ignored because the PC needs something plot relevant to do.
Joker's insight into the Quarian's decision to arm their civilian ships states how much of a dumb move it was. So much for the Quarians being smart individuals.
A weapons platform (like a ship or tank) needs a combination of 3 factors. Speed of maneuver, strength of Armour and power of weapons with the specialized targeting systems required to utilize them more effectively than the opposing force. Any deficiency in any of these areas is not compensated by strength in one area.
You and Joker are entitled to your opinions, but that doesn't make them objectively correct. Otherwise, less effective/ well rounded but more efficient weapons like battlecruisers (ignoring the fact that they and dreadnoughts are both obsolete because fighter Carriers dominate modern naval combat) or tank destroyers/ lightly armored AT missile platforms would not exist.
The purpose of the armed liveships (which I assume you are referring to in this case) isn't to serve as analogues to dreadnoughts in themselves, but as essentially an additonal source of low cost fire support to back the conventional dreadnoughts, frigates, destroyers, and carriers in the Heavy Fleet. An enemy ship being hit by dreadnought level firepower is going to die no matter if the gun is mounted on an actual dreadnought, a planetary installation or an agricultural platform. As long as they are properly utilized and the other forces have the capability to protect them from attack, I don't see how it is a "dumb" move. Risky? Maybe with the benefit of hindsight regarding the geth becoming Reaper allies and then actually posing a threat, but not without appropriate rewards. It is an efficient means of maximizing the forces at your disposal. The geth fleet is also stated to have armaments on virtually every type of vessel they field, so they must be similarly dumb by your logic.
One point on the Morning War I hope for opinion on. I've been reading a lot about how terrifying Cyber war threats are to advanced nations in the last 2 years. I think that the war could have been more of a series of Tech apocalypse events than a shooting war. The Geth causing failures in the industrial, logistical infrastructures in a form of Cyber warfare that would have been impossible for the Quarians to cope with. Makes more sense for a software based form of life to suddenly stop working or turn the machinery of the Quarian civilization against their creators.
yeah, Cyberwarfare is almost completely ignored apart from a few cursory or vague mentions of it in dialouge and the codex. Wasted potential IMO, probably because seeing ships get within a few hundred meters of each other and firing salvos like this is the goddamn Battle of Trafalgar, along with things like krogan headbutting their way to victory in ground battles, makes for better cutscenes. (rule of cool)
I have never picked the Geth over the Quarians. Either peace, or the Geth get destroyed.
Try it one time. A geth prime gives a very funny line of dialogue after choosing the geth. There is a geth prime at the fob that has dialogue
I wonder what the hacking capabilities of a Geth would be in terms of cyber-warfare.
I know their security is terrible, because anyone with Sabotage can override them within like a second, but there may be a difference between gameplay and lore.
Although maybe that's why they never attempted cyber-warfare, because counter-hacks would be devastating.
themikefest - That would be horrible. 
There are some things I never do in Mass Effect. 1. Make the council die. 2. Give the evidence in Tali's trial. 3. Kill the Quarians.
It's just no.
Didn't read the entire thread, just going to answer to the OP because it includes a fundamental misconception IMO.
The geth cannot be viewed as just one individual. They never could be. They are, just like us, a race of countless individuals that all have their unique perspective on the world. They are not a hive mind (as Tali tells you outright as far back as ME1 and Legion emphasizes this to no end in ME2).
The only thing, the geth share in their network is computational power. The network helps every single geth to think faster and in a more elaborate way. How this is achieved is never really revealed and personally, I can't think of an infrastructure where such a setup would be feasible or even effective in nay way. Tali says in ME1 that the quarians developed the geth in this fashion to help them work together as units but that never made much sense to me either because IMO that requires the exchange of data via a network, not processing power. However, she specifically states the the network is all about increasing the cognitive capabilities of each geth, rather than the exchange of sensory information (like it would be in a hive mind) so we'll have to roll with that.
What that implies is that the geth are individuals. Legion's platform encompasses 1183 geth. Sure, the platform looks like it is just one individual but it is not. That is why Legion cannot act when he is faced with the decision to delete or overwrite the Heretics in ME2, because the individuals within the platform are divided.
The geth want to achieve consensus among themselves. They are not living in a democracy where the majority rules but in a society that requires consensus of every available individual to act. This should not be confused with the very different concept that there is only one individual mind that receives information from countless drones (like the Borg in Star Trek). Instead there are many individual geth, we just do not see them, we do not hear all of them, we just see the outcome that happens when all of them agree.
Of course, if we humans had such a system, we'd barely get anything done (imagine a UN where every single country in the general assembly had veto powers) but as Legion says "[the geth] communicate at the speed of light" and therefore can afford to discuss even matters that need swift action to the point where consensus is achieved. In rare cases, such as the Heretics issue, it takes longer or doesn't happen, so they need outside help or they cannot move forward.
So, the premise of this topic is flawed, there is not just one geth. I don't know if it was ever stated how many there are, I don't know if (and if so, how) they procreate, but don't kid yourself, if you choose to eliminate the geth, you are conducting genocide, just as surely as you do if you wipe out the quarians.
Guest_alleyd_*
It is not silly for me to point out any inconsistencies in lore or the design of the game's front end story to other elements.
The lore states that it would take several days for the Quarian ships to get through a relay. Now, according to the Galaxy map there are a minimum of 7 relay connections between the Far Rim and the Krogan DMZ (Far Rim-Phoenix Massing-Hawking ETA- Horsehead Nebula-Annos Basin-Serpent Nebula-Krogan DMZ) and at least 2 of these are Reaper held systems which even the most advanced and fastest stealth ship in the MEU (Normandy SR2) cannot traverse safely without detection. How is a fleet of slow, ancient ships meant to traverse that network without being intercepted by a force of several Reaper Capital ships in each system?
Going by the game design of the scanning element of the game there are 3-4 Reaper Capital ships ready to pounce in each system they hold. Reapers are not simple dreadnoughts, but have a carrier function as well consisting of swarms of Occuli which out fly most fighter and one Occulus can penetrate the upgraded armour of a large frigate (as per ME2 Collector base assault). The only way to defend these ships would be with Capital ships and their screening forces. Forces the galaxy does not have in reserve.
It is for those reasons that I commented on the Quarian Fleet being a strategic negative. It would cost more lives waiting for them to arrive in theatre and the chances are they would have been chewed up long before they ever reached there and defending them would have taken valuable resources from more important areas
The War Asset score for the Quarians is extremely exaggerated compared with other races. The two most powerful fleets in the Galaxy are the Turian 6th and 7th fleets. The 6th fleet is the largest fleet of Dreadnoughts in the galaxy, but has an asset score of 135. The 7th fleet is so important and powerful it is the last line of defense for the Crucible project. Yet this force has a score of 90 asset points; which is the same as a single marine division (43rd).
Compare this with the asset score of the Quarian fleets, which are all around the 200 mark. This includes the patrol fleet of scouting class ships whose major functions were to scout ahead of the fleet for resources and do in-fleet security functions.
I don't know where you head canoned that the Quarians have dreadnoughts. The lore states that their heavy fleet consists of cruisers, frigates, cariers and fighters. Placing a cannon on a civilian ship does not make it a dreadnought. Just a big, slow, unarmoured target waiting to be crunched
In game dialogue is not an opinion, it is there to support and service the plot. Joker and EDI's comments are telling, because it shows Bioware writers were aware of how silly their own scenario actually was that they wrote some dialogue in. Arming the Liveships was fundamentally flawed. This would have been the Quarians only food source, even on Rannoch unless they could space Magic the crops they needed to survive.
The Quarians have one stealth ship, which they conveniently space magicked into existence (The lore states they have no ship building facilities in the fleet, lol)
Also every Geth ship is dual function with war functions built into the design from the ground up.
BTW the battlecruiser was one of the most retarded ship classes in the 20th century. A British invention, courtesy of Sir Jackie Fisher's doctrines that proved to be deadly to their own crews more than the enemy. In the only major engagements they featured in during WW1 and WW2, 4 Battlecruisers were destroyed in a matter of minutes (HMS Invincible, HMS Indefatigable, HMS Queen Mary in Jutland. HMS Hood in the battle with Bismark).
@alleyd - you assume that ships have to slowly get to the mass relay after entering each of the transit systems. I don't think this is the case. I think a corridor is created that passes through multiple relays. The ship doesn't get out of the relay FTL before reaching its destination.
The lore of several days being required for a fleet to pass through a relay is conveniently circumvented with the final cutscene when the whole galactic fleet passes through the relay in a few minutes. If the game was true to the lore, the united galactic fleet would've required weeks to get through the relay with or without Quarian fleet.
As for the quarians having dreadnoughts it's not headcanon it's Shepard's own words when asking Raan about the civilian fleet and choosing paragon option (he points out that it is a violation of the Treaty of Farixen), as well as Raan's own words when she mentions the firepower of those ships. Sure, they are essentially glass cannons as Joker's words clearly state (they do not state that it's ineffective strategy BTW), but against the Reapers armor makes no difference as they easily destroy shields and armor of dreadnoughts in one shot. They do have Thanix weaponry and firepower of dreadnoughts, so if they stay in the rear they can do decent-enough damage.
Quarian fleets have not engaged Reapers. Turian fleets have.
The lore states that it would take several days for the Quarian ships to get through a relay. Now, according to the Galaxy map there are a minimum of 7 relay connections between the Far Rim and the Krogan DMZ (Far Rim-Phoenix Massing-Hawking ETA- Horsehead Nebula-Annos Basin-Serpent Nebula-Krogan DMZ) and at least 2 of these are Reaper held systems which even the most advanced and fastest stealth ship in the MEU (Normandy SR2) cannot traverse safely without detection. How is a fleet of slow, ancient ships meant to traverse that network without being intercepted by a force of several Reaper Capital ships in each system?
Going by the game design of the scanning element of the game there are 3-4 Reaper Capital ships ready to pounce in each system they hold. Reapers are not simple dreadnoughts, but have a carrier function as well consisting of swarms of Occuli which out fly most fighter and one Occulus can penetrate the upgraded armour of a large frigate (as per ME2 Collector base assault). The only way to defend these ships would be with Capital ships and their screening forces. Forces the galaxy does not have in reserve.
It is for those reasons that I commented on the Quarian Fleet being a strategic negative. It would cost more lives waiting for them to arrive in theatre and the chances are they would have been chewed up long before they ever reached there and defending them would have taken valuable resources from more important areas
All of this is rendered irrelevant headcannon by the fact that such a problem is not even mentioned and does not manifest in any way should you acquire the fleets. You can use it to criticize the writing, but not the in universe utility of the Migrant Fleet. They are immediately put into use for evac and fire support purposes according to Hackett, and the Migrant Fleet arrives to help at the battle over Earth without issue. Really, this sort of argument reminds me of Indoctrination Theory types. The quarian fleet is beneficial to the war effort because the writers intended it to be. They don't have to explain every intricate detail of how any such supposed problems as you are describing were avoided, but merely write the story so that they that they were. The onus is on you to provide evidence that such things were a problem.
The War Asset score for the Quarians is extremely exaggerated compared with other races. The two most powerful fleets in the Galaxy are the Turian 6th and 7th fleets. The 6th fleet is the largest fleet of Dreadnoughts in the galaxy, but has an asset score of 135. The 7th fleet is so important and powerful it is the last line of defense for the Crucible project. Yet this force has a score of 90 asset points; which is the same as a single marine division (43rd).
Compare this with the asset score of the Quarian fleets, which are all around the 200 mark. This includes the patrol fleet of scouting class ships whose major functions were to scout ahead of the fleet for resources and do in-fleet security functions.
I don't know where you head canoned that the Quarians have dreadnoughts. The lore states that their heavy fleet consists of cruisers, frigates, cariers and fighters. Placing a cannon on a civilian ship does not make it a dreadnought. Just a big, slow, unarmoured target waiting to be crunched
It isn't. You are thinking in extremely limited terms of the war assets only in their ability to shoot at things instead of the various logistical and strategic resource utilization requirements of an actual war. Using your argument, everything and everyone on the Crucible is completely useless even though their work is what ultimately wins the war. Mordin, Admiral Xen and those ex Cerberus scientists? Useless to the war effort because they aren't holding a Mattock and trying to shoot husks.
Note that this doesn't mean the system is absolutely accurate (I happen to think it is far from this especially in regard to comparing individuals to groups) or the only measure one can use, but your slagging it off and dismissing it as irrelevant because it disagrees with your assertions is pretty stupid and doesn't objectively help your argument (not that you seem to be trying to be objective anyway). I could equally point out various inconsistencies in the Codex to make the argument that it is utterly useless and that War Assets are the only game in town. That wouldn't make my point any more valid, and it would be a fallacy.
The quarians have a simply massive number of ships, so I don't think it is at all odd or unreasonable that the combined thousands of ships in the Heavy or Patrol Fleet has nearly as much utility as a mere two Turian fleets (considering the turians have their full military force split between dozens of fleets and the quarians seemingly don't), nor is it unfeasible that the Civilian Fleet has high strategic value in terms of logistical capabilities, unless you think that the attacking of merchant shipping during wartime such as was participated in on a large scale during both World Wars was a pointless waste. "An army marches on its stomach" as one famous French general supposedly iterated before he went and completely lost a war against Russia, despite winning almost every battle, because of logistical failures.
It isn't headcanon. You never see a quarian ship described as a dreadnought in game but upon questioning Admiral Raan, she describes the Turian Fleet as having "more dreadnoughts" along with larger overall military force than the Heavy Fleet. Use of such terminology implies their existence, and seeing as it is not explicitly stated otherwise that the quarian fleet lacks them you cannot make that claim based on a single generalized description of the Heavy Fleet.
In game dialogue is not an opinion, it is there to support and service the plot. Joker and EDI's comments are telling, because it shows Bioware writers were aware of how silly their own scenario actually was that they wrote some dialogue in. Arming the Liveships was fundamentally flawed. This would have been the Quarians only food source, even on Rannoch unless they could space Magic the crops they needed to survive.
The Quarians have one stealth ship, which they conveniently space magicked into existence (The lore states they have no ship building facilities in the fleet, lol)
Also every Geth ship is dual function with war functions built into the design from the ground up.
BTW the battlecruiser was one of the most retarded ship classes in the 20th century. A British invention, courtesy of Sir Jackie Fisher's doctrines that proved to be deadly to their own crews more than the enemy. In the only major engagements they featured in during WW1 and WW2, 4 Battlecruisers were destroyed in a matter of minutes (HMS Invincible, HMS Indefatigable, HMS Queen Mary in Jutland. HMS Hood in the battle with Bismark).
Now you are really grasping at straws. Yes, It is by definition an opinion, unless the response option by Shepard to Admiral Raan's iteration of the same decision to arm the liveships of "that's smart, use what you've got" can be equally considered a fact to "support and service the plot", along with every idle dialouge ever by NPCs. Clearly, we should have followed Javik's "not opinion" that throwing Legion out of the nearest airlock was objectively the most prudent course of action.
Irrelevant point from a narrative perspective much like your first. It is there because the writers said so and all else is thus rendered headcanon. You disagreeing with the writing's ability able to justify its existence does not change that. Besides, how does one know it was not another vessel modified with appropriate technologies instead of being built from scratch, or even that it is the only one as you are claiming? Where is that written or implied "in the lore" as you are so fond of commenting when it suits you?
Yes. Your point to the broader premise that the quarians are stupid and useless being?
That's an interesting opinion. I would counter it with the assertion that the Dreadnought is now and has been extinct since the Second World War, whereas the Kirov-class is still in service. Either way, your nitpicking is irrelevant to both the ME universe and to the point that biasing a design in favour of firepower over either defense or mobility is not unheard of and hardly stupid depending on tactical deployment of the system in question. If it were, no military would ever waste money on buying lots of ATGM platforms when they could just buy 2 or 3 more tanks instead, for example. Yeah, sending the liveship Rayya to get torn apart by Harbinger one on one would be utterly stupid. Holding it back in a position where it isn't threatened and using its huge gun as fire support would be as useful as using a Dreadnought for the same role, yet the resources required to achieve such capability are minuscule compared to building a Dreadnought. I never said they were of similar effectiveness in all roles, merely that your assertion of them being useless is frankly incorrect. Getting shot by a big gun is getting shot by a big gun.
themikefest - That would be horrible.
It's just no.
That's nothing. Take a look at this playthrough. 
The entire purpose of the Rannoch missions were to make the Quarians look like complete idiots.
* Sci-Fi writers have no concept of scale.
Space combat, according to codex takes place at a distance of 10,000 km. Yet we were right on top of that dreadnought. What does being "smart" have to do with taking damage from thanix weapons that ignore shields? Apparently the geth dreadnought was the last one, because if it wasn't the quarian fleet would have been in serious trouble. Where were the others? Probably gone in the blitz. Bioware made no mention of any other Geth dreadnoughts even though they originally had somewhere in the neighborhood of 30. So axe 29. Why couldn't Quarian thanix weapons penetrate the Geth dreadnought's shields? Ah, it had plot armor and shields. The same kind as Kai Lame had on Thessia.
The only reason that the Quarians couldn't take out that dreadnought with their fleet even supported by the dreadnought level fire from their live ships was so that Commander Shepard (the player) could determine the fate of the Quarians and the Geth. It made no sense at all.
And the Quarians were not part of the Treaty of Fairixen. What could the Council do anyway? Nothing. No trade sanctions could work because the Quarians simply strip mine minerals when they need them. The Migrant Fleet is pretty much banned from Council Space. So what could they do? Deny them a homeworld? Been there done that.
Another thing is that Shepard should have died on Rannoch. When the Quarian fleet fired from orbit and killed that reaper with "everything they had" there should have been a smoldering crater containing the reaper and Shepard and anyone who was near Shepard. Main gun bombardment from orbit is pretty nasty. It should have been more like nukes than small artillery shells.
Guest_StreetMagic_*
Quarians every time for me. If Shep is space Jesus, then Legion is space Judas. He signed on specifically because the Geth wanted to build their own future. And in fact, every one I befriend in the series is trying to build their own future. To me, that's the main theme of Mass Effect... to get everything back on a more natural course, without uplifting or interference. And Legion is the only one who changes his mind. I don't mind the Rannoch missions because it at least hits on all of these notes well. Regardless of the logistics of the battle.
Guest_alleyd_*
@Quarian Master Race. I concede that I didn't place my arguments on the strategic utility of the Quarians in the manner I had hoped. My points were not meant to highlight deficiencies in the Quarian species; they were meant to highlight the flaws in Bioware's writing, design and attention to detail with their own creation. How its placing within the game timeline creates problems when other design elements are applied to it from the game and how elements of the storyline don't fit in with the lore that had been set-up in the canon of the franchise previously.
The entire Rannoch storyline really doesn't seem to make any sense to me other than to make the Quarians look far more stupid than they were in previous games. It also attempts to make the Geth look weaker than they were depicted in lore previously as well.
No one will convince me that it is stupid or silly to expect that experienced, professional writers follow through and pay close attention to detail with the elements that they created. That is the sort of thing that you see in the worst types of fan fiction; not in an award winning work of art created over a period of years by highly qualified creative minds. In the end, these liberties that the creative minds in Bioware took, with the rules they themselves set-up, tends to make their attempts at installing dramatic tension fall apart for me, cause me to recoil out of the story and shatter my suspension of disbelief more than engage me in the story.
From a design perspective: it would have made more sense for me to have the Rannoch storyline and the Tuchanka story lines open in game at the same time. The Turians need the Krogan - but they have no ships to transport the forces. This is already known prior to landing on Tuchanka. I would have chosen to get the ships in place prior to trying to get Krogan support. Then I would have no problems accepting the Quarian fleet serves the purpose that the Turians required and that the points of defending it at that point in the timeline would not apply as they do later on.
My points on the War Asset system are not as arbitrary as you point out. Can you explain to me how a fleet of Scout ships are worth more than double than the fleet assigned to guard the most valuable and crucial aspect of the Galaxy's entire battle plan? I cannot get my head around the equation that forms that conclusion. It's just another example of how illogical and arbitrary that system actually was.
When I do a success full play through:- I chose peace every time and collect the maximum resources available. In the playthroughs were I don't have that option open to me; I always side with the Quarians. I have NEVER chosen to side with the Geth and never will. I value any organic life far more than a synthetic life form; simple human bias but also informed by in game perspectives as well. The Geth were my enemy in game 1. I originally thought that they were hacked. The fact that the heretics chose that option is far worse in my mind than them being coerced. Also I did not trust Legion was being entirely honest with me, and I certainly did not accept that the picture in the Geth Server was not meant to manipulate Shepard. Legion even confessed that there was an element of manipulating the image by using the current image of Quarians rather than the true picture of what they looked like on Rannoch at the time of the Morning War.
That may make my argument look hypocritical (But I was never intending my argument to be anything other than highlighting the design and story deficiencies I mentioned above).
Guest_StreetMagic_*
The Quarians were just the same in ME2, I thought. They were willing to exile a hero, Tali, for the sake politics on war with the Geth. The same Admirals represented the various options (Xen - Control, Koris - Peace, Garrel - Destroy), and Garrel's route seemed to be taking the most root. Tali kind of showed some of this obsession with the homeworld herself when you went to her father's ship. She gets a bit dramatic and in Shep's face about it... and if Tali is willing to be that way, then imagine how the rest of the fleet would think.
A weapons platform (like a ship or tank) needs a combination of 3 factors. Speed of maneuver, strength of Armour and power of weapons with the specialized targeting systems required to utilize them more effectively than the opposing force. Any deficiency in any of these areas is not compensated by strength in one area.
No one will convince me that it is stupid or silly to expect that experienced, professional writers follow through and pay close attention to detail with the elements that they created. That is the sort of thing that you see in the worst types of fan fiction; not in an award winning work of art created over a period of years by highly qualified creative minds. In the end, these liberties that the creative minds in Bioware took, with the rules they themselves set-up, tends to make their attempts at installing dramatic tension fall apart for me, cause me to recoil out of the story and shatter my suspension of disbelief more than engage me in the story.
What hasn't entered the discussion yet is whether or not this is a choice, at least in the non-video game, meta-knowledge sense. In the story the only difference between Peace and Geth victory when Shepard uploads the code is that he tells the Quarians not to attack. It's kind of the Quarian admiralty that chooses to fly in, for what the game seems to be hammering over and over again, irrational reasons. Should I feel bad that I went for the supposedly peaceful option, only to have the Quarians rush to their own death?
I kinda find it hard to set up standards that other people or races even have to live up to for my sake, without also having to compaire myself to those standards.
PS: For reference they are, to be of value of humanity.
A certain minimum of intelligence and
A certain minimum of health and
A certain minimum of fertility and/or
Capability for long hard work in food production and manufacturing and/or
Inherent aptitude for teaching, curing people and/or
The capability to advance the sum of all human knowledge.
To sum up... Healthy, intelligent farm and factory workers and teachers, doctors and scientists (no soft sciences please).
I suspect, we can get by with a million individuals, but lets say 10-100 million for backup.
Yeah, I save both too...
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