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[Backdraft]

So while the reapers are depicted as these nigh unkillable god-like machines, based on calculations derived from codex entries and certain in-game descriptions, it would appear that the reapers could be easily killed by the alliance using available technology at their disposal.

 

The first thing to note is that reapers use kinetic barriers. Kinetic barriers are described by the codex as:

 

Kinetic barriers are repulsive mass effect fields projected from tiny emitters. These shields safely deflect small objects traveling at rapid velocities. This affords protection from bullets and other dangerous projectiles, but still allows the user to sit down without knocking away their chair. The shielding afforded by kinetic barriers does not protect against extremes of temperature, toxins, or radiation.

 

 

The important part to note is "does not protect against extremes of temperature, toxins, or radiation". This is important, because it means weapons that rely on thermal and EM radiation to do damage (like a nuke) will do damage to the body of the reaper itself and ignore its kinetic barriers.

 

It's also important to attempt to speculate what reapers are actually made of. Reapers are created by harvesting organic life, so it would be a reasonable assumption to assume that reapers are made exclusively from materials commonly found in organic creatures. I'm also going to assume that reapers have the technology to break down molecules into individual atoms and re-arrange them into molecules and materials of their choosing. Let's take humans for example. Reapers have a "metallic" appearance, yet the only metals found in significant quantities in humans are calcium and other alkali metals. Hard calcium has a tensile strength of around  115 Mpa, around half that of the minimum for steel or aluminum, or not very good. The other materials which the reapers could use would be hydrogen, oxygen, and carbon. The reapers could thus conceivably be made out of sort of carbon-nanotube composite which would provide both excellent strength and heat resistance.  

 

So let's say we detonate a 1 megaton thermonuclear warhead a kilometer away from a reaper capital ship in space. When a nuke detonates it releases tremendous amounts of X-rays. On earth the atmosphere absorbs most of the X-rays, which creates the large blast and fireball that accompany nuclear explosions. In space there's no atmosphere, so the X-rays (and gamma rays) act like rays being emitted from a point source, with their energy following the inverse-square law. Now consider our one megaton bomb detonating at 1000 meters distance from the reaper. We can represent this with a sphere of radius 1000 meters with a surface area 2,600,000 square meters. A one megaton bomb will release 4.184 × 10^15 joules of energy. Diving this by the surface area we have around 332,000 kilojoules per square meter at one kilometer distance. This is more than enough energy to vaporize any material in existence, and thus vaporize the reaper, as we've already established that radiation and heat ignores kinetic barriers.

 

 

So perhaps nuke's aren't feasible for some handwaved reason. Alliance ships however are fairly large and are capable of FTL speeds using mass effect drives. Why not accelerate them to FTL speeds and ram them into reaper capital ships (assuming we make them unmanned of course)? We run into the problem that to get to FTL speeds a ship has to reduce it's mass to essentially zero, and thus would not have any kinetic energy. So let's say we retain the ships mass and accelerate the ship to 99.9999....% the speed of light (which could theoretically be done without using mass effect fields). Let's say our ship weighs 10,000 tons (about the same as a modern cruiser or destroyer), and we ram it into the reaper at light speed. This equates to 4.5 x 10^23 joules of kinetic energy, or around 100 teratons of TNT (!!!!!!!). For comparison purposes the main gun of an alliance dreadnought is stated to have 38 kiltons (TNT equivalent) of kinetic energy while the main gun of a reaper capital ship has 132 to 454 kilotons (TNT equivalent) of kinetic energy. 

 

Let's put that into perspective. Our lightspeed kamikaze ship has over 200,000,000 times as much energy as a single shot from a reaper's main gun. 

 

Again from the codex:

[Reapers] are extremely durable, capable of taking the continuous and simultaneous fire of four dreadnoughts before they start to lose their kinetic barriers.

 

 

Remember that the main gun of a dreadnought has 38 kilotons of kinetic energy. Our kamikaze ship has over 2 billion times as much kinetic energy. Just like the reaper in ME2 that was obliterated by a large kinetic energy weapon, I think it's fairly obvious what would happen to the reaper. 

 

So here you have it folks, how to kill a reaper 101. Good thing the bioware writers aren't physics or engineering majors, as ME3 would have ended rather quickly. 

[Dantriges]

There is a codex entry about this ramming tactic. Reapers are organic-synthetic hybrids.

[Backdraft]

There is a codex entry about this ramming tactic. Reapers are organic-synthetic hybrids.

 

The ramming tactic should have been used everywhere. In the "final battle" we see alliance ships shooting at reapers when the logical thing to do would have been to convert the ships into unmanned drones and just ram them into the reapers at near light speed.

 

The fact the reapers are "cyborgs" is also a given, even though the codex is fairly vague about this. My assumption is that the reaper's "outer shell" is made from steel (judging by its blue-ish look) or perhaps titanium while the organic bits make up the core. The reapers weapons are also stated to use a molten iron-tungsten-uranium alloy accelerated to a fraction of light speed using magnets which is obviously something you have to build mechanically. My guess is that during each cycle the reapers also mine planets for minerals used to construct more of themselves in addition to "harvesting" the spacefaring sentient life of each cycle. 

[themikefest]

The ramming tactic should have been used everywhere. In the "final battle" we see alliance ships shooting at reapers when the logical thing to do would have been to convert the ships into unmanned drones and just ram them into the reapers at near light speed.

I would've done what Fleet Admiral Irix Coronati did. Had his dreadnoughts do a short ftl run landing in the middle of the reaper fleet. His ships were able to turn around quicker than the capital ships destroying several of them.

[Backdraft]

I would've done what Fleet Admiral Irix Coronati did. Had his dreadnoughts do a short ftl run landing in the middle of the reaper fleet. His ships were able to turn around quicker than the capital ships destroying several of them.

 

Not very smart for a variety of reasons. Reapers have guns in their tendrils and would destroy you in short order.

 

Space is essentially infinite, with the only thing limiting your engagement range being the resolution of your sensors. With the resolution of modern space based IR imagers we're looking at engagement distances of hundreds of thousands, if not millions of kilometers. 

 

In addition to engaging enemy fleets at absurdly close range for no apparent tactical reason, both the alliance and the reapers have a fairly amusing tendency of grouping their ships in extremely close together on a flat plane, with is extremely stupid for a variety of reasons. A smart space commander would space his ships out tens of thousands, if not hundred of thousands, of kilometers in all three dimensions. 

 

You're best bet against the reapers would be to launch your thousands of kinetic kill vehicles (aka unmanned "ramming" ships) as soon as you detect the reapers on your long range sensors which could be up to millions, if not billions, of kilometers away from the planet you're defending. As a backup you could put hundred of FOB (fractional orbital bombardment) MIRV buses into upper low earth orbit and have them de-orbit and detonate over reapers entering the planet's atmosphere, vaporizing the reapers in the process. 

[themikefest]

Not very smart for a variety of reasons. Reapers have guns in their tendrils and would destroy you in short order.

Actually its very smart since he didn't take any losses in doing that vs the several  reapers that were destroyed
 

You're best bet against the reapers would be to launch your thousands of kinetic kill vehicles (aka unmanned "ramming" ships)

Really? Where do these unmanned ships come from? Once they're used, they have to be replaced and the reapers won't give you time to rebuild to keep launching unmanned ships at them. The other thing is how many unmanned ships would it take to destroy one capital ship?

 

I take it you're wanting to defeat them conventionally? If so, the reapers would win just by numbers alone. Here's a post I made saying how many they might have.

 

If I was to defeat them conventionally, I would start with their processing ships and troop transport ships. When the reapers approached Illium, the people didn't fire on the capital ships, they fired on the troop transport ships. It delayed the invasion of that planet. If every planet was able to do that, it would put a dent in the reapers plan since they wouldn't have the ground forces they hoped for.

 

Next I would take every ship I had and go to each system that has the fewest reapers in that system and destroy them. I would work my way to the systems that have the most. Depending on your losses, it could take a very long time. I would only do this if I knew exactly the numbers that the reapers have. But since I don't, I wouldn't. The best thing to do is find the plans for crucible, build it and then use it before the reapers enter the galaxy

[Backdraft]

Actually its very smart since he didn't take any losses in doing that vs the several  reapers that were destroyed
 

Really? Where do these unmanned ships come from? Once they're used, they have to be replaced and the reapers won't give you time to rebuild to keep launching unmanned ships at them. The other thing is how many unmanned ships would it take to destroy one capital ship?

 

I take it you're wanting to defeat them conventionally? If so, the reapers would win just by numbers alone. Here's a post I made saying how many they might have.

 

If I was to defeat them conventionally, I would start with their processing ships and troop transport ships. When the reapers approached Illium, the people didn't fire on the capital ships, they fired on the troop transport ships. It delayed the invasion of that planet. If every planet was able to do that, it would put a dent in the reapers plan since they wouldn't have the ground forces they hoped for.

 

Next I would take every ship I had and go to each system that has the fewest reapers in that system and destroy them. I would work my way to the systems that have the most. Depending on your losses, it could take a very long time. I would only do this if I knew exactly the numbers that the reapers have. But since I don't, I wouldn't. The best thing to do is find the plans for crucible, build it and then use it before the reapers enter the galaxy

 

Assuming you only had available ships to work with you could convert any standard alliance ship into a kinetic kill vehicle by simply removing it's crew, life support systems, and weapons. All you really need is a chunk of metal attached to an engine with astro-inertial midcourse guidance and some sort of active LADAR, radar, or IR homing.

 

A ships traveling at relativistic speeds is going to have multiple teratons (tnt equivalent) of kinetic energy which is several orders of magnitude higher than the multi kiloton weapons possessed by the alliance and the reapers. In fact a 10,000 ton kill vehicle traveling at light-speed has the around the same kinetic energy as the meteor that created the Chicxulub crater which is believed to have caused the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event some 60 million years ago. In laymans terms whatever you hit with this thing is going to die, and everything is also going to die. Since the reapers are tactically inept and like to cluster together you could probably kill several of them with one kinetic kill vehicle if you lined it up properly. 

 

As the crucible is proof the the alliance still has significant manufacturing capabilities throughout the reaper invasion, a better course of action would be to mass produce cheap and expendable kinetic kill vehicles. A simple design would be a "boost vehicle" which consists of a  propulsion system capable of relativistic speeds, of which there are many potential options (anti-matter enhanced thermonuclear pulse propulsion drive comes to mind), attached to a kinetic kill vehicle consisting of a navigation suite with inertial and active homing, a ring of chemical rocket boosters for terminal maneuvering, and a tungsten or depleted uranium kinetic energy warhead. The alliance could manufacture tens or hundreds of thousands of these expendable missiles which each have the capability to obliterate a reaper, or pretty much anything they hit. With around 20,000 reaper capital ships (according to the leviathan DLC) this is more than enough to completely destroy the entire reaper fleet. 

 

You then take tons of large transport ships and equip them with hundreds or thousands of these kinetic kill vehicles. When another ship with a sensor suite or an orbital based detection detects the reapers, likely at millions of kilometers range, you fire your kinetic kill vehicles and destroy the reapers before they get anywhere close to your planet.

 

The only defense against his would be a high-powered laser or counter-missile system capable of engaging multiple targets traveling at relativistic speeds. This is something the reapers most obviously do not possess as the reaper destroyer on rannoch was almost comically incapable of hitting a moving human at extremely close range. This indicates that reaper targeting software is even more primitive than modern day human technology, which is certainly incapable of creating a system capable of intercepting an object traveling at relativistic speeds. 

[AllianceGrunt]

I would've done what Fleet Admiral Irix Coronati did. Had his dreadnoughts do a short ftl run landing in the middle of the reaper fleet. His ships were able to turn around quicker than the capital ships destroying several of them.

 

Where did you read this? Was it in a novel or ANN report? 

[themikefest]

Where did you read this? Was it in a novel or ANN report? 

Its from the codex. Scroll down to the Battle of Palaven

[AlanC9]

All arguments of this sort have a fundamental flaw. The Reapers have been harvesting for thousands of cycles. You think nobody ever tried nukes before? Nobody ever tried ramming? Really? The Reapers have been there, beaten that. ( A secondary problem is that most of them would make space dreadnoughts a useless weapons system, which is not coherent with the setting.)

The most you'll prove is that Bio's incapable of writing coherent lore. Well, yeah, but we knew that already.

[AllianceGrunt]

Its from the codex. Scroll down to the Battle of Palaven

 

Thanks  

[Quarian Master Race]

You're trying to think about this in logical terms. Don't. Biower has little grasp of either science or Military tactics/strategy, and no idea how to intergrate them. The lore also contradicts itself all the damn time.

If I had to hazard a guess for an excuse that the writers could use, I'd probably say that this strategy is unfeasible due to the fact that the Reapers have numerically far superior forces if we consider the number of cycles and how they are created/ constructed. Or maybe there's no technological means to target ships at such small targets as other ships (IIRC EDI states that FTL travel results in drift of several thousand kilometers, and Joker brags about his ability to "hit the target the size of a pinhead", suggesting that FTL is anything but an exact process), without getting them within a short range wherin they would have long since been destroyed by Reaper weapons (given the Ranges that ME space combat supposedly takes place).

In addition to engaging enemy fleets at absurdly close range for no apparent tactical reason, both the alliance and the reapers have a fairly amusing tendency of grouping their ships in extremely close together on a flat plane, with is extremely stupid for a variety of reasons. A smart space commander would space his ships out tens of thousands, if not hundred of thousands, of kilometers in all three dimensions. 

I chalk this one up to gameplay or presentation/ lore seperation. The codex states that battles happen at distances of thousands of kilometers for all but fighters and frigates, yet ME3 cinematics have Cruisers and even Dreadnoughts running right up next to the Reapers and pewpewing away. Another good example is the battle of Rannoch resolutions

http://masseffect.wi...ttle_of_Rannoch

In the two permutations in which fighting continues, you have each side using different strategies. If the geth aren't upgraded, the quarians use scout fighters to pinpoint the locations of geth ships and call in fire support from the Liveships and their Dreadnought scale weaponry on the far side of Tikkun nearly half a star system away. Using the star's gravity well as a sort of slingshot, breaking the geth line, destroying their C&C and then hunting down and preying on the seperated stragglers. If permitted the geth use their Reaper upgrades to destroy these fighters, forcing them to commit reserves, and then attacking the quarian's primary strategic weakness, the Civilian Fleet from the rear, forcing the rest of the Fleet to break its lines, put itself in a tactically disadvantageous position and engage in a futile defense due to the former's strategic importance (it contains the vast majority of the quarian population as well as its only sources of food production for the entire species).

However we don't get to see either of these battles. In the cinematics, the two fleets simply smash into one another head on in ridiculously tight formations at extremely short (i.e visual) range and one wins depending on which side Space Jesus ordained as worthy of his grace on the ground. The Liveships are sitting right there over Rannoch even though all the the codex descriptions state that they were parked on the other side of the system. They probably do this for the same reason that modern air combat films usually have dogfights instead of Tom Cruise staring at dots on a radar screen and launching missiles from 50-100km away, Rule of Cool.

[Sylvius the Mad]

Rule of Cool.

Rule of Dumb is more like it.

[Quarian Master Race]

Rule of Dumb is more like it.

I agree, but Rule of Cool is the name of the trope. I don't actually think it is "cool" either. Watching a cruiser and a Reaper fighting so close together that the cruiser gets grabbed by the Reaper's tentacles doesn't awe me, it makes me wonder why both the Reaper and everyone on the ship is so stupid that they decided holding fire and flying within spitting distance to use their multi thousand kilometer ranged guns instead of simply firing when they got in range was a good idea.

[Sylvius the Mad]

I agree, but Rule of Cool is the name of the trope. I don't actually think it is "cool" either. Watching a cruiser and a Reaper fighting so close together that the cruiser gets grabbed by the Reaper's tentacles doesn't awe me, it makes me wonder why both the Reaper and everyone on the ship is so stupid that they decided holding fire and flying within spitting distance to use their multi thousand kilometer ranged guns instead of simply firing when they got in range was a good idea.

Given that we see a Reaper destroyed by a thresher maw, they can't be that durable.

This separation between plot and combat mechanics needs to go away.

[Quarian Master Race]

Given that we see a Reaper destroyed by a thresher maw, they can't be that durable.

This separation between plot and combat mechanics needs to go away.

Rule of Cool yet again. We see an identical Reaper Destroyer tank perhaps hundreds of multi-kiloton yield shells from the entire Quarian Fleet, only going down when some videogamey Attack its Weakpoint for Massive Damage section is complete (said shells also seem to have the ability to confine what should be a tactical nuke sized blast radius to a few meters, or Shepard is magically immune to the effects of orbital bombardment for the duration of the scene).

Reaper capablities are variable to what the plot requires at the time. In ME3's case, it required them to be absurdly inept overall for the narrative to function.

[themikefest]

Rule of Cool yet again. We see an identical Reaper Destroyer tank perhaps hundreds of multi-kiloton yield shells from the entire Quarian Fleet,

The entire fleet? No. It was only 5 maybe 6 ships firing at the thing

 

The whole scene was whatever. When it first was fired on, it fell over on its side. At that point I believed it to be destroyed. But Bioware wanted it to get up close and personal with Shepard. After it gets up, its fired on again, but this time it doesn't fall over like the first time. Why? Nothing was different. I call it the cool crap effect. As for hitting it in the firing chamber, that's a no go since it wasn't exposed the first time it was fired upon and fell over.

[Backdraft]

I just think that bioware could have done a much better job of making the reapers a more deadly threat. The idea that they're supposed to be these "godlike machines" that can't be defeated by conventional means is just silly when you consider their in-game description and prowess. 

 

If Reaper capital ships were more like this, or several hundred, perhaps even thousand, kilometer long warships with main guns capable of turning the surface of a planet into slag with a single hit, I'd be a little more impressed. 

[AlanC9]

Yeah, but then the Reaoers really would be invincible.

[Backdraft]

Yeah, but then the Reaoers really would be invincible.

 

Yeah but isn't it the whole point that you need some giant mcguffin to defeat the reapers?