234 réponses à ce sujet

[Iakus]

Well, like I said upthread -- or was that another thread? -- we're talking about different kinds of unbelievability. Adding flat-out irrational behavior on both sides, on top of the space magic the series was always built on, makes things even worse than they already were. Of course, YMMV if you didn't already think that ME was about on par with Doctor Who in its commitment to scientific plausibility. (I don't mean that as a slam on ME; if wacky space magic bothered me I wouldn't have come back after ME1, or been watching Doctor Who since the Fourth Doctor.)
 

We were already there.  We'd been there since ME2, if not ME1.  Certainly since the fall of Earth.  As I've said before, there is no way SHepard should have survived to deliver the Crucible plans.  So what difference does it make at this point?

 

 

Remember, the strategic problem that the Citadel forces need to solve here is very difficult. Thanks to the horrible botch ME1 made of the space combat lore, planets are not really defensible. Merely being superior to total Reaper fleet strength doesn't give you a win if you can't bring the enemy to battle, and you can't keep the Reapers from entering a cluster by blockading the primary relay, since transit uncertainty works in favor of attackers, not defenders.

 

But, but the action!!  The explosions!  

 

THE FEELZ!

[fhs33721]

So in other words, it WAS possible. ME1 set up the conventional victory.

You mean the ME1 where a single Reaper was easily going to to toe with an entire fleet, was even winning that battle and ultimately only lost because he pulled a whacky posession move that somehow backfired for no apparent reason? Because if anything the Reapers have been significantly nerfed between ME1 and ME3.

[Iakus]

You mean the ME1 where a single Reaper was easily going to to toe with an entire fleet, was even winning that battle and ultimately only lost because he pulled a whacky posession move that somehow backfired for no apparent reason? Because if anything the Reapers have been significantly nerfed between ME1 and ME3.

Funny, I only recall seeing Sovereign destroy one ship.

 

The bulk of Alliance losses came from the geth fleet, which at that point had been dealt with.

 

The big question was "Could the Alliance destroy Sovereign before it could open the dark space relay?"  Not "Could Sovereign fight off an entire fleet single-handed?"

[ld1449]

You mean the ME1 where a single Reaper was easily going to to toe with an entire fleet, was even winning that battle and ultimately only lost because he pulled a whacky posession move that somehow backfired for no apparent reason? Because if anything the Reapers have been significantly nerfed between ME1 and ME3.

 

Someone should learn to read.

[CYRAX470]

Funny, I only recall seeing Sovereign destroy one ship.
 
The bulk of Alliance losses came from the geth fleet, which at that point had been dealt with.
 
The big question was "Could the Alliance destroy Sovereign before it could open the dark space relay?"  Not "Could Sovereign fight off an entire fleet single-handed?"

He destroyed a 3 ships with his beams, and then another just sort of crashed into him.

[fhs33721]

Funny, I only recall seeing Sovereign destroy one ship.

 

The bulk of Alliance losses came from the geth fleet, which at that point had been dealt with.

 

The big question was "Could the Alliance destroy Sovereign before it could open the dark space relay?"  Not "Could Sovereign fight off an entire fleet single-handed?"

Then you are recalling it wrong.

During the cutscene that triggers after you have depleted half of Saren-husks health we see Sovereign blow up 3-4 ships (one kind of just explodes without any red beam coming near it). The cutscene also last only a few seconds which means the actual losses during the entire battle were much likely higher. The Alliance even considers to retreat shortly in the very same scene. Quote: "Sovereign is to strong, we have to pull back!"

[Dantriges]

The interesting thing is, these ships were AFAIK intended to be frigates until the writers(?) or so, saw them in the cutscenes and realized, they were too big. So ok they were cruisers afterwards. I wonder if the first idea was that Souvereign´s resilience was partly based on the Alliance bringing undergunned ships. You could still headcanon the whole thing with the Alliance bringing old cruisers as the new ones were deployed somewhere else like the Citadel fleet that was supposed to catch Saren somewhere en route and the old rustbuckets were all that was close. But well, seems they choose not to because it was good enough.
 
I have to admit that I didn´t realize at first, that Shep killing Saren was the thing that took down Sovereign´s shields because it sounded totally ridiculous that killing the reaper´s favorite puppet drone would have such an effect. Sometimes i think that they should have used a strictly ground based enemy because the mental gymnastics, so Shep can kill mile long ships, are really weird.

[ImaginaryMatter]

Then you are recalling it wrong.

During the cutscene that triggers after you have depleted half of Saren-husks health we see Sovereign blow up 3-4 ships (one kind of just explodes without any red beam coming near it). The cutscene also last only a few seconds which means the actual losses during the entire battle were much likely higher. The Alliance even considers to retreat shortly in the very same scene. Quote: "Sovereign is to strong, we have to pull back!"

 

In ME2 don't we learn that only 8 cruiser's were lost in the entire battle?

 

More importantly though, I don't think this kind of argument is going to go any where. BioWare can and has ignored details like this the entire time. Even the line about Sovereign dying because of a negative feed back loop from Saren-hopper might be some sort of retcon; that line I said about the 8 cruisers might be a similar sort of retcon of I did remember it right.

[Dantriges]

Some people wanting to retreat was probably just a panic reaction after seeing that good ol cuttlefish was taking it without "flinching" while being a stationary target. Hm if one of the ships blew up just by being near the beam the obvious answer for conventional victory would be to construct bioships out of Shepard´s cloned muscle tissue and skin, as it´s the most resilient material in the galaxy. At least it´s better at withstanding close reaperblasts than an Alliance cruiser.

[ImaginaryMatter]

Some people wanting to retreat was probably just a panic reaction after seeing that good ol cuttlefish was taking it without "flinching" while being a stationary target. Hm if one of the ships blew up just by being near the beam the obvious answer for conventional victory would be to construct bioships out of Shepard´s cloned muscle tissue and skin, as it´s the most resilient material in the galaxy. At least it´s better at withstanding close reaperblasts than an Alliance cruiser.

 

I would teach captains how to do combat rolls with their ships. That tactic works.

[KrrKs]

In ME2 don't we learn that only 8 cruiser's were lost in the entire battle?

I always saw that as the number of cruiser being lost while aiding the DA against the geth, not the the total number...

[bunch1]

I've just been skimming this thread and thought I'd add my 2 cents on the OP. 

 

Technically it is possibly to win the war through conventional means.  We know reaper ships can be destroyed by conventional organic warships as we see several times throughout the games and their ground forces aren't all that impressive.  The only real factor is numbers.  Organics just don't have them.  If the Asari, the richest, most populous, and technologically advanced race this cycle had built 1 or 2 dreadnoughts a years and say 5 to 10 cruisers then how powerful would their fleet have been after their 2,000 years as a space fairing race?  The fact is that the organic fleets are insanely tiny when compared to the populations and territory they are expected to protect.  The US alone has more then a dozen aircraft carriers, with ships a 1/3 the size or a dreadnought and crews over 4,000 and that is only with a population of 300 million.  How many humans does the Alliance protect,11.4 billion on Earth alone and how many more beyond?  And yet they only have 9 dreadnoughts.  Their are trillions of Asari and Salarians, they've been in space for thousands of years and colonized hundreds if not thousands of worlds, they should have hundreds if not thousands of dreadnoughts each, instead they have a few dozen.  What's strange is that it doesn't take long to build one, in the 2 years between me1 and me2 the Turians build 2 and the Alliance 1 with 1 more finished the next year and another under  construction.

 

But after the Reapers arrive, I don't see the organics as being able to mass produce the number of ships they would need for conventional victory, the reapers seem to target the most powerful systems first so reducing capital ship building capacity.  If the network is shutdown then operating on a cluster level I can see some cluster build up massive fleets while they wait their turn for the harvest 2-300 years down the line and using that time to build thousands of dreadnoughts and cruisers to protect themselves.  Even then, lore wise their is over 10,000 reapers dreadnought, even if we don't see evidence in game, so while I think they would inflict losses I don't see victory in that scenario.  The only way I could see traditional conventional victory after the start of the game considering the default fleets would be if they figured out how to mass produce the thanix cannon and mount it on small cheap fighters giving them the power of a cruiser.  I could see major industrial worlds and their supporting planets, cut off from the rest of the galaxy but still having ease of movement within the cluster, building and stockpiling tens of thousands if not hundreds of thousands of these thanix armed fighters 2-300 years from the present and giving the reapers a nasty surprise when they show up.  Repeated over several worlds and clusters it might be enough to turn the tide, but it might not.  The only other option would be a true anti ship energy weapon that allowed them to completely bypass the reaper barriers.

 

But that would take far to long for a game to play out.

[fhs33721]

In ME2 don't we learn that only 8 cruiser's were lost in the entire battle?

 

More importantly though, I don't think this kind of argument is going to go any where. BioWare can and has ignored details like this the entire time. Even the line about Sovereign dying because of a negative feed back loop from Saren-hopper might be some sort of retcon; that line I said about the 8 cruisers might be a similar sort of retcon of I did remember it right.

That was kind what I was trying saying. They did somewhat rectoned the strenght of the Reapers between ME1 and the other two installments. In ME1 Sovereign apparently wrecks everyone on his own until the plot demands for him to flop on his back like a dead spider for no good reason.

Then in ME2 Shepard and crew kill an Reaper-in the making on foot and in ME3 while they are still significantly more powerful than everything else they actually suffer some (admittedly kind of minor) casualties in their harvest.

I was protesting against the notion that ME1 was the installment where conventional victory was presented as possible, because in my opinion it was the installment where they were presented as the most overpowered in the entire franchise.

[Iakus]

 

I was protesting against the notion that ME1 was the installment where conventional victory was presented as possible, because in my opinion it was the installment where they were presented as the most overpowered in the entire franchise.

Well, ME1 was the game where it was strongly implied that a united galaxy could successfully face down the Reapers.  And that was the reason why the hit the Citadel first:  DIvide and conquer.  And Sovereign used the geth fleet to run interference for it because it couldn't take the CItadel fleet on its own.

 

But it was all retconned in ME3.  They Reapers were doing just fine curb-stomping the galaxy fighting everyone at once, and leaving the galaxy control of the relay network.  It was ME3 where "THEY CAN'T BE FOUGHT CONVENTIONALLY!!!"  IT was ME# where a Deus ex Machina was needed to stop them, conveniently buried in Prothean archives that hadn't been found in 30 years of study  which in ME1 was "a small data cache"

[BaladasDemnevanni]

Yeah, but I wouldn't call one Reaper being unable to take on an entire fleet quite the same thing as conventional victory being possible, not remotely. We all expected there to be a Reaper fleet in dark space. If Sovereign could take on a fleet solo, that would just make them even more OP than they already are.

 

ME1 is usually touted as the Reapers being OP precisely because of how much effort it takes to remove even a single one of them.

 

Likewise with the Citadel trap. Herding cows doesn't mean we're afraid of them uniting against us; it's because it makes the slaughter easier/more efficient for us.

[fhs33721]

 It was ME# where a Deus ex Machina was needed to stop them, conveniently buried in Prothean archives that hadn't been found in 30 years of study  which in ME1 was "a small data cache"

As opposed to ME1 where Shepard killing Sovereigns favourite husk and this resulting in the extremely convenient death of his main body....  somehow... was needed to stop them? This isn't really much better than suddenly finding a convenient superweapon to stop them.

[Iakus]

As opposed to ME1 where Shepard killing Sovereigns favourite husk and this resulting in the extremely convenient death of his main body....  somehow... was needed to stop them? This isn't really much better than suddenly finding a convenient superweapon to stop them.

Except it didn't kill Sovereign, it momentarily stunned it, giving the Alliance a chance to pound it with the barriers down.

 

The Alliance may, heck probably would have killed Sovereign eventually.  Taking more casualties in the process sure.  The question was, could they have destroyed Sovereign before it could open the dark space relays?  Because if not the whole thing was moot.

[fhs33721]

Except it didn't kill Sovereign, it momentarily stunned it, giving the Alliance a chance to pound it with the barriers down.

 

The Alliance may, heck probably would have killed Sovereign eventually.  Taking more casualties in the process sure.  The question was, could they have destroyed Sovereign before it could open the dark space relays?  Because if not the whole thing was moot.

Now I think you are actually on to something.

[themikefest]

Had Hackett positioned the ships behind the reaper, its possible the Alliance may of taken minimal losses, maybe even no losses at all, firing at the reaper from behind. If that happened, Sovereign would've had to unhook itself from the tower, and turn around to fire at the Alliance. When the guy says "Sovereign is too strong. We have to pull back," Hackett says, " Negative. Take down that monster down no matter the cost." The problem with that is they weren't damaging Sovereign. So that was a stupid comment on his part. All he had to do was move the ships to a position where they won't take anymore damage.

 

Even after the shields went down, Sovereign still wasn't taking any damage. Hold on. Here's comes this itsy-bitsy frigate, with a fighter on each side of it, to fire a shot at Sovereign that ends up destroying the reaper. The whole thing was setup for the puny little SR1 to destroy Sovereign. The Alliance could've had a thousand ships firing at Sovereign. It wouldn't matter. It also showed how powerful a reaper is.

 

Lets say the Alliance was able to destroy Sovereign without Shepard defeating the grasshopper. Would that mean the reapers can be defeated conventionally? No. The reapers may take more losses, but would win by numbers alone.

 

I see only 3 ways for them to be beaten conventionally. Shepard learns by destroying Harbinger, the reapers will stop the harvest. Destroying the Citadel after learning the thing controls the reapers. Or if Bioware says the reaper numbers are low enough to have a conventional victory. Of course depending on that last one, a conventional victory might happen after Shepard dies of old age. I guess a 4th option could be added. Have a mission that takes place in darkspace where the reapers are vulnerable and destroy them that way. Them being vulnerable is only speculation on Vigil's part.

 

 I would be curious how Bioware would've set it up to have a conventional victory if they wanted one.

[Dantriges]

Does anyone actually know where a Reaper has its gun ports at this moment in the trilogy*  and would the Alliance navy been able to maneuver in this enclosed space surrounded by a space city with millions of inhabitants and on an unknown time constraint, after entering it via a gap between two highly populated areas? I have no idea how maneuverable these cruisers actually are.  And Sovereign never fired before, so it could be just a case of "ups, we thought that the part with the moving gear is the vulnerable one and now we are stuck with a whole fleet inside a city."

 

*do they actually that it flies tentacle forward, there isn´t much to discern how it flies. Considering that the only intel the Alliance has is that it lands with its tentacles to the ground, it´s not an unreasonable to assume that forward is the actual back.

[themikefest]

*do they actually that it flies tentacle forward, there isn´t much to discern how it flies. Considering that the only intel the Alliance has is that it lands with its tentacles to the ground, it´s not an unreasonable to assume that forward is the actual back.

If that's the case, why didn't the hackett tell the ships to move behind the thing when the ships were being destroyed?

[Dantriges]

Possibilities:

-The fleet as a whole (with the exception of frigates) is as maneuverable as a US carrier group within confined waters. Could be. As I said it´s a possibility, but never seen cruisers moving like graceful ballet dancers.

-Considering that no one knows how long it takes Sovereign to open the relay or reprogram the master unit or whatever Sovie was still doing when hugging the tower after Shep secured the console, taking casualties was considered an acceptable tradeoff for more time firing at the thing now.

-No one knew if moving the fleet wouldn´t be an exercise in futility. For all they know it could be that the red beam is actually the equivalent of an AA gun aka Gardian system or Sovereign is just taking potshots with his clear the LZ gun instead of his weapon of Doom. For all they know the main gun could be in the fin.

 

Yeah Hackett isn´t the brightest bulb in the drawer, but I wouldn´t use that battle as an example. The enemy was vastly superior with technology never seen or anticipated, they had no intel and were on an unknown countdown where the next second could be disastrous loss and he had to maneuver his fleet surrounded by a metropolis. Normally I would say that Hackett is an idiot for charging into battle with no intel but it´s hard to blame him for doing that, when it was more or less impossible to gather any and the alternative was to wait and see what happens when the dark space relay opens.

[themikefest]

Hackett  is an idiot. If there was a conventional victory in Mass Effect, he would be at the bottom of the list to lead such an attack.

 

If time was of the essence to prevent Sovereign from opening the relay, then saving the destiny ascension is a waste. It takes away ships that could've helped stop Sovereign and save time, but instead are destroyed for saving that ship

[Dantriges]

Considering that there were still geth ships out there, who have quite a lot of open space to turn around, nope. Also we don´t know how maneuverable these ships are. And the only info we had from forward observer Shepard who neglects to mention that s/he can´t see anything, the fleet isn´t even there, yet. We only know the condition of the Destiny Ascension which seems to be pretty grim and it turns out she can´t join the battle after being saved. But well for all we know at the moment, could have been that you exchanged losing one or two of your own cruisers for the aid of 7-8 turian cruisers or it turns out the Ascension can still turn on spot with maneuver thrusters or the offline drive was just some minor thing which gets repaired by replacing some fried circuits and then then proceeds to shoot Sovereign off the tower with the only dreadnought gun available.

[themikefest]

Fortunately I don't give a crap about the destiny ascension. So I don't save the thing. 

 

With the ships moving around. If they are not doing any damage, then why keep firing at the same spot? The reaper is very strong from the front, as seen in the game, but what about the back? I would say their backside is a weak spot. Even in ME3, no one is making any effort to fire at a reapers backside. The only thing is what the turians did during the Battle of Palaven. Kalros did the right thing. Knew it couldn't win from the front. So it got the reaper from the back