416 réponses à ce sujet

[marshalleck]

dan107 wrote...

No one is saying (at least I don't think) that you use the base to continue building a hostile Reaper. You keep it to at least study and understand the technology that's about to be used to wipe you out. A possible implication of keeping the base is that it could be used to construct a friendly Reaper-like entity to combat the Reapers at a great cost of human lives.

Whether or not it's worth it to construct a Reaper is argueable, but simply destroying the base and thus giving up your best hope of understanding your enemy is insane IMO.

Putting your faith in TIM to ever stop and question whether or not it's wise to construct a "friendly Reaper" is quite insane.

[Maria Caliban]

Kwonnern wrote...

Thaddeus Mynor wrote...
I think the most ridiculous thing about choosing
to save or destroy the collector's base is that it seems like the whole game is
geared toward you destroying it.

Well, i am sure that if you used that save (where you kept the base) it will totally change the ME3-experience should you desire to import.

Yep. Like the major impact saving the Council had in ME 2.

[KnightofPhoenix]

stofsk wrote...
The sole purpose for that base to exist is to turn human beings into milkshakes, because that's (apparently) how you make reapers. Without even needing to go into how this technology isn't exactly useful or ethical to implement, as other posters have already pointed out, EDI has already datamined whatever soft intel that could be gleaned from the base, so again it's a false dilemma (the choice between saving or destroying the base).

Assumption. No proof. We don't know how much data EDI extracted. STudying the base would make sure if we did miss anythign or not. Simply assumign that we giot everything is illogical.

Knowing how to build a reaper = knowing how to destroy it.
 Knowing how to create a virus = knwing how to cure it.

Studying how a reaper is created is not "useless". Studying any kind of technology about an enemy we know nothign about is never useless.

The ethics of the action is irrelevent, as that's personal and subjective. But to simply dismiss the base as useless is irresponsable. The only thing we can really argue about is that you don't trust TIM with the base. In which case it's a personal opinion, which you are entitled to have. I on the otherhand trust him enough to give him the base. I am entitled to my opinion.

And you can't argue from a consequentialist point of view if you don't actually have the results and consequences in front of you.

Modifié par KnightofPhoenix, 03 février 2010 - 11:51 .

[Schurge]

They can't possibly agree with you on everything...

Its as dumb as keeping the Ring of Power.

[jmood88]

mentosman8 wrote...

Giving the Collector base to Cerberus=the Salarian's giving nukes to the Krogan IMO. Taking extremely advanced-beyond-your-time technology does not end well, and hampers development. Not to mention, TIM is way too shady. Seemed to know the Collector's were behind the abductions, knows the Reaper's are real, knew the ship was a trap but sent Shepard anyway, just happened to know of undeniable proof of the Reaper threat that could have been used to force the council's hand and didn't mention it... As I played through I got more and more feeling that he wasn't what he seemed. Sure, he brought Shepard back to life, but it sure seems like that lines up with what the Collectors wanted. I didn't trust him once during the game, and can't think of any reason him getting the base would be a good idea.

The only reason the Mass Effect universe exists as it does is because humans took extremely advanced technology and figured out how to use it to their advantage.

Modifié par jmood88, 03 février 2010 - 11:54 .

[tariq071]

Looking from military perspective(as former military person) base was just way to far away from "frontlines",deep in "enemy territory"and realistically  almost impossible to hold on to it military and logistically.Due to distance and traveling issues , it cannot be used as some bridgehead.

It's like giving base back to the Reapers intact for free.Pure military rational would lead you to gather all the data and samples that you can, destroyed it and retreat it.

If, hypothetically, NATO took some military base deep in Russian territory (or vice versa), they would not hold onto it , no matter how important that it was, but do exactly as it above.You can translate same for the Space.

Shepard is first and foremost professional soldier and that would be his logic.He got data (EDI) , he got goods, made enemy to bleed heavily and have to retreat , in view of the advancing Reapers fleet, which he slowed down dramatically now.

On top of that,  attempt to hold onto that base, despite all mentioned disadvantages of doing it,is going to be perceived as desparate attempt of drowning person holding for a straw, or pure cowardness.

[dan107]

stofsk wrote...
The sole purpose for that base to exist is to turn human beings into milkshakes, because that's (apparently) how you make reapers. Without even needing to go into how this technology isn't exactly useful or ethical to implement, as other posters have already pointed out, EDI has already datamined whatever soft intel that could be gleaned from the base, so again it's a false dilemma (the choice between saving or destroying the base). Whatever intel can be gotten has been gotten, anything else - a large part of which is the infrastructure - isn't worth keeping (unless you seriously think the key to stopping the reapers is to make a set of reapers yourself to send against them... which would cost billions of lives... and don't be too surprised if they end up joining forces with the reapers that are coming).

TIM wants to keep the base intact because there might be hidden secrets. Five seconds from the end of the match he calls you up and wants to change the game. No way. He recruited me to stop the Collectors - this is how to stop them.

I'm not convinced that EDI can grab all the relevant information in the hour or so that you're there, regardless of what she says. And it's very likely that there will indeed be hidden secrets. As far as stopping the Collectors - destroying the base has nothing to do with it. You wipe them out regardless. I'd say that qualifies as stopping them.

I am arguing from a consequentionist standpoint - the outcome is what is important. Your scenario gives only two outcomes, where everyone dies or half die to save the other half (but you have to kill that half). Simplistically, the choice is obvious - but as I laboured to point out before, choosing the lesser of two evils isn't a 'moral' choice, you're still choosing an evil option. And in order to make a decision like that, the outcomes have to be certain - which is impossible to determine in a real life sitatuation.

I'm not saying otherwise. Lesser evil is still evil. But there are some ends that justify great evils to achieve them (like species survival).

Operating under the assumption that to any given scenario there can ONLY BE a choice between the lesser of two evils IS a false dilemma, however. The more simplistic the scenario only serves to limit the options, the less useful an ethical examination becomes.

I disagree. Once you introduce uncertainty, you lessen responsibility. The only way that you can truly examine a person's morality is if the consequences of his actions are known in advance. It does not require a lot of soul searching to roll the dice and hope for the best.

Modifié par dan107, 03 février 2010 - 11:59 .

[KnightofPhoenix]

tariq071 wrote...

Looking from military perspective(as former military person) base was just way to far away from "frontlines",deep in "enemy territory"and realistically  almost impossible to hold on to it military and logistically.Due to distance and traveling issues , it cannot be used as some bridgehead.

Point is super moot, as the Reapers don't live in the deep core.

[dan107]

KnightofPhoenix wrote...

tariq071 wrote...

Looking from military perspective(as former military person) base was just way to far away from "frontlines",deep in "enemy territory"and realistically  almost impossible to hold on to it military and logistically.Due to distance and traveling issues , it cannot be used as some bridgehead.

Point is super moot, as the Reapers don't live in the deep core.

And mass relay travel is instant (and seemingly free) thus nullifying the concept of frontlines.

[Stofsk]

KnightofPhoenix wrote...

Assumption. No proof. We don't know how much data EDI extracted. STudying the base would make sure if we did miss anythign or not. Simply assumign that we giot everything is illogical.

Knowing how to build a reaper = knowing how to destroy it.
Knowing how to create a virus = knwing how to cure it.

Studying how a reaper is created is not "useless". Studying any kind of technology about an enemy we know nothign about is never useless.

Well, not to 'meta game' but Joker handed Shepard a pad at the end of ME2 which clearly showed data on reapers on it. It is clear that EDI salvaged some intel from her datamining.

The ethics of the action is irrelevent, as that's personal and subjective.

No it isn't. Moral relativism is though.

And you can't argue from a consequentialist point of view if you don't actually have the results and consequences in front of you.

Totally false. Consequential thinking does not require all the results to be known in advance. Consequential thinking requires you to consider the ramifications of a particular course of action, weighing whatever variables that are obvious as well as not-so-obvious.

[pelhikano]

tariq071 wrote...

Looking from military perspective(as former military person) base was just way to far away from "frontlines",deep in "enemy territory"and realistically  almost impossible to hold on to it military and logistically.Due to distance and traveling issues , it cannot be used as some bridgehead.

It's not supposed to be a military base in any form, it's an object to be studied scientifically. It should be rigged to be detonated at the slightest sign it could be retaken by the enemy.

[tariq071]

KnightofPhoenix wrote...

tariq071 wrote...

Looking from military perspective(as former military person) base was just way to far away from "frontlines",deep in "enemy territory"and realistically  almost impossible to hold on to it military and logistically.Due to distance and traveling issues , it cannot be used as some bridgehead.

Point is super moot, as the Reapers don't live in the deep core.

I don't think it is. They do have much more advantage(military, strategical and logistical) to get it back before some scientists cracked the anything valuable out of it.

Council and Alliance don't even know about it yet, and that means they will need time for them to mobilze sufficient defensive force for it.Cerberus , despite all the money and resources, doesn't have enough of military muscle to do it alone.

"Suicide mission" was pure Hit and Run special Ops mission and as such was complete success. They managed to retrive some "hostages" but that was just bonus to it.You are not going to beat Reapers with sheer muscle , which that base supposedly represent , but with quick surgical strikes in their vital points, mostly of special ops type.

Even if 2 fleets do meet somewhere in ME3 , it will be Special Ops part that will decide and resolve the battle , and not who has more advanced tech or bigger d... (err. guns)

pelhikano wrote...
It's not supposed to be a military
base in any form, it's an object to be studied scientifically. It
should be rigged to be detonated at the slightest sign it could be
retaken by the enemy.

Way to much of risk , base doesn't have weapons itself, if it does , they would be used along with Collectors ship to intercept Normandy in her approach. And even if there was , blueprints (or schematics) are with EDI.

Modifié par tariq071, 04 février 2010 - 12:07 .

[dan107]

marshalleck wrote...
Putting your faith in TIM to ever stop and question whether or not it's wise to construct a "friendly Reaper" is quite insane.

You realize that not trusting TIM is actually not a logical option in ME2? Yeah you get the conversation options to say that you don't trust him, but that's just window dressing. If you really didn't trust him, you'd run to the alliance with all his plans. You certainly wouldn't voluntarily wander into the collector ship or fly blindly through a mass relay at his direction if you didn't trust him.

[KnightofPhoenix]

stofsk wrote...

KnightofPhoenix wrote...

Assumption. No proof. We don't know how much data EDI extracted. STudying the base would make sure if we did miss anythign or not. Simply assumign that we giot everything is illogical.

Knowing how to build a reaper = knowing how to destroy it.
Knowing how to create a virus = knwing how to cure it.

Studying how a reaper is created is not "useless". Studying any kind of technology about an enemy we know nothign about is never useless.

Well, not to 'meta game' but Joker handed Shepard a pad at the end of ME2 which clearly showed data on reapers on it. It is clear that EDI salvaged some intel from her datamining.

Some. Not all.

The ethics of the action is irrelevent, as that's personal and subjective.

No it isn't. Moral relativism is though.

We can argue about good and evil all day and that wouldn't matter. We all have different definitions. Unless you want us to argue for years.

And you can't argue from a consequentialist point of view if you don't actually have the results and consequences in front of you.

Totally false. Consequential thinking does not require all the results to be known in advance. Consequential thinking requires you to consider the ramifications of a particular course of action, weighing whatever variables that are obvious as well as not-so-obvious.

And as the issue isn't obvious and as I am arguing about the positive benefits that the base might provide that surpass the risks imo, then I am arguing from the same position.
Since we do not know the consequences for sure, we can argue this all day and it wouldn't matter.

Consequentalism is explained by Moore in Principia Ethica. and he says that the only way to judge the ethical aspect of an action is to anaylse its consequences, once they are clear and done. Other than that, it's msotly speculation.

[KnightofPhoenix]

tariq071 wrote...

KnightofPhoenix wrote...

tariq071 wrote...

Looking from military perspective(as former military person) base was just way to far away from "frontlines",deep in "enemy territory"and realistically  almost impossible to hold on to it military and logistically.Due to distance and traveling issues , it cannot be used as some bridgehead.

Point is super moot, as the Reapers don't live in the deep core.

I don't think it is. They do have much more advantage(military, strategical and logistical) to get it back before some scientists cracked the anything valuable out of it.

Hypotheticals. Whether they can or not is irelevent. I won't destroy the base sinply because there is a chance that the Reapers might take it easily, before we can learn anythign useful.
I might as well not get out of my house because there is a chance I might die.

War is about risks. We take them.
It's not clear if the Reapers know we took the base. It's not clear if they can go there immediately. Infact, they seem pretty despserate to find a way to go to the galaxy. I don't think it's via the deep core.

So the base is most likely safe from the reapers for now.

Modifié par KnightofPhoenix, 04 février 2010 - 12:15 .

[Stofsk]

dan107 wrote...

I'm not convinced that EDI can grab all the relevant information in the hour or so that you're there, regardless of what she says. And it's very likely that there will indeed be hidden secrets. As far as stopping the Collectors - destroying the base has nothing to do with it. You wipe them out regardless. I'd say that qualifies as stopping them.

Keeping the base intact isn't a final solution. Infrastructure is still intact, which means the bast can be taken off you in a counter-attack. There may be booby traps too, hidden defences. Harbinger has a direct line on the base, which nobody knows about (but we as removed 3rd party players do). In character, the risks are too great.

I'm not saying otherwise. Lesser evil is still evil. But there are some ends that justify great evils to achieve them (like species survival).

Ends justifying the means is fine, if the ends are a moral outcome the means used to achieve those ends would have to be moral as well. But if the means are evil, or immoral, then the outcome will be immoral. You can claim that the reapers have as much right for species survival as we do, and they don't care about moral or ethical considerations.

I disagree. Once you introduce uncertainty, you lessen responsibility. The only way that you can truly examine a person's morality is if the consequences of his actions are known in advance. It does not require a lot of soul searching to roll the dice and hope for the best.

Hardly. That would make the only moral person in the world a person who can see the future. You don't need to reduce uncertainty to make moral decisions, because life isn't like that, nor will it ever be. You can't examine someone's morality with certitude by loading the dice between two obvious outcomes. That's absurd. You can only do the best you can, operating under the information you have available, and knowing that certain actions have a high probability of affecting certain outcomes. Matters of negligence are  a perfect example. Acting negligently isn't guaranteed to result in a tragedy for which you are liable, but it doesn't have to be. Merely acting negligently without consideration for the consequences (which cannot by definition be known ahead of time) is goddamn immoral. Driving drunk for instance. You're not guaranteed to smash into someone and kill them, you cannot know that ahead of time, but the chances of doing so increase to unacceptable levels. Knowing this as a potential though unmade consequence, allows someone to decide whether to act expediently or morally. (the moral choice in this scenario being to not get behind the wheel)

[Darthnemesis2]

tariq071 wrote...

Looking from military perspective(as former military person) base was just way to far away from "frontlines",deep in "enemy territory"and realistically  almost impossible to hold on to it military and logistically.Due to distance and traveling issues , it cannot be used as some bridgehead.

No, the Collector base is more like a facility built deep behind 'our' lines, the Reapers are from outside of our Galaxy (as seen at the end where they are in deep space looking at the whole of the milky way) while the Collector's base is in the center, with only the Omega-4 relay linking to it. Its no harder to defend than any other planet.

___

As for EDI datamining the base, even for an AI there is no way she could have poured through every file on that base in that amount of time. Even if only a fraction of the files are encrypted it would still take much more than an hour (tops) to pour through the sheer amount of info the collectors would have amassed during the eons since they were converted from Protheans into Collectors by the Reapers. The data Joker has at the end could have been anything from another darelect Reaper to data they had already collected about Sovereign.

[pelhikano]

tariq071 wrote...

You are not going to beat Reapers with sheer muscle , which that base supposedly represent , but with quick surgical strikes in their vital points, mostly of special ops type.

Reapers aren't a bunch of guys with guns. What are you even going to "surgically strike" against? They have no bases or anything like that where they sleep, they are giant hyper-intelligent robot starships that fly through space and blast everything to bits that gets in their way. They need no sleep, or bases to refuel or anything like that as far as we know. Thousands upon thousands of them are coming, and yes I agree, the galaxy is worse than ill-prepared to fight them head on even if you could extract info out of the base to build better weapons and armor, never mind outfitting the ships of the organic's fleets in time, whenever that is.

The point of keeping the base is to study how they are made, what is inside them, so you can figure out if they even HAVE a weakness that doesn't involve them doing whatever Sovereign did in ME1 so the shields go down. They aren't completely magical either so we CAN learn something, as the Turians managed to make a gun based on the same principle as their own which also works brilliantly and to great effect, although we do not know if that weapon would be able to strike against a real Reaper rather than "just" a Collector ship.

[Mallissin]

stofsk wrote...
False analogy. There isn't a dead reaper sitting in the middle of the presidium, but there IS one sitting in the Collector base, and there IS a direct link between the Collector base and Harbinger.

Uh, actually...there was a dead reaper sitting in the presidium. We called it Sovereign. Turians were able to make a fantastic weapon that saved your ass from the wreckage splashed all over the inside of the Citadel.

Checkmate, my friend. CHECKMATE!

[jmood88]

Mallissin wrote...

stofsk wrote...
False analogy. There isn't a dead reaper sitting in the middle of the presidium, but there IS one sitting in the Collector base, and there IS a direct link between the Collector base and Harbinger.

Uh, actually...there was a dead reaper sitting in the presidium. We called it Sovereign. Turians were able to make a fantastic weapon that saved your ass from the wreckage splashed all over the inside of the Citadel.

Checkmate, my friend. CHECKMATE!

I already brought that up and he ignored it.

[Dragoncloud]

dan107 wrote...

TheRastapopolous wrote...
how most people could even consider destroying that base is beyound me.

I think it's subconscious meta-gaming. People know that it's a game and that it will end well even if you do all the "nice" things, that's why they throw away the base. However, if you were really in Shepard's shoes, and really were facing a very serious possibility of human extinction, you'd have to be out of your f*cking mind to throw out your only know hope for salvation. Hell, I'd personally feed half the humans in the galaxy into that thing if it meant saving the other half.

Didn't sovereign say the reapers liked it when species followed the set path of technological advancement that the reapers set out for them? Didn't the whole Heretic thing with the Geth happen because half of them were all 'yey we get free tech from an evil overlord' and the other half were 'we want to develop our own tech to come to a similar or maybe same outcome but with our own science not some free handout'.

I blew the base because many harvesting cycles showed that using tech laid out by the reapers is a bad thing (sure the new guns on your ship worked wonders on a collector ship, which isnt the same as a reaper, probably not as strong either, most of its functsion relied on a massive 1 hit kill cannon and massive transport, nothing defensive.)
On the other hand Legion's talk about the reprogrammed heretics having a chance to go heretic again (and even having spies amongst the non-heretics even though legion thought it to be impossible) combined with the whole quarian vs geth war brewing, i figured i'd blow up the heretics, getting rid of a ton of geth making them more prone to a peacefull surrender if not peacefull cease-fire with their creators (which if you talk to legion is more then possible from the geth point of view, the geth only acted in self defence, they still don't see why their creators striked at them). Worst case i'll have a weakened geth force going up against the full quarian fleet, having the quarians incur fewer losses. Sure it gave me renegade points, but so did playing bad cop, the rachni choice in me1 turned out to be a good one, reprogramming (brainwashing essentially) millions of geth, that retain the knowledge of being reprogrammed isn't really beneficial for relations.

I'm surprised TIM didn't plant a killswitch in shep though (or did he?). I actually see TIM using the base to make a reaper to fight the reapers (because every reaper is a race/a nation, so even if the whole of humanity is synthesised into a reaper, it still represents humanity),  probably even finding a way to make him the 'dominant' mind of the whole thing.

Also on the 'hidden relay' thing the reapers might use, i don't think they have anything like that, but i don't doubt they can travel a lot faster then the current space faring species. (don't forget that they each have a huge mass core, if they can somehow link them all thats a lot of energy they can use for travelling)



Only thing that made me think twice about destroying was that TIM's reasoning is the same one Mordin used for keeping the genophage research data from his loyalty quest.

KnightofPhoenix wrote...

Who said anythign about continuing that?

The collector base is a factory that builds reapers. That means it is equipped with the proper facilities and the technological know-how that is purely 100%, secret, Reaper technology. How can anyone not want to study that?
Studying how a reaper is built means uncovering alot of their secrets and hopefully weaknesses.

IT is highly unlikely that TIM will produce a reaper. It would draw too much attention to himself and he seemingly knows what the reapers are. He wouldn't take the risk. His intentions are probably to study it and reverse engineer whatever technology that can be used. Unless Bioware wants to pull off the classic stupid comic villain thing.

The only way to study would be to make little bits of working reaper with that tech... which requires organics... and even a fully shredded reaper still retains some of its mindcontrolling functions.... yeah... good luck with that, if anything those that kept the base will have a nice mission clearing out that base and finally destroying it.


No matter how it turns out in me3 though, i feel like they'll need seperate disks just for some of the different major choices that were made.

[shinobi602]

marshalleck wrote...

It's not just "advanced technology." It's freaking Reaper technology. The kind of technology that only Reapers understand. The kind of technology that is known for its ability to twist organic beings into husks or mindless, indoctrinated thralls.

This. Better safe than sorry.

[Mallissin]

jmood88 wrote...
I already brought that up and he ignored it.

Are you sure he's a Paragon? He's not playing by the rules!

[Mallissin]

shinobi602 wrote...
This. Better safe than sorry.

A bird in hand is worth two in the bush.

[tariq071]

KnightofPhoenix wrote...

War is about risks. We take them.
It's not clear is the Reapers know we took the base. It's not clear if they can go there immediately. I nfact, they seem pretty despserate to find a way to go to the galaxy. I don't think it's via the deep core.

so the base is most likely safe from the reapers for now.

Well they do know that base is lost and they, possibly, do have another way to get to it fast. Considering that they had (literaly ) all the time in the world. they should have backdoor to get there.Having dormant virus in IFF drive shows that they did took necesary precautions for worse case scenarios.

As for risk, holding on unattainable position is not risk but waste of resources, and unless base contains red button that insta kills all Reapers there it's not worth of the risk. Then you have Cerberus, with Nitchean Ubermensch agenda of Humanity being above all others.Way more reasons to destroy then keep it.

Either way both views are hypothetical, with difference with one being ultimately political (keeping the base) and other being military (blow it up).

I guess it was meant to represents today's disproportionate view between poliitical and miltary branch of goverments.

Modifié par tariq071, 04 février 2010 - 01:04 .