619 réponses à ce sujet

[rasblak]

CmdrFenix83 wrote...
The better question, one that you and everyone else siding with you on here seem to keep ignoring,
is that you simply do not know that there is any useful information in that base. 
You have no clue.  You're guessing, based on the fact that there was one in construction there. 

Sounds like a reasonable "guess" to me, as you said it's "based on [a] fact"

However, all of the Collectors were under Harbinger's control. 
How do you know he wasn't building that thing from his own memory banks?  Answer:  You don't. 

Right, so you'll tell your 'Boss' I didn't look around for evidence and just blew the place up
because I didn't know whether he was building that thing from his own memory banks or not.
I'm sure she'll be very impressed.

You're guessing, speculating, making your choice on what if's and not facts.

You just contradicted yourself with "not facts".

All I need is the lack of evidence supporting said useful information

Yeah right! There's nothing of value to be found there, and The Reapers badly want us to
have access to their technology, and yet, unlike the Greeks with the Trojan horse, they didn't pretend
to fall back, they spent Three f**king days very efficiently doing their dam*dest to keep me
from getting to the end of that god*amn finale.

Dude, "That's all the evidence I need".

[CmdrFenix83]

@FROST4584 - No, just no. The Normandy is the only ship with the stealth system. Black Ops teams will still have to come by on a ship, that ship will be detected. In fact, it might cause more than a bit of controversy if said ships then go through the Omega4 relay.



Collector Base containing useful intel: You don't know what the base had in it. It was essentially run 100% by Harbinger. What makes you think there's leftover data in there? You can guess, but you don't know for sure. You won't know until ME3.



Going purely on the facts(Base is a smoothie maker, reaper tech always causes problems, and Cerberus is inept.), I came to the conclusion that no data in that base would be worth the risks of indoctrination or Cerberus' inherent ability to screw up and make things worse. Even if you could hand it to the Council or the Alliance, facts 1 and 2 are still enough for me to side with blowing it up.



You can claim this is fear all you want. I call it a logical assessment of the only facts we have. It's all about whether your character is willing to risk innocent lives for potential gains. That's it. There's nothing to this decision beyond that. This is one of the most black and white decisions in both games.



Paragon: Don't risk lives on unknown tech. Find a better way.

Renegade: Risk unknown number of lives for an unknown amount of intel. That's not even taking into account that you have to give it to a known terrorist to go this route.

[FROST4584]

CmdrFenix83 your contradicting  yourself. You still don't understand that you don't  know anything about collector base other than what it was used for. Thus that is the reason why would send something or someone over there to study it. That one little bit of information hidden away could help. You assume there is nothing usefull there. That is the point of looking. Again you don't understand this is a video game, thus the writters have written "another way" in beating the reapers in Mass Effect 3 making sure a possible victory.

Realisticly keeping the base for study isn't a bad idea. In real wars you get every advantage you can get. You seem to be stuck in terms of a video game, the way the writters wanted, but in reality the base would been captured and looked over for any type of advantage it would bring.

Modifié par FROST4584, 03 mars 2010 - 06:04 .

[codesmurf]

Turkeysock
wrote...
 Now... I don't ever recall anyone saying that destroying the base willresurrect those who have died. How is that even a rebuttal?
 

Many posts suggest that Sheppard should destroy the base purely because the collectors used it for evil purposes, regardless of what you will do with it in the future. For clarity sake, I'll rewrite my first point to reflect the
essence of the paragon Sheppard dialogue and the point of view of many posters.

1. The base is evil and should be destroyed because the collectors used to liquefy people with it. As any paragon Sheppard knows, that if any evil ever occurred at a location, that location is doomed to evil for all eternity - evil is not bound by the time-space continuum. We should nuke Berlin (WWII evilness), Moscow (Cold war evilness), Tokyo (WWII evilness), London (Colonization evilness), Washington DC (Native American genocide/slavery evilness), and Oslo (Viking evilness) because evil once occurred there and it is tainted for all eternity.

 Turkeysock wrote...
If we have the schematics on how to make a Reaper, that's even better than the machinery. The Machinery just show's us how to MAKE one, it does not necessarily tell us it's weaknesses. Reapers may very well have no physical weakness, at least for the current level of tech that the galaxy contains. Look at the Panzer tanks of the Germans in WWII, those tanks practically had no physical weakness to the weapons of the day. The only weakness in the tanks was the fact that the Germans had a tedency to have them operate by themselves, or in pairs, and attack columns of American, British and Russian tank columns.

"If we have schematics " How do you know if you have everything be base had to offer?  At best you have some
schematics. TIM has all the information you have, EDI obviously sent him the base schematics (which is why is able to give you the radiation pulse option), so in all likelihood she sent him every other schematic you have as well. After examining the schematics and obviously knowing it in more depth than you do (again, the radiation pulse option) he really, really wants to keep the base because he knows there is valuable tech that is the info EDI could extract from the base via scans and hacks. And yes machinery can tell you about weaknesses.

As for your German Panzer theory, the German Tigers and Panthers were decent tanks that stood up pretty well to the competition, but they were not the godly weapons you make them out to be. Allied air power alone annihilated entire columns of German tanks without suffering any casualties during the battle for France.

 Turkeysock wrote...
There is another thing we have to remember, the Human Reaper is incomplete. With that being said, any testing done on it wouldn't yield the kind of information aside from what would punch through it's armor. And the armor isn't what we need testing on to figure out how to bypass, it's their shield (Soveriegn's shield was able to withstand a bombardment from over a dozen Alliance cruisers until Shep defeated his "conciousness" that had
taken over Saren's body

This is just a ridiculous statement, how can you possibly know that a 1/2 completed reaper is useless? This is like saying  that Iran acquiring only the nuclear warhead portion of a U.S. nuclear missile is harmless because it's only half of the whole weapon and therefore useless to them. They can just slap the warhead on a conventional missile they already have, or worse reverse engineer the warhead and make their own.

Maybe the collectors built complete and important sub-systems of the reaper fist.  There may be an intact fire-control system. The AI may have been complete. Perhaps the only things that were incomplete were the armor and a power source large enough to allow the reaper to function at its full capacity. Paragon Sheppard will never know, because he destroyed it. 

Turkeysock wrote...

But I think you need to work on your argument, because seriously... Learning how to construct them helps us know how to deconstruct them? That doesn't really make sense...

Clearly you are not an engineer. Consider the example of a German Tiger tank. If I'm running the WWII soviet arms development department and I'm looking to build a gun that can destroy a Tiger, it may have been useful to know that materials used in the armor plating and welding was inferior. So even if the tank has up to 120mm in armor plating according to my stolen schematics, I could save resources by using a smaller gun than the schematic would suggest because it’s easier to penetrate the lower quality German armor than British or American made armor of similar thickness. This type of information is not in a schematic, there were only two ways to find out about this weakness, find a Tiger, or find a factory where they made Tigers and examine the raw materials and machinery (or half completed Tigers - see half completed things are useful). Knowing how the Germans constructed a Tiger helped the soviets deconstruct (as in destroy) the Tigers  (With a big gun).

In ME2 Sheppard destroys the last intact reaper of necessity. The only options sources of this level of information left is the half completed reaper and the machinery and materials used to make it. 

Turkeysock wrote...
Yes, you are right that there are degrees of evil. But... really? TIM hasn't done anything worse than the U.S.
government? Does buying children (or at least endorsing it) to run extremely unethical experiments on them not surpass anything the U.S. hasn't done? You heard the reports at Jack's old facilities, they went through those kids really fast. Now, we do know that TIM did not know the whole story going on there, but he started the project and he would've known they were buying kids to experiment on.

 You have no proof to suggest that it Jack’s situation was sanctioned. In fact you have semi-proof from the VID at the facility that it wasn’t sanctioned. Unsanctioned actions by

the US military have been similarly reprehensible http://en.wikipedia...._prisoner_abuse

 

 Turkeysock wrote...  But there's a lot we don't know about Cerberus operations. Yeah, for the most part anything we really say is speculation. But we do know this, TIM wants to use it to advance Human dominance of not just the galaxy, but the universe! He clearly states this at the end, and he's a person who's said he is willing to do ANYTHING to ensure this. That is proof enough on why you shouldn't give him the Collector Base.

 We all know that TIM wants to advantage humans over the rest of the galaxy, but what does that mean?  I speculate that what he has in mind is similar to the how the US is playing world police, and securing access to natural resources in other countries by funding and arming dictators. Yes it’s evil, but it’s hardly the same as destroying all sentient life in the galaxy.

 You speculate that he wants to genocide/enslave/rule all other species. How do you justify this point
of speculation? Look at the known facts of Cerberus interacted with other species

• Experimented on Rachni –
  Stopped  when they discovered the Rachni
  were intelligent
• Harshly questioned Veetor but sent him back to the flotilla– The Quarian doctor admitted there was no torture, just “brute force’ medicine
•  Alien crewmembers were well treated and respected by their Cerberus crew mates
• Threatened the security of the migrant fleet - Not sure what this was about but it sounded like they wanted to kill a human hiding out on the flotilla by blowing up a ship. - I'm pretty sure Cerberus would have tried to blow up the ship if it was a human ship, so no racismthere, just general evilness.

Turkeysock wrote...
If the base has the tech or ability to indoctrinate living beings, than we aren't going to learn anything. To be honest, Saren was studying indoctrination, and he learned next to nothing except that indoctrination is subtle and unnoticeable until it is too late. Not only this, but basically sacrificing those people, no matter how evil or bad they are, to be test subjects is no better than TIM, or the Collectors melting humans down. It's unethical, and this is how things start. You start with criminals, and than you run out of them, you move onto those who committed less crimes, and eventually you start sacrificing innocents in order to keep studying. Now, it's possible that you can figure out a way to defend against the indoctrination, but at what cost? It's simply too unethical to do this! Plus it could very well be a giant waste of time as it's possible there is just no defense against indoctrination.

 The Protheans were about to unlock mass relay technology, so we know that reaper tech is not “unknowable”, yes sacrifices have to be made, but if you are careful and willing to make the necessary sacrifices, you will be able to figure out indoctrination. All it takes is time and money and yes, sacrificing some organics (maybe we can use Piyaks)

 

 Turkeysock wrote...
It takes at least a week or two before indoctrination takes effect. Plus, the more indoctrinated the people are, the less capable they are. If they are indoctrinated to the point of siding with the Reapers, it may very well be impossible for them to operate ships.

 To our knowledge it takes a week or two, we really have no idea how indoctrination works, there may be a slow and lasting indoctrination, or a fast and temporary indoctrination, without understanding how it works, we won’t know. 

Modifié par codesmurf, 03 mars 2010 - 06:10 .

[rasblak]

FROST4584 wrote...


CmdrFenix83 your contracting yourself. You still don't understand that you don't anything about collector base. Thus that is the reason why would send something or someone over there to study. You assume there is nothing usefull there. That is the point of looking.

Exactly this.

[CmdrFenix83]

Shandepared wrote...

Freedom has nothing to do with this. What is at stake is survival. You can stick to your ideals and die with them, which means they will be erased and forgotten. Or you can compromise with them now, survive, and reaffirm your commitment to your beliefs later. The United States has done this multiple times.

I don't care that my crew disagrees with me. I don't run my ship like a democracy and the fact that the majority are against this does not mean they are right. It's true that I don't know a lot about the base and without capturing I will never know very much about the base. The only way to learn anything about it is to study it. We may gain very little, or a lot.

Learning how to create Reapers would be invaluable. Reapers are powerful beings with frightening defenses and weaponry. Knowing how to construct them will allow us insight into how to destroy them, how to fight them. There are thousands of Reapers out there and the last time it took several combined fleets to take down just one. What if you had to fight two Reapers at once, or five, or a dozen, or a five hundred? What would you do then? We need to even the odds if we want to survive this war with civilization intact. A ration of 200 Alliance/Turian/What-have-you ships to ever one Reaper is bad.

Frankly, Paragon Shepard was a terrible Spectre.

Yes, Freedom has everything to do with this.  TIM stated flat out that he plans to dominate the galaxy in the name of humanity.  You supported this.  You called Paragon Shepard a terrible Spectre?  Are you high or just forget what your job is as a Spectre?  There's many species in Council space.  Your job is to protect galactic stability.  You sound more like a Cerberus Stooge than a Spectre.  In fact, you sound like you need to have your status revoked and to be brought in as a traitor, which is what Cerberus is. 

You may win(as stated before, if the Renegade results from ME1 in ME2, it'll be bad for you anyway), but the Paragons will find a better way to do it, without sacrificing people to unknown tech. That's metagaming, sure, but my characters are basing the distruction of the base on only the present facts.

[Inquisitor Recon]

My biggest concern was if TIM is actually crazy enough to try and put his own Reaper together?

[CmdrFenix83]

rasblak wrote...

Sounds like a reasonable "guess" to me, as you said it's "based on [a] fact"

Fact.  The base liquified people.  Care to tell me what else is in the base?  Oh, you don't know?  It could just as easily have nothing useful as it could have something critical.  You do not know, and you don't have time to investigate.   Based on what we *know* the base does, it's not worth keeping around.

Right, so you'll tell your 'Boss' I didn't look around for evidence and just blew the place up
because I didn't know whether he was building that thing from his own memory banks or not.
I'm sure she'll be very impressed.

Or, I'm telling my boss I didn't have time to, because things were shooting at me.  I had to make a snap decision within 30 seconds on whether to give a human slurpie maker to a terrorist or to blow it up.

You just contradicted yourself with "not facts".

No, I didn't.  I've stated a million times that based on the only information we *know*, I don't deem the potential intel worth the risks of dealing with Reaper tech, much less Reaper tech in Cerberus hands.  That's it, case closed.

Yeah right! There's nothing of value to be found there, and The Reapers badly want us to
have access to their technology, and yet, unlike the Greeks with the Trojan horse, they didn't pretend
to fall back, they spent Three f**king days very efficiently doing their dam*dest to keep me
from getting to the end of that god*amn finale.

Dude, "That's all the evidence I need".

Well congrats.  They've been trying to re-kill you since you showed your face on Horizon.  They set traps and you illuded them.  Them trying to kill you has nothing to do with them trying to keep you out of their base.  They want you eliminated.  You proved to be a massive threat by killing Sovereign.  Hence the trap in the Omega Cluster where they blew up the Normandy SR-1. 

None of that has the slightest to do with the Collector Base.  They didn't know you had EDI, they didn't know you'd learn about the IFF and go through the relay.  They just kept trying to find ways to eliminate you.  This argument is completely irrelevant to keeping the base.  They're attacks on you, personally, aren't linked to the base. 

Nothing you've said here lends a shred of credibility to your view that the base, for sure, had something useful to bringing down the Reapers.  The only case you can make for that is making your own Reapers there, which is an atrocity the majority of the universe wouldn't accept.  Juicing your fellow man in an attempt to save them... there's the contradiction you're looking for.

[CmdrFenix83]

FROST4584 wrote...


CmdrFenix83 your contradicting  yourself. You still don't understand that you don't  know anything about collector base other than what it was used for. Thus that is the reason why would send something or someone over there to study it. That one little bit of information hidden away could help. You assume there is nothing usefull there. That is the point of looking. Again you don't understand this is a video game, thus the writters have written "another way" in beating the reapers in Mass Effect 3 making sure a possible victory.

Realisticly keeping the base for study isn't a bad idea. In real wars you get every advantage you can get. You seem to be stuck in terms of a video game, the way the writters wanted, but in reality the base would been captured and looked over for any type of advantage it would bring.

When did I say I knew everything about the Collector base?  Please state this.  I've said the only part we *do* know, is that the base liquified people to make new Reapers.  That's it.  That's all the knowledge we have about it.  Your little Researchers could very well become indoctrinated, turning around and acting as sleeper agents to betray everyone else to the Reapers.  It happened to the Protheans.  It has precedent, and cannot be simply dismissed. 

Yes, this is a war.  However, using a device associated with others that have 100% of the time resulting in the brainwashing of the users is just flat out stupid.  Cerberus association or not.  You're risking thinks whether you keep the base or not.  You risk losing vital intel if you destroy it, but you risk giving the Reapers more pawns by keeping it.  You also risk Cerberus taking over the galaxy in the aftermath by keeping it.  Weighing those risks, I don't deem keeping the base to be acceptible. 

[BurstAngel75]

CmdrFenix83 wrote...

BurstAngel75 wrote...

Yeah I know I'm over simplifying it. Thanks for pointing it out.
But I just don't understand how so many people in today's modern society can be so morally ambiguous all for the sake of progress.
I find it very disturbing.
I was more shocked by how many people could justified the genophage.

Well, it all comes down to perspective.  If you understand what Mordin tells you, your options are A) Let Krogan take over galaxy, inflict genophage to keep numbers to what they were on Tuchanka before first contact sothey never get to the point of starting a war again, or C) Wipe the Krogan out altogether.

Krogan nature is to be violent and bloothirsty.  Krogan history supports this.  (Before Wrex), these were the only three choices out there.  If Wrex isn't in charge of the Krogan, the genophage is what's known as a 'necessary evil'.

If you say so, my perspective is that every female krogan will miscarraiage and give birth to stillborns or watch their newborn die after a few days. Every krogan father will bury their children, knowing that they were helpless to save them. Only one in a thousand survive. 999 babies dead. After thinking about all the mass death of children, makes me think that genocide was the kinder option. At least they are not suffering. If you call, burying children a lesser evil, then you are made of tougher stuff than me.
I blame the Council for the krogan. They forgot the Prime Directive, after all, they only saw the krogan as cannon fodder with teeth. I relish Mordin's loyalty quest, you make him put aside logic and show him a wounded heart of a people that never stopped bleeding.

[Nizu]

Seeing a lot of people weighing in on this thread without really thinking about the situation.

I didn't want to give it to Cerberus! There should have been an option to hand it over to the Council or Alliance!

Even if this was a viable choice there was no time! You were in the middle of destroying it (the original target remember) The whole base coming after you, your Allies/Comrades are holding the line behind you, every second counts.

So what, you're gonna ring up the Systems Alliance and the Councill and ask them for a meeting? Explain the Collector threat? 

Impossible. The only way to do this would be to... (drumroll please) NOT DESTROY THE BASE and simply tell them afterwards.   It's never, ever stated anywhere that after not destroying the base you keep it a super secret from anyone but Cerberus and your BFF TIM.

It'd be stupid to destroy the base! The Citidel and Alliance fleets could make incredible work of it!

Yeah... Maybe.

You're assuming the Citadel or the Alliance gives 2 ****s what you say these days (hint: They don't). You come bursting into the Council chambers telling them you went through an inaccessable Relay, Neutralised an Entire Enemy world, Destroyed a foe they consider a myth (keep in mind the Collectors are only a rumor) and they should totally send some fleets to go check it out!

Guess how that'll go down

"Ah yes, 'Collectors'."

The Alliance and the Councill both think you're a Cerberus stooge. The Alliance won't act on your information because they'll believe it's part of a trap set by TIM/Cerberus (who, keep in mind, they blame for the dissapearances).

The Councill won't do anything for the EXACT SAME GODDAMN REASON THEY'VE REFUSED EVERY OTHER REQUEST YOU'VE MADE REGARDING THE TERMINUS SYSTEMS.

They can't risk a full on galactic war on the basis of one persons's word. Even yours.
And again, your word carries far, far less weight since you're a Cerberus stooge.

You're talking about the people who grounded you for quite literally NO reason rather than letting you head to Ilos yourself.

 The Alliance will believe you! Anderson will make it happen... Maybe!

Eh, maybe. Even if this did happen it would be a very bad thing. Giving it to the Alliance would be just as bad as giving it to Cerberus.

Way too much power for one group to hold. Eventually it would end the exact same way as giving it to Cerberus.



The Choice is almost exactly the same as the choice at the end of ME1.

Letting the Councill and the Destiny Ascention die is a horrible act, HOWEVER it's one that could save the galaxy. Risking saving the DA and not having the firepower to take down Soverign is a terrible risk to take.

Letting Cerberus take the technology is a horrible act, HOWEVER it's one that could save the galaxy. The Reapers are coming and risking throwing away anything that could turn the tides against them is a terrible risk to take (potentially costing millions and millions of lives, if not outright failure).

Or to rephrase it for the Paragons.

It's all very well and noble to save the council, it preserves galactic stability and humanities image. However in doing so you risk losing everything.

It's all very well to not deal with the devil, it preserves galactic stability and the risk of giving a megolamanic unstoppable power. However in doing so you risk losing everything.


Renegade Shep says the risk is unnaceptable, the ends justify the means you have to get the job done. Paragon Shep says getting the job done and losing in the process is as bad as failure, the risk is nescessary.

That's why this is a ****ing Renegade/Paragon choice.


EDIT: Poor colour choice

Modifié par Nizu, 03 mars 2010 - 07:50 .

[Nizu]

I blame the Council for the krogan. They forgot the Prime Directive, after all, they only saw the krogan as cannon fodder with teeth.

Very true of course and as Mordrin points out the whole thing was a terrible, shortsighted mistake.

However, keep in mind at the time they were if not losing being very hard pressed by the Rachni. They had nothing that could assault the Rachni worlds, Krogan were an answer, they were perfect, almost too perfect.

It's very, very easy to see why it happened the way it did.

[thegreateski]

What? Continue to use Reaper-based tech?



No thanks.

[BurstAngel75]

Yep, the Council took the easy way out and a race suffered for it.

[Turkeysock]

[quote]codesmurf wrote...
Many posts suggest that Sheppard should destroy the base purely because the collectors used it for evil purposes, regardless of what you will do with it in the future. For clarity sake, I'll rewrite my first point to reflect the
essence of the paragon Sheppard dialogue and the point of view of many posters.[/quote]

Actually... Most posters on here who are for destroying the Collector base did so so TIM couldn't get it....

[quote]codesmurf wrote...
1. The base is evil and should be destroyed because the collectors used to liquefy people with it. As any paragon Sheppard knows, that if any evil ever occurred at a location, that location is doomed to evil for all eternity - evil is not bound by the time-space continuum. We should nuke Berlin (WWII evilness), Moscow (Cold war evilness), Tokyo (WWII evilness), London (Colonization evilness), Washington DC (Native American genocide/slavery evilness), and Oslo (Viking evilness) because evil once occurred there and it is tainted for all eternity.[/quote]

Wow... I really can't believe you said all of that. Let me debunk you, Feros. Unethical testing that basically sacrificed people to the Thorian, Paragon Shepard saved the colony instead of killing all the infected, and managed to get Exo-Geni, who perpetrated the experiments, to stand behind and help the colony.

We who argue for blowing the base up do so because Tim can't be trusted, and because tech directly related to the Reapers have proven to be too dangerous to even attempt to study.

[quote]codesmurf wrote...
"If we have schematics " How do you know if you have everything be base had to offer?  At best you have some
schematics. TIM has all the information you have, EDI obviously sent him the base schematics (which is why is able to give you the radiation pulse option), so in all likelihood she sent him every other schematic you have as well. After examining the schematics and obviously knowing it in more depth than you do (again, the radiation pulse option) he really, really wants to keep the base because he knows there is valuable tech that is the info EDI could extract from the base via scans and hacks. And yes machinery can tell you about weaknesses.[/quote]

To be honest, didn't know we would get the schematics. But we did in the end, and by the way the pad looked, it looked like blue prints to Harbinger. Besides, Harbinger's last act before releasing control was probably to wipe the databanks. Meaning that if the radiation pulse didn't effect the systems, all the data would be gone. If the pulse did affect the systems, than the chance of the systems being wiped out by the pulse or even basically wiping all the data is just as likely. Either way, the data would be gone or so corrupted you aren't going to get much of anything from it. Again, the machinery used to build things does not necessarily give you hints to weaknesses of the built item.

[quote]codesmurf wrote...
As for your German Panzer theory, the German Tigers and Panthers were decent tanks that stood up pretty well to the competition, but they were not the godly weapons you make them out to be. Allied air power alone annihilated entire columns of German tanks without suffering any casualties during the battle for France.[/quote]

A Panzer tank could take a shot from the Sherman or the T-34, and the shells literally bounced off (although by the late 1944 and early 45, T-34 had been upgraded with a better main gun and packed a bit more of a punch, but still not as strong as the Panzer). A single Panzer could literally wipe out a dozen or more Sherman tanks before being taken down with mass rush.

And to be fair, every tank in WWII was weak to air attacks. The Germans air force was by that point, practically destroyed, losing many of their veteran pilots in the African, Italian, and Russian fronts.


[quote]codesmurf wrote...
This is just a ridiculous statement, how can you possibly know that a 1/2 completed reaper is useless? This is like saying  that Iran acquiring only the nuclear warhead portion of a U.S. nuclear missile is harmless because it's only half of the whole weapon and therefore useless to them. They can just slap the warhead on a conventional missile they already have, or worse reverse engineer the warhead and make their own.[/quote]

Did I say useless? No, I said the incomplete Reaper wouldn't yield proper testing results because it is INCOMPLETE. We know what the Reapers are made up of, that was found out after Sovereign was defeated. What is really needed to fight the Reapers is to find a way to mitigate their shields! You completely side stepped that point I see. Also, your attempts to try to make real life comparisons actually advanced my argument, Shep being the U.S. and TIM being Iran.

[quote]codesmurf wrote...
Maybe the collectors built complete and important sub-systems of the reaper fist.  There may be an intact fire-control system. The AI may have been complete. Perhaps the only things that were incomplete were the armor and a power source large enough to allow the reaper to function at its full capacity. Paragon Sheppard will never know, because he destroyed it. [/quote]

I'm working on facts that we already know. This is not fact, this is speculation. We already know about how their weapons work (Thannix Cannon), the AI does nothing to help us in the long run (other than to hear it talk about how our efforts are futile etc. etc.). The Power Source was definatly there, a bit smaller than what was on the Derilict Reaper, so that could be taken as a point. But the rest of it, is pure speculation, and again, Sovereign couldn't stand up against over a dozen Alliance cruisers after it lost it's shields. Telling us that once those shields come down, they are just as vulnerable as any ship. It's the shields we have to worry about, and an incomplete Reaper won't provide us with what we need to know about the shields. And finishing it would be insane.

[quote]codesmurf wrote...
Clearly you are not an engineer. Consider the example of a German Tiger tank. If I'm running the WWII soviet arms development department and I'm looking to build a gun that can destroy a Tiger, it may have been useful to know that materials used in the armor plating and welding was inferior. So even if the tank has up to 120mm in armor plating according to my stolen schematics, I could save resources by using a smaller gun than the schematic would suggest because it’s easier to penetrate the lower quality German armor than British or American made armor of similar thickness. This type of information is not in a schematic, there were only two ways to find out about this weakness, find a Tiger, or find a factory where they made Tigers and examine the raw materials and machinery (or half completed Tigers - see half completed things are useful). Knowing how the Germans constructed a Tiger helped the soviets deconstruct (as in destroy) the Tigers  (With a big gun).[/quote]

Nope, history major. I look back at history and learn, and apply what I've learned in the present. I might not be an engineer, but I've studied information about the German Panzer and Tiger tanks. Both tanks had their issues, but compared to tanks in service by the allies, they were far more advanced and higher quality material than the massed produced Shermans and T-34's. But that is why so few of the Panzer and Tiger tanks were made, very high quality and high tech for it's time. Heck, the Allies had captured a number of somewhat intact tanks and did learn that their only shot at defeating the Panzer was to get behind and try to shot at the armor in the back of the turret. But again, this has nothing to do with the main argument, I was using it as a real life example.

[quote]codesmurf wrote...
In ME2 Sheppard destroys the last intact reaper of necessity. The only options sources of this level of information left is the half completed reaper and the machinery and materials used to make it. [/quote]

It was a shame to lose the derilict Reaper, but to attempt to try to study it would have been a waste of time. All teams sent in would have been indoctrinated. And again, we already know what materials was used in the construction of the Reaper, from Sovereign. We might not have every little peice, but we know what he is made of, which can be applied to the rest of the Reapers (as it is doubtful the Reapers would make another out of sub-standard material... besides, they don't gotta pay for anything, so money is no option). As I've stated a few times already, what we need to know is how to break it's shields, and the incomplete Reaper isn't going to give us that information no matter how much we study it!

[quote]codesmurf wrote...
 You have no proof to suggest that it Jack’s situation was sanctioned. In fact you have semi-proof from the VID at the facility that it wasn’t sanctioned. Unsanctioned actions by

the US military have been similarly reprehensible http://en.wikipedia...._prisoner_abuse[/quote]

First, it was sanctioned. Do you really think TIM doesn't know that they were going out and buying so many biotic human kids from Batarian slavers and poor families? You seem to forget that he signs their checks. And he doesn't seem to be the kind of guy who would ignore even a penny being mis-counted. And as TIM said, he doesn't care how something gets done, he looks for results.

And I just gotta say... REALLY? Last time I checked, what happened at Abu Ghraib was NOT SANCTIONED and that the military had been investigating it for at least a year before it came out. On the other hand, the situation at Jack's prison was specifically created to make a more powerful biotic, and again knowing TIM, he probably knew a good bit more than the guys at the facility thought he knew.

 [quote] Turkeysock wrote...  But there's a lot we don't know about Cerberus operations. Yeah, for the most part anything we really say is speculation. But we do know this, TIM wants to use it to advance Human dominance of not just the galaxy, but the universe! He clearly states this at the end, and he's a person who's said he is willing to do ANYTHING to ensure this. That is proof enough on why you shouldn't give him the Collector Base.
[/quote]
[quote]codesmurf wrote...
 We all know that TIM wants to advantage humans over the rest of the galaxy, but what does that mean?  I speculate that what he has in mind is similar to the how the US is playing world police, and securing access to natural resources in other countries by funding and arming dictators. Yes it’s evil, but it’s hardly the same as destroying all sentient life in the galaxy. [/quote]

Yes the U.S. plays world cop. Yeah, we arm dictators (I don't agree with any of it). But honestly, playing cop and trying to extend human dominance across the galaxy are sorta... two different things. The U.S. armed dictators to ensure we had access to cheap resources when issues came up, TIM wants to bring humanity to dominate the galaxy. How are either of those even related?

[quote]codesmurf wrote...
 You speculate that he wants to genocide/enslave/rule all other species. How do you justify this point
of speculation? [/quote]

Did I ever say that? No, I specifically said that his aims are Human domination. I have no idea what he's going to do with the other races. But I can say that it probably won't be pretty.


[quote]codesmurf wrote...
Look at the known facts of Cerberus interacted with other species

Experimented on Rachni –
[*]Stopped  when they discovered the Rachni were intelligent[/quote]

Really... I thought it had more to do with the fact that they couldn't control them. Intelligence just made them able to outsmart their captores.

[quote]codesmurf wrote...
Harshly questioned Veetor but sent him back to the flotilla– The Quarian doctor admitted there was no torture, just “brute force’ medicine[/quote]
They couldn't have tortured him because they would've killed him, thusly not getting information out of him, if he was in better condition, I don't doubt that torture would've been used if they thought they could get more information.

[quote]codesmurf wrote...Alien crewmembers were well treated and respected by their Cerberus crew mates[/quote]

It seems like most of the crew were recruited from outside of Cerberus, not from within the ranks. As everyone you talk to on the ship (aside from Jacob and Miranda) say they were recruited to do specific jobs on the ship and know little to nothing about them outside of the team on Normandy. This I believe is proven when you choose to blow up the base and if you saved the whole crew, they choose to remain working with Shepard with no vocal resistence against Shep abandoning Cerberus.

[quote]codesmurf wrote...
Threatened the security of the migrant fleet - Not sure what this was about but it sounded like they wanted to kill a human hiding out on the flotilla by blowing up a ship. - I'm pretty sure Cerberus would have tried to blow up the ship if it was a human ship, so no racism there, just general evilness.[/quote]

If you don't know the situation than using it as an example doesn't really help your cause.

[quote]codesmurf wrote...
 The Protheans were about to unlock mass relay technology, so we know that reaper tech is not “unknowable”, yes sacrifices have to be made, but if you are careful and willing to make the necessary sacrifices, you will be able to figure out indoctrination. All it takes is time and money and yes, sacrificing some organics (maybe we can use Piyaks)[/quote]

First, never said Reaper tech was "unknowable". What I did say was that at the current tech level, they probably don't have the technology to be able to effectively counter indoctrination. Being careful... The last person who was trying to be careful about the whole indoctrination process became a giant doll to Sovereign! At this moment, finding a way to stop indoctrination would be a waste of time! There is no real advantage to learning to fight against indoctrination. Ship vs. Ship battles is what is going to determine the fate of battles. Soldiers would only be deployed if the Reapers were to release something like husks or indoctrinated soldiers. And I know what your going to say, "If we can find a way to fight the indoctrination, than we don't need to fight indoctrinated people!" Wrong! Even if there is a way to fight indroctrination, it will be impossible to mass produce the way for every person out in the galaxy to be able to use it, so there will be fighting between indoctrinated and non-indoctrinated beings. The thing you need to remember is that indoctrination takes time, it doesn't happen over night, and they eventually become completely useless. Even if the plan was to land troops into the Reaper to destroy it from the inside, then as long as they aren't in there for like a week, then they will be fine.

And don't get me started on this whole "we'll have to sacrifice people", cause honestly, I don't see trying to study indoctrination as a neccessary move. Why? Read above.

[quote]codesmurf wrote...
 To our knowledge it takes a week or two, we really have no idea how indoctrination works, there may be a slow and lasting indoctrination, or a fast and temporary indoctrination, without understanding how it works, we won’t know. [/quote]

From what we know, Sovereign seemed like he was able to control how fast he indoctrinated beings. Saren was very slowly indoctrinated where as the Asari commando's and Benezia were indoctrinated within a short period. The same to the Salerian STG team on Virmire, those who were heavily exposed to the signals became useless, while those slowly indoctrinated seemed to be more successful in gaining control, the only issue was that a few of them went insane. We don't know much about the Krogan under Saren, and the Geth being synthetic are immune to indoctrination.

I have a few theories on indoctrination, but that has no place on here.

Modifié par Turkeysock, 03 mars 2010 - 08:41 .

[Bigdoser]

Luc0s wrote...

Halmiriliath wrote...

Good to see a proper debate on topics like this. I think the old quote (referenced in Baldur's Gate) from Nietzsche sums up my opinion on this: 'He who fights with monsters should look to it that he himself does not become a monster'. At what cost, and to what level, would you demean or contradict your own principles in keeping such nastiness about to further your own goals or to save the galaxy? Do you become as bad as the Reapers in doing so, and is the preservation of life worth the obvious horrendous losses it would require? Or do you destroy it, and galactic life goes out in a blaze of glory, safe in the knowledge that they have/had the moral high ground? Questions, questions, questions...

And on a side note, hi everyone!

And this is EXACTLY why Shepard says:

"I won't let fear compromise who I am."


Also, in ME1 (just started new game again), in the side-quest with Samish Batia (or something), he said (and made good point):

"What good cause is there in fighting for humanity if we're gonna lose our humanity in the progress? I'm actually fighting out there to stop crap like this!"

That quote from Shepard in ME1 can be perfectly applied here to this whole "keeping the collector base and giving it to TIM"-issue.

I like this too

[rasblak]

CmdrFenix83 wrote...
It could just as easily have nothing useful as it could have something critical.  You do not know,
and you don't have time to investigate.   Based on what we *know* the base does, it's not worth keeping around.

Where do you pull that "you don't have time to investigate" from?
You're Shepard. Your job is to decide whether to kill the Collectors and make time for investigation,
or kill the Collectors and blow the place up.

>      You just contradicted yourself with "not facts".

No, I didn't.  I've stated a million times that based on the only information we *know*, I don't deem the potential
intel worth the risks of dealing with Reaper tech, much less Reaper tech in Cerberus hands.  That's it, case closed.

Someone else can decide otherwise based on the very same "information we *know* " and not necessarily be wrong.
What is wrong is to insist that this decision different from yours is purely based on "speculation".

Knowing it's a place to build a reaper is evidence in my opinion to justify keeping it to learn more about The Reapers
and how to defeat them for the same obvious reasons that a country's Military has restricted-access locations.
What, you need BioWare to make EDI spell out a Reaper anatomy lesson or something then you'll be convinced?

Destroying it is akin to saying we'll make do with what weapons we have, and hope that whatever upgrades we happen to
think of will be enough; we don't want to risk keeping this place up in case more atrocities are committed. That's Fine.

Well congrats.  They've been trying to re-kill you since you showed your face on Horizon.  They set traps and you illuded them.
Them trying to kill you has nothing to do with them trying to keep you out of their base.  They want you eliminated.
You proved to be a massive threat by killing Sovereign.  Hence the trap in the Omega Cluster where they blew up the Normandy SR-1.

None of that has the slightest to do with the Collector Base.

They want Shepard eliminated because that's it, she's killed one of them and that makes her a massive threat for thousands
or millions of them that exist? Is one lion killing one human really a "massive threat" to the rest of Humanity?

Or are you prepared to see beyond " the only information we *know* " and realise that The Reapers fear Shepard because
by killing Sovereign she's proved that if someone can get close to information that would spell very bad news for
The Reapers, it's her? That they've made the Omega 4 relay such a death trap not just to sound important but because there's
things beyond it that they don't want the other races to gain access to?

Would you really take the fight to the Collectors beyond the Omega 4 relay and expect to find nothing of value?
And yet, Joker hands you some schematics.

Do you realise that by denying shades of grey in the decision that is to be made you are not paying much of a compliment
to the story writers' skills?
That the known facts making only 1 possible decision crystal clear for everyone is tantamount to railroading?

Modifié par rasblak, 03 mars 2010 - 12:25 .

[rasblak]

Turkeysock wrote...

[*]Yes the U.S. plays world cop. Yeah, we arm dictators (I don't agree with any of it). But honestly, playing cop and trying to extend human dominance across the galaxy are sorta... two different things. The U.S. armed dictators to ensure we had access to cheap resources when issues came up, TIM wants to bring humanity to dominate the galaxy. How are either of those even related?

[*]Hey, I don't know, maybe in that "access to cheap resources when issues came up" means continued perceived Super-Power status?
[*]What does "dominance across the galaxy" mean to you? Openly advertised intent of doing evil, or recognized superiority and commanding respect?

Modifié par rasblak, 03 mars 2010 - 03:18 .

[Flamewielder]

My Shepard remembers how Cerberus set up his marine squad to be gobbled up by tresher maws. He remembers cerberus toying with thorian creepers and rachni with no regard whatsoever for human lives. The Lazarus cell may not have had anything to do with the sick experiments played on Shepard's squad or Jack but I'm betting TIM knew...



EDI's already scanned the Reapers schematics off the Collector station. Nothing left there but dangerous xenotech which can bite us in the arse (endoctrination, husks, etc...) or **** TIM could use to experiment on sentient beings.



Bottom line: Renegade or Paragon -> stick it to TIM and blow it up.

[ShadyKat]

A better question would be, why would anyone trust the Illusive Man?

[Habelo]

Its all about if you want to side with cerberus or the alliance. Thats why you have no third option (giving it to the alliance).

[Gabey5]

i think you are forgetting that the base will go to cerberus not shepard

[Habelo]

If the cure is worse then the plague; then whats the point?



- paragon reasoning, logic undeniable

[Kurt M.]

codesmurf wrote...

Destroying the collector base makes no sense, it's not a paragon decision, it's a stupid decision. They were building a reaper at the base, so you're going to find some schematics telling you how it work, once you know how it works you can figure out the best way to kill it.

Sheppard is convinced that the reapers are still coming, so why destroy the only real information you have on your enemy? If he didn't want to work with Cerberus, why not make a pit stop at the citadel and get the council or the alliance to send a fleet to secure the base instead of Cerberus. Even if they don't believe you about the reapers, you have enough scans and other evidence to convince them that there is advanced technology that can be had.

I'm just venting because it seems that for ME2, you don't get to choose between being paragon and renegade, you get to choose between being an idiot or being a jerk.

I thought the same just until a little before taking the decision (on my Paragon char...my Renegade one saved the base, of course), but then I remembered the vids you can find inside the Reaper in the IFF module adquisition mission. Those people were indoctrinated by a dead reaper that was 50.000.000 years old and the whole experimentation ended up with the team converted into husks. I extrancted 2 conclusions from that:

1) Enemies' technology is nothing you can happily play with after you get it. Little pieces, details, etc can still work, but the Collector's base was way too dangerous to allow it's existence. Who knows what would have done to the people working there in a long term basis?

2) Although TIM seems to be genuinely sad (and he probably is) about losing Cerberus people on missions, he's always very happy to send people to Hell itself, regarding very little -or nothing at all- about their personal security, and many times under false pressumptions (Shepard has experienced that himself....aka, the Collector ship mission). It seems like nothing matters to him but the mission. While it's acceptable for a Renegade char (even more if you've the Ruthless background) Paragon chars simply can't stand that.

Besides, I entirely agree with what Samara says after destroying the base..."TIM thinks he had the wisdom to use that base. But he doesn't".

That's why my Paragon char ended up destroying the base

Modifié par Gladiador2, 03 mars 2010 - 07:01 .