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[devilsgrin]

In Last Stand moments, it is Faith that you rely upon. All the preparation in the world (or galaxy as the case may be) won't save you if you don't believe. Thats what last stand are built upon, triumphing against overwhelming odds, against adversaries who think they cannot be defeated because of all Their preparation. Sovereign's arrogance is his weakness in this instance, he believed he could not be defeated in that battle. that Shepard was barely more than an inconvenience, one his puppet Saren could easily deal with.

My Shep, and what seems to be the over-arching story belief, is that Sovereign was worth a Fleet of ships alone, and sacrificing them all to destroy him was not the ideal way to win. No survivors is a poor victory.

Liara certainly doesn't tell you to sacrifice the Destiny Ascension. She may reason it out once you decide to let it go, but she's very pro-saving it. Her argument carries as much weight as Kaiden or Ash's though, since both are human, and would rather not see human lives lost for an unsure and alien thing. Tali and Garrus, and possibly Wrex (though he's never been with me on the Citadel) make more reasoned arguments.



if Joker says it can be done, and he is the best pilot in the Fleet, i'd definitely believe him. the loss of a couple of ships is a minor thing, the loss of the rest of a fleet (centred upon the DA) is not.

[Wildecker]

CmdrFenix83 wrote...

Again, stop thinking that rescuing the Destiny Ascension will help you in this battle!  Their main drive is offline.  They're dead in space, they just haven't blown up.  If you save them, they're going to do nothing except survive.  They will not be joining the battle.

There is this often ignored feature of maneuvering thrusters. So they may not be able to outrun the Geth, but they can turn around sloooowly and bring their main gun to bear.
It just turned out that I knocked out Sovereign's puppet before the Destiny could align with Sovereign.

CmdrFenix83 wrote...
Saren's job was to bypass the Citadel's external defenses and take manual control of the station, then hand it over to Sovereign, yes.  However, if that was his entire job, there would be no point for the Geth in space.  Saren could have boarded the Citadel with an army of Geth and poured into the Control Center and just held that section of the Presidium until the Citadel was under his control, the Sovereign could send his signal from Ilos to open the Citadel Relay.

Hacking does not require a hardwired connection in this galaxy.  We've seen this from everything via omnitools.  Sovereign would regain control of the Citadel at any moment.  Vigil tells you himself that his datafile is temporary.  Look how good EDI is at hacking, and she is made from part of Sovereign himself.  Imagine what the original could do?  Time is an issue in this battle.

Apparently it is not possible to do a hack from half the galaxy away. Or even from the neighbouring system. No hacking via FTL communication. According to the Reaper plan, Sovereign would send a signal to the Keepers, and the Keepers would open the relay into darkspace.
The Keepers did not respond to Sovereign's signal, however. So Sovereign needed someone inside to transfer control, and that was Saren. AND it needed to be on location as the Citadel relay cannot be remote-controlled - otherwise, the Reapers could do that from darkspace any time without ever bothering about Keepers.
And Sovereign needed the Geth to cover its approach before it was safe inside the locked Citadel.
Sovereign is neither omnipotent nor invulnerable. And it knows that.

[Mnemnosyne]

CmdrFenix83 wrote...

Main drive offline.  Would seem to tell you flat out that the ship is essentially dead in space. 

Also, using your FTL drive means reducing the ship's mass dramatically.  The impact would be like throwing a grain of sand into a piece of tank armor.  The speed is irrelevant when it has next to zero mass.

If the kinetic barriers are still active then they still have power and their mass effect core is functional, so their gun is presumably functional, and maneuvering thrusters should be enough to line the ship up for a shot at Sovereign.  At least that's my thought.

As for the FTL kamikaze attack, I would have agreed with you, I spent a lot of time considering that concept, but the Cerberus news from March 10th ( http://www.cerberusdailynews.com/?p=61 ) states that "Fortunately, the pilots had disabled the ship’s FTL drive, which could have caused a megaton-scale impact." which clearly establishes an FTL kamikaze attack as a potential mode of attack in ME.

[grenadetaggav]

i wanted to say "I TOLD YOU SO" to the turian counciler

[MrChupee]

As a Spectre at that time, it made sense our focus (like any other not-so-shady arm of the Council militaries) should be the preservation of the evacuation ship full of important; ultimately all we could really do was hope and pray the 5th Fleet's equipment was good enough to trash Sovereign (even if you choose to throw the DA away).



Cutting through the Geth fleet was a bonus I guess (plot armor ftw).

[Kondorr]

Even if the council is a pain in the ass... I believe it to be the right decision... in the long run. Getting the council killed (AND CHOOSING UDINE) gets you to a human lead council... which the other races don't really respect...



This is a matter of debate... and probably ME3 will play out that thing, but I thing that is the honorable thing to do.



I saved them in my 1. playthrough... doomed then in the 2nd (just to see what would happen - actually not THAT much)... and now I know I will save them in a 3rd one...

[Raphael diSanto]

devilsgrin wrote...

Liara certainly doesn't tell you to sacrifice the Destiny Ascension. She may reason it out once you decide to let it go, but she's very pro-saving it. Her argument carries as much weight as Kaiden or Ash's though, since both are human, and would rather not see human lives lost for an unsure and alien thing. Tali and Garrus, and possibly Wrex (though he's never been with me on the Citadel) make more reasoned arguments.

Actually, depending on who you bring with you, their lines are mostly interchangeable.

[devilsgrin]

Raphael diSanto wrote...

devilsgrin wrote...

Liara certainly doesn't tell you to sacrifice the Destiny Ascension. She may reason it out once you decide to let it go, but she's very pro-saving it. Her argument carries as much weight as Kaiden or Ash's though, since both are human, and would rather not see human lives lost for an unsure and alien thing. Tali and Garrus, and possibly Wrex (though he's never been with me on the Citadel) make more reasoned arguments.

Actually, depending on who you bring with you, their lines are mostly interchangeable.

...this is true...but like i said, the weight of Who says it, makes a difference, for me at least... though in 6 playthroughs i've had Kaiden and Tali or Kaiden and Liara in three of them, so they are the ones i've heard most.

[Mnemnosyne]

devilsgrin wrote...

Raphael diSanto wrote...

devilsgrin wrote...

Liara certainly doesn't tell you to sacrifice the Destiny Ascension. She may reason it out once you decide to let it go, but she's very pro-saving it. Her argument carries as much weight as Kaiden or Ash's though, since both are human, and would rather not see human lives lost for an unsure and alien thing. Tali and Garrus, and possibly Wrex (though he's never been with me on the Citadel) make more reasoned arguments.

Actually, depending on who you bring with you, their lines are mostly interchangeable.

...this is true...but like i said, the weight of Who says it, makes a difference, for me at least... though in 6 playthroughs i've had Kaiden and Tali or Kaiden and Liara in three of them, so they are the ones i've heard most.

Who says it is meaningless since they argue depending on where they happen to be standing, literally.  Whoever is to Shepard's right (viewer's left) will always say to save the Ascension.  Whoever is to his left (viewer's right) will always say to sacrifice it.  Always.

[Raphael diSanto]

devilsgrin wrote...

Raphael diSanto wrote...

devilsgrin wrote...

Liara certainly doesn't tell you to sacrifice the Destiny Ascension. She may reason it out once you decide to let it go, but she's very pro-saving it. Her argument carries as much weight as Kaiden or Ash's though, since both are human, and would rather not see human lives lost for an unsure and alien thing. Tali and Garrus, and possibly Wrex (though he's never been with me on the Citadel) make more reasoned arguments.

Actually, depending on who you bring with you, their lines are mostly interchangeable.

...this is true...but like i said, the weight of Who says it, makes a difference, for me at least... though in 6 playthroughs i've had Kaiden and Tali or Kaiden and Liara in three of them, so they are the ones i've heard most.

Ah. I see. I agree that who says it bears weight - Next time, take two aliens with you, not human/alien. Basically (as far as I can tell), what happens is at that decision point, you will get the two conflicting opinions from your squad mates.

One will say "Save the council" and the other will say "Think of the risk to all those human lives"

If you take a human with you, they'll be the ones saying "Think of the risk to all those human lives" (I think), If you take two aliens with you, it will be random who says what.

Obviously, you can't take two humans with you.

So with a certain amount of squad juggling, it's very possible to get Liara, Wrex, or any of the aliens on your crew to advise you that letting the council die is a good idea.

Since this is possible intentionally, it's also possible accidentally by people who don't know the 'rules' for how to make who say what, and thus perhaps they've never seen Liara say anything -but- "No, Shepard, let the council die", which may color their perceptions of what she wants.

Uh. I'm rambling a bit, but that's what my point about the lines being interchangeable was supposed to mean. Unless you've run through that end mission with a very varied selection of characters, you won't have seen the inconsistency that comes from seeing Tali say "Shepard, you can't abandon the Destiny Ascension!" and then very next playthrough hear her say "Shepard, think of the human lives that could be wasted!"

Unfortunately, that's the way the characters are written in both ME1 and ME2. Except for some very specific circumstancs, they don't actually have fixed personalities and opinions - They're there to provide opposing viewpoints at certain game junctures, and the voice actors recorded both sides.

[Raphael diSanto]

Koyasha wrote...

devilsgrin wrote...

Raphael diSanto wrote...

devilsgrin wrote...

Liara certainly doesn't tell you to sacrifice the Destiny Ascension. She may reason it out once you decide to let it go, but she's very pro-saving it. Her argument carries as much weight as Kaiden or Ash's though, since both are human, and would rather not see human lives lost for an unsure and alien thing. Tali and Garrus, and possibly Wrex (though he's never been with me on the Citadel) make more reasoned arguments.

Actually, depending on who you bring with you, their lines are mostly interchangeable.

...this is true...but like i said, the weight of Who says it, makes a difference, for me at least... though in 6 playthroughs i've had Kaiden and Tali or Kaiden and Liara in three of them, so they are the ones i've heard most.

Who says it is meaningless since they argue depending on where they happen to be standing, literally.  Whoever is to Shepard's right (viewer's left) will always say to save the Ascension.  Whoever is to his left (viewer's right) will always say to sacrifice it.  Always.

I stand corrected (on the earlier part of my post about the rules on who says what). Thanks for the clarification. I never noticed this before.

[FlintlockJazz]

My reasoning from an ingame perspective is this:



At the point that you make the decision, we do not know how much firepower is needed. You are not told that the DA will withdraw from the battle when you save it, just that its in trouble. You also know that you will lose ships saving it. You also know that by losing those ships you could lose the battle against Sovereign but at the same time you don't know that you will defeat it with all those ships anyway, and the loss of the DA could be detrimental to the defense against an ensuing reaper invasion. You are also not told that your fleet can fly around them (yes its 3D in space, but if that's the case then why didn't either Sovereign or DA do the exact same thing? Species that have been fighting in space for centuries should know how to fight there and how to cut off other forces), that you can successfully save the DA, that the geth won't just fly in too, the council is needed to organise defense, etc etc.



Essentially, its a judgement call, one that is based on a total lack of information. In that case there is not right or wrong choice but the luck of the die.

[Mondo47]

I just pondered for a moment the potential lives lost if the Ascension was destroyed and the potential loss of life if the Arcturus fleet lost several cruisers (a point which was thankfully vindicated by Shepard's second run-in with the Citadel's douchiest reporter).

Then I considered the Council (as they are so fond of pointing out) are responsible for the governance of trillions of lives across numerous planets and colonies; the decapitation of this political machine could have dire concequences should a counter-attack be required or for simply the continued stability of these worlds should we all survive.

Then I bore in mind that Vigil had explained that a Reaper is far from invulnerable to conventional weaponry, it just takes a lot of it, plus it was just sat there like a giant Scorquidpion... you'd have to be pretty sloppy to miss it.

And then finally I thought of how much fun it would be to remaind that Turian jackass how I saved his scrawny backside over and over and over again...

And then I gave the order. Not tactically sound, not given a great deal of thought, but it worked out in the end.

[Reptilian Rob]

The galaxy needs diversity and stability, not a bunch of humans who "can't even get their own religions straight" as a famous Turian put it.

[Driving Ghost]

I saved them because they owed me 50 bucks.



I just remembered!.





Fo real: I saved them because its better for the galaxy.

[CmdrFenix83]

devilsgrin wrote...

In Last Stand moments, it is Faith that you rely upon. All the preparation in the world (or galaxy as the case may be) won't save you if you don't believe. Thats what last stand are built upon, triumphing against overwhelming odds, against adversaries who think they cannot be defeated because of all Their preparation. Sovereign's arrogance is his weakness in this instance, he believed he could not be defeated in that battle. that Shepard was barely more than an inconvenience, one his puppet Saren could easily deal with.

Basing decisions on faith is just outright stupid.  Sacrificing ships just because you think 'Eh, we'll be able to beat him regardless' is just outright idiocy.  We don't know exactly what caused Sovereign to fall.  Story-wise, we cannot be sure that killing Ninja-Cyborg-Zombie-Saren would drop Sovereign's shields.  If that's the case, then the writer simply decided to make the villian go cliche-stupid for a moment and lose out of stupidity, because none of the ships we putting a dent in his barriers.

Again, we never knew Sovereign's capabilities, and claiming "Ah, it'll be fine, go ahead and throw away several ships, we dun need em." would be just as dumb as choosing your decision by flipping a gorram coin.

My Shep, and what seems to be the over-arching story belief, is that Sovereign was worth a Fleet of ships alone, and sacrificing them all to destroy him was not the ideal way to win. No survivors is a poor victory.
Liara certainly doesn't tell you to sacrifice the Destiny Ascension. She may reason it out once you decide to let it go, but she's very pro-saving it. Her argument carries as much weight as Kaiden or Ash's though, since both are human, and would rather not see human lives lost for an unsure and alien thing. Tali and Garrus, and possibly Wrex (though he's never been with me on the Citadel) make more reasoned arguments.

if Joker says it can be done, and he is the best pilot in the Fleet, i'd definitely believe him. the loss of a couple of ships is a minor thing, the loss of the rest of a fleet (centred upon the DA) is not.

First off, yes, Sovereign is worth a fleet of ships.  The only reason he didn't steamroll through to the Citadel by himself(as Vigil states) is because it would rally the entire galaxy against him, and by himself the odds of trillions to one is too much to handle.  No, sacrificing everything to win isn't *ideal*, however, reality never turns out to be ideal.  Problem with these games, is that the naive, idealist, pure paragon get spoonfed the fairy-tale happily-ever-after result to all of their choices. 

What's the difference between saving the Council and sacrificing them?  Other than the obvious where 'one they die, one they live', the only difference made is that Shepard tells the reporter in ME2 the small casualties taken from saving them.  No mention of the loss of extra ships later due to having lost a dramatic amount of firepower going into that battle.  No penalties whatsoever.  I'm already prepared for the bland, cliche happy-happy ending for ME3 with paragons, with the entire galaxy holding hands and singing Kumbaya.

Every single squadmate has the exact same lines.  The one you select for your squad second will state, "This is bigger than the Council" and whoever you picked first will reply with, "Exactly.  The Council must be sacrificed for the greater good."  I've cleared the first game 16 times with various squadmates.  They have nearly 100% identical lines regardless of who you bring, but every single one advises sacrificing the Council.

Also, Joker is beyond the relay, he has zero tactical knowledge of the battle.  He doesn't know how many ships will be destroyed plowing through the Geth to save the Ascension, nor can he possibly guarantee that it won't be blown up after the Alliance has plowed through.  He *believes* he can do it.  You also keep assuming that the Destiny Ascension's loss would mean the utter destruction of the Citadel fleet.  It's not.  This is validated after-the-fact when the remnants of both the Citadel and Alliance fleets drive the Geth off after the Arcturus fleet destroys Sovereign.

[scxenophobe]

Because I'm a metagamer to the extreme.

[CmdrFenix83]

Wildecker wrote...

There is this often ignored feature of maneuvering thrusters. So they may not be able to outrun the Geth, but they can turn around sloooowly and bring their main gun to bear.
It just turned out that I knocked out Sovereign's puppet before the Destiny could align with Sovereign.

Main drive offline.  No Mass Effect fields.  No Mass Accelerator weapons.  That ship told you that it was dead in the water before you decided to save it.  We know the ship can move still, we see it moving in both cutscenes where the Alliance saves them or ignores them.  This has nothing to do with theior main drive.

Apparently it is not possible to do a hack from half the galaxy away. Or even from the neighbouring system. No hacking via FTL communication. According to the Reaper plan, Sovereign would send a signal to the Keepers, and the Keepers would open the relay into darkspace.

The Keepers did not respond to Sovereign's signal, however. So Sovereign needed someone inside to transfer control, and that was Saren. AND it needed to be on location as the Citadel relay cannot be remote-controlled - otherwise, the Reapers could do that from darkspace any time without ever bothering about Keepers.
And Sovereign needed the Geth to cover its approach before it was safe inside the locked Citadel.
Sovereign is neither omnipotent nor invulnerable. And it knows that.

No, he didn't *need* someone inside to transfer control.  It was just faster.  If you don't think Sovereign could have hacked the system eventually, then EDI is a massive retcon, since she's only 1 consciousness doing a job that Sovereign(millions of minds) apparently cannot accomplish.  EDI is made from Sovereign.  Sovereign is still more advanced. 

You also have no idea how the FTL comms work.  The signals are bounced through active relays to reach their destination.  Without this, it would take years to send a transmission accross the galaxy.  The Citadel Relay isn't on, the Reapers in Darkspace cannot send a signal to it.  They are trapped.  If the signal could be sent, they wouldn't have bothered leaving Sovereign inside the galaxy. 

You're correct, Sovereign isn't invulnerable, however its' capabilities are unknown.  You have absolutely no idea how strong its' barriers or weapon systems are.  You don't know if the Arcturus fleet could possibly defeat Sovereign as it is.  Vigil only states the Sovereign vs the entire galaxy would lose.  No where does he state how strong they are or give specs on their weapons/shield systems.  You're going in blind against an immensely powerful enemy.  Then you're justifying sacrificing ships to save one that has flat out told you that it's out of the battle either way.

[HeyBlade789]

Shepard would look off the hook if he left the head of a mighty empire to die.

[CmdrFenix83]

Koyasha wrote...

CmdrFenix83 wrote...

Main drive offline.  Would seem to tell you flat out that the ship is essentially dead in space. 

Also, using your FTL drive means reducing the ship's mass dramatically.  The impact would be like throwing a grain of sand into a piece of tank armor.  The speed is irrelevant when it has next to zero mass.

If the kinetic barriers are still active then they still have power and their mass effect core is functional, so their gun is presumably functional, and maneuvering thrusters should be enough to line the ship up for a shot at Sovereign.  At least that's my thought.

As for the FTL kamikaze attack, I would have agreed with you, I spent a lot of time considering that concept, but the Cerberus news from March 10th ( http://www.cerberusdailynews.com/?p=61 ) states that "Fortunately, the pilots had disabled the ship’s FTL drive, which could have caused a megaton-scale impact." which clearly establishes an FTL kamikaze attack as a potential mode of attack in ME.

If you listen while you're in control of Joker.  The ship's main drive goes offline, she switches to emergency fuel cells to keep the ship powered at all.  Though whether or not the ship's entire system failure is a result to the core being offline or the Reaper virus is up in the air.

That Cerberus news report refers to the core detonating on impact, not the impact itself.  Though I suppose it does turn the ship into a bomb, but it has nothing to do with activating FTL, just ramming and having the core explode.  However, there's still no guarantee that this type of attack would punch through Sovereign's barrier.  For all we know, Sovereign's shields were invincible until Ninja-Cyborg-Zombie-Saren was killed.  Story-wise, that connection would be dumb as hell, but we have no way of knowing whether or not that was the actual catalyst to Sovereign's defeat or not.

[CmdrFenix83]

Koyasha wrote...

Who says it is meaningless since they argue depending on where they happen to be standing, literally.  Whoever is to Shepard's right (viewer's left) will always say to save the Ascension.  Whoever is to his left (viewer's right) will always say to sacrifice it.  Always.

No one advocates saving it.  One tells you to sacrifice them for the greater good, the other says literally, "This is bigger than the Council."

[Barquiel]

CmdrFenix83 wrote...

Koyasha wrote...

Who says it is meaningless since they argue depending on where they happen to be standing, literally.  Whoever is to Shepard's right (viewer's left) will always say to save the Ascension.  Whoever is to his left (viewer's right) will always say to sacrifice it.  Always.

No one advocates saving it.  One tells you to sacrifice them for the greater good, the other says literally, "This is bigger than the Council."

Liara usually says  "This is bigger than humanity"

[CmdrFenix83]

Barquiel wrote...

CmdrFenix83 wrote...

Koyasha wrote...

Who says it is meaningless since they argue depending on where they happen to be standing, literally.  Whoever is to Shepard's right (viewer's left) will always say to save the Ascension.  Whoever is to his left (viewer's right) will always say to sacrifice it.  Always.

No one advocates saving it.  One tells you to sacrifice them for the greater good, the other says literally, "This is bigger than the Council."

Liara usually says  "This is bigger than humanity"

You're correct, I misremembered the quote.  Though it's not 'Liara' It's 'Whoever you added to the squad second'.  If you picked Liara first and Wrex second, Wrex will say the 'Bigger than Humanity' line and Liara will state "Exactly, the Council must be sacrificed for the greater good."

I still don't read "This is bigger than humanity!" to mean save the Council, as your other squadmate states, this is bigger than anything in the galaxy, and the Council must be sacrificed for the greater good.