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Forgive me but I'm going with the game designers wrote it that way and they did not really try or care if it made sense only that it sold and made money.

If you like it and had fun with it that is the only thing that really counts for you. If I think it needs some work (as in a lot (Edit: as in a complete rewrite)) that is my problem and loss.
 
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Frogs321 said:
Forgive me but I'm going with the game designers wrote it that way and they did not really try or care if it made sense only that it sold and made money.

If you like it and had fun with it that is the only thing that really counts for you. If I think it needs some work (as in a lot (Edit: as in a complete rewrite)) that is my problem and loss.
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ME3's conclusion was a bit of an ass-pull, no doubt. But one thing to bear in mind is that when the Reapers turned on the Leviathans, they had no reason to suspect it was going to happen. Additionally, Leviathans by their nature would have a significantly smaller capacity for creativity and ingenuity than "lesser" races, as they operated by dominating the minds of said lesser races, and by dint of this, had a much smaller total population than humaniform races.

So with the Reaper model of allowing lesser races to reach equivalence or near equivalence with Leviathan technology levels, and intentionally using previous cycles' wreckage as seed material to ensure similarity of tech base for evaluation purposes, it's no real surprise that over a sufficiently long period some collective group managed to create an effective weapon.

Shepard's accomplishment then wasn't being better than the Leviathans so much as it was being born at the same time as a weapon was available and being just barely smart enough to figure out how to pull the trigger.
 
We're running into the issue of a lot of people assuming competence and intelligent design in the reapers and digital AI. It happens every 20 pages or so like the tide coming in.

And I get why. I really do, No one wants to consider the massive galaxy ending thread in there loved games are pant's on head retarded.

But they really really are. The "child" (and boy wasn't that an asspull) in the capital is a broken VI. One very poorly made by space squids to run their slaves.
The Reapers are not even AI's, there hogpoged VI's made up of memories from dead civilians in whatever race they just ganked. I mean, they sure can't be using the body's for material to build with right? Cardon is ever fucking place, using squishy carbon is mining with more steps.

And even then, 99.9% of what they catch is civilians. Who would only know day to day shit, and 50% of that is likely gonna be a bunch of dumpasses.
Ever fighter and genius is off fighting trying to prevent ever one from dying, they don't end up part of it.

Huh, considering all that. Reapers are literally made up of stupid. They soddy VI framework stamped over top.

Wow.
 
Pai said:
And I get why. I really do, No one wants to consider the massive galaxy ending thread in there loved games are pant's on head retarded.
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It's more that by implication, they must have a certain degree of competence or they would not be a threat at all.

Just because Bioware is infamously bad at writing doesn't excuse us from trying to come up with something better for the purposes of this story, does it? I mean, you don't have to, but that leaves you with a parody of the setting where the major threat is actually just a bunch bumbling chucklefucks and everyone else is so utterly useless at everything that they still couldn't manage to survive them.
 
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Pai said:
We're running into the issue of a lot of people assuming competence and intelligent design in the reapers and digital AI. It happens every 20 pages or so like the tide coming in.

And I get why. I really do, No one wants to consider the massive galaxy ending thread in there loved games are pant's on head retarded.
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Actually, I find that pretty much every overwhelming evil in fiction tends to have glaring flaws, and one way to make an overwhelming force beatable is to give them some type of mental or psychological handicaps, which from a human perspective tends to be "pants-on-head retarded."

Moriarty HAS to test Holmes. He could easily avoid the one man who can beat him and live like a king in another part of the world. Harry Turtledove's Race just can't innovate like humans can. Niven and Pournelle's Fithp just can't fathom non-herd-based mentalities. Sauron can't guess that the good guys would choose to destroy the ring, because he would never do the same. Supervillains have to have a theme that they adhere to beyond all common sense in almost every comic book. Martians have space travel, but they haven't figured out immunizations. It's all because stories where the big bad really is unstoppable aren't called adventure stories -- they're called horror stories.

It's kind of a storytelling thing. Beating the bad guy had to fit within a reasonable story arc (although your definition of "reasonable" may vary, like with the Wheel of Time series by Robert Jordon). In order to beat them in anything approaching a reasonable time frame for a story, they almost have to have a glaring weakness. It's part of why real life is not like the stories, as we don't live in a world structured for narrative convenience.
 
Frogs321 said:
In reference to the ongoing discussion.

If the Reapers are all that the Reapers claim they are why are there less then 4000 Relays in the Milky Way Galaxy?

What is keeping the Reapers contained? There lots of things that could be doing this, lots of combination of things that could put limits on Reaper expansion.

What has been going on in the rest of the Milky Way Galaxy in the billions of years that the Reapers have playing in their little planium trap/sand box?

Edit: Are the Reapers little fish in a little pond?

:evil: :D
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Real Space Chulthu with 20x the tentacles?:o:ninja:
 
Userid70 said:
It is all a question of how outside the box you can think for how to quickly ID habitable worlds and worlds with advanced life on them. Place say a dozen telescope stations around the galaxy and you can ID 99% of habitable worlds and what level of tech they are at just off the reflected light from the parent star and the night side light produced. A wood fire produces a fingerprint in the light just as a tungsten incandescent light bulb dose.
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Major problem with that idea is that the speed of light is a thing. Which means that you're going to be looking at something that happened tens to hundreds of thousands of years ago, even assuming you can actually see it in the first place, which you wouldn't...

Derek M said:
Actually, I find that pretty much every overwhelming evil in fiction tends to have glaring flaws, and one way to make an overwhelming force beatable is to give them some type of mental or psychological handicaps, which from a human perspective tends to be "pants-on-head retarded."

Moriarty HAS to test Holmes. He could easily avoid the one man who can beat him and live like a king in another part of the world. Harry Turtledove's Race just can't innovate like humans can. Niven and Pournelle's Fithp just can't fathom non-herd-based mentalities. Sauron can't guess that the good guys would choose to destroy the ring, because he would never do the same. Supervillains have to have a theme that they adhere to beyond all common sense in almost every comic book. Martians have space travel, but they haven't figured out immunizations. It's all because stories where the big bad really is unstoppable aren't called adventure stories -- they're called horror stories.

It's kind of a storytelling thing. Beating the bad guy had to fit within a reasonable story arc (although your definition of "reasonable" may vary, like with the Wheel of Time series by Robert Jordon). In order to beat them in anything approaching a reasonable time frame for a story, they almost have to have a glaring weakness. It's part of why real life is not like the stories, as we don't live in a world structured for narrative convenience.
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It's also why a genuinely competent evil threat would be, and is, absolutely terrifying. Far more so than something that can be beaten by just wandering over to the one vulnerable spot it somehow never noticed and giving it a swift kick in the goolies.

And it's why the 'good guys' are often also pretty dim, since it usually takes them far too long to actually notice the obvious vulnerability, or the major flaw in the evil plan, or something of that nature.

I mean, to take another example than ME, there was the Star Trek reboot movie where by some incredibly strained set of circumstances Romulus gets all exploded. So the big bad guy builds a huge ship, goes back in time, and preemptively gets revenge for that by destroying Vulcan.

Hold on...

He's got a fucking time machine.

Why did he not go a little further back and fix the original problem, thereby saving both Romulus and Vulcan, then ride off into the sunset while being hailed a hero? Much shorter movie, and far less dead people, that's why :) Sensible and watchable are often diametrically opposed, as are plausible and game-worthy...


"General, the humans have repelled our invasion again!"

"Those primitives! We will show them the might of the Turian people! Assemble the invasion... Hold on a second, everyone, just stop for a minute, OK. Now, I know this is a little late in the game but can I just ask why we're running off to some place half way across the galaxy to attack some people who have no idea we're here, and aren't actually subject to our laws in the first place? I mean, isn't this technically an act of war? Are we actually the baddies?"

"Um... Not sure I understand, General."

"Fine, let me try again. One of our scout patrols found a group of unknown ships right next to a dormant relay, correct?"

"Yes, sir."

"Great. OK, what happened next?"

"The patrol fired on the aliens, sir!"

"Yes, I understand that. What I want to know is why they did that."

"They're aliens, sir."

"Yes. And?"

"And they were next to a dormant relay, sir!"

"Go on."

"Well... clearly they were about to activate it and unleash hell. Against Council law. 'Article 1034.4.iib - Hell is not to be unleashed via unauthorised relay activation without prior approval of the Council in triplicate.' So they had no choice. Sir."

"I see. All right, let me try a different tack. Did anyone think to, you know, actually talk to them? Or possibly ask for a First Contact team to come and do the talking? As both the law and common sense would require?"

"No, sir."

"They just opened fire."

"Yes, sir."

"And destroyed all but one of the ships, which managed to escape, get reinforcements, return, and utterly demolish the scout group?"

"Yes, sir. This unprovoked attack must be punished by the might of the Turian military!"

"... You know, sometimes I think that people who say that the Turian life style is breeding for stupidity have a point."

"Sir?"

"Nothing, I was just thinking out loud. All right, then, so we started it, they finished it, and now we're going to start it all over again on a larger scale in a manner that can't fail to not only ultimately cause massive trouble for everyone involved, but attract the attention of the Council and lay us all open to who knows what problems in the future? Is that the idea?"

"Yes, sir, exactly. Succinctly summarized."

"Oh gods. I know I'm going to regret asking this, but why?"

"It's in the script, sir! See? Page 216, 'Turian military vastly overreacts and uses the power of idiocy. It's super effective, sort of, for a while, then it all goes wrong for us, leading the way for the humans to save the galaxy.' There's a little drawing of our fleet attacking this colony world in the margin and everything, look."

"... Fuck it all."

"Sorry, sir."

"Never mind, it's not your fault. But if I ever find the bastard who wrote this dreck, he's going to regret it. Now where was I?"

"Line forty two. 'Those primitives!...'"

"Ah, yes, thank you. Those primitives! We will show them the might of the Turian people! Assemble the invasion fleet immediately! We attack in two days!"

"Yes, sir! The message has gone out even as we speak. Soon the new species will bow before the unstoppably fury of the Turian military!"

"CUT!"

"Fuck it, I need a drink..."

Arimai said:
Real Space Chulthu with 20x the tentacles?:o:ninja:
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Lizards.

It's always Lizards... ;)
 
mp3.1415player said:
Why did he not go a little further back and fix the original problem, thereby saving both Romulus and Vulcan, then ride off into the sunset while being hailed a hero?
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Actually, the crazy Romulan didn't have a time machine, he was sucked through an artificially generated black hole induced space-time anomaly of some sort that gave him the boot through time.

No intended time travel here, just a lot of highly improbable situations occurring all at once.
 
Avniel said:
Actually, the crazy Romulan didn't have a time machine, he was sucked through an artificially generated black hole induced space-time anomaly of some sort that gave him the boot through time.

No intended time travel here, just a lot of highly improbable situations occurring all at once.
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Been a while since I saw it, but if that's right, the movie was even less plausible than I thought it was :D
 
mp3.1415player said:
"Oh gods. I know I'm going to regret asking this, but why?"

"It's in the script, sir! See? Page 216, 'Turian military vastly overreacts and uses the power of idiocy. It's super effective, sort of, for a while, then it all goes wrong for us, leading the way for the humans to save the galaxy.' There's a little drawing of our fleet attacking this colony world in the margin and everything, look."

"... Fuck it all."
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It's not just easy to look like the super smart guy of the story when the author hands you the script, eh?

I want Commander Exasperatedus Turianus to be a character in this story.
 
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mp3.1415player said:
"... You know, sometimes I think that people who say that the Turian life style is breeding for stupidity have a point."
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"Commodore Idiottus."

"Sir!"

"Before making our final decision, this board is required to question you on standard practices of Turian Hierarchy Navy. Question one - you see unidentified ships next to an inactive Mass Relay. What is your response?"

"I blow them up, FOR THE HIERARCHY!"

"Very good. Question two, the ships from the previous situation attempted to communicate with you. Please describe your course of action."

"I blow them up, FOR THE HIERARCHY!"

"That's good. Question three, the previously described ships explain that they were not aware of Citadel Laws and as such can not be held responsible for breaking them. Present a proper response."

"I explain to them that ignorance of the law is not an excuse! It was in effect for millennia and it's only their fault for not looking it up in the Citadel. Then I blow them up, FOR THE HIERARCHY!"

"Yes, I think we can accept this answer. Question four, the commander of the ships complain that the Relay is not located inside Citadel Space and as such, Citadel laws should not apply to it. Give your response."

"I inform him that every spot of space where Citadel soldier foot stood belongs to the Citadel! Then I blow them up, FOR THE HIERARCHY!"

"Hmm... yes, the correct answer was 'I blow them up, for the Hierarchy' but I think we can accept it. Congratulations, Captain Triggerus Happius Idiottus, you are now a fully-fledged commander of a patrol fleet. Make Hierarchy proud!"


Some unspecified time later.


"Sir! Some unidetified ships are near the Relay!"

"They are obviously trying to activate it! Blow them up, FOR THE HIERARCHY!"

"FOR THE HIERARCHY!"
 
mp3.1415player said:
Been a while since I saw it, but if that's right, the movie was even less plausible than I thought it was :D
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It gets worse. Supposedly, the place he disappeared to for those years between the Kelvin and the battle at the start of the movie is because he was captured by the Klingons, who helped torture him into insanity or something like that. I generally have given up expecting sensible plots from JJ Abrams (see The Rise of Skywalker, for example). The dude co-wrote Armageddon, after all (which is my favorite movie to hate), and was producer for the mess that was Lost.
 
Derek M said:
The dude co-wrote Armageddon, after all (which is my favorite movie to hate), and was producer for the mess that was Lost.
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Yeesh. Now there's a statement. I mean, I'm perfectly aware that Lost was critically and commercially successful, but from the few episodes of it that I've seen, it's also utter bugfuck nuts to a degree that makes the X-Files look sensible.
 
I still can't believe how Abrams was handed control of Star Wars after he showed just how incompetent he was with continuity and setting rules in Star Trek. All Disney needed to do was throw a serviceable team of writers at the setting, let them pick a reasonable extrapolation of the previous content and generate some medium-term story arcs, and print cash forever a la MCU. But no. Full creative control goes to their hired-gun auteurs and here we are today.

Even BEFORE Trek, Abrams was known to be stupid as hell when it came to setting design and continuity. If you want a guy to make it pretty onscreen, fine, but keep him away from the script.

(Sorry, I get really mad about this.)

Oddly enough, I mostly enjoyed Armageddon. Stupid Hollywood character tropes vs. asteroid with rock soundtrack, relatively harmless AFY, and (decent at the time) effects.

--

I tend to think the "Reapers survey the galaxy" idea is possible (probably not every cycle, but within a 1My supercycle pretty easily), but somewhat dependent on how many actual Reapers there are. One thing I've seen conflicting answers for is whether they create multiple Reapers per species, and if they make at least one for every species. (I don't think there's a strict canon answer for either, though it's at least somewhat implied there is only one per species.) Even at a billion years, if you're only creating 5 new reapers per 50ky cycle that's 100k Reapers MINUS attrition. Enough to swamp the current Citadel Council species, but low enough that even the level of relay construction evident in the games gets problematic if they don't have very cheap on-site eezo generation.
 
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If it was Spaceballs, I'd expect some kind of comment about how they have to do it this way because it's the backstory flashback and already happened.
 
...let's bring it back to Incompatable System, please. Debates on Star Wars and Spaceballs should probably be taken elsewhere.
 
roman566 said:
"I explain to them that ignorance of the law is not an excuse! It was in effect for millennia and it's only their fault for not looking it up in the Citadel. Then I blow them up, FOR THE HIERARCHY!"
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"There's no point in acting surprised about it. All the planning charts and demolition orders have been on display at your local planning department in Alpha Centauri for 50 of your Earth years, so you've had plenty of time to lodge any formal complaint and it's far too late to start making a fuss about it now. … What do you mean you've never been to Alpha Centauri? Oh, for heaven's sake, mankind, it's only four light years away, you know. I'm sorry, but if you can't be bothered to take an interest in local affairs, that's your own lookout. Energize the demolition beams."

Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
 
SandwichKed said:
Oddly enough, I mostly enjoyed Armageddon. Stupid Hollywood character tropes vs. asteroid with rock soundtrack, relatively harmless AFY, and (decent at the time) effects.
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I'd say that the greatest summary for "harmless AFY" effect is the president's speech in Armaggeddon. It might be America Fuck Yeah, but it's the 1990s optimistic kind where it's America leading the way for good of all with several nods to America not having done everything alone.
 
GuiltyAsCharged said:
I'm a bit confused at how the reapers miss their relays being stolen... Well it must be a new problem, but how can they miss a destroyed one? No failsafes? Isnt the AI in the citadel at least monitoring such things? Signals etc.

Sorry if this has been answered already, kinda new to this thread 😅
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Please show us where in the story the Reapers have real-time monitoring of the relay network. Here's a hint for you: start with the chapters that detail the things the humans figure out about relay communication.

E M Berner said:
Did a little number crunching to see how long it would take to survey the entire galaxy.

Here are my assumptions:
  1. There are 200 billion stars in the Milky Way Galaxy.
  2. The average distance between stars is about 4 light years.
  3. It would take on average roughly 12 hours to survey a system for life bearing or potentially life bearing planets and any other interesting information.
  4. Reapers can travel at 30 ly/d indefinitely.
  5. They are about 50% efficient at setting up a route with minimal backtracking.
  6. The Reapers already have accurate star maps and thus doesn't need to spend any time searching for new stars to travel to.
If all this bears out than it should take about 420 million reaper years to survey the galaxy. So if you have a hundred million reapers it would take around 4 years to do it. A million reapers could do it in 400 years etc.

It's not impossible to do but it would be an immense undertaking and this is just for a basic survey, if you also want to search for rogue planets that could hide a Prothean base it would take far longer or require far more reapers.

If you had to spend weeks in each star system to search the neighbourhood for bases in the oort cloud or on planetoids far out in the black it would quickly escalate to thousands of years even if you had millions of reapers.
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Now subtract all the stars that do not possess life-bearing worlds and divide by the number of systems a single Reaper can survey at once.
 
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