Mass Effect 3 (Seriously, Use Spoilers People!)

[SlyReaper]

How do you know there was an unspoken agreement he would never be revived if it never came up?

Biotic powers grant telepathy as well as telekinesis.

That is completely inconsistent with the lore. Element zero allows you manipulate the mass of objects; it does not grant magical powers.

It grants FTL travel. Seems pretty magical to me.

[Belial]

Or, in the case of asari anyway, permeable nervous systems.

[skeptical scientist]

I also don't really understand the "play it for yourself" message he concludes with. If the ending makes the median fan feel betrayed, why would you suggest the median fan see it? Why not something like "enjoy the multiplayer while we work on this DLC"? And why italicize the word "trust," especially when a major problem is that fans feel betrayed?

How do we know the median fan feels betrayed? The median fan who is vocal about the ending might feel betrayed, but that self-selected subset of fans is likely to have very different demographics from the general population.

My sense is that it was a sincere apology, so I give him credit for that. He clearly understands that the fans are upset, and wants to make things right while still defending his team from the abuse they've been getting (understandable, especially given Belial's comment). However, I didn't really get a sense that he understood why the fans were upset.

[Belial]

How do we know the median fan feels betrayed?

the weighted average of the metacritic user review across the three platforms is 4.2, way worse than the score people gave to a broken Civ V

[Xeio]

But that's not a representative sample! People who hate the game ending are more likely to vote than people who are indifferent/liked it.

[Vaniver]

Bioware is banging this drum lately because of the ridiculous racist and sexist attacks on Jen Hepler and another staffer on their forums. It's caused them to say stuff like this kindof all over. And I agree with it and I'm glad they're standing up for their staff against all the bullshit. But it looks weird and out of place if you don't know the backstory of why this is in all of their messaging lately.

Looking into that, I agree that the attacks on Hepler are totally uncalled for and mistaken. If anything, the only thing you can out of the 2006 interview is that Hepler may have been behind the "action? / RPG? / dialogue?" choice, which is undeniably a feature of ME3.

How do we know the median fan feels betrayed? The median fan who is vocal about the ending might feel betrayed, but that self-selected subset of fans is likely to have very different demographics from the general population.

I'm comfortable assuming that people who leave reviews on metacritic (majority negative) are representative of fans, even if they're not representative of customers.

[Dark567]

How do we know the median fan feels betrayed? The median fan who is vocal about the ending might feel betrayed, but that self-selected subset of fans is likely to have very different demographics from the general population.

I'm comfortable assuming that people who leave reviews on metacritic (majority negative) are representative of fans, even if they're not representative of customers.

I mean, those are really low scores for meta-critic, far lower than similarly critically acclaimed games. Basically it seems that Metacritic hasn't succumbed to that sort of bias previously, I am not sure why we should suspect it has now. Based on my speaking with other people who have played it, both here and my friends who aren't fanbois and don't spend time on internet forums, there seems to be a pretty strong consensus that the ending sucked*.

*And honestly after playing it, how couldn't you think that? I mean, I know its a matter of taste, but it just seems so bad. It kinda blows my mind that someone would think that it was good. It's not like the Lost or BSG endings, or even the Star Wars prequels, where I am willing to give someone the benefit of their own tastes. Lost and BSG just provided a lack of closure to their stories... whatever. ME3's ending is incoherent as far as I am concerned which is far more damning than making a bad artistic decision.

[Xeio]

*And honestly after playing it, how couldn't you think that? I mean, I know its a matter of taste, but it just seems so bad. It kinda blows my mind that someone would think that it was good. It's not like the Lost or BSG endings, or even the Star Wars prequels, where I am willing to give someone the benefit of their own tastes. Lost and BSG just provided a lack of closure to their stories... whatever. ME3's ending is incoherent as far as I am concerned which is far more damning than making a bad artistic decision.

I don't think that's the issue is that anyone thought the ending was amazing. I agree that the ending wasn't good. I think it's being blown way out of proportion though compared to the rest of the game, which is excellent.

[Telchar]

Just got my salarian infiltrator to 20 with a Widow and Stealth (headshot and Sniper damage) and energy drain (more drain/shields) maxed along with points in salarian op and fitness. The proximity mine seems like a waste of time. I really like the playstyle and even without speccing stealth into duration the stealth still lasts a really long time, and it the cooldown doesn't come until after the stealth wears off, so you can stealth/drain/snipe and take down banshees/phantoms without help on silver, and with some help on gold.

Started playing an asari vangaurd. I use the locust SMG with weight reduction and the carnifex and I'm finding that I just run around stasis/headshoting everything and only using charge if I get in trouble and need to use my shields. I think she's up to 13 or so but I can hold my own in Bronze, especially against Cerberus and Reapers. Geth pyros are a problem however.

Other than that, I've played a salarian engineer and decoy can be amazing. I play it almost like an infiltrator, except I use decoy instead of stealth to get out of trouble. You really need a good pistol to do it though, because otherwise your only heavy hitter is incinerate and then you can't use decoy on a banshee to basically take it out of the game for a minute or so (she can't use her insta-kill ability on a decoy so it takes a while for her to kill it).

[Chen]

Also making its way around reddit was this, the (unconfirmed) experience of a underwriter on Mass Effect 3: [/spoiler]

From your spoiler

And then, just to be a dick... what was SUPPOSED to happen was that, say you picked "Destroy the Reapers". When you did that, the system was SUPPOSED to look at your score, and then you'd show a cutscene of Earth that was either:

a) Very high score: Earth obviously damaged, but woo victory
b) Medium score: Earth takes a bunch of damage from the Crucible activation. Like dropping a bomb on an already war-ravaged city. Uh, well, maybe not LIKE that as much as, uh, THAT.
c) Low score: Earth is a cinderblock, all life on it completely wiped out

I have NO IDEA why these different cutscenes aren't in there. As far as I know, they were never cut. Maybe they were cut for budget reasons at the last minute. I don't know. But holy crap, yeah, I can see how incredibly disappointing it'd be to hear of all the different ending possibilities and have it break down to "which color is stuff glowing?" Or maybe they ARE in, but they're too subtle to really see obvious differences, and again, that's... yeah.

This lends me to believe this is NOT someone in the company because at least 2 of those 3 cutscenes DO exist in the game. I didn't try to get the medium one but I've definitely seen the high and low score ones.

People have definitely got caught up on the endings. Yes they are a big part of the game, but rating the game as a 0 because of it is foolishness. Besides excellent gameplay, there are so many other bits of plot resolution and good writing its not funny. The resolution to the Genophage and to the Quarians is excellently done. Some of the dialogue at the end when you're saying goodbye to people is heart-wrenching in a way that I haven't really seen in any other game that I can think of.

Aside from the incoherence of the Normandy scene at the end, the rest of the ending can at least make some sense. The real issue is that everyone has to start guessing at what is going to happen to everyone else. Will the Quarian fleet try to get back to Rannoch? With the Krogan on earth start overpopulating things? Will the Turians find another dextra-amino planet nearby or die out? All these are of course going to be different depending on what you did in the game (clearly the Quarians won't be going back home if the Geth wiped them out), its just that they dropped the ball on telling us. Hell a slideshow like in most of the Fallout games would probably have been sufficient for most people (and frankly I bet that's what they're going to add, its the simplest thing to do). This will let them put real closure to each of the storylines, even if the ending was all real. Now I can't imagine many of those slideshow things will be happy considering the Mass relays are gone, but it will be closure at least.

[Obby]

Aside from the incoherence of the Normandy scene at the end, the rest of the ending can at least make some sense. The real issue is that everyone has to start guessing at what is going to happen to everyone else. Will the Quarian fleet try to get back to Rannoch? With the Krogan on earth start overpopulating things? Will the Turians find another dextra-amino planet nearby or die out? All these are of course going to be different depending on what you did in the game (clearly the Quarians won't be going back home if the Geth wiped them out), its just that they dropped the ball on telling us. Hell a slideshow like in most of the Fallout games would probably have been sufficient for most people (and frankly I bet that's what they're going to add, its the simplest thing to do). This will let them put real closure to each of the storylines, even if the ending was all real. Now I can't imagine many of those slideshow things will be happy considering the Mass relays are gone, but it will be closure at least.

Honestly, I don't even think that I would care if they never even fixed the inconsistencies. If they added something like this, that explained what happened to everyone based on your choices, I would be perfectly happy with it. I know a lot of people wouldn't, but I'm personally willing to overlook the inconsistencies.

I want my closure.

[Belial]

With the Krogan on earth start overpopulating things?

Considering I don't think they brought any women, that would be a hell of a trick. On the other hand, are thousands of Krogan with no hope a better thing to have on your planet?

Hell a slideshow like in most of the Fallout games would probably have been sufficient for most people

It's not like this is a foreign concept to them. It's how DA:O and Awakening both ended.

[An Enraged Platypus]

Just got my salarian infiltrator to 20 with a Widow and Stealth (headshot and Sniper damage) and energy drain (more drain/shields) maxed along with points in salarian op and fitness. The proximity mine seems like a waste of time. I really like the playstyle and even without speccing stealth into duration the stealth still lasts a really long time, and it the cooldown doesn't come until after the stealth wears off, so you can stealth/drain/snipe and take down banshees/phantoms without help on silver, and with some help on gold.

Started playing an asari vangaurd. I use the locust SMG with weight reduction and the carnifex and I'm finding that I just run around stasis/headshoting everything and only using charge if I get in trouble and need to use my shields. I think she's up to 13 or so but I can hold my own in Bronze, especially against Cerberus and Reapers. Geth pyros are a problem however.

Other than that, I've played a salarian engineer and decoy can be amazing. I play it almost like an infiltrator, except I use decoy instead of stealth to get out of trouble. You really need a good pistol to do it though, because otherwise your only heavy hitter is incinerate and then you can't use decoy on a banshee to basically take it out of the game for a minute or so (she can't use her insta-kill ability on a decoy so it takes a while for her to kill it).

The widow just will not drop for me, maddeningly. I'm having a lot of success with a Salarian Infiltrator armed with the Katana X though. One thing I only got put onto a few days ago with the Infiltrator is the ease of grab kills. You see an enemy in cover, stealth, run to the other side, grab instakill. Rinse and repeat, it makes otherwise potentially fiddly enemies like the Nemesis straightforward. Shame you can't grab-kill a Phantom.

[Chen]

With the Krogan on earth start overpopulating things?

Considering I don't think they brought any women, that would be a hell of a trick. On the other hand, are thousands of Krogan with no hope a better thing to have on your planet?

I don't know, if the Krogan expected a protracted war they might have brought some along. If Eve is in charge its possible there are some fighting too considering the sweeping changes she started bringing forward.

And I guess they could mate with any Asari there, although that would result in more Asari and not Krogan.

[Ghostbear]

I'm going to have to agree with the others here, Muzyka doesn't really seem to be saying anything useful here towards the ending.

People have definitely got caught up on the endings. Yes they are a big part of the game, but rating the game as a 0 because of it is foolishness.

I disagree. If people think the ending is so terrible that it weakens the overall product that much, who are you or I (or someone else) to say that they're being foolish? Games are a complete product, and should be able to be judged based off of how the complete package makes somebody feel. If you eat an apple, and all but the last bite is delicious, while the last bite has a worm in it, would you call it "foolishness" to say it was a bad apple? After all, the rest of the apple was excellent! You shouldn't be so harsh on that apple, just because the last bite was so terrible. Now switch "apple" to "game" and "last bite has a worm" to "terrible ending", and we're all set.

I haven't gone to metacritic or amazon or whatever to give the game a low aggregate rating, but "campaigns" like that aren't meant to reflect the game itself, but the attitude of the developer or publisher. So far, Bioware's response has essentially varied from "No, it's a great ending!" to "You see guys, the reviewers disagree with you, so you're all wrong, but we're gonna acknowledge that you have a right to be wrong". I don't see anything wrong with consumers attempting to remind publishers that just because the critics are nice, the customers won't be the same.

Hmm. Can't youtube from work, will have to watch later.

Transcript to save you the trouble:

Spoiler:

That was our fate, our leaders were dead before we even realized we were under attack. The reapers seized control of the Citadel and through it the mass relays. Communication and transportation across our empire were crippled. Each star system was isolated, cut off from the others. Easy prey for the Reaper fleets. Over the next decades, the Reapers systemtically obliterated our people. World by world, system by system, they methodically wiped us out.

They're still playing the long game, though, which works to their advantage in most cycles but works against them here. See, the crews of those starships (and the ones that get built after them) come from those forces on the ground, and the massive civilian populations that fuel them. By locking down, for example, Kharshan, and totally fucking it up before they move on to Earth, they ensure that not only is the Batarian navy screwed, but that Kharshan won't be producing any new surprises once the main force of the fleet moves on. Rinse and repeat for earth. Then Palaven. Then Thessia.

Rocking the entire planet into the stone age with relativistic orbital bombardment solves the "Not gonna be biting us in the back now, are you?" issue handily, you're right, but since they're also viewing organic species as raw materials for MOAR REAPERS, and they're already expecting to take heavier losses in this cycle than they have in any cycle previous, they're pretty loathe to just start vaporizing giant stores of reaper building resources.

In other words, they played it safe and got burnt.

Right, but my point is that the biggest threat to the reapers is star fleets. Nothing else is shown to have even a chance of damaging a full sized one, and even with the Quarians, we're shown it taking orbital bombardment from multiple ships to take out a smaller one. Instead of allowing that threat -- alone in it's consistency and scope -- to have time to organize and plan a response. Judging by the reapers FTL advantages and the speeds of the relay network themselves, a quick system hopping plan -- in, destroy fleets and any infrastructure that would allow the construction of more ships, out -- could be done before anyone else has any time to react properly. After that, they can then go about reaping the planets. This could have been done on a timescale of months at the longest in all likelihood, allowing them to safely go ahead with the decades-centuries long process of planetary absorption. Their strategy as shown only makes sense when looked at from the perspective of traditional combatants, and completely ignores their own advantages: overwhelming forces, no need for supplies, no points to defend, vastly superior technology.

The part about orbital bombardment was not meant as a general course of action, but as a response to "oh shit, they developed something on the ground that can hurt us". Such as the thanix missiles used in London, or the thresher maw on Tuchanka. If something like that is made while they're off fleet killing, then after their first loss, they can float up into space and destroy it safely, then go back to reaping traditionally.

[Telchar]

The widow just will not drop for me, maddeningly. I'm having a lot of success with a Salarian Infiltrator armed with the Katana X though. One thing I only got put onto a few days ago with the Infiltrator is the ease of grab kills. You see an enemy in cover, stealth, run to the other side, grab instakill. Rinse and repeat, it makes otherwise potentially fiddly enemies like the Nemesis straightforward. Shame you can't grab-kill a Phantom.

My usual MO is to stealth+energy drain (unless it's an atlas w/o shields or I have a clear shot. Even if it's just an assault trooper it makes them stand up and stay still) and then immediately fire the shot. I'm noticing that even if the stealth visual hasn't worn off, I still don't get the bonus damage to the sniper shot if I've used drain.

Also, I'm pretty sure Stealth doesn't use it's own cooldown if you used a power instead of sniping. So using energy drain also allows you more stealth uptime because it has a faster cooldown.

[ArgonV]

Then again, a point can be made in favor of attacking multiple worlds at once. The Batarians can be easily picked off because they're isolationist anyway and the game reveals their leadership was indoctrinated anyway. But the Asari wouldn't help because they were scared of being attacked. The turians wouldn't help before you secured help from the krogan on their planet. They kept the quarians busy dealing with the geth. If the Reapers had just focussed on humans, it might've even been easier for Shepard to point out that they'd be next if they didn't stop the Reapers now, which would've let to a massive attack on Reaper forces, which can be killed with enough capital ships.

[Belial]

The reapers seized control of the Citadel and through it the mass relays. Communication and transportation across our empire were crippled

That's...tenuous. It could easily refer to the fact that the citadel is sitting right in the center of the network, and blocking communication or travel through those relays cripples the network. And if we weren't already deciding that the writing in ME3 was wrong, the fact that they didn't just shut the network off again would probably serve as evidence that they never could.

Or maybe the prothean team that screwed with the keepers also screwed with the cutoff switch. Who knows.

Their strategy as shown only makes sense when looked at from the perspective of traditional combatants, and completely ignores their own advantages: overwhelming forces, no need for supplies, no points to defend, vastly superior technology.

They had one other advantage that they expected to play a much bigger role than it did. What's referred to in the Hitchhiker's Guide as the "Somebody Else's Problem" field. As long as they were just fucking up the Batarians, they were the Batarians' problem and no one else wanted to get involved. Moving on before they were finished crushing the Batarians' ability to fight back would've made them more obviously everybody's problem, or at the very least two species' problem. Instead, do just enough to worry the other races and make them circle their wagons, but not enough to convince them that the invasion of this world over here is their problem.

You saw it working as intended with the initial responses of the turians and salarians: if we give you ships to help with your planet, how will we defend ours? We have to stay in our little, easily conquerable pockets and hope somehow the fight for our planet will be different than everyone else's. Right now the main force of the Reapers is someone else's problem.

Basically, they didn't count on one crazy undead lady running around giving stirring speeches and getting everyone to throw all their forces into one big roaming hard-to-locate clump. When it started to happen, they started adapting: Kharshan and Earth were each conquered in a "finish crippling this planet before you start with that one over there" strategy, and Palaven started the same way, but when they started to get a whiff of what Shepard was doing (ie, when you dropped a shit-ton of krogan on their conquering efforts and started knocking off their long range scouts and shit-stirrers), they adapted to something much closer to what you're describing: rapid expansion, lashing out at everyone all at once, trying to cripple the biggest threats in a comprehensive way (which is, I'm guessing, why they moved on to hit thessia before they were done with Palaven). They just adapted too late, because they were overconfident. Which was always supposed to be their fatal flaw.

The quarians were interesting, because the reapers did sort of jump ahead to fuck them up without conquering the intervening territory, but they only did so in a way that was hard to trace back to them. To the rest of the universe and even most of the quarians, it just looked like the Geth/Quarian hostilities had amped up again, and it nearly killed the quarians and netted the reapers a new fleet of servitors. And they would've gotten away with it, too, if it weren't for you meddling kids.

Also, while we're discussing lore, can anyone explain what the ass a thanix missile is supposed to be? The thanix canon is not a principle that lends itself to rocket launchers.

[Okita]

If you consider the fleet being the biggest threat, then yeah, it seems silly that the Reapers didn't constantly go for the fleets. But I don't think the fleets are the biggest threat. You need a fleet to do damage but if you are specifically targeting fleets then (in the case of the Turians or Asari) you can play nifty trickses like hiding or FTL jumping in to attack and then jumping out before your enemy is able to turn and hit you with a broadside.

So instead the Reapers short circuited the problem by going directly for the planets. Why? Because those are targets of opportunity that have to be defended. Sure, it means they're a stagnant force but considering they are so strong, it doesn't matter. Hit and run doesn't matter if someone's knocking on your front door.

Although while I do agree that orbital bombardment could have dealt with Thanix missiles, there was a fleet battle going on in the skies above. Any ship turning away to aim at the planet probably presents itself as a target of opportunity. Also I think I read something about the energy needed to reduce mass to land on a planet (and presumably take off). That sort of energy loss would make it not as feasible to just lift off whenever they want.

Besides, going for the Batarians first before anyone else makes sense not just because the Batarians are isolationist but because they provided the first groups of decent infantry. And opening theatres of war across multiple fronts makes sense because otherwise you give breather room for one civilization to create more ships which would prolong the war.

As for the Thanix Missile... I'm guessing either that Thanix is just a name and the two weapons are not similar...or maybe the missile itself contains one shot of molten metal inside that is fired. It sort of makes sense in that the missile could maneuver a bit before firing off that one shot...but I don't really insist on it because it is kind of silly.

The funny thing is the real biggest threat probably was the Geth due to their dreadnought making capabilities. They probably could push out ships out of drydock faster than anyone if they weren't co-opted by the Reapers. But when you break the indoctrination, I would think that would give you a lot of breather room due to the sheer manufacturing capabilities of the geth (for example, geth don't need to have an economy).

[Belial]

If you consider the fleet being the biggest threat, then yeah, it seems silly that the Reapers didn't constantly go for the fleets. But I don't think the fleets are the biggest threat. You need a fleet to do damage but if you are specifically targeting fleets then (in the case of the Turians or Asari) you can play nifty trickses like hiding or FTL jumping in to attack and then jumping out before your enemy is able to turn and hit you with a broadside.

So instead the Reapers short circuited the problem by going directly for the planets. Why? Because those are targets of opportunity that have to be defended. Sure, it means they're a stagnant force but considering they are so strong, it doesn't matter. Hit and run doesn't matter if someone's knocking on your front door.

That is also a really fucking good point. A lot is made in the lore about the fact that it's basically impossible to destroy a ship with an FTL drive that doesn't have a reason to stick around. Because once they go to FTL not only are they gone, but it's almost impossible to know where they went or chase them. Almost the only time space battles continue to the destruction of one of the ships is when one ship has something they're defending and are unwilling to abandon.

So the reapers jumping system to system and destroying fleets would look like this:

Reapers jump in.
Reapers look around to try to find ships.
Fleet goes "what the fucking cuntwaffles, is that the reapers?"
Fleet jumps to FTL in a random predetermined direction
Reapers putz around and wonder why no one wants to play with them anymore.
Rinse
Repeat until heat death of universe

[Dauric]

If you consider the fleet being the biggest threat, then yeah, it seems silly that the Reapers didn't constantly go for the fleets. But I don't think the fleets are the biggest threat. You need a fleet to do damage but if you are specifically targeting fleets then (in the case of the Turians or Asari) you can play nifty trickses like hiding or FTL jumping in to attack and then jumping out before your enemy is able to turn and hit you with a broadside.

So instead the Reapers short circuited the problem by going directly for the planets. Why? Because those are targets of opportunity that have to be defended. Sure, it means they're a stagnant force but considering they are so strong, it doesn't matter. Hit and run doesn't matter if someone's knocking on your front door.

That is also a really fucking good point. A lot is made in the lore about the fact that it's basically impossible to destroy a ship with an FTL drive that doesn't have a reason to stick around. Because once they go to FTL not only are they gone, but it's almost impossible to know where they went or chase them. Almost the only time space battles continue to the destruction of one of the ships is when one ship has something they're defending and are unwilling to abandon.

So the reapers jumping system to system and destroying fleets would look like this:

Reapers jump in.
Reapers look around to try to find ships.
Fleet goes "what the fucking cuntwaffles, is that the reapers?"
Fleet jumps to FTL in a random predetermined direction
Reapers putz around and wonder why no one wants to play with them anymore.
Rinse
Repeat until heat death of universe

The other thing being that with the possible exception of the Migrant Fleet* all the other races' fleets required constant resupply from stations based on a world, something the Reapers aren't as tied to (fighting Reapers is a lot like fighting necromancers, they take everybody's dead/scrap to make new/stronger troops). By taking out major colonies and homeworlds the Reapers were effectively attacking the fleet's supply lines which weakens the fleets without actually having to engage a massed dreadnought formation.

*and this is sketchy at best because the Migrant Fleet still needed to have people gather external resources

[Belial]

Now that I think about it, the "dodge the reapers" system scanning mini-game doesn't actually make a ton of sense, since, unless those solar sytems are like 20 miles wide, you were probably hauling out at FTL speeds, which means the reapers should've lost you the moment you moved.

[Okita]

I noticed between ME2 and ME3 that they stopped making entering a system from FTL relative to your location in the circle. Meaning that in ME2, if I decided to enter in a system in a certain area of the circle, that's where my ship would appear. In ME3, it just puts you at the outer circle edge from where you entered in. I guess this is to make the Reaper escape minigame work.

I dunno, there's some explanation there involving Reaper Tech, acceleration, and light speed travel in a gravity well. I'm just too lazy to figure it out.

[Dauric]

Now that I think about it, the "dodge the reapers" system scanning mini-game doesn't actually make a ton of sense, since, unless those solar sytems are like 20 miles wide, you were probably hauling out at FTL speeds, which means the reapers should've lost you the moment you moved.

That and apparently your scanner was more powerful than all radio emissions emitted from earth -ever-, -combined-. And on top of that your scanner's emissions traveled at speeds greater than light even though there was no need for them to be FTL hyperpulse* signals.

*Yes I'm using Battletech terminology.

I really didn't care for the replacement scanning deal in ME3. What they really needed was some mechanic where you sit in orbit for X seconds to scan a planet of Y size, and the computer does the scanning, not Shepard holding down the "scan" button like it was in ME2, or the ship designated Stealth Recon to have the least stealthy scanning system imaginable.

[Okita]

They also got rid of the triangulating based upon audio clues.

In ME2, when you scanned certain missions, as you got closer to the location the audio would start to clear up with the actual call. But they completely got rid of that in ME3.

Still, I don't think there's any good way to make scanning good. Hitting a button to scan and then waiting is even more boring. I guess the way I would do it is allow you to launch multiple probes against the planet. The probes have a certain radius and ping out to try to locate an object. Enough probes in the vicinity of the item results in you finding it. So it's still a bit of a guessing game but at least you're not just blindly following a marker or waiting until the scan is complete to receive your item.

[Ghostbear]

That's...tenuous. It could easily refer to the fact that the citadel is sitting right in the center of the network, and blocking communication or travel through those relays cripples the network. And if we weren't already deciding that the writing in ME3 was wrong, the fact that they didn't just shut the network off again would probably serve as evidence that they never could.

Or maybe the prothean team that screwed with the keepers also screwed with the cutoff switch. Who knows.

I wouldn't call it tenuous. It states that every system was isolated. Even without being able to travel through the citadel relay, you could many nodes, perhaps even most of them. It also specifically says that the Citadel gave reapers control over the mass relays; not a central point, but the relays themselves. If it was just control over the central highway stopping point, then systems wouldn't be isolated from each other, since they could still travel to their neighbors.

The protheans disabling that switch would be plausible, but it would also be completely unmentioned, and not something that I think can be assumed safely.

Basically, they didn't count on one crazy undead lady running around giving stirring speeches and getting everyone to throw all their forces into one big roaming hard-to-locate clump. When it started to happen, they started adapting: Kharshan and Earth were each conquered in a "finish crippling this planet before you start with that one over there" strategy, and Palaven started the same way, but when they started to get a whiff of what Shepard was doing (ie, when you dropped a shit-ton of krogan on their conquering efforts and started knocking off their long range scouts and shit-stirrers), they adapted to something much closer to what you're describing: rapid expansion, lashing out at everyone all at once, trying to cripple the biggest threats in a comprehensive way (which is, I'm guessing, why they moved on to hit thessia before they were done with Palaven). They just adapted too late, because they were overconfident. Which was always supposed to be their fatal flaw.

I'd consider this fairly reasonable, though I still think you overestimate the ability of everyone else to band together quickly after they see fleets getting destroyed. I don't know, I just see "Let's dedicate a bunch of 2 KM long superships to collecting genetic goo planetside (that we can always collect later) now, even though we're still threatened by some shit in space that would be a lot easier to take out with a 2 KM supership" as a foolish strategy all around. I could maybe understand dedicating the "destroyers" to the ground operations, but that's it.

So instead the Reapers short circuited the problem by going directly for the planets. Why? Because those are targets of opportunity that have to be defended. Sure, it means they're a stagnant force but considering they are so strong, it doesn't matter. Hit and run doesn't matter if someone's knocking on your front door.

They could still just attack the planets long enough to force the fleets into an engagement, take them out, and then move on. The planet would still be waiting for them later.

Although while I do agree that orbital bombardment could have dealt with Thanix missiles, there was a fleet battle going on in the skies above. Any ship turning away to aim at the planet probably presents itself as a target of opportunity. Also I think I read something about the energy needed to reduce mass to land on a planet (and presumably take off). That sort of energy loss would make it not as feasible to just lift off whenever they want.

I wasn't speaking specifically for that battle, I meant if their planet skipping venture gave time for such tactics to be tried. If they control space (which was a fundamental step) then if they see encounter a strategy that allows any of them to be taken out on the ground, they can identify it, then bomb whatever allows it to happen into the stone age, then pop back down and get back to work. So if they encountered those missiles later (without a space battle going on) they'd know to just annihilate any tank formations they could find, destroy any factories that could make missiles, take out the mines that gave any special materials used for them, etc. Or to move it to the other example, the thresher maw, they'd know that if they encounter one, they should just take off right then, energy costs be damned. Then proceed to glass the entire desert, because fuck thresher maws.

Or, put another way: there are few problems that you can't solve without sufficient application of overwhelming force, so long as you are also willing to ignore the consequences of that force. The reapers had no shortage of overwhelming force, and had no reason to give a shit at all about the consequences.

[Okita]

Well they do care about the consequences though. Yeah, they could glass the entire planet but then there's not much of a population afterwards. Hell, just lobbing asteroids constantly at planets would do the job.

The thing is with the thresher maw or the thanix missiles, those were one-shot deals. That's how asymmetrical warfare works. Sure, the Reapers could know "hey, there's a giant ass thresher maw on Tuchanka, we should kill that before attempting to deploy land troops" but in the short run, how were they supposed to predict a freaking thresher maw or stockpiled Thanix missiles or whatever?

Frankly, the crux of your argument is that it's easy to take off and land on planets which isn't necessarily the case.

Anyway, with regards to forcing a fleet engagement...that's exactly what happened on Palaven and Thessia. Reapers sat on the planet and forced the enemy fleets to play ball. But the Turians/Asari did so as reluctantly as possible to preserve their forces at the cost of their planets burning. Which is why the Reapers were still stuck there playing a game of attrition (which they would inevitably win) or otherwise provide time to attempt to rebuild the fleet. If I was say a turian commander faced with that situation, I'd try to hold as much of my fleet back in reserve as I can get away with.

With regards to the Reaprs and Mass Relays... the Prothean strategy ended up being a fighting retreat where sacrificing colonies allowed them regroup/ shore up their defenses elsewhere. That basically means that they had some form of ship travel through the mass relay network. Most likely, taking out the Citadel meant that the Reapers controlled the most central relays preventing rallying of all forces.

[Belial]

Also, it should be noted that the actual harvesting process wasn't done by the sovereign-classes. It's done by harvesting ships and husk-organized camps. The actual reaper dreadnoughts were reserved for top-level stuff like blowing shit up and indoctrinating world leaders.

[Dauric]

I'm not sure that Reaper programming was quite so cavalier about the "biological goo". As much as I hate to reference it...

Spoiler:

...Citadel Child expressed that the goal of the Reapers was to harvest and -preserve- organic species and cultures, to that end there's a limit on what you can get culturally from semi-carbonized bio-goo.

Legion, when you rescue him from the reaper-harness in the Geth dreadnought, expresses that the thoughts of a Reaper are "Immense", and while I forget the exact wording Legion uses I believe the impression Legion gives would be appropriate to a single Reaper ship being a mass-mind created by a harvested civilization.

So grand upshot is that the reapers couldn't accomplish their goals by "ignoring the consequences of overwhelming force" and glassing planets with or without Thresher Maws.

[maybeagnostic]

Reapers jump in.
Reapers look around to try to find ships.
Fleet goes "what the fucking cuntwaffles, is that the reapers?"
Fleet jumps to FTL in a random predetermined direction
Reapers putz around and wonder why no one wants to play with them anymore.
Rinse
Repeat until heat death of universe

Battlestar Galactica got a very solid season out of this

Also the story of Marauder Shields makes for a much better ending.

With regards to the Reaprs and Mass Relays... the Prothean strategy ended up being a fighting retreat where sacrificing colonies allowed them regroup/ shore up their defenses elsewhere. That basically means that they had some form of ship travel through the mass relay network. Most likely, taking out the Citadel meant that the Reapers controlled the most central relays preventing rallying of all forces.

I am not sure what you are basing this on. All we know is that the Reapers conquered Prothean worlds one (or maybe only a few?) at a time. No one ever talks about the Protheans retreating from any battle. Javik actually makes it sound like every planet fought to the last.

On the whole deal with the Citadel being at the center of the network... the game keeps telling us that but then shows something completely different. I don't remember a single case in any of the three games when I needed to jump through the Citadel relay to get somewhere. In fact, the Citadel was usually 2-4 jumps away from most places I went.

[Ghostbear]

Well they do care about the consequences though. Yeah, they could glass the entire planet but then there's not much of a population afterwards. Hell, just lobbing asteroids constantly at planets would do the job.

You're misinterpreting my argument. I'm not talking about glassing an entire planet. Glassing the desert (with it's minimal population and all) would be a valid response to the thresher maw threat. Just like specifically targeting industrial facilities would be a valid response to people being able to make missiles that hurt them. Or orbitally bombarding a ground based mass driver. That's something where they say "Hey, we take this out, and maybe lose 1,000-50,000 people's worth of goo-material, but don't have to risk one of us proper". You'll note that said glass the "entire desert" not "entire planet". I know they don't want to glass the whole planet.

Frankly, the crux of your argument is that it's easy to take off and land on planets which isn't necessarily the case.

No, the crux of my argument is that the ability to threaten them from ground forces is hugely limited compared to the ability to threaten them with space forces. I was pointing out that many ground threats that could materialize would be things that can be specifically targeted to avoid in the future. The ability to take off and land on planets doesn't factor into it at all, beyond the fact that they have the ability to do so.

Anyway, with regards to forcing a fleet engagement...that's exactly what happened on Palaven and Thessia. Reapers sat on the planet and forced the enemy fleets to play ball. But the Turians/Asari did so as reluctantly as possible to preserve their forces at the cost of their planets burning. Which is why the Reapers were still stuck there playing a game of attrition (which they would inevitably win) or otherwise provide time to attempt to rebuild the fleet. If I was say a turian commander faced with that situation, I'd try to hold as much of my fleet back in reserve as I can get away with.

I don't think we have any information to work with, fleet wise, for Thessia. As for Palavan, yes, that is what happened, but the reapers could have lifted all of their sovereign classes from earth and the batarian world to help them there. The fleet threat that they could deal with at the moment was gone, so they should have allocated their fleet killing superships to helping them deal with other fleets.

With regards to the Reaprs and Mass Relays... the Prothean strategy ended up being a fighting retreat where sacrificing colonies allowed them regroup/ shore up their defenses elsewhere. That basically means that they had some form of ship travel through the mass relay network. Most likely, taking out the Citadel meant that the Reapers controlled the most central relays preventing rallying of all forces.

That doesn't fit in at all with what we are told. "Each star system was isolated, cut off from the others." doesn't not mesh up with "prothean forces regrouping elsewhere to make a better defense". There's no reason to believe that the protheans could still travel through the mass relay network, since we're specifically told that they couldn't. The protheans weren't fighting a retreat, they were fighting a slow destruction. The reaping process took time with them, and if you're the 150th planet being invaded, 100 years after the first one, you're going to build up your defenses, isolated or not.

So grand upshot is that the reapers couldn't accomplish their goals by "ignoring the consequences of overwhelming force" and glassing planets with or without Thresher Maws.

As I said above, it wasn't glassing the entire planet that I was talking about, but the hugely non-populated desert area inhabited by thresher maws. The consequences for overwhelming force that I was alluding to would be ecosystem damage, infrastructure damage, civilian casualties on the order of a few thousands (less than they waste on husks or other ground troops), etc. Not Aldaran sized consequences.

[Dauric]

On the whole deal with the Citadel being at the center of the network... the game keeps telling us that but then shows something completely different. I don't remember a single case in any of the three games when I needed to jump through the Citadel relay to get somewhere. In fact, the Citadel was usually 2-4 jumps away from most places I went.

I think the deal with the Citadel being at the "Center" of the networks isn't so much that every jump in some way passes through the Citadel, but that the Reapers had hidden a "Control Center" inside, much the same way that modern rail systems have a control center that monitors rail traffic and train positions and can communicate to remote servicing stations or trigger electro-mechanical systems (like derailers) regardless where they are in the system, the Citadel monitors the Mass Effect network and can send specific commands to specific Relays even if the relay is in the Terminus systems or waaay out in the Verge.

So grand upshot is that the reapers couldn't accomplish their goals by "ignoring the consequences of overwhelming force" and glassing planets with or without Thresher Maws.

As I said above, it wasn't glassing the entire planet that I was talking about, but the hugely non-populated desert area inhabited by thresher maws. The consequences for overwhelming force that I was alluding to would be ecosystem damage, infrastructure damage, civilian casualties on the order of a few thousands (less than they waste on husks or other ground troops), etc. Not Aldaran sized consequences.

Well, I was more addressing the idea of "Collecting Biological Goo", in that the biological goo is going to continue fighting until it's properly collected. A few posts from multiple posters made it sound like the Reapers tactics should just be scooping up buckets of primordial mush, when if they're doing that they've failed at their objectives.

[Okita]

I guess I'm basing the Protheans still having a fleet on that conversation with Javik.

Spoiler:

Shepard asked him how they fought the Reapers and he specifically states that they fought world to world, city to city, colony to colony. Entire planets were sacrificed to buy time to regroup and recover. The implication is that if the planet was sacrificed, the Protheans had some way of at least trying to save the planet (through ships). If the mass relay network was entirely under enemy control, then there would be nothing you could do. Also Javik says that he had a ship of his own but also that his first memories was of his planet in flames under a Reaper assault. The implication is that there is a navy with some ability to move between planets.

You're right of course that the reapers could just glass the desert where the Thresher Maw lives. But the thing with the thresher maw or the thanix missile or whatever is that those were pretty much one-time only things. It's not like on Tuchanka the military doctrine was "Let's lure the reapers into Thresher Maw range and unleash Kalros on it. So yeah, after the first Kalros attack, Reapers could attempt to glass any thresher maw hiding place as an example. Basically, I'm thinking of Vietnam. Carpet bombing the entire jungle isn't an effective solution unless you can consistently and accurately pinpoint all threats which isn't necessarily the case.
Edit: What I forgot to add is that you can't always plan for every unexpected clever thing your enemy does. If you have overwhelming force, in the long-run it doesn't matter how clever your enemy is. They might win some battles with being sneaky or clever or hitting you where it hurts but eventually the side with the ability to do the most damage wins.

[An Enraged Platypus]

I'm pretty sure Stealth doesn't use it's own cooldown if you used a power instead of sniping. So using energy drain also allows you more stealth uptime because it has a faster cooldown.

I can confirm this from my experience.

As a Shotgun Infiltrator, my MO is basically that of a Geth Hunter, relying on dodge moves to evade damage long enough to recloak and shoot again. It can get pretty hairy when one shot takes off 75% health and you depend on fighting targets with shields and/or barriers to be offensive.Reapers can be a nightmare because it's either score a headshot or get gibbed, in a big long chain until a Marauder or Phantom shows its face.

[Belial]

Glassing the thresher maw is like reinforcing cockpit doors after 9/11. Yeah, it's probably a good idea, but let's be real, that strategy was never going to work again anyway, and the "enemy" (organic life, in this case) has probably moved on to some new crazy idea.

[Okita]

I'm still waiting for R&D to approve funding for developing a Thresher Maw cannon....

[Dauric]

You're right of course that the reapers could just glass the desert where the Thresher Maw lives. But the thing with the thresher maw or the thanix missile or whatever is that those were pretty much one-time only things. It's not like on Tuchanka the military doctrine was "Let's lure the reapers into Thresher Maw range and unleash Kalros on it. So yeah, after the first Kalros attack, Reapers could attempt to glass any thresher maw hiding place as an example. Basically, I'm thinking of Vietnam. Carpet bombing the entire jungle isn't an effective solution unless you can consistently and accurately pinpoint all threats which isn't necessarily the case.

The other thing about Kalros is that it(she?) was a unique specimen. It's like with the earthquake on the east coast of the U.S. last year. It was terribly damaging because it was completely unexpected and nothing was built to withstand that type/magnitude of disaster, but it's not like they're all changing their building codes to match those in L.A. because it's just terribly unlikely to happen again.

A typical Thresher Maw can be killed by tank-mounted autocannons(ME1) or three infantrymen of terribly heroic abilities (ME2), a typical Reaper isn't going to worry about typical Thresher Maws, and they're unlikely to broadly change tactics because a Destroyer class was taken down by Kalros. If anything they'll send one Sovereign class to go drill a crater where Kalros is known to nest, when they get around to assimilating the Krogan at any rate.

Edit: That said, Kalros playing Boa Constrictor with a Reaper is still my favorite cinematic of the game.

[Okita]

Scary thought... reaper tech + thresher maw = unstoppable killing machine.

[Dauric]

Scary thought... reaper tech + thresher maw = unstoppable killing machine.

I can make it scarier.

Kalros killed the Reaper, but in ME2 a dead and broken reaper was still capable of indoctrinating and husking people. Luring Kalros to destroy the Reaper was probably the -worst- thing you could possibly do for Tuchanka's long-term survival.

[Belial]

I can only assume thresher maws (being essentially giant semi-sentient mobile fungus) are just too incompatible with reaper tech for that to work. Otherwise, they would have done the shit out of that.