Mass Effect 3 (Seriously, Use Spoilers People!)

[Dauric]

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.

Well, they'd probably do that to Kalros once they found out about it/her, but the typical Thresher Maw is pretty fragile for their size and certainly not a member of a civilization that was a candidate for "ascension" in the first place (who is Reapers tend to reserve their attentions for).

[SlyReaper]

Any word on when we'll be able to play as a hanar in the multiplayer?

[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.

Well, they'd probably do that to Kalros once they found out about it/her, but the typical Thresher Maw is pretty fragile for their size and certainly not a member of a civilization that was a candidate for "ascension" in the first place (who is Reapers tend to reserve their attentions for).

Counter-argument: harvesters.

[Dauric]

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.

Well, they'd probably do that to Kalros once they found out about it/her, but the typical Thresher Maw is pretty fragile for their size and certainly not a member of a civilization that was a candidate for "ascension" in the first place (who is Reapers tend to reserve their attentions for).

Counter-argument: harvesters.

What were harvesters in the first place, before they got Reaperized?

[Okita]

They were the harvester dragon thingies that dropped Klixen on Tuchanka during Grunt's Rite.

[Yakk]

Any word on when we'll be able to play as a hanar in the multiplayer?

No, but they will be an enemy for the "cushion" level play.

[Belial]

They were the harvester dragon thingies that dropped Klixen on Tuchanka during Grunt's Rite.

They were on a few other worlds too. I think they're like the thresher maws where they accidentally got dragged to several planets by starship pilots who didn't check for infestations of invasive wildlife.

[maybeagnostic]

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.

Right, my point was that the Citadel clearly offered some control of the relay system even if it wasn't perfect but the Reapers never cared to use that major advantage. There are lots of questions about relays that were raised in previous games and I expected to see some answered in ME3. What deactivates a relay (my understanding was the Reapers turn all of them off before heading back to dark space)? How long does it take to reactivate one? Was the Omega 4 one the only one with friend/foe recognition? Was someone looking into the Ilos proto-relay? Was someone at least protecting the Ilos relay? Why didn't the Reapers use their control of relay accuracy to jump enemy ships into stars or way outside systems or (for the final battle) all over Sol?

Basically my expectation was that the story would revolve around the relay system since the previous two games established it as the Reapers' primary means of controlling and directing sentient development.

Spoiler:

I guess it did but it seemed like more of an afterthought than a real part of the plot.

About destroying organic fleets before invading planets- do we ever see a Reaper destroyed in a space battle? I had a really high EMS and my assault on Earth clip showed lots of allied ships destroyed and only a single Reaper getting damaged but not disabled.

Any word on when we'll be able to play as a hanar in the multiplayer?

I'd rather see a Blasto movie. Those commercials were more interesting than a lot of what Hollywood turns out.

P.S.

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...

What damage? I thought there were no injuries and only some minor damage.

[Belial]

Was the Omega 4 one the only one with friend/foe recognition?

The fact that they kept calling it an IFF really annoyed me, because that's not what it did. The relay wasn't blocked or anything. Anyone could, and did, travel through it. All the "IFF" did was adjust the "Dark Switches" to specific really fine-tuned settings so you wouldn't appear in a black hole due to normal relay drift.

Why didn't the Reapers use their control of relay accuracy to jump enemy ships into stars or way outside systems or (for the final battle) all over Sol?

Because as far as I understand, those switches are tweaked at the Embark relay, not the destination relay. Also, all they do is narrow the arrival zone to a more specific area within the normal "drift area" of the relay. Relays are specifically positioned so that they don't have, for example, stars in the middle of their drift area, otherwise they wouldn't be safe methods of travel. There's a reason the charon relay is out by, uhh...Charon...and not orbiting mercury. My understanding is that the drift area is only a few hundred kilometers or so, it just happens that the safe zone near the galactic core relay was that small.

[Dauric]

Off Topic:

Spoiler:

P.S.

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...

What damage? I thought there were no injuries and only some minor damage.

The Washington monument is closed for repairs, some cracks are clear through the outer casement of the monument, repairs are estimated to cost $15 million. Washington National Cathedral is estimated to need 20 mil. in repairs.

These are just the repair estimates for buildings that are nationally noteworthy.

Edit: Back on topic:

Was the Omega 4 one the only one with friend/foe recognition?

The fact that they kept calling it an IFF really annoyed me, because that's not what it did. The relay wasn't blocked or anything. Anyone could, and did, travel through it. All the "IFF" did was adjust the "Dark Switches" to specific really fine-tuned settings so you wouldn't appear in a black hole due to normal relay drift.

IFF: "Identify Friend or Foe" is a box that transmits and receives coded signals that identify the equipped vehicle as a friendly (if recognized) or foe (if not), so yeah, that's exactly what the Omega 4 Relay was doing. What is done about an IFF recognition (or non-recognition) is separate from the IFF itself. In fighter jets it determines who gets what color on the radar and who the missiles try to lock on to, in the Omega 4 relay incoming IFF signal recognition determines whether it's operating in "throw incoming ship in black hole" or "Be careful with incoming ship" mode.

[Belial]

Yeah, fair, in the most basic sense that's what it does, but the way it's used gives the impression that, without the IFF, you couldn't even go through the relay. You absolutely could, it would just proooobably kill you.

[Dauric]

Yeah, fair, in the most basic sense that's what it does, but the way it's used gives the impression that, without the IFF, you couldn't even go through the relay. You absolutely could, it would just proooobably kill you.

No they pretty clearly described that people went through the relay never to return not that nobody could activate it, and so nobody who valued their lives and/or the million-credit ships they were commanding would even attempt it. When you use the IFF you end up in a debris cloud of destroyed vessels that tried to use the relay without IFF and were torn apart by the gravitational forces around the relay's destination.

Now I'm not sure if that debris cloud should ave actually been there, given that the defense mechanism of the Omega 4 was essentially gravitational... possibly, but my astrophysics-fu is weak.

[Belial]

The area between the black holes was supposedly carved out with massive Mass Effect generators, so it was essentially null gravity. That debris shouldn't have fallen toward any of the black holes unless it drifted out of the safe zone on its own.

Which, you know, means they probably weren't torn apart by the black holes. The debris in the field most likely came from the very small percentage of ships that happened to land in the safe zone by total blind luck, and were promptly shot to death by occuli.

[Telchar]

Confirmed asari vangaurds can charge and ninja reverse back out on banshees without getting insta-gibbed as long as you don't have bad lag and can immediately get back out. It's actually a nice way to hold off brutes in Silver.

I can now win ~60% of the Gold matches I pug on my Infiltrator. If anyone wants, they can add me as a friend on orange steam....whatever it's called. djporisch is my sn.

[Ghostbear]

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

Nothing about that precludes them from not having access to the relays, or the relays being able to be shut down. How many inhabitable worlds will be within reasonable FTL range of a relay? He was almost certainly talking about colonies and planets within a relay node (either that, or we have a case of a plot error caused by people either forgetting Vigil's conversation or not caring). He also described his ship as similar to Shepards; presumably, the protheans didn't have a proper fleet anymore, and only had smaller ships that could be built planetside (I think in game lore has it that anything bigger than frigates isn't able to operate within a planet's atmosphere. Which makes the dreadnought at the beginning of ME3 quite odd).

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.

Exactly. The ability for organics to present a consistent threat to the reapers from planetside is minimal. If they develop anything that isn't once off, the reapers can just destroy whatever allows it to happen, then go back to reaping as usual. Once off tactics such as Kalros aren't able to present a consistent or thorough threat to the reapers. Which is my whole point: they could have afforded to briefly sidestep groundside threats in order to eliminate the real threats to them, which are all spaceships, because nothing persistently threatening could be created in those few months that the they were "ignoring" the planets.

[maybeagnostic]

Which makes the dreadnought at the beginning of ME3 quite odd.

That seemed to be entirely a wouldn't-it-be-cool-if thing. Several of the early missions were mostly about showing off the beautiful scenery and weren't too concerned with telling the story or invoking emotions. Absurdly enough the invasion of Earth was probably the best example of this problem.

Which is my whole point: they could have afforded to briefly sidestep groundside threats in order to eliminate the real threats to them, which are all spaceships, because nothing persistently threatening could be created in those few months that the they were "ignoring" the planets.

We never see or hear about a Reaper destroyed in a space battle (this cycle). As far as we know they suffered no casualties this time except for the four Shepard destroyed. So clearly the Reapers should ignore both fleets and ground forces and concentrate on killing Shepard while the Alliance should start cloning the commander as a shepard is shown to be more powerful than any single Reaper.

[Ghostbear]

We never see or hear about a Reaper destroyed in a space battle (this cycle). As far as we know they suffered no casualties this time except for the four Shepard destroyed. So clearly the Reapers should ignore both fleets and ground forces and concentrate on killing Shepard while the Alliance should start cloning the commander as a shepard is shown to be more powerful than any single Reaper.

The codex disagrees:

Spoiler:

Knowing that the Reapers' weapons had a longer effective range than any of his own, Coronati made a short, daring FTL jump--landing his dreadnoughts in the middle of the Reaper fleet. The dreadnoughts then turned to line up their main guns on the Reapers, which also needed to turn to fire on the turians. This ploy used the Reapers' size against them--because they could turn faster, and their concentrated firepower downed several Reaper capital ships.

(Emphasis mine) Other parts of the codex also mention that the big reapers can be taken out by concentrated fire from four dreadnoughts, and that destroyers can be taken out by cruisers and fighters. So it is very clear that the fleets have inflicted casualties on the reapers, and not insignificant ones either. The reason we never see it happen is because there's only one actual space battle against reapers that the Normandy takes place in, and that's at the end of the game.

[Belial]

He was almost certainly talking about colonies and planets within a relay node

"World to world" and "Colony to Colony" is a really curious way to describe the two garden worlds in the exodus cluster (Eden Prime and Terra Nova, the latter of which shows no signs of previous Prothean colonization)

(I think in game lore has it that anything bigger than frigates isn't able to operate within a planet's atmosphere. Which makes the dreadnought at the beginning of ME3 quite odd).

Well, anything can enter a planet's atmosphere. The question is whether it can reasonably hope to stay aloft for very long, or ever reach orbit again. I think the gist of that scene is that the dreadnought was making a suicide run on the reaper.

We never see or hear about a Reaper destroyed in a space battle (this cycle). As far as we know they suffered no casualties this time except for the four Shepard destroyed.

Not entirely so. If you go into the codex, there are entries for the various battles of the reaper war. They lost a few sovereign classes taking palaven, and a couple destroyers and smaller ships taking Thessia.

The theme seems to be that the reapers only lose ships when you do something unexpected and hard to repeat, at huge cost to yourself. In the opening of the battle of Palaven (after the reapers went to great trouble to piss the turians off and make sure they would have all their nice juicy ships waiting at the homeworld), one turian general FTL jumped a pile of dreadnoughts into the middle of the reaper formation and just rocked the shit out of a few of the lead ships that weren't able to turn around in time. And then promptly got torn to shreds.

Later, on the planet itself, when the reapers were doing their whole "Indoctrinate military and political leaders so as to get useful pawns" thing, the krogans snuck onto the planet, handed off a bunch of warp bombs to the turian resistance, and had them smuggle them on board the reapers and go all suicide-bomb-y.

Thessia was an example of why targetting ships in and of themselves doesn't work: the reapers were taking losses because the asari kept jumping in, fucking shit up, and jumping out again before the reapers could do much about it. So the reapers went and fucked the planet up instead, to force them to come out and play for real. And then fucked them up.

That said, it's not a lot of losses by any means. It looked, for all purposes, like a damn successful invasion, given the setbacks. Right up until Shepard showed up with an assembled fleet of ships that had foregone protecting their own worlds in favor of forming a multispecies armada. This is...pretty clearly unprecedented in galactic history, a point underscored by talking to Javik. In other words, another example of doing something the reapers didn't expect, which is the only time they ever lose.

[maybeagnostic]

Ah, I didn't realize the codex had new entries. I started reading it in the beginning but everything seemed to be recycled old entries so I assumed they hadn't written any new ones. In hindsight that makes no sense because ME2 also recycled a lot of codex entries from ME1 but it still had some original content as well.

Spoiler:

Several capital ships? Wow, that sounds like very significant losses- we don't even know if the Reapers intended to make a Sovereign-class out of the turians but I was left with the impression that they only meant to make a single one from the humans so they are clearly losing more than they are gaining. Just further proof that attempting to preserve a race in a single non-reproducing warship is probably not the best idea AI-child ever had. Unless they make many capital ships from every 'worthy' species? Does the codex say anything about that or about the total number of Reapers?

[Okita]

Also in ME2, the codex lies.

[Belial]

It doesn't say anything about the reapers' reproduction plans, but probably because basically everything we know about reaper reproduction is speculative. They had almost finished a human reaper-core using just the populations of some noncentral colonies at the end of ME2, so it's probable that they could've wrung more than one reaper out of humanity. That said, they were still liquefying turians and batarians, so one assumes they planned to make those too.

As for their numbers, they keep being described in terms of "seemingly endless" throngs of ships. So I'm guessing the turian offensive mostly just bloodied their nose up.

Honestly, the human reaper in ME2 mostly confuses me. What were they planning to do with it? Like, why was the priority to make a human reaper right nao before the main invasion force rolls up? Did they need another Sovereign to go do something before they showed up?

[Ghostbear]

"World to world" and "Colony to Colony" is a really curious way to describe the two garden worlds in the exodus cluster (Eden Prime and Terra Nova, the latter of which shows no signs of previous Prothean colonization)

Only that we know of. We're only ever shown two systems within Exodus, and it's not inconceivable that protheans -- either protheans proper or one of the other species that was part of their empire -- would be able to find multiple habitable worlds within the cluster for themselves. The number of garden worlds we're shown in all the clusters we visit is very minimal, and doesn't imply anything like the large territories of the asari, turians, or salarians are implied/said to have. So I don't think we can base our information solely off the two planets they decided to put missions on.

Well, anything can enter a planet's atmosphere. The question is whether it can reasonably hope to stay aloft for very long, or ever reach orbit again. I think the gist of that scene is that the dreadnought was making a suicide run on the reaper.

I agree with the specifics of operation, I had meant to imply something along the lines of "can enter and exit the atmosphere without significant risk of crashing or otherwise being destroyed". I'd also buy that explanation for that specific dreadnought, though it would still seem to make little sense. I suspect it was just an attempt to make things more dramatic, lore be damned.

In other words, another example of doing something the reapers didn't expect, which is the only time they ever lose.

See, this is the part that confuses me. The tactics tried by the turians or asari weren't novel at all. The reapers have been doing this shit for, at minimum, millions of years, and quite likely hundreds of millions. The number of things they haven't seen before should be damn near zero.

Several capital ships? Wow, that sounds like very significant losses- we don't even know if the Reapers intended to make a Sovereign-class out of the turians but I was left with the impression that they only meant to make a single one from the humans so they are clearly losing more than they are gaining.

This is a big bit of confusion caused by discrepancies between ME2 and ME3, but based on ME3, I expect that they turn all sentient organics into reapers. The proto-reaper in ME2 was a couple hundred thousand people I believe. If we assume it was a destroyer (based on a combination of size and that's-what-I-feel-like-assuming), we get maybe a handful of million people for a destroyer, and maybe a couple hundred million or even a billion for a sovereign sized one, though for all we know the "core" of the reapers could all be the same, regardless of size. Still, going with that, I'd expect maybe a dozen or so big reapers to be made each cycle, with many more destroyers made. Based on that, this cycle could have just ended up being a "break even" cycle. Though obviously there's so much room to wiggle the numbers, either the losses or the new reapers, that it could go from "losses as usual" to "Pyrrhic victory" very easily.

[omgryebread]

It doesn't say anything about the reapers' reproduction plans, but probably because basically everything we know about reaper reproduction is speculative. They had almost finished a human reaper-core using just the populations of some noncentral colonies at the end of ME2, so it's probable that they could've wrung more than one reaper out of humanity. That said, they were still liquefying turians and batarians, so one assumes they planned to make those too.

As for their numbers, they keep being described in terms of "seemingly endless" throngs of ships. So I'm guessing the turian offensive mostly just bloodied their nose up.

I thought somewhere in the codex it states that they only build a dreadnought from one race per cycle. So turians, asari, etc would all be built into destroyers.

Honestly, the human reaper in ME2 mostly confuses me. What were they planning to do with it? Like, why was the priority to make a human reaper right nao before the main invasion force rolls up? Did they need another Sovereign to go do something before they showed up?

Because they needed a final boss in ME2. If you want to handwave, I guess you could say no one had ever stopped the invasion from occurring like in ME1, so Harbinger kind of freaked and was winging it.

[Dauric]

It doesn't say anything about the reapers' reproduction plans, but probably because basically everything we know about reaper reproduction is speculative. They had almost finished a human reaper-core using just the populations of some noncentral colonies at the end of ME2, so it's probable that they could've wrung more than one reaper out of humanity. That said, they were still liquefying turians and batarians, so one assumes they planned to make those too.

As for their numbers, they keep being described in terms of "seemingly endless" throngs of ships. So I'm guessing the turian offensive mostly just bloodied their nose up.

Honestly, the human reaper in ME2 mostly confuses me. What were they planning to do with it? Like, why was the priority to make a human reaper right nao before the main invasion force rolls up? Did they need another Sovereign to go do something before they showed up?

Well, Shepard having bested Sovereign at the Citadel was a big red flag that humans could pose a major threat to the Reapers. Shepard's ability to form a multispecies crew and forge alliances to take down Sovereign may (to the Reapers/Collectors way of thinking/calculating) point to a natural "indoctrination" ability, which coupled with the Indoctrination abilities of an actual Reaper ship, a "Human Reaper" may have been seen as a n incredibly powerful mind-control device. Also if Humans can counter Indoctrination (IE: getting Saren to shoot himself) then hitting the race that can nullify one of the Reapers' primary conquest strategies, and preferably converting them to a useful resource than a threat would be a major priority.

[maybeagnostic]

Well, the intentions of the original lead writer (too lazy to look for the not terribly reliable source right now) had something to do with...

Spoiler:

... 'dark energy.' Basically the setup began (I think) on Haestrom in ME2. Some force (likely non-sentient or at least utterly incomprehensible to organics) is making stars in the galaxy die much faster than they should. The Reapers are trying to figure out wtf is happening and stop/reverse the process. Each new sentient race turned Reaper provides fresh (and hopefully valuable) insight on the question but the question is so complex that it requires a mind many orders of magnitude 'larger' than what evolution produces to even understand. The humans were determined to be a good candidate for providing an especially useful insight once properly processed. Then the final choice was supposed to be about willingly joining the Reapers to try and save the galaxy or destroying them in the belief that there is a less terrible way to solve this problem which you can't even begin to understand.

Why are the humans such good candidates? ME2 mentions something about unusual diversity which was probably what it was meant to build off of but the whole concept was supposedly abandoned midway through ME2 when whatever-his-or-her-name-is left.

Besides, the human Reaper was far from complete. It could barely move and it couldn't even communicate so I would assume it hadn't even started developing higher functions. Maybe it was meant as more of a test model to make sure humans are as good a solution as Harbinger thinks they are?

Also somewhere in ME3 it was mentioned that all space-faring races are harvested but only the 'best' are turned into Sovereign-class ships. So batarians, elkor, hanar, quarian, krogan and volus would only go into destroyers, humans are clearly capital ship material, and the rest of the Council races... unclear but no one is in nearly as much of a hurry to harvest them as the humans. I kept thinking a single capital ship is produced from each cycle but that wasn't ever stated so I must be wrong.

[An Enraged Platypus]

Also somewhere in ME3 it was mentioned that all space-faring races are harvested but only the 'best' are turned into Sovereign-class ships. So batarians, elkor, hanar, quarian, krogan and volus would only go into destroyers, humans are clearly capital ship material, and the rest of the Council races... unclear but no one is in nearly as much of a hurry to harvest them as the humans. I kept thinking a single capital ship is produced from each cycle but that wasn't ever stated so I must be wrong.

It's mentioned in ME2 that not all races go towards Sovereign-class Reapers. When you are aboard the Collector Vessel in ME2, you find out from their databanks that the Protheans were not turned into a capital ship, and instead became the Collectors, who are used for utility missions. This is where the ME3 codex and ME2 plot reveals start to clash about the transformation because, as you rightly say, in ME3 the codex explicitly states that non-capital ship races become the lesser class Reaper vessels, not that they are made into husks/ground troops and left at that.

[Belial]

I thought somewhere in the codex it states that they only build a dreadnought from one race per cycle. So turians, asari, etc would all be built into destroyers.

The problem is that the codex is just a best-guess. It also said the Protheans built the mass relays, until someone knew better.

At the end of ME2, EDI engages in a bunch of random speculation based on, as near as I can tell, just looking at the human reaper. But until someone either lets the reapers do their thing unobstructed, or else sits one of them down for a conversation, we don't really know.

[Dauric]

Also somewhere in ME3 it was mentioned that all space-faring races are harvested but only the 'best' are turned into Sovereign-class ships. So batarians, elkor, hanar, quarian, krogan and volus would only go into destroyers, humans are clearly capital ship material, and the rest of the Council races... unclear but no one is in nearly as much of a hurry to harvest them as the humans. I kept thinking a single capital ship is produced from each cycle but that wasn't ever stated so I must be wrong.

Probably Destroyer classes from every "minor" race, then the "Major" races, the ones that have proven leadership capabilities, would go in to Sovereign class (IE: Command/Control/Communication or C3) ships. In the previous Cycle the Protheans had subjugated all the other races, so aside from the Collectors there may have been a very limited new Sovereign class from the Protheans (in addition to the Collectors) and the rest became Destroyers.

[Belial]

Yeah, I never really got why EDI decided that the protheans must have been unsuitable. The collectors were...not that numerous. It is pretty unlikely that you're looking at the entire prothean race, even if you're assuming the reapers didn't just clone the protheans to use as tools after they were done making reapers out of them. Basically, the AI is dumb and the existence of the collectors doesn't prove anything about what the reapers did with the protheans except that they made a few hundred thousand or so husks.

[Okita]

The Collector Human Reaper probably was the prototype for future bigger human-reapers. Develop the prototype first so that scaling up will be a lot easier later on and wouldn't have to be done in the midst of going to war with the rest of the galaxy.

[Chen]

Somewhat off topic, but you know I always wondered why these supposed super efficient AIs always seem to develop convoluted looking ships/platforms. The borg really had it right with simple designs. Now a cube is probably not the best, but those borg spheres seems to be a great design. You technically can't know which way its moving if its nice and uniform. With the current reapers its painfully obvious which way they're going to be shooting at you from (as stated earlier the Turian's used their poor turning characteristics against them).

[Ghostbear]

Well, in defense of that aspect of the reapers, they also have to be capable of planetside activity. All 2km of them.

[Chen]

Well, in defense of that aspect of the reapers, they also have to be capable of planetside activity. All 2km of them.

I don't know, a big rolling ball of death seems like it would work too.

[maybeagnostic]

Clearly the Reapers built themselves to look like space Cthulus so they can be as intimidating as possible to their ultimate enemy- the humans. Duh.

Also did we ever find out what capital Reaper ships did when they landed? Sure, they made pretty scary War of the Worlds-like pentapods (or are they septapods? I keep forgetting the tiny extra limbs) but that always struck me as an amazingly inefficient way for a spaceship to fight.

[Dauric]

The Collector Human Reaper probably was the prototype for future bigger human-reapers. Develop the prototype first so that scaling up will be a lot easier later on and wouldn't have to be done in the midst of going to war with the rest of the galaxy.

I don't think that the "Human Reaper" was actually smaller than the other reapers. Consider that the Human Reaper, described as the "Core", was anthropomorphic, which would suggest that Reapers would in some way be representative of the species that are "Ascended". This would mean that reapers should come in hundreds if not thousands of different varieties, instead of two different but roughly similar flavors of black insect-like starships with legs...

... Unless each starship has inside it "pilots" or "crew". Probably not moving around inside, but still a form-representative Core that would be bio-mechanically familiar with the organisms that go in to it's construction, that actually controls the external "starship".

[maybeagnostic]

... Unless each starship has inside it "pilots" or "crew". Probably not moving around inside, but still a form-representative Core that would be bio-mechanically familiar with the organisms that go in to it's construction, that actually controls the external "starship".

They still have docking bays, hallways and life support systems so clearly they are meant to have some kind of crew.

[omgryebread]

Some of the Reapers could presumably be designed that way to allow for crews if needed, as in Sovereign's case. He could be just as fine without one, but he needed to play along a bit and pretend he was Saren's flagship.

[Dauric]

... Unless each starship has inside it "pilots" or "crew". Probably not moving around inside, but still a form-representative Core that would be bio-mechanically familiar with the organisms that go in to it's construction, that actually controls the external "starship".

They still have docking bays, hallways and life support systems so clearly they are meant to have some kind of crew.

Hard to say, the Human Reaper was hardly human-sized, so the passages that Saren, Benezia and the Geth were walking around in Sovereign wouldn't have been anything that a Reaper Core would have been using.

If anything Reapers seem to be.. hidebound. They don't really handle new concepts well (as evidenced by almost every victory against Reapers being through unpredictable actions by their opponents) They're likely to think starships have life support, and docking bays, etc. etc. etc. because that's what starships have (in a wonderful example of tradition making for recursively circular logic).

That they can make use of these facilities for husks and harvesters may or may not actually have any bearing on the form these facilities take. IE: Husks wouldn't need a human-scaled command-bridge for example, that should be occupied by the/a Reaper Core, and the bays may be better suited for actual support vessels like fighters and shuttles than they are as Reaper Aviaries for Harvesters.

[Ghostbear]

I always assumed it was for use of indoctrinated servants. Are we ever shown that there's any ability for people to actually be "crew" of a reaper, instead of just transported by it? As in, is there any reason to believe there's any command or control that can be manipulated easily from within? I don't remember any. I really do just think it was meant to be a way to transport indoctrinated people; a reaper proper could transport them directly to fighting relatively safely, or keep high value targets (leaders or whatever) safe from attacks, or even continue to indoctrinate them if need be.

[Dauric]

I always assumed it was for use of indoctrinated servants. Are we ever shown that there's any ability for people to actually be "crew" of a reaper, instead of just transported by it? As in, is there any reason to believe there's any command or control that can be manipulated easily from within? I don't remember any. I really do just think it was meant to be a way to transport indoctrinated people; a reaper proper could transport them directly to fighting relatively safely, or keep high value targets (leaders or whatever) safe from attacks, or even continue to indoctrinate them if need be.

Saren's shown on a small "Bridge" of sorts in ME1, and he tore up one of the consoles near his chair in a rage and threw it at Benezia when she informed him about Shepard possibly having used the Prothean beacon. Now whether that bridge actually -does- anything meaningful (except inform Sovereign what commands Saren -thinks- he's telling the ship to do), probably not.