Mass Effect 3

[Ergo Sum]

I don't get the hoopla over the ending (except for gamers are whiny as hell) but I do have a few minor story complaints. Small spoilers:

Spoiler :

1. Although they've supposedly done this galactic-genocide thing thousands of times, the Reapers sure don't strategize very well. Firstly they should just sit at the ends of mass relays and maul any ship that flies through, instead of letting just about anyone with a starship get through. Likewise committing to massive invasions of every major home world simply doesn't make sense when the Citadel could coordinate a counterattack. Better to invade each major system in force, step by step up the mass relays, so as to be able to counter any combined fleet with a unified response from their own.
subclause: even one of the first cinematics has the Normandy dawdling around San Francisco (?) while the Reaper 200 yards away decides to torch a bunch of civilian ships instead of taking out the most well-known, storied Spectre in the galaxy, telling us that a) the Reapers have lost all sense and have decided massacring civilians is more important than taking out direct military threats, and b) Joker doesn't understand the danger of flying around in a city with about 10 different Reapers that could shoot down the Normandy at any given moment. Wat.


2. Have Shepard and Hackett gone out of their mind? Every other mission has the Normandy slipping behind Cerberus or Reaper lines to do X or Y impossible mission where Shepard fights off hundreds of soldiers/husks. Any responsible strategist would recognize that Shepard could have died during any of these ridiculous missions ("save the elcor from thousands of husks!"), much less getting killed en route should the enemy sniff out the Normandy's stealth tech. At least last game it was believable with the whole 'suicide mission' business but Shepard really takes it to the point of stupidity.

3. Are we expected to believe that Cerberus magically grew thousands of troops, ships, and materiel to throw about willy-nilly against Shepard? Again, during ME2 Cerberus seemed to be portrayed pretty reasonably portrayed: limited resources, believable motivations, conflicted personnel (Miranda, Jacob). All of sudden ME3 comes around and the Illusive Man has grown enough money on his money trees to supply a force of thousands of expendable troops anywhere in the galaxy, including war zones dominated by Reaper ships. I understand that this is for gameplay's sake, but this has really been bothering me every time I have to fight through the umpteenth Cerberus encounter/Atlas through mysterious space station X.

 

[kramerfan86]

Spoiler :

Illusive man was using reaper tech to turn people into blindly loyal slaves so piling up legions of troops wasnt exactly an issue since he could just enslave any human he so wished unlike Mass Effect 2 where he has to recruit willing volunteers who still at the end of the day had personal morals.

 

[kramerfan86]

Quoting myself from the Bioware forums:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~

You know what would be a good 4th edition to the Mass Effect franchise?

A game set on Earth during the Reaper Invasion!

Forget the concept of flying around in space doing missions and side quests to achieve some goal, focus entirely on Earth. Be a young recruit or maybe a man of position leading a squadron of commandos or something on Earth following David Anderson's orders. You'll be sent on missions around earth doing everything you can to slow down the Reaper Invasion until Shepard arrives for the final battle.

Bioware would have to really spoof up the combat system to make it really worth buying, as well as make it an interesting campaign with big(long?) missions and maps. Biotics and Tech powers would have to have whole new meaning, as would battlefield tactics, and maybe a dynamic omni-tool? In such a game, they would also really have to uplift the multiplayer to a whole new level.

If that wasn't enough to be worth a new game, Bioware could also bring out the development team and finally give us a Palaven, Sur'Kesh and Thesia. We would finally see how these planets are like (development and design team will really have to go wild) and we can go way more in depth into Turian, Salarian and Asari society. The game would be similar to the Earth campaigns, we would similarly be controlling Turian Soldier, Salarian Infiltrator and Asari Vanguard characters on missions throughout their respective planets in their attempts to stop/slow down the reaper invasion, and in Salarian case, the civil war(I think? Haven't gone that far in game yet).

The game could switch between characters similarly to how in Call of Duty Modern Warfare games switch between American and British forces following campaigns if you get what I mean.

The choices made in ME3 saves could directly affect events in this game as well. Shepards influences would be felt (for example, on Palaven, with the influences of Krogan groundtroops should Genophage be cured) throughout the game.

For tl/dr people, basically Mass Effect meets Gears of War would be good comparison? Dunno, never played Gears of War series... Anyway, thoughts?

Eh mass effect without the space and exploration isnt really Mass Effect. basically in your scenario you are gutting it of most of what makes it mass effect and dumbing it down to another shooter, no thanks.

 

[Dachs]

I don't get the hoopla over the ending (except for gamers are whiny as hell) but I do have a few minor story complaints. Small spoilers:

Spoiler :

1. Although they've supposedly done this galactic-genocide thing thousands of times, the Reapers sure don't strategize very well. Firstly they should just sit at the ends of mass relays and maul any ship that flies through, instead of letting just about anyone with a starship get through. Likewise committing to massive invasions of every major home world simply doesn't make sense when the Citadel could coordinate a counterattack. Better to invade each major system in force, step by step up the mass relays, so as to be able to counter any combined fleet with a unified response from their own.
subclause: even one of the first cinematics has the Normandy dawdling around San Francisco (?) while the Reaper 200 yards away decides to torch a bunch of civilian ships instead of taking out the most well-known, storied Spectre in the galaxy, telling us that a) the Reapers have lost all sense and have decided massacring civilians is more important than taking out direct military threats, and b) Joker doesn't understand the danger of flying around in a city with about 10 different Reapers that could shoot down the Normandy at any given moment. Wat.

Spoiler Response :

Nonsense. The Reapers have such overwhelming conventional-military superiority that notions like concentration of force are irrelevant. Victory is effectively a certainty.

Furthermore, time efficiency is utterly pointless from the Reapers' standpoint; they have literally infinite time in which to accomplish their objectives. Their only goal should be - and, seemingly, is - resource efficiency, the conservation of Reapers, as much as reasonable, to serve in the armada in the next cycle. Hence the Citadel surprise attack that began every extinction event for the past billion-odd years. And hence the use of relatively small forces to achieve disproportionate goals - a single destroyer, for instance, to potentially wipe out the quarians and the largest single fleet in the galaxy, or a single destroyer to potentially neutralize the krogan and the deadliest single army in the galaxy.

And it's the Vancouver-Seattle megalopolis, not San Francisco. This isn't Star Trek.

Spoiler :

2. Have Shepard and Hackett gone out of their mind? Every other mission has the Normandy slipping behind Cerberus or Reaper lines to do X or Y impossible mission where Shepard fights off hundreds of soldiers/husks. Any responsible strategist would recognize that Shepard could have died during any of these ridiculous missions ("save the elcor from thousands of husks!"), much less getting killed en route should the enemy sniff out the Normandy's stealth tech. At least last game it was believable with the whole 'suicide mission' business but Shepard really takes it to the point of stupidity.

Spoiler Response :

You're playing a freaking video game. If you didn't have challenging levels, nobody would play. Whatever. Complaining for the sake of complaining.

I mean, come on. You're playing as the human personification of the goddess of war. You're the freaking avatar, not of all life in the galaxy, but all organic life that has ever and will ever exist. Of course you're going to be sent to do the impossible. Shepard is sent to do these things because nobody else can. Okay, sure, Hackett's taking a big risk by sending the linchpin of the entire galactic war effort into the lair of the Mother of All Thresher Maws to do battle with a Reaper destroyer, but Shepard's only the linchpin of the entire galactic war effort if she succeeds in gaining the alliance of the krogan. Which, you know, can't be done without curing the genophage. Which requires the use of the Shroud. Which requires dealing with Kalros and the Reaper destroyer.

Plus, did you even read the articles on the Reaper War in the Codex? Take a look at what the krogan and turians did in the so-called Miracle on Palaven and tell me that Shepard's being unnecessarily wasted in the toughest parts of the war. Yeah, facing down a Reaper destroyer by herself was pretty sketchy, but a) Hackett never ordered her to take on a Reaper destroyer on foot with only a laser designator and b) it's not like she's on a suicide mission to destroy Reaper ships from the inside with nuclear weapons. You know, something dozens of krogan and turians did in the Trebia system. Sure, the odds aren't great for her at any point, but the odds aren't great for the entirety of galactic civilization at any point, either. Compared to the turian and krogan volunteers actually launching suicide missions, at no point is Shepard ordered to do anything that anybody expects will be "certain death" for her or her squad until perhaps the very end, the final counterattack in the Sol system.

Spoiler :

3. Are we expected to believe that Cerberus magically grew thousands of troops, ships, and materiel to throw about willy-nilly against Shepard? Again, during ME2 Cerberus seemed to be portrayed pretty reasonably portrayed: limited resources, believable motivations, conflicted personnel (Miranda, Jacob). All of sudden ME3 comes around and the Illusive Man has grown enough money on his money trees to supply a force of thousands of expendable troops anywhere in the galaxy, including war zones dominated by Reaper ships. I understand that this is for gameplay's sake, but this has really been bothering me every time I have to fight through the umpteenth Cerberus encounter/Atlas through mysterious space station X.

Spoiler Response :

Addressed in-game. Cerberus' shock troops are chiefly comprised of partially huskified captured civilians, not well-trained mercenaries or even volunteers such as Pvt. Talavi's brother; their training is a part of the huskification process, not an expensive, protracted equivalent of basic; their outfitting is an outgrowth of Cerberus' financial holdings, augmented by the conquest of places like Omega and the open alliance of several key figures in the Alliance military-industrial complex, such as Henry Lawson. Furthermore, the Normandy's activities during the events of ME2 themselves help explain how the Illusive Man's resources are so well augmented; Shepard more or less willingly assists Cerberus in recovering important data, seizing control of precious cargo, identifying major mineral deposits in poorly-surveyed regions of the galaxy, and nearly wiping three of its major competitors - the Blue Suns, Eclipse, and Blood Pack - from existence, resulting in their rather humiliatingly weak state in ME3.

Anyway. Explaining this huskification process was one of the points of the Sanctuary mission, and it is further elucidated by the video fragments on Cronos Station and EDI's commentary on that mission. The problems Cerberus was having in controlling their troops - fighting with the Reapers for control of their minds, a problem before Lawson's team on Sanctuary figured out how the Reapers' signals worked - was the entire motivation behind the seemingly indiscriminate attacks on Benning earlier in the game. So you didn't pay attention: this creation of a large and effective military force de novo was, within the logic of the game, reasonably well backed up.

 

[Maniacal]

Spoiler :

Nonsense. The Reapers have such overwhelming conventional-military superiority that notions like concentration of force are irrelevant. Victory is effectively a certainty.

Furthermore, time efficiency is utterly pointless from the Reapers' standpoint; they have literally infinite time in which to accomplish their objectives. Their only goal should be - and, seemingly, is - resource efficiency, the conservation of Reapers, as much as reasonable, to serve in the armada in the next cycle. Hence the Citadel surprise attack that began every extinction event for the past billion-odd years. And hence the use of relatively small forces to achieve disproportionate goals - a single destroyer, for instance, to potentially wipe out the quarians and the largest single fleet in the galaxy, or a single destroyer to potentially neutralize the krogan and the deadliest single army in the galaxy.

And it's the Vancouver-Seattle megalopolis, not San Francisco. This isn't Star Trek.

I still partially agree that the Reaper's tactics are lacking, I'd assume machines would be far more mechanical (so to speak) and precise with their attacks than the Reapers sometimes are. Stationing a small reaper at a relay would make a lot of sense. Although I guess it is possible that they long ago had problems with someone showing up with massive fleets and overwhelming the reaper left there in the past and abandoned the tactic.

Also it is only the Vancouver part shown in the game, you cannot see the USA during that level as those mountains are actually to the North

 

[Dachs]

Spoiler :

I still partially agree that the Reaper's tactics are lacking, I'd assume machines would be far more mechanical (so to speak) and precise with their attacks than the Reapers sometimes are. Stationing a small reaper at a relay would make a lot of sense. Although I guess it is possible that they long ago had problems with someone showing up with massive fleets and overwhelming the reaper left there in the past and abandoned the tactic.

Spoiler Response :

Camping relays is inefficient. There are many more humans/asari/turians/whatever on the major worlds than there are traveling through space, ergo attacking the homeworlds permits more efficient Reaping and forces the fleets of the galaxy to respond anyway.

Having said that, the control of the relays is important, but not by something so stupid as camping. Instead, the Reapers should have gone after the Citadel immediately. Seizing control of the relay network was the foundation of their strategy in previous cycles, and it remained a valid path in this one despite the destruction of Sovereign and the heretic fleet in 2183. The only valid excuse for the Reapers not attacking the Citadel immediately would have been a rapid response on the part of the Council to any attempted attack - closing the Citadel's arms immediately and forcing the Reapers to besiege the Citadel (probably a losing proposition when there is Reaping to be done elsewhere) or leave (probably a better idea) - rendering the Citadel inviolate for the whole game.

This was utterly overturned by the endgame, of course, in which it was revealed that the Reapers can not only seize control of the Citadel within the course of a few hours, but move it to Sol and integrate it into their plans for Reaping in less than a day. This is a serious plot hole, on the order of Tali's time-traveling in ME1 or Sovereign's knowledge of the Conduit's existence in the same game, and it's one of my biggest issues with the ending (other than the Reaper child's illogical, nonsensical explanation that doesn't fit anything that the Reapers have actually done, of course).

The only real way to patch that hole that I can think of is by stating that Vigil's program removed the Citadel's controls from the Reapers for all time when it was used in ME1, but this seems prima facie implausible due to the Reapers' hacking prowess dwarfing that of the Protheans.

 

[Azale]

Spoiler OBJECTION :

Each individual Reaper is like a nation, according to Sovereign. Maybe they just don't coordinate as well as we might expect because of this? If the Geth can have breakdowns in consensus, maybe the Reapers can as well.

 

[Ergo Sum]

Spoiler :

Nonsense. The Reapers have such overwhelming conventional-military superiority that notions like concentration of force are irrelevant. Victory is effectively a certainty.

Furthermore, time efficiency is utterly pointless from the Reapers' standpoint; they have literally infinite time in which to accomplish their objectives. Their only goal should be - and, seemingly, is - resource efficiency, the conservation of Reapers, as much as reasonable, to serve in the armada in the next cycle. Hence the Citadel surprise attack that began every extinction event for the past billion-odd years. And hence the use of relatively small forces to achieve disproportionate goals - a single destroyer, for instance, to potentially wipe out the quarians and the largest single fleet in the galaxy, or a single destroyer to potentially neutralize the krogan and the deadliest single army in the galaxy.

I'm not so convinced of overwhelming conventional-military superiority. Enough concentrated fire on one Reaper has been known to kill the likes Sovereign, Rannoch Reaper, or, presumably, cause enough duress for the Reaper Sol fleet when the Allied fleet engages them that the latter could shuffle the Crucible in. When you take into account that each Reaper is supposedly composed of a different species, and the Reapers' (read: Catalysts') stated purpose is to preserve organic life, leaving a small number of Reapers where an enemy fleet could potentially destroy it seems extremely counterproductive. I agree that time is of no importance to the Reapers, and that their only constraint is preserving their own fleet. Concentration of forces is logical because the likelihood of a Reaper falling to an enemy fleet - highest in the early stages of the war - is reduced as forces are concentrated. So take out each of the major worlds, luring each species' fleet (or an allied counterattack) to those worlds, and work up the mass relays so that you don't miss any major sources of resistance, while the worlds at the end of the relays are increasingly inundated with refugees. Preserves Reaper forces while ensuring an orderly Reaping.

I mean, come on. You're playing as the human personification of the goddess of war. You're the freaking avatar, not of all life in the galaxy, but all organic life that has ever and will ever exist. Of course you're going to be sent to do the impossible. Shepard is sent to do these things because nobody else can. Okay, sure, Hackett's taking a big risk by sending the linchpin of the entire galactic war effort into the lair of the Mother of All Thresher Maws to do battle with a Reaper destroyer, but Shepard's only the linchpin of the entire galactic war effort if she succeeds in gaining the alliance of the krogan. Which, you know, can't be done without curing the genophage. Which requires the use of the Shroud. Which requires dealing with Kalros and the Reaper destroyer.

Plus, did you even read the articles on the Reaper War in the Codex? Take a look at what the krogan and turians did in the so-called Miracle on Palaven and tell me that Shepard's being unnecessarily wasted in the toughest parts of the war. Yeah, facing down a Reaper destroyer by herself was pretty sketchy, but a) Hackett never ordered her to take on a Reaper destroyer on foot with only a laser designator and b) it's not like she's on a suicide mission to destroy Reaper ships from the inside with nuclear weapons. You know, something dozens of krogan and turians did in the Trebia system. Sure, the odds aren't great for her at any point, but the odds aren't great for the entirety of galactic civilization at any point, either. Compared to the turian and krogan volunteers actually launching suicide missions, at no point is Shepard ordered to do anything that anybody expects will be "certain death" for her or her squad until perhaps the very end, the final counterattack in the Sol system.

I'm not complaining about the main missions for Christ's sake. It obviously makes sense that Shepard's doing what other people can't manage - brokering Alliances, invading Cerberus facilities, etc. I'm complaining about the generic 10-minute firefight on random worlds throughout the game which I found quite tedious, and during which, in a 'realistic' scenario, Shepard could have died and endangered the entire war effort. II get the "personification of death" business but Cerberus/Reaper troops are just incapable of mounting any meaningful defense. I have this gripe with most shooters, where the ease of killing everyone just seems so ridiculous as to be satire. I understand the gameplay justification but all those missions just didn't seem believable or especially worthwhile.

As for the Cerberus armies - consider me edified. I didn't think too hard about it in-game mostly because I was fed up with fighting Cerberus on all those garbage missions. And - minor point - it might have been easier to understand if Shepard et al. commented on how Cerberus got an army after, say, Mars, instead of accepting their constant presence without question. Unless I missed that.

Camping relays is inefficient. There are many more humans/asari/turians/whatever on the major worlds than there are traveling through space, ergo attacking the homeworlds permits more efficient Reaping and forces the fleets of the galaxy to respond anyway.

Having said that, the control of the relays is important, but not by something so stupid as camping. Instead, the Reapers should have gone after the Citadel immediately. Seizing control of the relay network was the foundation of their strategy in previous cycles, and it remained a valid path in this one despite the destruction of Sovereign and the heretic fleet in 2183. The only valid excuse for the Reapers not attacking the Citadel immediately would have been a rapid response on the part of the Council to any attempted attack - closing the Citadel's arms immediately and forcing the Reapers to besiege the Citadel (probably a losing proposition when there is Reaping to be done elsewhere) or leave (probably a better idea) - rendering the Citadel inviolate for the whole game.

The point of camping relays is not to facilitate Reaping but to provide an immediate response to military threats arriving in-system. Is it not better to save forces by countering any enemy fleet - which a Reaper force of similiar numbers can surely crush - as soon as possible instead of letting that fleet pick off isolated Reapers?

 

[Dachs]

Spoiler OBJECTION :

Each individual Reaper is like a nation, according to Sovereign. Maybe they just don't coordinate as well as we might expect because of this? If the Geth can have breakdowns in consensus, maybe the Reapers can as well.

Spoiler Response :

We are completely unaware of the government that the Reapers enjoy, although the statements by the Catalyst imply that it imposes consensus upon them. At any rate, it would be foolish to extend such speculation to explain military decision-making.

Spoiler :

I'm not so convinced of overwhelming conventional-military superiority. Enough concentrated fire on one Reaper has been known to kill the likes Sovereign, Rannoch Reaper, or, presumably, cause enough duress for the Reaper Sol fleet when the Allied fleet engages them that the latter could shuffle the Crucible in. When you take into account that each Reaper is supposedly composed of a different species, and the Reapers' (read: Catalysts') stated purpose is to preserve organic life, leaving a small number of Reapers where an enemy fleet could potentially destroy it seems extremely counterproductive. I agree that time is of no importance to the Reapers, and that their only constraint is preserving their own fleet. Concentration of forces is logical because the likelihood of a Reaper falling to an enemy fleet - highest in the early stages of the war - is reduced as forces are concentrated. So take out each of the major worlds, luring each species' fleet (or an allied counterattack) to those worlds, and work up the mass relays so that you don't miss any major sources of resistance, while the worlds at the end of the relays are increasingly inundated with refugees. Preserves Reaper forces while ensuring an orderly Reaping.

Spoiler Response :

Read the Codex. Under totally ideal circumstances, a Reaper dreadnought requires sustained fire from four Citadel-standard dreadnoughts in order to evince damage. Obvious qualitative advantage is obvious. Furthermore, the Reapers possess over four times as many dreadnoughts as the forces of the united galaxy do at the beginning of the Reaper War; by the time of the Earth campaign, that superiority has increased dramatically to, at best, eight to ten times as many dreadnoughts.

You will notice that all engagements in which Reapers are shown to be destroyed involve some sort of overwhelming naval superiority on the part of Citadel forces, and still usually involve very heavy losses. Sovereign, one dreadnought, required the sustained fire of a sizable proportion of the Citadel fleets (Alliance Fifth Fleet, plus the remains of the turian and asari forces that had been guarding the Citadel, numbers unknown) and still failed to succumb until Shepard removed its shields by defeating Sovereign's Saren-avatar in the Council chambers. The Reaper destroyer on Tuchanka was neutralized - it is not clear that it is dead - by the mother of all thresher maws. The Reaper destroyer on Rannoch required the sustained fire of the largest single fleet in the galaxy, the Migrant Fleet, including three vessels that ought to be reclassed as dreadnoughts (the liveships), before it was killed. The Codex account of the initial stages of the Battle of Palaven see two carriers and several turian dreadnoughts destroyed for no explicit Reaper naval losses, although it is implied that one or more dreadnoughts may have been heavily damaged or destroyed.

Given the extreme difficulty involved in killing even a single Reaper destroyer, the use of them for high-payoff, medium-risk operations is understandable. The Reaper on Tuchanka, had it succeeded in its mission, would have effectively neutralized the most dangerous army in the galaxy, that of the united krogan. Had the Reaper on Rannoch succeeded in its mission - and unless the player brokers peace between the geth and the quarians, it does - either the largest fleet in the galaxy is destroyed, or the largest remaining dreadnought fleet is (the geth possess as many dreadnoughts as the turians did before the Hierarchy was invaded by the Reapers). As things were, the Reapers nearly succeeded in one of their objectives and two-thirds of the time they succeed in the other. The forces assigned to these operations, therefore, can hardly be said to have been inadequate, and complaining about them violates your own recognition of the value of concentration of force.

The Reapers' failure to control the mass relays is inexplicable and constitutes a plot hole, but as noted below, there are vastly more effective ways to do it. Camping mass relays is militarily inefficient, as it violates the principle of concentration of force, and is tactically inefficient, because there is a non-insignificant error involved in mass relay transport for non-Reapers, thus, there would be no guarantee of eliminating any forces at all before they escaped using traditional faster-than-light travel.

Spoiler :

I'm not complaining about the main missions for Christ's sake. It obviously makes sense that Shepard's doing what other people can't manage - brokering Alliances, invading Cerberus facilities, etc. I'm complaining about the generic 10-minute firefight on random worlds throughout the game which I found quite tedious, and during which, in a 'realistic' scenario, Shepard could have died and endangered the entire war effort. II get the "personification of death" business but Cerberus/Reaper troops are just incapable of mounting any meaningful defense. I have this gripe with most shooters, where the ease of killing everyone just seems so ridiculous as to be satire. I understand the gameplay justification but all those missions just didn't seem believable or especially worthwhile.

Spoiler Response :

You are complaining about optional N7 missions, the sole purpose of which is to tie the single-player campaign into the multiplayer Galaxy at War maps. Shepard can choose whether or not to embark on these. Complaint dismissed.

Spoiler :

The point of camping relays is not to facilitate Reaping but to provide an immediate response to military threats arriving in-system. Is it not better to save forces by countering any enemy fleet - which a Reaper force of similiar numbers can surely crush - as soon as possible instead of letting that fleet pick off isolated Reapers?

Spoiler Response :

Due to the inexact transit protocols for any given mass relay, and due to the ability to employ 'traditional' faster-than-light travel, the Reapers could not be sure of actually engaging any forces in such an encounter. It makes much more sense to concentrate to defend the actual targets, such as Earth itself, instead of spreading out an easily-broken cordon around the fringes of a system.

Again, the real failure as regards the mass relays is the failure to interdict them with the Citadel itself, but you people inexplicably haven't seized on that.

 

[shortguy]

Got the Valiant today--hooray! Maybe using my QI might not be such a nightmare now.

 

[Dachs]

I got the lousy freaking Hurricane.

 

[Ergo Sum]

Spoiler :

Yes well the Citadel's all well and good but it's peripheral to my argument. I'll try and rearticulate it. Given that:
1. Reapers possess overwhelming force in any reasonable unit ratio to their opponents
2. Reapers are unconstrained by time
3. Losing any single Reaper is a tragedy, in their eyes, equivalent to the destruction of an advanced civilization
Is it not logical to mass forces such that the possibility of violating 3. is reduced to an insignificance? Certainly Citadel forces (and past space-faring civilizations) are capable of levying enough forces to take down a single Reaper. The logic that "the use of [Reapers] for high-payoff, medium-risk operations is understandable" simply does not hold up because it risks 3. while gaining the Reapers nothing (see 1. and 2.) that they can't have with the proper amount of patience. It makes no sense to hurry along with pinpoint strikes when any forces the allies gain simply can't measure up; rather combine forces into one fleet that Citadel forces can't hope to match (see ratio of Reapers to dreadnoughts that you noted) and work step-by-step without fear of loss.

Likewise each failure of the Reapers in game could conceivably have been countered by a higher concentration of forces: Indoctrinated Geth almost certainly could have overwhelmed the Quarians if even 5 or 10 Reapers were committed to the fleet engagement; any significant number of Reapers on Sur'Kesh could have pretty easily dismantled the Krogan military before they even got off the planet - hell, knock the Shroud over for all it matters; getting more Reapers on Palaven might mean interdicting Krogan reinforcements or better dispatching the Turian military; more Reapers at Earth could have meant stopping the Crucible en route to the Citadel. Force allocation is literally the only problem with the Reapers' plan, and the one that could have been ameliorated simply by concentration of force.

 

[Azale]

Dachs, quick, give me a list of the multiplayer characters from best to worst. NO PARTICULAR REASON JUST DO IT.

 

[Dachs]

Meh. Too subjective and situational and dependent on the player's playstyle and weapons. The Black Widow salarian Infiltrator is probably the most dominant class in the widest variety of circumstances. The human Soldier is probably the crappiest class in the widest variety of circumstances. Everything in between is kinda meh.

There are a few other general rules. The human Sentinel is basically a crappier version of the asari Adept. The krogan Soldier is basically a crappier version of the krogan Sentinel. The Novaguard is dominant on Bronze and more or less marginalized on Silver and Gold. A two-Adept team with one drell and one asari/human can basically roll through anything with biotic explosions. The humangineer is probably the most versatile class.

There are other, general, non-character points to keep in mind as well, like the fact that SMGs and most assault rifles suck enormous amounts of cock and you should avoid them, that SMG Ultralight Materials are bugged and don't actually improve cooldown, and that the Black Widow and the Carnifex are hands down the best weapons in multiplayer. (Naturally, I have neither.)

 

[TheLastOne36]

Krogan Soldier isn't a crappier version of Krogan Sentinel.

Well it is if you use it the same way I guess, Krogan Sentinel is basically the same thing but with more health.

But you can customize the Krogan Soldier to being able to deal SO much damage it is unbelievable, and the Sentinel can't match it. It is on par with the sentinel if used the right way. Inferno Grenades and Carnage can do so much damage in very little time it is remarkable, Krogan melee is well, amazing (and the soldier can make it even more amazing) and the Krogan can carry those heavy weapons that do lots of damage like it's nothing, haha.

 

[Dachs]

Krogan Soldier isn't a crappier version of Krogan Sentinel.

Well it is if you use it the same way I guess, Krogan Sentinel is basically the same thing but with more health.

But you can customize the Krogan Soldier to being able to deal SO much damage it is unbelievable, and the Sentinel can't match it. It is on par with the sentinel if used the right way. Inferno Grenades and Carnage can do so much damage in very little time it is remarkable, Krogan melee is well, amazing (and the soldier can make it even more amazing) and the Krogan can carry those heavy weapons that do lots of damage like it's nothing, haha.

For the krogan, the ability to do large amounts of damage with Carnage and Inferno Grenades is useful, but not terribly relevant. The ability of Inferno Grenades to do large amounts of damage doesn't help, because the krogan is already a great damage-dealer; what would be useful about Inferno Grenades would be a greater certainty of setting enemies on fire to set them up for Fire Explosions. Unfortunately, it never actually works that way. Plus, invariably, your teammates screw with Fire Explosions and prevent you from actually setting them off.

The caster build for a krogan Soldier simply doesn't offer enough to offset the gimping you'll have to do to your melee capabilities, which are greatly superior anyway. (I mean, the upper evolutions of Rage are so much better than those of Inferno Grenade...) And the krogan Sentinel is incontestably better at melee than the krogan Soldier is. (Plus, its combo abilities are way better. Incinerate does a much better job of actually setting enemies on fire than Inferno Grenade does, and Lift Grenade can set up biotic explosions, something that the typical pub player is much more wont to detonate. Dealing pure damage from single powers is nice for Bronze, when nobody works together at all, but if you want to farm credits and clear Gold quickly, you use combos, and the krogan Soldier isn't nearly as useful for that purpose as the Sentinel is.)

 

[TheLastOne36]

You are probably right. Tech Armor > Fortification too.

Carnage does 1506 damage for me though (checked today) which is pretty beast.

Then again, there is always this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-A0TRbNEl4s

 

[Dachs]

I love that video. Would've made more impact if they hadn't been fighting Cerberus, though.

 

[RD-BH]

So ...
... why does BioWare introduce same sex relationships right before mass genocide?

If Shep and same sex LI wind up as the last surviving humans ...
... ??? well, that ain't much of a victory.

It's probably best they killed Shep and blew up the galaxy.

 

[TheLastOne36]

http://news.ea.com/portal/site/ea/i...gId=1012492&newsId=20120405005304&newsLang=en