Cerberus: Hypercompetent or incompetent?

[Megalodon]

Except Sanctuary wasn't around before the war, and they have their stupid out of nowhere military from the start of the reaper invasion.

Why? because you fought like 30 of them on Mars? That's a military now?

No, beause they're undertaking large scale military deployments from the start of the game. Eden Prime, Benning etc. They're invading and holding either entire planets, or the major urban centers/strategic locations. That would require a hefty commitment of ships, gear and manpower. Which the game doesn't tell us how they got.

Most of Cerberus actions (like invading Eden Prime and raiding Grissom Academy) are based on acquiring new subjects for integration. Do you think those were the only missions where they were doing that?

It's also clear, both from ME2 and ME3, that the actions of the council and alliance leadership in denying the existence of the Reapers have served to drive up Cerberus' recruitment.

Again, the problem isn't a lack of men, the game explains that. What the game doesn't explain how Cerberus managed to translate that manpower into an effective military force.

Coupled with Sanctuary seeming to appeal primarily to the out of luck and desperate, based on what you hear from people the the game, I doubt many multi billionaires were lining up to be husked.

Except, as revealed routinely in dialogue. It cost a lot of money to go there which is why not everyone is shipping out. Where was that money being paid to again?

Considering Rupe Elkoss is envious of the profit margins on such a scheme, it's obviously making big damn money.

Yes, but the point was that it was the sort of deal that desperate people, who pay their life savings, were going for.

And remember, that volus thought Sanctuary was cheap prefabs and nutrient paste. All that husking machinery has to eat into the profit margins

If they could afford a fleet like we see in ME3, then the few billion spent reviving Shepard would've been chump change, not the major expenditure Miranda says it was.

Why do you say so?

As pointed out in ME1, developing the Normandy SR-1 cost as much as a dreadnought. In ME2, Cerberus not only replicated that feat but improved on the design enormously. They clearly have money and shipbuilding facilities already.

Sure, there's a difference in scale, but then if I had a machine which made people loyal slaves I'm pretty sure I could use it to get things I wanted too.

ME1 says the SR-1 cost the same as a heavy cruiser, not a dreadnought or the eezo core could have been used for 12000 fighters. Incidently ME1 says the SR-1 has 120 billion credits of eezo in it's drive core. So I repeat my statement that the Lazarus Project budget (4 billion) should have been chump change if Cerberus has the kind of resourcing ME3 suggests.

What did they improve? They made it bigger so it couldn't enter atmosphere (until the writers forgot) and put in more lights. Apart from EDI, the useful upgrades Shepard had to buy him/herself.

My point is that the specifics of mass production in Mass Effect is never really dealt with. Why assume, for example, that you need a special factory to build tanks rather than.. you know, commandeering a civilian auto factory and reprogramming it with the (presumably illegal, but not unobtainable) tank building software. It's just an idea, but it fits in well with how most things seem to work in the Mass Effect universe.

Where does ME suggest that all construction is essentially 3D printing? You can repurpose civilian infrastructure for military designs however, and it has been done. However, Cerberus is stated as not having supply lines, whereas repurposed factories would be supply lines and the perfect target for strikes by Citadel forces.

While the various merc groups and corporate soldiers exist, we are never given the impression that they could stand up to any major race's military in a shooting war, even on a small scale.

Did you notice how most of the council's actions in ME1 and ME2 were based on a desire not to antagonize anyone in the terminus systems?

That doesn't automatically mean that they were a significant military challenge to Citadel forces, merely that they didn't want to inflict a war on their society and face the political shitstorm. To use a real world analogy, the US doesn't want to get into a conventional war with North Korea, Iran etc. However, this reluctance isn't due to a belief that these countries are a match for the US military.

The you get into the whole bit where the Terminus systems were made to seem bigger and scarier in ME1, then you go there in ME2 and it's not nearly as impressive.

We're just supposed to accept the TIM found a force capable of fighting the full force of the galactic fleets behind the sofa one day.

Ahem..

Spoiler: spoilered for size

And yet Cerberus doesn't use Reapers, only existing gear with Reaper Tech buffs. The only time before the finale when Cerberus and Reapers share screen time, they're fighting. So the Reaper fleet doesn't help explain where Cerberus get their materiel.

I'm not sure "the full force the galactic fleets" really meant what it used to any more by the time ME3 rolled around.

It's still enough to give the Reapers a fight at Earth, so it's ot a force to lightly dismiss.

All this comes down to the simple fact that the ME games are not consistent with each other, so the overall details don't add up. Like the fallout from the Battle for the Citadel:
ME2- Shepard lists the eight cruisers the Alliance lost defeating Sovreign.
ME3- The 1st, 3re and 5th fleets all lose 1/3 of their ships fighting Sovreign, not to mention any losses to the 2nd and 4th.

So either each alliance fleet is made up of around 9 ships each, which is a pitifully small number, especially given that the Alliance fields 6-9 dreadnoughts in the series. Or someone at Bioware wasn't paying attention.

 

[Terminal Blue]

Where does ME suggest that all construction is essentially 3D printing? You can repurpose civilian infrastructure for military designs however, and it has been done. However, Cerberus is stated as not having supply lines, whereas repurposed factories would be supply lines and the perfect target for strikes by Citadel forces.

Assuming you even knew where they were. The great thing about a re-purposed civilian factory being, of course, that it doesn't necessarily look any different from an ordinary factory.

Again, I assume that all construction is flexible by the fact that every human colonist has a nanoscale 3D printer strapped to their arm which can generate complex circuitry, homing projectiles and blades.

Granted, the whole idea of an omni-tool makes absolutely no sense in terms of any kind of plausability, just like biotics, just like the reapers, just like practically everything including, significantly, Cerberus' military. Are you noticing a trend yet?

All Mass Effect ever gave you was inadequate bare-bones explanation and supposition designed to cover glaring holes. Honestly, it still bothers me how many people miraculously managed to ignore this until the third game.

 

[Megalodon]

Assuming you even knew where they were. The great thing about a re-purposed civilian factory being, of course, that it doesn't necessarily look any different from an ordinary factory.

Which is what intelligence operations are for. If this was the explanation in the game, that would be fine, but the game tells us nothing.

Again, I assume that all construction is flexible by the fact that every human colonist has a nanoscale 3D printer strapped to their arm which can generate complex circuitry, homing projectiles and blades.

Granted, the whole idea of an omni-tool makes absolutely no sense in terms of any kind of plausability, just like biotics, just like the reapers, just like practically everything including, significantly, Cerberus' military. Are you noticing a trend yet?

This falls into the same argument about internal consistency in any fictional universe. Unless told otherwise, we assume that things work like in the real world. So being shot will kill you, but it's sci-fi, so the sci-fi medicine can fix you up better than what we have in the real world. We accept that eezo can do a bunch of impossible things, but if the writers keep pulling more out of their ass, people will get increasingly annoyed. ME constructs a world where the majority of economics seem to roughly follow real world parallels, the Alliance pays for its ships, collects taxes etc. An explanation in universe about how Cerberus aquired the massive boost in resources between games would have been nice.

All Mass Effect ever gave you was inadequate bare-bones explanation and supposition designed to cover glaring holes. Honestly, it still bothers me how many people miraculously managed to ignore this until the third game.

That's easy to explain, people are generally less critical and more forgiving of things they like. ME3 managed to undermine a lot of the goodwill people had towards the series, and so the inconsistencies that otherwise would be ignored become more noticeable.

 

[AD-Stu]

Like I said earlier this creates some other big questions that don't have answers (most notably, why in hell resurrect Shepard?!?) but it's all there in the comics and novels.

Resurrecting Shepard makes a degree of sense, Harbinger immediately targeted Shepard after Sovereign was destroyed, then attempted to retrieve the remains, so presumably they wanted Shepard as an asset to use against the rest of the galaxy. It stands to reason that if Shepard could foil a Reaper that's never had a problem thousands of time before, the rest of the galaxy wouldn't stand a chance against him/her.

Of course putting non-indoctrinated agents in command of Shepard and letting them all go for a jog round the galaxy beforehand as a sort of test run against your previous agents of doom may have been a mistake, but even the Reapers were dealing with a situation they'd never faced before.

Good point - and TBH, I suspect that needing to resurrecting Shepard (in a completely unchanged form, to boot) was probably part of the abandoned Drew Karpyshyn / dark energy / human DNA plotline that was alluded to at various points in ME2. Of course that stuff was all dropped by Mac Walters in ME3 in favour of... erm... the ending that we got instead, so now it's just one of many plot holes or dead ends

 

[Saviordd1]

How about "Really badly written because 3 different people wanted to do 3 different things with them"

Or I can settle for "Really poorly written" for less words.

But that's just my opinion.

 

[Souplex]

If they were to pour milk into cereal, it would catch fire.

 

[keiji_Maeda]

Did no one at BioWare notice this?

Yeah, they noticed.

There's a conversation in the Citadel DLC when Shepard, EDI, Joker and a couple of others sit around listing all of Cerberus's projects that ended with the subjects getting out of control and killing all their guys.

It ends with someone pointing out that, hey, at least they brought Shepard back to life. To which Shepard replies, "Yep, then I ditched them and started killing all their guys."

Good on you sir. You just suceeded in making me want to honestly buy Bioware DLC. You have suceeded where Biowares PR-team failed. Might i suggest you seek gainfull employment with their PR department?

Take this with a grain of salt, since I'm a known Bioware apologist, but, well... if you've ever enjoyed a Mass Effect game then you really owe it to yourself to play the Citadel DLC.

It's basically several hours of concentrated fan service (the good kind, not the anime panty shot kind) and more in-jokes than you can shake a stick at.

i..i...i WANT to but it. But i slightly shudder at the thought of starting up origin again, i have steam, and have had very few problems with it, but origin keeps updating and bugging out. I'm not saying it's ruining EA games for (i believe that particular honor falls to EA corporate) but sharing CC info with them?In the words of "the dude"


"i just don't know man"