How Will Shepard Beat the Reapers? (Minor Mass Effect Spoilers)

[Glademaster_v1legacy]

Shepard is going to shoot down the fleets by firing his laser out of his holographic cannon penis. The End.

 

[The_Blue_Rider]

Shepard will perform sexual favours to the ruling bodies of each race to unify them, then when confronting the Reapers he will use every paragon speech option to make them think he is interested in them.

Then you will get the paramour achievement and the galaxy is saved

 

[SageRuffin]

By bludgeoning them pretty hard.

Well, that's what my Shep plans to do, in any case.

 

[Worgen]

She will find a big red button that says don't push and she will push it and all the reapers will become subservient and work at mcdonalds for the next 50k years.

Really I dont see anyway this is going to end other then finding a magic mcguffen and it somehow beating all the reapers, with the setup the 3rd game has. Really the game should be about organizing the races into a fleet and finding a way into deep space to kill most of them while they are still sleeping, have a few wake up before they are wiped out and have that be the epic final battle, where it takes most of the fleets to deal with a few reapers and one of those reapers is infiltrated and taken down by Shepard's team, while the others are either taken down by similar infiltration teams or blown to hell by dreadnoughts.

I think that is exactly what the game WILL be about. Think about the allies we have (possibly) been recruiting. The Krogan, the Quarians, the Geth, the Rachni. All of those but the Quarians are renowned for terrestrial combat prowess (good for boarding reapers, for example), and all of them but the Krogans are renowned for strong fleets (hell, the Quarians have the largest one in the known galaxy, and the Geth fleet that followed Saren was only about 5% of the total Geth strength). And that's to say nothing of what a you could do with the Citadel and Alliance Fleets when they fight the Reapers at full strength and while not surprised.

I bet Mass Effect 3 will mostly be spent making sure that those allies are at full strength. Convincing the Quarians and Geth to make peace (or choosing between them, which Keelah knows I don't want to do), convincing the Salarians to lift the Genophage, scouting the Reapers so that the big fleets are not taken by surprise, etc.

Few things to keep in mind.

1. We've come to find out, more or less, that not all reapers are the BIG, capital ships Sovereign was. Granted, there are prolly alot of them big ships, but in general, it's not a fleet of "Sovereigns" like it's been made out to be.

2. Sovereign was taken down, more or less, but one wing, or fleet of earth ships, not the whole earth navy, and what was left of a suprise attack on the citidal that started with them knocking out communations so they couldn't call for help. There were alot more reinforcments to be had, if they'd known they were under attack in the first place.

3. The reapers are burning ALOT of resorces and fuel to make the trip to the cidital. Not only did they have to come back from dark space, but once the alpha relay was blown, that added possible up to a years worth more FTL travel, which has to be taxing.

So i think there's a SLIGHT misconception as to how powerful the reaper fleet really is, IE, they aren't all Sovereigns, and are buring ALOT of resorces right now, and we aren't as WEAK as we seemed. It was a suprise attack, and a fraction of the galaxies full milatery might. A head on fight, with the WHOLE galaxie, as in, EVERYONE, might be more then the reapers can handle.

After all, all reapers invasions START with a sneak attack that cripples interstaller travel. where they can pick apart picemeal resistince one system at a time. That won't be the case this time. It's going to be a head on fight, after a long exidos, with a unitifed galaxie (once i'm done with them). Something they may well have NEVER faced before.

And of course, there may be a magic Maguffin. That can always happen to if the writers get lazy... >.>

On that subject, we've been told that there is one set piece in ME3 wherein a Thresher Maw fights a Reaper, so they really all better NOT be Sovereign's size, or else Sci Fi Writers Have No Sense OF Scale.

No, unfortinatly according to everything I have seen about the game so far, it starts out with the reapers invading and attacking earth and Shepard is able to escape and tries to round up allies to counter attack but each race is involved with its own stupid shit, like the quarians have decided to retake the homeworld.
This is the trailer.
If it wasn't for the space ships you would think it was a cod clone.
So ME3 has the reapers already here and that should be bad ending, I mean unless they retcon the reapers to suck, I don't see how they are saving earth.

According to the Game Informer article on ME3 from a few months ago, part of the game involves solving a conflict between the Salarians and the Krogan (that was just one example given), which to me smacks of gathering allies in the sense of entire armies and fleets, not just his squad. Also keep in mind, if the events of ME2 are any indication, the Reapers will want live humans, so they'll probably be on Earth for a while after actually winning the battle there. That extends the time frame immensely.

As I see it, Shep is at Earth answering for the events of Arrival, and then the Reapers invade. Act 1 will be fighting to get off Earth. Act 2 (i.e, the Act in every Bioware game where you choose where to go) will be gathering Armies and Fleets of allies (by, for example, convincing the Salarians to lift the Genophage, or making peace between the Geth and Quarians [or helping one side win]), that sort of thing. Then Act 3 will be taking all of your allies and either trying to take back Earth or else attacking wherever the Reapers are at that point.

Which is why the plot will be bad or the reapers will have to be retconned to hell since so far its been established that we are using tech that they control, mainly the gates which are the key to intergalactic travel, the only one they don't control is that lil one that links the promethium world to the citadel, all they need to do is either shut down the gate to sol, station a fleet outside the gate so they can nuke anything that comes though or just blow or just blow up the gate and then nothing is getting though. Not to mention that the reapers have been doing this awhile so they know pretty much how the tech of the races will work and where species will be and since they have spies they will even know fleet size and such, really the only reason this invasion is different is because they weren't woken up by the keepers since the promethians managed to stop them from being able to send a message this time.
The only plot that really would make sense is to attack them in deep space, any other way of fighting them seems doomed, without the plot going wacky.

I think you misunderstood. Talk to Vigil on Ilos again. They only controlled all the Relays in the other invasions because they took over the Citadel first thing, and the Citadel gave them that control (along with census records and such). Since you stopped them from using the Citadel Relay, they are at a MASSIVE disadvantage, since they cannot control our fleet movements anymore. Add to that the fact that, for the first time ever, there will be an entire galaxy already aware of them and amassed to fight them and it won't even take a retcon.

Since they shut down the relays in the past, they only ever had to fight small forces at once (i.e, whatever forces would have been stationed at individual systems). Moreover, they had records of which fleets were where, so they could always attack in overwhelming strength. Their control of the Citadel was always their single largest advantage, and without that, they're just a fleet (possibly an enormous one, but we don't really know) of very tough ships; a hard target, to be sure, but we have giant fleets too.

Ehh, not exactly, I mean if they need the Citadel to control the relays then they should really attack the citadel first, if they no longer have way to control the relays then they could either just blockade the relay or just destroy it. I mean they might not have control over them but they still know exactly where a counter attack will come from and its not like they are really bound by time, I mean they could just knock out a relay, wipe out the system then travel though standard space to the next and it would be almost impossible to know where they would hit next.

Also we aren't sure how unified the galaxy is against them, I mean assuming the council or whatever was telling the truth at the start of ME2, then they still don't really believe that the reapers are out there. I'm going to assume that they don't really believe the reaper threat since you have to help the races though their drama before they help you, if they knew there was a giant intergalactic threat coming then they probably wouldn't be doing stupid shit right before it.

While you are right that they could just blow up a mass relay and destroy a the systems in the area there are a few problems with them doing that. The reapers most likely do not have an infinite source of energy and just traveling all the way out from dark space probably ate up much of their energy. Based on what vigil said the reapers strip planets of their natural resources probably because they need it for fuel/energy.

If they blow up the mass relays along with all the star systems and their life forms then the Reapers lose valuable resources and the means to travel over a great distance without using up too much energy. It should also be noted that the mass relays are a vital part of the Reaper's technology that allowed the growth and expansion of multiple civilizations, such as the Protheans, to reach the point where the Reapers would harvest them.

While the reapers could attack the citadel directly they would probably not have the luxury of using the mass relays and therefore would have to spend much time and energy to get there which they may not have. As a result they would have to stop at nearby planets to harvest them in order to refuel.

And true, the galaxy isn't exactly united at the moment, hell there is basically a war brewing between the humans and batarians. Still once the massive reaper fleet starts blowing shit up maybe the galaxy will decide to unite against a common enemy, as long as the reapers aren't on the Citadel's doorstep by then.

It really doesn't matter how united anyone is if the reapers manage to take control of the gates, since they could just shut down all fast interstellar travel and pick apart races one by one, really the stupidest thing they could do is announce their presents by attacking a home world and not going for the lynch-pin at the start. But if energy is a worry they could just go to systems without gates and harvest as much as they like, I mean I'm assuming that's how they got back into the galaxy anyway since the gate they used, the citadel wasn't opened.... really why are they able to attack earth at all, I mean shouldn't it take them at least 200 years to get back into the galaxy and by then their Shepard problem has already solved itself.

But they can't just take control of the lynch pin yet because the Alpha Relay was destroyed. It seems, judging by our in-game galaxy map (which, being fair, is lacking in detail) that the Local Cluster (in which Earth is) is the closest to the one where the Alpha Relay was. They're gonna have to go through Sol if they want to get to the Citadel in a timely manner (and possibly before running out of fuel), so they may as well kill two birds with one stone and take out Earth at the same time.

As for your other point, it seems that the Reapers are really fucking fast, even compared to normal ships (which travel at roughly 4000 times the speed of light when going FTL between systems without Mass Relays). I mean, in 2 years, they went from waaaaaaaay out in Dark Space to the Outer Rim, which means they can really book it. Obviously Relays are faster, but their normal FTL (wasteful of resources as it probably is) can still get the job done.

However, if given a choice between a Relay or none, they are obviously going to choose a Relay. I bet FTL for them is very wasteful and, comparatively fast as their FTL is, it's still gonna take them months if not years to go from the system which formerly housed the Alpha Relay to the Citadel.

If they can get to earth then they can go to any system without a gate that they want to, to refuel, even if they have to go to earth its stupid to attack it, if they need the local cluster gate then they should just quickly use the gate to get to the citadel, hanging around and destroying earth with out securing or destroying the gate is very stupid, the last thing they would want is to let everyone know they are there.

 

[Zetatrain]

She will find a big red button that says don't push and she will push it and all the reapers will become subservient and work at mcdonalds for the next 50k years.

Really I dont see anyway this is going to end other then finding a magic mcguffen and it somehow beating all the reapers, with the setup the 3rd game has. Really the game should be about organizing the races into a fleet and finding a way into deep space to kill most of them while they are still sleeping, have a few wake up before they are wiped out and have that be the epic final battle, where it takes most of the fleets to deal with a few reapers and one of those reapers is infiltrated and taken down by Shepard's team, while the others are either taken down by similar infiltration teams or blown to hell by dreadnoughts.

I think that is exactly what the game WILL be about. Think about the allies we have (possibly) been recruiting. The Krogan, the Quarians, the Geth, the Rachni. All of those but the Quarians are renowned for terrestrial combat prowess (good for boarding reapers, for example), and all of them but the Krogans are renowned for strong fleets (hell, the Quarians have the largest one in the known galaxy, and the Geth fleet that followed Saren was only about 5% of the total Geth strength). And that's to say nothing of what a you could do with the Citadel and Alliance Fleets when they fight the Reapers at full strength and while not surprised.

I bet Mass Effect 3 will mostly be spent making sure that those allies are at full strength. Convincing the Quarians and Geth to make peace (or choosing between them, which Keelah knows I don't want to do), convincing the Salarians to lift the Genophage, scouting the Reapers so that the big fleets are not taken by surprise, etc.

Few things to keep in mind.

1. We've come to find out, more or less, that not all reapers are the BIG, capital ships Sovereign was. Granted, there are prolly alot of them big ships, but in general, it's not a fleet of "Sovereigns" like it's been made out to be.

2. Sovereign was taken down, more or less, but one wing, or fleet of earth ships, not the whole earth navy, and what was left of a suprise attack on the citidal that started with them knocking out communations so they couldn't call for help. There were alot more reinforcments to be had, if they'd known they were under attack in the first place.

3. The reapers are burning ALOT of resorces and fuel to make the trip to the cidital. Not only did they have to come back from dark space, but once the alpha relay was blown, that added possible up to a years worth more FTL travel, which has to be taxing.

So i think there's a SLIGHT misconception as to how powerful the reaper fleet really is, IE, they aren't all Sovereigns, and are buring ALOT of resorces right now, and we aren't as WEAK as we seemed. It was a suprise attack, and a fraction of the galaxies full milatery might. A head on fight, with the WHOLE galaxie, as in, EVERYONE, might be more then the reapers can handle.

After all, all reapers invasions START with a sneak attack that cripples interstaller travel. where they can pick apart picemeal resistince one system at a time. That won't be the case this time. It's going to be a head on fight, after a long exidos, with a unitifed galaxie (once i'm done with them). Something they may well have NEVER faced before.

And of course, there may be a magic Maguffin. That can always happen to if the writers get lazy... >.>

On that subject, we've been told that there is one set piece in ME3 wherein a Thresher Maw fights a Reaper, so they really all better NOT be Sovereign's size, or else Sci Fi Writers Have No Sense OF Scale.

No, unfortinatly according to everything I have seen about the game so far, it starts out with the reapers invading and attacking earth and Shepard is able to escape and tries to round up allies to counter attack but each race is involved with its own stupid shit, like the quarians have decided to retake the homeworld.
This is the trailer.
If it wasn't for the space ships you would think it was a cod clone.
So ME3 has the reapers already here and that should be bad ending, I mean unless they retcon the reapers to suck, I don't see how they are saving earth.

According to the Game Informer article on ME3 from a few months ago, part of the game involves solving a conflict between the Salarians and the Krogan (that was just one example given), which to me smacks of gathering allies in the sense of entire armies and fleets, not just his squad. Also keep in mind, if the events of ME2 are any indication, the Reapers will want live humans, so they'll probably be on Earth for a while after actually winning the battle there. That extends the time frame immensely.

As I see it, Shep is at Earth answering for the events of Arrival, and then the Reapers invade. Act 1 will be fighting to get off Earth. Act 2 (i.e, the Act in every Bioware game where you choose where to go) will be gathering Armies and Fleets of allies (by, for example, convincing the Salarians to lift the Genophage, or making peace between the Geth and Quarians [or helping one side win]), that sort of thing. Then Act 3 will be taking all of your allies and either trying to take back Earth or else attacking wherever the Reapers are at that point.

Which is why the plot will be bad or the reapers will have to be retconned to hell since so far its been established that we are using tech that they control, mainly the gates which are the key to intergalactic travel, the only one they don't control is that lil one that links the promethium world to the citadel, all they need to do is either shut down the gate to sol, station a fleet outside the gate so they can nuke anything that comes though or just blow or just blow up the gate and then nothing is getting though. Not to mention that the reapers have been doing this awhile so they know pretty much how the tech of the races will work and where species will be and since they have spies they will even know fleet size and such, really the only reason this invasion is different is because they weren't woken up by the keepers since the promethians managed to stop them from being able to send a message this time.
The only plot that really would make sense is to attack them in deep space, any other way of fighting them seems doomed, without the plot going wacky.

I think you misunderstood. Talk to Vigil on Ilos again. They only controlled all the Relays in the other invasions because they took over the Citadel first thing, and the Citadel gave them that control (along with census records and such). Since you stopped them from using the Citadel Relay, they are at a MASSIVE disadvantage, since they cannot control our fleet movements anymore. Add to that the fact that, for the first time ever, there will be an entire galaxy already aware of them and amassed to fight them and it won't even take a retcon.

Since they shut down the relays in the past, they only ever had to fight small forces at once (i.e, whatever forces would have been stationed at individual systems). Moreover, they had records of which fleets were where, so they could always attack in overwhelming strength. Their control of the Citadel was always their single largest advantage, and without that, they're just a fleet (possibly an enormous one, but we don't really know) of very tough ships; a hard target, to be sure, but we have giant fleets too.

Ehh, not exactly, I mean if they need the Citadel to control the relays then they should really attack the citadel first, if they no longer have way to control the relays then they could either just blockade the relay or just destroy it. I mean they might not have control over them but they still know exactly where a counter attack will come from and its not like they are really bound by time, I mean they could just knock out a relay, wipe out the system then travel though standard space to the next and it would be almost impossible to know where they would hit next.

Also we aren't sure how unified the galaxy is against them, I mean assuming the council or whatever was telling the truth at the start of ME2, then they still don't really believe that the reapers are out there. I'm going to assume that they don't really believe the reaper threat since you have to help the races though their drama before they help you, if they knew there was a giant intergalactic threat coming then they probably wouldn't be doing stupid shit right before it.

While you are right that they could just blow up a mass relay and destroy a the systems in the area there are a few problems with them doing that. The reapers most likely do not have an infinite source of energy and just traveling all the way out from dark space probably ate up much of their energy. Based on what vigil said the reapers strip planets of their natural resources probably because they need it for fuel/energy.

If they blow up the mass relays along with all the star systems and their life forms then the Reapers lose valuable resources and the means to travel over a great distance without using up too much energy. It should also be noted that the mass relays are a vital part of the Reaper's technology that allowed the growth and expansion of multiple civilizations, such as the Protheans, to reach the point where the Reapers would harvest them.

While the reapers could attack the citadel directly they would probably not have the luxury of using the mass relays and therefore would have to spend much time and energy to get there which they may not have. As a result they would have to stop at nearby planets to harvest them in order to refuel.

And true, the galaxy isn't exactly united at the moment, hell there is basically a war brewing between the humans and batarians. Still once the massive reaper fleet starts blowing shit up maybe the galaxy will decide to unite against a common enemy, as long as the reapers aren't on the Citadel's doorstep by then.

It really doesn't matter how united anyone is if the reapers manage to take control of the gates, since they could just shut down all fast interstellar travel and pick apart races one by one, really the stupidest thing they could do is announce their presents by attacking a home world and not going for the lynch-pin at the start. But if energy is a worry they could just go to systems without gates and harvest as much as they like, I mean I'm assuming that's how they got back into the galaxy anyway since the gate they used, the citadel wasn't opened.... really why are they able to attack earth at all, I mean shouldn't it take them at least 200 years to get back into the galaxy and by then their Shepard problem has already solved itself.

Well even if the galaxy does not stand united at the first sign of the reaper invasion, at the very least the council could cut off all access to the citadel and therefore isolating it from the reaper invasion.

As for the reapers choosing to attack earth and not some remote systems keep in mind a few things. If the reapers are low on energy and need to replenish then earth is a logical target because judging from maps we have earth is relatively close to the alpha relay which the reapers were going to use. Now it could be that Earth is only planet nearby that has great deal of resources sufficient enough for the reapers to use and keep in mind humans also count as resources.

Now even if there were some remote planets nearby that the reapers could harvest I wonder how long they would be able to remain secret based on there location when the alpha relay was destroyed. Even though space is vast, it's gotta be hard to keep a massive fleet of massive reapers hidden especially if they are no longer in dark space. If an Alliance ship or any ship just happens to be cruising by and spots them then the Alliance might mobilize its entire fleet and may even get help from some other races. Basically it was only a matter of time before someone, other than Shepard, would notice them.

So it basically boils down to two things. By targeting Earth first the reapers can gain a massive amount of resources AND deliver a major blow to the human race at the same time. While it is true that the reapers can most likely destroy the Alliance fleet even if they were ready for the reapers, why do that if they can take the Alliance by surprise and therefore waste less resources.

 

[SidingWithTheEnemy]

Due to the coming doom and end of all intergalactic Civilisation Shepard will start the biggest pan-galactic Sex-Orgy party, featuring all prominent (sentient and nonsentient) races in all Citadel Space and the Outer Rim.

Either the combined release of these bound "Sexual Energies" will disable the entire Reaper fleet in some kamusutric mystical fantasy power magic kind of rainbow supernova thing or the Reapers are so utterly disgusted by these organic lifeforms that their main processor just melts and they suffer a complete system failure.
Either way, we won't know it until the release of "World of Mass Effect" is available as MMOG (where you can play anyone of Shepard's

and counting offspring.

 

[TheVioletBandit]

I think we may have to hit them where they live. Dump billions of squirrels on their planet after doping them up with Viagra.

 

[Worgen]

She will find a big red button that says don't push and she will push it and all the reapers will become subservient and work at mcdonalds for the next 50k years.

Really I dont see anyway this is going to end other then finding a magic mcguffen and it somehow beating all the reapers, with the setup the 3rd game has. Really the game should be about organizing the races into a fleet and finding a way into deep space to kill most of them while they are still sleeping, have a few wake up before they are wiped out and have that be the epic final battle, where it takes most of the fleets to deal with a few reapers and one of those reapers is infiltrated and taken down by Shepard's team, while the others are either taken down by similar infiltration teams or blown to hell by dreadnoughts.

I think that is exactly what the game WILL be about. Think about the allies we have (possibly) been recruiting. The Krogan, the Quarians, the Geth, the Rachni. All of those but the Quarians are renowned for terrestrial combat prowess (good for boarding reapers, for example), and all of them but the Krogans are renowned for strong fleets (hell, the Quarians have the largest one in the known galaxy, and the Geth fleet that followed Saren was only about 5% of the total Geth strength). And that's to say nothing of what a you could do with the Citadel and Alliance Fleets when they fight the Reapers at full strength and while not surprised.

I bet Mass Effect 3 will mostly be spent making sure that those allies are at full strength. Convincing the Quarians and Geth to make peace (or choosing between them, which Keelah knows I don't want to do), convincing the Salarians to lift the Genophage, scouting the Reapers so that the big fleets are not taken by surprise, etc.

Few things to keep in mind.

1. We've come to find out, more or less, that not all reapers are the BIG, capital ships Sovereign was. Granted, there are prolly alot of them big ships, but in general, it's not a fleet of "Sovereigns" like it's been made out to be.

2. Sovereign was taken down, more or less, but one wing, or fleet of earth ships, not the whole earth navy, and what was left of a suprise attack on the citidal that started with them knocking out communations so they couldn't call for help. There were alot more reinforcments to be had, if they'd known they were under attack in the first place.

3. The reapers are burning ALOT of resorces and fuel to make the trip to the cidital. Not only did they have to come back from dark space, but once the alpha relay was blown, that added possible up to a years worth more FTL travel, which has to be taxing.

So i think there's a SLIGHT misconception as to how powerful the reaper fleet really is, IE, they aren't all Sovereigns, and are buring ALOT of resorces right now, and we aren't as WEAK as we seemed. It was a suprise attack, and a fraction of the galaxies full milatery might. A head on fight, with the WHOLE galaxie, as in, EVERYONE, might be more then the reapers can handle.

After all, all reapers invasions START with a sneak attack that cripples interstaller travel. where they can pick apart picemeal resistince one system at a time. That won't be the case this time. It's going to be a head on fight, after a long exidos, with a unitifed galaxie (once i'm done with them). Something they may well have NEVER faced before.

And of course, there may be a magic Maguffin. That can always happen to if the writers get lazy... >.>

On that subject, we've been told that there is one set piece in ME3 wherein a Thresher Maw fights a Reaper, so they really all better NOT be Sovereign's size, or else Sci Fi Writers Have No Sense OF Scale.

No, unfortinatly according to everything I have seen about the game so far, it starts out with the reapers invading and attacking earth and Shepard is able to escape and tries to round up allies to counter attack but each race is involved with its own stupid shit, like the quarians have decided to retake the homeworld.
This is the trailer.
If it wasn't for the space ships you would think it was a cod clone.
So ME3 has the reapers already here and that should be bad ending, I mean unless they retcon the reapers to suck, I don't see how they are saving earth.

According to the Game Informer article on ME3 from a few months ago, part of the game involves solving a conflict between the Salarians and the Krogan (that was just one example given), which to me smacks of gathering allies in the sense of entire armies and fleets, not just his squad. Also keep in mind, if the events of ME2 are any indication, the Reapers will want live humans, so they'll probably be on Earth for a while after actually winning the battle there. That extends the time frame immensely.

As I see it, Shep is at Earth answering for the events of Arrival, and then the Reapers invade. Act 1 will be fighting to get off Earth. Act 2 (i.e, the Act in every Bioware game where you choose where to go) will be gathering Armies and Fleets of allies (by, for example, convincing the Salarians to lift the Genophage, or making peace between the Geth and Quarians [or helping one side win]), that sort of thing. Then Act 3 will be taking all of your allies and either trying to take back Earth or else attacking wherever the Reapers are at that point.

Which is why the plot will be bad or the reapers will have to be retconned to hell since so far its been established that we are using tech that they control, mainly the gates which are the key to intergalactic travel, the only one they don't control is that lil one that links the promethium world to the citadel, all they need to do is either shut down the gate to sol, station a fleet outside the gate so they can nuke anything that comes though or just blow or just blow up the gate and then nothing is getting though. Not to mention that the reapers have been doing this awhile so they know pretty much how the tech of the races will work and where species will be and since they have spies they will even know fleet size and such, really the only reason this invasion is different is because they weren't woken up by the keepers since the promethians managed to stop them from being able to send a message this time.
The only plot that really would make sense is to attack them in deep space, any other way of fighting them seems doomed, without the plot going wacky.

I think you misunderstood. Talk to Vigil on Ilos again. They only controlled all the Relays in the other invasions because they took over the Citadel first thing, and the Citadel gave them that control (along with census records and such). Since you stopped them from using the Citadel Relay, they are at a MASSIVE disadvantage, since they cannot control our fleet movements anymore. Add to that the fact that, for the first time ever, there will be an entire galaxy already aware of them and amassed to fight them and it won't even take a retcon.

Since they shut down the relays in the past, they only ever had to fight small forces at once (i.e, whatever forces would have been stationed at individual systems). Moreover, they had records of which fleets were where, so they could always attack in overwhelming strength. Their control of the Citadel was always their single largest advantage, and without that, they're just a fleet (possibly an enormous one, but we don't really know) of very tough ships; a hard target, to be sure, but we have giant fleets too.

Ehh, not exactly, I mean if they need the Citadel to control the relays then they should really attack the citadel first, if they no longer have way to control the relays then they could either just blockade the relay or just destroy it. I mean they might not have control over them but they still know exactly where a counter attack will come from and its not like they are really bound by time, I mean they could just knock out a relay, wipe out the system then travel though standard space to the next and it would be almost impossible to know where they would hit next.

Also we aren't sure how unified the galaxy is against them, I mean assuming the council or whatever was telling the truth at the start of ME2, then they still don't really believe that the reapers are out there. I'm going to assume that they don't really believe the reaper threat since you have to help the races though their drama before they help you, if they knew there was a giant intergalactic threat coming then they probably wouldn't be doing stupid shit right before it.

While you are right that they could just blow up a mass relay and destroy a the systems in the area there are a few problems with them doing that. The reapers most likely do not have an infinite source of energy and just traveling all the way out from dark space probably ate up much of their energy. Based on what vigil said the reapers strip planets of their natural resources probably because they need it for fuel/energy.

If they blow up the mass relays along with all the star systems and their life forms then the Reapers lose valuable resources and the means to travel over a great distance without using up too much energy. It should also be noted that the mass relays are a vital part of the Reaper's technology that allowed the growth and expansion of multiple civilizations, such as the Protheans, to reach the point where the Reapers would harvest them.

While the reapers could attack the citadel directly they would probably not have the luxury of using the mass relays and therefore would have to spend much time and energy to get there which they may not have. As a result they would have to stop at nearby planets to harvest them in order to refuel.

And true, the galaxy isn't exactly united at the moment, hell there is basically a war brewing between the humans and batarians. Still once the massive reaper fleet starts blowing shit up maybe the galaxy will decide to unite against a common enemy, as long as the reapers aren't on the Citadel's doorstep by then.

It really doesn't matter how united anyone is if the reapers manage to take control of the gates, since they could just shut down all fast interstellar travel and pick apart races one by one, really the stupidest thing they could do is announce their presents by attacking a home world and not going for the lynch-pin at the start. But if energy is a worry they could just go to systems without gates and harvest as much as they like, I mean I'm assuming that's how they got back into the galaxy anyway since the gate they used, the citadel wasn't opened.... really why are they able to attack earth at all, I mean shouldn't it take them at least 200 years to get back into the galaxy and by then their Shepard problem has already solved itself.

Well even if the galaxy does not stand united at the first sign of the reaper invasion, at the very least the council could cut off all access to the citadel and therefore isolating it from the reaper invasion.

As for the reapers choosing to attack earth and not some remote systems keep in mind a few things. If the reapers are low on energy and need to replenish then earth is a logical target because judging from maps we have earth is relatively close to the alpha relay which the reapers were going to use. Now it could be that Earth is only planet nearby that has great deal of resources sufficient enough for the reapers to use and keep in mind humans also count as resources.

Now even if there were some remote planets nearby that the reapers could harvest I wonder how long they would be able to remain secret based on there location when the alpha relay was destroyed. Even though space is vast, it's gotta be hard to keep a massive fleet of massive reapers hidden especially if they are no longer in dark space. If an Alliance ship or any ship just happens to be cruising by and spots them then the Alliance might mobilize its entire fleet and may even get help from some other races. Basically it was only a matter of time before someone, other than Shepard, would notice them.

So it basically boils down to two things. By targeting Earth first the reapers can gain a massive amount of resources AND deliver a major blow to the human race at the same time. While it is true that the reapers can most likely destroy the Alliance fleet even if they were ready for the reapers, why do that if they can take the Alliance by surprise and therefore waste less resources.

The mass effect galaxy map only shows a few systems with gates, there are more and there are even more systems with out gates, the gates specifically guide the development of races since its very hard to colonize or even explore systems without gates, the reapers know exactly where almost everyone is and where almost everyone isn't so it would be really easy to get to any nearby buy non-gated system and just take any resources they wanted, they don't need to have an inhabited system. Also there would be many closer systems then the local cluster, and they could hide in them for pretty much as long as they wanted, there might be an isolated exploration vessel but even if it found them and got a signal off it would still only be light speed and take a few hundred years to reach anyone, the gates are used for everything, travel, communication, everything.

 

[arcticphoenix95]

How do you think the Reapers will be defeated, considering one of them managed to demolish half a fleet before going down?

Here is my theory: Dark Matter. I've been playing through both games over the past few weeks, and I've noticed quite a few references to dark matter that have no other context in the story. Namely on Tali's recruitment mission and a few galactic newscasts. I feel that somehow, dark matter is going to be weaponized in the game as a means of combating the Reapers with superpowerful weapons.

So that's my pitch, what do you guys think is going to happen?

The poetic way would be to trick them into destroying themselves. But more than likely, here's my theory:

A central theme of the whole series has been the factionalization of the races. This division has been causing wars and problems all along. The Reapers seem to "reproduce" by taking the best traits of the current living races and integrating them into their whole. They represent the greatest strengths of the greatest races ever to exist.

In order to defeat them, all races will have to band together in some way and create their own "best of." It will no longer be about humans asserting dominance or krogans taking over or whatever. Everyone will band together or die. Probably the best way to do this would be the construction of a superweapon or super-ship (with superweapons) that represents the best contributions of each race.

Perhaps Shepard will have to undertake missions for each race to secure their support, provide them resources, and ultimately collect their contribution to the superweapon:

Asari: Some major biotic offensive/defensive widget
Turians: long-range firepower
Krogans: some type of super-armor (that can probably also be used to ram things)
Salarians: some type of major tech weapon (or something similar to the genophage)
Quarians: likely a super-engine of some kind (or perhaps a shield based on their suit tech)
Drell: Maybe an even-more-advanced cloaking tech?
Elcor, Hanar, and Volus: Probably donating resources, or something -- dark matter, maybe?
Batarians / Vorcha: No clue. Maybe just manpower.

And I suspect the possibility of a contribution from the Rachni (provided they are still alive) that involves tactical planning via collective intelligence.

Other prediction: EDI will occupy the body of a Reaper at some point, and will continue to exist beyond the ending of the game.

You forgot to mention the geth and Yahg.

 

[Supertegwyn]

How do you think the Reapers will be defeated, considering one of them managed to demolish half a fleet before going down?

Here is my theory: Dark Matter. I've been playing through both games over the past few weeks, and I've noticed quite a few references to dark matter that have no other context in the story. Namely on Tali's recruitment mission and a few galactic newscasts. I feel that somehow, dark matter is going to be weaponized in the game as a means of combating the Reapers with superpowerful weapons.

So that's my pitch, what do you guys think is going to happen?

The poetic way would be to trick them into destroying themselves. But more than likely, here's my theory:

A central theme of the whole series has been the factionalization of the races. This division has been causing wars and problems all along. The Reapers seem to "reproduce" by taking the best traits of the current living races and integrating them into their whole. They represent the greatest strengths of the greatest races ever to exist.

In order to defeat them, all races will have to band together in some way and create their own "best of." It will no longer be about humans asserting dominance or krogans taking over or whatever. Everyone will band together or die. Probably the best way to do this would be the construction of a superweapon or super-ship (with superweapons) that represents the best contributions of each race.

Perhaps Shepard will have to undertake missions for each race to secure their support, provide them resources, and ultimately collect their contribution to the superweapon:

Asari: Some major biotic offensive/defensive widget
Turians: long-range firepower
Krogans: some type of super-armor (that can probably also be used to ram things)
Salarians: some type of major tech weapon (or something similar to the genophage)
Quarians: likely a super-engine of some kind (or perhaps a shield based on their suit tech)
Drell: Maybe an even-more-advanced cloaking tech?
Elcor, Hanar, and Volus: Probably donating resources, or something -- dark matter, maybe?
Batarians / Vorcha: No clue. Maybe just manpower.

And I suspect the possibility of a contribution from the Rachni (provided they are still alive) that involves tactical planning via collective intelligence.

Other prediction: EDI will occupy the body of a Reaper at some point, and will continue to exist beyond the ending of the game.

You forgot to mention the geth and Yahg.

And the Humans (you know, us people)

OT: I honestly have no clue. I would prefer to wait for the game to be released rather than speculating.

 

[Alexias_Sandar]

They'll all do their part, once idiot Turian Councilor is shot in the head, having been discovered to be Saren in disguise, still indoctrinated.

What, are you saying they're the same because all turians look alike? You humans are all racist!

Nah. I just personally loathe him for the sheer level of idiot ball he seems to hold...and figure only someone under indoctrination can be that stupid.

 

[Alaster Angelo]

He calls upon the Maker and Andraste lends him her strength. Wait, what?

 

[Jubbert]

Put Turian Thanix cannons on each and every Alliance ship.

How do you like THAT, you sons of bitches!?

 

[AzureRaven]

Well, at the end of ME2 I believe they found some sort of Reaper schematic. It may divulge some sort of weak point. Or at least something to make them marginally easier. Plus...whatever killed the derelict reaper is probably another options. I mean they ripped that thing a new one. Someone brought up Dark Matter killing a star so there's that in weaponized form. And someone else brought up that fighting Sovereign was against insurmountable odds. It was the one reaper they left behind to bring in the rest of the fleet. It was probably pretty tough. Plus it was a sneak attack with cut off reinforcements. The fight will be tough...but not impossible.

I reeeaally wish they'd let you do some dogfighting with the Normandy though. That'd be friggin' sweet.

 

[Alaster Angelo]

I reeeaally wish they'd let you do some dogfighting with the Normandy though. That'd be friggin' sweet.

Based off Mass Effect's other vehicle modes, I imagine dogfighting in the Normandy wouldn't be sweet at all. In fact, it'd probably leave a bitter taste in your mouth.

 

[Laser Priest]

MY THEORY:

You can only win if you saved the council.

The reapers will be on their way to attack, the Turian Councilor will look out his window, say "Ah, yes. Reapers." and his sheer disbelief will poof them all out of existence.

 

[dessertmonkeyjk]

I think Shepard will call in the Red Shirt army to distract the Reapers while he finds the power plug for all the ships... while playing Poker with Garrus and Wrex.

 

[Skulltaker101]

Corner them in Batarian space and start hucking asteroids at mass relays ala Arrival. Sure, a lot of Batarians would die, but who really cares, right?

 

[AzureRaven]

Based off Mass Effect's other vehicle modes, I imagine dogfighting in the Normandy wouldn't be sweet at all. In fact, it'd probably leave a bitter taste in your mouth.

2 things.
First, flight simulation and ground vehicle simulation are two different beasts.
Second, even humoring you and assuming BioWare handled them the same...I didn't have an issue with vehicle sections thus far. The Mako's only issue was that you had to align "forward" with the front end of the vehicle instead of just pushing forward. And I had quite a bit of fun with the Firewalker. I've played racing games with worse vehicle control though, it hasn't been all that bad.