- ROBERTO jh
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- Fabled Heroic Member
Posted by: PLUT0NIUM 235
right, this is an in-depth post about the Reapers. at first, when this debate first started I was one of those who thought 'Reapers, sure...!' however, upon going through the Mass Effect games again and reading all the material I am no longer so sure it would be so clear cut as we all think, let me explain...!
think the technology of Sovereign has been underestimated, the final battle at the Citadel the fleet was powerless to stop it, nothing made an impact on the Reaper, even ramming a cruiser didn't damage it or slow it down. it just casually flew (without even firing back) through the Citadel defence fleet, like it didn't care, it wasn't concerned with those 'insects'.
inside the Citadel, the Alliance ships shot and shot and shot, nothing even scratched it, in return it used its shall we call them 'point defence?', each shot (no more than one shot) junked whatever it touched and it had what, around six or more of these weapons? not to mention it has a large, spinal mounted 'main gun' of unknown length and power, it didn't use that main gun during the battle so speculating on its level of fire-power is difficult. however we can 'guess' to the power of the gun, an alliance dreadnought fires slugs at 1.3% light speed with the impact of around ~40 kilotons of TNT, since the Reapers are well, experts in Mass Effect technology, building the relays, the Citadel and what not we can assume that the main gun can accelerate a projectile to much greater velocities, not to mention the projectile itself is probably going to be more massive, liquid and super-heated, would it be wrong to guess it might be as much as ten or more times stronger than the ones used on Alliance ships? based on how powerful its much smaller weapons were, junking everything in a single shot?
also Sovereign' defences are a bit of a confusing topic as well, because the fire did nothing, don't think a single weapon touched its hull until the death of Saren seemed to 'weaken' it, when Saren is killed Sovereign seems to shut down and 'fall off' the tower, unshielded, loss of power, is it possible that Sovereign had 'possessed' Saren and his destruction either killed or stunned Sovereign? either way whatever happened at that moment was the only reason Sovereign was destroyed, leading me to question what does it take to kill one without such an event going in ones favour?
the Derelict Reaper from Mass Effect II had been 'dead' and almost powerless in super low orbit of a Gas Giant for millions upon millions of years, and its power source is still working seemingly well, enough to hold the 'unknown' sized Reaper in perfect orbit of the planet and then generate a shield around itself when its boarded, not to mention it was 'dead' and still indoctrinated the researchers without much trouble.
another thing worth noting, we don't know if the Reapers lost any of their own fighting the Protheans, no information on that topic is given, that fact is we have never seen a Reaper defeated without some 'divine' intervention, so not sure where these statements regarding how the Covenant would walk over them comes from? also another thing for the Reapers, the fact they can land and stroll around, whilst mass murdering is an interesting feat for a giant sentient warship, if Grunts are pushed over the edge by a SPARTAN, what the hell they going to make of a Reaper wasting all their buddies?
Edit: also as much as people choose to forget, plasma has mass therefore won't circumvent the shielding of a Reaper, another point is Alliance shields are 'kinetic barriers' but the nature of the Reaper defences could be different, would even hint it could be since the derelict was in the horrible, volatile atmosphere of a gas giant for aeons without being destroyed by severe temperatures, radiation or other such things. also unless some random 'divine intervention' occurs in Mass Effect III to help Sheppard then sure, its the end of the world, in the trailer there is 'thousands' of Reapers in orbit of Earth (darken the skies anyone?) and nothing to hint that is their 'entire' number...so for the number part, still there is 100% no facts to tell us a number for the Reapers, there might be thousands (at the minimum, due to the fact there are 'thousands' above Earth) or there could be trillions, who knows?
also, look at some of the weapons used by the Collectors, those particle beams which annihilate people in the blink of an eye. the Collectors are nothing more (literally) than pawns to a single Reaper, Harbinger. if the Collectors have some advanced technology it would suggest the Reapers surpass them with ease in technological terms.
The reason we say the Covies could defeat the Reapers is that the Covenant's energy lance is a laser bolt, that would ignore the shields (and before you say the Reapers could have an unknown defense type, we don't know that, so its a non-factor). The armor on a Reaper we know for a fact can be destroyed by sub-kilo missiles. The Lance on Covie ships has split entire battle groups in half at a distance up to and including 100,000 kilometers, even once detonating five UNSC ships with one shot.
But the Covies vs Reapers is an even match. Once the Forerunners get involved its laughable how quick they die.
Oh, and BioWare has stated "you're not going to find some Reaper 'off' switch; you're going to need to construct a real plan and find out how to defeat them."
/paraphrase
So 66 tonnes of HE spewing "divine intervention" isn't likely to happen.
I've also heard of a Thresher Maw tackling a Reaper and almost winning, in ME3, and I've seen Shepard shooting a Reaper with a defensive turret, so there are ways to kill them.