1. #18161
    Warchief Nazrark's Avatar
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    I figured I would eventually give Space Engineers a look. But I would have to wait until they put out some Let's Play videos. I typically only wait until they put out LP vids before I make a choice on buying. Allows me to see the in depth look of the game that the gameplay/trailers do not give me.

  2. #18162
    Over 9000! zealo's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by May90 View Post
    I am not a racist, but I really cannot stand Indie games... There is just something about them that feels cheap and clunky. I'm yet to see an Indie game that I do not uninstall after a few hours of play tops. So, as much as I don't like overgeneralization, I am not going to try Space Engineers... Especially since I failed as a student of engineering and had to switch to physics.
    How and why do you link racism to indie games?

    What do this game offer that ksp do not? Seems like its just minecraft in space which do not interest me.

  3. #18163
    Quote Originally Posted by Gravath View Post
    Can someone explain this?
    Maybe he thinks Indie games are made by Indians?

    That's literally the only thing I can think of that might even have a tenuous link here...
    Quote Originally Posted by xanzul View Post
    Quote Originally Posted by obdigore View Post
    So if the states get together and work with the Legislative Branch to write an amendment to the federal constitution, you think the Judiciary (SCOTUS) could strike it down for being 'unconstitutional'?
    Uh...yes. Absolutely.

  4. #18164
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    Quote Originally Posted by Gravath View Post
    Can someone explain this?
    misuse use of the word racist, he meant he doesn't anything against indie game, against this "breed" of games, it just doesn't like them.

  5. #18165
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    Quote Originally Posted by Vankrys View Post
    misuse use of the word racist, he meant he doesn't anything against indie game, against this "breed" of games, it just doesn't like them.
    Sounds like the societies misuse of 'racism' overall.

    Oh...
    I see what May did there.

  6. #18166
    The Unstoppable Force May90's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Gravath View Post
    Can someone explain this?
    Quote Originally Posted by zealo View Post
    How and why do you link racism to indie games?
    Quote Originally Posted by obdigore View Post
    Maybe he thinks Indie games are made by Indians?
    It was actually a joke played on the similarity between words "indie" and "Indian"... and the recent talk we had in DA3 thread about racism... ah well. A joke needed to be explained is a failed joke.

  7. #18167
    So, with the DAI release date out there, and "the end" of that being in sight, how long do you figure it'll be before we see some Mass Effect hype?

  8. #18168
    Over 9000! zealo's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Nerraw View Post
    So, with the DAI release date out there, and "the end" of that being in sight, how long do you figure it'll be before we see some Mass Effect hype?
    E3 2014 in June would be my guess.

  9. #18169
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    I would wager a month after DA:I release, just to ride the already rolling hypetrain.

  10. #18170
    The Unstoppable Force May90's Avatar
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    I just finished yesterday yet another Mass Effect 1 playthrough (currently watching Asari strippers in the Afterlife on Omega in ME2). I think the whole Ilos thing does not make any sense.

    Just look at this. Reapers are so thorough that they managed to kill or enslave every single Prothean in the galaxy, except for a small group of scientists on Ilos. OK, they are not perfect, they might have missed them. Then they return back to the Dark Space, leaving one Reaper (Sovereing) back to observe and to send signal to Citadel when the next invasion is to begin.
    What I don't understand is this: how come Sovereign was so careless as to not check the Citadel's condition periodically? How come the Protheans managed to alter the Citadel's system so that Sovereign could not initiate the invasion, and the Reaper was not aware of it? If they are so thorough, how come they did not foresee such a turn of events? Sounds quite stupid that they managed to build Citadel and Mass Relays, to exterminate countless civilizations down to every single person - and lost to a bunch of Protheans who just learned how to make prototype Mass Relays? Since that signal is the primary way to start an invasion, it is only logical that they would keep a close mechanical eye on it, monitor it every second.

    Not to mention that they haven't discovered Ilos' facility while they could just fly over the planet and "look" at its surface to see all these constructions. But that's another topic...

  11. #18171
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    There's no such thing as perfect, it's not that hard to comprehend that the Reapers can make mistakes, or simply fail to finish the job :P

    Also remember, the Protheans had hundreds (something like that?) of years dedicated solely to fighting the Reapers, that's a lot of prep time

  12. #18172
    Warchief Nazrark's Avatar
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    Well, the Reapers are not an all knowing race. They heavily utilized indoctrinated agents to root out secret bases. It isn't much a leap of faith to assume that in some point during the centuries of fighting with the Reapers. They acknowledged they would lose and put in contingency plans, they essentially sent the Ilos expedition out and told them not to come back, not even try to contact their own people.

    Theoretically, you can outwit the Reapers by sending out an expedition with explicit orders not to contact anybody and avoid mass relays at all costs. The Citadel should have a warning flag for the Reapers if a mass relay has been activated. From there they must send out a scouting party to see if it poses an immediate threat. The Quarians and Asari would be the most likely survivors of the last Reaper war. Longevity from the Asari and ingenuity/survival instincts from the Quarians. They would just have to realize not to use the existing Mass Relays.

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    Over 9000! zealo's Avatar
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    I would not ponder too much about that, its just a plothole which there are many of in the Mass Effect world if you actually dig into the storyline but a fairly reasonable and plausible explanation is given by Vigil that works for the franchise.

    What they did do is write themselves into a corner by making the Reapers so powerful they needed a fleet to kill Sovereign, with him being one reaper out of thousands which in the end resulted in a "galactic super weapon of doom!" ass pull that was needed to make sure the player side won.

  14. #18174
    Reapers are also extremely arrogant. The notion someone could tamper with their technology is something they don't consider because they are clearly the superior race. The notion that their plan might fail is also something they don't consider, after all they've done it thousands of times already with the same outcome each time.

    A better question about Ilos is how are the ruins in such good condition? After all, these aren't Prothean - they are from a race before the Protheans, the Inusannon. And those ruins are in better condition then Prothean ruins half their age! Obviously very well built!

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    The Unstoppable Force May90's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Nazrark View Post
    Theoretically, you can outwit the Reapers by sending out an expedition with explicit orders not to contact anybody and avoid mass relays at all costs. The Citadel should have a warning flag for the Reapers if a mass relay has been activated. From there they must send out a scouting party to see if it poses an immediate threat. The Quarians and Asari would be the most likely survivors of the last Reaper war. Longevity from the Asari and ingenuity/survival instincts from the Quarians. They would just have to realize not to use the existing Mass Relays.
    This is true. I think, if more Protheans survived on Ilos, enough to rebuild the Empire, and if they were careful to avoid Mass Relays, they would be able to mass an enormous fleet in 50,000 years somewhere in a hidden place. Since they had discovered the Mass Relay technology, it would probably not be long before they, using their collected data from the war, discovered everything about the Reapers, their weaknesses - they would be able to build ships specifically to "counter" Reapers.

    It would probably be worse for us than the Reapers arrival though. Reapers, at least, harvest us and are done with it after. Protheans, however, used other races as slaves, so, should they have defeated Reapers with their hidden fleet in our cycle, our fate would not be very pleasant. Not to mention that, according to Catalyst, they would eventually create a race of machines that would wipe them and us out. So, maybe, Reapers are a less evil?

    Quote Originally Posted by Durandro View Post
    Reapers are also extremely arrogant. The notion someone could tamper with their technology is something they don't consider because they are clearly the superior race. The notion that their plan might fail is also something they don't consider, after all they've done it thousands of times already with the same outcome each time.
    I think this is the best possible explanation. Still, it is strange that such an advanced race that consistently has been wiping out all the advanced life in the galaxy without leaving any evidence of their existence didn't take such basic precautions as getting periodical automatic reports from the Citadel's systems, checking all the planets beyond Mass Relays "just to make sure" soon after the cycle has ended and so on.

    Quote Originally Posted by Durandro View Post
    A better question about Ilos is how are the ruins in such good condition? After all, these aren't Prothean - they are from a race before the Protheans, the Inusannon. And those ruins are in better condition then Prothean ruins half their age! Obviously very well built!
    I believe these are Prothean ruins. They were build on the remains of Inusannon cities, true, but, still, what we see in the game is, most likely, Prothean constructions. Inusannon statues were there just as a sign of gratitude from Protheans to the people who "provided" them with technology. They worshipped them, just like Hanars worship the Protheans, I think.

    Which, again, makes it illogical that Reapers ignored this planet in their "reaping". Since they wiped out Inusannon there just a cycle ago, it would be logical to check it to see if no one used these ruins as a base. And to bomb them once again to make sure of it.

  16. #18176
    The Unstoppable Force Elim Garak's Avatar
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    1. It was explained how Ilos was missed by the reapers. It was a secret research facility NOT mentioned in Citadel archives. Reapers use Citadel for information of where every species is.
    2. Reapers don't have a goal to personally kill every member of the species. They just need to kill enough - the rest will die out. They are neither arrogant nor sloppy in this - they are efficient as machines that they are.
    3. Protheans lost.
    4. Protheans managed to crack the keepers and change them - that was their last act as species.
    5. Sovereign cannot check up on Citadel - first of all it needs to conserve energy, secondly it needs to remain unseen. To test if keepers are in line Sovereign would've needed to activate them early - which is a no no. Not to mention that Reapers got a contingency plan for everything. In this case Saren and Geth who basically uncovered what Protheans did and then fixed it, well they would've if there were no Shepard who grabbed Saren's tail. You've just finished ME1 - it should be clear for you that Shepard was always one step behind Saren and all they knew about Reapers and Protheans was taken from Saren's Discoveries. Who made a mistake of not destroying that first beacon. Here Sovereign got sloppy via Saren. Maybe it was arrogant.
    6. You cannot check every planet in the galaxy. It is not efficient, it would've taken more than 50k years. Thye lured species into Citadel and then used the information stored in it to find everyone. A single secret facility on some unknown planet is of no significance. All those protheans died before Reapers left the galaxy, most were disconnected by VI, the rest were dead by definition of dying species.
    All right, gentleperchildren, let's review. The year is 2024 - that's two-zero-two-four, as in the 21st Century's perfect vision - and I am sorry to say the world has become a pussy-whipped, Brady Bunch version of itself, run by a bunch of still-masked clots ridden infertile senile sissies who want the Last Ukrainian to die so they can get on with the War on China, with some middle-eastern genocide on the side

  17. #18177
    The Unstoppable Force May90's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Elim Garak View Post
    4. Protheans managed to crack the keepers and change them - that was their last act as species.
    This is what raises many questions. How come the security of Reapers' system was so poor that a bunch of guys managed to crack it without Reapers noticing it during 50,000 years? Reapers are very thorough, and yet didn't foresee such a simple event as someone hacking their systems? At least, they could make a basic notification system: whenever someone tampers with Keepers during the period of their idle state, Keepers send a signal to Sovereign, which then arrives to the Citadel and fixes everything right away.

    Quote Originally Posted by Elim Garak View Post
    5. Sovereign cannot check up on Citadel - first of all it needs to conserve energy, secondly it needs to remain unseen. To test if keepers are in line Sovereign would've needed to activate them early - which is a no no.
    They don't need to activate anything. Vigil said that Sovereign awakens periodically (every 500 years?) to evaluate the state of the galactic civilization. During these periods of "awakening" it didn't even bother to send some basic signal to Keepers and get the report from them on the state of their systems? It just doesn't make sense, especially for hyper-advanced race of machines: machines are much less prone to overlooks than organics, and even a human kid would realize that some kind of check system is needed.

    Quote Originally Posted by Elim Garak View Post
    Not to mention that Reapers got a contingency plan for everything. In this case Saren and Geth who basically uncovered what Protheans did and then fixed it, well they would've if there were no Shepard who grabbed Saren's tail. You've just finished ME1 - it should be clear for you that Shepard was always one step behind Saren and all they knew about Reapers and Protheans was taken from Saren's Discoveries. Who made a mistake of not destroying that first beacon. Here Sovereign got sloppy via Saren. Maybe it was arrogant.
    Reapers are machines. They aim at the highest efficiency - this is how they came up with the idea of cycles in the first place. Putting all their hopes in unpredictable organics, instead of installing a proper system on Citadel that would notify them if something in the system prevents them from returning, doesn't sound like them. Besides, they failed in the end, didn't they? To not expect such an outcome would be silly even of organics, let alone machines with millions of years of technological advancement.

    Quote Originally Posted by Elim Garak View Post
    6. You cannot check every planet in the galaxy. It is not efficient, it would've taken more than 50k years.
    True, but they could, at least, check all the planets where the Inusannon were spotted: these planets are the most likely sites for Protheans to hide their facilities.

    ---

    All in all, it seems that in the last cycle Reapers were much less thorough than before. They missed an important science facility, they didn't realize the Protheans discovered the Mass Relay technology, they didn't notice the Protheans tampering with their Citadel systems, they used a single Spectre to try to start the cycle, they were careless enough to slip up evidence of their existence (while Protheans, being more advanced than humans, had no idea about the Reapers before the invasion started) by transmitting and uncoded message to all the Geth that Tali retrieved... Seriously, it is as if they suddenly decided to give the organics a chance. If they were just a little bit more careful and, say, left in the galaxy not a single Reaper, but, say, 10 of them - they would be able to win just by direct assault on the Citadel.

  18. #18178
    Warchief Nazrark's Avatar
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    There is evidence of them around. They aren't the type to retrieve their own dead. I realize they don't because their dead husks still indoctrinate people. Which allows them to stay anonymous.

  19. #18179
    The Unstoppable Force Elim Garak's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by May90 View Post
    This is what raises many questions. How come the security of Reapers' system was so poor that a bunch of guys managed to crack it without Reapers noticing it during 50,000 years? Reapers are very thorough, and yet didn't foresee such a simple event as someone hacking their systems? At least, they could make a basic notification system: whenever someone tampers with Keepers during the period of their idle state, Keepers send a signal to Sovereign, which then arrives to the Citadel and fixes everything right away.
    What are you talking about? How do you even know that Sovereign didn't know about it? It did know about it - hence the Geth and Saren. It couldn't just flew to the Citadel and say "Hi, Keeper Inspection.", and there was no point checking up on them before new species got to the Citadel. And since they are doing it for so long they know exactly when to expect that to happen.

    Quote Originally Posted by May90 View Post
    They don't need to activate anything. Vigil said that Sovereign awakens periodically (every 500 years?) to evaluate the state of the galactic civilization. During these periods of "awakening" it didn't even bother to send some basic signal to Keepers and get the report from them on the state of their systems? It just doesn't make sense, especially for hyper-advanced race of machines: machines are much less prone to overlooks than organics, and even a human kid would realize that some kind of check system is needed.
    How do you know there's no such system? And machines are no perfect. In fact they are even less perfect than organics, because they were created by organics to begin with. They are limited by their programming even the AI ones. Not to mention that reapers are not fully machine, they are made of people - their mind is made of people's minds.

    Quote Originally Posted by May90 View Post
    Reapers are machines. They aim at the highest efficiency - this is how they came up with the idea of cycles in the first place. Putting all their hopes in unpredictable organics, instead of installing a proper system on Citadel that would notify them if something in the system prevents them from returning, doesn't sound like them. Besides, they failed in the end, didn't they? To not expect such an outcome would be silly even of organics, let alone machines with millions of years of technological advancement.
    They weren't perfect. And they were stale in their evolution because, duh, machines. They made mistakes, small mistakes ,that were unimportant because they were small. But these mistakes accumulated over the eons and organic evolution took advantage of that. That's how Protheans managed to crack Mass Effect technology and build their own mini-relay, this is how they understood what a Citadel is and how to counter act. And they did counter act, they just failed to save themselves.
    Same for the Crucible, its design evolved over cycles. Organic Evolution played a joke on Silly Machines, who couldn't foresee it.

    Quote Originally Posted by May90 View Post
    True, but they could, at least, check all the planets where the Inusannon were spotted: these planets are the most likely sites for Protheans to hide their facilities.
    For whatever reason? That secret facility could've been on some other planet, that never got cleansed before. there's no logic connecting Ilos to Prothean Facility from reapers perspective, and they are machines. They don't have hunches. They do whatever Starbrat tells them to do.

    Here's actually the answer to your previous questions - Starbrat - is a security system of Citadel. It knew EVERYTHING about Prothean manipulation of the keepers.
    One can even suggest that it wasn't the first time in history of cleansing that organics managed to do that.

    Quote Originally Posted by May90 View Post
    All in all, it seems that in the last cycle Reapers were much less thorough than before. They missed an important science facility, they didn't realize the Protheans discovered the Mass Relay technology, they didn't notice the Protheans tampering with their Citadel systems, they used a single Spectre to try to start the cycle, they were careless enough to slip up evidence of their existence (while Protheans, being more advanced than humans, had no idea about the Reapers before the invasion started) by transmitting and uncoded message to all the Geth that Tali retrieved... Seriously, it is as if they suddenly decided to give the organics a chance. If they were just a little bit more careful and, say, left in the galaxy not a single Reaper, but, say, 10 of them - they would be able to win just by direct assault on the Citadel.
    1. In every cycle - there were secret facilities that Reapers "missed"
    2. It is irrelevant to Reapers what have species discovered technology wise - because all technology comes from Reapers.
    3. They did notice Prothean tampering.
    4. They didn't used a single Spectre. They used Geth, ex-Protheans (Collectors), and indoctrination technology to manipulate anyone they want.
    5. They didn't need to remove all evidence , because evidence that remains depends on interpretation, everyone thought it was from the race that came before - nothing to point to Reapers.
    6. Reapers don't need cloak and dagger approach when they are about to start the cycle.
    7. Organics have no chance apart from Crucible which was overlooked by Starbrat and it admitted it.
    8. They don't need to leave more than 1 Reaper to check on things, because the rest of Reapers could easily just fly in via Alpha Relay. Which got destroyed by Shepard in Arrival DLC, but that only postponed Reapers invasion for couple of month. And when they finally arrived NO ONE WAS PREPARED. Reapers wisely relied on one of the major organic flaw - inability of pure logical thinking, that makes it hard for Organics to unite as one force before it's too late and even an imbecile will be yelling "let's unite".
    All right, gentleperchildren, let's review. The year is 2024 - that's two-zero-two-four, as in the 21st Century's perfect vision - and I am sorry to say the world has become a pussy-whipped, Brady Bunch version of itself, run by a bunch of still-masked clots ridden infertile senile sissies who want the Last Ukrainian to die so they can get on with the War on China, with some middle-eastern genocide on the side

  20. #18180
    The Unstoppable Force May90's Avatar
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    No, I am stressing on another point. Sovereign awakens every few hundred years or so to analyze the situation. How come it hasn't realized that Keepers have been reprogrammed before it sent the signal for invasion (according to Vigil) to no avail? If it did realize it, it would just send a group of Collectors to the Citadel and they would manually fix everything before any organics discovered the Citadel again. The fact that it had to resort to Saren and the Geth shows that they learned it when it was too late. This is what is strange: the system most vital for cycle initiation (which is all the Reapers care about, basically) was hacked and Reapers weren't even aware of it until it was too late.

    Why didn't they check the Citadel's status periodically? Why didn't they leave a group of indoctrinated thralls there for the time being just in case someone survives the harvest and arrives there? Why did they leave only one Reaper in the galaxy which certainly is some risk and machines do not think in terms of risk? Why, after all, was Citadel security system so low that organics who barely discovered Mass Relay technology (known for Reapers for millions of years) managed to hack it so easily? Why didn't they put Citadel control terminal deep into Citadel where no organics go so, instead of using Saren and such, they could just place a few thralls there and make them override the system without organics being even aware of it? All in all, they acted as organics: as if they felt their omnipotence and control over the galaxy and started underestimating organics.

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