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Humans' crappy little pre-first contact colonial fleet still exhibited a military doctrine capable of fending off a turian patrol, and it would have been embarrassing for them to escalate to a full-scale war in retaliation. The advantages given to humans in the story are a fresh perspective on mass effect technology (something that every council species benefited from in the setting's history), good luck in occupying a politically convenient territory (humans got first dibs on many productive colony planets even after first contact because it was a way for the council to reprimand the batarians), and being highly motivated to shamelessly gain every advantage possible (understandable following an introduction to aliens characterized by narrowly avoid being turned into a "client race"). The part that strains credulity for me isn't that humans are portrayed as becoming a major power, but that it's shown happening within a single generation. Stretching the timeline a bit farther would make sense. Reapers can be fought conventionally, which is why they go to the trouble of turning off all the mass relays. They like to start reaping at about the time that spacefaring species start developing the technology that could make them a potential threat. Their surprise attack and several backup plans have been thwarted by the time Mass Effect 3 starts, and over the course of that game you start seeing the development of tactics and weapons that are more effective against them. The war is still unwinnable without the ancient superweapon, but fighting it better determines how much will be left over to rebuild after the superweapon is used.
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May 25, 2021 23:49
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Do I need any levels under my belt for Insanity (new game plus or an imported character) or can I go in from the jump? I played through most of 3 on Insanity (Citadel DLC was hosed, as were the pistol QTE’s if you had the heavy) but can’t remember how I started
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May 26, 2021 00:03
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Most modern character creators start your cursor in a neutral position so you actively have to make the incorrect (male) decision now.
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May 26, 2021 00:06
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King Bahamut posted:Do I need any levels under my belt for Insanity (new game plus or an imported character) or can I go in from the jump? I played through most of 3 on Insanity (Citadel DLC was hosed, as were the pistol QTE’s if you had the heavy) but can’t remember how I started Nah, you can do all of them from level 1 + imports from previous games. They're tough but not... insane
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May 26, 2021 00:06
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Thanks for the Adept advice friends but hey wait I'm doing my homework on what the powers all do and it appears to me that Sentinels can actually get lower cooldown time than Adepts (30% if Guardian vs 20% for both Adept passives)?
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May 26, 2021 00:35
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Sentinel gets the best cooldowns, the tradeoff being they don't get All The Powers (until 3 when they're just stupidly powerful) Edit: wait no, Tech Armor inherently makes your cooldowns really long, are you sure you're doing the math right?
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May 26, 2021 00:37
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ME1 Legendary, I have a million+ credits but the specter weapons aren’t unlocked on the Normandy. Is something glitched or did they change it? Googling says they should be unlocked but it looks like there’s a lot of original edition stuff in there.
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May 26, 2021 00:48
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So ive just finished ME1 on pc and when i go to launch ME2, it boots me back to the title selection screen every time before i get the ME2 menu.... anyone else have this issue/know a fix?
clean ayers act fucked around with this message at 00:57 on May 26, 2021 |
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May 26, 2021 00:49
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Psycho Landlord posted:The codex doesn't actually imply one way or the other who would have won a hypothetical Total War after shanxi fwiw, it just states that both sides were gearing up for a total war scenario after the Turian expeditionary forces got their asses handed to them by what they thought were a bunch of barely out of their gravity well space idiots. Yeah, I tend to suspect the end result if it had gone to full war would have been Citadel victory over humanity eventually (though a very pyrrhic victory indeed), but the fact that we were in a position to fight that hard scared the hell out of the Council. There was some tech advantage by the Citadel (no human biotics back then, for one), but given getting mass effect tech from the "Protheans"/Reapers seems to put everybody at a fairly similar level the difference wasn't that huge. And post war the Codex makes note of how tactically flexible humanity was (even uses the phrase "sleeping giant" to describe how we get so much military strength despite having only 3% of the population under arms), whereas the turians are noted as being about basically hitting hard rather than cleverly and the Salarians and Asari go so hard into quality over quantity it actually screws them over against the Reapers. Again, humans are not tougher than everybody else put together, but tough enough to give an unusual level of influence, especially since compared to the more laid back major species we're running around colonizing dangerous locations and generally aggressively expanding. Council seems to mostly work on trying to direct that energy towards targets they want, I have to figure the Baatarians were probably not terribly well liked even before they left if they had their "tradition" of slavery and being xenophobic egotists so pointing the humans at them was a win-win. Bongo Bill posted:The part that strains credulity for me isn't that humans are portrayed as becoming a major power, but that it's shown happening within a single generation. Stretching the timeline a bit farther would make sense. Yeah, the timeline in general is a little too compressed, an extra 1-2 centuries or even just a few decades in the post-Contact timeframe would have worked a bit better. quote:Reapers can be fought conventionally, which is why they go to the trouble of turning off all the mass relays. They like to start reaping at about the time that spacefaring species start developing the technology that could make them a potential threat. Their surprise attack and several backup plans have been thwarted by the time Mass Effect 3 starts, and over the course of that game you start seeing the development of tactics and weapons that are more effective against them. The war is still unwinnable without the ancient superweapon, but fighting it better determines how much will be left over to rebuild after the superweapon is used. I do like the Reapers put a ton of planning and work into their harvesting cycles and the current slug it out with superior tech approach is very much around Plan M or N levels compared to their typical methods. Even though it was working out for them, you have to figure they're taking far more casualties than usual, which given it's one extinguished race per ship is some pretty significant attrition, too much to be workable if it was their standard plan of attack every cycle. I honestly wonder if the Council had taken the threat seriously and went full bore into preparation (i.e. major military buildup, Thanix cannons on every ship, work on detecting indoctrination, etc.) whether or not they could have made it too expensive to pull off a full extinction. Andromeda basically outright prevents true extinction as is really, unless the Reapers go extragalactic (the fact they don't really shows how stupid their plan is, they've got nothing if their feared omnicidal synthetic race pops up in another galaxy and comes to the Milky Way). Actually, speaking of missed opportunities in Andromeda, having a race like the Protheans which had sent a group ahead of the Citadel might have worked better compared to the Keth, if nothing else they could have made an excellent comparison in colonizing methods if they went full conquistador (and the equivalent of Paragon/Renegade being how much you emulated their methods).
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May 26, 2021 00:51
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I still haven’t really grasped how the crucible was designed and built without anyone really knowing what it does.
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May 26, 2021 01:04
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Pops Mgee posted:I still haven’t really grasped how the crucible was designed and built without anyone really knowing what it does. Considering (ME3 DLC spoilers) its basically a leviathan design I just tell myself it’s low key indoctrinating people with the designs through magic space fuckery because it really doesn’t make any god drat sense
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May 26, 2021 01:07
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Pops Mgee posted:I still haven’t really grasped how the crucible was designed and built without anyone really knowing what it does. It was designed by the Reapers themselves as a galactic failsafe that, if ever successfully constructed, would cause the catalyst to reconsider its programming.
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May 26, 2021 01:08
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Eh, it's not that hard to follow blueprints even if you have no idea what it's for.
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May 26, 2021 01:08
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Pops Mgee posted:I still haven’t really grasped how the crucible was designed and built without anyone really knowing what it does. I don't think it's quite as clear as "We donno what the poo poo this is" but "This is an incredibly powerful weapon and we can tell that but we don't have any real idea how the gently caress to aim it and without that it's functionally useless."
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May 26, 2021 01:11
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I haven't played Andromeda, and don't want to, but I'm curious to see how it fails again and again by comparison with prior games. The geth have a cool factor that doesn't diminish even with you killling them by the hundreds. Their head honcho Saren is an incredibly layered villain who is a joy to watch. The kett in Andromeda are a bunch of ugly losers that shamelessly recycle tropes employed by previous antagonists. Their leader is some guy with a forgettable name who uh... I've watch two long video-essays about the game and even they struggled to find anything intersting about him.
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May 26, 2021 01:16
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clean ayers act posted:So ive just finished ME1 on pc and when i go to launch ME2, it boots me back to the title selection screen every time before i get the ME2 menu.... anyone else have this issue/know a fix? Launch it 25 times until it sticks. That's what I've had to do for both ME2 and ME3. Let me know if you find any fixes lol
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May 26, 2021 01:16
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Hackett specifically says it's "massive in scope but simple in design." From what we see in game it's basically a fuckoff huge radio antenna, broadcasting a red, blue, or green signal. Instead of loving around with that poo poo, they should've built 100,000 of whatever gouged Klendagon. That actually killed a reaper and we found the corpse to prove it. "What if gun, but bigger?" is a concept most species can figure out and get behind. comedy edit: Make a million Cains.
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May 26, 2021 01:17
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What the heck, I just did a sidequest in ME2 that I'm sure I never did before  (The geth weather device planet)
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May 26, 2021 01:17
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 So, that's ME1:LE. It's *mostly* the game you remember, the main gameplay tweaks being a UI improvement for inventory, guns now behaving a bit differently depending on model, and thresher maws being actually mildly challenging now. Graphics overhaul looks great, but unless that was your make-or-break bit LE is basically the same game as before. Fortunately I loved Mass Effect so I like LE, too.
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May 26, 2021 01:18
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Pops Mgee posted:I still haven’t really grasped how the crucible was designed and built without anyone really knowing what it does. 
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May 26, 2021 01:19
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Cross-Section posted:It's apparently a bug tied to framerate lol God, this needs to be fixed yesterday.
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May 26, 2021 01:19
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The crucible and the citadel have space sex. It's as simple as that.
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May 26, 2021 01:20
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imho it feels like the crucible was squarely in the 'we dunno what this poo poo is' territory because there's no way any crucible engineer foresaw the catalyst ghost child scenario playing out it seems especially egregious given that various species have been 'modifying' and 'improving' the designs over an incomprehensible number of cycles, apparently without knowing what it does either or having any kind of cohesive plan covering that great of a timespan, making the crucible's functionality seem like something that spontaneously emerged from the galactic unconsciousness it's crazy
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May 26, 2021 01:20
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DourCricket posted:Launch it 25 times until it sticks. That's what I've had to do for both ME2 and ME3. Let me know if you find any fixes lol <unlocked achievement: mass effect 2>
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May 26, 2021 01:21
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SubponticatePoster posted:Hackett specifically says it's "massive in scope but simple in design." From what we see in game it's basically a fuckoff huge radio antenna, broadcasting a red, blue, or green signal. mecha-shepard dammit
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May 26, 2021 01:21
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SubponticatePoster posted:Hackett specifically says it's "massive in scope but simple in design." From what we see in game it's basically a fuckoff huge radio antenna, broadcasting a red, blue, or green signal. Issue every citizen a personal suicide nuke for use in case of reaper abduction.
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May 26, 2021 01:23
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Ugly In The Morning posted:Issue every citizen a personal suicide nuke for use in case of reaper abduction. 
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May 26, 2021 01:25
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Photo Postin'  The rings on this planet are awfully low in the atmosphere    Ensign, I don't think that's a standard-issue Cerberus uniform.
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May 26, 2021 01:25
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How much ammo does the Cain need per shot?
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May 26, 2021 01:31
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Spacebump posted:How much ammo does the Cain need per shot? (Not a smartass reply, it's literally a percentage of "charge" or whatever)
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May 26, 2021 01:33
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Lol grunt has literally zero dialogue on Mordin's loyalty mission It's funny that there's so much dialogue for bizarre edge cases that almost nobody will ever see but they missed things like that, I'd be willing to bet a lot of people brought Grunt on that mission Same with Miranda on Jack's mission but at least she has like two lines
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May 26, 2021 01:47
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Simone Magus posted:Sentinel gets the best cooldowns, the tradeoff being they don't get All The Powers (until 3 when they're just stupidly powerful) It does? I'm reading descriptions of the powers, with numbers, on a walkthrough and I don't see anything about Tech Armor slowing cooldowns.
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May 26, 2021 01:52
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DourCricket posted:Speaking of tonal shifts - I dislike the first ten minutes of ME3 intensely but the next few hours is just so loving dark and dour and hopeless and I love it so much yeah playing through 3 back to back with 2 and 1 has made me like it alot more. i probably like 2 a little more because i tend to like smaller stories more then galaxy saving laser appocolyse stuff but 3 does it well enough and the gameplay is very fun and being full paragon pays off pretty well. Inspector Gesicht posted:I haven't played Andromeda, and don't want to, but I'm curious to see how it fails again and again by comparison with prior games. andromeda sucks because its basicaly mass effect 1 but lovely. take out everything interesting about mass effect 1 but keep all the lovely parts and have some ok but very loving boring combat and dog poo poo story/characters(outside like 3) and then make it ugly and generic and lovely. i like saren because he starts out as "oh he is just a dickhead racist super agent" but then its "yeah, he is that, but then he discovered some unthamable horror and the horror and cynicism consumed him(literally) and he bent the knee to it" Simone Magus posted:Lol grunt has literally zero dialogue on Mordin's loyalty mission two barely has party banter, thats more 3's thing. i do like that you can just tear into mordin and pull apart his excuses.
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May 26, 2021 01:55
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SuperKlaus posted:It does? I'm reading descriptions of the powers, with numbers, on a walkthrough and I don't see anything about Tech Armor slowing cooldowns. It definitely does in 3, weird if it has literally no downside in 2
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May 26, 2021 01:58
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Yes Sentinel is pretty strong in 2. They don't get any flashy powers but they're tough. E- actually the shield blast is pretty dope
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May 26, 2021 02:02
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It's almost infuriating how funny I think this is
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May 26, 2021 02:03
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the Crucible is a dark energy reactor, according to Hackett - it makes a lot of energy but the Mars blueprints don't indicate for what. presumably most of the additions over the cycles have been about getting dark energy reactions to work, building a stable mega-structure, fortifying against Reaper attack etc. the whole thing with the Catalyst is finding the missing piece to direct that energy usefully (by using the Reapers' own technological nature against them - literally with the Citadel, but also more figuratively when the Catalyst realises the Reaper stranglehold is no longer absolute) it is essentially a big bomb that blows up all the Reapers. any sufficiently large explosion is indistinguishable from space magic e: like the Mars archives are incomplete, at least partially due to Cerberus sabotage. the Thessia archive has the full plan for the Crucible in Vendetta, but the asari keep it hidden until almost too late Lt. Danger fucked around with this message at 02:07 on May 26, 2021 |
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May 26, 2021 02:04
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Sentinel with Reave is basically literally invincible on everything but Insanity
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May 26, 2021 02:06
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so i read the OP and then skipped to the end, are they making rear end effect 4?
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May 26, 2021 02:06
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What advanced weapons training do you want to take as a infiltrator on insanity? AR or Widow? AR seems like it's probably the best, especially with the Mattock, but
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