So right, can someone please explain to me

how the fuck shit like this makes sense.

From MercNet btw.


Reason I'm even asking you all is 'cause some of you aren't completely fucktarded and the thread got locked 'bout an hour ago after it started tanking the servers after that post.

So uh

yeah.

Anybody gonna take a crack at this?

Are you familiar with the broken window fallacy? This is exactly it on grander scale. Were it unnecessary to expend money on protecting assets in the first place, there'd be more money to invest, spend and use to better one's trade and life. Instead there are pirates and other scum of the space "breaking the window", requiring colonies to invest in defense instead of expanding, or hiring the "glaziers" like you to fix the security issue with cash that could have been spent elsewhere.

I'm re-evaluating that entire 'half of your fleet destroyed and crippled within opening volleys and homeworld lost utterly' thing, and it honestly isn't looking like you weren't blindsided

There are a few tidbits that point to someone knowing something, but it in no way points to the council as a whole knowing about and preparing for the Reapers, even after Bahak. Certainly not on the scale that would justify something like Bahak.

Everything we can claim was a reaction to the Reapers without severely stretching it was minor, and certainly not worth sacrificing three hundred thousand.


At the time you were:

Recovering from what people believed to be a geth attack on the citadel
Had enormous military tensions with the batarians
Building your relationship with the turians for socio-political benefits
Trying to train an army and navy that had never seen a proper war.

All of these explanations not only work to explain the joint exercises, but also don't require anyone to believe that Council Space's response to the reapers, after what you would have us believe is years of preparation, is 'fight more or less independently, letting council homeworlds burn before beginning to properly pull together'. Earth was completely blindsided, the asari didn't help properly till after Thessia burned, and refused to share the information in the beacon. Sur'Kesh did shit to assist. The implications of this if they knew that the Reapers were coming makes the council look far, far worse than the implications if they didn't.

Honestly, council space looks better if it was blindsided, since that means you got ambushed (Understandable, happens to everyone) instead of being massively and systemically incompetent.


I don't think anyone is going to go 'oh, we have these new, revolutionary, incredibly powerful cannons for our spaceships, but we might as well not use them'! Thanix cannons were rolled out because you had thanix cannons. They would have been rolled out regardless of the reapers and claiming otherwise is absurd.


A nice platitude. Frankly, it doesn't work as evidence. If, however, evidence of some massive, vital development that happened in those three months comes out I will admit my mistake here.

However, it wouldn't have justified Shepard's actions unless she good reason to believe that it would be discovered in the time she brought.


Incredibly basic revisionist history, ignoring other possible (And probable) causes in order to make your side look good.

I'm an info broker, I know how politicians pretty up their bullshit, the same applies to diplomats. There were measures taken, generally minor (The near-powerless Hierarchy Task Force, for example, which you brought up, alliance patrol step-ups, etc.) but they were just that, minor steps that didn't justify the murder of an entire cluster and likely didn't outweigh what we lost and our enemies gained during those three months.

It is, perhaps, slightly unfair to judge Bahak based on things Shepard couldn't possibly predict at the time (Most of the Bad Shit except for Cerberus, since she had worked for them), but it's also unfair to justify it based on things Shepard couldn't possibly know were happening at the time.


I don't think three months where the situation degraded significantly, two possible allies (The geth and quarians) were crippled, and our enemies (Cerberus, Gruul) became significantly more prepared to fight the war really helped much.

The geth would have helped us at full capacity if the war started before the quarians invaded.


You know, despite earth getting invaded and occupied, and Khar'Shan, and Palaven, and an innumerable amount of other planets, people survived and evacuated from them. Intel was gained.

No-one survived Bahak. No-one evacuated Bahak. No reaper forces were combated by an insurgency on Bahak.

Because of Shepard.

And, frankly, you don't need to pretend otherwise. No government's squeaky clean, and you can still respect, serve and believe in the Systems Alliance despite events like Bahak and Torfan.

Half you say, let us review the state of the fleets after initial contact.
First Fleet: Active
Second Fleet: Destroyed
Third Fleet: Active
Fourth Fleet: Destroyed
Fifth Fleet: Active
Sixth Fleet: Active
Seventh Fleet: Active
Eight Fleet: Nearly routed, (remnants active)

That is 37.5% of the fleets that are incapacitated at the start of the war, while certainly significant this is still far from the 50% you profess.


You are grasping at straws, first you said it did nothing, now you are saying it did not enough. My statement is still the same; Bahak, helped save lives. Could it be used better? Certainly, but they were hampered, so they made do with what they had.

If you fail to understand why any time gained on the Reapers was a good thing, even if it is underutilized, even if comes at a terrible cost than so be it than I hope you are never in a position of power and responsibility if/when the next existential threat appears.


That happened a year earlier, while recovery was still on the way it would not explain why they would encourage the turians to build of dreadnoughts. When what was against the geth were smaller (cheaper) crafts.


The tension was between the Alliance and the Hegemony, there was no need for the Alliance to deal be more permissive vis-à-vis the Hierarchy, especially not regarding dreadnoughts. It should also be noted that under no circumstances did the Hegemony ever pose a threat to the Hierarchy, everyone knew that. Therefore the Hegemony would have never done something that would have pulled the Hierarchy into the conflict. Meaning in turn that we would never feel the need to let the Hierarchy build-up forces, in the hope that they would then deploy them against the Hegemony.

In short the tensions between the Alliance and the Hegemony would not lead to a review of policy regarding Hierarchy dreadnoughts.


There is many more conventional and less contentious ways to build up such a capital.


... you got distracted by the "joint exercises" thing, that is not the important part, or maybe it is. There have been more than one joint exercises before the ones mentioned in the article. So what would have made these run of the mill exercises so important that it changed a major policy point over night?

You interpret it like a majority of the leadership were involved in this for years at a time. This is very much a minority that did what they could, the majority (and indeed in some cases the entire leadership,) clearly were caught with their pants down. But as a whole, as the galaxy, even if it is disconnected, even if it was minor things was not totally caught blind sighted, there was some things, however minor, in place.

This is not an all or nothing proposition, where you are either hyper aware and totally prepared or totally unaware and not prepared at all. Some people somewhere did the best they could do. To bring it back to Bahak, I am sure they used that time the best they could and they saw this as their signal to put things in high gear.


There is a reason why I do not like being called a politician.


Do not be farcical.

There are nearly many dreadnoughts, hundreds upon hundreds of cruisers and frigates and innumerable smaller crafts, across multiple navies that all were retrofitted with a new weapon system in less than three or so years. Yes, obviously they would have come in use, but do you think they would have spend so much money on it to do it in such a short time-frame if they did not believe there was a clear and present danger?


Once again, Bahak, did not win us the war, it allowed us to win the war.

There is a difference between revisionist history and reevaluation of history. One claims an event happened differently then recorded, the other revisits the why of an historical event and the outcome of it. It would behoove you to know the difference between the two.


I did not know a star system was a cluster.


Once more, those three months gave us just a little bit more time, made the homeworld of those that would listen just that little harder to crack, I cannot imagine how to explain it otherwise to you, not everyone believed, not everyone followed, but those that did, did the best they could and those little time gains make a difference.

The difference between for example 37.5% of the fleets being destroyed and 50%.


So you say, the quarian/geth peace was only achieved through their war, it is speculative to assume they would join the coalition at full force instead of keeping their reserved attitude.


It is a well know theory that the reapers allowed people to escape so they could plant indoctrinated people among the refugees, but I doubt they would use the population of Bahak for that. A more likely scenario, as I think the more I think about it, is that the Reapers would have done to them as they did to Bekenstein, orbital saturation bombardment. Theoretically they could have survived that, I guess. But it would be very unlikely.


Never claimed it was a clean thing, or a morally good thing, but it was useful.

I guess that are the core tenants of my thesis. That Bahak, helped our war effort more than it happened us and that in a war with things like The Reapers even a small advantage, a small delay should be pursued even if the cost is great.

And your father must have told you to "be a sport and grab daddy another beer" every night to explain away that universal hostility of yours.


They were, in fact, crucial. The entire Terminus was crucial for the war effort because auxiliary shipping lanes were needed during the occupation of citadel space by the reapers. Without our cooperation, you would have been sitting on giant piles of material and engineers hoping for the reapers to go away long enough to transport them to the crucible. And don't even get me started on naval support. Selfless sacrifices performed as delaying actions to let bigger fleets get away (And I do mean real sacrifices, not decisions that were made for them like Bahak), standup fights assisted by pirates that ended in reaper kills, all documented.

And don't claim that the SA deployed it alone, that's just being obtuse. The Sword and Shield fleets consisted of pirate raiders, mercenaries, Terminus and Abyss nations along with fleets from Citadel Space. I have heard no reliable sources either that it was a 1:1 ratio of pirates who aided and pirates that raided. Logically that makes no sense because every person with two brain cells to rub together would realize that there isn't going to be money if the reapers aren't warded off. You'd have to be as shortsighted as a kid at the SA recruitment office to not see that.


......

Okay before I respond to this

Ilk

Really?

really

We're in an archaic linguistics class now? You sound like an asari Matriarch two hundred years past senility.

If we were normal spacers we would not have had the martial training or combat equipment required to fight a prolonged war. Experience with naval combat is a requirement for battle going up against the Reapers if you haven't noticed.

And by the logic that "We caused fleets to maneuver in such and such location", the Hegemony did 10 times as much damage to the war effort then we did because they were gearing up for a conflict after Bahak, which the alliance mirrored, which further proves my point that Shepard didn't solve anything at Bahak because no preparation to maneuver against the reapers was accomplished during the theoretical time the reapers delayed, which is probably bullshit because we have no evidence that the reapers were at Bahak.

Is not made up of pirates. Yes, we've heard about the RUM fleet, but they were a fraction of a fraction of the entire Terminus fleet, and acting like they were anything but an exception is ridiculous.

And it doesn't change the fact that pirates are a useless bunch of polishers before and after the War.

Funny, I was under the same impression of Extranet slacktivists.

Pirate fleets were a fraction of even the Terminus input, never mind overall contributions to the war. They were no more crucial than any other bit player you could care to name. Indeed, the only aspect in which you excel any actor in the conflict is in incessant self-aggrandisement. You speak as if the entire war hinged on your efforts alone, when it was the combined efforts of all that made victory necessary.

What's more, you then have the gall to demand that the same people you screwed over for years on end kowtow to you in gratitude. You didn't spend your whole life honing your raiding and smuggling skills in preparation for a war of galactic survival; you did it for personal enrichment. You only helped out because, as you admit, your own ass was on the line. Don't expect us to start kissing it now.

Not like pirates to prioritise short-term profit margins over the long-term good.

If the salarians - one of the more informed races - could drag their heels over curing the genophage despite the threat of imminent extinction, do you not think that a clutch of ignorant raiders might not have gotten the memo? Most people don't tend to account for "unreasonable, unrelenting killing machines" in their business plan. Even in war, people will still screw each other in the name of profit. Not to mention those who hoped that we might yet survive the war, and were already feathering their nests for the future.

Oh, my apologies. I didn't realise Pirate Academy offered up remedial courses in dealing with unknown galactic threats.

You misunderstand the purpose of this discussion. I am not demanding gratitude or recognition for support offered during the Reaper War, I am setting the record straight and proving the point that there is no moral superiority in the terms of galactic military powers. I'll sit in my territory collecting taxes and goods from ships that pass through and you'll sit in your territory collecting taxes and goods from planets you own.

Sounds good?


As a matter of fact.

Even if this bullshit were true, how is this Shepard's fault?

She produced no evidence of the Reaper's imminent arrival despite apparently having no doubt in her mind that blowing up an entire system was necessary to delay them.

I'm almost certain she was just ranting on the way to her jail cell going "No really guys, it was the godsquid that did it."

OK, on this one I've gotta weigh in. It's entirely possible that Shepard tried to bring evidence forward and got stonewalled, or something. It wouldn't be the first time C-Space governments have done something horrendously impractical or stupid on the premise of keeping a panic from spreading (been on the receiving end of that at least once myself - I cite the QoroQ debacle and ending up on the STG's shitlist for a little while).

Gotta give Shepard the benefit of the doubt on that one.

Well...no. You're still self-interested thugs operating outwith any legal or political framework, with no rightful claim to the jurisdiction you have carved out for yourself, while imposing yourself upon the galaxy at large and exploiting the output of the latter to your own ends. Oh, and "raiding ships" is not tantamount to "tax collection". In C-Space, taxes are voluntarily paid in exchange for the goods and services that the state provides. You provide nothing to your victims, while exacting money from them at gunpoint. There is no room for false equivalence, here.

But in the interests of concord, I'm willing to shake hands and let bygones be bygones if you'll only just sing this song.


Pffft. What's she ever done for us?

....

ahahahahahahahahaha.

I might be the only one who remembers how much pushback I got when I said Shepard was alive. This is all varrenshit, I'm going to respond to something interesting.


I feel like, your simpler terms equate things that should not be equated in a way that makes the Terminus/Mercenary Types look good.

MRE and my temple's holiday feast, both food.


Most gangs understand how terrifying arbitrary hyper-violent punishments are. I've like, seen a terrorist asshole disembowel someone to scare the fuck out of the population. It was not pleasant. Having it actually written out, in a way that 'enforcers' (your crappy word) have to follow, has a huge impact on people's quality of life. It can be debated, it can be changed, it can be applied with something like an even hand. That's a lot more legitimate!


I do not understand this argument. One is clearly better. It is clearly better WITH NUMBERS.


One is run properly and one has Calypso in it?


I'm not. I'm really not. I don't understand what it is to be a salarian boy and they don't understand what it is to be an independent drell and that's fine.

I know right.

Being sold into slavery because you couldn't pay off a pirate is totally the same as paying progressive taxes!

ONE IS CLEARLY WORSE THAN THE OTHER DEAR GODS

Edit: Also the people who pay taxes are citizens with rights and responsibilities as such. The people you raid aren't part of your gang, that's why you bleed them so hard. Your analogy is crappy. Varren-shit false equivalence.

..... Can you not read

Were you dropped on your head as a child.

Because if you had actually stopped to read my posts you'd realize that



I am the last person to whine to about the plight of the slaves. Trust me, I know. I was born into it.


Gross generalization. Once you learn a bit more about economics that can't be derived from a saturday morning educational holo, you'll realize that not only citizens pay governments for services, but also people who utilize the space for commerce, including corporations and traders.

It's why I first referred to it as a Tithe, not a Tax to try to intercept this misconception before it began, but apparently you all skipped out on secondary language classes and have the vocabulary of an illiterate vorcha, and thus, had no idea what I was talking about.

1) Do you think I actually believe you do that?

2) Wow, looks like that comment chain is snarking c-space vs the Terminus and the Terminus is full of slavery.

3) As of next month, I get PAID to activist.

...every post you've made has been an attempt to paint yourself in as good a light as possible and then paint everyone possibly related to you in the exact same way.

By your logic, because unlike some "extranet slacktivist" (or you) I've made an actual positive difference in this galaxy, then all of C-Space is filled with saints.

an' we all know dat dat ain't true

heh heh