The glaringly stupid defense of the citadel (Mass Effect 1)

[Vault101]

As someone mentioned in the ME3 plotholes thread, wouldn't the AI on the Citadel have done something to allow Sovereign to win? Or more directly just trigger the mass effect that would allow the Reapers to jump to the Citadel?

I thourght perhaps the reaper starchild had to be "activated" by the catalyst?

 

[Bravo 21]

What do you mean not one of our futuristic means of communication was able to warn us ahead of time, if only by a couple minutes, of a fleet of dreadnought-sized ships coming into the Sol system??"

So true, I started freaking out when they said that they lost contact with the MOON. Sure, the reapers are pretty advanced, so I can understand them taking out the longer ranged communications, but I can see the moon from my window, wouldn't somebody notice the massive (judging from the wreckage) space battle going on in Earth's own backyard?

 

[Fuhrlock]

Though it won't explain away all the issues with the battle, before you leave for Ilos the council state that fleets were being positioned at every relay connecting to the citadel. I would presume that they anticipated the battle being fought at one of these relays and the citadel fleet was to 'mop up' any ships that sucessfully managed to reach the relay and jump to the citadel relay (of course sovereign stopped this happening). This scenario does rely on the council making some pretty large assumptions and be subsequently pretty overconfident but this is the council we're talking about.

 

[Clive Howlitzer]

BE WARNED, LOTS OF READING AND SUCH, MIGHT HURT THE BRAINS OF SOME, OR BORE PEOPLE WHO DON'T CARE FOR MASS EFFECT LORE.

Lately I decided to play through the entire Mass Effect series again, just cause I'm like that, and while finishing ME1 I noticed something.

The defense of the citadel against the geth was the biggest military blunder ever conceived in a fictional universe. Why? Well lets go over the biggest mistakes.

In case you don't remember the defense of the citadel, or don't know what I'm talking about, I've provided a link.

The Citadel Fleet put the Citadel itself at risk
In the scene where Sovereign and the Geth fleet arrive its quite clear that the Citadel fleet is close the Citadel itself, and no where near the mass relay into the system.

What the hell?

There's a few things wrong with this.

One, if a Mass Accelerator round hit even one ward of the citadel, millions would die, as these rounds have been told to cause more damage than atmoic bombs.

Two, the fleet should have been near the Mass Relay itself, this way it gives the citadel time to close, as well as minimizes the chances of a accelerator round hitting the station itself.

Three, if ships in the fleet are destroyed they run the risk of their debris also hitting the wards, causing even more civilian deaths.

To add to all of this there isn't a risk of enemies coming from all directions, as the nebula around the citadel is considered too dangerous to travel through, as kinetic barriers do nothing against its dangerous electrical discharges.

All in all the fleet was doing more harm than good being so close to the citadel.

The fleet formation goes against the stated doctrine of space combat
In the various codex entries it is stated that dreadnaughts, the biggest damn things in the galaxy, are great at hitting things from far away with big goddam guns, but can't do crap if something gets to close for its guns to track.

So why were Turian dreadnaughts and the Destiny Ascension on the front lines of the battle? Wouldn't it have made sense for the biggest ships to be in the back for fire support while frigates and cruisers attack the Geth lines?

Evacuating the council to the Destiny Ascension is a HORRIBLE idea
The Destiny Ascension is the biggest/most powerful ship in the council fleets, so it makes some sense that you would want to put the most important people in the galaxy on the ship if the place was ever attacked.

Except that an attacking fleet would probably prioritize targeting on the ship that dwarfs all the other ships.

This is even shown in ME1 where the Destiny Ascension is getting its teeth kicked in and is only saved if a full fleet of alliance ships come and save it.

Wouldn't it make more sense to put the Council on a smaller, possibly stealthed ship? Or maybe throw them in a heavily guarded bunker somewhere on the citadel itself? Its sure as hell not a good idea to put them on the most targeted ship in the fleet.

A failure to close to melee range (Except for the ships not equipped for such combat)
In the codex entry on space combat its stated that after a bit of throwing Mass Accelerator slugs at each other, fighting fleets normally get really close to each other so they can start burning each other with GARDIAN lasers and such.

Why did no one do this except the Geth?

Towards the end it becomes obvious the Geth did this, but they did it to the ship that couldn't handle it, the Ascension.

Why didn't council frigates and cruisers, the ships who could handle these "Melee" battles, get sent towards the Geth ships?

Concluding Statements
Obviously this is all nit picking, and honestly the battle was pretty badass to watch, making it more a victim of "Rule of Cool"

None the less I thought I would share my over-thought...thoughts on the battle, and would welcome any rebuttals or discussion on it.

TL;DR
I have way to much time on my hands and decided to nitpick 10 minutes of a cinematic.
I also pay way to much attention to the Mass Effect lore.

Ah yes, fleet tactics. We have dismissed these claims.

 

[Hydro14]

Ok, concerning why the Citadel AI didn't just call in the Reapers; if you ask Vigil all the questions you can on Ilos it explains that the last Prothean survivors that it was able to save, upon finding that there weren't enough of them to form a stable population, went through the Conduit once the Reapers had withdrawn and disabled the Citadel's transmitter. It's strongly implied that in every previous cycle the Reapers had just appeared in precisely the way you describe, with no need for a Reaper to physically reach the Citadel.

On the matter of why the fleet didn't engage the attacking fleet at the relay: two possible explanations.

1) As has already been addressed, complacency: The Council had no idea about Sovereign's capabilities, or the kind of numbers the Geth could field. (bear in mind that the Quarians are the only ones who've fought the Geth and they and the Council don't see eye to eye) Furthermore, Sovereign is mistaken for a Geth ship in the aftermath, showing that the Geth are just as alien and unknown to the Council as the Reapers themselves. Couple that with the Council's demonstrateable arrogance throughout Mass Effect 1 and 2 and you have an explanation for poor strategy: A belief that sheer force of arms would win the day with or without competent strategic planning. It also justifies the Council's presence on the Destiny Ascension: they would have thought that even with focused fire the enemy fleet would be unable to bring down their barriers.

2) And this theory is based on a bit of conjecture and a bit on codex entries. Mass relays aren't device-to-device transit; this is established in the opening dialogue between Joker and Nihlus by the phenomenon referred to as drift. If I recall correctly this drift can be several hundred thousand kilometers. How exactly fleets are able to jump in formation without smashing into one another on arrival I don't know; if you're really looking for holes in the established pseudo-science there's one for you. Now I don't know how long the sensor range on most ships is in Mass Effect, I haven't read about it in that much detail, but working on the assumption that they're less than 5 thousand kilometers or so, when you account for drift the ease with which a fleet could be caught out of position if they were defending the relay is tremendous. This theory is contradicted by Mass Effect 3's opening scenes in which the alliance fleet attempts to defend against the first Reaper attacks at the Sol relay. On the other hand, it appears to be supported by Mass Effect 2's Omega 4 relay in which a Reaper IFF causes the relay's behaviour to change, giving more accurate transit. This would DEFINITELY allow a Reaper-led fleet to bypass a fleet defending at the relay, but the Council and the Citadel defence fleet admirals would not be aware of this at the time.

Given how the Council's arrogance is hammered home with all the subtlety of an anvil throughout the first game I'm in support of theory 1.

 

[AD-Stu]

Take pretty much everything you said about the battle of the Citadel, apply it to the battle above Earth at the end of ME3, and think about the consequences for the planets below of all the rounds fired that missed the Reapers...

The Rule of Cool simply outweighs the laws of physics and canon in a situation like this. Just roll with it IMO

 

[AbstractStream]

I'm actually replaying ME. I didn't think about it before, but I guess I'll look into it when I get there. "Caught with their pants down" or "panic mode" is how I see this thing went down.

Ah yes, fleet tactics. We have dismissed these claims.

Hahaha, I was thinking the same exact thing.

 

[Bostur]

There is of course a lot of 'rule of cool' happening. It's cooler to see the battle of the Citadel, than seeing the skirmish of the relay of system 3467888 even though the latter might have been a tactical turning point.

Assuming that the alliance fleet is disorganized, and I think there are some hints at that, making a last stand at the Citadel does make tactical sense. If Alliance forces rendezvous at the relay and get there too late, the Citadel would be undefended. Making the meeting point the Citadel would be the conservative decision. If the fleet gets there early they can organize defensive formations and maybe move towards the relay, if they arrive late at least they get to fire a few torpedoes. It also depends on the amount of intel available, and we know very little about that.

Putting the council on a flagship instead of a cloaked command boat. Flagships are cool and it makes for drama. There's also some morale advantages, friendly ships can rally around the flagship for a last stand. If the Citadel as a symbol is considered more important than the specific council members, then it makes sense to make that sacrifice.
ME naval battles work under the assumption that 1600-1800 naval tactics are in use, long lines of ships slugging it out. It's of course highly unrealistic, it would be more 'realistic' if ships were thousands of miles apart, but it's hard to give cinematic suspense to such a scenario. It would feel more like a modern fleet scenario, little dots moving around on scanners firing weapons at targets outside visual range.

 

[Vanitas likes Bubbles]

In the various codex entries it is stated that dreadnaughts, the biggest damn things in the galaxy, are great at hitting things from far away with big goddam guns, but can't do crap if something gets to close for its guns to track.

So why were Turian dreadnaughts and the Destiny Ascension on the front lines of the battle? Wouldn't it have made sense for the biggest ships to be in the back for fire support while frigates and cruisers attack the Geth lines?

Actually I'm pretty sure those were Turian cruisers in the battle. The art book suggests it.

Other then that all I can say it is because of space magic.

Oh yeah..... onne more thing regarding ship proportions. Sovereign was considered 2 km long buuuuut the Citadel tower was said to be 1 km long but when Sovereign molestes it (or whatever it does) why is the Citadel tower longer then Sovereign?

 

[370999]

See I always saw it as two things happening at once

A) The Citadel was expecting a joke fleet to attack them, not a Reaper. They were lazy and didn't take the battle at all seriously.

B) With Saren and geth teleprocessing into the Citadel, he was able to cripple communications and thus massively fuck up all attempts to collect and act on information.

As for the Council boarding the destiny Ascension, I thought they just weren't thinks traight and went,

"this is the most powerful ship... Oh shit our fleet is getting it's ass kicked...fuck we have to go... fuck fuck fuck... Destiny Ascension, that's the best...fuck"

They weren't think things through.

 

[Mojo]

I'm too tired to read every post in this topic, but OP, you mentioned that the fleet should be at the Mass Relay to buy the Citadel time to close. Eventhough this makes sense, Saren used the Conduit to travel directly to the Citadel and not the Mass Relay.
And, are you shure about the Atom bomb thing? I recall reading something about that in the Codex, but I rember it to say that with the use of mass effect fields theoretically a bullet can do the damage of an Atom Bomb, but the heat output and backfire would be way to high.
I may be wrong though, and besides, I bet Sovereign had enough firepower allready...

 

[Saviordd1]

-goodpoint-

No it's a plothole.

-snip-

That's a good point, so again the councils pride dooms us all.

-snip-

Actually that means that they should have had reports from the ships at other jump points that huge ass fleet was headed towards the citadel.

-snip-

Actually the Codex explains the whole drift idea

"The crucial choice for any attack through mass relays is how to divide the fleet for transit. The accuracy of a relay's mass-projection depends on the mass being moved and how far its going. Any long distance and/or high mass jump will see "drift". That is, a ship may be hundreds or millions of kilometers from its intended drop point, in any direction from the relay.

Distance can't be chosen by admirals, but a relay is told how much mass to transit. For example, if told to move a million metric tons of mass, the relay will scan the approach corridor, find four 250,000-ton freighters, and transit them together, maintaining their relative positions."

 

[GloatingSwine]

All of the space battle cutscenes in Mass Effect are terrible. This is because the people who write the story and gameplay don't talk to the people who render the cutscenes, and neither of them talk to the people who write the codex.

 

[Whateveralot]

Pretty simple:

They didn't see it coming. They were caught by suprise. Waste of time, writing all this text...

 

[thespyisdead]

to be honest, i couldn't give a flying fuck about whether the battle plan was sloppily executed, or there was a genius tactition behind it (am i contradicting my self here ), i still feel that this ending is the strongest ending in the series...

BioWare should have really been taking notes on the ending of ME, hell even ME2, because damn that ending was satisfying

 

[XMark]

Nobody believed Shepard about the Reapers, and nobody expected the Geth (or anyone else for that matter) to have the balls to launch an all-out attack on the Citadel. If they had, they definitely would have prepared an effective ambush at the Mass Relay.

Hell, they may have even been able to take out Sovereign. In ME3 the Turians are said to have destroyed several of the Reapers over Palaven in the initial invasion, before being overrun. So it stands to reason that if the Citadel defenses had been prepared they could have stopped Sovereign.

 

[dimensional]

It's pretty clear that there are two Mass Effect universes; the game world and the cutscene world. They work different ways. Space combat is one aspect, but I most commonly note it when a character will have a weapon in a cutscene that they don't have in game. I most recently noticed this in one of the near-final cinematics for ME3, where Garrus suddenly started one-shotting Cannibals that out-of-cutscene took a few seconds of concentrated assault rifle fire (due to playing on a higher difficulty setting) before hand - and he'd managed to switch to a weaker model of assault rifle on top of that!

Very true that and dont forget the scene with Jack destroying everything in the scenes but when you get her in your party she aint quite so good. Loads of games do this mind and I have learnt to ignore it Mass Effect is no different looking cool is the most important thing to hell with continuity.

 

[CAPTCHA]

I wondered why they didn't close the citidel's wings. I'm not sure whether it's ever explained that they know they knew how to close them, but giant actuators can't be that hard to spot. besides the name itself, "citidel", suggests they know it's a fortifiable structure. So why did they leave the gate open for the geth to walk right in.

So why were Turian dreadnaughts and the Destiny Ascension on the front lines of the battle? Wouldn't it have made sense for the biggest ships to be in the back for fire support while frigates and cruisers attack the Geth lines?

Obviously they wanted to hit them with their swords.

 

[RJ 17]

Snip

A lot of this can be BS explained away as "Who's to say they weren't doing that and the camera just didn't show it?" (such as with you're points on the "melee range combat" and such)

As for evacuating the Council to the Ascension, I do agree that's retarded. You don't send the most important people in the galaxy onto a ship that is then going to be going into the front lines of battle.

As for "Why so close to the Citadel?" For starters, it's never really made clear what the distance between the Citadel and it's relay is. You also have to keep in mind that, ideally, as soon as they know they're under attack they'd close the Citadel. But while the Reaper signal couldn't fully activate the Citadel Relay function, it WAS able to prevent them from closing the arms. As such the fleet hovers near the Citadel expecting it to close at the first sign of danger, this wasn't the case.

Also, as soon as the hostile fleet appears, the Citadel fleet moves forward and away from the Citadel to engage in combat.

Beyond that - and this actually covers a lot of questions - there was the council's disbelief in Shepard throughout the entire game. They thought he was some ranting, raving lunatic convinced of giant space monsters when he's really just chasing a rogue specter and nothing more. They had no idea what the capabilities of the Geth fleet were, let alone Sovereign. I highly doubt they did anything at all to beef up their security because they were overconfident in their own abilities.