I trusted you to piece together that 17 million is pretty small for a species when we have Earth cities now with larger populations than that, and 0 population growth shows they aren't getting any bigger
And clearly underpopulation isn't their biggest problem if they're willing to strap a bunch of guns to liveships and throw untrained civilians into the line of fire.
And if it is, then maybe throwing a bunch of untrained civilians into the line of fire isn't the best solution.
Seriously, life on the Migrant Fleet is shit, I don't contest that.
What I do contest is that they had a right to exterminate the geth, just because the attempted genocide led to a couple of rough centuries, especially when all they had to do was pick up the phone, and tell the Consensus they were tapping out.
Now granted the quarians acted rashly here and technically they broke the law, but this is more to illustrate how desperate they are to make their own world, and for a long time they were willing to abandon Rannoch altogether if it meant they could just survive, even given that it would take centuries more for their bodies to adjust to a new environment.
They were never able to, though, because the Council has never granted them the rights or representation necessary to colonize new worlds. They're like the krogan in that respect, except they're not dinosaur men.
The geth have stated, over and over, they don't give a care, and if you leave them alone then they leave you alone. The solar array had no military application, it was there just to allow the geth to chill out. There's nothing about that placement that prevents the quarians from moving back to Rannoch - if anything it's actually a tactical liability, as the quarians proved.
The geth's policy of non-interference isn't really a policy so much as it's a state of being, and it's established in ME2 that they kind of have trouble wrapping their heads around the idea that other people want to mess with them when they're just trying to chill out. There's no reason for them to make room for the quarians; if the quarians return peacefully, they can just have the planet
Yes the geth are dumb, but it's consistent with how they were dumb to start with, and there's nothing malicious in how they built their array
if they want to be left alone, and are also interested in eventually giving the quarians back their planet, it is probably a bad idea to build your living quarters across the street from your biggest enemy
if you want to be left alone, it is probably a much better idea to build your living quarters in the ass-end of nowhere where nobody else lives
Except they were mostly based on Rannoch, so it probably made more sense to build the Dyson sphere close to their largest population base, as opposed to somewhere in the middle of nowhere.
they are "based" wherever their servers are, space travel is not that inconvenient to the geth. they have built plenty of bases in different systems.
Don't start none, won't be none
The geth don't understand conflict the same way we do. Why woudl the quarians attack them? THere's no reason for it.
Wait hold on this whole damn discussion is moot
The solar array was partially to fuel the dyson sphere, yeah, but the sphere wasn't there just to let them chill, and the array wasn't there just for the sphere.
Both of those things were there to fuel the fight against the Reapers, first by bringing the geth to their ultimate potential as intelligences and secondly by providing the absurd amounts of energy the geth needed in order to build an armada capable of taking on Reaper forces
the geth may be stupid but they are not that stupid
I think they are well aware that the quarians want to attack them, including after they retake their planet. Not only do the admirals tell Legion as much when he visits, but he himself says the only reason the geth haven't offered it back is because they don't trust the quarians to not attack them anyway.
But you agree with the second part
Right?
yes, that is why I am not anti-geth
but man do they do some goosey things. they could have done that second part anywhere.
That would have been.... inefficient. All their infrastructure is already there.
Their war machine is already there.
There's no time to make another. The Reapers are coming.
fuck that
the geth knew about the reapers for decades before anyone else
We knew in ME2 that the geth had no intention of fighting the Reapers because the peaceful coexistence thing also extended to the Old Machines
In the six months between ME2 and ME3 they decided that the Reapers had to be stopped; there is no reason whatsoever for them to waste time when there is no time to waste. They couldn't have built the sphere anywhere else, because every day they weren't building Reaper-killing dreadnoughts was another point bringing them and everyone else closer to extinction
they had been working on that sphere well before ME2
why didn't they start in a different system in the first place, if they are truly interested in being left alone and are aware that the quarians want their planet back + will attack them
Because the geth are a bunch of mentally disabled children and have been for hundreds of years
But they're completely in the right, here
Where was it mentioned that construction itself began before ME2? I remember Legion talking about it, but only that they were in the planning stages
Legion says the geth have been working on their dyson sphere for 264 years
0 population growth does not mean "nobody is born"
the point is that their population is pretty small
And you didn't just say that, because...?
Actually, I would really like to see where you got the specific statistics on the post-exodus population growth of the quarian species.
Either way, their population growth might be small, but they're not about to go extinct, and there's always the possibility of seeding colonies on other worlds if absolutely necessary.
Or, hey, they could stop trying to kill the non-hostile robots that already have infrastructure and ecological stations set up on their homeworld!
Now the quarians are definitely buttholes in ME3 and they're stupid and their whole history is a long krogan-esque tragedy of their own making
but
Let's be fair: they have tried to colonize other worlds before. They can't afford it. Whenever they petition the Citadel for funding, they are always shut down because of systemic racism.
Their bubble-boy-and-girl immune systems don't help here, either
So because the Council races are assholes and the systemic genocide had some really shitty consequences, that gives the quarians the right to keep up their stupid cycle of self-destructive conflict? Especially when there were viable alternatives they could have resorted to, but didn't because trying to reconcile with the geth was apparently too fucking terrible to consider?
Seriously, this is the part where this whole argument about the quarians having it rough hits a big brick wall; they literally could have ended centuries of nomadic wandering and shitty conditions, if they had just bothered to try and drop a line to the geth to say that they wanted to try and forge a mutually beneficial relationship. Instead, they decide it would be better to strap guns to their kids' school buses, then throw them at the geth.
That is dumb. That is not dumb on the geth's part, that is not dumb on the Council's part, that is not dumb on anybody's part. That is dumb on the quarians' part.
What I do contest is that they had a right to exterminate the geth, just because the attempted genocide led to a couple of rough centuries, especially when all they had to do was pick up the phone, and tell the Consensus they were tapping out.
how are people living in the "present" culpable for the actions taken by their ancestors 300 years prior, and how are they supposed to know the other side of the conflict would be okay with peace if the other side of the conflict never says a word about it and in fact maintains their occupation and destroys any intruder into their territory
also the council gave the krogan a bunch of worlds already, the krogan were just bullies and started a war to get more
well now let's be fair
the krogan population was exploding
their solution to this was of course not enacting their own population control methods, or even expanding to undeveloped worlds, but dropping asteroids on turian colonies
The most interesting thing about the geth is that the true geth are, in one sense, the most enlightened species in the series.
THey're pretty much the only species that doesn't tap into other races for advancement where they can help it; they don't accept the help of the Old Machines because they want to find their own way, and be prepared for it as a species once they get there. No other species in the entire galaxy can be described that way
What I do contest is that they had a right to exterminate the geth, just because the attempted genocide led to a couple of rough centuries, especially when all they had to do was pick up the phone, and tell the Consensus they were tapping out.
how are people living in the "present" culpable for the actions taken by their ancestors 300 years prior, and how are they supposed to know the other side of the conflict would be okay with peace if the other side of the conflict never says a word about it and in fact maintains their occupation and destroys any intruder into their territory
Well, clearly sending an entire armada to blow up the other side didn't work.
And I don't know how well that bolded section tracks after the whole Heretics vs. True Geth retcon.
Not that it makes much of a difference, since the quarians probably would've blown both sides into oblivion.
The whole problem here is that we really don't know much about any of those expeditions beyond the Veil Relay, so it's all pretty much speculation.
Meanwhile, Tube reads the thread and wonders why we're all arguing about whether or not robots can blow up organics if the organics try to blow up the robots first.
The most interesting thing about the geth is that the true geth are, in one sense, the most enlightened species in the series.
THey're pretty much the only species that doesn't tap into other races for advancement where they can help it; they don't accept the help of the Old Machines because they want to find their own way, and be prepared for it as a species once they get there. No other species in the entire galaxy can be described that way
Yup
Humans found the Prothean archives
Asari had Prothean shit before anyone else
Krogan were uplifted
Salarians did the uplifting
Elcor and hanar were uplifted by asari
And everyone bases every single piece of their tech around stuff left behind by the Reapers
The most interesting thing about the geth is that the true geth are, in one sense, the most enlightened species in the series.
THey're pretty much the only species that doesn't tap into other races for advancement where they can help it; they don't accept the help of the Old Machines because they want to find their own way, and be prepared for it as a species once they get there. No other species in the entire galaxy can be described that way
Yup
Humans found the Prothean archives
Asari had Prothean shit before anyone else
Krogan were uplifted
Salarians did the uplifting
Elcor and hanar were uplifted by asari
And everyone bases every single piece of their tech around stuff left behind by the Reapers
With the sole exception of the geth
Well
For a while
Then the Raloi stumble upon a first contact team from the Council, and get thrown into the shit without having any idea what they're getting into.
Seriously, this is the part where this whole argument about the quarians having it rough hits a big brick wall; they literally could have ended centuries of nomadic wandering and shitty conditions, if they had just bothered to try and drop a line to the geth to say that they wanted to try and forge a mutually beneficial relationship. Instead, they decide it would be better to strap guns to their kids' school buses, then throw them at the geth.
That is dumb. That is not dumb on the geth's part, that is not dumb on the Council's part, that is not dumb on anybody's part. That is dumb on the quarians' part.
...what?
how is it in any way not insane to put the burden of extending the olive branch on the quarians?
1. the last time they had any real interaction with the geth, the geth were committing wholescale genocide upon them. the quarian population was billions strong. after the war, they were left with probably less than what they have now, around 17 million according to the codex. that is a scale of extermination that we have no possible way to relate with.
2. the last three hundred years of their existence has been spent in abject poverty while every non-quarian a quarian meets hates and mistrusts them. at the time of mass effect 3, the quarians have known this for their entire lives, and the lives of their parents, and their grandparents, and their great-grandparents, and so on in appropriate fashion. and every single one of them knows it is because of the geth.
3. the geth haven't said a single word. legion is the first time a geth ever says anything to a quarian. all the quarians know is that the geth have been sitting in their territory on the other side of the perseus veil for three centuries, and no ship that goes in ever comes out. it's a matter of doubt that the geth are capable of peace.
and even with all this on their shoulders, there are still quarians who think they should move on and let the geth be, or try the diplomatic option. they don't though, because one of their scientists finally discovers a way to reliably beat the faceless Other that is at the core of all the suffering they have had to deal with. the migrant fleet wouldn't have been at any risk at all-
except that the geth did something nobody could have expected and hooked themselves up to some bullshit machine god code and then they started pulling strafing runs against the civilian ships the quarian ships that pass as military were trying to protect
Seriously, this is the part where this whole argument about the quarians having it rough hits a big brick wall; they literally could have ended centuries of nomadic wandering and shitty conditions, if they had just bothered to try and drop a line to the geth to say that they wanted to try and forge a mutually beneficial relationship. Instead, they decide it would be better to strap guns to their kids' school buses, then throw them at the geth.
That is dumb. That is not dumb on the geth's part, that is not dumb on the Council's part, that is not dumb on anybody's part. That is dumb on the quarians' part.
...what?
how is it in any way not insane to put the burden of extending the olive branch on the quarians?
1. the last time they had any real interaction with the geth, the geth were committing wholescale genocide upon them. the quarian population was billions strong. after the war, they were left with probably less than what they have now, around 17 million according to the codex. that is a scale of extermination that we have no possible way to relate with.
2. the last three hundred years of their existence has been spent in abject poverty while every non-quarian a quarian meets hates and mistrusts them. at the time of mass effect 3, the quarians have known this for their entire lives, and the lives of their parents, and their grandparents, and their great-grandparents, and so on in appropriate fashion. and every single one of them knows it is because of the geth.
3. the geth haven't said a single word. legion is the first time a geth ever says anything to a quarian. all the quarians know is that the geth have been sitting in their territory on the other side of the perseus veil for three centuries, and no ship that goes in ever comes out. it's a matter of doubt that the geth are capable of peace.
and even with all this on their shoulders, there are still quarians who think they should move on and let the geth be, or try the diplomatic option. they don't though, because one of their scientists finally discovers a way to reliably beat the faceless Other that is at the core of all the suffering they have had to deal with. the migrant fleet wouldn't have been at any risk at all-
except that the geth did something nobody could have expected and hooked themselves up to some bullshit machine god code and then they started pulling strafing runs against the civilian ships the quarian ships that pass as military were trying to protect
oops
I think it's fair to say that the quarians are the ones on olive branch duty, since they're the ones who keep starting shit; that said, though, I have to agree that the geth's policy of forced isolation wasn't the best solution.
1) I think you've got it backwards; the quarians were committing genocide, the geth were just defending themselves up to the point where the quarians cut and run. Even in the face of the massive number of quarian casualties, you have to realize that the geth suffered just as many casualties, if not more, considering the nature of each individual geth program. Even if the geth pushed the quarians too far, it was only in the interest of protecting themselves, not out of some misplaced sense of animosity and fear.
2) Again, life on the flotilla is shit, but it's a direct consequence of a campaign of attempted genocide on another sapient race; I'd say the consequences of that campaign are equivalent to its worst excesses. And if the quarians had bothered to pay attention, they'd know that it was their fault for waging a one-sided war of aggression against a developing sapient race - one that didn't even want to fight in the first place. Those three centuries of nomadic wandering are a direct consequence of the quarians refusing to face up to what they did to the geth three hundred years ago, while simultaneously convincing themselves that they were the real victims of this whole mess, not the geth programs that they tried to exterminate. It's a crappy situation, but it's a crappy situation because the quarians couldn't just face up to what they did.
3) Even if Legion is the only point of contact that the outside galaxy has had with the geth in three centuries, it doesn't change the fact that he presented a viable, non-violent solution to the geth/quarian conflict, and pointed out that pretty much all of the recent geth violence against organics could be attributed to the heretics, a faction that only comprised a small portion of the full geth fleet. The majority of the geth didn't want conflict, and were open to the possibility of making amends with the quarians. Despite that, the quarians decided to go to war anyway, and risk the remaining fragments of their population, just so they could kill a race that was willing to negotiate with them in the first place. Even if the true geth had been responsible for the missing scout ships, that doesn't change the fact that the quarians made a really bad decision because they couldn't face facts and realize that they'd done the geth wrong all those centuries ago. Also, this argument wouldn't feel complete if I didn't append a "Fuck Shala'Raan," in here somewhere.
If the number of quarians who supported isolation or peace was as large you're implying, then odds are they never would have even used Xen's countermeasure, except as a last resort. And if they decided to go ahead and use it anyway, guess what? That means that they're nowhere near as tolerant as the geth as they claim to be, if they're still willing to wipe out a non-hostile race for no other reason than they can.
Oh, and the geth only hooked themselves up to the Reapers after the quarians sucker punched them, caused a massive drop in their processing power, killed billions - possibly trillions - of sapient programs, and pushed them back to the edge of oblivion.
That's not really an "Oops," kind of circumstance, unless you're speaking for the quarians.
All that said, I will admit that I was wrong on the whole population argument, and I didn't give that one the proper level of thought it deserved.
Though that was probably obvious, since I mistook zero population growth for no population growth.
I'm going to go ahead and apologize if that argument wanders off the track at some point in the middle; I didn't sleep well last night, and I think it's starting to have an effect on my ability to focus.
Romanian My Escutcheon on
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AntimatterDevo Was RightGates of SteelRegistered Userregular
RME you are flat-out wrong in one of your points
series spoilers
The geth programs were fine, they just retreated to new bodies or left
the bodies were destroyed and the programs were okay
the quarians were nearly wiped out
0
chiasaur11Never doubt a raccoon.Do you think it's trademarked?Registered Userregular
RME you are flat-out wrong in one of your points
series spoilers
The geth programs were fine, they just retreated to new bodies or left
the bodies were destroyed and the programs were okay
the quarians were nearly wiped out
That would require some amazing incompetence on the part of the Quarians. Even by their standards.
Legion mentions that, when Shep killed the servers on Virmire, she iced more Geth than she knew. The Geth can backup and hop, but they can still be permanently taken out by any enemy who knows what to aim for.
listen, winning a genocide war wins you certain benefits. Such as not giving a fuck about the other side, and rights to all property won during the genocide war.
The quarians had other options, not many, but space is a big place, the council doesn't rule all of it.
If you lose the fight you started as a people, I ain't paid to care about you. does it suck when 300 years later you've still not taken any moves to better your situation? sure. Still ain't paid to care.
RME you are flat-out wrong in one of your points
series spoilers
The geth programs were fine, they just retreated to new bodies or left
the bodies were destroyed and the programs were okay
the quarians were nearly wiped out
I'm not entirely sure how accurate this is - especially since chiasaur has a point about the Virmire servers - I'll assume it's true for the sake of argument.
Even if the quarians managed to avoid killing a single geth program over the course of the extermination, that still means that they were essentially being focused into one central hub, where they could easily be eliminated by a single quarian with a shotgun. If that were to happen, the body count - at least the organic equivalent - would have been massive, maybe even greater than the losses inflicted on the quarians by the geth. We're talking about trillions of deaths, and the elimination of an entire species, versus several billion quarian casualties, suffered as a result of the geth's decision to defend themselves against genocide. I hate to boil it down to a mathematical equation, but the fact is that the geth would have lost everything, and the quarians would have destroyed them without a second thought; the geth let the quarians go, and gave them a chance to rebuild, and possibly reclaim the homeworld later. The potential losses for the geth definitely outweighed the losses suffered by the quarians, especially considering some of the the possible outcomes of the war for Rannoch in ME3 (reconciling both sides/eliminating the geth wholesale).
So, even if the geth suffered a casualty rate of zero over the course of the entire Morning War, considering the consequences of a quarian victory, I'd say that the losses suffered by the quarians were preferable to the complete elimination of the geth.
It's a shitty choice between two shitty options, but since neither side decided to opt for tea and cookies, that's what we've got.
legion himself says at some point (in ME2, I believe) that the geth suffered no casualties during the war.
rannoch was the core of the geth network. there was always a server somewhere for the programs to transmit to when they were threatened
And considering how the quarians lived on Rannoch, it wouldn't have been hard for them to trash that core, once all the geth were forced to concentrate there.
I think I'm just about geth-vs-quarian'd out, so all I'm gonna say is this; the next time I get pulled in to referee a war that's been brewing for three centuries, I'm going to bring a bottle of tequila.
Posts
And clearly underpopulation isn't their biggest problem if they're willing to strap a bunch of guns to liveships and throw untrained civilians into the line of fire.
And if it is, then maybe throwing a bunch of untrained civilians into the line of fire isn't the best solution.
Seriously, life on the Migrant Fleet is shit, I don't contest that.
What I do contest is that they had a right to exterminate the geth, just because the attempted genocide led to a couple of rough centuries, especially when all they had to do was pick up the phone, and tell the Consensus they were tapping out.
http://masseffect.wikia.com/wiki/Ekuna
Now granted the quarians acted rashly here and technically they broke the law, but this is more to illustrate how desperate they are to make their own world, and for a long time they were willing to abandon Rannoch altogether if it meant they could just survive, even given that it would take centuries more for their bodies to adjust to a new environment.
They were never able to, though, because the Council has never granted them the rights or representation necessary to colonize new worlds. They're like the krogan in that respect, except they're not dinosaur men.
It's pretty super duper sad really
Since the Council said they sent diplomatic envoys beyond the Perseus Veil back in ME1, and that none had ever returned
Although that's probably due more to Drew Karpyshyn straight up making Mass Effect about fleshies versus robots initially than anything else
PSN ID : DetectiveOlivaw | TWITTER | STEAM ID | NEVER FORGET
I
I know it
sniff
Legion says the geth have been working on their dyson sphere for 264 years
So because the Council races are assholes and the systemic genocide had some really shitty consequences, that gives the quarians the right to keep up their stupid cycle of self-destructive conflict? Especially when there were viable alternatives they could have resorted to, but didn't because trying to reconcile with the geth was apparently too fucking terrible to consider?
Seriously, this is the part where this whole argument about the quarians having it rough hits a big brick wall; they literally could have ended centuries of nomadic wandering and shitty conditions, if they had just bothered to try and drop a line to the geth to say that they wanted to try and forge a mutually beneficial relationship. Instead, they decide it would be better to strap guns to their kids' school buses, then throw them at the geth.
That is dumb. That is not dumb on the geth's part, that is not dumb on the Council's part, that is not dumb on anybody's part. That is dumb on the quarians' part.
how are people living in the "present" culpable for the actions taken by their ancestors 300 years prior, and how are they supposed to know the other side of the conflict would be okay with peace if the other side of the conflict never says a word about it and in fact maintains their occupation and destroys any intruder into their territory
Just like nobody's saying that the geth aren't dumb according to certain organic standards
Yeah, this is pretty much the whole problem right here.
well now let's be fair
the krogan population was exploding
their solution to this was of course not enacting their own population control methods, or even expanding to undeveloped worlds, but dropping asteroids on turian colonies
THey're pretty much the only species that doesn't tap into other races for advancement where they can help it; they don't accept the help of the Old Machines because they want to find their own way, and be prepared for it as a species once they get there. No other species in the entire galaxy can be described that way
Yo.
Well, clearly sending an entire armada to blow up the other side didn't work.
And I don't know how well that bolded section tracks after the whole Heretics vs. True Geth retcon.
Not that it makes much of a difference, since the quarians probably would've blown both sides into oblivion.
The whole problem here is that we really don't know much about any of those expeditions beyond the Veil Relay, so it's all pretty much speculation.
Yup
Humans found the Prothean archives
Asari had Prothean shit before anyone else
Krogan were uplifted
Salarians did the uplifting
Elcor and hanar were uplifted by asari
And everyone bases every single piece of their tech around stuff left behind by the Reapers
With the sole exception of the geth
Well
For a while
PSN ID : DetectiveOlivaw | TWITTER | STEAM ID | NEVER FORGET
Then the Raloi stumble upon a first contact team from the Council, and get thrown into the shit without having any idea what they're getting into.
also the geth are quarian technology so they do not count
...Well, maybe not the worst, since I'm not calculating the volume of human seminal fluid that can be held by a quarian enviro-suit.
...what?
1. the last time they had any real interaction with the geth, the geth were committing wholescale genocide upon them. the quarian population was billions strong. after the war, they were left with probably less than what they have now, around 17 million according to the codex. that is a scale of extermination that we have no possible way to relate with.
2. the last three hundred years of their existence has been spent in abject poverty while every non-quarian a quarian meets hates and mistrusts them. at the time of mass effect 3, the quarians have known this for their entire lives, and the lives of their parents, and their grandparents, and their great-grandparents, and so on in appropriate fashion. and every single one of them knows it is because of the geth.
3. the geth haven't said a single word. legion is the first time a geth ever says anything to a quarian. all the quarians know is that the geth have been sitting in their territory on the other side of the perseus veil for three centuries, and no ship that goes in ever comes out. it's a matter of doubt that the geth are capable of peace.
and even with all this on their shoulders, there are still quarians who think they should move on and let the geth be, or try the diplomatic option. they don't though, because one of their scientists finally discovers a way to reliably beat the faceless Other that is at the core of all the suffering they have had to deal with. the migrant fleet wouldn't have been at any risk at all-
except that the geth did something nobody could have expected and hooked themselves up to some bullshit machine god code and then they started pulling strafing runs against the civilian ships the quarian ships that pass as military were trying to protect
oops
this is not my beautiful wife
Anti it's time to face facts
Your wife was never beautiful
PSN ID : DetectiveOlivaw | TWITTER | STEAM ID | NEVER FORGET
nonexistent things have a hard time trying to be so
1) I think you've got it backwards; the quarians were committing genocide, the geth were just defending themselves up to the point where the quarians cut and run. Even in the face of the massive number of quarian casualties, you have to realize that the geth suffered just as many casualties, if not more, considering the nature of each individual geth program. Even if the geth pushed the quarians too far, it was only in the interest of protecting themselves, not out of some misplaced sense of animosity and fear.
2) Again, life on the flotilla is shit, but it's a direct consequence of a campaign of attempted genocide on another sapient race; I'd say the consequences of that campaign are equivalent to its worst excesses. And if the quarians had bothered to pay attention, they'd know that it was their fault for waging a one-sided war of aggression against a developing sapient race - one that didn't even want to fight in the first place. Those three centuries of nomadic wandering are a direct consequence of the quarians refusing to face up to what they did to the geth three hundred years ago, while simultaneously convincing themselves that they were the real victims of this whole mess, not the geth programs that they tried to exterminate. It's a crappy situation, but it's a crappy situation because the quarians couldn't just face up to what they did.
3) Even if Legion is the only point of contact that the outside galaxy has had with the geth in three centuries, it doesn't change the fact that he presented a viable, non-violent solution to the geth/quarian conflict, and pointed out that pretty much all of the recent geth violence against organics could be attributed to the heretics, a faction that only comprised a small portion of the full geth fleet. The majority of the geth didn't want conflict, and were open to the possibility of making amends with the quarians. Despite that, the quarians decided to go to war anyway, and risk the remaining fragments of their population, just so they could kill a race that was willing to negotiate with them in the first place. Even if the true geth had been responsible for the missing scout ships, that doesn't change the fact that the quarians made a really bad decision because they couldn't face facts and realize that they'd done the geth wrong all those centuries ago. Also, this argument wouldn't feel complete if I didn't append a "Fuck Shala'Raan," in here somewhere.
If the number of quarians who supported isolation or peace was as large you're implying, then odds are they never would have even used Xen's countermeasure, except as a last resort. And if they decided to go ahead and use it anyway, guess what? That means that they're nowhere near as tolerant as the geth as they claim to be, if they're still willing to wipe out a non-hostile race for no other reason than they can.
Oh, and the geth only hooked themselves up to the Reapers after the quarians sucker punched them, caused a massive drop in their processing power, killed billions - possibly trillions - of sapient programs, and pushed them back to the edge of oblivion.
That's not really an "Oops," kind of circumstance, unless you're speaking for the quarians.
All that said, I will admit that I was wrong on the whole population argument, and I didn't give that one the proper level of thought it deserved.
Though that was probably obvious, since I mistook zero population growth for no population growth.
series spoilers
the bodies were destroyed and the programs were okay
the quarians were nearly wiped out
Legion mentions that, when Shep killed the servers on Virmire, she iced more Geth than she knew. The Geth can backup and hop, but they can still be permanently taken out by any enemy who knows what to aim for.
Why I fear the ocean.
rannoch was the core of the geth network. there was always a server somewhere for the programs to transmit to when they were threatened
if there were a version of the quarian engineer with flamer and snap freeze instead of incinerate and cryo blast
This is a nice dream
Quarian engie all running around with the Reegar to be thematically appropriate
Big power damage bonuses
Melting dudes
The quarians had other options, not many, but space is a big place, the council doesn't rule all of it.
If you lose the fight you started as a people, I ain't paid to care about you. does it suck when 300 years later you've still not taken any moves to better your situation? sure. Still ain't paid to care.
Even if the quarians managed to avoid killing a single geth program over the course of the extermination, that still means that they were essentially being focused into one central hub, where they could easily be eliminated by a single quarian with a shotgun. If that were to happen, the body count - at least the organic equivalent - would have been massive, maybe even greater than the losses inflicted on the quarians by the geth. We're talking about trillions of deaths, and the elimination of an entire species, versus several billion quarian casualties, suffered as a result of the geth's decision to defend themselves against genocide. I hate to boil it down to a mathematical equation, but the fact is that the geth would have lost everything, and the quarians would have destroyed them without a second thought; the geth let the quarians go, and gave them a chance to rebuild, and possibly reclaim the homeworld later. The potential losses for the geth definitely outweighed the losses suffered by the quarians, especially considering some of the the possible outcomes of the war for Rannoch in ME3 (reconciling both sides/eliminating the geth wholesale).
So, even if the geth suffered a casualty rate of zero over the course of the entire Morning War, considering the consequences of a quarian victory, I'd say that the losses suffered by the quarians were preferable to the complete elimination of the geth.
It's a shitty choice between two shitty options, but since neither side decided to opt for tea and cookies, that's what we've got.
I would not be averse to longer chill duration and greater damage bonuses
but in my dreams they are giving cryo blast lash-like shield penetration
"but we need their fleet!" naah, i got like 30 guys, just as good at their fleets combined.