The Little Things 2.0

nevermind

I've though about that as well. 50K is an absurd amount of time. The only answer I can come up with is that the reapers stick around after the harvest to make sure no one's close enough to space travel to have 48K years to advance. Consider that trinket you get from the consort in 1, the reapers were paying attention to Earth back in the caveman days. Although it's been a very long time so I might be remembering it wrong. But if they don't check, then some cycle definitely would have evolved with the timing you described and would have laughed in the reapers faces.  

If that happen, how many ships would have been needed to defeat the reapers? Why would they have that many to begin with? Did they know about the reapers to build so many ships?  If humanity occupies the Citadel, whoever is living on the Citadel would be dead before they knew what was going on since the signal was never altered.

Who knows? Say there are 20,000 Reapers. Sounds like a lot, no? Not really. Just policing a galaxy wide Empire would require a massive fleet, much larger than 20 000. Disassemble a single small planet and you'd have enough materials to build millions of Dreadnoughts. If they had 48000 years to play with, who knows what could happen in terms of technology or discovery of the Reaper's plans? It's all conjecture and a writer could still have the Reapers win if they take out the Relay network and isolate the fleets as they did the Protheans. I get the impression that if the Protheans hadn't been hobbled by the loss of the Citadel and relay network they were capable of winning a conventional victory as well.

The number of reapers is possible, though that would be up to Bioware what the number is.

Here's something I've posted a few times about the number of reapers at the start of this cycle.

The reapers have a lot. I would also include processing ships and troop transport ships. The scene showing the reapers approaching the Milky Way, after the suicide mission, shows what looks to be processing ships and troop transport ships along with other reaper ships
 
 Casey Hudson or Patrick Weekes said that only a few destroyers are lost each cycle while one  capital ship is lost every few cycles.
 
I will use the number 3 to represent few.
 
That means that 6 667 capitals ships have been destroyed if I use the 50 000 year cycle over 1 billion years and 60 000 destroyers are destroyed in the last 1 billion years. 
 
So when the reapers arrive at the beginning of our cycle they have about 13 333 capital ships plus destroyers, processing ships and troop transport ships
 
Of course I have no idea how long the 50 000 year cycle has been happening. Leviathan mentions that the intelligence directed the reapers to build the relays so the number from above most likely would be lower. If the reapers have been around longer than 1 billion years, then the number above most likely would be higher. At the moment its just guessing until Bioware says how long the 50 000 year cycle has been happening
 
I will add that the number of destroyers would be very high. Lets say they build 5 destroyers after each harvest, and using the number from above, there would be about 66 000 destroyers at the start of the cycle.

Either way, the reapers win by numbers alone. They also can one-shot any council ship whereas the council species need more than one shot to damage or even destroy a reaper.

As far as Protheans winning conventionally? Not a chance. I do believe they would have defeated the reapers if they were able to use the relays like we can in this cycle and the crucible project wasn't sabotaged.

What about finding any information about the reapers? They can though what did they find that would have them build x number of ships to deal with the reapers. How do they know they built enough to defeat the reapers?
 

That would be interesting if that were to have happened. How large of a fleet would it take for Sovereign to call in the troops? I doubt it ever happened in previous cycles. Only Bioware can answer that.

I'm playing ME3 with EGM and talked to Dominic Osoba with his son's dogtags and saw a longer heartbreaking scene with him....

If your character is a renegade, I believe what Shepard says is different there as well. Something about everyone gaming the system and using the war as an excuse to get what they want. I thought that was pretty cool.

Also if you actually trust legion here and then go to rannoch and legion talks about him being upgraded with reaper tech if you choose renegade dialogue shep can be exasperated that once again legion lied to shep and is making lives harder for geth all around.... i really love how the dialogue in Me3 is so nuance and it flows consistently with what youve chosen before...

I just discovered that I could talk to Captain Matsuo in Port Hanshan in ME1 and ask about her private life and discuss why Shepard was promoted to a Spectre. This is really a surprise as Noveria is my favorite place in game and I thought I already knew everything. Seventh playtrough, still surprises me.

Yes, I discovered those too and was more blown away.
So sad they did not have this much writing (or it felt like it) in the following games. Even a side characters in ME1 feels very liveable.

I'm at the Silver Coast Casino for the Citadel dlc infiltration mission. I touch the waterfall. A message says not to. I touch it again. I'm told not to do so again. I touch it again and it says "Fine. You know what? That's a hanar urinal. Knock yourself out."