Things that don't make sense (v2)

Obviously the council used a shuttle to get to the destiny. Why not just fly away from the battle?

They didn't have to show the DA firing the cannon if the implied action of the scene is that the Geth are over whelming the DA with their superior technology and fire power as well as sheer numbers. Given how ME 1 was pretty much a by the books AI Overlord Skynet story with the Geth.  And there was no stealthy evacuation of the Council. Moving them to the most secure or mobile area is pretty standard stuff and given that Saren was leading the assault all the strong points on the Citadel would have been known so going to the most powerful mobile ship the DA would be pretty standard protocol.  


They do not know they are in a fight for their species. They think the is a plot by Saren to gain control of the Citadel for his own personal power.

Well lets see the ships are facing the front and the Fifth Fleet attacks from the rear. This would allow the combined attack power of the Citadel Fleet and the Fifth Fleet to overwhelm the Geth Barriers. As well as require some of the Geth to break off to defend against the Fifth Fleet. Less fire from the Geth allowing the Citadel Fleet to rally and recover and fight back against the now smaller attack force.  The Geth are caught in a pincer maneuver and now out gunned.

Also I'm not sure if it was said or hinted at but I would assume that they have the ability to control the strength of the barrier around specific areas of the ship. If that is true then the Geth would have had full power with forward shields and only lightly shielded from behind. In come the anti shield missiles and main cannons would have ripped into the ships much easier.

There is no assumption it is based on facts of the game. The Geth are shown in all engagements shown in the game to be an over whelming force that pushes back or wipes out any non Shepard lead group. Of which Shepard gains super protagonist powers to ignore the in game reality.  This is noticeable with Ashley or literally any other NPC you run into were the Geth are concerned.  Ash goes from being pinned down her entire squad being wiped out and on the verge of death (story line) to mowing down Geth left and right the second she joins up with Shepard (game play). The same thing on Ferros when the entire security force is pushed back to a small hole in the wall by the Geth occupation (story line) until Shepard shows up and mows them down like wheat against an atomic bomb. (game play) As well as the Geth weapons you can find in Saren's base have extremely high rates of fire needed to quickly wear down the barriers of other Geth. As it is hinted in game that it was created to fight other Geth.  Which was later used as the jumping off point to validate switching to an ammo based game play. Which had it's pros and cons. Everything set up in the story line and codex's puts the Geth as far more advanced and much more deadly then any individual organic race. The problem is BioWare like many other game companies throws all that aside to allow game play.   That is how you get a protagonist armed with a pocket knife slashes their way threw a demonic army that has conquered the planet and killed billions to kill the god devil incarnate.

Ash only mentioned Alliance barriers when she comments on it. As well as the main cannons of those ships only fire slugs that are the size of your fist. This isn't Halo were a MAC Gun were they fire a 9m (29 foot) long round. That hole in the center isn't the main cannon it is the propulsion. And it is very well possible the DA took out a good chunk of the Geth Fleet on it's own. How ever again basic strategy says you take out your enemies big guns as priority.  This is well known in modern combat of creating Air Superiority other wise you can be bombed from the sky to older versions of taking out artillery or cannons which would allow them to blow up large numbers of your troops while taking little to no casualties on their side.  Hell even dumbing it down to RTS game level you always prioritize taking down your enemies heavy hitters. In Crusaders game when the AI throws some Knights, Mace men and Spear men at me I to after those knights first. Because if they breach my wall they will do far more damage then the other two melee units could do their their very high damage and defense values.  Which is exactly what the Geth are doing in the scene. They are clearly trying to over whelm and take down the DA and due to all the sparking and shaking when shown the inside of the DA it is shown they are taking heavy damage and the barriers are failing.

There are no specific mention of how shields are set up true enough how ever the whole Geth are more advanced then we are bit of the story line leans towards the statement that the Geth were not effected as much as an Alliance ship would be against the DA.  The two guns you mentioned are not a part of ME 1 and thus this specific story line when written. So far I have been using the reasoning and logic limited only to ME 1 and not brining ME 2 or 3 into the argument.  If you want to bring the entire trilogy into the argument then the events make even more sense why it happened. As the Geth not needing physical bodies besides for repairs allows them to devote more space to armor, weapons and shielding as shown in ME 3 with the Geth Dreadnought.

The Citadel Fleet is in defensive position protecting the Citadel from attack. To move around to much would allow an opening to be exploited allowing the Geth to reach and attack the Citadel in even more force with ground troops. Or even worse attack them from the rear. They can move around how ever they want but the set up of the fight literally pins the Citadel Fleet in place in a defensive position.  You are not wrong about their capabilities but you are wrong about the context of why their actions were taken.  I mean we already have a pretty close real world example of this with the UK in WW2. The RAF were acting defensively protecting to the best they could the cities, towns and factories the Nazi air force was trying to bomb. They could have gone more on the offensive and maneuvered around the sides of the Nazi bombing fleets but it would have simply opened up more chances for them to bomb strategic locations hampering the UK war effort.

Yes Shepard tells them point blank about the Reapers. But they dismiss it because that is their job in the story line. To be the authoritative force that works against Shepard because humanity has to proof it self to the rest of the galaxy. Rather ironically we are in the same position with this topic. I am Shepard explaining why it makes sense if done in an overly dramatic way for drama reasons and to provide a real effect of the player choice. And you are the Council dismissing everything I say as meaningless and the whole situation is stupid.

So which Council member am I speaking to? By the tone and action I would assume this is the Turian Council member. You ignore the context of the assumptions being small little things like the ability to control barrier strength on different parts of the ship to better facilitate combat and the DA would be a major target to be attacked and wiped out first.

You must not confuse game play mechanics with story line. There is no plot hole created when you separate them. There are limits to what you can do to play the game and limits to the game it self. Do you really think 5 Salarians and 1 Human would be able to put up enough of a fight to draw the majority of the Geth and cloned Krogan away from the back end? Of course not but because of hardware, time and money limitations creating just a handful of Salarians is enough. Much in the same way Shepard only uses 2 squad mates.

I never said the Geth would sit there and never move. As well turning capabilities or at leas the speed of the turn depends on the class and size of the ship. The SR-1 is a very small Frigate compared to the SR-2 which is 61m (200 foot) larger in length.  Which compared to a Turian Frigate 236M and a Geth Cruiser at 316M. As well as the SR-1 has an over sized drive core for the size ship it has.  So you can not make direct comparisons. As well as the game shows the Geth fleet reacting, turning and firing at the Fifth fleet and it shows ships being blow up in the attack.

I don't get your complaint about this part at all. The Geth Fleet has units break off to engage the Alliance and while still attacking the DA. By doing that you save the DA which means you destroyed some of the Geth Fleet while the DA or other Citadel Fleet ships help wipe out the rest.  In fact you complain about the DA not firing the main guns yet it very clearly shows the DA going right into battle and firing the main guns when the Geth Fleet first arrive. By the time Shepard reaches the Council chamber and gets the message from the DA they make it clear their main drives are offline (thus dead in space) and their kinetic barrier is down to 40%. Which means it took one hell of a beating.  It also means that they are unable to fire their main cannon anymore because they are unguided shots. They have to line the shots up to fire them.  Your complaints are pretty much explained in the game.

Lets say the DA was shown wiping out Geth ships....would that change anything? Drive core still goes offline limiting their mobility thus limiting their capabilities to bring their main guns to bare. Their barrier is still down to 40% due to the dozen or more Geth ships attacking the DA.  Nothing about the situation changes. This seems rather like someone complaining that because we don't see Shepard eating, sleeping and using the toilet thus the entire trilogy is a massive plot hole because humans have to eat, sleep and use the toilet.

Since Liara's intentions were to disperse her little time capsules throughout the galaxy before the final battle for earth even began, the whole circumstance of that message makes no sense to me.  I've always assumed it was written based on an assumption like the "If you're reading this, I must be dead" messages we frequently see used in movies.  Still, that doesn't explain how the capsule would detect that the crucible had not been fired.  One thing I've made up is that Liara's device itself was somehow tied to the Crucible's firing mechanism in such a way that the whole capsule would self-destruct if the Crucible was used so that the only situation where her message would ever be heard was if the Crucible had not been fired.  Since she would likely never assume that Shepard would ever just refuse to use the Crucible, the default assumption would be that Shepard did try to fire it, but it didn't work.

Why would she possibly program it to self-destruct?  Thinking that if the Crucible worked, the time capsule wouldn't be necessary would be my guess.

Tali does explain that the quarians regulate their numbers carefully because of the limited space and resources they have aboard the fleet.  When their numbers get to high, they only allow families to have one child but will relax that restriction if their numbers start to fall.  (I'm sorry I just can't remember in which game and when that conversation takes place though.)  However,  I would assume that, at the current point in time, quarian numbers are sufficient that Tali would not have to be overly concerned about not having children herself.

Personally, I tend to think the whole dextro/levo issue combined with the immunity issue is artificial and overplayed in the Trilogy... along with the whole idea that Asari can mate with any species on the other side of that coin.  I also tend to try to just overlook the different species thing and concentrate on matching up the personalities I think work best for whatever personality my Shepard has.  From a personality POV, Tali's romance is very sweet.  It has an aspect of natural spontaneity and innocence about it that's lacking in some of the other romances a Male Shepard can have.

If you do romance Tali in ME2 and talk with her after the SM, she does indicate that she is indeed ill but that it was "totally worth it."  She repeats the "totally worth it" line a couple of times in ME3.  During ME3's romance scene, she'll also indicate that her body has gotten use to Shepard and doesn't react that way to him anymore.

When I was talking about spontaneity, I wasn't really referring to how the romance starts, but rather the manner in which they exchange different quips between each other during the romance (particularly during the geth dreadnought mission in ME3).  They also exchange a line at the end of Tali's loyalty mission in ME2 that I just love (even though it's a line said before any romance can actually exist)...

Shepard (referring to how she was treated at her tiral):  "You deserved better."
Tali:  "I got better.  I got you."

To me, it just seems like they would be the type of couple who would have a lot of "spontaneous" fun just being together.

She's the Shadow Broker... I would think that she's possibly having some of her agents distribute the time capsules as well.  It's also likely, that once she designed the prototype, she enlisted a corporation to manufacture them in bulk and handle the distribution for her.... perhaps Mr. Rupe Elkoss of Elkoss Combine (who could ship them along with weapons shipments) or another company contacted through Barla Von.

That makes sense.  If they survived then the capsules would be recovered.  Then stories would be passed down about how that survival came about.

I really don't think she was making each one up by hand in her office and then placing them on each planet herself.    I would think it would be far more likely that she contracted a company to make several/many by copying a prototype and then having someone like Rupe Elkoss pack them in weapons shipments he obviously made throughout the galaxy before the final battle.  Someone on each planet would receive the shipment with a request to just find a place to hide it.  Why do you think it would be necessary for the player to have visited every planet in the galaxy for a time capsule to be placed there?  I'm saying all of them were placed before the Crucible was ever fired.

Crikey - All time capsules distributed either by a contractor or her agents before the battle for earth to whatever places throughout the galaxy where Liara wanted them placed.  Satisfied?

If the capsules were sent out before the fleets head to Earth, how would T'soni know what happened on Earth? Or any other event that happened after the capsule was sent out to the planets?