Not sure how tf Earth/anynone survived for months since the reapers arrived in ME3

[76561198055083273]

All of the curscenes show all the ship reapers taking .000009 HP dmg with like 999999999 total HP and while regening HP at 999999HP per second and dishing out big damage like ship reapers were one giant 10 million pound hammer hitting small ants in humans/turians/asari. And there probably hundreds of thousands of reaper ships. 10 reaper ships could genocide one planet in 3 business days max

[valium]

Reapers have a weakness when it comes to their size and taking on ground forces. They dont want to completely wipe out the races, they want to convert them into more reaper forces. It will take time for the indoctrinated forces to deal with the ground forces. Javik talks about this incessantly, it took hundred of years for the Reapers to finally corner the Protheans to their final bastions of defense.

[kud1]

Reapers have no objection to killing organic beings.... if they have to, but they prefer to take them alive into captivity.
Because of this, they have to rely on their ground forces, as Sovereign-type ships are poorly suited for this purpose.

[ULTRA]

Originally posted by valium:

Reapers have a weakness when it comes to their size and taking on ground forces. They dont want to completely wipe out the races, they want to convert them into more reaper forces. It will take time for the indoctrinated forces to deal with the ground forces. Javik talks about this incessantly, it took hundred of years for the Reapers to finally corner the Protheans to their final bastions of defense.

Good thing they moronically choose to send little foot soldier men to do the work then and not like, a huge wave of tiny robots that freeze everyone in place

uhh

no wait, forget that happened

[Leo]

Originally posted by ULTRA:

Originally posted by valium:

Reapers have a weakness when it comes to their size and taking on ground forces. They dont want to completely wipe out the races, they want to convert them into more reaper forces. It will take time for the indoctrinated forces to deal with the ground forces. Javik talks about this incessantly, it took hundred of years for the Reapers to finally corner the Protheans to their final bastions of defense.

Good thing they moronically choose to send little foot soldier men to do the work then and not like, a huge wave of tiny robots that freeze everyone in place

uhh

no wait, forget that happened

We can assume only the collectors had that technology. Furthermore, they talk in game about different reaper ships. Off memory there are 4: Capital ships, destroyers, troop transports and conversion ships. I'm not sure about the conversion ships (Where they basically huskify populations) but its stated that troop ships and destroyers are easier to take out.

[BingusDingus]

The reason is pretty simple, Earth is huge and they didn't stay in full force once they destroyed most of the human military presence.
It's talked about throughout Mass Effect 3, by the characters, lore pieces and the news, about how the reapers are moving their forces to different areas around the galaxy, these places change as the game progresses.

Essentially what happened during ME3 is that the Reapers attacked both the Humans and the Turians in full force as their primary focus as they were the main threats, the Humans crumbled fast while the Turians were holding on for longer. Once they crushed Earth they moved many of their forces from Earth to attack the Turian homeworld and crush them.
Then once they got the Turian moon reigned in they started to attack the Salarians, Asari and Krogan, with splinter groups being sent to attack the less immediate races and locations of importance.

The invasion fells organic in this game if you pay attention, because the Reapers execute a strategy over the course of the game, they only concentrate their forces on Earth again after the citadel is taken there.

The Reapers plan to subjugate a world was to simply transform captured humans or aliens into all the reaper forces you fight throughout the game and let them slowly whittle the life on the world down to nothing, they didn't need to stay in force on a world once they set up the process.

[Volbard]

I know a lot of people will push back on this, and that's fair, but the answer to this is most likely marketing reasons.

Does anyone remember the tagline "Take back Earth"? Or all of the promo material showcasing Earth? I think all of the trailers featured Earth. It got you in the feels. It pumped you up for the fight.

Who cares about the little details? Are you sad yet that Earth is falling? You should be, you human, you. Who cares that it makes more sense to have the cold open on the Citadel instead, and the final battle be about retaking the Citadel. How dare you question that Earth won't survive. We're humans, baby! Earth rules!

Add to that development costs, time crunch, script rewrites, and an over reliance on asset reuse, and you start to get the picture.

[kud1]

That the ending of the trilogy was written on a knee is probably not necessary to tell anyone....
Which doesn't change the fact that, from a lore perspective, the Reapers are much more interested in catching organics alive than killing them.

[Revalopod]

It took centuries for the reapers to wipe out the Protheans. Not years, not decades, centuries. You underestimate how long things will realistically take.

[kud1]

Of course.
But the Protheans inhabited a large part of the galaxy. Not just one planet. If the Reapers had wanted to, they would have reduced the surface of the Earth to cinders in a few days.

[barzai]

Originally posted by kud1:

Of course.
But the Protheans inhabited a large part of the galaxy. Not just one planet. If the Reapers had wanted to, they would have reduced the surface of the Earth to cinders in a few days.

Well, the humans--and the other organic species in the current cycle--inhabit a fair number of worlds as well. We only see a few, but the implications of the Asari and Turians having been spacefaring species for millennia is clear.

Also, as is stated over and over, the Reapers--as their name suggests--aren't trying to "reduce the surface of the Earth to cinders..." but rather to harvest them in the process of making the "Human" Reaper. Presumably they intend--if they're not already doing it--to perform the same process on the Asari homeworld, the Turian homeworld, e tutti quanti.

So, you are correct: if the Reapers had wanted to, they could have nuked Earth, along with Thessia, Palavan and the rest. But evidently that is not their goal.

I assume that--once done with the harvest--they'll comb through the galaxy and bigfoot any remaining colonies of the spacefaring species they find. As is discussed in the lore, several species that have some space travel capability have destroyed it in order to attempt to fly under the Reaper radar. Whether they'd have been successful, we do not know.

[NativeOne]

Think of The Reapers as farmers it will set the mind at ease ..

The Resources they are after ..

DNA / Tech advances then wipe / Rinse Repeat 50 k yrs or so ..

~The Harvest Is Over Ripe -Promethean's Seen To That

[Dave]

The Reapers are very thorough. While they do miss things here and there, they are very good at erasing any trace of their existence from prying eyes. And while Shepard's crew definitely struck a blow by forcing them to invade from only one direction and spread from there, they're still winning and they have no reason to rush. It's likely the Reapers faced other generations of the galaxy who they actually struggled to beat but they still won.

[Taifun_Vash]

As the reapers are also collecting the knowledge of each spacefaring race they harvest, that would mainly mean indoctrination. They're harvesting, not only destroying organic races, also if you read each flavor text of all the planets through out the games you would know most of the colonies of each race.

[Cass]

Originally posted by Taifun_Vash:

also if you read each flavor text of all the planets through out the games you would know the colonies of each race.

Not every inhabited planet is depicted in the game.

[Taifun_Vash]

Originally posted by Cass:

Originally posted by Taifun_Vash:

also if you read each flavor text of all the planets through out the games you would know the colonies of each race.

Not every inhabited planet is depicted in the game.

That was why I said games, there are different colonies shown through all three parts, don't actually know if that are all of them. So let me change it to most.