User blog comment:Markurion/How many of you put a bullet in Godchild in EC?/@comment-101.172.85.70-20120723015344/@comment-1388547-20120723174330

Aleksandr: All the examples you listed either had a very large guerrilla component, or had an enormous strategic advantage for the numerically weaker side. At least in the space side of the Reaper War (which is the most important part, since if the Reapers control the space around a planet, they can always bombard the surface from orbit as a last resort), guerrilla tactics are very difficult to pull off, and I don't think there are any good strategic choke points where a smaller force could hold off a much larger one in ME-verse space combat. At best, the allied fleets could concentrate their force and try hit-and-run tactics against smaller groups of Reapers, but the Reapers could counter that (and IIRC were already working on this -- the Cyone reactor trouble, for example) by attacking allied antimatter production sites, leaving the fleets without fuel. I don't really see a way for the organics to fight this war without having to fight the Reapers on their terms, which is not the position you want to be in if you're the smaller, less advanced force.

The one possibility I've heard that might work is having the entire allied fleet focus their fire on the Citadel, in the hopes of taking down the Catalyst and somehow thereby crippling the Reapers. (I think this is mostly if not entirely Ygrain's idea, from a comment on another blog.) If it worked, it would have been a great callback to Sovereign being crippled when its Saren-husk-thing was defeated -- and in the actual ending the allied fleet manages to drive the Reapers off and dock the Crucible, so probably the Citadel bombardment part would have worked. Sadly, we'll never know whether destroying the Catalyst's home would have hurt the Reapers at all.