User blog comment:The Milkman/Mass Effect in Retrospect/@comment-5267262-20130417140134

typo correction: they added the M-7 Lancer not M-8 Avenger. Ok, time to break open your complaints about arrival.

So firstly, from what I could tell (especially since you can do arrival before the suicide mission) the reapers were already coming to the alpha relay, its not a plan b compared to making the human reaper, its a plan b to sovereign opening the citadel's relay. The human reaper bit is just getting a headstart on one of the reaper's objective for the cycle (1. kill everything that ever put someone into space. 2. make a reaper).

Next, technical correction about supernovae, they are not there to make stars, they are the dramatic death sequence of a large star (so in some ways they kill them). During a nova or supernova the star implodes, impacts on itself and blows off the outer layers of the star, for small stars these can be flung lightyears apart. A relay could be moved by being far away from the original star and get picked up by this 'wind', moreover this would act across the whole length of the relay so it is being pushed with roughly equal forces from everywhere. On the other hand getting hit by an asteroid at one end of the relay would cause a very sudden sharp force at one end while the other end is as it was before. Imagine comparing a kite being pushed by wind or by throwing rocks at one end. This would cause the relay to fracture at the least, this in turn could trigger some sort of overload (or that may be cause by the relay trying to propel a 10 km or so asteroid)

On a final note "The Hammerhead is vastly superior" Steve Cortez.