90 réponses à ce sujet

[darth_lopez]

SomeKindaEnigma wrote...

E-MailA.K.A.Mr.Fox wrote...

Just explain that Sir Issac Newton is the deadliest son-of-a-**** in space, A++ for sure.

lmao i love this

he's got a good point at least you can take a few ideas out of this and a couple of laughs

[Fiery Phoenix]

Ahglock wrote...

(...)

You know, you could flat out ask your professor.  After class ask him/her, "do you think a paper analysing the use/miususe of scince in science fiction is a valid topic for the assignment" 

Exactly. It never hurts to be honest with your professor and discuss your ideas with them. It's what I always do myself. You should ask the professor first.

[adam_grif]

Schneidend wrote...

adam_grif wrote...

There's no difference in the physics, but ME2 manages to push the biology silliness to a new level with the reaper goo.

Considering most reaper technology is beyond the characters' understanding, and EDI herself says she can't explain the goo, I'd say this has been successfully lampshaded/handwaved.

Handwaving something doesn't make it plausible or possible, bro. Being made of nonsense biology and nonsense physics is what we're acusing it of, not "was not adequately explained in the fiction". Although tbh it wasn't really that either

[Schneidend]

Impossibility is relative to the technological context of the era. In the early 1900s, everything from the clothes we wear to the equipment we use on a daily basis would be considered impossible.



If the Bioware writers could accurately explain things like medi-gel and reaper goo, they'd be making trillions of dollars making those technologies, or ruling us as our new overlords.

[darth_lopez]

adam_grif wrote...


Handwaving something doesn't make it plausible or possible, bro. Being made of nonsense biology and nonsense physics is what we're acusing it of, not "was not adequately explained in the fiction". Although tbh it wasn't really that either

what's funny about your statement is that Calculus itself was considered "nonsense" for a time, Gravity, Relativity, Dark Energy, Dark Matter, Evolution, Cell structure, Elemental composition, n-dimensions, Computers, A global Network that allows literally Hundreds of Millions of people to communicate nigh simultaneously across multiple regions. All these things have 1 thing in common. They were considered "nonsense" at one point by a group of people who thought they already had all the answers.

What defines nonsense is relative to the era and claiming our present view of nonsense is absolute is an arrogant manuever. After all our current world is built upon the "nonsenses" of past generations. Plausibility can be established on the sole basis that it is not explicitly known to be impossible at the moment. While their are degrees of plausibility(i.e. your probability or liklihood) of these things occuring and not all are equal and most are relatively low at the moment. But what i'm getting at is that simply because it's "nonsense" right now does not rule out plausibility. Though i could be missing your point in the quote

Either way if he can find good demonstrations of properties of physics in ME or potentially good applications in the future, that are at least moderately plausible, he should use them if his professor gives him the go.

Modifié par darth_lopez, 02 février 2011 - 07:29 .

[Dexi]

Using Mass Effect for a physics essay hm...



Heavy risk, but the priiiize!

[Schneidend]

Dexi wrote...

Heavy risk, but the priiiize!

[adam_grif]

what's funny about your statement is that Calculus itself was considered "nonsense" for a time, Gravity, Relativity, Dark Energy, Dark Matter, Evolution, Cell structure, Elemental composition, n-dimensions, Computers, A global Network that allows literally Hundreds of Millions of people to communicate nigh simultaneously across multiple regions. All these things have 1 thing in common. They were considered "nonsense" at one point by a group of people who thought they already had all the answers.

Derp, all of those things were actually based on reality. The reaper slushee machine being used to construct starships by incorporating the "essence" of humans (lol) is straight out absurd. I'm sure you could melt down people and build a starship, but using melted down humans as a construction material? What are the material properties of goop, exactly? If the Reapers were making themselves out of Play-Dough or match sticks I'm sure you'd be here defending the nonsense just as vigorously. "Ah, but you see, people once thought that XYZ was nonsense and they were wrong (even though I'm providing no evidence to suggest that this is actually the case) and therefore building rocketships out of silly putty is a sound move."

Plausibility can be established on the sole basis that it is not explicitly known to be impossible at the moment.

It's not impossible to build something out of goop, it's just ridiculous and makes them look like huge idiots for doing it. It isn't believable, and makes zero sense given what we know about materials and human biology and philosophy.

[Phaedon]

adam_grif wrote...
Lolwut?

Are you referring to mass energy equivelance? Because there is no way in hell that MEverse Eezo physics is operating on E=MC^2.

Everything is operating on E=mc^2. And as long as the system is not isolated, then energy can change just fine. I don't see why you find it so difficult to understand. Just because some parts of the ME-verse are fictional (at least with our current knowledge), it doesn't mean that everything is wrong.

As for the ME-verse being too 'squishy' for sci-fi, you haven't been watching a lot of sci-fi shows lately I think.

Modifié par Phaedon, 02 février 2011 - 01:31 .

[adam_grif]

And as long as the system is not isolated, then energy can change just fine.

"The Universe" is a closed system.

I don't see why the heck you find it so difficult to understand.

I understand it quite thoroughly. The problem that has come up several times when this discussion takes place is that the energy required to keep the momentum of the system constant when you magically make the mass disappear is not the same as the energy required to keep the kinetic energy of the system constant. You can't satisfy both criterion, and so you have to choose whether CoE is violated or CoM is violated, neither of which has pleasant implications for the universe.



And whether CoM is conserved or not, the universe doesn't make sense either way for reasons I linked to in one of my previous posts in this thread.

As for the ME-verse being too 'squishy' for sci-fi, you haven't been watching a lot of sci-fi shows lately I think.

I don't believe I ever said it was "too squishy to be considered scifi". It's scifi, it's just squishy scifi. If the baseline you're comparing MEverse to is Star Trek then this must seem like the hardest SciFi ever. Unfortunately, there is a very long list of SciFi that is harder than a priest in a playground, and arguing that Mass Effect is 'hard scifi" is like arguing that malaria is a desirable condition to be afflicted with on the grounds that "it's not as bad as AIDS".



This is the setting where you can make mass appear or disappear at will. Where you can bring people back from the dead with their memories fully in tact despite a week of brain death, exposure to hard vacuum and reentry into a planet. Where the "unknowable elder gods" exist in robot starship form, who come to the universe every 50,000 years so they can, um, capture people and use them as a construction material for their starships (lol). Where there is an entire species, unrelated to us, who are so human they fit into human armor and look exactly like what is sexually appealing to 21st century male humans. A species whose members are all born with super magic powers, the ability to wirelessly network their consciousness with any other species that has a nervous system (lol), and somehow uses this in the process of their reproduction, at which point their offspring allegedly takes on characteristics of the other organism, even if they aren't another Asari. And by mating with their own species, they increase the risks of creating super space sucubus vampire things, who can mind control people and gets stronger by doing... something.



Did I mention that psychic powers exist too? Lol. Not just the Asari, but the Thorian is telepathic, and the Prothean beacons can just beam images straight into your brain, even the brain of an unrelated organism, and they can still make some of it out. God, the thorian. A giant plant that releases spores that let said giant plant telepathically control you by (somehow) inflicting pain when you disobey it. Oh and it's compatible with the brains of vastly different species, Humans, Salarians and Asari are all confirmed. Because brains are pretty much just plug and play, right? They all used standardized interfaces to make your mind control more convenient.



This is the setting where the mainline infantry weapon in use by all armies in the galaxy are railguns that fire microscopic bullets at high speed, and this is somehow effective. A setting where every man and his dog has a starship, but a 3 man team on the ground is the most effective military tool in existence. Where unmanned drones are useless in a fight against real soldiers, the sole exception being giant armored mechs with rocket launchers, which can be hacked by any idiot with an omnitool anyway. Wireless security, not so good in the future.



This is a setting where bright lights can turn you into a cyborg robot demon thing. Getting impaled on a stick will do that to you too. Everything about the Reapers is pretty silly too, but indoctrination is especially amusing. Once again, works on every sentient species, not just ones around now but all of them historically too. Plug n' play, go Reapers Go. It works by Infrasound and Subliminals, or some crap, which is enough to make anybody who is versed in such things laugh out loud (I know I did when I read the codex entry for the first time). Oh, and I better talk about the laughable universal translators too, which are so good at translating they already know the exact meaning of the sentence that an alien is going to say before they have even said it, and has a translation that perfectly matches their lip movements ready to go precisely as they move.



The setting is packed to the brim with ridiculousness. And with each new entry in the series, the silliness grows larger and larger. Trek wasn't really that silly early on either, and the same goes for just about any Space Opera. By the time Mass Effect 5: Electric Reaper Boogaloo rolls around you'll be swimming in it. Then the obligatory comics from Dark Horse will just make it worse.

[Elvis_Mazur]

Here, in Brazil, I wouldn't dare to do such thing. As far as I know, many people here have a bias or back-step when words like "game" and "video-game" are mentioned.



Maybe you live in a more open-minded place, but that's the reality here.

[Phaedon]

[quote]adam_grif wrote...[/quote][quote]"The Universe" is a closed system.[/quote]Good. Then you understand that you change the mass of the ship's system and NOT the universe's ? 
The energy from the system's ship transfers to the enviroment?

[quote]I understand it quite thoroughly. The problem that has come up several times when this discussion takes place is that the energy required to keep the momentum of the system constant when you magically make the mass disappear is not the same as the energy required to keep the kinetic energy of the system constant. You can't satisfy both criterion, and so you have to choose whether CoE is violated or CoM is violated, neither of which has pleasant implications for the universe. 

And whether CoM is conserved or not, the universe doesn't make sense either way for reasons I linked to in one of my previous posts in this thread. 
[/quote]You are making one very serious logical fault here. If your logic applied (energy can't transfer to the enviroment), then bye bye thermodynamics/laws of the universe/etc . The energy does not magically disappear, it just moves elsewhere. Not every change in the universe is adiabatic.

[quote]I don't believe I ever said it was "too squishy to be considered scifi". It's scifi, it's just squishy scifi. If the baseline you're comparing MEverse to is Star Trek then this must seem like the hardest SciFi ever. Unfortunately, there is a very long list of SciFi that is harder than a priest in a playground, and arguing that Mass Effect is 'hard scifi" is like arguing that malaria is a desirable condition to be afflicted with on the grounds that "it's not as bad as AIDS". [/quote]Mass Effect is a relatively realistic sci-fi, actually. I wanted to list a few popular series that I consider less realistic, but they aren't exactly as few as I thought.


[quote]This is the setting where you can make mass appear or disappear at will.[/quote]
non

[quote]Where you can bring people back from the dead with their memories fully in tact despite a week of brain death, exposure to hard vacuum and reentry into a planet.[/quote]
I won't even bother with this... so many bring this up that I have to make a thread about it. Wait until the weekend.

[quote]Where the "unknowable elder gods" exist in robot starship form, who come to the universe every 50,000 years so they can, um, capture people[/quote]
Soooo? 

[quote]and use them as a construction material for their starships (lol).[/quote]
Errrrrrrrr,no. 

[quote]Where there is an entire species, unrelated to us, who are so human they fit into human armor and look exactly like what is sexually appealing to 21st century male humans. [/quote]
1) You don't know how their internal organs are arranged
2) Evolution may have to follow certain paths. Oh, you are quick to dismiss that? Then why is bipedalism considered as a requirement for the evolution of intelligence then?

[quote]A species whose members are all born with super magic powers, the ability to wirelessly network their consciousness with any other species that has a nervous system (lol), and somehow uses this in the process of their reproduction, at which point their offspring allegedly takes on characteristics of the other organism, even if they aren't another Asari. And by mating with their own species, they increase the risks of creating super space sucubus vampire things, who can mind control people and gets stronger by doing... something. [/quote]
You are quick to dismiss that, huh? Skipping the parts which you just didn't bother read in the codex, 

1) You claim to understand the asari nervous system somehow, okay
2) Ah, alien genetics, yeah, I am sure they work the same way with ours. 



[quote]Did I mention that psychic powers exist too? Lol. Not just the Asari, but the Thorian is telepathic, and the Prothean beacons can just beam images straight into your brain, even the brain of an unrelated organism, and they can still make some of it out. God, the thorian. A giant plant that releases spores that let said giant plant telepathically control you by (somehow) inflicting pain when you disobey it.[/quote]
You are whining about telepathy in a sci-fi setting 

[quote]Oh and it's compatible with the brains of vastly different species, Humans, Salarians and Asari are all confirmed. Because brains are pretty much just plug and play, right? They all used standardized interfaces to make your mind control more convenient. [/quote]
i don't even

[quote]This is the setting where the mainline infantry weapon in use by all armies in the galaxy are railguns that fire microscopic bullets at high speed, and this is somehow effective.[/quote]
:blink:

You know that if bullets travel at a higher speed they are more effective, right? The projectiles have their mass lowered, and thus, the acceleration caused by the firing pin is much much higher.

[quote]A setting where every man and his dog has a starship,[/quote]
Where did you even get that from?

[quote]but a 3 man team on the ground is the most effective military tool in existence.[/quote]
Except that the only 3 man team that you had seen is Shepard's squad?!?

[quote]Where unmanned drones are useless in a fight against real soldiers, the sole exception being giant armored mechs with rocket launchers, which can be hacked by any idiot with an omnitool anyway. Wireless security, not so good in the future. [/quote]
Are you suggesting that future wireless security will be unhackable? 

[quote]This is a setting where bright lights can turn you into a cyborg robot demon thing.[/quote]

Getting impaled on a stick will do that to you too./quote]
No, it's a setting in which machines absorb minerals from your body and use them in order to build mini-structures that turn you into a semi-robot. 

[quote]Getting impaled on a stick will do that to you too. Everything about the Reapers is pretty silly too, but indoctrination is especially amusing. Once again, works on every sentient species, not just ones around now but all of them historically too. Plug n' play, go Reapers Go.[/quote]
What's your point really, come on, explain why indoctrination shouldn't work. In fact explain the whole nature of the Reapers since you and other seem to have understand it so thoroughly. :happy:

[quote]It works by Infrasound and Subliminals, or some crap, which is enough to make anybody who is versed in such things laugh out loud (I know I did when I read the codex entry for the first time). Oh, and I better talk about [/quote]
You laugh to easily at something you didn't even read correctly
[quote]A signal or an energy field surrounds Sovereign, which influences people's minds.[/quote]

[quote]the laughable universal translators too, which are so good at translating they already know the exact meaning of the sentence that an alien is going to say before they have even said it, and has a translation that perfectly matches their lip movements ready to go precisely as they move. [/quote]
Okay, so you wouldn't whine about incombatible lip synching...

[quote]The setting is packed to the brim with ridiculousness. And with each new entry in the series, the silliness grows larger and larger. Trek wasn't really that silly early on either, and the same goes for just about any Space Opera. By the time Mass Effect 5: Electric Reaper Boogaloo rolls around you'll be swimming in it. Then the obligatory comics from Dark Horse will just make it worse. [/quote]
Is that rage I detect? 

[DessieB]

adam_grif wrote...

And as long as the system is not isolated, then energy can change just fine.

"The Universe" is a closed system.

I don't see why the heck you find it so difficult to understand.

I understand it quite thoroughly. The problem that has come up several times when this discussion takes place is that the energy required to keep the momentum of the system constant when you magically make the mass disappear is not the same as the energy required to keep the kinetic energy of the system constant. You can't satisfy both criterion, and so you have to choose whether CoE is violated or CoM is violated, neither of which has pleasant implications for the universe.

And whether CoM is conserved or not, the universe doesn't make sense either way for reasons I linked to in one of my previous posts in this thread.

As for the ME-verse being too 'squishy' for sci-fi, you haven't been watching a lot of sci-fi shows lately I think.

I don't believe I ever said it was "too squishy to be considered scifi". It's scifi, it's just squishy scifi. If the baseline you're comparing MEverse to is Star Trek then this must seem like the hardest SciFi ever. Unfortunately, there is a very long list of SciFi that is harder than a priest in a playground, and arguing that Mass Effect is 'hard scifi" is like arguing that malaria is a desirable condition to be afflicted with on the grounds that "it's not as bad as AIDS".

This is the setting where you can make mass appear or disappear at will. Where you can bring people back from the dead with their memories fully in tact despite a week of brain death, exposure to hard vacuum and reentry into a planet. Where the "unknowable elder gods" exist in robot starship form, who come to the universe every 50,000 years so they can, um, capture people and use them as a construction material for their starships (lol). Where there is an entire species, unrelated to us, who are so human they fit into human armor and look exactly like what is sexually appealing to 21st century male humans. A species whose members are all born with super magic powers, the ability to wirelessly network their consciousness with any other species that has a nervous system (lol), and somehow uses this in the process of their reproduction, at which point their offspring allegedly takes on characteristics of the other organism, even if they aren't another Asari. And by mating with their own species, they increase the risks of creating super space sucubus vampire things, who can mind control people and gets stronger by doing... something.

Did I mention that psychic powers exist too? Lol. Not just the Asari, but the Thorian is telepathic, and the Prothean beacons can just beam images straight into your brain, even the brain of an unrelated organism, and they can still make some of it out. God, the thorian. A giant plant that releases spores that let said giant plant telepathically control you by (somehow) inflicting pain when you disobey it. Oh and it's compatible with the brains of vastly different species, Humans, Salarians and Asari are all confirmed. Because brains are pretty much just plug and play, right? They all used standardized interfaces to make your mind control more convenient.

This is the setting where the mainline infantry weapon in use by all armies in the galaxy are railguns that fire microscopic bullets at high speed, and this is somehow effective. A setting where every man and his dog has a starship, but a 3 man team on the ground is the most effective military tool in existence. Where unmanned drones are useless in a fight against real soldiers, the sole exception being giant armored mechs with rocket launchers, which can be hacked by any idiot with an omnitool anyway. Wireless security, not so good in the future.

This is a setting where bright lights can turn you into a cyborg robot demon thing. Getting impaled on a stick will do that to you too. Everything about the Reapers is pretty silly too, but indoctrination is especially amusing. Once again, works on every sentient species, not just ones around now but all of them historically too. Plug n' play, go Reapers Go. It works by Infrasound and Subliminals, or some crap, which is enough to make anybody who is versed in such things laugh out loud (I know I did when I read the codex entry for the first time). Oh, and I better talk about the laughable universal translators too, which are so good at translating they already know the exact meaning of the sentence that an alien is going to say before they have even said it, and has a translation that perfectly matches their lip movements ready to go precisely as they move.

The setting is packed to the brim with ridiculousness. And with each new entry in the series, the silliness grows larger and larger. Trek wasn't really that silly early on either, and the same goes for just about any Space Opera. By the time Mass Effect 5: Electric Reaper Boogaloo rolls around you'll be swimming in it. Then the obligatory comics from Dark Horse will just make it worse.

Reaper tech is supposed to be foriegn and imcomprehensible by design. If I had to take a guess (And im no physics major so I dunno if this would help) but, could it be that FTL travel is possible because Mass Effect Fields can't overlap, no matter how powerful one is compared to another? Consider the following: A personal kinetic barrier is used during FTL travel to protect everyone on the inside of the ship from the effects of having their mass lowered significantly (Thereby making them "pop" due to blood pressure) by keeping their mass the same while the ship travels. The same could be applied to the engine itself. It generates incredible thrust by having its mass be significantly higher than the sum of what its trying to move.

It generates thrust for a ship of X size, preserved by a kinetic barrier, while it is actually trying to move a ship of Y size, which isn't protected by the FTL drives personal barrier. It could be similar to the concept of throwing stuff off a plane to make it easier to fly.

While the engine would have to carry the weight of the 50ish crew members and the engines own weight, it'd still be making the rest of the ship trivially small. I dunno, just a thought.


EDIT: Also, I think Mass Effect goes out of its way to try and explain its setting and make it believable. I think it succeeds at this. It puts forth more effort than the vast majority of settings, so I'd hardly call it "Squishy" by the standards of most sci-fi

Modifié par DessieB, 02 février 2011 - 03:31 .

[adam_grif]

[quote]Good. Then you understand that you change the mass of the ship's system and NOT the universe's ?[/quote]



So are you saying there is like some magical place where all the missing mass goes to when you lower your mass to near zero? You're trying to keep this physically consistent but you're replacing one magic with another, lol.



[quote]Errrrrrrrr,no.[/quote]



We played the same game, right? The one where they build Reapers out of melted down humans? And not built in some metaphorical sense, they go straight from the melty tubes into the Reaper superstructure.



[quote]1) You don't know how their internal organs are arranged[/quote]



That's right, just keep pointing to the things that might be different instead of the insane, extremely implausible similarities, Like dude, they're blue! They're totally not like humans at all!



[quote]2) Evolution may have to follow certain paths. Oh, you are quick to dismiss that? Then why is bipedalism considered as a requirement for the evolution of intelligence then?[/quote]



Being a sexy space babe is necessary for the evolution of intelligence? Nice. It's a good thing for your argument that dolphins and octopuses don't exist. Do a forum search for "turian female", there should be a fairly recent thread where there were some pretty epic debates on this held.



[quote]You know that if bullets travel at a higher speed they are more effective, right? The projectiles have their mass lowered, and thus, the acceleration caused by the firing pin is much much higher.[/quote]



I'm a firearms enthusiast in addition to scifi nerd. Momentum = mass x velocity, if you're lowering mass to increase velocity proportionally you're treading water in terms of firearm penetration. Unless you're getting free energy from nowhere this technology is laughable. Small fast things are only useful up to a certain point, and the sweet spot is just above 6mm caliber going at ~ 1 kps. Obviously faster is better, but if you're going faster at the expense of bullet diameter and mass then you're not improving your situation. If you get to lower the mass during acceleration and have it raised on arrival since it's no-longer in the low-mass field, then you're getting "energy from nowhere" and can use this technology to built perpetual motion machines. If the bullet conserves momentum by slowing once it's left the low mass fields and regained its mass, then there's no point doing it in the first place.



[quote]

Where did you even get that from?

[/quote]



I'm saying "they are common".



[quote]Except that the only 3 man team that you had seen is Shepard's squad?!?[/quote]



The three man squad that takes on endless waves of enemy mooks, yes. Good thing air support in the future solely consists of tiny gunships with pathetic armaments that are vulnerable to small arms fire. Otherwise Shepard might have been in trouble a few times



[quote]Are you suggesting that future wireless security will be unhackable?[/quote]



You ever studied computer security? Hacking on battlefield timescales should be impossible in any system not set up by a complete muppet. Simply by disabling wireless communications during gunfights they could make themselves 100% unhackable, for example. The degree to which everything in Mass Effect is easily hackable is quite amusing, see: Overlord DLC.



[quote]No, it's a setting in which machines absorb minerals from your body and use them in order to build mini-structures that turn you into a semi-robot.[/quote]



I don't suppose you've read Mass Effect: Evolution Issue 1.



[quote]You are whining about telepathy in a sci-fi setting[/quote]



I whine about telepathy in every setting, don't you worry.



[quote]

1) You claim to understand the asari nervous system somehow, okay[/quote]



The Asari nervous system can apparently facilitate wireless brain to brain communication, which is utterly absurd. It implies the ability to magically manipulate electromagnetism at arbitrary distances. Hard Scifi indeed!



[quote]hat's your point really, come on, explain why indoctrination shouldn't work.[/quote]



Err, because subliminal messages and infrasound can't be used to transmit information to someone, let alone compel them to do what you say? They *don't* work. If the reapers flew by wishing it really hard, would you be defending that too on the grounds that "you can't understand how reaper minds work, so maybe when they wish things it can come true"?



[quote]

You laugh to easily at something you didn't even read correctly[/quote]



Nice ME Wiki quote there. Here's one directly from the codex:



[quote]Reaper "indoctrination" is an insidious means of corrupting organic minds, "reprogramming" the brain through physical and psychological conditioning using electromagnetic fields, infrasonic and ultrasonic noise, and other subliminal methods. The Reaper's resulting control over the limbic system leaves the victim highly susceptible to its suggestions. [/quote]



Aka gibberish.



[quote]Okay, so you wouldn't whine about incombatible lip synching...[/quote]



No, I want them to speak alien languages and then have the translator spit out augmented reality subtitles, give sometimes flawed translations and only translate a sentance once it has been completely spoken, and sometimes retroactively adjusts the previous translation based on new context. I DEMAND REALISM!



That would actually be a really awesome thing ot have in a SciFi work, it would really add flavor and believability to the setting.





[quote]Is that rage I detect? [/quote]



Bitter? **** no. I think it's hilarious.

[Capeo]

@adam_grif



You're completely right on your're reading of the nonsense that is mass effect fields. It breaks every energy condition in physics. The disappearing mass has to be converted to energy, the energy levels would turn a spaceship into a quasar and there would be no way to reconstitute it after its voyage.



And to the folks who are invoke the whole "nobody could predict today's tech 100 years ago" thing. That's simply not true since the modern age of science. Everything we have today is predicated on the laws and theories that have been established in the last 150 years and the respective science fields have predicted the uses of discoveries from their inception. Bell, and anyone working the fields of electro magnetism, certainly wouldn't be shocked by the internet. They maybe surprised that technology and infrastructure grew so quickly but the concept is as old as knowing info could be transmitted electromagnetically.

[DessieB]

They mentioned in the codex that bullets aren't meant to penetrate at all, really. They are designed to shatter or "squash" on impact to transfer as much force as possible to the target.



Any penetration is just you bludgeoning them so hard that it breaks their skin, in reality what the mass accelerators are meant to do is smash something so hard it breaks.

[Legbiter]

I'm fine with the sci-fi in ME being squishy instead of hard. I can accept it at face value and play along.

[ObserverStatus]

Schneidend wrote...

adam_grif wrote...

There's no difference in the physics, but ME2 manages to push the biology silliness to a new level with the reaper goo.

Considering most reaper technology is beyond the characters' understanding, and EDI herself says she can't explain the goo, I'd say this has been successfully lampshaded/handwaved.

Well kudos to the reapers for figuring out how to turn genetic material (which normally looks like wet tissue paper) into a metallic building material, but ME2 still has no excuse for using "dextro-dna" and "dextro-proteins" interchangeably.

Modifié par bobobo878, 02 février 2011 - 06:23 .

[ObserverStatus]

Legbiter wrote...

I'm fine with the sci-fi in ME being squishy instead of hard. I can accept it at face value and play along.

So can the rest of us, but the point is that the science in Mass Effect makes it unworthy of a graduate level paper, not that it makes the game unplayable.

[SomeKindaEnigma]

I've been reading through these posts, and it seems like some people are taking my goal out of context. I don't wish to explore the "science" of mass affect fields or whatever, if I initially said that or implicated it I apologize, but rather what seems to be the absence of the notions of special/general relativity. for example, there is soooooo much one could criticize about the suicide mission at the supermassive black hole in the center of our galaxy. one of the simplest examples of what's wrong with that picture is that you cannot observe an object falling into a black hole, much less physically SEE the black hole itself, at least in a realistic time frame. when an object crosses into a black hole's schwarzschild radius, it takes an infinite amount of time in our frame of reference to actually see the object fall in (as the photons emitted by the object take an infinite amount of time to escape the "gravitational well" of the black hole). anyways, i'm just digressing now, but hopefully you get my point. the title of this thread is admittedly deceiving, but i hope this post sheds light on the fact that if I do choose special/general relativity in media in my topic, I will probably merely wish to highlight inaccuracies like what I mentioned above.

[Phaedon]

Neofelis Nebulosa wrote...

People should move their disputes somewhere else and not hijack this topic, period.

Fine taken to PMs.

However, I'll state this, so no one else is confused by this:

Conservation of energy/mass works in an isolated system. The only isolated system (and that's apparently questionable lately) is the universe. You disagree? Put a glass of water in your fridge.

Taddaaaaa...

Somehow it lost energy!

Energy and mass CAN (and probably will) be transferred to the enviroment.

Modifié par Phaedon, 02 février 2011 - 07:34 .

[SomeKindaEnigma]

Phaedon wrote...

Neofelis Nebulosa wrote...

People should move their disputes somewhere else and not hijack this topic, period.

Fine taken to PMs.

However, I'll state this, so no one else is confused by this:

Conservation of energy/mass works in an isolated system. The only isolated system (and that's apparently questionable lately) is the universe. You disagree? Put a glass of water in your fridge.

Taddaaaaa...

Somehow it lost energy!

Energy and mass CAN (and probably will) be transferred to the enviroment.

Not to add fuel to the fire in this argument, but Phaedon has a point here.  It is impossible to create a COMPLETELY isolated system (within the universe).  It's possible to make one where accounting for errors in calculations/observations becomes relatively insignificant, but you can never create one devoid of everything else in the universe. That's pretty much the story of physics, nothing will ever be 100% efficient, a system will never achieve a true Carnot cycle, you can never know BOTH the momentum and position of a particle with 100% accuracy, there's ALWAYS going to be outside forces affecting experiments.  

[cachx]

Everybody! change your game design hats for your science professor hats!

Can't really say anything other than wish the OP good luck. I always tried to somehow mix videogames with class assignments (But I studied computer engineering, so it was easier to sneak videogames in ).