With the end of ME3, Bioware plunged the galaxy into a dark age where galactic civilization is fragmented. I don't want it. I'm sure there are quite a few others who don't want it. We can't make it go away, but we can try to keep it short. This is an attempt to provide a plausible framework for the rebuilding of galactic civilization in a reasonable timeframe for each of the three "Earth is OK" endings. Everyone is invited to participate.
Other threads dealing with similar problems:
MyChemicalBromance's "We are not as primitive as you think.
MyChemicalBromance's The four problems with rebuilding galactic civlization.
(to be extended)
Proposed ground rules:
(1) Put a positive spin on things.
We want to get out of the dark age, not wallow in it. Most intelligent organic life in the galaxy destroyed because of the relay explosions? Doesn't happen, the Crucible didn't work that way. Dextro-protein-based species starving? Find a way around it (see below for an example).
(2) All endings are good endings (as far as any one can be considered good).
Don't try to force a negative interpretation of endings you don't like. Instead put a positive spin on endings you do like.
(3) Keep characters out of things.
This is worldbuilding not fanfic. Who does what isn't important, only that it's done, and players' endgame scenarios are too different in that regard anyway.
(4) No Reaper actions.
The Reapers are either dead or gone. In Control and Synthesis, they may have left a few goodies behind, but I don't think it's in the spirit of the story that just ended to posit something like "The Reapers help rebuilding the mass relays".
Now into the details....
Solutions to problems common to all of the three "good" endings:
(1) The planet in the stargazer epilogue
....is a lost colony. The Normandy can't be the only ship whose crew observed what happened and got caught in-transit. Anyway, whether you think it's the same planet the Normandy stranded on or not, it's just one planet. It says nothing about how the rest of the galaxy recovered from the war. Otherwise, the fate of the Normandy is not a topic we're dealing with here.
(2) The state of Earth
Most of Earth's big cities will be depopulated. Many will lie in ruins. However, there's no reason to assume they'll all lie in ruins, because it's the fighting that does the damage. As Anderson said, the resistance abandoned the cities early since the Reaper presence there was too strong. Which means that quite a bit of Earth's urban infrastructure will be largely intact or easily repaired. The Reapers weren't interested in destroying infrastructure, they were after people. Also the rural areas, which produce most of the food, will likely remain mostly intact.
Earth's population will have dropped by a few billion people, and while that's a sad thing, it also means there is enough space for the survivors and the people of the allied fleet. See below for more about that
(3) Turians and quarians and dextro-food.
Food problems? Quarian liveships will be able to provide food as they always did. I'd think they could be convinced to share with the turians. Apart from that, Dextro-aminoacids shouldn't be that hard to produce, even in industrial quantities. There will be some shortages - there always are after a war - but the problem will be surmountable.
(4) Communication
There will be no instant cutoff of galaxy-wide communication. Why? QE devices. Many ships will have them and some will exist on Earth, too. While refueling them will be impossible for the foreseeable future, many of the non-humans and colonials will be able to call home, tell the story of what happened in the Sol System and be told what happened in other places. Vidcomm will be restricted since that uses too much bandwidth (bandwidth is one-time for QE devices), telegram-style messages will remain possible for some time, depending on how strictly the restrictions are enforced.
The people in the Sol System will probably have the most complete picture of what happened around the galaxy it is possible to have under these circumstances.
(5) Star travel, short-term perspective
Non-relay FTL still works (the line about Destroying destroying "most of the technology you rely on" is restricted to low-EMS endings. We are not talking about those here). A "typical" travelling speed is 12ly/day (source: ME:Revelation). Logistics problems are addressed as follows:
(1) Eezo makes up the drive cores and is not consumed as "fuel". Source: Codex. There is mention of ships using the same core for two decades and not mention at all of attrition.
(2) Fuel: starship thrusters use antiproton drives (combat only) and fusion torches. Antiproton drives will most likely be not viable for long-range expeditions because antimatter production needs gigantic facilities. Fusion torches need only helium-3, though, which can be found at any gas giant and collected using a refinery ship.
(3) Drive core discharge: can be done at any gas giant or any other celestial body with a magnetic field. Given the star density around Sol (which is low), there are over 200 stars within the range of the two-day trip a starship can travel without recharging. Since by current estimation, about 40% of all stars have planets and most planets are gas giants, this should present no problem at all.
(4) Food: a long-range expedition fleet would need to be accompanied by a liveship-analogue. The quarians can build them, so others can, too.
The Sol system is in an area with low stellar density, which is about 0.003 stars per cubic light year. That *still* means there are more than 2500 star systems within a range of a 5-day voyage. Since most stars have planets and most planets are gas giants, that means there are plenty of opportunities for drive discharge, refueling and restocking raw materials for repair.
That way, a long range expedition fleet can sustain itself from resources found along the way and travel the galaxy. Though it would take at least 23 years to cross the galaxy.
(I would also remind everyone that because of Newton's first law, the fuel needed by a ship is independent from the distance travelled. Acceleration and deceleration are the limiting factors. There would still be some continuous fuel consumption to maintain the ME core charge and for life support, but not for propulsion. The implementation in the games is just game mechanics)
(6) Resettling our allies. Perspectives for going home.
The only ally with an immediate prospect of going home are the quarians (I wonder if the writers ever thought of how cruel it is to deprive them of a homeworld they just regained for another 30 years). Mid-term, there may be some asari or krogan who would want to put together a long-range expedition fleet (see above) and go home). Nonetheless, I'm going to assume that most of the allies will be stuck in the local area or decide to stay instead of taking a 30-year trek. So what are we to do with them? You know, the idea of settling, say, the krogan, on Earth is..er....unsettling. Read on...
(7) New worlds? They exist. They can be reached.
Wait.....Isn't it a fact that there aren't any habitable worlds but Earth in the local cluster? Not so fast. The fact is that there aren't any such worlds in a short distance from where the Sol relay was. We are never given travel times, but the sequence of events throughout the games suggest that it can't take more than a few days to travel from a relay to the most remote world in a "cluster" (which isn't really a star cluster, just an area named for convenience).
Now suppose we extend the time we're willing to travel from...hmm....five days to 30 days. Never thought of that? That's how the relays made galactic civilization decadent. 30 days of typical FTL means 360 light-years.....
Star density around Sol is about 0.003 stars per cubic light year. This is LOW, most regions of the galaxy are more densely populated. That means, given a travel speed of 12ly/day, that there are more than half a million stars in reach of a one-month trip, with about 5% of them being G-type stars and another 7% K-type stars. Almost all stars have planets. Plenty of places to refuel, restock raw materials and discharge drives, and it's quite possible there are a few dozen habitable worlds orbiting some of those 70000+ candidate stars.
(8) Rebuilding relays:
Rebuilding a mass relay is a massive undertaking. I would think that it would take a developed world about a century or more, if it's possible at all. Knowledge is not a problem, resources are. Remember, the energy equivalent of a star is bound up in a relay. You could posit it needs a civilization of type II on the Kardashev scale to build a relay. None of the civilizations in the ME universe - even pre-apocalypse ones - are of that type with the possible exception of the geth. I would posit that in the Destroy endings, rebuilding relays is not viable for the foreseeable future, in Control, the relays are only damaged so they may be repaired, and in Synthesis it might be possible that the post-Synthesis civilization acquires the capability to build on that scale rather fast. The question is will they need it or will they find another way. Synthesis is something of a wild card.
Mid-term effects of the final choice on star travel and rebuilding galactic civilization:
Here I'm going into full speculation mode:
Destroy:
I don't think it is in the spirit of the Destroy ending to posit that they'll just rebuild the relays at some point. Instead, I'd propose that the existing technology for FTL travel will be refined to increase its speed by increments, gradually increasing the size of a possible cohesive civilization throughout the centuries. The same will happen with most surviving developed worlds of the pre-Disaster civilization, like Sur'kesh. Contact between the different spheres will exist, since there will always be people who'd risk decade-long travels if they can be reasonably certain there's a habitable place at the other end. Eventually, the different spheres will reconnect to have common "borders". What happens then is anyone's guess.
Control:
I think the best possible setup for Control scenarios is to assume that the relays are damaged and nonfunctional for the foreseeable future but not destroyed (several threads have hinted at this as a possible interpretation of the differences in the ending cutscenes). After a functional infrastructure has been restored, the surviving developed worlds will this focus their efforts on repairing the relays. Eventually, the civilization that emerges from this scenario will look very similar to the one destroyed by the Crucible. It is also possible that something valuable in terms of technology or knowledge will be salvaged from the Reaper debris flying around in this scenario.
Synthesis:
This is something of a wild card. I'd say it would be in the spirit of this ending to have things go into new and totally unexpected, even exotic directions. In my thread on the Synthesis ending, I have proposed some effects on individuals, but the big picture has largely been ignored. How would a galactic civilization emerge from the Synthesis which is still recognizably "Mass Effect" but radically different from those emerging from the other two scenarios? The legacy of the Old Machines (who aren't Reapers anymore in this scenario) might come into play in unexpected ways. Whatever they left behind may still be "live", but not hostile any more.
Here's what I've come up with regarding new methods of FTL travel that are still noticeably "Mass Effect":
"Mass Effect-initiated self-affecting FTL jump technology":
Principles and limitations:
The general principle for technology within my scenario was "decentralized technology, small is more effective". No more should long-range FTL depend on giant structures that would take a century to build. It was also my goal to provide a plausible incentive towards smaller ships and miniaturization of ship components.. Fortunately, the ME lore provides me with just the right tools (see below).
So that means no more mass-relay-like structures. Ships will have their own built-in long-range FTL capability. But since unlimited long-range FTL is as boring as no long-range FTL is depressing, there need to be limitations.
As a third principle, the new technology should be based on eezo and the "mass effect" because otherwise it wouldn't be Mass Effect, right?
Why not rebuild mass relays?
My proposal uses relay-like technology, so you could ask why not rebuild relays in the first place? I think that the primary problem with rebuilding relays is not knowledge but resources. The energy equivalent of a star's is bound up in a large mass relay. Such a thing would take centuries to build - the expenditure of resources is so immense that there is a big pressure to find alternative solutions.
How it works:
Relay-like functionality in starships:
I propose that it is possible to construct ME core variants for starships that let them create their own "mass-free corridors" (I'm using the lore in full acknowledgement of the fact that this makes no scientific sense). This would effectly be like carrying your own mass relay with you. Miniaturized relay functionality is known since the discovery of the Conduit, and the principles of relay construction are likely well-known as well, or Aethyta couldn't have proposed building new ones in ME2.
Limitation: endpoint only near stars of a minimum size
No artificial structures are needed at the endpoint of an FTL jump, but still you can't just go anywhere. The endpoint of your jump must be at a gravity gradient of a certain minimum steepness. I.e. near a star of a certain minimum mass. In addition, the star must be dense enough because otherwise you'd end up in the star rather than around it.
Above that minimum mass, any increase in the target's mass will make it reachable from further away. Pulsars and neutron stars make great long-distance targets (i.e. strategic choke points) but also pose some danger to ships because of their tidal effects.
This will create regions of the galaxy which are easier to travel to than others. Regions with mostly old stars (which are small) will be hard to reach, the dense regions of the spiral arms with many hot young stars will be easy to reach. As an example, if the minimum size is the mass of an A1 main sequence star, there will be one star in the solar neighbourhood which can be reached with a long-range jump. The remaining 8ly from Sirius to Sol would have to be traveled using "standard" FTL.
Limitation: ship size
According to the Codex, the required mass for the mass effect core of a ship increases exponentially to its size and its speed. This has a consequence I don't think anyone has thought through yet: There is a theoretical maximum to the size of an FTL-capable starship. Why? Well, because the exponential formula means that if you increase the ships's mass further and further, you inevitably reach a point where the mass of the ME core required to put the ship into FTL becomes greater than the ship's mass!
WIth "standard" FTL, this obviously isn't much of a limitation, otherwise ships like the Destiny Ascension couldn't exist. But suppose that using the new FTL jump technology, the requirements for the ME core are far more restrictive. Just by increasing the basis of the exponential formula, you could arrive at a scenario where the ME cores of a fighter-sized craft must have the mass of the fully loaded ship. Ships even slightly bigger just couldn't be built with long-range FTL capability. I propose that the theoretical maximum for the mass of a FTL jump-capable starship lies around the mass of a fully loaded fighter craft.
Consequences for economics and logistics:
The obvious consequences of such a scenario as easy to see: large ships will be restricted to non-jump "standard" FTL and take a very long time - months or years - to reach distant destinations. This will limit colonization and trade of bulk goods. Colonies will have to be more self-sufficient. On the other hand, trade of valuable low-weight goods will flourish, and communication is easy. Dedicated courier ships, perhaps even in the form of automated drones, will carry news and mail easily over long distances, QE devices can be refueled easily to that galactic civilization is held together. Something like a galaxy-wide extranet will take some time to create because of the expense of QE devices which are the only available way for long-distance instant communcation, but it's by no means impossible.
Individuals and small groups of people will be comparatively mobile, depending on how expensive the ME cores for small starships are. There will be an extreme pressure towards miniaturization of starship components, since the exponential formula means that very small ships are significantly cheaper to build and to operate.
All right, I think this is a good jumpoff point. Now it's everyone else's turn.
Modifié par Ieldra2, 29 avril 2012 - 10:02 .
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