83 réponses à ce sujet

[Ieldra]

daemiendrake wrote...
For Control: Odd note in my game i saved the Geth and Quarians. So with a large quantity of reaper enhanced geth one has pilots for truly long distance travel. With cryogenic stasis(certainly possible) and geth pilots long travel times mean less. Also the Geth provide a rather large boon to any and all future scientific research.

Also the asari are extremely long-lived. I've always wondered why there was no famous asari "around the galaxy" expedition. 

However, that long-distance FTL travel is possible was never the problem. I'd even say that trade of really exotic goods would probably continue. But for a cohesive galactic civilization, travel times in decades are too long.

Or are they? I wonder if my imagination is too limited. Can a cohesive civilization work under those conditions? What would it have to be like?

[FOX216BC]

Oh is this sim city 5? lol

[Arppis]

Well, if you blew up the Reapers, you should have some Reaper tech at your hands. So people can study it and rebuild the relays. And communications with other planets can be done by fixing the extranet connections.

[Ieldra]

Arppis wrote...
Well, if you blew up the Reapers, you should have some Reaper tech at your hands. So people can study it and rebuild the relays. And communications with other planets can be done by fixing the extranet connections.

You could salvage something from the Reapers, yes. In all endings, since there must be quite a bit of Reaper debris flying around. But as I said, I don't think it's in the spirit of the Destroy ending to use what amounts to Reaper technology, even if the knowledge could be salvaged. Also I rather think the circuits carrying that knowledge were fried by the Crucible.

As for rebuilding relays, see paragraph (8) in the OP. It's a massive undertaking. I wonder if it would even be feasible from a cost/effectiveness viewpoint. If it's impossible to drastically improve the speed of regular FTL and no other technology can be found, perhaps. But it would a very long time to get there.  

FTL Communication, btw, depends on the relays as well. The comm buoys use the relays as....well...relays.

Modifié par Ieldra2, 30 mars 2012 - 11:13 .

[Clumsy Astronaut]

Ieldra2 wrote...

Clumsy Astronaut wrote...I am curious as to the social aspect of synthesis. Would there be people who react adversely to these new upgrades or would they be accepted as the new norm? I am certain at least some people would want their old forms back.( I am thinking something along the lines of a new religios group almost who seek to bring about a return to organic life at any cost.) The reaction of the Geth would also be interesting.

Based on my Synthesis scenario, people would acquire a synthetic symbiont that without any input from the individual, does nothing but improve the immune system and slow aging. People are free to do nothing more with it. 
Of course some would go further than that, being opposed to it as a matter of principle. I guess there would be some religious splinter-groups attempting to reverse the change for themselves. But I don't think the majority would feel obligated to consider the feelings of people who would reject such benefits on grounds of some arbitrary notion of purity.  

It would be interesting if there was a Cerberus-esqeu group that was founded on the belief of organic purity. Perhaps kidnaping and experimenting on other biosynthetics in an attempt to find a way to return life to it's original. It would certainly be a plausible scenario, as it could operate undercover with discreet funding from major political and religious groups. I alsowondrr  if it would be possible to modify oneself to digest previously indigestible food (thinking of the Quarians and Turians and how it would solve food problems.)

Modifié par Clumsy Astronaut, 30 mars 2012 - 09:18 .

[jumpingkaede]

Really, even with the most optimistic bent everyone (certainly every human or Salarian) currently living would be dead by the time "galactic civilization" got up and running.

Simple logic really, not even much speculation. The entire galaxy is founded on mass relay technology. Individual and nearby systems most likely don't have the resources to sustain themselves. (Which is why the Alliance keeps pushing the envelope for new colonies).

If you wiped out interstate transport for all of us tomorrow, we'd probably be alright for a little bit. But quite a few states/countries would be in the toilet. Any island, certainly. Alaska, any country without its own sustainable agriculture... problems everywhere.

Modifié par jumpingkaede, 30 mars 2012 - 09:28 .

[Ieldra]

jumpingkaede wrote...
Really, even with the most optimistic bent everyone (certainly every human or Salarian) currently living would be dead by the time "galactic civilization" got up and running.

*In my Synthesis scenario everyone has a greatly extended life span.
*In Control it is unclear how damaged the relays are.
But in general, yes, you're right. Likely there will be no galaxy-spanning civilization for quite some time if mass relay technology remains the only way to travel long distances across the galaxy in a relatively short time.

Simple logic really, not even much speculation. The entire galaxy is founded on mass relay technology. Individual and nearby systems most likely don't have the resources to sustain themselves. (Which is why the Alliance keeps pushing the envelope for new colonies).

If you wiped out interstate transport for all of us tomorrow, we'd probably be alright for a little bit. But quite a few states/countries would be in the toilet. Any island, certainly. Alaska, any country without its own sustainable agriculture... problems everywhere.

As a rule, being dependent on interstellar commerce for food is a bad idea. I'd say that the first thing any new colony does is to create sustainable food production from local materials. Things like mining outposts would get the short stick, but habitable worlds will mostly be able to sustain themselves. 

[Clumsy Astronaut]

I am wondering about the effects of the dead reapers in the destroy ending. Would the massive amounts of debris and element zero from the dead reapers have an adverse affect on people? I could see a rise in the number of biotics, and harvesting the reaper's eezo seems like a good way to jump start any FTL research. The fact remains that you will have alot of metal smashing into earth, causing some decent damage though.

[Ieldra]

Clumsy Astronaut wrote...
I am wondering about the effects of the dead reapers in the destroy ending. Would the massive amounts of debris and element zero from the dead reapers have an adverse affect on people? I could see a rise in the number of biotics, and harvesting the reaper's eezo seems like a good way to jump start any FTL research. The fact remains that you will have alot of metal smashing into earth, causing some decent damage though.

Given the presentation, I think the Reapers will be destroyed in a non-explosive way. They will just drop dead. So no more flying Reaper debris than in the other endings. Some harvesting will definitely be going on, and there will be significantly more eezo from the dead Reapers available in the Destroy ending. Regular FTL tech will get a boost compared to the other endings, but rebuilding relays will not (see the paragraph in the OP). Control will get a jumpstart with rebuilding the relay network because of the CItadel and because the relays aren't completely destroyed, but regular FTL will remain less powerful. Synthesis will have the best chance to develop something completely new.    

[fpspind]

The earth becomes divided into racial zones and districts while galactic reparations are underway. The council is established on earth at least until such a time as travel can be arranged to other clusters again. If they didn't help due to curing the genophage, the salarians are not represented on the council and will not be when galactic society resumes its previous status. Instead the krogan gain a seat on the council for their efforts during the reaper invasion. By the time travel has been arranged earth is burnt out and humans go and establish eden prime as their homeworld. Instead of building a new citadel, a planet is decided upon for establishing the governing body of council space. And so life continues in the galaxy.

Just a little something I came up with. I am in no way trying to say this is what happens nor that I believe this is what happened - it's just a bit of a thought experiment as intended by the OP (btw good thread +1 to you).

[Ieldra]

Thanks. Some interesting details but I can't see Earth abandoned. With half of the population killed by the Reapers there's enough space for everyone. I can see Earth becoming the hub of a new galactic civilization since so many species are there. But it will take a long time to get there in most cases.

[Zolt51]

Good thread. Will try to post something nerdy and coherent after I get some sleep.

[Ieldra]

Bumping this to offset the determination of some people to imagine the worst possible outcomes of an already bad ending.

@all:
The endings are vague enough that everyone who says "This and that WILL be the local consequences of them" is wrong. Basically, if you can't imagine anything different than "everything goes supernova" then it's because on some level you don't want to.

I understand. The endings are so bad that the attempt to salvage something from them seems ridiculous. But since they're staying, that's all we can do.

Bioware wants the galaxy plunged into a dark age. I DO NOT WANT IT. I can't unmake it, but I can do my best to imagine a short dark age instead of a long one. If enough people think the same, the universe will look better. If we're serious about "Retaking Mass Effect", about taking ownership of a universe Bioware, by destroying it, has just lost any moral right to rule, then remake the world, damn it!

[Archereon]

Leldra...You do realize that life on Earth only survives in the Control ending right? There's been a series of threads on this topic, and the conclusion is: The wreckage of the Citadel is going to hit Earth at roughly 10 km/s with the energy of a 92 gigaton bomb. That's nowhere near the energy required to cause an ELE, but the release of element zero and other chemicals will poison Earth. Food chains break down, CO2 levels become toxic, everyone dies.

[Blarty]

My concern over timescales to build a relay is that the Crucible (yes different technology, but alien and massive nonetheless) is built within a very specific timeframe, assumptions would need to be made about the size of the Crucible fleet that accompanied it and whether any engineers, etc were left behind at whatever section of the galaxy was used to build it.

Secondly, I find it dubious that plans for the Conduit and other Mass Effect transport experiments would not be embedded in various Prothean archives, as part of a galactic seeding of data for the next cycle, in face of total annihilation - after all the knowledge of the Conduit's existence and the wipeout of the Prothean race was found on Eden Prime. Plus the fact that the Crucible plans just happened to be 'lying around' in the Mars Achives as a single copy detracts from the general consensus that the Protheans felt the Asari were to be the Prime race of this cycle not humans - why only hide the plans to save the galaxy from annihilation on the planet next to beings considered primitive. Multiple copies across multiple archives would be a far more sensible approach and one that would dove tail with the Mars archive and the Asari uplifting.

[Blarty]

Archereon wrote...

Leldra...You do realize that life on Earth only survives in the Control ending right? There's been a series of threads on this topic, and the conclusion is: The wreckage of the Citadel is going to hit Earth at roughly 10 km/s with the energy of a 92 gigaton bomb. That's nowhere near the energy required to cause an ELE, but the release of element zero and other chemicals will poison Earth. Food chains break down, CO2 levels become toxic, everyone dies.

This is a plausible outcome, but if you look carefully at the ditadel explosion, the Citadel is pointing away from the Earth and it's vanes explode at the central nexus and move outwards away from the crucible across the front of the Earth, and whilst significant debris will fall, the Citadel has to be in sufficiently near orbit as to be under the gravitational influence of Earth, with the debris traveling at a speed slow enough to have it's trajectory overcome by gravity?

[UpLiftingVanguard]

An interesting read, seems to be all plausible following the ending.
Cheers Ieldra

[a.m.p]

Finally got time to read this and I really like what I'm reading and I like your approach to the problem. I'm not giving up on mass effect because of the broken ending either.

Some of the same general ideas have been vaguely wandering my brain since 20 minutes after finishing the game. (I picked destroy and I did cure the genophage so in my timeline it'll get interesting). Yesterday's debate about getting the fleets home cleared up a lot too.

But! I'm definitely not yet at the point of making peace with the current endings, in fact I'm going to wait till PAX and see what happens there. If as it's most likely, we get the dreaded clarifications about how dark exactly that dark age is, I'm going to 1) delete stargazer from the game folder 2)sit down and organize those ideas into something comprehensive and 3)come back here.

Because if we are indeed stuck with the current endings, a big world-rebuilding project is right what the doctor ordered. Keeping all those scenarios in one place is a great idea too.

Until then, allow me to link you this thread by Tov01, he's been doing pretty much the same in great detail.

Also, where does the idea of QEC needing refueling come from? I keep stumbling into it in the forums but I've never seen any such info in the games.

Modifié par a.m.p, 04 avril 2012 - 03:57 .

[ahandsomeshark]

This actually sounds like it could be the makings of a decent console open world strategy/action game.

has there ever been one?

[Sparrowhawke]

With regards to the rebuilding of the relays: The protheans were an advanced civilization, but not advanced beyond the understanding of current civilization. Speculating, I'd say that it is entirely possible (within a century) to produce an analogue to the conduit on Illos. The alliance of races built the crucible - a technological task the Prothean Empire failed to accomplish.

In addition, the relays are "destroyed" but not obliterated as they were in Arrival. We clearly see massive components drifting in different directions. If they were collected and studied by the crucible team (we now have the best scientific minds in galactic history in one spot) I imagine relay tech would become theoretically viable (If not reproducible) within a couple decades.

Look at pre-war civilization vs. Postwar civilization in the 20th century. Medical, military and general technological advancement took a huge leap forward. This was not despite the massive destruction, but in part because of it. Nagasaki, Berlin...These places were near destroyed in WWII and are now gorgeous cities with robust economies.

The advantage now is that we are no longer limited by the reaper relay system, which guided exploration and created barriers to our exploration of those "galaxies" the catalyst mentions. If anything, post-invasion we are now unlimited in our potential for galactic exploration - this fits in well with the stargazer speech.

[Ieldra]

Archereon wrote...
Leldra...You do realize that life on Earth only survives in the Control ending right? There's been a series of threads on this topic, and the conclusion is: The wreckage of the Citadel is going to hit Earth at roughly 10 km/s with the energy of a 92 gigaton bomb. That's nowhere near the energy required to cause an ELE, but the release of element zero and other chemicals will poison Earth. Food chains break down, CO2 levels become toxic, everyone dies.

This is exactly the kind of thinking I'm fighting against. Why do you WANT to find reasons that everything is dead? It's just as likely the wreckage stays in orbit for long enough to be cleared away. Actually, if something explodes in space the original vector of its movement will still influence where the parts go. Also it's only the centre of the Citadel which explodes, the ward arms stay in place and will retain their original vector of orbital movement.

You see, as opposed to you, I want to find plausible reasons why the picture may look good, all things considered. As I said, I can't unmake the relay explosions, and it would be naive to assume that rebuilding won't be a huge challenge. Maybe there will be a million deaths more because of starvation and eezo exposure. But you can put a positive spin on things because unless something is extremely implausible, you can simply STATE that things look better and then find reasons why. It is, btw, how the writing process usually works - the author first determines where the story is to go, and then finds plausible reasons why it should go that way.

So, yes, in the timeline I'm trying to create, things look better because I - and all those who participate - want them to look better, and all you need to do to see my point of view is to ask yourself: do you want to add more bleakness to an already depressing ending, or do you want to make the best of it.

In the fight against Bioware's endings, I say we go from depressed to defiant. We retake the universe we love by recreating it. As alive and vibrant as we can make it given the undeniable facts of the endings. Bioware wants to plunge the galaxy into a dark age? I say this dark age will be short. It will be because we can make it so.

Modifié par Ieldra2, 04 avril 2012 - 05:08 .

[Ieldra]

a.m.p wrote...
But! I'm definitely not yet at the point of making peace with the current endings, in fact I'm going to wait till PAX and see what happens there. If as it's most likely, we get the dreaded clarifications about how dark exactly that dark age is, I'm going to 1) delete stargazer from the game folder 2)sit down and organize those ideas into something comprehensive and 3)come back here.

If they clarify things to make things even more depressing, I'm going to ignore the clarifications. Because that would be the proof that they are determined to crush their fans emotionally as much as they can. Apart from that, I'm not making peace with the endings, but I think we won't get a new version that significantly changes the big picture.

Until then, allow me to link you this thread by Tov01, he's been doing pretty much the same in great detail.

Thank you for the link. Subscribed.

Also, where does the idea of QEC needing refueling come from? I keep stumbling into it in the forums but I've never seen any such info in the games.

It's an implication of the way QE devices work. They need entangled pairs of particles to work. Those pairs are created by separating pairs of particles with indeterminate quantum states and putting each one one end of the line. That's why QE devices are strictly point-to-point. For every bit of information that goes through the QE device, one such particle attains a determined quantum state and becomes useless for further transmission

Modifié par Ieldra2, 04 avril 2012 - 05:19 .

[Ieldra]

@Blarty et al. about rebuilding relays:

It's not a problem of knowledge. I think the knowledge exists, at least to build small relays like the Conduit. The problem is that the energy equivalent of a star is bound up in a large mass relay, as implied by Arrival. To build one is an absolutely huge undertaking. The question is if it's feasible to put all of a developed worlds resources into building one for a century or two, or more promising to refine existing FTL technology or to find something completely new. In the end, it's a decision any world-builder has to make. There's no "most plausible" extrapolation, it must be done by fiat.

This is the reason why I proposed different scenarios for the different endings - refine existing FTL for Destroy, rebuild relays for Control, find something completely new for Synthesis, for no better reason than I think that would be in the spirit of these endings.

[ahandsomeshark]

to me I could deal with having to rebuild during a galatic dark age if 1. my shepard was alive and he and his LI were happy, and Tali (and I guess Garrus) got back to Rannoch. Basically I'd be fine with no relays and technological set backs if I knew my squad was happy and were coping with it. At this point I'd like to see a DA:O type game where you pick a species and class.

[Ieldra]

ahandsomeshark wrote...
to me I could deal with having to rebuild during a galatic dark age if 1. my shepard was alive and he and his LI were happy, and Tali (and I guess Garrus) got back to Rannoch. Basically I'd be fine with no relays and technological set backs if I knew my squad was happy and were coping with it. At this point I'd like to see a DA:O type game where you pick a species and class.

How characters fit into the scenarios is in the realm of fan fiction. We could never agree on that anyway. Apart from that, it is exactly the dark age I take issue with. It is the stated goal of this project to find a plausible way to limit the technological setback to the absolute minimum. For the same reason, I don't propose any interpretation for what happens with the Normandy.

My personal headcanon has Shepard's mind re-coalescing after the Synthesis and finding Miranda as he promised. As a highly personal preference, I won't try to bring that here, because this is an attempt to get a fundament people can agree about.