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[a.m.p]

There has been a lot of debate on what the distances between the homeworlds are and how long it would take to get there, now that the relays are down (provided they did not go supernova).

The in-game map isn't exactly made for distance measuring, and I haven't been able to find anything that looks like an accurate galaxy map, so I decided to make one. It's here. UPDATE: Well, now it's updated with some calibrations.

And here is the spreadsheet with the coordinates I used. The data was extracted by staring intently at the screen.

EDIT: Since the announcement of the Extended Cut DLC, Bioware has been dropping hints, that nobody actually starves, Shepard gets to reunite with the crew and even rebuilding Mass Relays is completely likely.
While I am completely is favor of this, if we stick with existing lore, before any long range FTL is to be attempted a number of very serious engineering issues arise. These should not be completely glossed over in the EC, lest there be even more confusion.

The galaxy relied on the relays not because it was lazy and didn't bother doing research, but because cross-cluster FTL travel is a colossal undertaking, much more so with Earth and the other homeworlds in ruin.

This thread is a pretty substantial discussion of said issues.

Recommended reading on the subject:
1) Optimism through Math: The Galaxy is within Reach   
2) The Omega 4 Relay: Anomaly or Hint?
3) The Four Problems with Rebuilding Galactic Civilization
4) We are not as primitive as you may think. (Possible solutions to Problem 3 and Problem 4)
all by MyChemicalBromance, whose research skills I salute.


----------------------------------------------------------- Here are speculations --------------------------------------------------------------

According to my data the distances and FTL travel times at 12 ly/day without any stops and in a straight line between homeworlds are as follows:

                               Distance from Sol (ly)        FTL travel time (years)
Sur'Kesh                          9504                                    2,2
Tuchanka                       16359                                   3,7
Palaven                           17468                                  4
Thessia                           30716                                  7,0
Rannoch                         64433                                  14,7


UPDATE.
There were lots of speculations in the thread about the viability of such a journey and a lot of very good points both for and against it were brought up. I went through the thread and compiled a summary.

I should probably point out that I am assuming the relays did not go supernova. Nor did the colorful spacemagic destroy all technology. You may interpret the endings like this but I’m pretty sure that was not what Bioware meant.

Before any kind of inter-cluster FTL travel can be achieved a number of serious engineering problems arise.

1.    Fuel
a)   It has been established that conventional FTL drives require fuel in the form of Helium-3. Any fleets travelling long distances will have to regularly refuel. In game we use fuel depots (or wreckage of them) to do that. Outside the explored clusters there are no fuel depots.
[quote]Orthodox Infidel wrote...
helium-3 is constantly touted throughout the codex as an interstellar fuel, and there's LOADS of it in Saturn's atmosphere that can be scooped up. [/quote]
   The question then arises whether and how we can collect helium-3 from gas giants directly.
Point:
[quote]Zolt51 wrote: The Quarians have been mobile-harvesting for centuries. [/quote]
Counterpoint
[quote]The Angry One wrote:
You do realise that the Quarians have relied on *barter* to gain supplies for their ships?
Their entire society is built around gaining resources from elsewhere, a Quarian upon coming of age must leave the fleet and find something of value before returning.[/quote]
c)   If we can manage that problem, the next question is how much do we really need and how exactly the fuel is used.
[quote]Orthodox Infidel worte:
Normandy has a fusion plant. It's never mentioned as being a novel part of the ship, so it's safe to assume that building fusion plants is normal and easy.[/quote]
[quote]hippanda wrote:
There's direct evidence that [the mass effect field] requires fuel to maintian. You have to pass a current through the eezo to generate the field (and continue doing so to maintain it). The strength of the field is proportional to the strength of the current (stronger mass effect fields being necessary to reduce the mass of more massive ships and allow them to FTL travel). [/quote]

2.    Discharging the core.
That at least is clearly defined in the codex.
[quote]hwf wrote: Core discharge requires orbit around a body with an active and powerful magnetosphere.
That or landing on a smaller body.[/quote]
On the other hand we have some dead reapers to study, who managed in two years to get all the way from dark space to the galaxy using their FTL drives. The turians managed to reverse-engineer the Thanix cannon. If the survivors have access to a few more or less intact reaper drive cores their technology could be studied and eventually replicated. Until then at least once every few days the traveling ships would have to find a planet with a magnetosphere.
Which brings us to…

3.    Navigation
By the time of ME3 something like 1% of the galaxy is actually explored. The rest are unknown territories. The density of stars is uneven, there are regions with few systems far apart outside the explored clusters. How do we plot a course that will regularly bring us to a system with a gas giant to refuel and discharge the core.
I would argue, that is one of the smaller issues. Present day astrophysical equipment is capable of registering planets (most of them gas giants) in nearby star systems.
[quote]Orthodox Infidel worte...
They don't even need to explore that much more of the galaxy; they just need to use a telescope and predict where the major objects in their path are going to be once you correct for time lag. Not hard, especially considering they need to stop every other day anyway.[/quote]
On the other hand
[quote]The Angry One worte...
There are a lot of systems without gas giants too. I don't know how realistic that is for actual solar system formation given astronomers tend to find a lot of gas giants, but in the ME universe that's how it is.[/quote]


4.    Food and maintenance
a)   Any journey of this length requires food reserves and maintenance for the ships. If the quarians still have their lifeships ironically they are the ones who will be least affected by this problem, their fleet is already specialized for long space travel.

Counterpoint:
[quote]The Angry One wrote...
I'm saying that without external supplies their infrastructure will eventually go belly up.[/quote]
Counter-counterpoint:
[quote]Zolt51 worte...
their ships are running with much smaller crews than usual: they left all the civilians on Rannoch. If they squeeze on the best ships and scrap the others for parts they'll have plenty[/quote]
   Another possible solution: Cryonics.
[quote]Orthodox Infidel wrote...
I'm fond of pointing out that they established right in the first game that ships have cryonic sleep technology built into them as standard equipment. That would be one way to solve the "food" and "boredom" problems simultaneously. [/quote]
I checked the ME1 codex about those SR1 ‘sleeper pods’. It does not say whether they are cryonic or not. Regardless of that, as Orthodox Infidel pointed out we have the prison ship Purgatory that was definitely equipped with cryonics. The technology exists. Whether it is already on some ships or needs to be installed is up for debate.

Now to tangentially related problems.

5.    Communication.
All conventional communication is down with the relays. Presumably QEC is not affected by whatever flavor of spacemagic you choose. Problem with QEC is we don’t really know where and how many pairs they have. All we know for sure is that the Normandy had a connection to Earth and so did Hackett. Maybe there are a few on every homeworld. Maybe more. Maybe much less.

6.    Indoctrination.
Another purely speculative topic. If we chose destroy we get tons of dead intact reapers everywhere. If we choose another option there are still a few that the fleet killed in the battle. Either way with the relay network down the survivors will definitely want to study that tech. But we know that even a derelict reaper managed to indoctrinate Cerberus staff. To that I say – it’s high time someone figured out a way to work with reaper tech without melting one’s brains. With reasonable precautions it shouldn’t be impossible to do.

7.    Citadel explosion
Two of the three endings feature a colorfully exploding citadel in low Earth orbit. I’m not going into details, instead I’ll reference this thread where a lot of people were running numbers on the topic. Short version: if we take the cutscene literally, things do not look promising for poor old Earth. But I believe that is another instance of the developers not really meaning to imply such devastating consequences.
Needless to say, for any of the above solutions to be viable we need Earth to survive.

UPDATE 2: on page 10 of this thread:

[quote]Orthodox Infidel wrote...

There was cut content from Lair of the Shadow Broker that described a trip Samara took from Salarian space to the Sol system and back when she was part of a survey ship in her relative youth. The Captain of said voyage said it would be a 4 year trip, and brought provisions for 10.

Content is here: http://masseffect.wi...ossiers:_Samara

I started a thread on it because I couldn't find this one. It's here:
http://social.biowar.../index/11094661[/quote]

--------------------------------------------------------- End of speculations ---------------------------------------------------------------------

Now all of the above (except the thing with the citadel) are practical problems that could as demonstrated, potentially be solved using existing in-game lore. The stories that attempting to solve them would generate have in my opinion a lot of potential.
It’s up to the writers. It’s their universe and if they say it'll be a 10000 year long dark age, then it’s dark age. But if they choose to try and rebuild it all they have to do is give definitive answers to questions like the ones raised here and keep writing.

Main point of this:
Dear Bioware, you don't have to completely obliterate galactic civilization to the point of turning Shepard into a myth. If you are going for clarification after all, please don't do another stargazer. The universe is still salvageable.

This space is reserved for a thank you Bioware if it turns out they decide to save the universe after all. And handle it carefully.

Retconning starkid and his spacemagic out of existence still would be a better choice of course.

Modifié par a.m.p, 24 avril 2012 - 06:17 .

[Bradagan]

I love the thought you've put into this. Good job sir.

[Asnine112]

You're also assuming straight line distances I presume?

Can't travel through the vast majority of the galactic core

[Bleachrude]

We never get an indication of how long refueling/restocking would take but even if you go with a 3 for 1, the only ones REALLY screwed are the quarians who ironically are best suited for such a trip ANYWAY.

[jmaster888]

Asnine112 wrote...

You're also assuming straight line distances I presume?

Can't travel through the vast majority of the galactic core

That isn't a big problem if you look on the map. If you set a straight line between earth and the homeworlds listed in the op you'll see that that line doesn't hit the galactic core. ofcourse there are other problems for example black holes that might be in the way. I think the quarians are the most ****ed up since they have to travel a vast distance for Rannoch.
Edit: C'mon am I not even allowed to say the f word. I consider it a block on my freedom of speech.

Modifié par jmaster888, 03 avril 2012 - 01:47 .

[Orthodox Infidel]

Asnine112 wrote...

You're also assuming straight line distances I presume?

Can't travel through the vast majority of the galactic core

Did you look at his map? None of the destinations require a direct path through the galactic core.

[Mannie89]

*slow clap*

[StartOrange]

Food supply is more of an issue for all that time.

The geth would probably survive at least...

[Baronesa]

Really like the thought you put in all this.


As others mentioned, cant really move in straight lines, and those times are asuming a constant travel time non stop, you should probably get those time x3 or x4 to account for repairs/refuels/etc

[BobbyDylan]

While I have to confess (if this is acurate) it is re-assuing. However, this is assuming that the races already embroiled on a nigh hopless war brought >2 years worth of supplies with them.

Given how easily it was for a ship to resuply with the relays intact, I doubt it's standard proceedure and that's before supply lines became straned.

[Lmaoboat]

There's also a good chance that there's expanses of empty space to large to be crossed.

Modifié par Lmaoboat, 03 avril 2012 - 01:49 .

[Baine10]

So, if you went with synthesis or control, they're all dead and done for?

Assuming, then, you went for destroy, I don't see why they can't salvage the reaper-tech to get them home easily.

Which then leaves the problem of sustenance.

[xxLDZxx]

Was not the dead reaper Indoctrinating ppl in ME2?
And if you say chose destroy option why are the reaper cores still working?

Modifié par xxLDZxx, 03 avril 2012 - 01:49 .

[TranceOrphen]

FTL engines don't fire if there is anything in the path of the calculated route, so objects in the way shouldn't be a problem for the initial jump. However, normal FTL travel at those distances take years (as pointed out by the OP), so drifting celestial objects may indeed be a problem.
As pointed out by the codex, it is almost impossible to scan ahead of you when travelling at FTL so I imagine as a safety precaution, the FTL operator or pilot may need to drop out of FTL regularly and in proven marked safe areas (such as already discovered systems) to discharge and scan the route for any new unknowns.

[pistolols]

With control choice the reapers could easily be used as transport vessels.

[Vaktathi]

a.m.p wrote...

There has been a lot of debate on what the distances between the homeworlds are and how long it would take to get there, now that the relays are down (provided they did not go supernova).

The in-game map isn't exaclty made for distance measuring, and I haven't been able to find anything that looks like an accurate galaxy map, so I decided to make one. It's here.

And here is the spreadsheet with the coordinates I used. The data was extracted by staring intently at the screen.

I have most probably missed some clusters because I do not at this point have ME1 and ME2 with all DLC installed. If I did, please point them out, I'll fix it.

Also if any of you sneaky data miners know how to extract the galaxy map coordinates from the game itself, I'd be happy to hear that.

It’s worth to point out that according to this data the distances and FTL travel times at 12 ly/day between homeworlds are as follows:

                               Distance from Sol (ly)        FTL travel time (years)
Sur'Kesh                          9504                                    2,2
Tuchanka                       16359                                   3,7
Palaven                           17468                                  4
Thessia                           28167                                  6,4
Rannoch                         64433                                  14,7

And yes, I know about fuel and discharging the core. In my ending there are lots of very dead reapers with cores that don’t need to be discharged scattered all over the place. They're working on it.
And I'm not giving up on Mass Effect because of one broken ending.

The Quarrians and Geth may be allright, but did the Turians, Asari, Salarians, Elcor, Volus, Batarians, etc all bring enough food for multi-year journeys? That's a long 6.4 years back to Thessia with only the food they brought with them to Sol for a battle they all figured would be relatively short one way or the other.

[Orthodox Infidel]

Baronesa wrote...

Really like the thought you put in all this.


As others mentioned, cant really move in straight lines, and those times are asuming a constant travel time non stop, you should probably get those time x3 or x4 to account for repairs/refuels/etc

Are they?

I know that's what the math assumes, but the "12 ly/day" number comes from a comment that Ashley made about an actual trip she took that required "a day." It was under "normal" conditions and with infrastructure to back it up, but her statement could include all of those things in it the same way I might say that a flight from Boston to Seattle took a day even though most of the day was spent waiting around in Chicago O'Hare Airport for a connecting flight.

I doubt that ships could do a lot more than 12 ly in a 24 hour period, but I doubt that they're really going to be going much slower either when you consider it's a one-way trip.

[Asnine112]

Orthodox Infidel wrote...

Asnine112 wrote...

You're also assuming straight line distances I presume?

Can't travel through the vast majority of the galactic core

Did you look at his map? None of the destinations require a direct path through the galactic core.

1) The galactic "core" is quite large. In fact, the vast majority of the stars of the galaxy are located in the core.

2) No, I can't see the map because the website it is hosted at is blocked where I'm at

edit: not to mention that it's stated that they've only explored less than 1% of the galaxy. Can't FTL jump blindly.

Modifié par Asnine112, 03 avril 2012 - 02:00 .

[Alez Zinai]

If i remember correctly Shepard gets from Ilos to Citadel by mass relay build by protheans, so if combined forces built Crucible - then pehaps they can build mass relay relativly fast (1-5 years)

[a.m.p]

Wow, that's a lot of feedback. Thanks everyone.

About the fuel, the drive cores, the food, the safety precautions, the route not being a straight line, thus doubling or tripling travel time. All of these are engineering problems. And if the writers so choose, they can have these problems solved one way or the other.

So dear Bioware, you don't have to completely obliterate galactic civilization to the point of turning Shepard into a myth. Just saying.

[Patchwork]

Thanks for this. I knew the loss of the relays wasn't as bad as some painted it as being but lacked the know how to figure out the details.

It seems trade will be very possible within systems and clusters. The fleets should be able to re-supply on route but the big problem is they don't have resources to barter with. Being part of the big battle will only grant them so much goodwill and I doubt Earth can afford to be very generous even if getting the aliens to leave would be the best thing in the long run.

[Orthodox Infidel]

Asnine112 wrote...

Orthodox Infidel wrote...

Asnine112 wrote...

You're also assuming straight line distances I presume?

Can't travel through the vast majority of the galactic core

Did you look at his map? None of the destinations require a direct path through the galactic core.

1) The galactic "core" is quite large. In fact, the vast majority of the stars of the galaxy are located in the core.

2) No, I can't see the map because the website it is hosted at is blocked where I'm at

edit: not to mention that it's stated that they've only explored less than 1% of the galaxy. Can't FTL jump blindly.

Ok, take my word for it that the only places you can't get to from Earth in a straight line are Omega and Ilos. Even the Rachni can make a straight line shot if from Earth if they want to. He accounts for the size of the core by using the borders that the developers use on their own galaxy map.

And there's no reason to think they'd be making totally blind jumps. They don't even need to explore that much more of the galaxy; they just need to use a telescope and predict where the major objects in their path are going to be once you correct for time lag. Not hard, especially considering they need to stop every other day anyway.

[pistolols]

actually now that i think about it, for both control AND synthesis the reapers could be used as transport vessels.

Problem solved. GJ ppl that picked destroy.. lol!

[Poison_Berrie]

a.m.p wrote...

And yes, I know about fuel and discharging the core. In my ending there are lots of very dead reapers with cores that don’t need to be discharged scattered all over the place. They're working on it.
And I'm not giving up on Mass Effect because of one broken ending.

Where do people get the idea that they never need to discharge. Reapers descending to a planet discharge quite a bit of energy. Perhaps they sacrificed some Reapers for discharging on route to the galactic core (or they had infrastructure in place).

Also I don't think you just plug in a Reaper core and be done with it. There's likely hundreds of problems to overcome just getting one installed in a ship.
How about heat and resource management.
I don't think you can just FTL straight toward your destination. The Geth might be the ones who can go the farthest without a stop.

[a.m.p]

Poison_Berrie wrote...

Where do people get the idea that they never need to discharge. Reapers descending to a planet discharge quite a bit of energy. Perhaps they sacrificed some Reapers for discharging on route to the galactic core (or they had infrastructure in place).

Also I don't think you just plug in a Reaper core and be done with it. There's likely hundreds of problems to overcome just getting one installed in a ship.
How about heat and resource management.
I don't think you can just FTL straight toward your destination. The Geth might be the ones who can go the farthest without a stop.

I don't think it's explicitly stated anywhere whether they do or don't need to discharge. It's all hypothetical, the writers can turn it any way they want.

And I'm definitely not proposing to plug a reaper core and be done with it. I'm proposing to study and reverse-engineer it.