440 réponses à ce sujet

[ed87]

Mass Effect with no mass effect. Sigh, who thought that was a good idea?

Modifié par ed87, 09 avril 2012 - 04:20 .

[OhoniX]

Even with FTL, we still can't traverse the entire galaxy. The second you run into any gap between planetary systems that's greater than two days travel, it's over.

It would take a little planning. Even using modern technology we can see planets that are lightyears away. Using ME-level technology, not to mention actual FTL drives, I'm sure that they've mapped out every star system anywhere near anything, and could probably map one system from the next nearest in minutes. It's no different than planning an ocean voyage back in the age of sail, you just need to have a general idea of what ports to hit so that you don't run out of resources. You would plot a route that wouldn't include any gaps of more than you could cross.

No idea, but the Derelict Reaper was in basically the same situation. Eezo core active, scientists indoctrinated. It seems that all Reaper tech. has similar effects, hence why research on it is done in strict environments, eg. rotating shifts, hazmat suits, sealed vaults to store it - according to the codex.

Even mostly dormant Reaper tech still had Reaper intelligence within it. After the ending in Me3, all Reaper intelligences are either destroyed or uninterested in messing with people.

[akuma1973]

NReed106 wrote...

Ahem, what of fuel? Are there random fuel stations everywhere in the uncharted galaxy?

There were but they were all in pretty close proximity to the Mass Relays, which exploded.

[Ctserber]

OhoniX wrote...

"Space" is relatively crowded. Dozens of
star systems within two days' travel of Earth at ME speeds. They could
find suitable discharge points roughly ever yother hour of travel time
if necessary.

Check again. You're right, there are dozens of star systems witihn two days travel of Earth. And systems after that... and after that... With gaps getting larger.. and larger...

http://en.wikipedia....anetary_systems

Take a look at the chart. There's ton's of systems within a days travel of each other. But there are also several that are too far to travel, some literally thousands of light years apart. And mind you, that isn't a list of of systems in a straight line from each, but in a circular radius.

Say the closet system is 15 light years away, and the second closet system is 17 light years away. Two light year gap, right? But no-one said that those two systems are two light years apart. One can be 15 light years away to the right, and the other 17 light years away to the left. The actual gap betwen systems is far, far greater than you assume.

OhoniX wrote...
It would take a little planning. Even using modern
technology we can see planets that are lightyears away. Using ME-level
technology, not to mention actual FTL drives, I'm sure that they've
mapped out every star system anywhere near anything, and could probably
map one system from the next nearest in minutes. It's no different than
planning an ocean voyage back in the age of sail, you just need to have a
general idea of what ports to hit so that you don't run out of
resources. You would plot a route that wouldn't include any gaps of more
than you could cross.

It's not a matter of planning, it's a matter of physics. There either are systems in range, or they're not. A simple glance at the wiki chart of the nearest systems we know of reveals dozens of systems that are far, far, out of range of a 12 light year per day/discharge every 50 hours ship. Space doesn't convienetly have a relay network with all the planets arranged one after another within 50 hours travel.

Modifié par Ctserber, 09 avril 2012 - 04:27 .

[leapingmonkeys]

kumquats wrote...

leapingmonkeys wrote...

So in the writer's mind, the events at the end of ME3 pushed the universe so far back into the stone age that even 10,000 years later they've not been able to reclaim space travel. According to ME lore, it look humanity about 6,500 years to get from the time of the ancient Egypt to discovering ancient tech on Mars. 10,000 years after the end of ME3 we're still not there yet.

That's your interpretation.
In my opinion, they have a humanoid form, but they are not humans.

Just a humanoid species, dreaming about spaceflight after discovering Liara's little project.

Actually, no opinion is involved.  As I said, if you use the gibbed save game editor you can pull the director notes out of the consolidated.bin file.  The notes for that final cut-scene with StarGazer says "10,000 years in the future".  No opinion at all involved.  Simple facts garned from Bioware's own files.

[Ieldra]

leapingmonkeys wrote...

kumquats wrote...

leapingmonkeys wrote...

So in the writer's mind, the events at the end of ME3 pushed the universe so far back into the stone age that even 10,000 years later they've not been able to reclaim space travel. According to ME lore, it look humanity about 6,500 years to get from the time of the ancient Egypt to discovering ancient tech on Mars. 10,000 years after the end of ME3 we're still not there yet.

That's your interpretation.
In my opinion, they have a humanoid form, but they are not humans.

Just a humanoid species, dreaming about spaceflight after discovering Liara's little project.

Actually, no opinion is involved.  As I said, if you use the gibbed save game editor you can pull the director notes out of the consolidated.bin file.  The notes for that final cut-scene with StarGazer says "10,000 years in the future".  No opinion at all involved.  Simple facts garned from Bioware's own files.

Unpublished information doesn't count, because that only reflects what was planned at a certain point.

[Ieldra]

Ctserber wrote...
It's not a matter of planning, it's a matter of physics. There either are systems in range, or they're not. A simple glance at the wiki chart of the nearest systems we know of reveals dozens of systems that are far, far, out of range of a 12 light year per day/discharge every 50 hours ship. Space doesn't convienetly have a relay network with all the planets arranged one after another within 50 hours travel.

Untrue. Stellar density around Sol is approximately 0.004 stars per cubic ly. Which means that within a sphere of 25ly radius around any star in the local area, there are approximately 260 other star systems, and current estimations are that about half of those have planets. Now that may vary somewhat, but from 130 to 0 - that's very, very unlikely.

If your list indicates something different, that just means the list doesn't contain all stars in the area. 75% of all stars are very dim red dwarf stars. They tend to be overlooked.

You also fail to account for the pressure to improve regular FTL technology because of the destruction of the relays. And lastly, increasing the size of the ME core in relation to the ship's mass will increase the time a ship can travel without having to discharge the core.

Modifié par Ieldra2, 09 avril 2012 - 07:56 .

[MyChemicalBromance]

Ieldra2 wrote...

And lastly, increasing the size of the ME core in relation to the ship's mass will increase the time a ship can travel without having to discharge the core.

This is a good point. Perhaps part of why the Reapers can fly for so long is the massive size of their drive cores. Most of our numbers come from cruisers and frigates, which have comparatively tiny drive cores. A larger vessel, like the Destiny Ascension (in the Sol system if you saved it in ME1!), may be better suited to long-range exploration.

[Ctserber]

Ieldra2 wrote...
Untrue. Stellar density around Sol is approximately 0.004 stars per cubic ly. Which means that within a sphere of 25ly radius around any star in the local area, there are approximately 260 other star systems, and current estimations are that about half of those have planets. Now that may vary somewhat, but from 130 to 0 - that's very, very unlikely.

I gave you a wiki link containing information on every known multiplanetary system near Earth. You can read it yourself. Gaps exist between systems that are far greater then a mere 24 light years, and some of those gaps are literally hundreds of light years accross. You cannot deny simple reality. There are huge chunks of empty space with no planets anywhere in reach. Sure, the majority of star systems are very close, the average stars being maybe 3.5 light years apart from each other. But there are gaps, and those gaps completely eliminate conventional FTL travel, effectively acting as a barricade. It's ridiculous to assume that throughout the entire galaxy, no matter where you are, there are going to be a planet within 50 hours reach.

And also don't forget, that it was well established that several planet's atmospheres are unsuitable for drive discharge. You might find a system within 24 light years that has two planets orbiting it, only to find that you can't discharge your core there, and the next nearest system is another twelve light years away. You're screwed.

If your list indicates something different, that just means the list doesn't contain all stars in the area. 75% of all stars are very dim red dwarf stars. They tend to be overlooked.

Did you take a moment to actually check the list? It's a list of multiplanetary systems, not stars, and the purpose of the list is to demonstrate the huge distance that exists between planetary systems.

You also fail to account for the pressure to improve regular FTL technology because of the destruction of the relays. And lastly, increasing the size of the ME core in relation to the ship's mass will increase the time a ship can travel without having to discharge the core.

 It was the complete opposite.. The codex states, "As positive or negative electric current is passed through an FTL
drive core, it acquires a static electrical charge. Drives can be
operated an average of 50 hours before they reach charge saturation.
This changes proportionally to the magnitude of mass reduction; a
heavier or faster ship reaches saturation more quickly.
"

 In other words, the larger the mass of the ship, or the faster a ship wants to go, the larger the eezo core needs to be in order to have a larger mass effect. Larger mass effect=have to discharge faster. It doesn't matter how large the core itself is, what matters is how strong the actual mass effect is. Which means that if we're talking about huge freighter's used to transport tens of thousands of people, food, water, cargo, fuel, etc? It's going to be far less then 50 hours, limiting their operational range even more.

Where did it ever say that having a disproprtionally large core increases travel time before discharge is required?

As for "pressure to improve FTL technology," do you have any idea how weak of an argument that is? You're basically saying, "oh they'll think of something." I have no interest in dealing with "what if" speculations, but with the actual, given canon of the game world.

Modifié par Ctserber, 09 avril 2012 - 09:29 .

[MyChemicalBromance]

Ctserber wrote...

Where did it ever say that having a disproprtionally large core increases travel time before discharge is required?

The core not only makes the Normandy quiet and fast, but means she can run at FTL speeds for much longer before having to discharge the drive.

This is referring to the Tantalus Drive Core, which was twice the size of a normal core. No other information was given on it that made it different. That was quoted from the wiki, and was said by Engineer Adams in Mass Effect 1.

[Ctserber]

MyChemicalBromance wrote...

Ctserber wrote...

Where did it ever say that having a disproprtionally large core increases travel time before discharge is required?

The core not only makes the Normandy quiet and fast, but means she can run at FTL speeds for much longer before having to discharge the drive.

This is referring to the Tantalus Drive Core, which was twice the size of a normal core. No other information was given on it that made it different. That was quoted from the wiki, and was said by Engineer Adams in Mass Effect 1.

Talking specificually about the unique prototype Tantalus core, not core size in general. The Tantalus Drive Core is an expirimental, prototype drive core that happens to be twice the size of a normal core, but it's not the size that gives it the unique properties, herwise it'd be a simple matter to just slap every ship with a core two times bigger than their standard issue. There is absolutely nothing, anywhere in the entire canon, that states that core size in anyway affects static charge buildup. Charge buildup is a result of the strength of the mass effect field. A stronger field requires a larger core, and typically larger ships require stronger fields, and hence have larger cores. But it's the strength of the field, not the size of the core causing the field, that results in static saturation.

[Aesieru]

If a ship is floating dormant, you can bet that its defense systems for active intrusion prevention are going to in some form be triaged to retain power in some capacity.

That's why indoctrination was still active with the Derelict Reaper.

[OhoniX]

Take a look at the chart. There's ton's of systems within a days travel of each other. But there are also several that are too far to travel, some literally thousands of light years apart. And mind you, that isn't a list of of systems in a straight line from each, but in a circular radius.

That is a list of systems with planets that we know about, using out rather limited detection capabilities. The case of the more distant ones doesn't mean that there are no planets in between, just not ones that we can, or at least have detected planets in yet using our rather primitive detection techniques. Fifty years ago it was no more than wild speculation that there even were extra-solar planets at all. It's quite likely that there are numerous other stars with planets in our local region, as there are way more stars than that nearby.

It's not a matter of planning, it's a matter of physics. There either are systems in range, or they're not. A simple glance at the wiki chart of the nearest systems we know of reveals dozens of systems that are far, far, out of range of a 12 light year per day/discharge every 50 hours ship. Space doesn't convienetly have a relay network with all the planets arranged one after another within 50 hours travel.

Possibly there would be some insurmountable gap at some point, but unlikely. If there was no way to map a leap-frog path from capital to capital using current drive technology, then they would need to adapt the Reaper ability to avoid needing to discharge.

Actually, no opinion is involved. As I said, if you use the gibbed save game editor you can pull the director notes out of the consolidated.bin file. The notes for that final cut-scene with StarGazer says "10,000 years in the future". No opinion at all involved. Simple facts garned from Bioware's own files.

But you assume that there is no space travel between now and then, while my interpretation is that they've had space travel the entire time, just that the child in that vignette has not been into space personally yet.

You might find a system within 24 light years that has two planets orbiting it, only to find that you can't discharge your core there, and the next nearest system is another twelve light years away. You're screwed.

Yes, but you can plan ahead for this. 23rd century scanning technology should give them precision enough to know the atmospheric content of planets in systems many hops distant, they should not get caught flat footed with a system that cannot be used.

[CapnManx]

Ctserber wrote...

Ieldra2 wrote...
Untrue. Stellar density around Sol is approximately 0.004 stars per cubic ly. Which means that within a sphere of 25ly radius around any star in the local area, there are approximately 260 other star systems, and current estimations are that about half of those have planets. Now that may vary somewhat, but from 130 to 0 - that's very, very unlikely.

I gave you a wiki link containing information on every known multiplanetary system near Earth. You can read it yourself. Gaps exist between systems that are far greater then a mere 24 light years, and some of those gaps are literally hundreds of light years accross. You cannot deny simple reality. There are huge chunks of empty space with no planets anywhere in reach. Sure, the majority of star systems are very close, the average stars being maybe 3.5 light years apart from each other. But there are gaps, and those gaps completely eliminate conventional FTL travel, effectively acting as a barricade. It's ridiculous to assume that throughout the entire galaxy, no matter where you are, there are going to be a planet within 50 hours reach.

And also don't forget, that it was well established that several planet's atmospheres are unsuitable for drive discharge. You might find a system within 24 light years that has two planets orbiting it, only to find that you can't discharge your core there, and the next nearest system is another twelve light years away. You're screwed.

If your list indicates something different, that just means the list doesn't contain all stars in the area. 75% of all stars are very dim red dwarf stars. They tend to be overlooked.

Did you take a moment to actually check the list? It's a list of multiplanetary systems, not stars, and the purpose of the list is to demonstrate the huge distance that exists between planetary systems.

You also fail to account for the pressure to improve regular FTL technology because of the destruction of the relays. And lastly, increasing the size of the ME core in relation to the ship's mass will increase the time a ship can travel without having to discharge the core.

 It was the complete opposite.. The codex states, "As positive or negative electric current is passed through an FTL
drive core, it acquires a static electrical charge. Drives can be
operated an average of 50 hours before they reach charge saturation.
This changes proportionally to the magnitude of mass reduction; a
heavier or faster ship reaches saturation more quickly.
"

 In other words, the larger the mass of the ship, or the faster a ship wants to go, the larger the eezo core needs to be in order to have a larger mass effect. Larger mass effect=have to discharge faster. It doesn't matter how large the core itself is, what matters is how strong the actual mass effect is. Which means that if we're talking about huge freighter's used to transport tens of thousands of people, food, water, cargo, fuel, etc? It's going to be far less then 50 hours, limiting their operational range even more.

Where did it ever say that having a disproprtionally large core increases travel time before discharge is required?

As for "pressure to improve FTL technology," do you have any idea how weak of an argument that is? You're basically saying, "oh they'll think of something." I have no interest in dealing with "what if" speculations, but with the actual, given canon of the game world.

Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.

What you listed is just discovered planetary systems; it's pot luck and we are still pretty new at it.

In Mass Effect we have better sensors, more places from which stars may be observed, and friendly aliens who have been out in space a heck of a lot longer than we have.

They'll know of more.

[Lavits75]

MyChemicalBromance wrote...

rebo_tfc wrote...

Yeah cos those military ships have enough food for 23 years ....

The Quarians survived for 300 years.

The Quarians were PREPARED to survive those 300 years. Now, their fleet is largely damaged and they need to travel all the way back to Rannoch on limited supplies with damaged ships, wounded soldiers, etc. I'm sure the races could travel these distances when properly prepared. But they AREN'T properly prepared. Earth doesn't have the supplies and food sources available to support Salarian, Turian, Asari, Volus, Elcor, Hanar, Drell, or Krogan fleets for years long journeys. I wouldn't be surprised if Earth couldn't even support itself right now.

Your theory is illogical. Use math as much as you want, use quoted codex entries and character dialogue. But it's WRONG.

1. The races can't survive years in space right now. They have damaged ships, wounded soldiers, very limited supplies. They can't make years long journeys to their homeworlds.
2. Earth can't supoort all of these races or supply them with what they need. It's every man(race) for itself. Welcome to the OK Corral!
3. You're basically disproving some of your evidence. Legions quotes on not using another's means to advance? He uses the Reapers'. He contradicted himself, his evidence doesn't count. Not only that, you're saying if we destroyed the relays it's good because we won't have to rely on Reaper tech but then you say if we use it we can get home faster. And even with it, it will take too long.
4. I shouldn't have to sit there and do calculations to make the ending of a video game make sense (it still doesn't, by the way)

Try starving yourself for two years, see how far you get.

[Spectre Impersonator]

Good thread. Nice of you to do the math for us. But I still dont think spending years on a ship is the best solution.

[Lavits75]

General User wrote...

Arturia Pendragon wrote...

Dean_the_Young wrote...

They grew their own food.

They can transport their own fuel infrastructure.

Manufactories to make refined tools out of raw materials are established.



Fortunately, the ME universe has the explanation technologies necessary.

I could have sworn the purpose of the Pilgrimage was for the exact reason that they didn't have these things....

I always thought that the Pilgrimage was mainly a rite of passage.

The Pilgrimage was a "rite of passage" but you needed to bring something that could keep the fleet afloat. It was a rite of passage but it was MAINLY a way to get the supplies they needed.

[Ctserber]

You guys want to tell me that our feable sensors can discover a star system two thousand light years away, but miss one in between the star systems 40 and 60 light years away? All you're doing is throwing out speculation and what ifs. "What if better scanning reveals previously invisible planets that we missed? What if we can harness reaper technology to mitigate the need to discharge our drive cores?" Well, I have a counter: What if they don't?

I'm not dealing with speculation, I'm giving you established facts of both reality and game canon. Fact of reality: Huge gaps can and do exist between star systems. Are there systems we haven't discovered? Does that somehow mean there are no impassable gaps in space and that all planets are within 24 light years of each other? No.  Just because futuristic sensors might find planets easier, does NOT mean that there are planets to be found in the first place.

Space is bloody huge. It's simple common sense that there will be impassable gaps of space that sooner or later they're going to run into, and those gaps of space may very well completely block passage to other homeworlds. We've discovered huge gaps of empty space JUST WITHIN TWO THOUSAND LIGHT YEARS OF EARTH. You want to tell me no such gaps exist between Earth and... I don't know, Rannoch?

[streamlock]

It would impossible with how the current drive tech is explained.

A: It would take years to get to point A to point B.

B: You have to get to point A to point B before you can create a new relay at point B. Can't use Com bouy's to tell point B to build relay B because there long range coms were tied to the relays (iirc, need to check codex).

C: After reducing mass, ships use convential thrusters. H2 LOX, Kerosine LOX, metallic H2, whatever. You run into the same problems there we do in todays world. That is, they would have to spend years making ships just to carry all the fuel they need to get to point A to point B. Most of your fuel would be used to....you guessed it-move the fuel from point A to point B.

D: Even by ME standards, the majority of star systems were un-accessable due to no relays being present. You would have to traverse very large distances of unexplored space that had zero infrastructure in place. (if there were bunches of other races there, it would defeat the purposes of the Reapers as defined by the catalyst)

E: As explained, ships have to periodically discharge their drive core. The largest ships in particular were limited as to what planets they could discharge at.

F: Assuming the trip took years, and you had to stop in systems to restore provisions, dump drive core discharge-you probably would have to take a non-linear path. Other reasons why a round about course would be needed. In short-no straight line to point A to B.


No, no, and just f*cking no way. Only way for it to work is to raid Reaper tech. That is the only out the writers have. I would bet real money on either that, or on a wholly new developed tech. They have cornered themselves here.

[Greed1914]

They pretty much have to raid the Reapers for new engines for this to ever work, but here is something I was thinking: destroying the relays is supposed to symbolize how the galaxy is no longer dependent on Reaper tech and is able to forge its own path. But wouldn't using Reaper engines just be a substitute for the relays. Reaper tech exchanged for Reaper tech.

This is why I hate dark age endings. It's blaming the tech for who made it.

[maddlarkin]

[quote]OhoniX wrote...

[quote]
So Tali got to build her house on Rannoch after all, but she was an
old woman by that time and her children still grew up on ships (or she
never had any).[/quote]

She got to stand on Rannoch, which is better than any Quarian in three hundred years, and she made a better life for her children than they would otherwise have faced, what more could one reasonably ask for?

Assuming she got there at all, I mean its the otherside of the galaxy, one miscaculated gap in unmapped space which I'll remind you the bulk of the galaxy is and she's toast when the drive core discharges

[quote]
What was the bloody point of destroying the relays at all if we can
all just assume everything's fine and dandy at the end of it?[/quote]

It wasn't a primary goal, it was a side effect. The primary effect was the "RGB wave", which as a consequence destroyed the relays. It was to show how massive an undertaking that was. There was never any reason to believe that this was it for galactic civiization, although certainly they'll face some difficult times ahead.

The end of galaxtic civilisation, trade and commerce as we know it, no more istantaneous communication apart from a few quantum entanglement communicatiors aand those are point to point. Plus with there industrail Bases destroyed, attacked worlds will be almost in a dark age level of technology and production without the support of worlds and colonies who were not attacked it could be decades if not centuries for any meaningful recovery.

[quote]

You end up at the same point if you remove the underlined portion entirely. It has no reason to exist.[/quote]

It has no reason to exist only IF you believe that the point to destroying the relays was to make people gloomy.

Destroying the Relays was ill thought out and done to look spectacular and suitably cinematic, the ill thought out tweets about Reaper tech and the feesibility of rebuilding them demonstrate that

[quote]

Their eezo cores remain intact according to Weekes, same as the
Derelict Reaper in ME2. Indoctrination is a very real possibility.[/quote]

Eezo cores are engines, they don't do anything like indoctrination. Reapers conciousnesses cause Indoctrination. This isn't Carrie.

You still have to go inside the Reaper to get to the engine core and that didn't workout so well for Cerbus scientists on the derelict one or the Batarians who found and studied the crashed one. What effect indoctrination would have without a guiding intelligence can only be guessed at, but the possibility that they would attempt to fufil pre-programmed goals or just become drooling idiots is at least reasonable

[quote]So basically they took it from Mass Effect to Star Trek because one of
the things that made the Universe different was the Relays.......now it
is just another Sci-Fi Space Universe with faster than light
travel....gee thanks Bioware.[/quote]

Stargate had FTL travel too, and in a sense Star Trek had relays (wormholes). All sci-fi is a shared universe. There are still plenty of unique elements to Mass Effect, like their artisitc design, races, biotics, projectile weapons, etc.

Erm kind of, Stargate used hyperspace travel as opposed to conventianl FTL (warp) from Star Trek and the wormhole from DS9 is more akin to the jumpgate from B5 since those series did a fair amount of ripping each other off. The point is the Relays are the basis of the technology all of it, they are iconic to the franchise, without them, it is a bit like Star Trek with Turians

[quote]

Then you accept the premise that the galaxy is completely boned?
That the Quarians, with ships that won't last 6 months without constant
repairs, will be lucky to get 1/4 of the fleet back home since they can
no longer make short trips to the nearest supply depot.[/quote]

unless you know, they bring supplies with them when they go

Supplies from where? I suppose the Turians could lend them a few spares if they didn't have a mammoth journey of their own, or the Alliance Navy could since they don't have a planet to rebuild... Besides its likley with the Colonisation of Rannoh underway they had a lot of essential supplies down on the planet, along with non-combatants and food supplies etc yes they can do salvage and all that but its a long journey and chances of having enough to make the whole route, doubtful

[quote]
That Tuchanka is ruined because it will go for years without
level-headed leadership, even longer without the trade necessary to
sustain a population that is incapable of growing its own food and
barely has any animals worth eating. The Krogans in the fleet are doomed
to murder each other because there's no way to sedate them all for such
a period of time and they don't do well in close quarters for long.[/quote]

Actually, that might work out rather well. The levelheaded types like Wrex and Grunt would survive, because they, and their trusted troops, would refrain from casual violence, and those on Tuchanka right now would likely be the females and some of the least warrior-like males, so perhaps they would breed a whole bunch of the most genetically passive Krogans ever before the males come home from the war and retake the place. Eugenics in action.

Actually, you could be right here, the Krogan earth side woulld be more of a problem for the other races than themselve and given their long life span, redundant organs and genral hardness they'd prob make it back okay... well the ones who didn't kill each other


[quote]
Galactic civilization is ruined. Or more specifically, it is
completely destroyed. Yes, you've disputed that the galaxy and all life
on it is not completely gone. That's great. But the math does not
dispute the galactic dark age. The galaxy is ruined and bleak.
Homeworlds do not grow their own food and can't tolerate several
month/year long trade routes to their garden worlds, either.[/quote]

Who says homeworlds don't grow food? Most of the ones we saw looked fairly lush. It's possible hat they would not have been able to support billions and billions of people, but with the much smaller populations post-Reapers they can probably do just fine. Besides, having a country that would require importing food from other planets wouldn't make sense even during a time of peace. Too much that could go wrong, and far too expensive to be rational. While I'm sure there was planty of trade, it was almost certainly for luxury purposes, not necessity.

Well, given what earth looked like post Reaper invasion, isn't much going to be growing there anytime soon, that sort of wide spread smoke would darken the atmosphere and probably lower global tempretures for years to come, possibly decades, so agriculture to support the still likely Billions of surviours would be problmatic at best. Relay travel is fast reliable and reasonably safe. It takes you to fixed points where in the heart of the various civilisations large fleets were deployed to guard those choke points and secure shipping. Some of the colonise would be unsurstainable without long term support simply due to size or nature of development ie mining industry etc... Ferros alone is totally screwed, an Ice world no one there is growing anything without supply drops.

Why are you so insistant on such a bleak and pessimistic outcome when other options are equally plausible?

For me, personally it's the more likely senario, without the support of other worlds and species, un damaged worlds helping those runined things will deterioate fast... very fast esp as the clean drinking water runs out...


[quote]Remember the final cut-scene? The one with StarGazer talking to the kid about "when they return to the stars?"[/quote]

I can't say for certain, but my impression of that scene is that he was talking in the personal sense, when "you and I" go into space, rather than about their entire civilization. I imagined it was more along the lines of "someday, we'll go to Disney World kid." Besides, if they'd been in anything approaching a dark age for ten thousand years they wouldn't even remember who Shepard was. On Earth history from even six thousand years ago is sketchy at best. The only hope of retaining a ten thousand year history would be with functioning technology to do the remembering for us.

Hence, 'The Shepard', he talks about the other worlds and systems in the abstract, yes civilisation would eventually rebuild and go back to the stars, but with the shattering of the industrial base your talking decades on the short end for planets lucky enough to have fleets able to reach neiboughing systems and far, far longer for those with no ships or communication, centuries for the more industrialised and thousands of years for those without a large population or industrail base at the outset.

[quote]There are still a few problem here, firstly drive core discharge, empty
space with no discharge points are need in the code to be barriers to
navigation more than distance, yes reader upgrades may help with heat
management, but they were machines so excess heat would be less of a
problem for them than an organic crew who can be cooked. [/quote]

"Space" is relatively crowded. Dozens of star systems within two days' travel of Earth at ME speeds. They could find suitable discharge points roughly ever yother hour of travel time if necessary.

well thats just cobblers, space has a lot of stars in it but they are not evenly spread, there are large patches of dead space in places, and due to the use of relays exploration was done in pockets, going anywhere previously unmapped or outsid the range of a couple of days travel would be a big risk, exploration and recon would be needed and those crews would have a high casulty rate, after centruy or so most of the routes between realively close systems (say upto 3-4 months travel time) would be worked out and a level of intersteller trade would be once again conducted, but it would be in pockets and clusters not the large single galatic society seen in the Mass Effect games

[quote]. The geth do have open spaces on their ships and the guardian liveships
do provide some solutions to thwarting food issue, but that assumes the
lightly armoured veships survived the battle unscaved and had brought
the crops with them, which is possible but unlikely as they were
colonists rannoh so would need those types of supplies there.[/quote]

It does assume a Paragon ending, but in a Paragon ending you ordered those ships to be used as support vessels, which means that they would have been in theater, but would have been kept at the rear lines, and so would very likely have survived the battle intact. A Renegade ending would have more of a struggle because most of them would likely have been destroyed.

Okay this original point was mine, the Liveships whatever case were vunrable targets and the cut scenes implied a general melee of the battle... but without any paragon or renegade context to the ending, its impossible to say... but would be good as at least this would give some weight to one of your choices... btw I'm still not convinced how much food the Liveships would be producing after the battle as given the recolonisation I'd of thought a lot of those kind of supplies and crops would be on Rannoh



[quote]This still leaves the volus question a who are ammonia based n would find any supplies but there own poisonous.[/quote]

Perhaps, but do we even know what they need, or how they would normally get it? For all we know, perhaps they can produce their own foods in sufficient quantities? In any case, their numbers were fairly tiny in the grand scheme of things and the vast majority of them were at home. Nobody said that "everybody lives", just that the casualties don't have to be nearly as high as some of the doomsayers insist.

My original point again, actually Jess on twitter said on twitter, no one starved, the volus count for this reason alone, and yeah in the grand scheme of things they aren't important, but the thought of the little fella's who showed up to defend earth with their lone Dreadnaught and Bomber frigates is a little harsh... I care about the Volus even if Bioware dont Oh btw in the codex it states the Volus as ammonia based life forms find oxygen/nitrogen posionus... those elements are found in any time of food they could aquire on earth due to our atmosphere and the chances or warships having advanced hydroponics to sustain the crews for an indefinate period seemes unlikely esp as Relays rendered travel and deployement time in the hours and days mark so thre wouldn't of been the need

[quote] Finally the quantum communicators while more advanced are limited by
the expense to create and the fact they r point to point not broad
transmission those in existence would be useful in coordinating efforts
to repair or replace relays assuming they happened to be in different
systems but the nature of how they work limits them so they could not
replace the extra net as it stands...[/quote]

True, but they do allow for at least limited communications between distant systems within a reasonable amount of time. As for the extranet, we actually have no reason to believe it's down at all. My understanding is that the extranet did not use the standard, ship-flinging relays at all, but rather smaller relays that were built by Citadel races. Those smaller relays should still be intact, as they weren't part of the Crucible programming.

Limited communication betwen systems who were lucky enough to have them, they'd be few and far between as they were a new technology and expensive to produce (emily wong in her ill fated twitter feed got hers frm a reserch lab). As for the extranet, just double checked the wiki for the codex entry, the relied on comm bouy's near the relays so when they went they most likely took the bouys with them... The Reapers also targeted them during the war, the Batarins losing comm's, only communication with earth through few qutaum entanglement communicators. Although some of the Bouys survived most would not of and since they relayed info to each other via laser n mass free corridors the whole network need to be in place to work, so its reconstruction would also be a massive effeort, I'll link the wiki page http://masseffect.wi...#Communications



[quote]As for the relays not going nova weeks said aldgedly said this was
because they overloaded not ruptured, well that's just nonsense, the
power build up of an overload would logically produce a bigger explosion
and theyes ruptured in the literal sense of th word when they broke
[/quote]

Did you watch any of the ending cinematics? They have them on Youtube if you haven't. In them you can clearly see the relay discharging its energy before breaking apart. The energy it contained was used to transmit the "RGB" signal across the galaxy, and to the next relay in the chain. By the time it broke down and was no longer able to contain the energy within, it no longer had the energy within to contain. It's like worrying about a gas tank rupturing after you've already driven it dry.

Yes I have seen the ending cinimatics, the horror of them are burned onto my mind. The Relay actually starts to break apart as it fires, producing an explosion with significant kinetic force throwing the peices apart with a massive shockwave eminating outwards link attached the discharge of energy causing it to break apart and the shock wave clearly has kinetic, so how come the shockwave is non destructive, without any basis this makes no sense.

[quote]
And I don't really see that being wholly erased. At least not from our minds.

Every "good" ending that's still based on the original ending will always suffer a stain of being fan fiction.
A bitter aftertaste of being some sort of grudgingly granted fanservice, rather than true canon.
[/quote]

Nope for me, what won't be erased is its total failure as a peice of writing, Biowares appaling treatment of its most loyal fans in the aftermath and the total sense of failure I felt on 'beating the game' true canon, espcially in a franchise whose producers have been stating all along has no canon due to choice is the least of my concerns, if a fan mod came out tomorrow which made the ending better I'd use it happily and never look back

And yet plenty of people had this "new version" in our minds while watching the original version. Everyone creates their own interpretation of events, that doesn't mean that yours was right.

see above statment, I have no intrest anymore in what was considered right, simply that a suitable ending for a series I loved is created one which doesn't leave me hollow on watching and succeds as a peice of writing, the fan edit without the god child works prefectly for me

[quote]OP, you do remember that Bioware had us refueling after basically every ftl flight to a nearby solar system right?

Are the fleets going to mine eezo every other day?
[/quote]

Two points. One, the Normandy is a light frigate, it isn't made for extended trips. If it moved in a fleet with refueling vessles, chock full to the brim with fuel, they could likely travel much further without external fuel.

True, although no refueling vessels are details there existance is reasonable, but large fleet manuve would be high risk without the relays, as I've stated above extensive recon would need to be done to make sure the fleet could more and not all die, you can mine and process Helium 3 as you go, but without pre mapped systems to move to you'd need ships to ensure that you are going somewhere you can do this and discharge the cores, this unfortunately would be the job of light frigates as they have the smallest crew to loose, limiting travel range in any one hop to the distance they can scout

Second, ships don't burn Eezo. They need it, but they don't expend it. What you have is all you'll ever need. What they burn is hydrogen and healium based isotopes, which generate rocket thrust. All the Eezo core does is make them light weight. Think of it like a blimp. Blimps need lift to fly, so they are full of hydrogen, but they also need gas to drive their engines, which push them forward. But once you fill a blimp with hydrogen once, then assuming it doesn't leak you'd never have to fill it again, while it constantly needs fresh gasoline.


Ships in ME are the same way, and thankfully, the hydrogen and helium fuels they need are super-plentiful in gas giants, so while they may need to stop off occasionally to refill the fueling ships, it would be doable. In the short term "migratory fleets", they definitely couldn't just take off at random and hope to get home, they'd need to travel in large fleets with all sorts of support vessels, but they could make it work. Long term, assuming they never get the relays going again (which is a big leap to make), then all they would need to do is set up a lot more "gas stations" along the way. Not a big deal, really.
[/quote]


Large fleets and convoys in this world would be a big risk, you couldn't go blind and with the industrial destruction replacements would be problmatic, more likely recon ships would be used with skeleton crews (apt choice of words given the casulty rates likely) hoping blind into a system then having to hop back to the fleet to report in, quatum communicators are expensive and not the sort of thing youd risk on these ships on high risk missions. Not every gas giant in ME universe has helium 3, hydrogen is a lot easier to find, although a massive tanker full of hydrogen would be extremely dangerous if anything went wrong.

A more likely senario is small clusters of trade and economy with in the areas previously reachable by FTL, piracy would be more rife, these clusters if reasonably close (say 2-3 months travel) would have trade likely by large convoy with significant military protection as the discharge points would make them all to vunrable to piracy. Your right infastructure would follow. But it would take time and have to be mapped by recon and exploration vessels to ensure a route was viable before committing any large fleet

As for not rebuilding the relays being a leap, the relays may have salvagable parts but only in systems with enough ships to do a grid search, you'd need communication on the other end to co-oridinate the construction of the other side, the bulk of the science and industry necessary to build 4 KM long galactic sling shots has been trashed by the Reapers. Relay tech was used, but barely understood, like the citadel they were easy to operate but not understand, the Prothean Relay monument would give a lot of valuable pointers on Earth (assuming it survived the Citadel destruction, not a huge leap) but you still need to pass that data on to the other end, get the parts salvaged and rebuild something that massive, easy for a citadel race at its prime, far less so for a crippled species with destroyed infastructure and a starving populace.

Suppose if you did control or synthisis you could get the Reapers to do it for you, assuming Shep. didn't fly off with them, or you ask really nicely respectively

[CapnManx]

Ctserber wrote...


You guys want to tell me that our feable sensors can discover a star system two thousand light years away, but miss one in between the star systems 40 and 60 light years away? All you're doing is throwing out speculation and what ifs. "What if better scanning reveals previously invisible planets that we missed? What if we can harness reaper technology to mitigate the need to discharge our drive cores?" Well, I have a counter: What if they don't?

I'm not dealing with speculation, I'm giving you established facts of both reality and game canon. Fact of reality: Huge gaps can and do exist between star systems. Are there systems we haven't discovered? Does that somehow mean there are no impassable gaps in space and that all planets are within 24 light years of each other? No.  Just because futuristic sensors might find planets easier, does NOT mean that there are planets to be found in the first place.

Space is bloody huge. It's simple common sense that there will be impassable gaps of space that sooner or later they're going to run into, and those gaps of space may very well completely block passage to other homeworlds. We've discovered huge gaps of empty space JUST WITHIN TWO THOUSAND LIGHT YEARS OF EARTH. You want to tell me no such gaps exist between Earth and... I don't know, Rannoch?

We aren't denying that you are presenting facts; we are denying that they tell us anything useful.

Detecting exoplanets is very difficult; the fact that we have found so many in such a short period of time tells us that planetary systems are extremely common.

There are 51 stellar systems within 16 light years of Earth (a little over 1 day's FTL travel), several of which have been confirmed to have planets; and Sol is considered to be in a relatively empty region of space.

We find new planetary systems all the time; we have barely scratched the surface, even within our local area.

[DashRunner92]

How exactly are they going to plot around black holes while traveling?

[OhoniX]

[quote]
The Quarians were PREPARED to survive those 300 years. Now, their fleet is largely damaged and they need to travel all the way back to Rannoch on limited supplies with damaged ships, wounded soldiers, etc. [/quote]

They don't have to leave immediately. They can take the team to gear-up, and there are plenty of spare parts littering the Sol system.

[quote]
You guys want to tell me that our feable sensors can discover a star system two thousand light years away, but miss one in between the star systems 40 and 60 light years away? [/quote]

Yes. It's an imperfect science and it works best for certain types of planets. Based on what I've seen, I'd wager that the ones we've discovered very far away had just the right types of stars and the right types of planets to show up using our existing methods (which mostly depend on VERY large planets that whip relatively smaller suns around). If there were an exact duplicate of the Sol system that was a couple hundred lightyears away, we might not be able to detect any planets from it, and even if we did, we might only pick up Jupiter.

[quote]

B: You have to get to point A to point B before you can create a new relay at point B. Can't use Com bouy's to tell point B to build relay B because there long range coms were tied to the relays (iirc, need to check codex).[/quote]

Except that there are quantum entanglement communicators fo that. And also the Extranet relays are likely still functional.

[quote]C: After reducing mass, ships use convential thrusters. H2 LOX, Kerosine LOX, metallic H2, whatever. You run into the same problems there we do in todays world. That is, they would have to spend years making ships just to carry all the fuel they need to get to point A to point B. Most of your fuel would be used to....you guessed it-move the fuel from point A to point B.[/quote]

To a point, but they can also harvest fuel along the way.

[quote]
The end of galaxtic civilisation, trade and commerce as we know it, no more istantaneous communication apart from a few quantum entanglement communicatiors aand those are point to point. Plus with there industrail Bases destroyed, attacked worlds will be almost in a dark age level of technology and production without the support of worlds and colonies who were not attacked it could be decades if not centuries for any meaningful recovery.[/quote]

It'd be a set-back, but I see it more like post-war Europe than the dark ages, a few years, definitely, perhaps even decades, but even if they don't rebuild the relays galactic civilization would rebuild itself fairly quickly.

[quote]

You still have to go inside the Reaper to get to the engine core and that didn't workout so well for Cerbus scientists on the derelict one or the Batarians who found and studied the crashed one. [/quote]

Bah, I'm not even going to entertain this "point" anymore. The Reapers are out of the picture, indoctrination is out of the picture, it's a non-issue.

[quote]Erm kind of, Stargate used hyperspace travel as opposed to conventianl FTL (warp) from Star Trek and the wormhole from DS9 is more akin to the jumpgate from B5 since those series did a fair amount of ripping each other off. The point is the Relays are the basis of the technology all of it, they are iconic to the franchise, without them, it is a bit like Star Trek with Turians[/quote]

I very much disagree, but you're entitled to be wrong.

[quote]
Supplies from where? I suppose the Turians could lend them a few spares if they didn't have a mammoth journey of their own, or the Alliance Navy could since they don't have a planet to rebuild... Besides its likley with the Colonisation of Rannoh underway they had a lot of essential supplies down on the planet, along with non-combatants and food supplies etc yes they can do salvage and all that but its a long journey and chances of having enough to make the whole route, doubtful [/quote]

Post-Sword the Sol System is the galaxy's new gold mine. It's chock full of the detritus of the largest fleet in modern history. After the final battle, my guess would be that only maybe 10-25% of the ships you sent in came out of it in working condition, 50% at the absolute outside, which means that most of them are in bits orbiting Earth. There are plenty of spare parts, rations, fuel, etc. lying around for the taking.

[quote]

Well, given what earth looked like post Reaper invasion, isn't much going to be growing there anytime soon, that sort of wide spread smoke would darken the atmosphere and probably lower global tempretures for years to come, possibly decades, so agriculture to support the still likely Billions of surviours would be problmatic at best. [/quote]

It's really hard to judge the state of Earth at the end, but even if the skies are blackened, they could use alternate farming methods like greenhouse/hydroponic methods, even vat-production. We also don't know how advanced their environmental clean-up capabilities are. I mean, I imagine they terraform worlds from time to time, and with anti-gravity technology they might have some good options for clearing atmo. The Salarians built that spire on Tuchanka, right? An environmental catastrophe that might take the 21st century decades to get over might be cleared wihtin weeks using ME tech.

[quote]
Yes I have seen the ending cinimatics, the horror of them are burned onto my mind. The Relay actually starts to break apart as it fires, producing an explosion with significant kinetic force throwing the peices apart with a massive shockwave eminating outwards link attached the discharge of energy causing it to break apart and the shock wave clearly has kinetic, so how come the shockwave is non destructive, without any basis this makes no sense. [/quote]

So if you've seen the videos you'd know that the effect is completely different from the supernova of the Alpha Relay, and that there's no reason to believe that the explosion had any more than a very local effect. It's like comparing a hand grenade to a nuke.

[quote]
True, although no refueling vessels are details there existance is reasonable, but large fleet manuve would be high risk without the relays, as I've stated above extensive recon would need to be done to make sure the fleet could more and not all die, you can mine and process Helium 3 as you go, but without pre mapped systems to move to you'd need ships to ensure that you are going somewhere you can do this and discharge the cores, this unfortunately would be the job of light frigates as they have the smallest crew to loose, limiting travel range in any one hop to the distance they can scout[/quote]

Perhaps, but you could move in a "scouting fleet" pattern, with several large fueling and support vessels that stay in one system, mining and harvesting, then dozens of small ships that hop a couple systems out and back, refuel, and repeat. When they have a lead, they follow it. I could definitely see recon ships hopping to a new system and back, but I don't see them blindly hopping off weeks ahead of the bulk of the fleet. If, by some chance, they did hit a "dead end," they could always just turn around and go home, but it'd be worth the attempt.

Still, I think with ME-level tech they could be much more efficient at long range stellar mapping, and would know the planetary breakdown and even resource composition of worlds hundreds, maybe even thousands of light years away before they even got there. They wouldn't harvest a world thousands of light years from the nearest relay before because it wouldn't be worth the time and effort, but that doesn't mean they wouldn't be aware of them.

[quote]Not every gas giant in ME universe has helium 3, hydrogen is a lot easier to find, although a massive tanker full of hydrogen would be extremely dangerous if anything went wrong.[/quote]

It's actually not that big a deal in space. No oxygen.

[quote]
As for not rebuilding the relays being a leap, the relays may have salvagable parts but only in systems with enough ships to do a grid search, you'd need communication on the other end to co-oridinate the construction of the other side, the bulk of the science and industry necessary to build 4 KM long galactic sling shots has been trashed by the Reapers. Relay tech was used, but barely understood, like the citadel they were easy to operate but not understand, the Prothean Relay monument would give a lot of valuable pointers on Earth (assuming it survived the Citadel destruction, not a huge leap) but you still need to pass that data on to the other end, get the parts salvaged and rebuild something that massive, easy for a citadel race at its prime, far less so for a crippled species with destroyed infastructure and a starving populace. [/quote]

I would assume every capital world would have a quantum communicator, but it could possibly take decades to get a working relay system together, and decades more to expand it out to the further reaches of the galaxy like Illium and Omega.

[quote]How exactly are they going to plot around black holes while traveling? /quote]

By going around them. It's really not that hard.

[MyChemicalBromance]

The posts in this thread are why I still love Bioware fans. If there's a way, we'll find it.