11 réponses à ce sujet

[Stalker]

I have been studying the functioning of Mass Relays a bit and one thing kept me wondering: How does the Conduit on Ilos work?

Mass Relays can just accelerate objects to FTL by decreasing their mass. So it's accelerating (kind of "shoots") an object onto a location where another Mass Relay receives it, right?

Now my question is: How does the Relay monument on the Citadel receive it? The Conduit shoots it onto a certain location (from a rotating planet btw), but wouldn't the Citadel and Ilos always have to be in a very exact position to make this jump possible? They would have to be in a exact line for that!

[Rick Lewis]

It's space magic my sweet.

[PsiFive]

Yes, space magic. But seriously I think there may be reason to think that the relays don't work quite like that. I'd need to fire up the games and go to the galaxy maps to be sure and I'm on the wrong machine for that, but aren't the relays all between points that aren't on a straight line anyway? Multi relay travel between some clusters seems to involve doing a jump to an intermediate relay in a completely different direction from the cluster you want to go to, and from there back to the relay in the destination cluster. The games don't really make it clear exactly what is happening but the obvious things that spring to mind are first that the pilot 'tells' the relay network where he wants to come out and the ship is automatically flung between relays as needed to come out at the desired cluster, kind of like an email before ending up on a particular mail server. If so then it doesn't seem to matter which direction the relay is oriented - it just picks the ship up and throws it into the eezo generated phlebotinic field, then there's space magic and you end up where you're going.

The second obvious possibiulity is that you go from cluster to cluster in single jumps and if your destination relay is linked to the one you're at you need to make one or more jumps to get to one that is, which would be more like a train journey where you need to change trains once or twice on the way. But unless those intermediate systems have more than one relay so each can point in the right direction, and we've never seen anything to suggest there's ever more than one relay in a system that is on the relay network, direction must still be irrelevant unless the intermediate relay re-orients itself to point the right way between your arrival there and making the next jump in your journey. And we've never seen anything to suggest that either even though it'd have to be done all the time what with the relay moving around between jumps even if just on it's orbit. There'd be nothing to suggest it doesn't happen apart from that we have seen one jump, the conduit to the Citadel Presidium jump, that seems to be completely independent of any need to be pointing in a particular direction.

One example is very bad stats of course, but we have zero examples of either of the other two possibilities that I could come up with. Maybe someone else could think of something that does make direction important and is supported by something we see in one of the games but right now I'd say the relays don't care about direction at all. You get launched down the pointy end, whichever way the pointy end happens to be pointing at that particular time, and then the space magic takes over and makes sure you go the right way.

[Stalker]

Wow, I actually never expected a serious answer in this dead forum^^

PsiiFive,
It appears that Relays are capable of turning and aligning themselves to each other

From Codex:
When a relay is activated, it aligns itself with the corresponding relay before propelling the ship across space

That's where the problem comes up: The Conduit can't turn, neither can the Citadel in the given context...

I am currently trying to write fan-fic and from all the Mass Effect happenings, it appears that they are really just functioning with space magic... 

[PsiFive]

Given the enormous size of mass relays and how much fuel would be used moving the things around all the time I'd always thought the 'align' there did not refer to a literal physical alignment but some kind of weird (space magicky ) system alignment. I suppose they could be using their own mass effect fields to lower their mass temporarily so a few tiny Apollo capsule size thrusters can swing the whole thing around to point another way, but the fact that travel via the Conduit seems to be accomplished without any need to refer to orientation makes me think it's not necessary and so doesn't happen.

There is an outside possibility that the Conduit is a special case though. The Conduit is not part of the relay system because the Protheans made it, and that could mean that it doesn't function quite the same way. I feel it's an outside possibility because the Protheans made the relays at each end of the Conduit look a hell of a lot like smaller versions of the ones on the relay network, which suggests perhaps that form relates to function somehow and that they have to look that way for the same reason all aircraft manufacturers included large, flat horizontal structures sticking out of each side. If so then the only real difference between the two Prothean made baby relays and the original ones is that the former are not on the network of the latter and in fact are an incomplete network since Vigil said you can't come back from the Citadel to Ilos that way. We could believe that the Conduit is not direction dependent because the Protheans made an improvement to the relay technology, but I think we'd also need to believe that they stumbled across it by pure, blind luck because Vigil also says that the Protheans had only just developed an understanding of how the relays work.

Really there's evidence for both scenarios, that the relays have to point at each other and that they don't, so it comes down to picking which you prefer to believe. I'd go for the latter if only because it carries fewer implications for things to do with the Conduit and its operation and construction and only requires us to assume that one word in the Codex was poorly chosen. But that's just my two cents.

[blakegoodman08]

I forget where I saw this exactly, but I remember from some codex entry or something that the relays work as a combination of both methods PsiFive first mentioned, specifically that you have to take multiple relays but that the individual relays are multi-directional. I remember something about each relay having a max transmission distance (which is why in ME1 the trip is traced through different systems), but you can get to different systems from the same relay. An easy way to confirm that would be just load up ME1 and trace out some paths between systems.

Again I can't confirm this, as I have no idea where I heard it from, but I just finished re-playing ME1 and didn't hear anything about it so maybe it was explained in ME2. I'll admit that I didn't go back through and pore over all the codex entries either though... To me the best explanation for the Conduit is what PsiFive already mentions: they were Prothean built, and therefore aren't on the larger relay network; additionally, the Reapers came just as the Conduit was being finalized, so the Protheans never had the opportunity to complete bidirectional communication between the two, much less link them to other relays for multidirectional travel. At least that's what makes the most sense to me.

[jakenou]

Mr Massakka wrote...

I have been studying the functioning of Mass Relays a bit and one thing kept me wondering: How does the Conduit on Ilos work?

Mass Relays can just accelerate objects to FTL by decreasing their mass. So it's accelerating (kind of "shoots") an object onto a location where another Mass Relay receives it, right?

Now my question is: How does the Relay monument on the Citadel receive it? The Conduit shoots it onto a certain location (from a rotating planet btw), but wouldn't the Citadel and Ilos always have to be in a very exact position to make this jump possible? They would have to be in a exact line for that!

The Conduit from Ilos to the Citadel is a one way backdoor independent "mini relay" that only goes from Ilos to the Citadel, but not the other way around and nowhere else. That much is established.

My guess is that, perhaps at least in the case of the Conduit, the direction it points wouldn't matter because it only goes to one place and doesn't have to align itself with any other relays. (Conjecture alert!) Since Ilos is indeed a rotating and orbiting planet, it differs from all other relays which are stationed in space. The Ilos relay is simply pointing up, which to me suggests it only has to get you into orbit to shoot you over to the Citadel - ?? Anyway, that the word "alignment" is used to describe how a relay gets you from one relay to another doesn't neccessarily mean it has to literally point in the right direction. I think of it more like two beacons linking together, but I'm not sure that's really the question here?

The relays actually enable much faster than FTL. It seems akin to wormholes as seen in other scifi (or even a Stargate), in that it's virtually instantaneous, and I would relate how it works to be something like in Portal where it's like an instant doorway to where you need to go. Since how the mass relay system works is still a mystery in the story, even to races that have been using it for a long time, for all anyone knows the traveler could be transformed into anti-matter until it reaches it's destination. Maybe it's a straight line, but it doesn't matter where the two points are or what's between them?

As for how the Conduit's receiving end works on the Citadel -  I'm trying to remember if the light beam came straight down on the monument or not, but basically that seems to be how it works - enter beam of light on Ilos, exit beam of light on the Citadel. Remember, the Protheans actually made the Conduit using what little knowledge they could scrounge together about the mass relays, so even though it's based on relay tech, it's not exactly the same thing, but rather a cobbled together Prothean experiment (although they did seem to get as far as figuring out how to get from point A to point B by mimicing the relays) - and since the Protheans were all but destroyed, they didn't leave their tech specs until Shep started finding bits and pieces.

Modifié par jkthunder, 30 mai 2012 - 04:21 .

[Stalker]

I kinda forgot about this thread... so here is my 4-day late reply...

I accept that Mass Relays (or Conduit) can fire in multiple directions without aligning themselves physically and therefore the jump Ilos-Citadel might be possible for a few seconds if the planet is facing the right direction.

I still have a problem with the functioning and it's not about the direction it shoots.

Mass Relays are described to create a mass-free "corridors" between each other, in which the object can accelerate to FTL. That still doesn't make the jump through closed Citadel arms possible. The direction or speed doesn't matter. It's simply impossible

[PsiFive]

That's a good spot and certainly leaves us with a problem. One solution would be simply to regard the Codex as being in error on that point. Reality, as seen from the perspective of people in the game travelling through the mass of the wards to the Conduit's mini-relay on the Presidium, must trump the Codex entry. And in fairness to whoever (again, in universe) would have written the entry it was almost certainly done without any knowledge of the Conduit or it's operation, so a simple Codex mistake is plausible. Another possibility, which unfortunately brings in yet more space magic, is that the virtually mass free corridors the relays create are only virtually mass free from the perspective of anyone travelling within them and insert technobabble about maybe being a one dimensional corridor from the perspective of anyone on the outside. I'd go with mistaken Codex entry myself even if it hasn't been corrected as of ME3.

Edit: Of course all this is just rationalising something that the game's makers probably didn't think of, but it's fun to hammer away at it to see how it can be made to fit what we actually see in the game.

Modifié par PsiFive, 04 juin 2012 - 06:28 .

[jakenou]

Mr Massakka wrote...

I accept that Mass Relays (or Conduit) can fire in multiple directions without aligning themselves physically and therefore the jump Ilos-Citadel might be possible for a few seconds if the planet is facing the right direction.

I still have a problem with the functioning and it's not about the direction it shoots.

Mass Relays are described to create a mass-free "corridors" between each other, in which the object can accelerate to FTL. That still doesn't make the jump through closed Citadel arms possible. The direction or speed doesn't matter. It's simply impossible

No, it doesn't allow FTL speed in the corridor - it is much faster, practically instantaneous. FTL speed would still take years or decades to travel between Mass Relay points. The idea is that it creates some sort of gap in the time-space continuum making instant travel from point A to B possible. And even though we know the Protheans figured out the Mass Relays enough to create the Conduit, the technology is still a mystery to us in-story, since most of their knowledge was lost. One of the main themes of the Mass Effect story is in the race to figure out the technology of the Protheans and then the Reapers before them (this becomes more apparent if you've played ME3, but the thread goes through all the games).

I don't think it's too far of a stretch to accept the possibility of travel through the Conduit and Mass Relays. Creating a mass-free corridor opens a lot of imaginative concepts in physics - two principles in particular: 1)That the corridor doesn't neccessarily have to be a straight line. Perhaps it goes around objects with mass to get to it's destination, and/or 2) That in becoming "mass-free" either or both the corridor and everything in it's path, as well as the traveler, have their own mass altered in such a way that their particles hop past/through each other. Both of these possibilities make direction and obstacles a non-issue.

Another wild idea is that in becoming mass-free, everything in the corridor and the traveler become just that - massless energy signiatures - perhaps element zero is an ingredient that converts objects to dark matter then back to their original state again.

I think it's pretty interesting that they are using concepts in quantum/particle physics and string theory from the past several decades in the story. It's like the Reapers (or whoever created them) had the unification theory all figured out; the Protheans were almost there from studying the Reaper tech, but the Reapers annhilated them before they could do much with it, then the galactic races were kind of just riding on what was left to be used by the Reapers and Protheans, and humans joined the mix - and the current state has made it an imperative to figure out the ancient tech very quickly in order to survive.

Modifié par jkthunder, 04 juin 2012 - 03:58 .

[stiglaw]

In my understanding, the Relays reduce the mass of the object to infinitely near zero, enabling it to follow quantum physics, in which case the object could be instantaneously transported directly to the receiving end without being aligned. Maybe, think about the quantum-entanglement communication devices widely used in ME universe?

[jakenou]

That's what makes sense to me stiglaw, although the codex describes it as creating a mass-free corridor and doesn't say much about what happens to the traveling object except that it's actual mass needs to be quantified somehow. But all of our current ideas with string theory and the like make just what you said seem to be what the mechanics behind it are based on - however it is alien technology, so it has it's own mysterious twist.

Modifié par jkthunder, 07 juin 2012 - 09:03 .