215 réponses à ce sujet

[Taboo]

Tom Lehrer wrote...

If you talk to Allers she will tell you Bekenstein got destoryed from orbit.

Yeah, see I never talked to Allers.

EVER.

I left her on the Citadel.

[D24O]

o Ventus wrote...


Disproven by the sheer number of survivors left at the end of the game.

As far as we know only 4ish people survive. There's no mention of anyone else in the Local cluster, not to mention the rest of the galaxy.

[Delta_V2]

o Ventus wrote...

Taboo-XX wrote...

Wulfram wrote...

Taboo-XX wrote...

We're talking about colonies and such....

People are going to die.

Most colonies are either small and on garden worlds, or extremely small and within conventional FTL range of garden worlds.

What about running out of supplies?

Can they manufacture drive cores?

On devastated planets?

The colonies don't need to manufacture anything, just grow food.

It isn't like the Reapers inhabited every single planet in the galaxy at the same time, nor did they destroy every planet (Look how long a dinky resistance held out on Earth).

This is just completely wrong.  For the record, I grew up on a farm, so I know a thing or two about the subject.

Modern agriculture is incredibly dependent on manufacturing and other supporting industries.  These things need to come from somewhere.  Machinery like that only lasts for so long, and without it, food production will grind to a halt.

Without supporting industry to manufacture heavy equipment or produce medicine, even the farm worlds will be screwed.

[o Ventus]

Tom Lehrer wrote...

o Ventus wrote...

The colonies don't need to manufacture anything, just grow food.

It isn't like the Reapers inhabited every single planet in the galaxy at the same time, nor did they destroy every planet (Look how long a dinky resistance held out on Earth).

Its hard to farm without farming equipment. People need places to sleep so they will need to build homes. A method to ship the food they grow is needed. Colonies need to manufacture lots of stuff.

The Reapers did not land on every world but they did fly around destroying industrial centers. If you talk to Allers she will tell you Bekenstein got destoryed from orbit.

I understand this. Wasn't obvious enough, I guess.

I'm just saying that's it's silly (if not outright stupid and morbidly idiotic) to assume there aren't at least SOME fertile worlds that still bear a functioning population.

[Omanisat]

o Ventus wrote...

Omanisat wrote...

General User wrote...

Omanisat wrote...

General User wrote...

Jassu1979 wrote...

Now, people have talked a lot about the destruction of the relays, pondering whether their destruction would obliterate the systems they were in, hypothesizing about the potential of re-building them, arguing about whether or not the fleet in Sol system can return home, etc.

But I think few people have actually considered what cutting the supply lines like that actually means: it doesn't really matter whether the species of the galaxy will eventually be able to invent a technology that fills the gap - right there and then, it means that billions throughout the war-torn galaxy WILL die, even if the explosions were harmless.

No relays - no interstellar traffic. No interstellar traffic - no supply lines. No supply lines - billions of casualties. The worst thing that can happen to a disaster area is being cut off - and that is exactly what happens to pretty much every planet in the Mass Effect universe.

Nonsense!  Most of the population in Mass Effect lives on or about life bearing worlds.  they wouldn't die en masse unless someone kills them.

That someone being the Reapers, who've bombed them back to the stone age.

Hardly.  The Reapers may have destroyed infrastructure and a good deal of the local populace, but in overwhelmingly most (if not all) cases the knowledge to rebuild remains or can be easily accessed/reintroduced.

Who said they couldn't rebuild? I'm saying there won't be anyone to do the rebuilding.

Disproven by the sheer number of survivors left at the end of the game.

I'm not saying there wouldn't be survivors, it's quite likely there are many worlds the Reapers never hit. What I'm saying the the worlds they did hit would be toast.

[The Angry One]

Delta_V2 wrote...

o Ventus wrote...

Taboo-XX wrote...

Wulfram wrote...

Taboo-XX wrote...

We're talking about colonies and such....

People are going to die.

Most colonies are either small and on garden worlds, or extremely small and within conventional FTL range of garden worlds.

What about running out of supplies?

Can they manufacture drive cores?

On devastated planets?

The colonies don't need to manufacture anything, just grow food.

It isn't like the Reapers inhabited every single planet in the galaxy at the same time, nor did they destroy every planet (Look how long a dinky resistance held out on Earth).

This is just completely wrong.  For the record, I grew up on a farm, so I know a thing or two about the subject.

Modern agriculture is incredibly dependent on manufacturing and other supporting industries.  These things need to come from somewhere.  Machinery like that only lasts for so long, and without it, food production will grind to a halt.

Without supporting industry to manufacture heavy equipment or produce medicine, even the farm worlds will be screwed.

Indeed, and in Mass Effect farming is heavily dependant on machinery. For the kind of populations it sustains, this is a given.
Benning for example has fully a fully automated farming infrastructure that's continued to run even while it's cities have been attacked. What happens when that machinery breaks down. Oh you'll get replacements parts fro.... oh wait, you can't because everything's cut off.

[The Angry One]

o Ventus wrote...

I understand this. Wasn't obvious enough, I guess.

I'm just saying that's it's silly (if not outright stupid and morbidly idiotic) to assume there aren't at least SOME fertile worlds that still bear a functioning population.

Sure and in Fallout there are some settlements that survive.
That doesn't change that a) galactic civilisation has collapsed, permanently and  a lot of people are going to die. The major homeworlds in particular are screwed.

Modifié par The Angry One, 03 juin 2012 - 05:20 .

[o Ventus]

Delta_V2 wrote...

This is just completely wrong.  For the record, I grew up on a farm, so I know a thing or two about the subject.

Modern agriculture is incredibly dependent on manufacturing and other supporting industries.  These things need to come from somewhere.  Machinery like that only lasts for so long, and without it, food production will grind to a halt.

Without supporting industry to manufacture heavy equipment or produce medicine, even the farm worlds will be screwed.

You're applying real world principles with a fictional universe that is both set in the future and populated by hyper-advanced alien species. It isn't remotely beyond the realm of disbelief to think that most (if not all) of the agriculture can be handled by a VI program that only requires upkeep and maintenance. The colonies you visit in-game (Not founded by humans) have been established for well over a few centuries, so again, it's entirely plausible to assume they have some form of self sustenance, in medicine, food, and industrialization, at least to a point.

Modifié par o Ventus, 03 juin 2012 - 05:21 .

[gisle]

http://masseffect.wi...om/wiki/Benning
This planet is really close in a galactic scale, and it seems the Reapers have left much of the agricultural systems intact. It's also really large compared to earth and only have a population of 2.25 million humans. Sol->Arcturus is only 36 light years, and Arcturus->Euler is a distance we can travel in-game. With careful route planning, it might be possible to get there within a week.

It might be something to keep the a good amount of humans alive and the stranded levo victory fleet survivors until tech research and other colonies have been found in systems that was ignored before due to relays opening to a cluster of close ones, as quarian liveships and supplies might not keep quarians and turians alive for long.

Protheans made the conduit during the reaper war, so they might just as well have started with no idea on mass relay technology. Reapers fall over, is controlled, or are allies depending on ending, there's perhaps something to get out of at least 2 of these possible outcomes.

Just throwing out ideas here, looking forward to see it torn apart -- challange accepted?

[The Angry One]

o Ventus wrote...

You're applying real world principles with a fictional universe that is both set in the future and populated by hyper-advanced alien species. It isn't remotely beyond the realm of disbelief to think that most (if not all) of the agriculture can be handled by a VI program that only requires upkeep and maintenance. The colonies you visit in-game have been established for well over a few centuries, so again, it's entirely plausible to assume they have some form of self sustenance, in medicine, food, and industrialization, at least to a point.

Again, what happens when machinery starts to break down and the places capable of making replacements are cut off?
Management by VI means nothing.

[Tom Lehrer]

Taboo-XX wrote...

Tom Lehrer wrote...

If you talk to Allers she will tell you Bekenstein got destoryed from orbit.

Yeah, see I never talked to Allers.

EVER.

I left her on the Citadel.

It was my first playthrough and I didn't know any better.

[General User]

Omanisat wrote...
I'm not saying there wouldn't be survivors, it's quite likely there are many worlds the Reapers never hit. What I'm saying the the worlds they did hit would be toast.

I'm not sure the Reapers really completley destroyed many worlds this time around.  Maybe they would have gotten around to it eventually.  But from the start of the War to the end they seemed to be almost exclusively focused on military targets and population centres. 

Besides, even if a world was "toast", it could be repopulated/colonized by other colonies in the area that were less toasty.

Modifié par General User, 03 juin 2012 - 05:26 .

[Tigerman123]

Averdi wrote...

Tigerman123 wrote...

You've got to remember in this discussion that regardless of the trade deficits or surpluses that individual countries have, in aggregate our world is in balance with itself (if you ignore the accounting errors which say it isn't), we don't need to import machine tools or grain from alpha centuri to survive, we can do so ourselves. Why is there a claim that the denizens of these worlds would be unable to do so? It's a completely false analogy to compare a planet to a country.

Because there would be a tendency for planets to similarly specialize, to some degree, in tradable goods, just like countries do now.  Thus, it's not really a false analogy.  There was a time when the US was self-sufficient it much of its consumer goods, but this erroded as there was greater specialization due to declines in the cost of trade.  In a galaxy with low trade costs enabled by the mass relays, there's no reason to believe that such specialization wouldn't similarly occur.  After several decades of increasing trade, the US lacks the capacity (both physical and technical) to instantly produce some goods.  The planets of ME would be in a similar predicament - they'll need to relearn how to producer certain necessities, which takes time at the very least.

Trade generally arises on our planet through the uneven distribution
of resources, or from a country specialising in a certain good and
achieving a comparative advantage in through economies of scale etc, but
any solar system would likely have a surplus in any factor of
production such as raw materials or land, so trade would arise from
asymmetric costs, not from need and in the case of most good
transportation costs would negate the possibility

Relative factor abundance is one of several reasons why specialization of production may occur.  The key is relative factor abundance, not absolute factor abundance, however.  The fact that a planet may have more than enough resources to produce an item doesn't necessarily mean they will in the face the ability to trade.  If that product is necessary for life and requires infratructure or lead time to produce, then said planet is in trouble.

And, of course, then there are the planets that simply lack the resources necessary to produce certain life-necessary goods outright.  For those places, trade is an absolute necessity, not just a welfare-maximizing convenience.

It wasn't really my point that there would be no deterioration in living standards in the short run, just that most essential goods like food or mass produced clothing would be too cheap to be worth exporting

You are assuming that the mass relays completely negate costs, but they don't. To export a good you'd have to build a spaceship with an extremely expensive eezo core to reach the system's relay, or as is the case with the majority of planets, to reach the planet at all since the majority of systems don't have relays. You'd also have to transport the good from the point of manufacture to some hub where it can be taken into space and then again on the importing planet. In what cases would it be economical to do that? After all, international corporations frequently establish manufacturing plants in foreign countries to save on transportation costs; Coke is generally made and bottled in the country where it's then sold.

Most planets should be able to be self sufficient in food, the galaxy isn't made up of overpopulated worlds with billions of souls, the majority of planets have less than a billion inhabitants. Is there even a non homeworld with a population of over a billion? There would be no reason to establish a significant colony on a world incapable of producing food and so I

[The Angry One]

Gisle-Aune wrote...

http://masseffect.wi...om/wiki/Benning
This planet is really close in a galactic scale, and it seems the Reapers have left much of the agricultural systems intact. It's also really large compared to earth and only have a population of 2.25 million humans. Sol->Arcturus is only 36 light years, and Arcturus->Euler is a distance we can travel in-game. With careful route planning, it might be possible to get there within a week.

It might be something to keep the a good amount of humans alive and the stranded levo victory fleet survivors until tech research and other colonies have been found in systems that was ignored before due to relays opening to a cluster of close ones, as quarian liveships and supplies might not keep quarians and turians alive for long.

Protheans made the conduit during the reaper war, so they might just as well have started with no idea on mass relay technology. Reapers fall over, is controlled, or are allies depending on ending, there's perhaps something to get out of at least 2 of these possible outcomes.

Just throwing out ideas here, looking forward to see it torn apart -- challange accepted?

The Arcturus in game is in another cluster, far further away than 36 light years.
The name is either mistake, or another star was renamed Arcturus in the future.

[o Ventus]

The Angry One wrote...

o Ventus wrote...

You're applying real world principles with a fictional universe that is both set in the future and populated by hyper-advanced alien species. It isn't remotely beyond the realm of disbelief to think that most (if not all) of the agriculture can be handled by a VI program that only requires upkeep and maintenance. The colonies you visit in-game have been established for well over a few centuries, so again, it's entirely plausible to assume they have some form of self sustenance, in medicine, food, and industrialization, at least to a point.

Again, what happens when machinery starts to break down and the places capable of making replacements are cut off?
Management by VI means nothing.

As long as there is at least 1 person (with proper training and knowledge) to maintain the technology, the technology should function.

Of course, there would be more than only 1 person on a colony or homeworld that bears inhabitants.

You're assuming the colonies are industrially retarded and can't manufacture simple parts on their own.

[General User]

The Angry One wrote...

o Ventus wrote...

I understand this. Wasn't obvious enough, I guess.

I'm just saying that's it's silly (if not outright stupid and morbidly idiotic) to assume there aren't at least SOME fertile worlds that still bear a functioning population.

Sure and in Fallout there are some settlements that survive.
That doesn't change that a) galactic civilisation has collapsed, permanently and  a lot of people are going to die. The major homeworlds in particular are screwed.

Are they?  Thessia perhaps.  But I don't think Sur'kesh was even hit.  And Earth and Palaven have powerful, intact military forces in the area.  As near to ideal for a recovery effort as could be reasonably hoped for.

Modifié par General User, 03 juin 2012 - 05:27 .

[The Angry One]

o Ventus wrote...

As long as there is at least 1 person (with proper training and knowledge) to maintain the technology, the technology should function.

Of course, there would be more than only 1 person on a colony or homeworld that bears inhabitants.

You're assuming the colonies are industrially retarded and can't manufacture simple parts on their own.

A fully automated farming infrastructure is going to be made up of far more than "simple parts".
The naivete here is staggering.

[Averdi]

o Ventus wrote...
It's not remotely beyond the field of belief to think there are fertile worlds that the Reapers haven't touched yet that hold a population.

It's not just remotely possible, it's likley.  And those poplulations will be fine, at least in the near term, since they have the ability to produce the core necessities of life.  Over time, they may have problems with disease and broader development, since more than likley the galaxy's advanced tech and R&D were concentrated on industrial worlds that were both devistated by the reapers and post-reaper starvation, civil war, etc.

But almost tautologically, the planets most likely to experience the greatest difficulty are those with large poplulations.  Even if a majority of habitable planets continue on, a huge chunck of the galaxy's poplulation, scientific knowledge, and advanced technology will be gone.

[The Angry One]

General User wrote...

Are they?  Thessia perhaps.  But I don't think Sur'kesh was even hit.  And Earth and Palaven have powerful, intact military forces in the area. 

.... and? Can you feed people with dreadnoughts?

[Tom Lehrer]

o Ventus wrote...
I understand this. Wasn't obvious enough, I guess.

I'm just saying that's it's silly (if not outright stupid and morbidly idiotic) to assume there aren't at least SOME fertile worlds that still bear a functioning population.

Im sure the smaller colonies would not have been targeted and even larger farming worlds might have been left more or less functinal but industrial centers were primary targets for the Reapers. With the industrial complex destoryed farming colonies will suffer from a lack of needed equipment and materials. They would be unable to make repairs to their infrastructure and would suffer a long period of collapse.

[The Angry One]

Tom Lehrer wrote...

o Ventus wrote...
I understand this. Wasn't obvious enough, I guess.

I'm just saying that's it's silly (if not outright stupid and morbidly idiotic) to assume there aren't at least SOME fertile worlds that still bear a functioning population.

Im sure the smaller colonies would not have been targeted and even larger farming worlds might have been left more or less functinal but industrial centers were primary targets for the Reapers. With the industrial complex destoryed farming colonies will suffer from a lack of needed equipment and materials. They would be unable to make repairs to their infrastructure and would suffer a long period of collapse.

Some low population worlds were destroyed outright. Others like Benning had their spaceports, ships and related infrastructure destroyed to trap people there for later harvesting.

[Omanisat]

General User wrote...

Omanisat wrote...
I'm not saying there wouldn't be survivors, it's quite likely there are many worlds the Reapers never hit. What I'm saying the the worlds they did hit would be toast.

I'm not sure the Reapers really completly destroyed many worlds this time around.  maybe they would have gotten around to it eventually.  But from the start of the War to the end they seemed to be almost exclusively focused on military targets and population centres. 

Besides, even if a world was "toast", it could be repopulated/colonized by other colonies in the area that were less toasty.

You don't have to vapourize the entire planet's surface to render it uninhabitable, at least for the immidiate future. 

http://en.wikipedia..../Nuclear_winter

The American Geophysical Union released a study in 2006 that stated an enchange or 50 Hiroshima sized weapons would release enough ash and smoke into the atmosphere to cool the planet for 1-2 years at the minimum. It would also destroy the ozone layer.

A single capital class reaper can generate a yield of around 460 kilotons, around 39 times the yield of the Hiroshima bomb. 30 minutes of bombardment could easily exceed the required amount.

[General User]

The Angry One wrote...

General User wrote...

Are they?  Thessia perhaps.  But I don't think Sur'kesh was even hit.  And Earth and Palaven have powerful, intact military forces in the area. 

.... and? Can you feed people with dreadnoughts?

There's a reason the military is often asked to respond to disasters (natural and otherwise) and it isn't because of firepower.  The military brings focus, discipline, and organization to an otherwise chaotic situation.  That by itself is the most important thing that needs to happen in any relief effort. 

So "Step One" (the most important step) is covered.  As for what comes next, we'll just have to see.  But there's no sense in throwing up ones's hands in either panic or despiar before one even know what exactly one's dealing with.

[The Angry One]

General User wrote...

The Angry One wrote...

General User wrote...

Are they?  Thessia perhaps.  But I don't think Sur'kesh was even hit.  And Earth and Palaven have powerful, intact military forces in the area. 

.... and? Can you feed people with dreadnoughts?

There's a reason the military is often asked to respond to disasters (natural and otherwise) and it isn't because of firepower.  The military brings focus, discipline, and organization to an otherwise chaotic situation.  That by itself is the most important thing that needs to happen in any relief effort. 

So "Step One" (the most important step) is covered.  As for what comes next, we'll just have to see.  But there's no sense in throwing up ones's hands in either panic or despiar before one even know what exactly one's dealing with.

They're also brought in because of their logistical capabilities, able to evacuate survivors and bring in supplies.
With the relays down, you can do neither. Moreover all those ships also need supplies, and they're going to run out.
They don't have the space to evacuate the billions of survivors on Earth nor anything to feed them with.

How long is that discipline going to last in these circumstances? Eventually, a shooting war is going to break out as various factions are carved out among the surviving fleet, vying for resources.

Modifié par The Angry One, 03 juin 2012 - 05:37 .

[o Ventus]

The Angry One wrote...

o Ventus wrote...

As long as there is at least 1 person (with proper training and knowledge) to maintain the technology, the technology should function.

Of course, there would be more than only 1 person on a colony or homeworld that bears inhabitants.

You're assuming the colonies are industrially retarded and can't manufacture simple parts on their own.

A fully automated farming infrastructure is going to be made up of far more than "simple parts".
The naivete here is staggering.

During the timespan of the games, it probably is simple. I could argue very simple.

How many examples are we given of an AI or a VI that ceases to function due to lack of maintenance? The VI on the Hugo Gernsback survived ~13 years on its own.