215 réponses à ce sujet

[RiouHotaru]

The Angry One wrote... 
Yes it does, it shows us the position of the Citadel relative to Earth

Which is what, exactly?  What's the position?  Do you know for a fact it's low enough to cause atmospheric re-entry?

The Angry One wrote... 
You see, I'm doing the one thing Mac Walters doesn't want me to do. I'm thinking.
The fleet is not going to be carrying supplies for a long term stay. The Turians and Quarians specifically need different food than the rest of us, and Earth is uninhabitable anyway.
There simply is not going to be enough food to go around. People will starve, and when people starve, desperate measures are taken.

Oh boy, personal attacks.  And here's where you start making assumptions again.  The Quarians brought some of their liveships.  Do we know how many survive the fight?  And there's again, no evidence to conclude Earth is "uninhabitable".  Wrecked, yes.  Permanently ruined, no.  And the Quarians could always use FTL, as could the Turians.

The Angry One wrote... 
Rubbish. Cerberus were certainly not saints in ME2, but there were morally grey allies at worst.
Turning them into supervillains was entirely an ME3 thing.

Did ME1 just convienently disappear?

The Angry One wrote... 
Weekes also said that the speed of Citadel ships was never stated in game. It is. In the codex.
Weekes may be a good writer, but he's also not familiar with all the lore, especially the lore of an ending he didn't write.

Who did write it? Mac Walters. What did *he* say about it? Galactic dark age.

Then perhaps the issue is with the definition of what "Galactic dark age" means.

The Angry One wrote... 
My argument is common sense. You're just whining because it's depressing.
Well, yeah. Sorry, we're not here to uplift you. If you want to wear rose tinted glasses and assume everything will be fine, go ahead. Don't complain when the rest of us are more realistic.

Again with the personal attacks.  And common sense isn't an argument here, at least not a factual one.  I could just as easily argue common sense right right.  And once again, you generalize my argument.  I never said things wouldn't be tough, I just argue that things WILL get better, eventually.

The Angry One wrote... 
more space magic

Just because your interpretation is "more realistic" (which is an opinion, not fact) does not make it any more valid.

Modifié par RiouHotaru, 03 juin 2012 - 08:22 .

[RiouHotaru]

Jassu1979 wrote...
"Those sailboats are really fast! Clearly, they'll fill the gap and solve all of our problems."

Concerning your sailboat analogy, obviously civilization progressed from the point of using sailboats, a regression back that point would certain limit the development of civilization, but it hardly spells an end.  Civilization dealt with being stuck with sailboats for some time.

(Plus where in this analogy would I put Reaper salavage?)

Salvaging Reapers has worked really well in the past. Leviathan of Dis and the Reaper corpse in ME2, anyone?

EDI and the Thanix Cannon.  Obviously it's possible to work with Reaper salvage without being indoctrinated.  My guess (and it's only a guess) is that the power source fuels indoctrination (The dead Reaper's Core and Object Rho from Arrival)

I'm not talking about long-term consequences. I'm talking about what's going to happen right after the relays are destroyed, all across the galaxy.

"Right after" meaning what...a week?  A month?  3 months?  Because that's about as immediate as you get.  A year later isn't immediate anymore.  So unless anarchy breaks out almost as SOON as the war is over...

The Citadel already IS in low orbit in those cut scenes.

I'll ask the same question I asked the AngryOne.  Where exactly is the Citadel relative to Earth?  Do we know for a fact it's position in the cutscene is "low orbit"?  Do we know it's close enough to cause re-entry?

Now it's getting downright silly.

No it's not, these are valid questions that, quite frankly, are NOT addressed by the ending.  To make any claims about these statements as fact is conjecture and speculation, not informed estimation.

[Lozark]

Let's not forget that mixed-species colonies are also screwed, because the planets native flora and fauna may not be consumable by all species (Turians, Quarians, Volus), that any ship travelling at the time of the relays blowing up is now possibly stranded in a star cluster with no habitable worlds, and all the space stations (Omega, anyone?) will starve because places like that are dependent on food being brought in. I look forward to the people in these situations starving or turning on their fellows and trying out cannibalism.

Modifié par Lozark, 03 juin 2012 - 08:38 .

[sH0tgUn jUliA]

Regarding the EC: We don't know what they're going to do exactly. At the moment it's all speculation.

At the moment all we have to work with is the ending we have.

* Yes, in the under 4000 EMS endings one arm of the Citadel does break. This will destabilize the orbit. When that happens you can rest assured it will go into a decaying orbit and impact earth. It isn't going to fly off into the sun. It isn't going to orbit the moon. It is going to fall to earth. It is 44 km long. It weighs 7.11 billion metric tonnes. It will be a major extinction event on the level of the Permian/Triassic Extinction or Cretaceous/Paleocene Extinction on impact.

* Add to it the debris from the fleets impacting.

* Then you have dead rotting husks. Lack of immediate food. Lack of infrastructure for food distribution. Lack of clean water. Yes water can be made clean, but you need infrastructure for doing that and distributing that to people. People in rural areas will have the best chance of survival, and will probably shoot anyone coming in from cities since they'll have barely enough to feed their own clans soon to be tribes.

* Disease. This and the food and water is going to be trouble on all worlds. Resources are going to be stretched thin even with the relays.

Rebuilding the individual civilizations after this war is going to be a very long process. It will take about a century with the relays. Without the relays longer.

Now add the scenario with the Citadel impacting earth. Earth then becomes habitable again in about 300 yrs. after the dust settles and short half-life radioactive materials decayed. It's a very grim scenario. Some people will survive in isolated areas but it will be like the stone age. Rats and cockroaches will most definitely make it.

But this is what we have until the EC says otherwise. I can't see how even in the best case scenario where the relays survive intact, Shepard lives, the Geth live, everyone of your team live, and you're united with your LI that when you take an honest look at the Earth, Palaven, Thessia, Khar'shan and any of the colony worlds that you could call that anything other than a bittersweet ending. It is more like the ending to Gears of War 3 ---

Shepard looks around "What have we got left Liara? Tell me. What's left?"
"We have tomorrow."

That's about it.

[sH0tgUn jUliA]

Dead reapers in Destroy do not indoctrinate, nor should they be able to indoctrinate.

[Ieldra]

@sH0tgUn jUliA
Let me just clarify that something breaking up in orbit does not necessarily destabilize the orbit. Actually, space debris is a problem for current satellites exactly because that does NOT happen nearly often enough.

And you have absolute zero idea of how much infrastructure on Earth is destroyed. London is pretty much rubble, yes, but there was a lot of actual fighting there. Many other cities will be destroyed as well, but how large a percentage? No idea, really.

Modifié par Ieldra2, 03 juin 2012 - 08:45 .

[Wulfram]

Coats tells us that London is worse than most places, doesn't he?

[General User]

Many buildings in London seemed partially, if not largely, intact.

[Averdi]

ThomaswBloom wrote...

*shrug*  Okay.  Fun little intellectual exercise.

Cool!

Pre-invaion population is in "Trillions" per ME1.  So at least two Trillion people. 

Lets say 50% of the galactic population is wholly dependent on imported food.  Pure speculation there.

I doubt this.  Likely some food would be local.  Water, both pure and as an ingredient, is almost certain to be local.

That said, one doesn't need to have no food at all in order to starve.

So you've got roughly 3 trillion meals per day being unloaded at spaceports around the galaxy.  Call it a pound and half per meal?  So 4.5 trillion pounds of food per day being unloaded.

Seems light to me.  Krogen (who seem to have been importing food for a while) would almost certainly be eating more.

To move 4.5 trillion lbs per day would require how many freighters?  ME freighters don't look all that big to me.  I'd say they were smaller than modern container ships.  So 50 million lbs per Freighter optimistically.   Given those estimates you're looking at 90,000 freighters per day being unloaded.

I've no idea as to the cost effectiveness of large/small commercial ships (large = more cargo per run, but more eezo to lighten the mass, etc.), so let's go with the container ship comparision.

Modern container ships carry up to 15,000 or so TEU (http://en.wikipedia..../Container_ship).
A 20-foot container is about 48,000 lbs (net) per container (http://en.wikipedia....equivalent_unit).

So, a fully-laden, large-ish container ship could carry 720 million lbs per run, if I'm reading the sources and doing the arithmatic correctly.

[Alternatively, the Emma-Maersk can carry 11,000 TEU of 14 tons (presumably metric) each, for a total cargo mass of about 340 million lbs.  http://www.emma-maer...specification/]

So, assuming say 5 trillion lbs per day, we're looking at around 7,000 freighters.

Now you've got to have all this pipelined because the round trip is going to be more than one day.  Load the freighter, lift, travel to Mass relay, travel to destination, discharge, unload and refuel, lift, travel to mass relay, travel to food planet, discharge, load and refuel, repeat ad nausium.  So best case estimate two days round trip.

I think this isn't too relevant.  Galactic supply chains would be set up, with inventories, to segment the raw cargo trips from general distribution.  No one really waits on the docks for their food to arrive.  As long as the chain is intact, it matters much less exactly how long any particular trip takes.

Disruptions in that chain, however, would matter....a great deal.

So you're looking at around 180k frighteners to support  50% of the galaxy given the minimum pre-invasion population andpresuming that ME freighters are as large as the biggest container ships we have.  And that the entire galactic population is within one day of a mass relay, counting discharge and unloading time.

I disgree, and would say still around 7,000 freighters.  Even doubling that to 15,000 freighters or so doesn't seem crazy to me.  But there are still lots of variables in here.

Btw, where'd you get your contain ship estimates?  I just pieced stuff from wikipedia, but there seems to be plenty of variation.

Personally it looks like to me that most planets/colonies/clusters are 90%+ self sufficiant.  With many being totally self sufficiant at least as far as food production goes.

I still disagree.  While I'm sure there's some local production just about everywhere, for the highly industrial planets I don't think it's anywhere near subsistence levels.

Modifié par Averdi, 03 juin 2012 - 09:28 .

[RiouHotaru]

Ieldra2 wrote...

@sH0tgUn jUliA
Let me just clarify that something breaking up in orbit does not necessarily destabilize the orbit. Actually, space debris is a problem for current satellites exactly because that does NOT happen nearly often enough.

And you have absolute zero idea of how much infrastructure on Earth is destroyed. London is pretty much rubble, yes, but there was a lot of actual fighting there. Many other cities will be destroyed as well, but how large a percentage? No idea, really.

This.  Or more specifically, the part about orbit destabilization.  It's amusing that people use real-world examples and fail to get that one.

[Wulfram]

I'd expect Earth wouldn't be too dependant on imported food simply because it's only had extraplanetary sources of food available to it for 30 years. Unless all the farmers just packed up and went to the colonies or something. While Thessia and Palaven's populations are comparable to current Earth's, so why wouldn't they be largely self sufficient?

Obviously, the Reaper invasion will have changed all that beyond recognition, but I'm just talking about food self sufficiency in general terms.

[Averdi]

RiouHotaru wrote...

- The confirmed FTL speed of 12 ly/day is the CRUISING speed for frigates, larger ships move faster by default, and higher speeds are possible otherwise.  The fact that he mentions conventional FTL as an option means the issue of fuel can be solved.

Granted.  It seems clear to me that a trip accross the galaxy is still possible, just extremely time consuming and costly.  I could see a way that the quarians around Earth could get home, but I'm more dubious that the others won't start eating each other before they get back, even with the shorter trips.

On a more permanent side, said travel times would, in my opinion, prohibit any except for local colonies/planets from effecting travel sufficient to be of mutual support in rebuilding.  To me, this still means that millions will go without.

- Salvaging parts from Reapers helps develop technology.  This means that despite the devestation enough infrastructure exists to not only salvage parts and pieces from the destroyed Reapers, but also to integrate it or reverse engineer it to work with existing technology.

That's possible, I suppose, but I'll have a problem if only that aspect of reapers is introduced, without the accompanying downsides (i.e. people get indocotinated, impale themselves, and try to kill each other).  Also, what is the maximum benefit from this?  The greatest one is doubling FTL speeds, no?

Also, about the worlds where Shepard picked control or synthesis?

As for the ending isse, I'd argue that the level of suspension of disbelief is the same for both sides.  After all, we're only presented with the IMMEDIATE consequence of the war, with absolutely nothing that points to the long-term consquences.

I disagree here.  I think the destruction of the relays is significant and fairly clear in its implications.

- We know in two endings, the Citadel is destroyed.  Do we know if the destruction was enough to shove it into low orbit and send it crashing to Earth?  No.  Absolutely no evidence exists to back this claim up.  Neither is the cutscene evidence either.

True, though an uncontrolled orbit via explosion is more likely to be unstable.

- We know the Allied fleet sustains heavy losses.  Do we know that that there's going to be Eezo contamination based on those losses?  No.  Do we know that the Quarians lose enough lifeships to render themselves unable to sustain their population?  No.

I agree, no hint either way.

- We know Earth is wrecked quite heavily.  Do we know that Earth is rendered permanently uninhabitable?  No.  Do we know that enough infrastructure has been destroyed to guarantee Earth will not support the life that survives on it?  No.

Unless kilometer long sections of the citadel or reapers hit the surface, I doubt that Earth will be wrecked or unable to sustain life.  Whether it can sustain the numbers currently relying on it is more doubtful.

That's my argument.  We lack ANY evidence whatsoever that things turn out as badly as people seem to love claiming.  Now, in reverse, there's no evidence that things eventually get better either.  But to argue that it's more difficult to believe an eventual "bad end" over an eventual "good end" seems silly when the evidence to support either claim patently does NOT exist.

Here's where I disagree again, primarly because of the relay's destruction and interdependency of galactic commerce that, to me, is implied throughout the game.

Modifié par Averdi, 03 juin 2012 - 09:12 .

[Averdi]

General User wrote...

Tell 'ya what.  if you really want to talk about WWII, hit me up with a PM.

Well, I'm forced to point out that you stared that particular analogy by referencing Hiroshima and Nagasaki.  But no, I don't really want to discuss WWII.

I was refering more to the fact that there are several resource rich worlds (including at least one garden world) within short distance of Earth that any "relief administration" would be more than able to exploit at will.

Which one are you referring to?  Eden Prime?  Possibly, though since it seemed to have been attacked as well, the farming infrastructure would need to be rebuilt.

It's a concern, no doubt about that.  And, armchair admiral that I am, one of the first things I'd do after the battle is put Aria's mercenary forces on lock.  But as far as the Alliance, Hierarchy, asari, salarian, quarian, geth, even remnant batarian and (under Wrex at least) krogan forces, I have no doubt that continued mutual cooperation remains the best strategy for us all and that they will recognize that as well.

Could be.  Maybe the situation would bring out the best in people.  Earth also somewhat has an advantage insofar as the "best" minds that constructed the crucible presumably are there as well.

[Averdi]

Wulfram wrote...

I'd expect Earth wouldn't be too dependant on imported food simply because it's only had extraplanetary sources of food available to it for 30 years. Unless all the farmers just packed up and went to the colonies or something. While Thessia and Palaven's populations are comparable to current Earth's, so why wouldn't they be largely self sufficient?

Obviously, the Reaper invasion will have changed all that beyond recognition, but I'm just talking about food self sufficiency in general terms.

I don't truely know, but I find the notion that Earth would be self sufficient somewhat dubious.  With an original popluation of over 11 billion, another quarter million on the space stations, another 4 million on Luna, and 3.4 million on Mars, all presumably who source food from either Earth or extra-Sol, I'm suspect of subsistence-level farming.  Even if Earth could produce enough food for its poplulation, I doubt it would given economic evolution since the relay network was discovered.

Now, of course, the Earth's population is less than it was.  How much less versus how much food it has the capacity to produce in the near term would determine whether there's malnutrution or starvation.  Other worlds would be the same.

[Omanisat]

General User wrote...

Omanisat wrote...
Two. Over the course of 3 days. Both less then 15 kilotons. That's like saying driving a car into a wall at 100mph wouldn't kill you because doing it at 5 wouldn't. I've already said most estimates require at least 50 weapons detonated, with yields above 15kT. Individually they're city killers, collectively they're planet killers.

Estimates are fine as far as they go.  But when all observable and historical fact speaks against them it's time to set them aside.

Estimates are the only thing you can go on when a comparable event has never occured. Humanity has never witnessed an asteroid impact large enough to cause an extiction event, does that mean it therefore can't happen?

[sH0tgUn jUliA]

Ieldra2 wrote...

@sH0tgUn jUliA
Let me just clarify that something breaking up in orbit does not necessarily destabilize the orbit. Actually, space debris is a problem for current satellites exactly because that does NOT happen nearly often enough.

And you have absolute zero idea of how much infrastructure on Earth is destroyed. London is pretty much rubble, yes, but there was a lot of actual fighting there. Many other cities will be destroyed as well, but how large a percentage? No idea, really.

Anderson said they hit all the major population areas globally. So you can assume the fighting was intense in Shanghai as well as other places like Seattle/Vancouver, and Moscow, and Seoul, Tokyo, etc. I would say enough cities destroyed to make things a pretty **** mess. And don't forget the indoctrinated will have no problem turning their fellow citizens into husks.

The vid I was describing had an explosion prior to breakup, hence the thought  about the orbit destabilization.

[General User]

Averdi wrote...
Which one are you referring to?  Eden Prime?  Possibly, though since it seemed to have been attacked as well, the farming infrastructure would need to be rebuilt.

The garden world?  It's in Alpha Centauri.  Has a human population of (I believe) a hundred or so.  Additional expendable labor (something Earth far from lacks in the wake of the Reaper War) will, of course, have to be brought in. 

Don't get me wrong.  Hyperbole notwithstanding, the old order where 10% of the population do something productive/useful and the rest are (at best) a bunch of weasels who sell crap to each other is gone and it's not coming back any time soon.  My whole thing is: that doesn't mean civilization, let alone life itself, is at an end.

Omanisat wrote...
Estimates are the only thing you can
go on when a comparable event has never occured. Humanity has never
witnessed an asteroid impact large enough to cause an extiction event,
does that mean it therefore can't happen?

By no means!  Large scale, above ground nuclear explosions, major volcanic eruptions, enormous fires (both natural and man made, in both urban and wilderness areas) all these events have occurred and have amounted to little more than footnotes and trivia.  Only naturally occurring volcanism has ever even been notable at all on a planetary scale.  And even then only with minor effects and for a brief period.

Modifié par General User, 03 juin 2012 - 10:34 .

[Reorte]

A few points from a skim read of just this page:

The Citadel looks to be well below geostationary orbit so if the beam was permanently directly conneced to London then it must've been using mass effect to stay there. Therefore the majority of the wreckage will probably deorbit. I wouldn't even want to guess at how much or little damage it would cause; it'll be in pieces and each piece will have less kinetic energy than an asteroid of equivalent mass hitting from a solar orbit would.

Time and fuel isn't much of an issue for getting to any nearbyish systems (e.g. Arcturus is only 36 ly away and some calculations I did give the Normandy a 120 ly range). Long distance travel is screwed so I find the idea of saying dormant relays are unaffected and trying to use them to get the rest of the galaxy back together to be one ripe for future storytelling possibilities.

[JadedLibertine]

General User wrote...

Many buildings in London seemed partially, if not largely, intact.

As Big Ben was the only building visible, I assumed most of central London had been devestated.

[General User]

JadedLibertine wrote...

General User wrote...

Many buildings in London seemed partially, if not largely, intact.

As Big Ben was the only building visible, I assumed most of central London had been devestated.

Quite devastated indeed, but far from destroyed.  And if that's the worst that happened to Earth, well...

[Reorte]

JadedLibertine wrote...

General User wrote...

Many buildings in London seemed partially, if not largely, intact.

As Big Ben was the only building visible, I assumed most of central London had been devestated.

<pedant mode>Big Ben wasn't visible, it's a bell. I think you're referring to the Clock Tower of the Palace of Westminster</pedant mode>
Anyway, it's London. I'm more interested in what's happened to places that I actually like.

[Candidate 88766]

It means that every cluster will be on its own for decades, possibly centuries. FTL between clusters is too infeasible, but FTL between systems has always been the norm. Its unlikely that many planets will be utterly reliant on resources from outside their own cluster.

The massive damage to infrastructure, the collapse of the galactic economy, and the large losses or resources (a lot of resources may have been destroyed, or used up aiding the war effort) will lead to very high casualties. Some planets will suffer far more than others - Earth, for example, has no systems nearby that can be reached without the Charon relay, and given the massive destruction to the planet it will struggle to recover. A planet like Thessia, however, has half a dozen systems in its cluster that are within FTL range. Thats how ships travel between systems - the relays are only for inter-cluster transport.

The best analogy I can think of is if every country in the world was suddenly split off and dropped in some vast ocean, that made travel between countries impossible. Countries will no longer be able to rely on imports, but they still have access to their own resources. For some countries, those resources won't be enough. Some countries are almost entirely lacking in natural resources. But there will also be a lot of countries that will survive. It'll be a struggle, but they'll manage.

That goes for the ME universe as well - some clusters won't have enough resources remaining to adequately survive. However, many of them will. Interstellar supply lines still exist and function - its only supply lines between clusters that have been lost.

[Candidate 88766]

Reorte wrote...

JadedLibertine wrote...

General User wrote...

Many buildings in London seemed partially, if not largely, intact.

As Big Ben was the only building visible, I assumed most of central London had been devestated.

<pedant mode>Big Ben wasn't visible, it's a bell. I think you're referring to the Clock Tower of the Palace of Westminster</pedant mode>
Anyway, it's London. I'm more interested in what's happened to places that I actually like.

To be fair, Big Ben is generally accepted as the name of the Clock Tower as well as the bell itself.

Modifié par Candidate 88766, 03 juin 2012 - 10:42 .

[Reorte]

Candidate 88766 wrote...

Reorte wrote...

JadedLibertine wrote...

General User wrote...

Many buildings in London seemed partially, if not largely, intact.

As Big Ben was the only building visible, I assumed most of central London had been devestated.

<pedant mode>Big Ben wasn't visible, it's a bell. I think you're referring to the Clock Tower of the Palace of Westminster</pedant mode>
Anyway, it's London. I'm more interested in what's happened to places that I actually like.

To be fair, Big Ben is generally accepted as the name of the Clock Tower as well as the bell itself.

Common ignorance doesn't make something true.

Anyway, this is rather off-topic. PM me if you want to continue having a go at my pedantry!

[Reorte]

Candidate 88766 wrote...

It means that every cluster will be on its own for decades, possibly centuries. FTL between clusters is too infeasible, but FTL between systems has always been the norm. Its unlikely that many planets will be utterly reliant on resources from outside their own cluster.

The definition of "cluster" is rather arbitrary. As far as the game is concerned Arcturus is a separate one but is easily reachable from Earth without the relays - but who's going to bother doing that when the relays are far more practical (in much the same way that most people these days will fly across the Atlantic). I can see a couple of decades of chaos then settling down to anywhere within at least a few months' travel being in contact. That will probably get us into turian and batarian space.