31 réponses à ce sujet

[Megamag]

Okay so in Mass Effect 2's Arrival Shepard destroys a Mass Relay by launching an asteroid right into it (and not even at full speed). But there countless asteroids of every size and speed already floating around the universe. So how is it, that no Mass Relay ever got hit and destroyed by one of those in the past? Especially the Relays, that are drifting aimlessly through space themselves? The Reapers obiously built them to last eons, but that's a pretty big risk they are taking there, if they're so easily destroyed, don't you think?

[JamesFaith]

Didn't this asteroid also contain huge Reaper power source?

Also we don't know if this happened in past. System destroyed by relay explosion would hardly get new relay and without it will become just one of million stars, needle in haystack.

[Hanako Ikezawa]

Well, the asteroid in question was the size of a small planet according to Dr. Kenson, so there's a lot more mass there than an asteroid. Perhaps smaller asteroids are launched by the Mass Relay as a safety precaution. You see the Relay in Arrival try to do something with it before the impact.

[JasonShepard]

I agree with JamesFaith - how do we know that relays weren't ever destroyed by accident?

The Alpha-relay is the oldest relay that Kenson could find - Cerberus Daily News from the build up to the Arrival DLC demonstrated that a lot of Mass Relays are a lot younger (though still much older than the Protheans, who everyone still thought had built them...)

So maybe the Reapers had to build replacements from time to time? Would there be any evidence for us to tell the difference?

[KaiserShep]

Aside from the survivability of the relays with both heavy shielding and resilient materials, the odds of an object as large as Kenson's asteroid striking one are considerably remote. There's also cases like the Charon relay, which orbit bodies that actually have a gravitational field that are much more likely to be struck.

[ImaginaryMatter]

Megamag wrote...

Okay so in Mass Effect 2's Arrival Shepard destroys a Mass Relay by launching an asteroid right into it (and not even at full speed). But there countless asteroids of every size and speed already floating around the universe. So how is it, that no Mass Relay ever got hit and destroyed by one of those in the past? Especially the Relays, that are drifting aimlessly through space themselves? The Reapers obiously built them to last eons, but that's a pretty big risk they are taking there, if they're so easily destroyed, don't you think?

Although there are an innumerable number of bits and pieces of rock hurdling around in space, space is an unimaginably large expanse of nothingness; the actually propability of something hitting another thing is basically zero (imagine trying to flick a grain of sand at another grain of sand).

Having said that, the Mass Relays can apparently survive supernovas (which makes the fact that the Arrival asteroid destroyed one a little surprising) so it'll probably have to be a significantly sized rock.

[Kiwiphoenix]

The Reapers are also a entire race of supercomputers, and it's been shown that they can move the entire Citadel somehow. Don't think it's beyond reason that they could place their relays out of the projected pathways of hazardous bodies, and reassess during every cycle.

[JasonShepard]

ImaginaryMatter wrote...

Having said that, the Mass Relays can apparently survive supernovas (which makes the fact that the Arrival asteroid destroyed one a little surprising) so it'll probably have to be a significantly sized rock.

There's a difference between withstanding a supernova at point blank range, and withstanding a supernova from a few light-years away. We're never told how close the Mu Relay was to the supernova that went off, only that it got lost in the resulting nebula (which is slightly ridiculous - nebulae aren't actually that dense - but hey, it's sci-fi).

[KaiserShep]

A relay in a system is not even 1 LY from the star. To clarify, 1 light year is equal to over 63K AU. 

Modifié par KaiserShep, 23 décembre 2013 - 02:37 .

[ImaginaryMatter]

JasonShepard wrote...

ImaginaryMatter wrote...

Having said that, the Mass Relays can apparently survive supernovas (which makes the fact that the Arrival asteroid destroyed one a little surprising) so it'll probably have to be a significantly sized rock.

There's a difference between withstanding a supernova at point blank range, and withstanding a supernova from a few light-years away. We're never told how close the Mu Relay was to the supernova that went off, only that it got lost in the resulting nebula (which is slightly ridiculous - nebulae aren't actually that dense - but hey, it's sci-fi).

Supernovas have a fairly large point blank range though.

[Orikon]

It is established that some relays are younger while some are older,so Reapers probably had to rebuild some of them just like in the Control ending.Mass Relays are HUGE,so even if an asteroid/planet/whatever does hit them,its possible it will be simply pushed off somewhere else due to its zero mass.
About Arrival though,honestly I think the only reason the Relay was destroyed was because the mass of the asteroid was too large.Before the asteroid hits the relay itself,you can clearly see eezo in the relay trying to reduce the asteroid's mass,and failing.The asteroid was bigger then the relay itself,which isn't exactly common for ships or fleets passing through it.

[JasonShepard]

KaiserShep wrote...

A relay in a system is not even 1 LY from the star. To clarify, 1 light year is equal to over 63K AU. 

Forgive me, it's been a while since I played ME1. Is it actually stated that the Mu Relay was actually orbiting the star that went supernova? Because if so... yeah, it does feel a bit silly that a Relay can be wiped out by an asteroid, but not by a supernova at that  range.

Otherwise, I guess I just always assumed that the Mu relay was in a different system to the supernova, but still only a few LY away from it.

Modifié par JasonShepard, 23 décembre 2013 - 09:15 .

[JamesFaith]

JasonShepard wrote...

KaiserShep wrote...

A relay in a system is not even 1 LY from the star. To clarify, 1 light year is equal to over 63K AU. 

Forgive me, it's been a while since I played ME1. Is it actually stated that the Mu Relay was actually orbiting the star that went supernova? Because if so... yeah, it does feel a bit silly that a Relay can be wiped out by an asteroid, but not by a supernova at that  range.

Otherwise, I guess I just always assumed that the Mu relay was in a different system to the supernova, but still only a few LY away from it.

Well, if relay was in outer part of system, it should survive supernova explosion. When planet were scorched and pulverized, relay is much smaller so it would be more likely pushed out of system. Sure, force of blast would be still tremendous, but relay would - how to say it - "resist" blast much less then planents and moons.

I show it on example of nucelar explosion - when big buldings near epicentrum are destroyed and shattered, smaller objects like cars are thrown away and destroyed not by blast itself, but by impact on ground. 

[JasonShepard]

JamesFaith wrote...

JasonShepard wrote...

KaiserShep wrote...

A relay in a system is not even 1 LY from the star. To clarify, 1 light year is equal to over 63K AU. 

Forgive me, it's been a while since I played ME1. Is it actually stated that the Mu Relay was actually orbiting the star that went supernova? Because if so... yeah, it does feel a bit silly that a Relay can be wiped out by an asteroid, but not by a supernova at that  range.

Otherwise, I guess I just always assumed that the Mu relay was in a different system to the supernova, but still only a few LY away from it.

Well, if relay was in outer part of system, it should survive supernova explosion. When planet were scorched and pulverized, relay is much smaller so it would be more likely pushed out of system. Sure, force of blast would be still tremendous, but relay would - how to say it - "resist" blast much less then planents and moons.

I show it on example of nucelar explosion - when big buldings near epicentrum are destroyed and shattered, smaller objects like cars are thrown away and destroyed not by blast itself, but by impact on ground. 

Hmm. This is beginning to feel like I want to run the maths on this. Average energy of a supernova, E, at D distance, vs an asteroid of mass M and velocity V. Which has more energy?

But I'm not gonna bother. Because my willing suspension of disbelief is still intact, and calculating the mass and velocity of the Arrival asteroid would involve over-analysing cinematics to the point of absurdity.

I'm happy with the explanation that the Mu relay was sufficiently far away from the supernova to survive, since I doubt the distance is ever directly specified.

[sH0tgUn jUliA]

And the Earth was struck by killer asteroids an estimated four times since the beginning. So yeah, over the course of a billion years the odds are that one or more have been destroyed. It's just that no one is around to have recorded it.

[cap and gown]

Perhaps some of the so-called super nova that have been observed were actually mass relays blowing up?

[Reorte]

sH0tgUn jUliA wrote...

And the Earth was struck by killer asteroids an estimated four times since the beginning. So yeah, over the course of a billion years the odds are that one or more have been destroyed. It's just that no one is around to have recorded it.

Earth is in the inner solar system too, where it's more likely to get struck.

[Reorte]

cap and gown wrote...

Perhaps some of the so-called super nova that have been observed were actually mass relays blowing up?

In nearby cases (i.e. in this galaxy or a satellite) the stellar remnant is still observable for any supernova that's been observed, so so far that isn't the case

[dgcatanisiri]

JasonShepard wrote...

KaiserShep wrote...

A relay in a system is not even 1 LY from the star. To clarify, 1 light year is equal to over 63K AU. 

Forgive me, it's been a while since I played ME1. Is it actually stated that the Mu Relay was actually orbiting the star that went supernova? Because if so... yeah, it does feel a bit silly that a Relay can be wiped out by an asteroid, but not by a supernova at that  range.

Otherwise, I guess I just always assumed that the Mu relay was in a different system to the supernova, but still only a few LY away from it.

Benezia says specifically that it was lost when a star NEARBY went supernova. 'Nearby,' of course, being a relative term, but I think that confirms that it wasn't in the same system.

As for destroying Relays, remember, Kenson and her team were specifically targeting that asteroid at the Alpha Relay, which means that it wasn't something that was wandering towards the Relay on its own. Which probably means that they were also accelerating it (I believe Kenson says something to this effect on the shuttle ride out there), which means that it was probably not directly pointed at the Relay to begin with. So without their interference, that size of an asteroid would not have approached that Relay, and it never would have been an issue. So it's unlikely that there would be too many destroyed this way. It's possible, sure, but it's equally (and probably more) possible that the Reapers have repaired and replaced the Relay structures over the cycles, due to natural wear and tear.

[Armass81]

A Wizard did it.

[NeroonWilliams]

Take a look at where the relays are placed in each of the systems that have them: always outside the orbit of the outermost planet in the system. This places them at the edges of a system in the area we call the Oort cloud. Stuff out there? Yeah, but you need to also take into account. . .

They are also MASSIVE. The Sol Relay became encased in ice and debris so that we currently refer to it as Charon, Pluto's moon. The case could be made that this is actually a more frequent outcome of a large body encountering a relay.

So that's the case for it hasn't ever happened before. Here's the case that it HAS.

We only have theories until the Alpha Relay is destroyed what will actually happen if one is. Even if hundreds have been destroyed previously, do we know what evidence to look for to confirm "there used to be a relay in this system"?

The span of observed history is tiny compared to the age of the relays. Think about it. Even if we can theoretically add the observation period of the Protheans to our own, we are talking about a maximum of maybe 10,000 years of observation of artifacts that date back almost a BILLION years.

There are two beings in the game that might be able to answer this question for us: the Leviathans, and their AI. I know most of us don't trust either one to give a truthful answer.

[Ome6ablak]

If I had to guess the Keepers make sure it doesn't happen. I highly doubt that the relays don't have the ability to move out of the way. If a asteroid is on a collision course, the Keepers make a slight flight adjustment so that said asteroid would fly by. The problem with Kenson's asteroid is it was making course corrections in order to collide with the relay, where as a normal asteroid is typically on set path. Give or take gravitational pull from planets and stars. So no matter what the Keepers did there was no avoiding the collision. But then again it's just a game, stop thinking so deeply about it.

[AlexMBrennan]

Because they didn't just hit the relay with an asteroid, but an asteroid with a magical Reaper device which completely changes the laws of physics. Simples.

[Nitrocuban]

Space magic, man. Space magic.