64 réponses à ce sujet

[Ironhandjustice]

They can just reverse-engeneer Reaper FTL.

Then travel, repair.

Sounds easy to me. The relays were a trap at first place in order to make organics lazy xD

[Dean_the_Young]

katamuro wrote...

AlanC9 wrote...

Logical fallacy is a bit much. Until a sequel ships we don't have any solid figures on how long repairs would actually take. The only characters we see returning to their homeworlds live so long that they could get there even if the relays were never repaired at all; I don't think this is a coincidence

The problem with relays in Destroy for example which I consider the most likely to be canonized ending is that it cripples the relays and destroys all reapers, geth even EDI. In the other endings the Reapers could help rebuild them quite easily considering that they move much faster than other ships however in Destroy with no Reapers, Geth who could actually do it or EDI they have to first fully understand how they work.

How is that a problem in a narrative sense? That just works against relays being repaired in the short term- that organics will have to work it out themselves.

Which is completely fine for an interim timeskip to readjust the galaxy and get past most legacy characters.

I think the way they will do it is by revealing that Asari have a lot more technology than they told anyone even other Asari. Why did Aethyta say that she tried to get the Asari to start building their own relays? I think that will be taken as the way "out"

Aethyta tells you why: she felt the Asari were becoming decadent and stagnating, and ignoring that there's a war in every Asari lifetime. Her warnings of the complacency of the Asari, and her subsequent ostracision, are a narrative device that fit the wider ME2 and are reflected in ME3 that the established governments and Council were woefully complacent and resting on their laurels.

. By logical fallacy I referred to several others that unless conveniently retconned again will be major walls to consistent and believable ME universe.

So when you refer to logical fallacies, you are referring to things that aren't actually logical fallacies. Gotcha.

Also what kind of energy weapon built against reapers cant discriminate between techno-organic reapers and purely synthetics like Geth and EDI.

Insufficently advanced kinds that target the techno part of the Reapers, and not the organic.

And why did relays blow up?

For a number of narrative and thematic reasons that can be collectively gathered under 'Art.' The legitimate kind, mind you.

Aside from narrative themes such as breaking free from the Reaper's machinations and traps, it also helps secure all of Shepard's actions to date from any immediate tampering and allows the Big Decisions to propogate themselves into the future without an immediate recourse to reverse them. Things that might initially be reversed in the short time (killing the Rachni after they become useful, applying the Genophage cure after the war in a more controlled manner, and so on) are effectively isolated and allowed to progress forward without outside intereference.

Surely if the amount of energy needed to overload those huge things was distributed through the galaxy everyone would die. It is a major plot point in ME2 that destroying a relay requires hell of a lot of energy. In ME1 Mu relay was thrown from its usual place by supernova and it still worked. So...

Sadly no, unless you want to ignore how energy works in our world as well. You are being pumped with so many different sorts of energy right now that you never notice, and yet much lesser amounts of energy released in a different way could kill you. How energy is released and controlled can change its effect- hence why your car is something other than a gasoline bomb. And why an EMP pulse can turn off a regional power grid, but do nothing to all the people within it.

ME3 establishes, even before the Extended Cut, that a sufficently refined Crucible wave wasn't going to release energy in a way to kill everyone. It could, in low EMS destroy with less technology and more implied battle damage to the thing, but at higher EMS the largest mass effect relay in the galaxy doesn't go supernova because its energy is already being used for the Crucible wave.

[sr2josh]

CosmicGnosis wrote...

I think the Extended Cut should have explained how the galaxy is going to rebuild the relays. These things are supposed to be mysterious and difficult to replicate. The Protheans had a huge breakthrough, but it was still just a small one-way-only relay. How is a crippled galaxy going to have the resources to rebuild the relays and the gigantic Citadel, their central hub? Is it possible that their work on the Crucible provided them with the knowledge? I can't think of any other possibility.

More than likely the extensive work and collaboration on the Crucible yielded knowledge on the mass relays not previously known.  I would imagine that additional information would be extracted from the "dead" tech in Reaper corpses as well.

[katamuro]

Dean_the_Young wrote...

katamuro wrote...

AlanC9 wrote...

Logical fallacy is a bit much. Until a sequel ships we don't have any solid figures on how long repairs would actually take. The only characters we see returning to their homeworlds live so long that they could get there even if the relays were never repaired at all; I don't think this is a coincidence

The problem with relays in Destroy for example which I consider the most likely to be canonized ending is that it cripples the relays and destroys all reapers, geth even EDI. In the other endings the Reapers could help rebuild them quite easily considering that they move much faster than other ships however in Destroy with no Reapers, Geth who could actually do it or EDI they have to first fully understand how they work.

How is that a problem in a narrative sense? That just works against relays being repaired in the short term- that organics will have to work it out themselves.

Which is completely fine for an interim timeskip to readjust the galaxy and get past most legacy characters.

I think the way they will do it is by revealing that Asari have a lot more technology than they told anyone even other Asari. Why did Aethyta say that she tried to get the Asari to start building their own relays? I think that will be taken as the way "out"

Aethyta tells you why: she felt the Asari were becoming decadent and stagnating, and ignoring that there's a war in every Asari lifetime. Her warnings of the complacency of the Asari, and her subsequent ostracision, are a narrative device that fit the wider ME2 and are reflected in ME3 that the established governments and Council were woefully complacent and resting on their laurels.

Here I meant that they could use that convo as the base, not "why" she told us that. I remember. Also that I agree would be perfecrtly reasonable way to do it. 

. By logical fallacy I referred to several others that unless conveniently retconned again will be major walls to consistent and believable ME universe.

So when you refer to logical fallacies, you are referring to things that aren't actually logical fallacies. Gotcha.

Logical fallacy is a trick or illusion used to force your way of thinking to the way somone else wants it. Destroying Reapers AND Geth AND EDI just so that destroy ending seems more renegade, "worse" if you will, forcing you to sacrifice more to destroy the reapers is a trick to justify the other two solutions. 

Also what kind of energy weapon built against reapers cant discriminate between techno-organic reapers and purely synthetics like Geth and EDI.

Insufficently advanced kinds that target the techno part of the Reapers, and not the organic.

Well lets see, Reaper tech is quite more advanced than the standard tech used by ME universe, Geth have nothing to do techically with Reapers, they are sufficiently different for the beam to be innefective. And then there is EDI, housed in a ship, built by Cerberus. So why did it fry that technology but did not fry everything else like an EMP? Other ships, quarian suits and implants, Shepards implants? Relays should have stopped working completely since they are Reaper tech. A beam that fries only AI and Reaper ground forces is something too convenient to be existing. If it only fried AI then yes(still a question on how it knows what is and what isnt AI), but all the Reaper troops would have been left behind. 

And why did relays blow up?

For a number of narrative and thematic reasons that can be collectively gathered under 'Art.' The legitimate kind, mind you.

Aside from narrative themes such as breaking free from the Reaper's machinations and traps, it also helps secure all of Shepard's actions to date from any immediate tampering and allows the Big Decisions to propogate themselves into the future without an immediate recourse to reverse them. Things that might initially be reversed in the short time (killing the Rachni after they become useful, applying the Genophage cure after the war in a more controlled manner, and so on) are effectively isolated and allowed to progress forward without outside intereference.

Those are the kinds of details that are unique to each playthrough and unless canonized they cannot be used to justify anything especially blowing up the relays so that they can progress. Relays blowing up sure, can be justified as a cost of ending the war but thats about it, things like genophage cure and rachni are variables hence are inadmissable.

Surely if the amount of energy needed to overload those huge things was distributed through the galaxy everyone would die. It is a major plot point in ME2 that destroying a relay requires hell of a lot of energy. In ME1 Mu relay was thrown from its usual place by supernova and it still worked. So...

Sadly no, unless you want to ignore how energy works in our world as well. You are being pumped with so many different sorts of energy right now that you never notice, and yet much lesser amounts of energy released in a different way could kill you. How energy is released and controlled can change its effect- hence why your car is something other than a gasoline bomb. And why an EMP pulse can turn off a regional power grid, but do nothing to all the people within it.

ME3 establishes, even before the Extended Cut, that a sufficently refined Crucible wave wasn't going to release energy in a way to kill everyone. It could, in low EMS destroy with less technology and more implied battle damage to the thing, but at higher EMS the largest mass effect relay in the galaxy doesn't go supernova because its energy is already being used for the Crucible wave.

EMP does not conveniently fry only certain kinds of electronics. It destroys all of them unless shielded. The reaper destrying pulse should have fried all the technology that resembled reaper tech and considering the civilizations of ME are literally built on what reapers left behind then ALL technology would have been destroyed or at least damaged. And yes on Low EMS it did destroy everything. Lets take standard light as an example, usually on a sunny day the damage to your skin cells from UV radiation results in a tan or maybe some reddening of the skin. However if you use the same light same UV radiation but make it a thousand times more energetic then it wont stop at damaging just your skin cells but 1000 times faster, it will burn into anything. A sufficiently powerful EMP to fry everything on our planet would kill a hell of a lot of animals, unprotected people would get burns. 

Take the photos from Hiroshima and Nagasaki, people far away from the cities would get burns from the light emitted. The hard radiation had not reached them yet. The fallout also, only the light. One part, small part of the whole force of the explosion. 

So the crucible "energy" is somehow a very convenient type of energy that only burns Reapers, reaper ground forces and Geth and EDI. It seems not to matter that while they might have parts of reaper code in them physically they do not have any reaper parts. So unless that "energy" only looks at the programming and destroys only the programming then it is a logic trick used to force the consideration of the other two endings. A beam of energy that reads the programming, understands which one is reaper one and destroys that would also destroy mass relays and citadel. And for a energy beam it seems rather intelligent.

Modifié par katamuro, 18 février 2014 - 01:25 .

[DeinonSlayer]

@katamuro
Considering that an alternative function spontaneously rewrites everyone's genetic code, it seems we're just supposed to switch our brains off, bob our heads, and accept that the crucible functions as portrayed. Mac and Casey fail science forever, full story at six.

[Dean_the_Young]

[quote]katamuro wrote...

[quote]Dean_the_Young wrote...

[quote]katamuro wrote...

[quote]AlanC9 wrote...

Logical fallacy is a bit much. Until a sequel ships we don't have any solid figures on how long repairs would actually take. The only characters we see returning to their homeworlds live so long that they could get there even if the relays were never repaired at all; I don't think this is a coincidence[/quote]

The problem with relays in Destroy for example which I consider the most likely to be canonized ending is that it cripples the relays and destroys all reapers, geth even EDI. In the other endings the Reapers could help rebuild them quite easily considering that they move much faster than other ships however in Destroy with no Reapers, Geth who could actually do it or EDI they have to first fully understand how they work. [/quote]How is that a problem in a narrative sense? That just works against relays being repaired in the short term- that organics will have to work it out themselves.

Which is completely fine for an interim timeskip to readjust the galaxy and get past most legacy characters.
[quote]
I think the way they will do it is by revealing that Asari have a lot more technology than they told anyone even other Asari. Why did Aethyta say that she tried to get the Asari to start building their own relays? I think that will be taken as the way "out"
[/quote]Aethyta tells you why: she felt the Asari were becoming decadent and stagnating, and ignoring that there's a war in every Asari lifetime. Her warnings of the complacency of the Asari, and her subsequent ostracision, are a narrative device that fit the wider ME2 and are reflected in ME3 that the established governments and Council were woefully complacent and resting on their laurels.
[quote]

Here I meant that they could use that convo as the base, not "why" she told us that. I remember. Also that I agree would be perfecrtly reasonable way to do it. 
[/quote]
So what's the problem?

[quote]
. By logical fallacy I referred to several others that unless conveniently retconned again will be major walls to consistent and believable ME universe.[/quote]So when you refer to logical fallacies, you are referring to things that aren't actually logical fallacies. Gotcha.

Logical fallacy is a trick or illusion used to force your way of thinking to the way somone else wants it. Destroying Reapers AND Geth AND EDI just so that destroy ending seems more renegade, "worse" if you will, forcing you to sacrifice more to destroy the reapers is a trick to justify the other two solutions. 
[/quote]That's not what a logical fallacy is. You are thinking of (but were not describing) a false delimma, which is a type of fallacy in the same way that a cat is a type of mammal.

But a false delimma that doesn't apply to the ending. The consequences of sufficiently advanced sci-fi technology are arbitrary outputs of fiction, but they aren't false. The Destroy wave will destroy synthetics.
[quote]
[quote]
Also what kind of energy weapon built against reapers cant discriminate between techno-organic reapers and purely synthetics like Geth and EDI.
[/quote]Insufficently advanced kinds that target the techno part of the Reapers, and not the organic.

Well lets see, Reaper tech is quite more advanced than the standard tech used by ME universe, Geth have nothing to do techically with Reapers, they are sufficiently different for the beam to be innefective. And then there is EDI, housed in a ship, built by Cerberus. So why did it fry that technology but did not fry everything else like an EMP? Other ships, quarian suits and implants, Shepards implants? Relays should have stopped working completely since they are Reaper tech. A beam that fries only AI and Reaper ground forces is something too convenient to be existing. If it only fried AI then yes(still a question on how it knows what is and what isnt AI), but all the Reaper troops would have been left behind. 
[quote]...er, relays do stop working completely. And since all Reaper troops are AI/controlled by the AI, why should they be spared?

Which isn't to say the Destroy wave isn't an arbitrary writing device: it certainly is, just like so many other ME technologies and tropes used in the series. ME1 starts the series who oodles of pseduscience and very little technobabble, and ME3 and the Crucible do much the same with vague handwaves to 'carrier waves' and 'dark energy' and 'incredibly complex science.'

It's sufficiently advanced technology to do what the writers want it to do, and that includes taking out other synthetics.

(If you like, a low-EMS destroy in the EC does have a strong implication of shutting down ALL technology: even leaving the fleets stranded in space.)

[quote]
[quote]
And why did relays blow up?[/quote]For a number of narrative and thematic reasons that can be collectively gathered under 'Art.' The legitimate kind, mind you.

Aside from narrative themes such as breaking free from the Reaper's machinations and traps, it also helps secure all of Shepard's actions to date from any immediate tampering and allows the Big Decisions to propogate themselves into the future without an immediate recourse to reverse them. Things that might initially be reversed in the short time (killing the Rachni after they become useful, applying the Genophage cure after the war in a more controlled manner, and so on) are effectively isolated and allowed to progress forward without outside intereference.

Those are the kinds of details that are unique to each playthrough and unless canonized they cannot be used to justify anything especially blowing up the relays so that they can progress. Relays blowing up sure, can be justified as a cost of ending the war but thats about it, things like genophage cure and rachni are variables hence are inadmissable.
[/quote]...except that the fact that they are variables is a case to blow up the relays. So that your selected variable (genophage not cured) will continue forward for an indefinite amount of time and allows the next installment to approach them or not as they desire.

[quote]
[quote]
Surely if the amount of energy needed to overload those huge things was distributed through the galaxy everyone would die. It is a major plot point in ME2 that destroying a relay requires hell of a lot of energy. In ME1 Mu relay was thrown from its usual place by supernova and it still worked. So...
[/quote]Sadly no, unless you want to ignore how energy works in our world as well. You are being pumped with so many different sorts of energy right now that you never notice, and yet much lesser amounts of energy released in a different way could kill you. How energy is released and controlled can change its effect- hence why your car is something other than a gasoline bomb. And why an EMP pulse can turn off a regional power grid, but do nothing to all the people within it.

ME3 establishes, even before the Extended Cut, that a sufficently refined Crucible wave wasn't going to release energy in a way to kill everyone. It could, in low EMS destroy with less technology and more implied battle damage to the thing, but at higher EMS the largest mass effect relay in the galaxy doesn't go supernova because its energy is already being used for the Crucible wave.

[/quote]

EMP does not conveniently fry only certain kinds of electronics. It destroys all of them unless shielded.[/quote]You rather missed the point that EMP does not kill everyone, despite carrying a great deal of energy. It's the form of energy release, not that it is energy, that matters.

No one is claiming Destroy is just EMP, so the limitations of EMP in the sci-fi upgrade of mass effect fields and dark energy and a giant black box device need not apply.

[quote]
The reaper destrying pulse should have fried all the technology that resembled reaper tech and considering the civilizations of ME are literally built on what reapers left behind then ALL technology would have been destroyed or at least damaged. And yes on Low EMS it did destroy everything. Lets take standard light as an example, usually on a sunny day the damage to your skin cells from UV radiation results in a tan or maybe some reddening of the skin. However if you use the same light same UV radiation but make it a thousand times more energetic then it wont stop at damaging just your skin cells but 1000 times faster, it will burn into anything. A sufficiently powerful EMP to fry everything on our planet would kill a hell of a lot of animals, unprotected people would get burns. 
[/quote]

What makes you think all qualifying technology wasn't destroyed or at least damaged? 'At least damaged' could entail anything from rebuilding all things from scratch to changing some wires and re-flipping a circuit breaker.

With the exception of Hacket's fleet seemingly stranded in space, we don't see any signs of advanced technology working at full capacity in the immediate aftermath of the Destroy wave. By the time we do, we also have enough time to justify repairs having taken place.

[quote]
Take the photos from Hiroshima and Nagasaki, people far away from the cities would get burns from the light emitted. The hard radiation had not reached them yet. The fallout also, only the light. One part, small part of the whole force of the explosion. 

So the crucible "energy" is somehow a very convenient type of energy that only burns Reapers, reaper ground forces and Geth and EDI. It seems not to matter that while they might have parts of reaper code in them physically they do not have any reaper parts. So unless that "energy" only looks at the programming and destroys only the programming then it is a logic trick used to force the consideration of the other two endings. A beam of energy that reads the programming, understands which one is reaper one and destroys that would also destroy mass relays and citadel. And for a energy beam it seems rather intelligent.
[/quote]
Of  course it's convenient. All technology is Mass Effect is based on convenience, starting with mass effect fields. This is why brainwashing is somehow a biotic power. Destroy just seems to primarily effect high-functioning technology through unknown means. Those unknown means are arbitrary.

Arbitrary, but not false. That the Destroy wave works through vague means doesn't mean it doesn't work through those means. Which includes destroying the mass relays and Citadel in a way to propogate the energy.

[Dean_the_Young]

DeinonSlayer wrote...

@katamuro
Considering that an alternative function spontaneously rewrites everyone's genetic code, it seems we're just supposed to switch our brains off, bob our heads, and accept that the crucible functions as portrayed. Mac and Casey fail science forever, full story at six.

Oh, come now- don't tell me you didn't giggle at the Prothean 'psychic machine' beacon, Asari 'link nervous system' mind melding, Thorian 'I am biologically compatible and telapathic' spores, or Rachni 'plot convenient things only' genetic memory? And let's not get into the whole scope of 'organic biotics are special and distinct from machine mass effect fields,' even without the whole 'I eat a high energy bar to justify ignorring conservation of energy' thing.

About the only time mass effect science wasn't funny was when it was deliberatly hilarious in presentation. Newton is the Deadliest Son of a **** in space indeed.

[katamuro]

Dean_the_Young wrote...

DeinonSlayer wrote...

@katamuro
Considering that an alternative function spontaneously rewrites everyone's genetic code, it seems we're just supposed to switch our brains off, bob our heads, and accept that the crucible functions as portrayed. Mac and Casey fail science forever, full story at six.

Oh, come now- don't tell me you didn't giggle at the Prothean 'psychic machine' beacon, Asari 'link nervous system' mind melding, Thorian 'I am biologically compatible and telapathic' spores, or Rachni 'plot convenient things only' genetic memory? And let's not get into the whole scope of 'organic biotics are special and distinct from machine mass effect fields,' even without the whole 'I eat a high energy bar to justify ignorring conservation of energy' thing.

About the only time mass effect science wasn't funny was when it was deliberatly hilarious in presentation. Newton is the Deadliest Son of a **** in space indeed.

True enough, a lot of things in ME are not right scientifically. But while biotics(that includes asari, prothean beacon and the thorian i guess) are obviously ingoring them for the sake of both gameplay and story same would go for mass effect fields, element zero, the fact that almost everyone is conveniently human sized and shaped. But all of those things are correct within the ME universe while the Crucible, Catalyst and the green, blue and red energy beams are as far as 95% of the lore and the rest of the ME games concerned just spring out of the fruitful artistic loins of the whoever thought of them.

[Dean_the_Young]

katamuro wrote...

Dean_the_Young wrote...

DeinonSlayer wrote...

@katamuro
Considering that an alternative function spontaneously rewrites everyone's genetic code, it seems we're just supposed to switch our brains off, bob our heads, and accept that the crucible functions as portrayed. Mac and Casey fail science forever, full story at six.

Oh, come now- don't tell me you didn't giggle at the Prothean 'psychic machine' beacon, Asari 'link nervous system' mind melding, Thorian 'I am biologically compatible and telapathic' spores, or Rachni 'plot convenient things only' genetic memory? And let's not get into the whole scope of 'organic biotics are special and distinct from machine mass effect fields,' even without the whole 'I eat a high energy bar to justify ignorring conservation of energy' thing.

About the only time mass effect science wasn't funny was when it was deliberatly hilarious in presentation. Newton is the Deadliest Son of a **** in space indeed.

True enough, a lot of things in ME are not right scientifically. But while biotics(that includes asari, prothean beacon and the thorian i guess) are obviously ingoring them for the sake of both gameplay and story same would go for mass effect fields, element zero, the fact that almost everyone is conveniently human sized and shaped. But all of those things are correct within the ME universe while the Crucible, Catalyst and the green, blue and red energy beams are as far as 95% of the lore and the rest of the ME games concerned just spring out of the fruitful artistic loins of the whoever thought of them.

Ignoring the science for the sake of story is precisely what you should do for the endings if you want any credible claim of consistency in it. They, too, are things that just sprang out of the fruitful artistic loins of the writers... you just like those fruits of the loom better.

Which is fine, but let's not confuse 'correct' with 'I enjoyed it,' or else I have a whole list of things in the ME universe which were not 'correct,' starting with ME1's initial conceits of Human involvement in the galaxy and moving onto some incredibly sexist content that passes for 'romance.'

[TheWerdna]

AlanC9 wrote...

johnnythao89 wrote...

It'll take light years just to travel from a relay to another. A world without Relays? :'-(

Nothing wrong with leaving the relays blown forever, actually. MEU ships are faster than Star Trek ships, and that universe works OK.

Yep, bioware has said that FTL can travel at about 12 light years per day, and thats only the average speed, some ships are faster

Modifié par TheWerdna, 18 février 2014 - 03:54 .

[Barquiel]

TheWerdna wrote...

AlanC9 wrote...

johnnythao89 wrote...

It'll take light years just to travel from a relay to another. A world without Relays? :'-(

Nothing wrong with leaving the relays blown forever, actually. MEU ships are faster than Star Trek ships, and that universe works OK.

Yep, bioware has said that FTL can travel at about 12 light years per day, and thats only the average speed, some ships are faster

Patrick Weekes also mentioned that the element zero cores of the dead/controlled Reapers can be used to improve FTL drives.

We're not that far behind the Protheans technologically (who were able to create their own relay successfully) and as mentioned above, Aethyta implies that the asari have the capability (or at the very least the foundations) to make their own mass relays. The original relay network was obviously enough for their purposes, so "they laughed the blue off her ass!" But with the relay network destroyed though, I guess the matriarchs won't laugh anymore.

The first priority will be rebuilding  Earth, Thessia, Palavan and all the other worlds (the official word is 10-15 years for total restoration)...rebuilding the relay network will take some decades, I guess.

[Dorrieb]

'How is a devastated galaxy going to rebuild the relays? '

'How' is not important. The important thing is: Who do you need to bribe to get the contract?

[CosmicGnosis]

Dean_the_Young wrote...

Oh, come now- don't tell me you didn't giggle at the Prothean 'psychic machine' beacon, Asari 'link nervous system' mind melding, Thorian 'I am biologically compatible and telapathic' spores, or Rachni 'plot convenient things only' genetic memory? And let's not get into the whole scope of 'organic biotics are special and distinct from machine mass effect fields,' even without the whole 'I eat a high energy bar to justify ignorring conservation of energy' thing.

Good points. How do the rachni have a "natural QEC"?

[durasteel]

If you set ME4 50 or 60 years in the future, all you have to do is say "they were fixed."

They were blown up with handwaving and space magic, they might as well be put back together the same way.

[KaiserShep]

CosmicGnosis wrote...

Dean_the_Young wrote...

Oh, come now- don't tell me you didn't giggle at the Prothean 'psychic machine' beacon, Asari 'link nervous system' mind melding, Thorian 'I am biologically compatible and telapathic' spores, or Rachni 'plot convenient things only' genetic memory? And let's not get into the whole scope of 'organic biotics are special and distinct from machine mass effect fields,' even without the whole 'I eat a high energy bar to justify ignorring conservation of energy' thing.

Good points. How do the rachni have a "natural QEC"?

What would really have helped all of this is if the story was not so deadly serious. Doctor Who gets away with so much crazy physics-breaking shenanigans because it's also comedic in nature.

[Anduin The Grey]

The Relays had one purpose more important that travel, control. With the Relays the Reapers could control those that would use them. FTL has not been developed in this cycle because of how well and how reliable the Relays are.

As mentioned above, the Protheans managed to unlock the secrets of the Relays, whereas in this cycle none have done so. However, there is an entire Prothean archive on Mars and a Prothean Beacon of some note on Thessia.

Where the races might not understand how the Relays work, they have the information they need to repair them, just as most here could perform maintenance on devices they likewise could not make by themselves.

[Undead Han]

CosmicGnosis wrote...

I think the Extended Cut should have explained how the galaxy is going to rebuild the relays. These things are supposed to be mysterious and difficult to replicate. The Protheans had a huge breakthrough, but it was still just a small one-way-only relay. How is a crippled galaxy going to have the resources to rebuild the relays and the gigantic Citadel, their central hub? Is it possible that their work on the Crucible provided them with the knowledge? I can't think of any other possibility.

Going O/T for a bit, but it sort of relates to the galaxy possessing a means of repairing relays...

I always thought it was a mistake to have the Reapers arrive via conventional FTL travel. It makes the plots of both ME1 and ME2 seem baffling, when the Reapers didn't need to bother at all with the Citadel relay as means of entering the galaxy. When the Keepers failed to respond to Sovereign's signal, why didn't the Reapers simply fly at conventional FTL to the Citadel? They'd have the element of surprise and the combined Council fleets wouldn't have stood a chance. The Citadel would have been captured and the relay network severed just as surely as if the Keepers had responded to orders. Another extinction cycle would have gone according to plan.

It would have been better IMO, if the writers had instead left the Reapers stranded in dark space and needing the relay system as a means to enter the Milky Way. Besides not causing problems with the plots of the first two games, it also potentially provides a means for the galaxy to learn how to build and repair the relay system.

We know that Batarian scientists and military officials who were exposed to the Leviathan of Dis (a partially deactivated Reaper) were indoctrinated, and acting as Reaper sleeper agents. When the Sovereign plot is foiled by Shepard, the Reapers go to plans B (the Collectors) and C (Object Rho). But what if the Reapers also had a plan D in the works? What if as a contingency plan, the Reapers begin construction of a new relay in Batarian space via those indoctrinated scientists and military officials? The Batarians keep it a state secret, with the unindoctrinated involved in the project having no idea where the plans truly originated, and thinking they are involved in a patriotic endeavor. As far as the unindoctrinated know, this newly constructed relay is going to link to the Batarian home system, and humiliate the rest of the galaxy by demonstrating Batarian technological and engineering supremacy.

ME3 begins with the Batarians completing the relay and proudly boasting of its existence to the rest of the galaxy. They activate it, intending to link it to their home system. Instead with the aid of the indoctrinated who are on the project, the relay realigns itself to a relay hidden deep in dark space. The link is established and the entire Reaper Fleet leaps through the relay into Batarian space, and the extinction cycle begins.

Fast forward to the end of the game and you now have a means for the galaxy to rebuild the relay system. The Reapers provided the knowledge of relay construction to the Batarians, and when the extinction cycle ultimately fails, that knowledge is preserved.

[Anduin The Grey]

We don't need to speculate further on the Reapers as we already know their methods and their modus operandi. They conserve as much of their resources as possible and use as much of the cycles inhabitants against themselves. They are patient, willing to wait as long as necessary for a plan that has worked for 37 million years.

Modifié par Anduin The Grey, 21 février 2014 - 08:13 .

[DeinonSlayer]

@Han Shot First
Not bad. Reminds me of Dean_The_Young's idea that in the course of ME2, the heretics could be working on such a relay to let the Reapers come back.

I never saw an explanation as to why they never tried to shut down the relay network per standard procedure. It'd have been interesting if the Normandy, with its Reaper IFF, was the only ship able to open relays back up for everyone else after such a shutdown took place. I pictured the Citadel being captured by seeker swarms being released from the walls, with whoever you chose as councilor biting it in the opening minutes and whoever you didn't choose taking their place.

[CronoDragoon]

DeinonSlayer wrote...
I never saw an explanation as to why they never tried to shut down the relay network per standard procedure. It'd have been interesting if the Normandy, with its Reaper IFF, was the only ship able to open relays back up for everyone else after such a shutdown took place. I pictured the Citadel being captured by seeker swarms being released from the walls, with whoever you chose as councilor biting it in the opening minutes and whoever you didn't choose taking their place.

I've only ever heard a semi-explanation at PAX right after ME3's release, where Weekes responded to that question from a fan by saying the Keepers would block it. Possibly due to Prothean sabotage? Dunno. He might have just been brainstorming a solution to the plothole.

Modifié par CronoDragoon, 21 février 2014 - 08:39 .

[MrFob]

If BW wanted to make a sequel with working relays, they can easily do that. There are heaps of loop holes for them to make the network work again. Just to name a few:
1. In case of synthesis and control I don't see a problem because the reapers are there to hlp us out anyway so let's focus on destroy
2. We only see the Sol relay fall apart. That relay was hit by the Citadel directly. Maybe that's why it overloaded to the point where it actually fell apart. Could be that the other relays are in better shape
3. The main problem in reverse engineering was the fact that the relays were quantum shielded so no one could really have a look at them. Now that we have a damaged one, where the shielding no longer works, we can reverse engineer it
4. There are heaps of reaper carcases floating around. Shurely we can just learn how the relays work from one of their left overs. Look what TIM could do with a few salvaged parts of the collector base in less than a year.

Of course, given that since ME3, we can suddenly just fly between cluster without issue anyway makes things even more easy (and developing reaper spec FTL engines will make travel times almost a non-issue). I absolutely hate the fact that they downgraded the importance of the relays so much over the course of the trilogy. In ME1, it was at least implied that without the relays, you can't go anywhere. It made the galaxy a damn huge place and we knew only the tiniest little tidbits of it (look at the ME1 codex entry on Council Space). For all we knew back then, there might have been an entire second galactic community, living in our galaxy, using another part of the relay network (well, maybe not that but it surely felt bigger and more... vast).
I do hate it when the creators of a SciFi universe "downsize" it like that. Stargate, which had an almost identical setup did the same thing. IMO it really takes away from the feel of wonder you get for this imagined space exploration but apparently, the moment-to-moment rule of cool is always more important than some foresight. At least that is my opinion.

/rant (sorry 'bout that, got carried away there a bit)

[CosmicGnosis]

There are 200 to 400 billion stars in our galaxy. I don't know how many relays there are, but most of those stars don't have one. I don't think BioWare downgraded anything.

[shodiswe]

The Terminous relays might get fixed by the Geth if they are still around, they tend to do those kinds of things, fixing things, building huge stations.

Reaper FTL is twice as efficient as Citadel species FTL. It's a nice upgrade.

The Citadel probably had an even better FTL drive, it was said the larger dreadnaughts were at the limit of the size of something that could travel the Relay network. Therefor the Citadel must have had a vastly superior FTL drive.
Since it was too big to use the relays.
Shepard stranded the Reapers for 6 months by destroyign a relay at that batarian colony, but the Citadel could jump to earth in pretty mcuh an instant.
You didn't even learn it had been attacked before it had moved.

If they don't want everyone to have almost instant travel like the Citadel they could say the technology required super big mass effect cores the size of relays.... Which they somehow missed.

Modifié par shodiswe, 21 février 2014 - 09:47 .

[KotorEffect3]

I imagine most governments made fixing the relays a top priority post war. Plenty of engineers in the sol system post war and the alien fleets will want to get that relay fixed right away so they can get back to their own systems. Also have to figure some species (such as the salarians) didn't get hit as hard, not to mention their were probably a number of colonies that still had their infrastructures in tact.