Oh boy this is going to be a mouth full.
Hi my name is Ronald and I have been a fan for a while, my sister introduced me to the franchise... well not really, I played ME2 before her, but she was the one that dove deeper into the universe, but I digress.
(English is my third language so take it easy).
People have been debating over the internet about the travel time towards Andromeda and how it could be done with the "weak" mass effect based FTL drives that can only push a little over a dozen light years per day, well I usually won most of those arguments thanks to research, but it has come to my attention that may no longer be the case... So I will try to make an argument in this forum (a return of a lost son) and see if anyone in Bioware can see it and hope it can still be taken into account for MEA.
Ok here is the premise, how long would it take a ME ship to reach Andromeda using the numbers and mechanics provided by the lore in ME. Lets start with the ones that have the better shown capabilities and the harder numbers, the reapers.
But before that!!
FTL drives are devices which allow ships to travel at FTL speeds through space. FTL drive cores work by exposing element zero to electric currents, creating mass effect fields. It reduces the mass of an object, such as a starship, to a point where velocities faster than the speed of light are possible. With a mass effect drive, roughly a dozen light-years can be traversed in the course of a day's cruise without bending space-time and causing time dilation.
The precise maximum speed and the time this acceleration can be maintained varies depending on the exact type of FTL drive being used. In general, the larger the drive, the longer the ship can run at FTL.
When travelling across space, thrusters are applied in one direction for the first half of the trip, then the thrusters are reversed for the second half of the trip in order to reach appropriate speeds for arriving. In 2185, Commander Shepard can have a conversation with Marab on this particular point stating that several people who travel in space forget that the ship must be slowed as much as it was accelerated, hence it will start being slowed halfway to its destination.
The exact FTL speeds at which starships of the modern galaxy travel are unknown. It is noted, however, that Reapers are believed to be capable of traveling nearly 30 light-years (283,821,914,177,424,000 meters) within a 24-hour period, and that this rate is roughly twice what Citadel starships are capable of traveling. This equates Reaper FTL capabilities to around 10,958 times the speed of light.
In comparison, by 2165, human starships are known to be capable of traveling at least fifty times faster the speed of light (14,989,622,900 meters per second).
Faster-than-light drives use element zero cores to reduce the mass of the ship, allowing higher rates of acceleration. This effectively raises the speed of light within the mass effect field, allowing high speed travel with negligible relativistic time dilation effects.
Starships still require conventional thrusters (chemical rockets, commercial fusion torch, economy ion engine, or military antiproton drive) in addition to the FTL drive core. With only a core, a ship has no motive power.
The amount of eezo and power required for a drive increases exponentially to the mass being moved and the degree it is being lightened. Very massive ships or very high speeds are prohibitively expensive.
If the field collapses while the ship is moving at faster-than-light speed, the effects are catastrophic. The ship is snapped back to sublight velocity, the enormous excess energy shed in the form of lethal Cerenkov radiation.
As positive or negative electric current is passed through an FTL drive core, it acquires a static electrical charge. Drives can be operated an average of 50 hours before they reach charge saturation. This changes proportionally to the magnitude of mass reduction; a heavier or faster ship reaches saturation more quickly.
If the charge is allowed to build, the core will discharge into the hull of a ship. All ungrounded crew members are fried to a crisp, all electronic system are burned out, and metal bulkheads may be melted and fused together.
The safest way to discharge a core is to land on a planet and establish a connection to the ground, like a lightning rod. Larger vessels like dreadnoughts cannot land and must discharge into a planetary magnetic field1.
As the hull discharges, sheets of lightning jump away into the field, creating beautiful auroral displays on the planet. The ship must retract its sensors and weapons while dumping charge to prevent damage, leaving it blind and helpless. Discharging at a moon with a weak magnetic field can take days. Discharging into the powerful field of a gas giant may require less than an hour. Deep space facilities such as the Citadel often have special discharge facilities for visiting ships.
So this info dump explains how FTL is supposed to work (constant acceleration between two points, with the first half of the trip being positive acceleration and the second half being negative acceleration), this is important and the core of my argument. Now lets dissect the Capabilities of the Reapers and the standard non reaper ships.
Reapers: It is noted, however, that Reapers are believed to be capable of traveling nearly 30 light-years (283,821,914,177,424,000 meters) within a 24-hour period.
Reaper power sources seem to violate known physical laws. Reapers usually destroy fuel infrastructure rather than attempting to capture it intact, indicating that Reapers do not require organic species' energy supplies. Consequently, the Reapers attack without regard for maintaining supply lines behind them, except to move husks from one planet to another. Unlike Citadel ships, Reapers do not appear to discharge static buildup from their drive cores, although they sometimes appear wreathed in static discharge when they land on planets.
So we have a distance and a time frame, and a explanation of how ME FTL works, this is more than enough to find the rate of acceleration.
2( X/(T^2) - IV/T ) = A
X = Distance
IV = Initial velocity
T = time
A = Acceleration
So
X = 283,821,914,177,424,000 meters
T = 24 hours = 86400 seconds
IV = 0
However, since we are told the first half of the trip involves positive acceleration and the second half involves negative acceleration, the starting speed being 0 and the ending speed being 0 we have to divide the variables by two.
X = 141,910,957,088,712,000 meters
T = 43200 seconds
IV = 0
2( X/(T^2) - IV/T ) = A
A= 152,082,215.7 meters per second.
So yay we have Reaper accelerations!!!
That means that If reapers FTL drive cores had the same operative limitations as the other ME ships (50 hours) they would be able to travel 615,932,970,750,000 kilometers during the first half of the trip and a equal distance during the second half, this gives us a total distance of 1,231,865,941,500,000 kilometers in 50 hours, with is a little more than 130 light years.
Now what if the reapers had no such limitation? how long would it take them to move from the dark space between the galaxies to the milky way if they could keep their drive cores going for the entire duration of the trip?
Well how far were the reapers?
According to Mass Effect Retribution they were pretty far.
''Commander Shepard had discovered that human colonists were being abducted by the Collectors, a reclusive alien species that served the will of the Reapers without question. Though trapped in dark space, the massive starships were somehow able to exert control over their hapless minions even across millions of light-years.''
That has to be a nonsensical blurb of text right? there is no way the reapers were THAT far away right?
That image corroborates the numbers stated in Mass Effect: Retribution.
Its difficult to get an exact distance from that image alone, but it can give us rough numbers to work it.
First we know the reapers are around two kilometers in height, so their distance from the camera is more than negligible (Harbinger the one in the front is only a handfull (a few dozen) of kilometers in front of the camera) , second is that we can almost see the full diameter of the milky way in front of us, that is not a small feat, we are working around titanic numbers here, the angle of the view would throw off the calculations and introduce large margin of errors on our assumptions, but its SAFE to claim we are talking about eight hundred thousand (800,000) light years at the extreme low end.
However, we don't have to waste our time trying to get the distance if we already have time (sort off).
Mass Effect 1 happens in 2183
Mass Effect 2 happens in 2185
Mass Effect 3 happens in 2186
The exact date of the events in Mass Effect 1 are hard to place, but since the reapers apparently only start to move towards the milky way after ME2, ME1 is pretty much irrelevant to us.
We know ME2: Arrival DLC happens six months before ME3.
ME3 starts around late September 2186, that means Arrival happens around late March 2186.
Since ME2 starts somewhere around 2185 that gives the reapers a MAXIMUM of a year and three months of travel time.
X = IV*T + (1/2)*A*T^2
X = Distance
IV = Initial velocity
T = time
A = Acceleration
Example 1: 15 months.
Time = 38,275,200 seconds.
A= 152,082,215.7 meters per second.
IV = 0
However, since we are told the first half of the trip involves positive acceleration and the second half involves negative acceleration, the starting speed being 0 and the ending speed being 0 we have to divide time by two and then multiply the result (distance) by two.
Time = 19,137,600 seconds.
A= 152,082,215.7 meters per second.
IV = 0
Thus
(2)27,849,883,422,662,200,000,000. meters
55,699,766,845,324,400,000,000 meters
5,887,470 Light years
However that time table would only be possible if the events in Mass Effect 2 were to be resolved in a single day (utter nonsense), what happens if we put ME2 ending right before the lair of the shadow broker DLC at early august.
Example 2: 7 months
Time = 20,044,800 seconds.
A= 152,082,215.7 meters per second.
IV = 0
However, since we are told the first half of the trip involves positive acceleration and the second half involves negative acceleration, the starting speed being 0 and the ending speed being 0 we have to divide time by two and then multiply the result (distance) by two.
Time = 10,022,400 seconds.
A= 152,082,215.7 meters per second.
IV = 0
Thus:
(2)7,638,215,355,703,070,000,000 meters
15,276,430,711,406,140,000,000 meters
1,614,720 Light years
That goes more in line with what we see in this picture and what we are told in Mass Effect: Retribution.
Hence why an "Ark" ship with reaper equivalent upgrades would take a couple of months less than a year to reach Andromeda, because remember:
"Reaper power sources seem to violate known physical laws. Reapers usually destroy fuel infrastructure rather than attempting to capture it intact, indicating that Reapers do not require organic species' energy supplies. Consequently, the Reapers attack without regard for maintaining supply lines behind them, except to move husks from one planet to another. Unlike Citadel ships, Reapers do not appear to discharge static buildup from their drive cores, although they sometimes appear wreathed in static discharge when they land on planets."
Now how long would it take ME ships without reapers upgrades to get there?
Depends on the variables, do they have to stop every 50 hours? How long it takes them to "discharge" and so on...
If the Ark ships didn't FIX any of the problems with Citadel FTL drives then that would make them terrible Ark ships, but I am running late for work, so I will continue this premise when I get home.
Retour en haut
cool
