116 réponses à ce sujet

[Deflagratio]

Also as a point of interest. The Charon Relay (It's a secondary relay I believe) connects with the Arcturus System's Primary Mass Relay. The Star Arcturus is actually part of another Galaxy that is currently crashing it's way through the Milky Way. Read that again, Arcturus, Is part of ANOTHER GALAXY. This has two implications. One, Mass Relay Tech could stretch to other galaxies as well, but that was possibly an unintentional interrpetation of the codex (And actual facts, since the Arcturus Star is part of another galaxy as recognized by Astronomy).

More interesting is that it's possible only recently did the Charon Mass Relay come into Transit Range of the Arcturus Relay. This could be why it was not in use for so long.

The likely scenario is a billion or so years ago when the galaxies began to collide, the Relay(s) that originally connected to Charon were thrown off by gravatational forces. Around the time of the Protheans, the Arcturus System and the Charon Relay were finally within transit point for the secondary Relay. (Primary are One to One, so is there a second secondary relay in the Arcturus system to travel between Sol and Arcturus?)

The most important thing to know about the galaxy and universe, is there's no such thing as a statistical impossibility. a probability of 1:1,000,000,000,000 happens three times a minute in the Universe.

[Cyadina]

Deflagratio wrote...

Also as a point of interest. The Charon Relay (It's a secondary relay I believe) connects with the Arcturus System's Primary Mass Relay. The Star Arcturus is actually part of another Galaxy that is currently crashing it's way through the Milky Way. Read that again, Arcturus, Is part of ANOTHER GALAXY. This has two implications. One, Mass Relay Tech could stretch to other galaxies as well, but that was possibly an unintentional interrpetation of the codex (And actual facts, since the Arcturus Star is part of another galaxy as recognized by Astronomy).

More interesting is that it's possible only recently did the Charon Mass Relay come into Transit Range of the Arcturus Relay. This could be why it was not in use for so long.

The likely scenario is a billion or so years ago when the galaxies began to collide, the Relay(s) that originally connected to Charon were thrown off by gravatational forces. Around the time of the Protheans, the Arcturus System and the Charon Relay were finally within transit point for the secondary Relay. (Primary are One to One, so is there a second secondary relay in the Arcturus system to travel between Sol and Arcturus?)

The most important thing to know about the galaxy and universe, is there's no such thing as a statistical impossibility. a probability of 1:1,000,000,000,000 happens three times a minute in the Universe.

Interesting, the Arcturus star being a different galaxy does make for an interesting point, but then again I would suggest its a plot loop hole within a plot loop hole.

I do think you have a point here about the range of the relays, but I would also suggest that the time line for the galaxies colliding might be longer than the time line of the reapers?  The reapers being a billion years old isn't suggested, only 30+ million.  Why would there be a relay in the Sol system that connected to nothing for millions of years? 

[Kenshen]

Not a different galaxy but different solar system. All of mass effect game takes place in the milky way galaxy unless I have missed something this big which in case I need to re read the codex again.

[jimmyjoefro]

There isn't any definitive proof that Arcturus is a remnant of a galactic collision. Even if that were so, the fact that there is a Mass Relay at Arcturus doesn't prove the Reapers are inter-galactic travelers. To me, it suggests two things. First, it could be proof that the Reapers do in fact have an origin and that they didn't build the relay until after the collision.  Second, it could mean the Reapers included the newly consumed stars in their already existing Mass Relay network.

Modifié par jimmyjoefro, 24 février 2010 - 03:27 .

[Shadowrun1177]

Maybe Earth was colonized before in the past and also victim of the Reapers. I mean look at some of Earth's legends about lost civilizations, like Atlantis and such. We also have societies with legends about "gods"  and "giants" coming down and living among the humans. Honestly it could be like others have suggested and maybe different groups saw human life growning watched it and choose not to lift the race up which I can understand not wanting to do after what happened with the Krogan and the Rachni wars. Mordin even said he would of stood against uplifting the Krogan during the Rachni wars if he was around.

Modifié par Shadowrun1177, 24 février 2010 - 03:32 .

[MrBeardface]

It's certainly an interesting subject to discuss. And I can see why you'd think it's implausible that Earth wasn't colonized before.

Cyadina wrote...

Sure I could buy that, but we're talking thousands of potential space faring races, who are limited to travelling the mass relays which only likely go so many places.

 Well, disputing this point requires us to take several assumptions. We don't know the exact age of the Reapers, but let's assume it's 40 million years. One 'cycle' takes 40k years [correct me if I'm wrong, it's been a while since I played ME1]. That gives us, potentially, 1000 space-faring civilisations. Even if you allow for my 4 exclusion points, it's still improbable that none of them would have colonized earth, true.

 However, we assume that Reapers have been indenpendent and conducting their genocide cycles for all of their lives. They might have been servants of their creators for millions of years. They might have approached suffiecent power, or simply made the decision to 'control' organic life in this manner only some time down the line.

 If we assume that few hundred civilisations, rather than 1000+ had a chance to discover Earth, then it becomes much more likely that they would not colonize it. However, I *would* agree that the chance would be fairly small - but IMO not small enough to make it improbable.

 Another assumption we currently make is that the mass relays map only part of the galaxy. What if they don't? If the Reapers have indeed created them they had plenty of time to build relays to every system in the Milky Way. If THAT was the case then I think it becomes immedietly apparent just how likely it was that Earth was never considered for colonisation.

Cyadina wrote...

I could buy this too, but if we use the protheans and the current cycle that's at least 10 species, not including quarians and volus who would find earth quite nice.  Synthetic species would also find the extremely hospitable environment easy to mine the planet for resources as well.  Its not just a matter of wanting to live there, most of the planets in the "known" galaxy have some sort of structure to exploit the resources of that planet, even if it wasn't a full scale colony earth has plenty of easy to access resources compared to say mining the core of a gas giant.

 It's possible that some mining operation did exist on Earth. If it did, it's likely Reapers would leave no trace of it - much easier to wipe out than all-out settlements.

Cyadine
Logical, but so far evidence in this game suggests every garden world would be hit with at least a small colony. A garden planet with earth's potential would be a very prime target for colonization.  The protheans may be an outlier in many respects, benevolence, single species cycle etc.  So far all we know is that species we know of want to explore, and the species we know of want to colonize. 

 It's likely that we only have evidence of the last 'cycle'. I would argue that it's very much possible that Reapers wiped out very advanced civilisations that didn't do all that much colonisation or exploration. Or they simply had a slow enough reproductive cycle or produced so few offspring that they did not need many planets to support their needs.

Cyadine
Intelligent beings on this planet are extremely recent, it would be no more crude than for us to settle on a planet with Pyjaks except in maybe the last two cycles.  The protheans may have been unusually benevolent regardless. Even so, the number of humans would have been extremely small, an advanced colony need not have displaced or eliminated our ancestors to co-exist. 

 I think during one of the exploration missions in ME1 the description says that the Council disallows development on the planet because intelligent life may be in process of evolving there - it kinda stuck in my head. It could be civilisations like Protheans would keep their distance from Australopithecus 5 million years ago, but it's more likely that ****** habilis, the first ****** species to use tools, would mark that point - that is still around 2 million years ago, so quite a few cycles.

CyadineFor what its worth MrBeardFace you make some excellent points here, simply debating, not necessarily disagreeing.

 That's quite alright, you certainly made me think. As I said before, I agree that the chance Earth would not be colonized [assuming only part of the galaxy is mapped with mass relays] is fairly small. Not small enough to be absurd, though ^^.

[adam_grif]

Massadonious1 wrote...

(Right click + View Image for full size)

Modifié par adam_grif, 24 février 2010 - 03:39 .

[CanadAvenger]

Thargorichiban wrote...

Why do you think the dinosaurs went extinct?

Those poor T-Rex's should never have activated that mass relay! That's why we'll see a dinosaur reaper in the next game. I'm preemptively naming it Barney.

random, but I totally read this in Caboose's voice from Red vs Blue. Lol

[Cyadina]

aryon69 wrote...

Not a different galaxy but different solar system. All of mass effect game takes place in the milky way galaxy unless I have missed something this big which in case I need to re read the codex again.

It was suggested above that Arcturus is a galactic remnant.  Although the only thing that matters is proximity of systems to each other for mass relays.  If the Milky Way were made in a similar structure but every "arm" was a different galaxy it wouldn't matter, they would still be traversible by mass relay.  The only point that was interesting is that he suggested that without that galactic remnant the Sol system wouldn't have been reachable because nothing was in range.  This doesn't fit the lore or timeline as far as I know.

Shadowrun1177 wrote...

Maybe Earth was colonized before in the past and also victim of the Reapers. I mean look at some of
Earth's legends about lost civilizations, like Atlantis and such. We also have societies with legends about "gods"  and "giants" coming down and living among the humans. Honestly it could be like others have suggested and maybe different groups saw human life growning watched it and choose not to lift the race up which I can understand not wanting to do after what happened with the Krogan and the Rachni wars. Mordin even said he would of stood against uplifting the Krogan during the Rachni wars if he was around.

Personally I think God myths being explainable are wishful thinking.  I would suggest that since the discovery of the Prothean observation post on Mars and the subsequent craziness over possible guided evolution that humanity would have SCOURED the planet looking for evidence.  That means if there was something odd in the fossil record they'd have found it, either evidence of a previous civilization's colonization, or mining efforts, or evidence that something was removed.  I've been arguing that I think its impossible to remove all the evidence of something happening if something happened.

MrBeardface wrote...

It's certainly an interesting subject to discuss. And I can see why you'd think it's implausible that Earth wasn't colonized before.

Cyadina wrote...

Sure I could buy that, but we're talking thousands of potential space faring races, who are limited to travelling the mass relays which only likely go so many places.

 Well, disputing this point requires us to take several assumptions. We don't know the exact age of the
Reapers, but let's assume it's 40 million years. One 'cycle' takes 40k years [correct me if I'm wrong, it's been a while since I played ME1]. That gives us, potentially, 1000 space-faring civilisations. Even if you allow for my 4 exclusion points, it's still improbable that none of them would have colonized earth, true.

 However, we assume that Reapers have been indenpendent and conducting their genocide cycles for
all of their lives. They might have been servants of their creators for millions of years. They might have approached suffiecent power, or simply made the decision to 'control' organic life in this manner only some time down the line.

 If we assume that few hundred civilisations, rather than 1000+ had a chance to discover Earth, then
it becomes much more likely that they would not colonize it. However, I *would* agree that the chance would be fairly small - but IMO not small enough to make it improbable.

 Another assumption we currently make is that the mass relays map only part of the galaxy. What if they
don't? If the Reapers have indeed created them they had plenty of time to build relays to every system in the Milky Way. If THAT was the case then I think it becomes immedietly apparent just how likely it was that Earth was never considered for colonisation.

The 40 million mark might be correct, but it sounds like the cycle is around every 50k years.  Your number might be on the high or low side depending on whether single species prothean type cycles were more common than the current 10+ species cycle.  More species means more need for garden planets, means more exploring, means more colonizing.

You make a good point that we don't know exactly when the cycle of harvesting started, it could be later, or it could have been at the beginning when they first decided to hibernate.  A reaper dying 35 million years ago, the one we explore in ME2, suggests at least that people weren't friendly with them then, but in truth it doesn't necessarily say the harvesting cycle had started then.

I'm forced to make assumptions on the number of relays based on what we have available in the game.  They seem relatively rare to me, the lore doesn't say how many inactive ones there are as far as I know, I'd have to reread the codexs in ME1 again just to be sure.  We do know that it is forbidden to activate relays that aren't mapped, assuming by conventional FTL to avoid Rachni situations.  It makes sense from a reaper perspective to make sure the systems were appealing to the potential victims so they don't have to go looking much beyond the relay systems and not so wide spread that harvesting them doesn't take *too* long, or they risk too many organics and too much time for them to develop a way to fight back. 

MrBeardface wrote...

Cyadina wrote...

I could buy this too, but if we use the protheans and the current cycle that's at least 10 species, not including quarians and volus who would find earth quite nice.  Synthetic species would also find the extremely
hospitable environment easy to mine the planet for resources as well.  Its not just a matter of wanting to live there, most of the planets in the "known" galaxy have some sort of structure to exploit the resources of that planet, even if it wasn't a full scale colony earth has plenty of easy to access resources compared to say mining the core of a gas giant.

 It's possible that some mining operation did exist on Earth. If it did, it's likely Reapers would leave no trace of it -
much easier to wipe out than all-out settlements.

Maybe, but then again mining is more intrusive than surface structures, and is MUCH more likely to leave evidence.  Under ground is significantly more protected of time than the surface, unless of course the Reapers have the ability to say cover their tracks with a volcano, then I imagine it'd be really hard to say exactly, unless of course there's evidence that the volcano wasn't natural.  Covering things like that up lead to more and more extreme outcomes.  I think that points to no settlements more than anything.

MrBeardface wrote...

Cyadina wrote...
Logical, but so far evidence in this game suggests every garden world would be hit with at least a small colony. A garden planet with earth's potential would be a very prime target for colonization.  The protheans may be an outlier in many respects, benevolence, single species cycle etc.  So far all we know is that species we know of want to explore, and the species we know of want to colonize. 

 It's likely that we only have evidence of the last 'cycle'. I would argue that it's very much possible that Reapers wiped out very advanced civilisations that didn't do all that much colonisation or exploration. Or they simply had a slow enough reproductive cycle or produced so few offspring that they did not need many planets to support their needs.

I have no doubt the reapers wiped out hundreds and more likely thousands of other civilizations we will have no knowledge of because of time, or because other civilizations recovered the evidence and were themselves destroyed.  The reasons we have so many prothean artifacts is because they were so advanced, so wide spread AND they were the last cycle.  But, that doesn't mean other species didn't explore the relays, and didn't need garden worlds, and didn't have any qualms about colonizing a garden world with semi-intelligent life.  Even if not every cycle produced that many space faring races, that both the protheans and the current cycle have unusually widespread exploration, that doesn't preclude other species.  Honestly the species most likely to explore are probably the ones most likely to colonize as well, so if they did find Earth, they'd use Earth.

MrBeardface wrote...

Cyadina wrote...
Intelligent beings on this planet are extremely recent, it would be no more crude than for us to settle on a planet with Pyjaks except in maybe the last two cycles.  The protheans may have been unusually benevolent regardless. Even so, the number of humans would have been extremely small, an advanced colony need not have displaced or eliminated our ancestors to co-exist. 

 I think during one of the exploration missions in ME1 the description says that the Council disallows development on the planet because intelligent life may be in process of evolving there - it kinda stuck in my head. It could be
civilisations like Protheans would keep their distance from Australopithecus 5 million years ago, but it's more likely that ****** habilis, the first ****** species to use tools, would mark that point - that is still around 2 million years ago, so quite a few cycles.

This is the prime directive argument.  Its possible that space faring civilizations tend to be more ethical than what our current sociopolitical climate on earth would suggest.  Its a possible argument, even if that cuts 2 million years off the cycle, that is still an awful lot of civilizations that would have had no ethical barrier even if it wouldn't bother them.

Modifié par Cyadina, 24 février 2010 - 06:16 .

[didymos1120]

Deflagratio wrote...

Also as a point of interest. The Charon Relay (It's a secondary relay I believe) connects with the Arcturus System's Primary Mass Relay. The Star Arcturus is actually part of another Galaxy that is currently crashing it's way through the Milky Way. Read that again, Arcturus, Is part of ANOTHER GALAXY.

You know, you could fact-check. I know, I know: it's the Internet.  Anyway...

Quoth Wikipedia: 

The star is in the Local Interstellar Cloud.

and:

According to the Hipparcos satellite, Arcturus is 36.7 light years (11.3 parsecs)
from Earth, relatively close in astronomical terms.

 

Nearest full-size galaxy?  Yeah, that's Andromeda, sitting pretty at about 2,500,000 light-years away.  Nearest known dwarf galaxy? Canis Major, at a cozy 25,000 light-years. Diameter of the Milky Way?  Roughly 100,000 light-years.  36.7 light-years?  That's nothing.  A mere hop, astronomically speaking.  Evidence that Arcturus and pals are remnants of a merged dwarf? Not much, actually. 

Modifié par didymos1120, 24 février 2010 - 11:32 .

[BattleVisor]

Because aliens aren't jerks like humans, they wouldnt colonize planets where there is already sentient life developing.

[Jayce]

Deflagratio wrote...

Also as a point of interest. The Charon Relay (It's a secondary relay I believe) connects with the Arcturus System's Primary Mass Relay.

The fiction is a little vague on this.

But as you say, primaries are point to point and cover vast distances. Secondaries can be pointed at any other nearby secondary, but [HERE'S THE IMPORTANT BIT] I believe secondary relays actually have a relay that is a hub and points to the other nearby secondaries rather than ANY secondary can be pointed at ANY other secondary.
 
See, <38 light years is too short for Charon-Arcturus to realistically be a primary relay pair and if Charon is a secondary it should point to more destinations than Arcturus...  unless my hub theory is true.

We know from the fiction that the Alliance only had three extra-solar colonies prior to the First Contact War (Shanxi, Terra Nova and Eden Prime), plus the Alliance base at Arcturus.... If my hub theory holds true, then the lack of colonisation could be simply due to no other space faring species after the Reapers "picking door number 3," until the Protheans and then later us, opening "door number 3" ourselves.

Modifié par Jayce F, 24 février 2010 - 12:44 .

[Cyadina]

didymos1120 wrote...

Deflagratio wrote...

Also as a point of interest. The Charon Relay (It's a secondary relay I believe) connects with the Arcturus System's Primary Mass Relay. The Star Arcturus is actually part of another Galaxy that is currently crashing it's way through the Milky Way. Read that again, Arcturus, Is part of ANOTHER GALAXY.

You know, you could fact-check. I know, I know: it's the Internet.  Anyway...

Quoth Wikipedia: 

The star is in the Local Interstellar Cloud.

and:

According to the Hipparcos satellite, Arcturus is 36.7 light years (11.3 parsecs)
from Earth, relatively close in astronomical terms.

 

Nearest full-size galaxy?  Yeah, that's Andromeda, sitting pretty at about 2,500,000 light-years away.  Nearest known dwarf galaxy? Canis Major, at a cozy 25,000 light-years. Diameter of the Milky Way?  Roughly 100,000 light-years.  36.7 light-years?  That's nothing.  A mere hop, astronomically speaking.  Evidence that Arcturus and pals are remnants of a merged dwarf? Not much, actually. 

You're correct, doesn't matter what arcturus was or how it got there, proximity is all that matters in building the relays.  Fact checking by quoting wikipedia, even if it does tend to be more accurate on scientific answers than average, is not the best way to do it, the abstract on the other hand was interesting.

BattleVisor wrote...

Because aliens aren't jerks like humans, they wouldnt colonize planets where there is already sentient life developing.

Intelligent life is very recent, before that point there would be no ethical reason not to colonize the planet.  You're also assuming aliens aren't jerks and that they're driven by the same morals that we have, which is only supported because to think like an alien species is next to impossible and thus are attributed "alien" features through our cultural filters.  Now we can assume that we're following the story line based on the ME aliens and you may be right, but that simply goes back several million years leaving out likely less than a hundred of the potentially thousands of species who *could* have found earth and used it.

Jayce F wrote...

Deflagratio wrote...

Also
as a point of interest. The Charon Relay (It's a secondary relay I
believe) connects with the Arcturus System's Primary Mass Relay.

The fiction is a little vague on this.

But as
you say, primaries are point to point and cover vast distances.
Secondaries can be pointed at any other nearby secondary, but
[HERE'S THE IMPORTANT BIT] I believe secondary relays actually have
a relay that is a hub and points to the other nearby secondaries rather
than ANY secondary can be pointed at ANY other secondary.
 
See, <38 light years is too short for Charon-Arcturus to realistically be a primary relay pair and if Charon is a secondary it should point to more destinations than Arcturus...  unless my hub theory is true.

We
know from the fiction that the Alliance only had three
extra-solar colonies prior to the First Contact War (Shanxi, Terra Nova
and Eden Prime), plus the Alliance base at Arcturus.... If my hub
theory holds true, then the lack of colonisation could be simply due to
no other space faring species after the Reapers "picking door number
3," until the Protheans and then later us, opening "door number 3"
ourselves.

You're correct as far as I know, secondary relays can send ships to every other secondary relay IN RANGE.  It is necessary for every primary relay to be paired with at least one secondary relay otherwise ships would simply be stranded at the terminal point with the only option of going back.  

It is possible that with such a large combination of relays that exploring them all would be difficult *if that were the case*.  Nothing says currently that the relays aren't relatively rare, pointing to clusters that are then travelled by conventional FTL.  If the relays were more common I would assume nearly every star would have one and that would cause the exponential exploration that would make locating individual systems nightmarish.  I've been suggesting instead that the relays are limited and only go certain places, systems that are appealing to organic species primarily so they're encouraged NOT to explore to far beyond them so the reapers can make their harvesting more efficient. 

Modifié par Cyadina, 24 février 2010 - 08:56 .

[Mooh Bear]

The Reapers are harvesting space-faring civilizations on a regular basis (around 50k years). However, there's nothing about how long after a civilization has reached the space faring stage the Reapers come. There is not a lot of information on the extent of the Prothean empire or any other galactic civilization before them. The Asaris have been in space for several thousands years and it seems Sovereign planned to intervene a while ago, as early as before the Rachni war if the Citadel had not been sabotaged by the Protheans. There are no clear metric of what the Reapers are monitoring or even what they're after, so it's possible space-faring civilizations actually usually have very little time in front of them and cannot explore that much of the relay system before being consumed.

Modifié par Mooh Bear, 24 février 2010 - 08:57 .

[apk117]

I would imagine that the Council would have restrictions about colonizing a world that is densely populated with a "primitive" race that still hasn't broken the bounds of their own world/solar system.

[Jarcander]

Thargorichiban wrote...

Why do you think the dinosaurs went extinct?

Those poor T-Rex's should never have activated that mass relay! That's why we'll see a dinosaur reaper in the next game. I'm preemptively naming it Barney.

Hey, great minds alike. I was thinking the space dinosaurs were the first sentient species on Earth too. Of course, as a physically imposing race, they had less use for structures, which would explain the lack of ruins on Earth. Anything they build, Reapers took down while doing their regularly scheduled galactic reaping. 

[jimmyjoefro]

Space raptors are the worst.