Sailor_Skarro
The Lurker
See just did a happy dance and he doesn't know why.
Attempting to Fulfill the Plan: GDI Edition
Or with our luck something far worse than Tiberium. :Shudder:
Okay, so I realize this is completely unrelated and totally out of left field but... hear me out on this sleep-deprived idea. Static defense lunar installation, we turn the moon into a giant orbiting mini turret to protect Earth from anymore invasions. Maybe even complete with that giant laser cannon thing from Doom Eternal.
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- MSC
More interesting question - can we convert Tib in Eezo, like with other materials?
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Sounds like a great project for Seo.
You just gave me a horrifying vision of NOD slowly becoming this universe's version of Cerberus. Going underground and turning into a secret society of sorts as soon as they come to an accord with GDI or lose, working towards a better future for humanity involving Eezo and Tiberium.
- Location
- his hidden lair
GDI would literally go to war to stop this sort of thing. It doesn't even need to be a winnable war, it would be tantamount to witnessing galactic genocide and doing nothing.
Like full stop, they will tell everyone they meet not to weaponize Tiberium, they will beg you not to weaponize Tiberium. And they will almost certainly kill you to prevent you from weaponizing Tiberium. From GDI's perspective, Tiberium is a metaphorical ancient evil they're trying to seal away. They won't let it leave the Solar system without trying to stop anyone by any means necessary, they won't sell it- and considering the Scrin are evidently aware of the Reapers and actively stay off the Relay network to avoid being noticed, I really doubt the Citadel (which canonically has explored less than 1% of the galaxy) has any fucking clue where else to find it.
You can meme about the STG, and I have no doubt they'll do some solid electronic espionage on us. But Venus and Earth are going to be the most fortified positions in human space, likely with anyone leaving without authorization having their ships seized or shot down. From GDI's perspective one containment breach based off misunderstandings cost 6 billion lives. A proliferation throughout Citadel space could mean the death of trillions. The calculus when the stakes are so high get's absurd. Like Relay killing to prevent the spread being a legitimate option absurd.
Even NOD is less likely to indiscriminately proliferate the crystal to those unworthy of it and more likely to leverage it into seizing some kind of power (NOD backed Batarian uprising when?)
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I think you're going a bit far with the 'ancient evil they're trying to seal away' angle, I mean... we've literally been experimenting with making fuel cells, injections, and glass out of it somewhat regularly for the last few years. GDI just hasn't quite broached the line of weaponizing it directly, which I definitely approve of as of now and for the foreseeable future.
That being said, I don't doubt they'll tell people not to do it, but that has never done anything but make people more curious. How would they even keep any potential for a breach impossible? Seal the solar system from every other Citadel race? The Citadel won't like that at all, letting other races immigrate was how humanity was more quickly accepted as a part of Citadel Space.
Even if they did do that, and only ever let humans into the Sol System, we haven't even been successful at stopping our own people from experimenting and using it. Who is to say there isn't some enterprising group that wouldn't try to sell Tiberium at a premium rate to the Citadel races? In fact, I think that's quite likely.
Overall, I'm not too worried about spreading the Green Death beyond the Sol System... by the time we're anywhere close to meeting with the Citadel races we'll likely have Tiberium countermeasures well beyond anything we've ever known. The Relays that connect to Citadel space are multiple Relay jumps from Earth, if I remember correctly. That's hundreds of years of expansion.
That sounds totalitarian and scary. Might be justifiable for the people as long as war is constantly on the horizon, but people will chafe under demands like that.
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- his hidden lair
One, Seo has explored fuel cells, the public is actually angry and outraged for him experimenting with small controlled LT power stations. They were also mad about the infisions.
Yeah, the Citadel and GDI have to have closed borders, there will be an economic disaster if they have open borders. Citadel credits are incredibly devalued by Tiberium mass producing expensive resources, and GDI's economy is geared completely different and primarily oriented around voucher systems for social welfare.
It is really, fantastically hard to hide in space. The Normandy was a cutting edge design and the only ship capable of doing it at the time of it's construction. Even then it was vulnerable to optical sensors. Keeping track of all shipping too and from two planets is not as hard as you think. Especially since almost all Tiberium mining and refining is state owned. There's literally no reason any civilian has to go to Venus, and you can bet your ass GDI will not let anyone poke around it the moment it has a militarized presence in space.
If you think Tiberium will never not be a concern, I think this is probably a misunderstanding of the setting between you and I. I see supposed instances of Tiberium being under control; the TCN and the Scrin. The Scrin need tiberium to survive, are hopelessly addicted to it, and casually exterminate worlds to get more of those delicious greens. The TCN was incredibly poorly understood, was in it's infancy, has a variety of knock on effects no one but arguably Kane knows about, and may have entailed reopening the Threshold for the Scrin to invade Earth again. Even if we assume the TCN is the bees knees and the absolute best ending with no downside- we still can't afford to build super expensive TCNs wherever we go.
Tiberium will never not be dangerous. It will never not be boundless potential- all too easily bent to horror. Humanity will never be free of some degree of dependence on the crystal- but there's a reason the most powerful states on Earth are ideologically committed to hating the crystal and fighting for a world free of it, or committed to adoring the crystal and fighting for a world ruled by it. As for it's rate of growth, the example you gave was dumbassess shooting it left and right. Likewise, it spread because people spread it to exploit it. What do you think is going to happen if others get a hold of it through illicit channels? They'll exploit it, starting an arms race around Tiberium, increased tension, and an incredibly likely chance of galaxy spanning warfare the likes of the Krogan Rebellion or the Rachni Wars. Hell yeah GDI would send Commando teams to kill and reclaim any stolen Tiberium.
It's a bit like saying 'eventually the One Ring will be entirely harmless for Frodo and easy to use as a benevolent force for good'
Our people live in a society far more heavily monitored than yours and mine, and are the survivors of the apocalypse, WW3, and the near complete collapse of Earth's biospheres. Tiberium is the enemy, and boy do our civilians hate it.
We'd literally be ousted if not shot for suggesting we spread Tiberium to other solar bodies. Why the hell do you think our people would be any happier at the idea of aliens or self-serving profiteers spreading it? It'll pretty much be a killing offense. However scary a draconian policy around Tiberium sounds to you, the proliferation of Tiberium probably terrifies the vast majority of our citizens more than anything else. Canonically, GDI refused to use the Liquid Tiberium bomb at the risk of Human extinction. And the public lauded that decision and crucified the man arguably behind it. If you put a gun to the head of our ~600 million citizens and told them to pull the trigger on Tiberium weaponization and proliferation, I bet the majority would spit in your face and die with a smile. Cultural trauma on this level is incredibly alien to you or I.
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I doubt that you're right. Given that the Scrin are out there seeding the galaxy with Tiberium indiscriminately it would strain credulity if it wasn't already something the Council races are aware of and can deal with. I doubt any of them got their homeworld seeded, but if Earth got hit that means the Scrin aren't staying too far away from the Relay network, so there should be plenty of Tiberium planets out there for the Citadel to research and exploit.
And Tiberium probably gets a lot easier to deal with if you are a united, galactic society that has very advanced gravity manipulation tech and can easily evacuate planets.
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K von Carstein
Likes to go for a walk
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- Belgium
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If it's for preventing the death of billions, let them chafe.
And it would be deserved. There's no good reason to spread that poison to other systems.
Durabys
Miaow! Break the Chains!
- Location
- the land of the Boii
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- He/Him
Yup. My head canon is that the Asari found about Mass Effect and Eezo in their version of the Sumerian/Babylonian Era, with the Salarians and Turians probably in their Victorian Age equivalent. It is part of my theory why Humans had been kicking so much ass (and it was not only because of the Prothean Archive). It was because they got their hands on Eezo and Mass Effect tech only after they went full interstellar and sent the Mansfeld expedition colony ship to Alpha/Proxima Centauri. Their base tech level when discovering Eezo had been much higher than with most other civilizations.
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- his hidden lair
1% of the Galaxy, while deliberately avoiding the relay network. There is plenty of real estate for the Scrin to chill out in. And I think they only seeded ours because the Charon relay was literally hidden under gigatons of ice.
Likewise, Citadel space is so ridiculously porous and poorly regulated I think it would a nightmare. How many instances do we find of lost ships, derelicts, and pirates and the like operating around in ME 1? Illium. Noveria. Whatever Terminus systems groups in Citadel space feel like doing business through that month. Moreover, having never touched ME 3- do we see them evacuating millions upon millions of people? Nothing massing more than a frigate can safely touch down I think- and presumably frigates as military vessels have much larger Eezo cores than freighters. That means you need orbital infrastructure, cargo lighters and shuttles, and a shitton of things that make getting into space more expensive.
Nottheunmaker
Altman be praised
- Location
- USG Ishimura
Frankly I have a hard time imaging that we can keep Tiberium from spreading out of the solar system. Just to start we know that it's extra solar, it's already out. It also assumes that the Citadel races have never encountered the Scrin, which is... a harder call, but it would surprise me.
But even assuming the aliens have never stumbled on Tib, you only a tiny little bit of Tiberium to eventually get an entire planet of Tiberium, as we're trying to averted right now.
And then there's the human factor. People were stupid and greedy enough to spread it around the world before, I don't see them not getting greedy again once we have a lot of planets that it could be spread to and not care about because no one lived there and never would. And then there's Nod.
Unless we can eradicate Tiberium in it's entirety, which would be dumb, as noted our economy is built on it, it will not stay locked down.
But even assuming the aliens have never stumbled on Tib, you only a tiny little bit of Tiberium to eventually get an entire planet of Tiberium, as we're trying to averted right now.
And then there's the human factor. People were stupid and greedy enough to spread it around the world before, I don't see them not getting greedy again once we have a lot of planets that it could be spread to and not care about because no one lived there and never would. And then there's Nod.
Unless we can eradicate Tiberium in it's entirety, which would be dumb, as noted our economy is built on it, it will not stay locked down.
You say Nod, but given Cerberus' core values and inherent xenophobia and elitism, I'd peg it being spawned by the Initiative First crowd.
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The idea that it's hard to deliberately hide in over 99% of the galaxy when we have WOG the Scrin are avoiding the Reapers, who know the galaxy far better than anyone else around is kinda head scratching.
The STG can hide, NOD can likely hide, but the hyper advanced aliens with a unique techbase and femtotech they seemingly created can't hide?
Likewise, even if there were people who want to sell Tiberium to get rich (which I think is a much tougher sell when foreign currency is going to be very weird in GDI's economy) but is basically inevitable.... how do they do it? Harvester tech is regulated, fusion torches are going to be regulated, the relay is going to be super heavily regulated (by virtue of being the gateway into humanity's homeworld), Earth is going to be absurdly fortified given how valuable it is, the fact it's our homeworld, and that it's the vector the Scrin can best attack us through.
The vast majority of our populace will never even see a Tiberium refinery, and harvesting the stuff is easier said than done. Escaping Earth's gravity well unnoticed when we will have constellation upon constellation intended to keep NOD from doing just that. There's 6 tons of weapons grade plutonium that's gone missing and never accounted for from what I can see. And that's with less oversight, more commercial access, and (I'd argue) easier conditions for smuggling than several military checkpoints and the incredibly hard to hide a ship in canvas that is space.
The STG can hide, NOD can likely hide, but the hyper advanced aliens with a unique techbase and femtotech they seemingly created can't hide?
Likewise, even if there were people who want to sell Tiberium to get rich (which I think is a much tougher sell when foreign currency is going to be very weird in GDI's economy) but is basically inevitable.... how do they do it? Harvester tech is regulated, fusion torches are going to be regulated, the relay is going to be super heavily regulated (by virtue of being the gateway into humanity's homeworld), Earth is going to be absurdly fortified given how valuable it is, the fact it's our homeworld, and that it's the vector the Scrin can best attack us through.
The vast majority of our populace will never even see a Tiberium refinery, and harvesting the stuff is easier said than done. Escaping Earth's gravity well unnoticed when we will have constellation upon constellation intended to keep NOD from doing just that. There's 6 tons of weapons grade plutonium that's gone missing and never accounted for from what I can see. And that's with less oversight, more commercial access, and (I'd argue) easier conditions for smuggling than several military checkpoints and the incredibly hard to hide a ship in canvas that is space.
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What do you think is going to happen when we bring Liquid Tiberium Fuel cells to our forces? That it's just completely going to be a non-factor in an expansion into space? That it will never be used? That no Tiberium is ever going to make it beyond Earth or Venus, or hasn't already for that matter?
I don't think the average citizen would like a profiteer spreading it, but average citizens don't like thieves, pirates, or smugglers and they have continued to exist despite that.
The idea that the GDI is going to be capable of micromanaging every last human Big Brother style for the rest of eternity baffles me, it's just not sustainable past a certain point.
Under control? Maybe not. Significantly less dangerous? Yes, we're already working on that and I'm talking about an eventuality that is literally hundreds of years into the future where who even knows what technology we have on our side.
Nothing will ever be safe, doesn't mean things don't get safer as medical/scientific advances hit us. I bet you if you went back and asked, people believed they'd never be free from Smallpox til we eradicated that too. (Not to say we'd eradicate Tiberium, but just that technological advances are difficult to foresee, and assuming that we will always be at the mercy of green space rocks no matter how far we advance seems heavily pessimistic)
Yes, that is exactly what I think is going to happen. I also think it's something of an eventuality, how would we ever monitor every citizen? And if it did happen, it's something like Pandora's box. We could never be sure we got all of it, space is too big.
I feel like this is disingenuous, stealth tech for hiding entire spaceships from sensors is pretty advanced. Cloaking tech for personnel existed way before that, and smugglers hiding things aboard transportation where authorities can't see it is positively ancient.
They don't need to sneak an entire mining ship to Venus, bumble around on it under a heavy cloak, and then make it all the way back to Citadel space. They just have to pay off one corrupt human to slip them a single grain of the stuff and blam.
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- his hidden lair
Newsflash- we're not bringing Tiberium fuel cells into space. The public is upset we're building some on Earth. We will flat out lose our job if we put a single Tiberium fuel cell into space.
How many Somalian pirates do we see hijacking shipments of nuclear weapons material? How many people are offended at the idea of governments responding to attempts to steal nuclear material with lethal force?
The idea you think it takes micromanaging every single human when the government has a monopoly on the use of, refining of, and harvesting of tiberium is the real baffling part.
You and I are talking past one another. You can't concieve of the government being so overbearing about Tiberium, I'm saying it already is- that we have received warning shots across the bow for our actions, and that we are laughably far from seeing LT-power plants spread. There's a decent chance the literal 1st phase is the last we ever do, and it's possible that doesn't even finish.
Why on Earth would GDI not check every single ship going through the relay as a matter of course? Or stopping at Earth? Or Venus? You seem to be under the impression there's going to be a bunch of commercial traffic to hide among? There's going to be a major tariff barrier with Citadel space, the relatively specialized cooperatives, and then there's going to be state-owned corporation efforts- which by their very nature are going to allow a lot of government oversight.
Moreover where are they going to get in contact with the very few corrupt humans that are in a position to a) be contacted, b) get the material, and c) have the resources to deliver this, d) can hide all this super incriminating evidence from InOps. This is not an instance of someone stealing a bit of gold out of the mines, GDI is going to vet every single person involved with gathering Tib. And with EVA and AI, it's going to be increasingly hard to find these humans with government background checks who are hilariously corrupt and amoral enough to proliferate the thing that's universally blamed for the death of billions.
There are several worlds of distance from material 'randomly' falling off backs of trucks and stealing Tiberium when we're at the point of being in contact with ME.
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There is no indication that the Scrin are avoiding the relay network, and if the Charon relay being covered by Ice was enough to fool them then they probably failed at it elsewhere too since I don't think it's ever implied that the Charon relay was special for being covered in ice. I think Tiberium not being a known variable is unlikely.
The Citadel is a galaxy spanning society of trillions with an equally sized economy. They are able to build planet spanning orbital megastructures on a planet that as far as I'm aware has no inhabitants (Trii Supercollider). The Quarians were able to evacuate millions of people during a much shorter time limit than Tiberium imposes, several centuries before canon, during a war of extermination against their AI servants that they were loosing.
Honestly, I'm just not a fan of the crossover approach that gives anyone but the protagonist faction no agency. There is a species out there that does nothing but spread Tiberium. Them or their works not getting into contact with the mass effect based galactic civilization at all just so canon is preserved and the protagonist faction gets to be even more special than they already will be for having survived on a Tiberium infested homeworld with Kane and a hostile pre-spaceflight first contact just leaves a bad taste in my mouth.
Oh really? The GDI is the only faction with access to Tiberium? I guess NOD just doesn't exist, nor do the Scrin.
Yup, total monopoly.
Nuclear weapons? They've been stolen several times. They've been lost several times. They've been outright dropped several times, on accident.
Since 1950, there have been 32 nuclear weapon accidents, known as "Broken Arrows." A Broken Arrow is defined as an unexpected event involving nuclear weapons that result in the accidental launching, firing, detonating, theft or loss of the weapon. To date, six nuclear weapons have been lost and never recovered.
For the question about Somalian pirates stealing weapons from a military cargo ship? Last time that happened off the top of my head was in 2009, when they hijacked a UN ship. It happens, governments and the people that run them aren't infallible.
Are you even listening to what I'm trying to say? Of course they're going to check every single ship going through the relay as a matter of course.
GDI are not gods, they are not going to flawlessly catch every single attempt to circumvent their control, just like every other government that has ever existed. People can hide things in ships and get it through security, it has happened countless times throughout history.
Even assuming no ships are allowed through the Relay, all of the Citadel races are capable of FTL travel without using the relay. Whether or not they can pull off a handoff like that, I don't know, but they probably wouldn't even have to do that.
You think governments haven't vetted people before? That this is some new, flawless idea? We've had several security breaches in this quest alone where NOD infiltrators have made off with information, assassinated someone, or sabotaged our enterprises.
You think those people weren't vetted? That they just let them sign up at the local corner store? Espionage exists for a reason.
Edit: Anywho, I'm going to drop this before I get too heated, this is a pointless discussion.
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Nottheunmaker
Altman be praised
- Location
- USG Ishimura
It also implies that we'll never let the Forgotten off of Earth. That's a huge group of people that such policies would place under massive travel restrictions just because of what they were born as or even mutated into.
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K von Carstein
Likes to go for a walk
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- Belgium
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Why is everyone suddenly talking about a crossover with Mass Effect?
On another note:
Erewhon being a teenaged edgelord was absolutely hilarious.
I bet his avatar will have eyeshadow, spiked hair, be leather clad and wearing combat boots.
This was commented on often enough that I am not sure a spoiler is warranted, but…
Erewhon being a teenaged edgelord was absolutely hilarious.
I bet his avatar will have eyeshadow, spiked hair, be leather clad and wearing combat boots.
This was commented on often enough that I am not sure a spoiler is warranted, but…
This crossover is Illithid's plan for a follow up quest. The mineral we found on Mars is literally element zero, we are in ME-verse.
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K von Carstein
Likes to go for a walk
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- Belgium
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Nice! I've never played ME, but I've read a few fanfic about it. I wonder what the world building for the Citadel races be.
Turian: Aggressive action to stop any new Relay openings.
GDI: That was a dick move to attack us. We totally understand *nervously glances at Tib*