Except when it comes to Batarian pirates/slavers, it seems...
Distance Learning for fun and profit...
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No, they "tend" to use any excuse to enforce Citadel Law. There's a difference. One just conveys a desire to fight, and test their might. Krogans, Turians are not. The other is thinly veneered attempt at flexing authority and taking what they want. And as woodzrox just pointed out, Turians still leave some Citadel Laws unenforced. So really, they're less "rigid, and inflexible Law Enforcers" and more "The Schoolyard Bullies" in this case. Again, unless MP3 re-writes the ME universe because, again, MP3 doesn't write grim(dark/derp)
No, recall the news broadcasts that play on Illium and Omega in Mass Effect 2.
The Council have placed restrictions/caps on how much Slave Trade can take place (for which a group of Batarians intend to sue them), and enforce it on the Batarians. They haven't actually made it illegal.
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They're treating their citizens as economic resources rather than something that the economy is supposed to serve. So very much arch-capitalists.
They have to find out first, and the Quarians probably have the second most efficient and effective intelligence service in Citadel space. That sort of rumour can easily get accidentally deleted in a hardware crash and oh wouldn't you know it, the Quarian maintenance guy has been filing recommendations to tighten up the backup procedure for that system for months…
DN's slugs move at 0.01c. While ships in cutscenes aren't particularly fast for a space-fearing civilization, they can dodge those projectiles in less than a minute. Probably as much as ten to twenty seconds for larger ships. Frigates like Normany would evade in seconds. This means any fight would take place close enough for those ships to hit each other, so about 20-30k km. Sensors aren't an issue at this range.
Also, since when ME has FTL missiles? Is this something added in Andromeda?
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Quite the contrary; unless the sensors are precise enough to detect and track the incoming fire, dodging will be a matter of evasion patterns and good luck. If the shooter is better at predicting where the target will be then the target is at avoiding fire, it will be hit.
It's the same issue that has defined navel gunnery from the age of sail right up until the invention of guided missiles. A spotter may detect a gun has fired long before the round hits, but that doesn't mean they know where the round is before it arrives...
Now, if Taylor can give the Migrant Fleet sensors that can track mass driver shots in real time, or better yet speed of light energy weapons with sufficient range... well, see Incompatible Systems by this very author to see how effective such a setup can be. Especially if they also get a better FTL drive to allow effective "Shoot and Scoot" tactics....
Kryslin
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The problem with directed energy weapons is as varied as the weapons themselves; Lasers need really good focusing systems to deliver enough energy to target at anything greater than planetary distances (<1000 miles/ 1609 km) . The lasers used for the Apollo laser retroreflector experiment, while being a relatively small beam size, was actually a spot tens of yards across at lunar distances, and that was with some fairly good equipment.
Partical Accelerators are power hogs, even with Gravtec's superconductor. The closer you get to C, the more power you need. The theoretical meson guns of sci-fi need entire new theories of high energy physics to get a meson up to the relativistic speeds needed to precisely time their decays. Even then, the ME Kinetic Shield may be able to take the brunt of the hit, because of the relatavistic mass of the particle stream. And so on. The torpedo will be king, especially if they use some kind of one-shot DEW for the warhead, like a nuclear pumped X-ray laser. Doesn't need to intercept, just get close enough to get a firing solution, and then you've got several petawatts of x-rays burning through your ship.
Partical Accelerators are power hogs, even with Gravtec's superconductor. The closer you get to C, the more power you need. The theoretical meson guns of sci-fi need entire new theories of high energy physics to get a meson up to the relativistic speeds needed to precisely time their decays. Even then, the ME Kinetic Shield may be able to take the brunt of the hit, because of the relatavistic mass of the particle stream. And so on. The torpedo will be king, especially if they use some kind of one-shot DEW for the warhead, like a nuclear pumped X-ray laser. Doesn't need to intercept, just get close enough to get a firing solution, and then you've got several petawatts of x-rays burning through your ship.
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Gravitational lenses are theoretically perfect and who do we know who completely mastered gravity manipulation already?
Three words: Optical Diversion Field.
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Not to mention that Taylor already taken a look at Squealer's cloaking and figured it out along with the principles.
Say hi to laser proof shields for one. Also arbitary mirror telescopes on a compact and lightweight sat.
Say hi to laser proof shields for one. Also arbitary mirror telescopes on a compact and lightweight sat.
FaerieKnight79
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*sighs*
And once again someone assumes all ME fans hate the council species with the strength of a thousand burning suns. It's not hate for the species. It's recognizing that the Council is inept, corrupt, and likely subtly brainwashed by the Citadel it's self. One can like the games, find the individual species to be interesting with intriguiing societies (from what is described in game), and recognize that the politics and politicians are hopelessly corrupt and likely inept.
I like Victus, both of them actually, and Garrus. But honestly, there aren't many other Turians we actually encounter enough to form any opinion about (there are Saren and Sparatus I suppose, but I don't exactly like either). Kryik could have become a character I like, but he never lived long enough to become one. Apart from them, how many Turians do we encounter enough ingame to form an actual opinion about
Liara is awesome, I also like Peebee from Andromeda and Aethyta. But otherwise ... Samara is not bad I suppose and Aria. I like them, but we don't encounter any other likeable Asari enough to form a proper opinion about
From the Salarians, Kirrahe, Mordin and Jondum Bau. How many other Salarians do we actually now?
Anyway, the Council being brainwashed is all but certain
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The issue here is that I'm pretty sure the same is true of humans in ME. We don't really meet many actually likeable ones outside of our own crew.
True that. And the less said about Batarians ... From the asari, drell, salarians, quarrians, krogan, humans, turians (and Geth) I can name at least one character I like (from the Geth, singular character is debatable, given that Legion is a networked intelligence comprised out of a few thousand individual programs). Batarian, I can name one character, Balak, who's probably among the most despised ME characters. I can't actually name a single Hanar or Elcor character. And only a single Volus, Barla Von, who I am kind of neutral about.
Pethrai Darkos
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True, but a lot of that is from the fact that outside of our crew and antagonist leaders we don't really interact with a lot of people enough to form strong opinions of them. Like there's the Salarian director of Noveria, the Turian security chief for the Nexus, and the Asari bartender on the Exile planet, but it's not like they've got ten minutes of dialogue, even collectively.
FaerieKnight79
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There's a lot of codex entries though that flesh out the societies and setting.
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I've said this before, but the whole issue with ME combat being largely throwing very fast rocks at each other is that (A) they only go in straight lines aligned with the horizontal axis of the ship, making targeting require pointing your ship directly at the enemy, which also means you're moving towards the enemy, and (B) if you're moving very fast towards each other in battle, it makes dodging an incoming projectile much harder even with ME fields. There's going to be a limit to how far you can actually move sideways while accelerating forwards. And of course if you're dodging, that means that your target lock on the opponent is necessarily lost until you can point directly at him again...
Missiles are less of a silly idea, but they're also much more complex, expensive, and large than dumb projectiles, so there's a limit to how many you can carry. Especially since as far as I can determine ME combat really concentrates on mass drivers as the primary weapon.
You also see some very odd ideas in fics about how such combat actually works, too. I was reading one the other day that had the bad guys shooting a whole crapload of disruptor missiles at our plucky heros, then fighters to escort the missiles so the other side couldn't shoot them down...
I mean... WHAT? This is not how it works! Or if it does the ME-verse is even more weird than I thought it was
I think it was the same fic that had a comment along the lines of the missiles coming directly at the good guys were impossible to shoot down because they were moving too fast
They're coming right at you. That means that they're just getting bigger and bigger with no lateral movement. By definition this is the ideal setup for a successful interdiction!
And unlike mass driver slugs, killing a missile at range removes it as a threat, which is far more difficult for something that's just very fast and very hard. In that case you need to push it off course enough to miss, something not entirely trivial.Lasers primarily need to be at a short enough wavelength to cover the required distance and still have a suitably small spot size. A visible light laser of any feasible power output less than "We shoved a star into the power supply" is only going to be a lethal weapon at ranges of a few thousand to tens of thousands of kilometers, if for no other reason than the beam divergence is too large to allow focusing it to a small spot.
On the other hand, if you can produce a gamma laser, you can punch a hole in something a million kilometers away without too much trouble, assuming you can actually hit it. And if you can run your laser as a continuous wave output, you compensate for that sort of thing by just raster-scanning the general area you think the enemy is in, and then target the area that glows vividly as it starts to vaporize
There's also the bonus that even a glancing shot on a ship is likely to create so much secondary radiation from the hull being illuminated by a massively powerful gamma beam that you kill everyone on board within minutes anyway. Actually cutting the ship in half is largely redundant...One other thing to consider is that the CIWS laser systems the ME species use are not all that powerful in real terms. Yes, they're sufficient to take out a missile at a few tens of kilometers, but I highly doubt they can actually vaporize one, just slice it up enough to kill it. That being the case the obvious counter to it is a bomb-pumped laser missile, or even a nuclear HEAT charge, that detonates instantly when it detects an incoming anti-missile laser before that laser can damage it enough to render it inert. You of course arrange to have it use the direction the beam came from as the direction it fires in
Even if it takes only milliseconds for the CIWS laser to burn through the missile, that's more than enough time to let it acquire the source of that beam as a target and fire its countermeasures.
For that matter, simply using enhanced radiation warheads of sufficient size and having one detonation method being "We're being shot at, explode now," would be fairly devastating under those circumstances. Because by the time the enemy can shoot your missiles down, they're close enough to him to give him a really good neutron sun-burn
Most ME stories lack imagination in the weapons department. Luckily we have Taylor Hebert here, and one thing she doesn't lack is imagination...
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Mr. Cloak
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... I just read your post, and my first thought was 'casualty-violation weapons', or 'I shot you now, which means you were hit before I shot you, as I wouldn't be shooting you if I missed'.
Things that retroactively make sure they hit.
Fun stuff.
Things that retroactively make sure they hit.
Fun stuff.
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Wait, what? Why would they...that seems utterly pointless. Surely the point of missiles is that they dont really matter if they get shot down, riight? If your going to send in an escort, why not just use bomber wings instead?You also see some very odd ideas in fics about how such combat actually works, too. I was reading one the other day that had the bad guys shooting a whole crapload of disruptor missiles at our plucky heros, then fighters to escort the missiles so the other side couldn't shoot them down...
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erm... yea, over this... i think the ME-races need with this rate a new universe, because i'm not sure Taylor knews the meaning of Overkill
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Escorting missiles sort of makes sense if your target's hiding behind a formation of point defense drones; you use the rapid-fire weapons on the fighters to make holes in the drone cloud for the missiles to fly through. I don't think that's what was going on in that fic, though.
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Spaceship design is weird you kind of want to point your accelerateing bits towards the enemy while not getting shot at said bits.
Besides anything capable of propelling a decently sized ship to meaningfull velocities in a reasonable time doubles as a weapon.
What media depicts as the front of a ship really should be the top, so acceleration doesn't fuck your stuff up if artificial gravity fails for any reason. And you'd want to be able to thrust in any direction anyway.
Stuff gets complicated fast.
Besides anything capable of propelling a decently sized ship to meaningfull velocities in a reasonable time doubles as a weapon.
What media depicts as the front of a ship really should be the top, so acceleration doesn't fuck your stuff up if artificial gravity fails for any reason. And you'd want to be able to thrust in any direction anyway.
Stuff gets complicated fast.
FaerieKnight79
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The point of missiles is that they are self guided and thus more likely to hit. If they are shot down, they do no damage to the enemy. So a missile that gets shot down, is a missile that might as well have never been fired.
And Mass Effect's disrupter torpedos/missiles apparently are difficult to shoot down due to their mass being increased initially, but this makes them slow and easy to dodge. It's not until they are close to the target that the disrupter missile switches from "slow and heavy" to normal speed. Nor are they self guided. They aren't missiles or torpedos so much as directional rockets.
Clearing the way for a strike with fighters can make sense. The question of why, if you're sending small craft on the strike, you're using long range missiles instead of small craft-carried short range missiles stands though...