Shepard Quest Mk V, Base of Operations (ME/MCU)

Sorry about that. The point still stands: using wires to transfer that much power should be pretty much impossible.
Not really. I'll admit I don't know the first thing about fusion technology however it's important to remember that not only did they shrink fusion technology to the point it fit on spaceships they, from what I understand, did it before they found Mass Effect technology.

So I can absolutely see them having 80TW of power generation in combat.
I can't, for many reasons. One of them is waste heat and ability to transfer energy out of the reactor. Fusion reactors generate energy in the form of heat that's converted to electricity. Even if you go with direct electricity generation (possible), it'll still melt the whole ship to slag. Leaving that aside, again, you are completely neglecting mass effect. Which is used to make accelerators possible. It might be that I am an engineer, but the point is: 80 TW of power is an insane number. It requires clarke tech to handle.


Our 40TW reactor is 8,000 times more powerful then our standard Arc Reactor. So assuming it scales by volume, which the number seems to imply, that's form an Arc Reactor 2m to 3m in diameter.

Lets assume for arguments sake that the front of the Everast is 10m by 10m (which seems really small in comparison) by 888 (size of the main gun, the actual ship would be bigger) that gives her a total volume of 88,800 cubic meters.

If we assume that 5% of the ship's volume is spent on the reactor(s), reasonable in my opinion given that it's basically a ship built to fire the main gun, that gives a volume of 4,400 cubic meters.

The 40TW arc reactor, assuming a perfect sphere which it isn't, has a volume of 113 cubic meters. Double that for two reactors and it's 226 cubic meters.

That makes the Arc Reactor 19.46 times more size efficient and that's assuming a really narrow ship. Especially since they mention that on the Kilamanjaro the broadsides are 40% of the ships width.

So lets say we up use the Nimitz as the scale. A Nimitz class is 332.8m long, 76.8 m wide and 12.5m high. That's a ratio of 23% width-to-length and 4% height-to-length.

If we assume that the Everest is 900m, 888m is the length of the accelerator after all, that gives a width of 207m and a height of 36m for a total volume of 6,706,800 and a Reactor volume of 335,340 cubic meters or 1,484 times larger then the equivalent in Arc Reactor.
This is all good and nice. But now we have to calculate the heat fluxes. The Surface area of the Everest in you calculations is 2*(900*207+900*36+207*36)=452304 m^2. Let's say that due to radiators and such the working surface area is 10 times that. Now, assuming it's a perfectly black body, which means it emits as much energy as possible, and that the temperature of the hull is 800 K (a little over 500 C, a very generous assumtion), the power radiated by the ship into space would be 1.05*10^11 watts, or 105 gigawatts. This gives us aт energy conversion efficiency, i.e. how big a portion of the output of the reactors can be waste heat. At 80 TW of useful output, which is 8*10^13 watts, we have 1*10^11 of waste power, meaning that ECE is = 0.999. Which is insane. That's leaving aside how I said the temperature of the hull is 800 K, wherein it's likely to be lower.

As a side note ITER is, apparently anyway, 840 cubic meters so a thousand times that is 840,000 cubic meters. ~260 years and Space Magic Eezo is more then enough to justify a top of the line military reactor been 40% the size.
That's plasma volume. It's not the size of the reactor. It's the volume of the plasma inside the vacuum chamber of the reactor. ITER itself (the whole reactor) is somewhere between 3 and 10 times as big by volume (don't remember numbers). And that's just the reactor, not the supporting equipment.

What I'm driving at is that there's absolutely no way, no how, from any viewpoint, that Mass Effect played at this power levels. They used mass effect fields in their accelerators, lowering the output required by many orders of magnitudes (about 3 I would say, maybe even more).
 
That isn't a very good argument, Why should we Help the council when they refuse to help humanity?
...what in the world are you talking about? The Turian military regularly engages and destroys pirates whenever it can, and Spectres have been explicitly noted to have been sent after slaver rings.

...or are you ignoring the very valid political concerns that exist regarding the situation with the Hegemony?

Remember - they were a part of the Citadel for centuries...and got effectively thrown out in a matter of years in favor of Humanity, precisely because the Council was tired of their shit.
 
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Carrnage, what the fuck are you trying to say?

I said this earlier - the Turians kill pirates whenever they can, just like the Alliance. Spectres are specifically noted to have gone after slavers - what exactly do you want? Open warfare with the Terminus?

At some point, you consider what is cost effective. Killing them whenever they show their face in Council space, and bloodying them whenever you can in the Traverse is what is feasible, and that is what they so.

The fact that Humanity is a bit foolhardy, and puts down more colonies than they can defend, is not the Council's problem. They are enabling them, sure, because they like that Humans are taking out the Batarians trash...but that is to be expected. What more do you want?


I'm ignoring your tinfoil hat stuff, because it's stupid.
 
Superconductors lose their superconductivity if they are put in a too strong a magnetic field. This includes the field generated by current passing through them. The field generated by 40 TW of electricity is insane.

I miss remembered anyway the tech is some sort of eezo based thermal conductor/capacitor (link). Which I guess links into your latest comment on the thermal issues of the ships.


Ar you taking into account the effect of the mass effect on fusion reactor technology? One should be able to increase the mass of the particles involved (though I doubt it'll effect their rest mass), and in addition it should allow an increase in plasma density. I know without any actual numbers it hard to draw any conclusions, but the needed size of the reactor should go down yes?

For the sake of numbers ITER (in theory anyway) is supposed to make about 500MW of thermal energy (not total energy, just the thermal stuff) and the core system including the cyrostat and bioshield takes up ~27,795.16m^3. If we can scale volume to power a 40 TW reactor would be a cube 1,305m to a side. DEMO, ITER's successor is set to produces ~2,000MW in ~42,272.9m^3 (its supposedly about 15% larger lineally), so 945m to a side aka really effing big. But that is an immature technology as the estimated ITER-DEMO jump shows. If we only have to consider the vacuum vessel then scaling the ITER vacuum vessel (1400m^3) would only be a volume that had edges 495m long (though it wouldn't actually be cube shaped most likely). Yog will of course have to tell us if those numbers are sane, I'm not a nuclear physicist. Also ITER is not a D+3​He like the ME reactors are,

To top that all of there a lot more energy in a fusion reaction only about 4.45g of matter needs to be destroyed to produce this amount of power. Which apparently needs around 113.24g in D+3​He. From what little I can find energy extraction on D+3​He using "direct energy conversion" is about 75% or possibly better, so ~151g of fuel per second? Which using ITER fuel rate gives me a cube 252.7m^3 to a side, but that's a high number for a immature tech. Once again Yog will have to comment on the sanity of such numbers.

And once again all that wasn't taking mass effect into account as we have no real numbers.

Data from the ITER website and Atomic Rockets. DEMO stuff from Wikipedia

On the other subject:
Also isn't the Batarian Hegemony a terminus power now? Basically when humanity showed up the Batarian wanted all of the Skyllian Verge tagged as theirs, Council refused and then the Batarians quit the council, making them one of the Terminus powers the Council is trying not to piss off. (This occurs in the early 2160s). Hell the Council likes the Alliance and its strong military because as the SA expands into the Attican traverse the SA stabilizes the region. Humanity is the new favorite of the Council according to comments in ME1.
 
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Yes, because turians are actually secretly Rachni and have a hivemind. It explains everything!
I meant in general.
Carrnage, what the fuck are you trying to say?

I said this earlier - the Turians kill pirates whenever they can, just like the Alliance. Spectres are specifically noted to have gone after slavers - what exactly do you want? Open warfare with the Terminus?

At some point, you consider what is cost effective. Killing them whenever they show their face in Council space, and bloodying them whenever you can in the Traverse is what is feasible, and that is what they so.
Investigating, finding a link between the slavers and the batarians, or at least prove that batarian government is holding slaves from other council nations which would be a good justification for a crackdown.
Naturally. All those human pirates? Batarians wearing makeup to disguise themselves
don't be ridiculous, they're merely scum and traitors.
 
Also isn't the Batarian Hegemony a terminus power now? Basically when humanity showed up the Batarian wanted all of the Skyllian Verge tagged as theirs, Council refused and then the Batarians quit the council, making them one of the Terminus powers the Council is trying not to piss off. (This occurs in the early 2160s). Hell the Council likes the Alliance and its strong military because as the SA expands into the Attican traverse the SA stabilizes the region. Humanity is the new favorite of the Council according to comments in ME1.

Yes, it's why the Volus ambassador is so bitchy in ME1. Humanity has gained tons of concessions that the other races had to wait forever/do a lot for, because the Council is supporting them fighting the Batarians.

Investigating, finding a link between the slavers and the batarians, or at least prove that batarian government is holding slaves from other council nations which would be a good justification for a crackdown.
Except they are doing that whenever possible, and fucking the Hegemony whenever possible. That's why the Batarians had to leave the Council, that's why the Alliance has amassed so much power so quickly for a minor race.


I will say though, that no one wants a war with the Batarians - again, it's not cost effective. Better you bleed them until their economy/social order/government collapses. We start seeing signs of that before the Reaper War...it was probably the Council's plan all along.
 

That does not invalidate his point. He said that because you claimed that the guy who organized the attack on Elysium being a turian was reason not to trust turians, even though that guy is just as much of a traitor to his people as a human pirate attacking a turian world.

Investigating, finding a link between the slavers and the batarians, or at least prove that batarian government is holding slaves from other council nations which would be a good justification for a crackdown.

Do you honestly think the Council enjoys having slavers and pirates harassing their own citizens? If they haven't done a crackdown yet, then it's not because they want batarians f*cking over innocent people who are just trying to live their lives and get work done. At worst they're incompetent enough to think the problem will go away by ignoring it, or callous enough to say that all-out war would cause more loss long-term than the mostly small-scale and ineffectual raids that go on currently.

don't be ridiculous, they're merely scum and traitors.

Right, a human pirate is a traitor to his species and to judge humanity based on his actions is ridiculous. But a turian pirate is proof enough that turians can't be trusted.
 
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That does not invalidate his point. He said that because you claimed that the guy who organized the attack on Elysium being a turian was reason not to trust turians, even though that guy is just as much of a traitor to his people as a human pirate attacking a turian world.
I am aware that it wasn't evidence that turians can't be trusted (their trigger happiness at first contact, imperialism, and nominating Saren as a spectre fill that niche). i was making a general statement that i'm not fond of turians either.
Do you honestly think the Council enjoys having slavers and pirates harassing their own citizens? If they haven't done a crackdown yet, then it's not because they want batarians f*cking over innocent people who are just trying to live their lives and get work done. At worst they're incompetent enough to think the problem will go away by ignoring it, or callous enough to say that all-out war would cause more loss long-term than the mostly small-scale and ineffectual raids that go on currently.
No, i think they don't understand the impact it has on lives, sure they're dealing with it, but in ways that carry minimal risk to them, despite the Lives that are destroyed in the interim.
 
I miss remembered anyway the tech is some sort of eezo based thermal conductor/capacitor (link). Which I guess links into your latest comment on the thermal issues of the ships.
Indeed. Also, here I would like to bring up myprevious post about how eezo could be used to deal with heat issues:
3) Heat management. Here, I think, I have an interesting idea. Again, mass effect and blue/red shift. Heat is transferred, through three channels: radiation, conduction, convection. For all of them, mass effect can be used to increase the efficiency of the cooling system:

3a) Conduction. Heat is energy of the vibrating molecules. When two bodies are in contact with each other, the molecules on the surface of one body interact with the molecules on the surface of the second body, transferring their vibrational energy to them (from the heated body to the cooled body). If the mass of the molecules of the colder body is bigger, than they are heated less (simply because it would require more energy to make them move faster). Thus, either placing the casing / radiators into the mass-increasing (from here on out "positive") ME field, or the heated body into the mass-lowering (negative) ME field, would increase the efficiency of the a "heat capacitor" type of the cooling system (that is a large cold body that is used to store the heat from the heated body).

3b) Radiation. Energy of each photon is directly proportional to its frequency. This means that a photon of an EM wave with the wavelength two time longer than a given one, would have two times less energy. Thus, if the main source of heating is radiative heat (such as the heat from a plasma discharge, like the ones used in many gas lasers) was to be placed into a positive ME field, and the heat receptor was to be placed into the negative ME field, the energy of photons actually getting to the radiator would be less, resulting in the lower temepratures and less heat to manage

3c) As can be seen above, 3a and 3b offer diametrically opposed solutions for heat managing problem. Which solution to use where is a question for engineers. For example, in space, 3b would be more useful, as there radiation is the domineering mechanism of heat transfer. However, both of them can be actually combined. As many of you know, hard radiation easily pierces solid bodies and requires thick shielding to be used. This is because the cross-section of high-energy gamma-quants/solids interactions is small. That is, it is unlikely that high energy photons would interact with a solid body, but it is more likely that they will pass clear through it, without dissipating their energy into it. Thus, a layered solution exists. A layer of heat-conducting transparent material (with systems to transfer heat out, like water circulation cooling) in immediate contact with the heated object under the effects of a positive (relative to the heated object) ME, encased in a layer of EM-absrobing (including in the radio-wave wavelength) material under the effects of the negative ME would be the optimal solution covering all the bases.

3d) Speaking of, carbon is magic. The best known heat conductor is diamond. So, a diamond casing with eezo doping layers and channels for water might be a good way to make the heat dissipation system.
So, yeah, good point. I was preparing to make cacls for water as a heat capacitor and estimate the maximum engagement time for a dreadnought based on it, but now that I remember about mass effect, I won't.

Ar you taking into account the effect of the mass effect on fusion reactor technology? One should be able to increase the mass of the particles involved (though I doubt it'll effect their rest mass), and in addition it should allow an increase in plasma density. I know without any actual numbers it hard to draw any conclusions, but the needed size of the reactor should go down yes?
..I'm an idiot. Yes, if eezo affect M in E=MC^2 (and there are all indications that it can), we basically throw out everything we know about fusion technology and have tokamaks that can fit in a car and produce as much energy as DEMO would (oversimplification, hyperbole and no calcs to back it up, but you get the idea). Also the "mass effect kilotons" thing (where a tactical nuke was seen from orbit in ME1) starts making sense, if they were talking about "kilotons without eezo enhancement in the bomb".

For the sake of numbers ITER (in theory anyway) is supposed to make about 500MW of thermal energy (not total energy, just the thermal stuff) and the core system including the cyrostat and bioshield takes up ~27,795.16m^3. If we can scale volume to power a 40 TW reactor would be a cube 1,305m to a side. DEMO, ITER's successor is set to produces ~2,000MW in ~42,272.9m^3 (its supposedly about 15% larger lineally), so 945m to a side aka really effing big. But that is an immature technology as the estimated ITER-DEMO jump shows. If we only have to consider the vacuum vessel then scaling the ITER vacuum vessel (1400m^3) would only be a volume that had edges 495m long (though it wouldn't actually be cube shaped most likely). Yog will of course have to tell us if those numbers are sane, I'm not a nuclear physicist. Also ITER is not a D+3​He like the ME reactors are,
Honestly? I can't really say if those numbers are sane because plasma scales non-linearly, we don't really know about the regimes the big installations will work at (we could discover a new H-mode or something). And there's probably the fact that ME-type fusion reactors use gravity for confinement and work completely differently that normal ones...
To top that all of there a lot more energy in a fusion reaction only about 4.45g of matter needs to be destroyed to produce this amount of power. Which apparently needs around 113.24g in D+3​He. From what little I can find energy extraction on D+3​He using "direct energy conversion" is about 75% or possibly better, so ~151g of fuel per second? Which using ITER fuel rate gives me a cube 252.7m^3 to a side, but that's a high number for a immature tech. Once again Yog will have to comment on the sanity of such numbers.
Once again, hell if I know, really. Leaving aside how mass effect screws everything over completely, plasma scales non-linearly. in all directions and by all parameters. That is, you can't just increase or decrease density, or scale the installation up or down or change the temperature.


Still, I think that normally mass effect races don't play with anywhere near the levels of power and power density we are talking about.
 
Dude, you're not convincing anybody. Back off for a day, gather your arguments and try again. And please bring something that doesn't sound like it was pulled out of a Terra Firma recruitment packet. Because

is the exact argument that Ash made in the first game when she was still racist and ended up admitting that it was wrong. We named our company Paragon Industries. We're not going to go super renegade don't trust the filthy xenos.

Your problem is that you're believing in the better nature of the other species, that giving out Arc Tech would not bite us in the ass because " we're a Citadel Species ". You're not taking into account the fact that they have no reason to play nice with us unless they want to.

Economic might ? The SA is done if a sanction is imposed
Military might ? The SA loses if it ever comes to a straight battle

The other species have no ties to us that guarantee they will care about what humanity wants, they outclass us on a economic and military level. We're subordinate to them on every level. The Arc Tech allows us to change that by producing something that they cannot counter easily.

The fact that you want to give Humanity's only advantage at this point to them at peak efficiency for more cash shows you give no shit about the wider repercussions of the tech and what it will do to humanity's position.

With the tech, humanity had a chance of increasing it's military gear and infrastructure allowing it's quality to improve, by giving the tech to them, you're allowing the other species to catch up to the miniscule advantage that Humanity has.

So far, all you've been doing is being overly optimistic and believing that the current relationship will continue, not taking into account the What Ifs that may happen.

The Arc Tech is a big game changer, it's implementation will jump start tech on every level just because of the amount of power it can generate. Keeping it for humanity as much as we can widens that tech gap and allows humanity to gradually build up to be able to handle itself if a worse case scenario happens.

"Aww, look at that adorable Human whining about the STG reverse engineering tech they wouldn't share.
*snickers*
Moving on to things that matter..."

Humanity doesn't demand concessions. It doesn't have the power, or the right to. Trying to keep the Arc Reactor a secret (an impossibility) is counterproductive to its goals (and counterproductive to ours).


Nobody said we aren't looking out for number one. You know the best way to do that? Share the Mk. 1, let them play with it while we move on to the Mk. 2, earn goodwill, climb the corporate ladder boyo.

Then you're contradicting yourself then.

You did mentioned that Arc Tech requires our aid to be used, so now you're saying that if we don't help them they can do it anyway ? Which leads to the point, why should we offer them a Arc Reactor at full capacity instead of powering it down when they have no way of telling the difference ?

Your argument seems to come from the fact that they already have a Arc Reactor in hand, which not only have they not crack, they will have no reason to if we released the Arc Reactor for sale.

The only way they would be able to tell if the one we're selling them is less powerful then the ones we sell to the SA would be if they compare the technical stats of the 2 reactors, which ties back to the point that why would they suspect that ?

Why would they divert resources to re-crack something that as far as they know is available on the open market ?

Lowering it's power output is a sensible precaution that allows us to not only maintain our edge, it also provides humanity with a trump card that can help it if the worse can happen.
 
Your problem is that you're believing in the better nature of the other species, that giving out Arc Tech would not bite us in the ass because " we're a Citadel Species ". You're not taking into account the fact that they have no reason to play nice with us unless they want to.

Economic might ? The SA is done if a sanction is imposed
Military might ? The SA loses if it ever comes to a straight battle
Question: what would they attack or sanction humans for, when they could get human cooperation instead?
 
To stop humanity from growing to strong too fast, of us outpacing them, Put simply because they are afraid that we may become a threat.
We can't. Because they will be growing and profiting from our growth too. Trying to stop humanity's growth isn't in anyone's (longterm) interest. Far smarter thing to do is to tie humanity to the citadel, integrate them
 
I wonder what the Citadel's laws are regarding Price discrimination? Because when the patent goes through we should absolutely jack up the prices, since right now selling Arc Reactors isn't economically efficient and it's not like it will really hurt demand, a good deal. The only question is whether or not we can get away with selling to the Alliance at a significantly lower price then the rest of the Citadel.

I'm thinking something along the lines of continuing to sell Arc Reactors at 125k to the Alliance but 250k to the Citadel. I mean worst case scenario, price discrimination is outlawed, we've already locked in two key contracts with the Alliance (Well with companies that sell to the Alliance) at the present value anyway.
 
Question: what would they attack or sanction humans for, when they could get human cooperation instead?

Eh, a example of the way they can use economic might on us.

My main point was more we can't compete with them on a economic level, thus if they want to they can ruin our economy with relative ease. What i'm saying was that we should plan for the worse so that if it happens, we have a hidden ace up our sleeve.

It's not like we're the only ones doing that, the Asari use their beacon for the same reason. A Hidden Ace that they can use to pull themselves out if they need to.
We can't. Because they will be growing and profiting from our growth too. Trying to stop humanity's growth isn't in anyone's (longterm) interest. Far smarter thing to do is to tie humanity to the citadel, integrate them
That however comes at a price of humanity being absorbed into the Citadel because they have the larger resources in everything, which means that said ties can easily form a noose if they want to wield it as such.

What it will lead to would be dependency on the council to a extend that we have to bow to their whims if we want to survive. For example, see the Quarians, the Council's action to them pretty much destroyed them as a power.

I do not like the idea of giving that much power to the council to wield against humanity voluntarily, i rather humanity has a trump card so that if the worse does happen, we're prepared for it and thus are able to react instead of falling to pieces because we believed that it could never happen to us.
 
i've said my pieces any more would just be repetition.

[X] Building Better Babies. Distribute your new procedures as widely as you can, making Humanity stronger, faster, smarter and prettier. Also pissing off the companies that are making a killing doing this for the rich and powerful.

To File or not to File
[X] Do not file. Yet. Keep your cards close, the human market is still big enough that you don't need to let anyone know exactly what you're doing.

Spare time (pick two)
[X] Have your own advanced implant installed (and come up with a suitable name for it).
[X] Go to the Shooting range
I wonder what the Citadel's laws are regarding Price discrimination? Because when the patent goes through we should absolutely jack up the prices, since right now selling Arc Reactors isn't economically efficient and it's not like it will really hurt demand, a good deal. The only question is whether or not we can get away with selling to the Alliance at a significantly lower price then the rest of the Citadel.
Are we selling at a loss? remember selling cheaper in proportion to power generated than the other guys makes our market share grow faster.
 
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Eh, a example of the way they can use economic might on us.

My main point was more we can't compete with them on a economic level, thus if they want to they can ruin our economy with relative ease. What i'm saying was that we should plan for the worse so that if it happens, we have a hidden ace up our sleeve.

It's not like we're the only ones doing that, the Asari use their beacon for the same reason. A Hidden Ace that they can use to pull themselves out if they need to.
Planning for the bad outcome can easily become counter-productive if it precludes one from achieving a good outcome. And on the subject of economic sanctions... What, exactly, does Alliance import?
That however comes at a price of humanity being absorbed into the Citadel because they have the larger resources in everything, which means that said ties can easily form a noose if they want to wield it as such.
Why would they want to? The more we cooperate, the less reason they have to go against us.
What it will lead to would be dependency on the council to a extend that we have to bow to their whims if we want to survive. For example, see the Quarians, the Council's action to them pretty much destroyed them as a power.
Quarian actions pretty much destroyed quarians as a power and as a species. They have very few to blame but themselves.

I do not like the idea of giving that much power to the council to wield against humanity voluntarily, i rather humanity has a trump card so that if the worse does happen, we're prepared for it and thus are able to react instead of falling to pieces because we believed that it could never happen to us.
Which leads to the galaxy completely unprepared for the Reapers. Like what happened with asari beacon (yeah, that's arguable, but if you bring it up...).
 
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