Carrnage
Human
- Location
- New Zealand
The council may not have disabled the relay control system but may have altered it so they weren't crippled if they had to disable it.
Shepard Quest Mk V, Base of Operations (ME/MCU)
- Thread starter Esbilon
- Start date
Carrnage
Human
- Location
- New Zealand
the protheans didn't have forewarning.
The control system allows one to shut down the relays entirely. Unless they were able to actually alter such a crucial function of the control system (unlikely, the Protheans couldn't) that functionality would be intact.
Doesn't the Citadel close up to protect itself? That is why Sovereign had to go through the trouble of getting Saren and the Heretics in there to make it so he gets in and lock the defense fleet out. Sovie was a sitting duck when he was physically accessing the controls in the tower. Even with an entire Reaper armada, it would probably take quite awhile for a siege to break through. Besides the reaper could have played the long game and just cut off all route to the Citadel and let those living there starve.
Van Ropen
Angry, angry about elves.
But the team of Prothean scientists on Ilos who modified it in the first place to disable Reaper remote-access did. The fact that they disabled the remote access instead of its ability to actually shut things down is telling.
Also, the Citadel didn't have forewarning either. They were attacked by a Geth Dreadnought, not a "Reaper"
Sovereign needed the defense fleet locked out, yeah...but remember, that means he was fast enough to get inside before it closed up anyways. A whole Reaper armada zerg rushing the citadel should have obliterated any resistance pretty much immediately as they raced to the Citadel, and once inside in sufficient numbers had no trouble conquering it.
There is no war in Ba Sing Se.
They had no reason to think that it was capable of affecting the relay network at all any more. If part of something has been sabotaged, then you can generally assume that all of it's been sabotaged. And on the off chance that it isn't, well that's what indoctrinated infiltrators are for.
He also immediately got blown the fuck up and no one's entirely certain why.
Indeed. Sorry about the semantics.
I'm not so sure about this. There's a big difference between just falling in and already being there. Let's say that at t=0 (observer's clock) the radius of the event horizon is R=R0. ME field is applied, the radius becomes R=R1<R0. A probe is place at the orbit of the black hole at R=R2, where R1<R2<R0. At t=t1 mass effect field is dissipated. At t=t2>t1 the event horizon's radius is R=R0 again. Now, the question: from the outside observer's viewpoint, what's the coordinate of the probe?
Furthermore, mass effect might allow for "cavity creation" within black holes, where the space around the probe is altered by it so the radius of the event horizon is lowered (and thus the probe is "outside" the black hole) but the probe itself is deep inside the hole that the event horizon completely closes above it.
Yeah, I know. Still, what they'll show should be interesting.
That's a big different. Lots different actually. With ME core discharges they occur without needing to dock to any station or planet, meaning that the charge is redistributed within the vessel, and doesn't disappear from it (though, really, charging your ship by shooting off electron beams... Well, you'd have to do so for very, very long). This means that shooting the cores with positive charge is viable, or should be, at least.
Except that causes a massive increase in the ship and crew's density, which is a whole new set of problems. Like crushing everything into a singularity.
Hence multicored system. Instead of using one big core to generate an FTL field, use several smaller ones in conjunction. Have enough cores in the ship that not all of them are used at once (normally, until an emergency speed boost is required). Cycle through the cores in use for FTL. Cores not in use will be bombarded by low flux of positive ions, creating a weak mass effect mass increasing field that, at most, will lower the top speed a bit. We know that mass increasing fields can be used while in FTL - there's artificial gravity onboard the ships while in FTL after all. When the cores not in use were neutralized, put them back in use.
Wouldn't work.
Small cores just aren't capable of it.Codex FTL Drive said:
Multiple small cores in conjunction. With the total amount of it being the same as one big core, if not a bit bigger. Not one small core.
Then you'd have to be running them all at once, which rather defeats the point.
No? I mean, you make a lot of cores.
Ok, the most primitive model:
You have X big cores. Each core separately is capable of powering an FTL field. You use core 1 and monitor the charge; the current hitting it is A. When the charge gets worrisome, you switch to core 2. At the same time you start bombarding the 1st core with the positive current of A/(X-1). Then you switch to core 3, etc. By the time you cycle back to core 1 it's completely free of charge.
That's a very primitive scheme. In actuality you do it with lots and lots of small, unevenly tasked cores, so not only the switch between them is smooth and doesn't drop you out of FTL, but the total amount of them is somewhat lower, and the neutralization is more efficient.
Yes, this is expensive, the total amount of eezo used is several times higher than it would be otherwise. For unlimited FTL it's worth it.
Firstly, clearing the charge one the first core would increase the ships mass, necessitating a much larger increase in the charge you're generating in the second core since there's diminishing returns as you increase the power of the field, causing static build up to happen much, much faster. Secondly, I don't know exactly how mass effect field interactions work, but offhand I'd say that's a good way to either create unstable warp fields randomly though the ship, or just create a biotic detonation large enough to shred the entire ship. Thirdly, that's way to expensive to be a viable option.
Not really, since the current being fed into the core is far smaller, and thus mass increase is far smaller. The precise ratios would need to be addressed, but I am absolutely sure that there are combinations of current ratios, core sizes and the core rotation schedules that would allow for in-flight core neutralizations.
Besides, that's exactly why I proposed to use multiple small cores at once, with uneven distribution of current between them. This way only one core of subset can be neutralized, without the problems of the big core setups.
Not really. We see that ships use artificial gravity while in FTL. artificial gravity is mass effect.
Depends on the goals one has. And not really. For dreadnoughts? Yeah, probably. For small frigate-sized ships? I'd say no.
The issue I was rebutting was the idea of cancelling the charge in the core by shooting off electrons into space.
Shooting the cores with positive charge should in theory work but it obviously doesn't otherwise it would be done in canon. After all they already pump a positive charge into the core to increase mass so it stands to reason the very obvious idea of canceling a negative build up by applying a positive charge has already been tried and failed for some reason.
Well, costs might be a problem. Also possibly relaxation times. Heat is a good problem - neutralization will generate it.
You need to somehow get the neutralized atoms out of eezo core or it'll become impure and will be ruined. That;s actually a very big problem. If gas gets trapped in eezo core, it'll likely to become porous or brittle and will change its parameters. You need to somehow negate that. One solution could be to use positrons instead of ions, but that would generate lots of heat when they annihilate with electrons. Before now (before arc reactor) heat was a big problem. Now it might not be as big one, and this might be viable.
Or you could go with a mesh-like or porous structure instead of a "solid lump" structure for the core. But that'll necessitate a whole new research.
What probably happens regardless of the polarity of the drive is either;
- Dark energy generates electrons which because of the field or the nature of Eezo become trapped in or on the surface of the core
- The same but from the electron flow going into the core rather than them being generate
Ah, from the wiki
Some other Drive thoughts
- I've already suggested alternating drive cores and partially powering each by the other's built up electron charge
- Expensive
- Requires Cubage
- Might make calibration harder
- Will in worst case double safe travel time between discharges
- If the build up is on the surface of the core careful use of low level repulsors to sweep them into a discharging lattice surrounding the drive.
- Need to be less force then required to move the Drive's mounts
- Might cause issue with ME field
- Electron gun
- No reason why it wouldn't work, possible that ships do mount a few for emergencies but are very slow
- Better to dump the power into repulsors now
- Even before by careful discharge into capacitors it could have been put to better use
This would have the effect of turning the Eezo core into a backup reactor if mounted appropriately.
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The wiki seems to suggest the second option. Only it's not electrons (which are negatively charged particles) but charged particles in general. You could bombard the core with positive ions or positrons for positive charge. Static charge isn't necessarily negative, after all. Hence the thoughts about neutralization.
True. I need to think things through before I post, I was seeing static electric and forgetting it can be positive due to depletion as well as negative.
I think I was also operating on to assumption the negative charge = negative mass something which I haven't actually be able to verify. But since negative mass is most useful in context...
Hence the assumption with usual results
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There's no negative mass. If you bombard eezo with negatively charged particles, the objects around it become lighter, but there never will be negative mass. If you bombard eezo with positively charged particles (positrons, positively charged ions), then the object around it will become heavier.
Bad word choice on my part I meant 'negated'.
I'd blame the autocorrect but it isn't actually its fault this time.