Shepard Quest Mk VI, Technological Revolution

[Hazard]

*snip*

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On the genophage; the big, immediate issue with the genophage is to do with the simple fact that of thousands of births only a few are viable. While this does successfully restrain krogan population growth to that of a healthy post industrial society, even the krogan, as harsh as they are in their approach to life, do not like seeing piles of their own babies born dead. Because of this they've sufferend and are still suffering a considerable amount of trauma, which among other things causes an all encompassing sense of nihilism and futility in the idea of uplifting the krogan to its once great heights like it was before the nuclear wars.

Another issue is that there are indications that during the Uplift of the krogan for the Rachni War the salarians deliberately marginalised the position of krogan females in their society. Which is actually quite logical from a salarian sociopolitical viewpoint; their entire culture is devoted to supporting a small number of extremely influential women, with the men in a subordinate position and unable to reach above it. There is also the implication that krogan females have served as a restraining bolt for the males.

Likewise the fact that asari are basically monogendered but seem to culturally weigh towards being female would predispose them towards seeing females as potential threats and powers and males as less threatening and more easily manipulated.


Because of this, just 'curing' the genophage, even changing it from 'thousands of death babies' to 'thousands of babies aborted before they're even fetuses' while maintaining the preferred population growth will not be enough. Even curing the underlying causes of the blood rage (which I'll note is implied to be worsened by the genophage on a genetic level) will not be enough. You need to do all that and help the krogan turn their culture around from its murderous, despairing nihilism towards the idea that (re)building a future where krogan have a position other than a dying race of leg breakers for the galaxy is possible, desired and worthwhile.

Without flipping to the other side and causing the Second Krogan Rebellions, of course.

 

[DakkaMania]

On the genophage; the big, immediate issue with the genophage is to do with the simple fact that of thousands of births only a few are viable. While this does successfully restrain krogan population growth to that of a healthy post industrial society, even the krogan, as harsh as they are in their approach to life, do not like seeing piles of their own babies born dead. Because of this they've sufferend and are still suffering a considerable amount of trauma, which among other things causes an all encompassing sense of nihilism and futility in the idea of uplifting the krogan to its once great heights like it was before the nuclear wars.

Another issue is that there are indications that during the Uplift of the krogan for the Rachni War the salarians deliberately marginalised the position of krogan females in their society. Which is actually quite logical from a salarian sociopolitical viewpoint; their entire culture is devoted to supporting a small number of extremely influential women, with the men in a subordinate position and unable to reach above it. There is also the implication that krogan females have served as a restraining bolt for the males.

Likewise the fact that asari are basically monogendered but seem to culturally weigh towards being female would predispose them towards seeing females as potential threats and powers and males as less threatening and more easily manipulated.


Because of this, just 'curing' the genophage, even changing it from 'thousands of death babies' to 'thousands of babies aborted before they're even fetuses' while maintaining the preferred population growth will not be enough. Even curing the underlying causes of the blood rage (which I'll note is implied to be worsened by the genophage on a genetic level) will not be enough. You need to do all that and help the krogan turn their culture around from its murderous, despairing nihilism towards the idea that (re)building a future where krogan have a position other than a dying race of leg breakers for the galaxy is possible, desired and worthwhile.

Without flipping to the other side and causing the Second Krogan Rebellions, of course.

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I'm not saying it will be easy.

Still, removing the source of the trauma and the bloodlust should at least stop the constant reinforcement of the nihilism.

The follow up can well be within PIs own MO. Tuchanka only has a billion Krogans or so. By the point we can do it, I think we can relatively easily rebuild parts of the planet and get a society set up that is actually worth anything. Getting Wrex or someone similiar into power is another important step. Ideally we first get a reformer into power, then give him popularity by getting PI to treat the genophage and building up the planets economy.

 

[Hazard]

There is no one similar to ME2 and 3 Wrex in existence right now, not even Wrex himself. But yeah, ameliorating the genophage would go a long way towards stopping the decline of the krogan.

 

[DakkaMania]

There is no one similar to ME2 and 3 Wrex in existence right now, not even Wrex himself. But yeah, ameliorating the genophage would go a long way towards stopping the decline of the krogan.

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We'll put an ad into the extranet.

"Looking for Krogan Battlemaster interested in saving his species. Requires leadership experience, being open to new ideas and headbutting experience.

Pay is negotiatable."

 

[Hoyr]

even the krogan, as harsh as they are in their approach to life, do not like seeing piles of their own babies born dead.

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Actually is that definitively the main cause? Because in humans, particularly women, the inability to have children is a cause for depression in and of itself (not having stillborns, but that sucks to). Combine that with a social pressure that put a lot of weight on females such that if you can have children your valuable and important and if you can't you're worthless. In addition, to that you also have the issue of repetitive failure. In theory there are no infertile females, just ones that got lucky in the the times that they tried. One out of a thousand is not good odds.

Also do Krogans lay eggs or have live births (or some weird thing where it can change based on conditions)? Because one things says produce clutches of 1000 eggs per year and that does fit the whole krogans are camel-turtles (with a dash of D&D troll). Also 1000 live births per year would be crazy.

But then everything else uses terms like stillborn and births. Though you can have stillborn eggs...

"Looking for Krogan Battlemaster interested in saving his species. Requires leadership experience, being open to new ideas and headbutting experience.

Pay is negotiatable."

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Technically you have a Krogan Battlemaster already. He's a trained combat biotic and a Krogan. He much prefers science (and SCIENCE!) though.

 

[Hazard]

Actually is that definitively the main cause?

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Not quite. @DakkaMania can probably tell it better since he's been playing ME2 again, but it's a key point of Wrex' rant in ME1 IIRC, as well as major krogan antagonists in ME2. Including the time you go look for Mordin's student. There's also a good chunk of revanchism and not exactly undeserved feelings of being oppressed involved.

Also do Krogans lay eggs or have live births (or some weird thing where it can change based on conditions)? Because one things says produce clutches of 1000 eggs per year and that does fit the whole krogans are camel-turtles (with a dash of D&D troll). Also 1000 live births per year would be crazy.

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Uncertain, but most likely krogan lay a number of smaller nests throughout the year instead of a single nest of a thousand eggs. Otherwise the eggs have to be pretty tiny and there's an implication that even krogan young take several years to mature to adulthood, if not a decade or so. Then again, humanity is weird in how long it takes for us to become sexually mature, compared to a lot of other species.

But then everything else uses terms like stillborn and births. Though you can have stillborn eggs...

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The implication is that fetuses that abort do so in a late development stadium, so...

Technically you have a Krogan Battlemaster already. He's a trained combat biotic and a Krogan. He much prefers science (and SCIENCE!) though.

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Which is nice, but we need someone whom the krogan will actually respect, rather than a scientist. And yes, the idea of not respecting a krogan Battlemaster because he's a scientist is stupid, but krogan appear to be anti intellectual.

Not entirely stupid, given the reason why they didn't win the Rebellions, but far from smart.

 

[UberJJK]

3) We need to build our space lab, otherwise some of our techs are still locked. While we're at it we may as well build it into a 150-200m space yacht, right?

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If I'm looking at the tech tree right TIR is the only tech that needs a space lab we'll be researching in the next couple years. Since I'm pretty sure we're not researching TIR this year (2174) that can probably wait until next quarter when we have a lot more free production because production costs go up way fast for larger ships.

Fake Edit: That might not actually be true now. I've been messing around with the formulas since I realized there was a flaw.

For Tanks, I'd say we make them heavily armored/low flying gunships. ME 2 already has that hover tank thing. Adding repulsors should make it that much better.

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Aside from the heavily armored part the Tiger actually fills that description pretty well. Although Warp Barriers would be needed to prevent death by missile spam.

As for uses? Make it multi role.

It can act as a traditional tank and just keep fighting and killing.

Switch the gun out and you can have AA, Artillery or even light anti-orbital capabilities.

Remove the gun entirely and mount a bubble shield to protect nearby troops.

Or a EM/ECCM suite.

Basically, we create a modular monstrosity that once again blows everything else out of the water.

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Hm. It's certainly not a bad idea, although by that point I'd question calling it a tank, but I'm not so sure that a hyper-modular vehicle would be as desirable as a hyper-modular starship. Mostly because vehicles are, relatively speaking, cheap enough that militaries can afford to just buy one for each situation rather then having one that can deal with each situation.

Writing these had taken +45minutes. Most of that searching for the currect post to quote. We need an index for post with math relevant (agreed upon solutions) to the various problems. Their wordcount may even exeed the actual story...

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While sadly your suggestion can't be used, for the reasons @Hoyr mentioned earlier, an index for that sort of thing does sound like a good idea. If someone else doesn't end up doing it first I'll probably end up doing it in two weeks time, I'll be stuck with just my laptop so no Fallout 4 to distract me.

~6m (or more?) main gun with a fire rate measured in rounds per second (May require rotary effects). Point at building, press trigger, building melts like ice in lava.

Or something like that.

I have it in my head that an Alliance MBT has 3 guns in that size and chain fires them to get a high rate of fire.

Long range (>1km), anti-structure weapon that isn't primarily ammunition limited. Currently PI lasers sadly don't have the spread/energy to do that. Also would be good against Legionaries.

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Uh. That sort of anti-structure work sounds like something better suited to artillery or bomber support then tanks.

Yeah, due to complications we had to drop specialized production... and I don't think I removed it from that one page... sorry, my bad. Hey @UberJJK there isn't a reason I can't purge that info right?

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Nope, no reason at all. In fact I just did it for you. Also do the armed space factories/stations modifiers stay or do they get the axe as well? Because they are almost as complex to track.

Uhh... wasn't the 200 point "Basic DEWs" bought? It's the trivial level of tech deployment... right? They may not reverse engineer it, but the idea of using an arc-reactor to power a small laser is not exactly a difficult research project for anyone that has the money and facilities. I think... I'm not crazy right?

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The basic DEW tech was bought yes but I figured that even thought we bought it we still made some improvements to the tech, such as with our advanced materials, otherwise everyone would already be fielding Laser Tanks.

Ripping the main gun off a tank and mounting a laser while replacing the power core with an Arc Reactor isn't that complex and the ability to ignore barriers makes it the perfect anti-armor, and to a lesser extent anti-personal, weapon.

Uhh it 20% vs unaided humans and simpler VIs wasn't it?

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...you're right. For some reason I just remembered it as "humans and VIs" and completely ignored/forgot the unaided and simpler parts.

Looks like The Invisible Man just got a jump in priority.



@Hoyr I've been doing a bunch of messing around with the Starship design sheet and realized something. Shields, as they were done, just don't work. They get prohibitively expensive the larger the ship gets and represent a massive proportion of the cost. So I looked into it and realized that shields scaled with volume rather then the more sensible area. Some fiddling, and adjusting of armor having realized it also used volume, and I've arrived at set of modifications that I think work quite well.

What do you think?

For comparison:

Size Class	Example Cost	Example Production	Sheet Cost	Sheet Production
100	46,300,000,000	156,250.00	44,245,603,788.08 ​	150,957.60 ​
250	723,000,000,000	2,441,400.00	589,951,447,862.56 ​	2,195,451.77 ​
400	2,960,000,000,000	10,000,000.00	2,333,160,770,374.54 ​	8,884,074.42 ​
700	15,900,000,000,000	53,593,750.00	12,208,055,158,961.00 ​	47,262,261.90 ​
800	23,700,000,000,000	80,000,000.00	21,476,206,870,871.30 ​	88,427,070.09 ​
1000	46,300,000,000,000	156,250,000.00	41,755,912,750,422.50 ​	172,503,929.10 ​

Overall an average difference of 12% which isn't really that much all things considered.

 

[Hoyr]

Uh. That sort of anti-structure work sounds like something better suited to artillery or bomber support then tanks.

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If you can put that much power into a tank than why not? It's going to be directly there when it's needed so less time to effect, also it's supposed to readily kill stuff like the Mako which is pretty freaking durable when you look at it.

The basic DEW tech was bought yes but I figured that even thought we bought it we still made some improvements to the tech, such as with our advanced materials, otherwise everyone would already be fielding Laser Tanks.

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I assume you did make some improvements in adapting the tech for your own use the basic idea as you note isn't that complicated. Thus I have imagined that others are working on building their own version. You haven't been selling arc-reactors to the wider galaxy that long.

@Hoyr I've been doing a bunch of messing around with the Starship design sheet and realized something. Shields, as they were done, just don't work. They get prohibitively expensive the larger the ship gets and represent a massive proportion of the cost. So I looked into it and realized that shields scaled with volume rather then the more sensible area. Some fiddling, and adjusting of armor having realized it also used volume, and I've arrived at set of modifications that I think work quite well.

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Well the numbers look okay from the table. Pure area scaling is not quite right shield quality also increases with the ship's power source's strength, better shield systems should cost more*. Also while were are on the topic of shields... maybe we should add an extra aspect? Shields are limited by power, emitter density and emitter quality (amongst other things). Increasing the power allows the other two to go up as well. There should probably be an option for "normal" shielding levels and arc-reactor boosted shielding levels.

*A similar argument could be put forward for armor with larger ships having thicker armor too. It's still not necessarily a volume scale but the ship's engines can support more armor. Remember that an area scale will produce the same level of performance on a cubicly scaling object. A cubic scaling effect on an object constrained by area will produce better levels of performance. Whether or not it needs to be fully cubic can be debated though, but it'll produce better levels of performance if it's higher than quadratic.

I still think power draw needs to go up. A 100m "normal" ship can be powered by less than one 10cm arc-reactor as it stands and that's maybe a little to small. Arc-reactors are bullshit but that's a little to much bullshit for me.
Let see:

• GARDIAN power up by 8 fold
• The multiplier for MAC gun power should probably be 10 not 2.25 (10MN force times gun length meters = energy per short. That times RoF (Normally 1/2) = peak power use)
• Shields need to go up to then... 10MN * (ship size gun length) * 1/2 [ROF] * 1.25 for normal shields maybe or higher it's blocking hundreds of gigajoules of energy per hit after all.
• And mass effect core power needs to go up by 30 or so. I refuse to believe that a 3.75Ly core uses only kilowatts of power. And yes that means that only around 1/1000th or less of the power used to feed the core is returned when the core discharges irregularly, I can live with that, either irregular discharges only release a fraction the core's charge or only a fraction of the energy gets stored as charge.

I DNK there's probably other things. And now I should get back to writing. Hopefully we can get the ship stuff hammered out enough that we can use when I post the next update!

Edit typos

 

[DakkaMania]

Hm. It's certainly not a bad idea, although by that point I'd question calling it a tank, but I'm not so sure that a hyper-modular vehicle would be as desirable as a hyper-modular starship. Mostly because vehicles are, relatively speaking, cheap enough that militaries can afford to just buy one for each situation rather then having one that can deal with each situation.

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Production costs may not be a limiter, but space transportation may well be when the galaxy goes tits up. So being able to transport 100 Chassis, and install the weapons on site means they can adapt to rapidly changing battlefield situations.

 

[TheEyes]

Technically you have a Krogan Battlemaster already. He's a trained combat biotic and a Krogan. He much prefers science (and SCIENCE!) though.

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Heh, if Gaver Dor becomes known as "The Krogan who Cured the Genophage" it won't matter what he likes; they'll elect him messiah.

If I'm looking at the tech tree right TIR is the only tech that needs a space lab we'll be researching in the next couple years. Since I'm pretty sure we're not researching TIR this year (2174) that can probably wait until next quarter when we have a lot more free production because production costs go up way fast for larger ships.

Fake Edit: That might not actually be true now. I've been messing around with the formulas since I realized there was a flaw.

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Yeah, now that we're putting out laser frigates I guess we don't really need a specialized space yacht for another few quarters.

Hm. It's certainly not a bad idea, although by that point I'd question calling it a tank, but I'm not so sure that a hyper-modular vehicle would be as desirable as a hyper-modular starship. Mostly because vehicles are, relatively speaking, cheap enough that militaries can afford to just buy one for each situation rather then having one that can deal with each situation.

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Production costs may not be a limiter, but space transportation may well be when the galaxy goes tits up. So being able to transport 100 Chassis, and install the weapons on site means they can adapt to rapidly changing battlefield situations.

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I think the "killer app" for tanks is going to be Transformation Systems, so we can have adaptive weapons, ala Mega Man. Starships are (especially with larger cruisers and dreadnoughts) large enough to have more than one main gun, but if you want your vehicle to still be road-capable you just can't have a 100m-long tank rolling down the street. There's also potential issues of time to deployment: vehicles generally need to be ready right now, whereas having to take a few hours to reconfigure a starship for a given mission isn't generally as important, given the travel time to get to the mission site.

Having a main tank barrel that can dynamically reconfigure between laser turret, MAC turret, AA turret and/or indirect fire artillery piece/missile launch platform would, I think, be very, very useful, and a much better use for Transformation Systems than trying to copy Veritech.

 

[TKB17]

Armor absolutely should scale with volume. A warship is not going to just have a thick skin- it needs thick bulkheads, internal emergency airlocks (which need armored doors of some type), and armored 'vitals' (coolant pipes will likely need to be self sealing, hardened electronics, ect).

The more volume you have the more room you have to put stuff, and the stuff to fix that stuff. Part of why anything involving space is so ridiculously expensive is because you need redundant back up on redundant back up.

If you spring a leak in a suface ship you break out the pumps and send out divers. If you spring a leak in space you get decompression. Armoring and providing backups for anything will get more expensive with volume, because you can simply (and will) fit more of them. (The lack of which is why the Normandy isn't just a bad spaceship but also a bad warship.)

The trade off, of course, is cost.

 

[Ramble]

You know, I think mech would actually make for a much better colony defense weapon than a tank.

You know what a mech had that a tank doesn't?

Hands.

In fact, you could have mechs replace all kinds of gear. They lift, they push, they reach high places. Their hands can grab all sorts of things. Giant shovels. Giant axes. All sorts of stuff.

And if some Batarians decide to cause some trouble, conversion into a battle machine is as simple as dropping the shovel and picking up a laser rifle, or if you don't have a laser rifle on hand, a mining laser should get the job done decently enough.

 

[TKB17]

You know, I think mech would actually make for a much better colony defense weapon than a tank.

You know what a mech had that a tank doesn't?

Hands.

In fact, you could have mechs replace all kinds of gear. They lift, they push, they reach high places. Their hands can grab all sorts of things. Giant shovels. Giant axes. All sorts of stuff.

And if some Batarians decide to cause some trouble, conversion into a battle massive is as simple as dropping the shovel and picking up a laser rifle, or if you don't have a laser rifle on hand, a mining laser should get the job done decently enough.

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This is already a thing in ME. The issue being that if you don't have a dedicated cyber warfare specialist protecting them, you're screwed. You can literally hack military grade mechs with an omnitool and a wireless signal.

 

[Ramble]

This is already a thing in ME. The issue being that if you don't have a dedicated cyber warfare specialist protecting them, you're screwed. You can literally hack military grade mechs with an omnitool and a wireless signal.

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How about just not processing anything other than sensory information. The mech pilot's boss needs to talk to them? Giant walkie talkie.

Or just, you know, control the mech with your neural implant. Unless it's possible to like, load up a sabotage and hack people's brains, in which case, you're shit outta luck.

 

[TheEyes]

This is already a thing in ME. The issue being that if you don't have a dedicated cyber warfare specialist protecting them, you're screwed. You can literally hack military grade mechs with an omnitool and a wireless signal.

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See: what happened to us last year, where a bunch of hacked construction equipment attacked our walls.

 

[UberJJK]

If you can put that much power into a tank than why not? It's going to be directly there when it's needed so less time to effect, also it's supposed to readily kill stuff like the Mako which is pretty freaking durable when you look at it.

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Risk. Why send in a multi-million credit tank and risk losing both it and it's crew when you can just bombard the target from out of range?

As for killing IFVs like the Mako; that is basically the reason for tanks. Destroying vehicles that are too difficult for infantry to take out. Of course with how killy the Tiger is that isn't much of a use.

I assume you did make some improvements in adapting the tech for your own use the basic idea as you note isn't that complicated. Thus I have imagined that others are working on building their own version. You haven't been selling arc-reactors to the wider galaxy that long.

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It's been a year and we've already seen power armor designed to exploit the Arc Reactor. In comparison laser tanks, or other appropriate mobile platform, are significantly easier since there isn't really any need for design or innovation.

Well the numbers look okay from the table. Pure area scaling is not quite right shield quality also increases with the ship's power source's strength, better shield systems should cost more*. Also while were are on the topic of shields... maybe we should add an extra aspect? Shields are limited by power, emitter density and emitter quality (amongst other things). Increasing the power allows the other two to go up as well. There should probably be an option for "normal" shielding levels and arc-reactor boosted shielding levels.

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It would make shield design more complicated since it would bring the number of choices from 3 (Standard, CBT, and Warp) to 6 (Normal and Boosted versions of the current 3) but nothing too unreasonable.

Really just a question of how much of a boost we are talking here.

*A similar argument could be put forward for armor with larger ships having thicker armor too. It's still not necessarily a volume scale but the ship's engines can support more armor. Remember that an area scale will produce the same level of performance of a cubicly scaling object. A cubic scaling effect on an object constrained by area will produce better levels of performance. Whether or not it needs to be fully cubic can be debated though, but it'll produce better levels of performance if it's higher than quadratic.

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While it's certainly true that larger ships can afford a relatively larger amount of armor it's questionable how desirable that is.

With the exception of Silaris armor, which is reserved for small ships due to expense, the only sort of armor we see described is ablative. Which makes sense since if the KBs don't block the MAC round it would take some pretty bullshit armor to do so. Even then, as the Silaris codex points out, that sort of impact would shatter the frame the armor is mounted on.

So at the higher sizes it's really a question of is the additional ablative armor worth the mass that could be otherwise spent on other stuff.

In my opinion the answer is no since lasers are, pre-PI anyway, a knife range weapon and if you get into that kind of range with a larger ship odds are disruptor torpedoes will be more effective.

I still think power draw needs to go up. A 100m "normal" ship can be powered by less than one 10cm arc-reactor as it stands and that's maybe a little to small. Arc-reactors are bullshit but that's a little to much bullshit for me.

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I think you are letting fantasy's tendency to throw around crazy numbers get to you. 5GW is a massive amount of power. It's "world's largest coal power plant" levels of power.

For comparison's sake the Los Angeles class submarine, about the same size, uses a mere 26 megawatts that is a mere 0.52% of a 5GW Arc Reactor. Now Future!Tech certainly helps balance things out a bit buy having large power drains but it's still a lot of power.

Even more so when you factor in the heat generated. That math however will wait until some other day.

Armor absolutely should scale with volume. A warship is not going to just have a thick skin- it needs thick bulkheads, internal emergency airlocks (which need armored doors of some type), and armored 'vitals' (coolant pipes will likely need to be self sealing, hardened electronics, ect).

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All of that is handled under the "Hull" cost. In this case "Armor" refers solely to the massive hunks of material strapped to the framework surrounding the interior pressure hull:

A scaffold was built around the interior pressure hull, with sheets of ablative armor hung from the structure. Ships typically have multiple layers of armor separated by empty baffles, spaces often used for cargo storage.

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[TKB17]

How about just not processing anything other than sensory information. The mech pilot's boss needs to talk to them? Giant walkie talkie.

Or just, you know, control the mech with your neural implant. Unless it's possible to like, load up a sabotage and hack people's brains, in which case, you're shit outta luck.

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If your referring to un-manned mechs, of which ME 2 gives us 3 varieties, the LOKI (which is the same size as a human) the FENRIS (which functions as a scout/attack dog) and the YMIR (which is around 16ft tall, iirc, and armed with rockets and a heavy machine gun) and a series of drones, which come in 'machine gun' and 'rocket' flavors.

All of these (but the YMIR) can be hacked through their IFF broadcasting, apparently temporarily corrupting their files on what is friendly and what isn't, turning them into berserkers that shoot at everything. It's a little harder to hack the YMIR (it needs to be in stand by, but still.) This is a game mechanic, and multiple characters can do it.

Also, in game, one quarian by himself (while on some pretty serious painkillers and antibiotics) permanently changed the IFF codes for every single mech in an entire colony to kill everything that wasn't him. He may have done this from said colony's security HQ (I can't recall), but that's still a huge security risk.

If your talking manned mechs, we don't see any of those until ME 3, and then only when deployed by Cerberus. You can also take those down using small arms, because almost every single gun comes with a 'disrupter' function which uses 'high energy projectiles' (ie, lightning) to fry the shields, and incendiary or armor piercing mods to shread the vitals. You can switch between the three on the fly.

For perspective, it doesn't look like anyone other then Cerberus even bothers with manned mechs. We see Alliance, Krogan, and Turian tanks, APCs, and fighters and I think that's it for their respective atmo combat forces.

 

[Ramble]

If your referring to un-manned mechs, of which ME 2 gives us 3 varieties, the LOKI (which is the same size as a human) the FENRIS (which functions as a scout/attack dog) and the YMIR (which is around 16ft tall, iirc, and armed with rockets and a heavy machine gun) and a series of drones, which come in 'machine gun' and 'rocket' flavors.

All of these (but the YMIR) can be hacked through their IFF broadcasting, apparently temporarily corrupting their files on what is friendly and what isn't, turning them into berserkers that shoot at everything. It's a little harder to hack the YMIR (it needs to be in stand by, but still.) This is a game mechanic, and multiple characters can do it.

Also, in game, one quarian by himself (while on some pretty serious painkillers and antibiotics) permanently changed the IFF codes for every single mech in an entire colony to kill everything that wasn't him. He may have done this from said colony's security HQ (I can't recall), but that's still a huge security risk.

If your talking manned mechs, we don't see any of those until ME 3, and then only when deployed by Cerberus. You can also take those down using small arms, because almost every single gun comes with a 'disrupter' function which uses 'high energy projectiles' (ie, lightning) to fry the shields, and incendiary or armor piercing mods to shread the vitals. You can switch between the three on the fly.

For perspective, it doesn't look like anyone other then Cerberus even bothers with manned mechs. We see Alliance, Krogan, and Turian tanks, APCs, and fighters and I think that's it for their respective atmo combat forces.

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Manned mechs. I'm basically talking about making it so that they can be used for heavy work but can also be used as a basic combat vehicle by dint of having hands and thus, capable of wielding giant assault rifles, or maybe picking up their giant shovels and swinging them at infantry. Also, I'm not talking about using them as purpose built combat weapons, it's basically selling them as heavy duty machinery to colonies that can't afford to buy specialized heavy duty machinery for every imaginable task, it's just that each mech also have a special compartment that stores the mech's 57mm pistol.

 

[Alanek]

Manned mechs. I'm basically talking about making it so that they can be used for heavy work but can also be used as a basic combat vehicle by dint of having hands and thus, capable of wielding giant assault rifles, or maybe picking up their giant shovels and swinging them at infantry. Also, I'm not talking about using them as purpose built combat weapons, it's basically selling them as heavy duty machinery to colonies that can't afford to buy specialized heavy duty machinery for every imaginable task, it's just that each mech also have a special compartment that stores the mech's 57mm pistol.

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Basically, smaller destroids from macross.

 

[SirKaid]

How is it fail deadly? It's designed to resist preasure just fine with the ME fields Off. As in litterally what modern subs do. The only issue is that it can't surface if the ME fields are dead... which is the same problem subs have with their pumps. Or engines. And when did i say anything about cities? It was a fix to "mass effect fields aren't stealthy". For combat units. Which are also vacume rated.

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My apologies, I thought you were discussing underwater cities, not military units. My concern had been if the city was damaged then the civilians would drown, but obviously that's much less of a concern if it's a military stealth thing instead of a civilian stealth thing.

 

[TKB17]

Manned mechs. I'm basically talking about making it so that they can be used for heavy work but can also be used as a basic combat vehicle by dint of having hands and thus, capable of wielding giant assault rifles, or maybe picking up their giant shovels and swinging them at infantry. Also, I'm not talking about using them as purpose built combat weapons, it's basically selling them as heavy duty machinery to colonies that can't afford to buy specialized heavy duty machinery for every imaginable task, it's just that each mech also have a special compartment that stores the mech's 57mm pistol.

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I mentioned manned mechs in my post, too. I see no issue selling them as an industrial tool, but as a weapon they'd be terrible. Because of the joints you can't rely on armor, instead having to rely on shields that infantry can hard counter.

 

[Ramble]

Basically, smaller destroids from macross.

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And when we get the bigger mech tech, we can get actual destroids.

I mentioned manned mechs in my post, too. I see no issue selling them as an industrial tool, but as a weapon they'd be terrible. Because of the joints you can't rely on armor, instead having to rely on shields that infantry can hard counter.

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Yeah, they'd be pretty terrible, but they would be much better than having nothing at all, and "conversion" to a "combat machine" takes only as much time it takes to drop whatever it's carrying at the moment, open the side holster, and grab the pistol. When you're a colonial governor on a shoestring budget, the hell are you going to get the money to buy a tank?

 

[TKB17]

And when we get the bigger mech tech, we can get actual destroids.


Yeah, they'd be pretty terrible, but they would be much better than having nothing at all, and "conversion" to a "combat machine" takes only as much time it takes to drop whatever it's carrying at the moment, open the side holster, and grab the pistol. When you're a colonial governor on a shoestring budget, the hell are you going to get the money to buy a tank?

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The larger government you're a part of? It being leased as part of the military base you've allowed to be built on your planet? A donation from the Alliance to better protect other human colonies?

But yes, I see your point about the mech. Needs must, and all.

 

[Hoyr]

Really just a question of how much of a boost we are talking here.

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Well... based on the Legionary having the shields of a Tank... x10-20 times the effect? Maybe? Not sure the power draw and cost changes but... IDK it should look like it's taking advantage of the additional power within reason of cost.

So at the higher sizes it's really a question of is the additional ablative armor worth the mass that could be otherwise spent on other stuff.

In my opinion the answer is no since lasers are, pre-PI anyway, a knife range weapon and if you get into that kind of range with a larger ship odds are disruptor torpedoes will be more effective.

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Frigates do get that close to their targets though and use their GARDIANs as an attack weapon (Link to codex):

Only fighters and frigates enter CLOSE 'knife fight' ranges of 10 or fewer kilometers. Fighters loose their disruptor torpedoes, bringing down a ship's kinetic barriers and allowing it to be swarmed by frigates. GARDIAN lasers become viable weapons, swatting down fighters and boiling away warship armor.

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Ablative armor is principally dependent on thickness for combat effect and endurance. More is better.

I think you are letting fantasy's tendency to throw around crazy numbers get to you. 5GW is a massive amount of power. It's "world's largest coal power plant" levels of power.

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I know, it just makes me shake my head when I look at that. That said 800 main gun with 82 TW output! ME appears to be using fantasy numbers already. Between common super conductors and thermal conduits/capacitors:

Dreadnought-class drive capacitors use specialized eezo-based compounds to channel and store thermal energy with greater efficiency than previous designs.

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It's all space magic bullshit.

That said all of those complaints are actually primarily directed at the system itself. the x8 on GARDIAN power is from the math I used indicating that as it stands the 100m ship can only power one turret at a time. The gun cost was pure linear accelerator math (the way you had it listed the main gun produced <2.25MN force on the round before ME fields). Shields was just from the Gun. The mass effect core was purely from making a 3.75ly/14% core take a least 1MW of power to run.

All told you can run that on a 100m ship with 1.1162 10cm arc-reactors so meh. I can get radiate away an equal amount of heat using reasonable numbers. Abusing carbon for fun and profit let's me toss out hundreds of gigawatts of heat, mind the armor is about to melt off so it won't do much to stop lasers...

Also easy calculations for heat stuff (Radiated energy), also google surface area of an ellipsoid for easy ship surface area guesstimate.

It's been a year and we've already seen power armor designed to exploit the Arc Reactor. In comparison laser tanks, or other appropriate mobile platform, are significantly easier since there isn't really any need for design or innovation.

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One or more of the following maybe true:
The GM forgot
Cultural design inertia
Okay it's not super trivial*. They aren't just putting GARDIANs turrets on wheels.

*Question is of course how how hard is it... salarians are working on it for sure.

Edit: Should I say anything about expansion options/construction or should just rap this update up and let you guys do your thing?

 

[TheEyes]

One or more of the following maybe true:
The GM forgot
Cultural design inertia
Okay it's not super trivial*. They aren't just putting GARDIANs turrets on wheels.

*Question is of course how how hard is it... salarians are working on it for sure.

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Well, from the post it looks like we did do something non-trivial: we bought a 200-million credit GARDIAN laser turret, took it apart, and miniaturized it from something tens of meters tall to something that can fit on an IFV. To Revy that's relatively trivial, but to the rest of the galaxy that's about 15-20 years of technological development.

Edit: Should I say anything about expansion options/construction or should just rap this update up and let you guys do your thing?

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I think the question here is whether or how to limit our actions. Right now, as far as I can tell, we're talking in terms of at least three things that need to be done:

1. Reloading/rearming/updating the ParSec operation on Anhur.
2. Building a half dozen or so modular frigates as a proof of concept, which I suppose can be combined with 1 if we're creative about it.*
3. Readying our expansion on Demeter (although... @UberJJK should we really be going there, since we don't yet have multi-core eezo transports researched? I was sort of assuming we were going to get those sooner than we have).

*-Re: modular frigates: I'm a little nervous that sticking the lasers in them at this point. I'm concerned it rather risks showing our hands early IMO; maybe we should stick with MACs, missiles, and drone/fighter carriers for now?

Under the whole two-pass action plan system that we've been discussing for the last few dozen pages, the first step would be to flesh out what are currently vague plans into specific actions to choose from. Ideally this would mean that there would be a few different options to accomplish each of the above, along with a few other plans that don't fit into any of those three categories. Are there any other opportunities we have to think about? How many actions will we be limited to for manufacturing/construction, keeping in mind now that General Williams at least should give us a good project manager in this area?