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Shepard Quest Mk VI, Technological Revolution

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Carrnage said:
Wait... How do they have the largest fleet again?
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They have a fleet of ~50,000 vessels, on which they house 17-18 million Quarians. It's a large fleet, but much of it is old, overcrowded, and long past its retirement date; presumably the liveships and many of the larger vessels date back to the Morning War 300 years ago!

So it's probably the largest single fleet in the galaxy, because they go to the trouble of keeping it together. Keep in mind, though, that even humanity has multiple fleets by 2183-2186, so presumably they'd have more ships in total than the Quarians; they're just scattered through the Systems Alliance's large territory rather than concentrated into one single fleet.
 
TheEyes said:
It's hard to get exact numbers, but the two quotes from above are probably the best we have to go on:
  • "Although the quarians had maintained zero population growth aboard the Flotilla quite successfully in the three centuries since their exile, their problem was the lack of spaceworthy vessels. They were unable to replace old ships as fast as they were losing them, and within ninety years, their population would be unsustainable."
  • "It's the difference between sixty years and six hundred. For anyone alive today to see a sunset without a mask, we must take back our home."
The first is, unfortunately, from the wiki, and references a novel rather than a game so it's hard to say if it's really canon or not, but it gives us a time limit of about a century before the Quarian people start to starve. At the same time, the second is Tali's quote, claiming that adapting to any environment other than Rannoch will take multiple centuries, a process that will likely only be exacerbated by their people starving en masse in the meantime.

Presumably the time the Fleet tried to invade that one Council-claimed planet they must have discovered something that would make it conducive to being terraformed into a Rannoch-like state relatively quickly, otherwise they wouldn't have bothered. At the same time, they couldn't exactly tell the galaxy that their people are in danger of dying off, since most of the galaxy won't care, and might well try to hasten the process. So they get kicked off the planet by force of arms, and get labeled the villains of the piece, while the planet that could have saved their species (and probably marginalized the "Rannoch or die!" faction) became somebody else's colony instead.
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Yeah, but that doesn't result in the conclusion that person came to. That means "we need to get off our ships within a century". Which is fine. You don't need Rannoch to do that, and the time it will take them to adapt isn't relevant either - they would just be wearing their suits on that colony.

Carrnage said:
Wait... How do they have the largest fleet again?
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Biggest number of ships in one place - largest fleet, not the largest navy.
 
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TheEyes said:
You know, with all the jokes about Shadowrunning, we actually have quite the budding teenage Runner team:
  • Jack, the Combat Mage Cat Shaman
  • Misaki, the Drone Rigger (always the central part of any team)
  • Kasumi, the Infiltration Specialist
All we need is Tali the Decker and we're set. :D
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  • Jeff, the Veichle Rigger
  • Revy the Power Armor Rigger/Combat Mage/General Tech Specialst Sentinel
  • Dor the Combat Mage/Mercenary Vanguard
  • Conrad the Verner
 
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tyaty1 said:
  • Jeff, the Veichle Rigger
  • Revy the Power Armor Rigger/Combat Mage/General Tech Specialst Sentinel
  • Dor the Combat Mage/Mercenary Vanguard
  • Conrad the Verner
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Yeah, but none of them are teenagers anymore. Well, I guess Jeff is technically 19 this year, but still, Vehicle Rigger? Blech. :D

Van Ropen said:
Yeah, but that doesn't result in the conclusion that person came to. That means "we need to get off our ships within a century". Which is fine. You don't need Rannoch to do that, and the time it will take them to adapt isn't relevant either - they would just be wearing their suits on that colony.
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While sort of true, it's also very dangerous. It's a lot easier to keep a sterile environment on a ship than on a planet.

What the Quarians would have to do is take a presumably sterile planet and terraform it to Rannoch standards with the biological samples that they hopefully still have preserved on their liveships. This will be difficult to do, considering that the Quarians themselves live in symbiosis with that Rannoch ecosystem, and would thus have to introduce themselves at the same time as the other lifeforms, exposing themselves to whatever foreign pathogens reside on the new planet. They'll have to go through this centuries-long process while the liveships themselves are failing, and where any mouth-breathing moron with a grudge--of which there are a lot in the galaxy, given the Quarians' reputation--can bring the whole process to a halt by flying down to their new planet and sneezing in the wrong place.

Politically, I can see that as a hard pill to swallow, compared to making a suicide run at the Geth. At least then you have a small chance of holding your grandkids before you die.
 
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TheEyes said:
Yeah, but none of them are teenagers anymore. Well, I guess Jeff is technically 19 this year, but still, Vehicle Rigger? Blech. :D
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Do not diss Vechle Riggers.:p

You van learn fear vehicles, when a T-bird ambushes and obliterates the party. Really, if nothing else, a rigged combat vehicle outguns you, hard to kill, and it is annoyingly accurate. They are often used as boss units campaigns.
 
TheEyes said:
While sort of true, it's also very dangerous. It's a lot easier to keep a sterile environment on a ship than on a planet.

What the Quarians would have to do is take a presumably sterile planet and terraform it to Rannoch standards with the biological samples that they hopefully still have preserved on their liveships. This will be difficult to do, considering that the Quarians themselves live in symbiosis with that Rannoch ecosystem, and would thus have to introduce themselves at the same time as the other lifeforms, exposing themselves to whatever foreign pathogens reside on the new planet. They'll have to go through this centuries-long process while the liveships themselves are failing, and where any mouth-breathing moron with a grudge--of which there are a lot in the galaxy, given the Quarians' reputation--can bring the whole process to a halt by flying down to their new planet and sneezing in the wrong place.
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...the process was adapting Quarian immune systems. Not literally turning the planet into Rannoch - hence why they needed time even back on Rannoch.

Politically, I can see that as a hard pill to swallow, compared to making a suicide run at the Geth.
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No, it's fucktarded and will always be fucktarded. "We lost the first time, but maybe now that they have had centuries to improve (certainly outpacing any improvement of our own given the massive difference in available resources) we can kill them all."

Hell, forget working on the immune system at all.
"I would rather my children die than be forced to wear suits on a planet not named Rannoch."
 
tyaty1 said:
Do not diss Vechle Riggers.:p

You van learn fear vehicles, when a T-bird ambushes and obliterates the party. Really, if nothing else, a rigged combat vehicle outguns you, hard to kill, and it is annoyingly accurate. They are often used as boss units campaigns.
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They just always seemed a bit strange thematically to me, compared to Drone Riggers. The vehicles big and tough enough to be worth investing hundreds of thousands of nuyen into building them would presumably be worth selling for those same hundreds of thousands of nuyen, which could easily go into buying a permanent Lifestyle and a handful of drones, giving you a Drone Rigger who is also set for life.

Then again, they did it in Firefly.
Van Ropen said:
...the process was adapting Quarian immune systems. Not literally turning the planet into Rannoch - hence why they needed time even back on Rannoch.
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Presumably it has to be more complicated than "just" adapting Quarian immune systems, or it would be done inside of one generation, and certainly wouldn't take more than 10-20 generations. The Quarians are stated to have some sort of weird symbiotic relationship with their parent ecosystem; this implies that they require some other species or combination of species, one or many of which may require hundreds of years of gestation, before they can properly be in symbiosis with their environment.

Van Ropen said:
No, it's fucktarded and will always be fucktarded. "We lost the first time, but maybe now that they have had centuries to improve (certainly outpacing any improvement of our own given the massive difference in available resources) we can kill them all."

Hell, forget working on the immune system at all.
"I would rather my children die than be forced to wear suits on a planet not named Rannoch."
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More like, "I would rather have a small chance of holding my grandchildren than no chance of seeing my species weather 600 years of assault by the same asshats who think we're better off dead."
 
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TheEyes said:
Presumably it has to be more complicated than "just" adapting Quarian immune systems, or it would be done inside of one generation, and certainly wouldn't take more than 10-20 generations.
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Sure, and what is 20 generations? 400 years? Doesn't sound that far off then.

The Quarians are stated to have some sort of weird symbiotic relationship with their parent ecosystem; this implies that they require some other species or combination of species, one or many of which may require hundreds of years of gestation, before they can properly be in symbiosis with their environment
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And you don't think that's a relatively huge stretch to justify the 60 years?

This doesn't touch on "would rather my children die than live on a planet not named Rannoch with suits", btw.
 
Van Ropen said:
Sure, and what is 20 generations? 400 years? Doesn't sound that far off then.
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600 was the number quoted. I'd presume that Admiral Tali, head of the R&D section of the Migrant Fleet, would be in the right ballpark.

That would suck, but yeah it would be doable, except from another source in the fleet we know the liveships are apparently not going to last another 100 years, giving the Quarians a 500 year gap where anyone with the slightest grudge, of which there are many because nobody likes the Quarians, can end the entire species with ease.
Van Ropen said:
And you don't think that's a relatively huge stretch to justify the 60 years?
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Half the cells living in the human body do not have human DNA. Biology is fucking weird, and Quarian biology is stated to be weird even by the standards of "normal" biology. It wouldn't surprise me to learn that Quarians are dependent on something(s) that might still be (barely) alive on Rannoch, even after 300 years of exile, but would take hundreds of years to grow/breed anywhere else; in fact that would actually make more sense than the idea that it takes 600 years, meaning more than 20 generations, to build up antibodies inside their own bodies.
Van Ropen said:
This doesn't touch on "would rather my children die than live on a planet not named Rannoch with suits", btw.
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It's a matter of risk assessment. Do you think that the Quarians, whom everyone hates, can go 500 years before a terrorist attack kills off their entire species? We can't even go a single year before some nutcase in a tiny splinter group tries to kill us; what are the chances that they'd be able to go for 500?

Then there's the Geth. At the end of ME2, thanks to Tali's dad's research, the Quarians actually had several tools with which to fight the Geth, and win. Given that the Geth (or "a splinter group" that nonetheless had a large enough membership to be a threat, and the tacit acceptance of the "main" group since they refused to openly fight the "splinter" group) had sided with the Reapers before, it was actually in the best interests of the rest of the galaxy to take them out early, to prevent them from going over to the Reapers when they came. And, in fact, the Quarians would have won, had the Reapers not arrived, intervened, and Indoctrinated the Geth with the promise of saving them.
 
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TheEyes said:
Then there's the Geth. At the end of ME2, thanks to Tali's dad's research, the Quarians actually had several tools with which to fight the Geth, and win. Given that the Geth (or "a splinter group" that nonetheless had a large enough membership to be a threat, and the tacit acceptance of the "main" group since they refused to openly fight the "splinter" group) had sided with the Reapers before, it was actually in the best interests of the rest of the galaxy to take them out early, to prevent them from going over to the Reapers when they came. And, in fact, the Quarians would have won, had the Reapers not arrived, intervened, and Indoctrinated the Geth with the promise
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It's been awhile since I played the game but wasn't the Geth fleet which attack the council only a incredible small part of the 'Good' Geth that decided not to fight? So wouldn't the Geth win if the Council ever decided to attack all of them?
 
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AZATHOTHoth said:
It's been awhile since I played the game but wasn't the Geth fleet which attack the council only a incredible small part of the 'Good' Geth that decided not to fight? So wouldn't the Geth win if the Council ever decided to attack?
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Quarians beat Geth in ME3 if you deny them the Reaper upgrade. They get some help from you, but it's far from impossible.
 
TheEyes said:
Half the cells living in the human body do not have human DNA. Biology is fucking weird, and Quarian biology is stated to be weird even by the standards of "normal" biology. It wouldn't surprise me to learn that Quarians are dependent on something(s) that might still be (barely) alive on Rannoch, even after 300 years of exile, but would take hundreds of years to grow/breed anywhere else; in fact that would actually make more sense than the idea that it takes 600 years, meaning more than 20 generations, to build up antibodies inside their own bodies.
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And then you get into how a specialized VI/AI living in one's hardsuit (and likely impants) can "train" one's immune system way ahead of that schedule.

It wouldn't surprise me at all if quarian "immune system" was actually a symbiotic organism. Possibly even a pre-sapient one. Say, dog intelligence level. One that couldn't survive (or mutated, or didn't develop properly) outside of Rannoch.
 
So for something total different cause we have Science to do and companies to run out of business.

How much of our production will be taken up if both the Systems Alliances and Hanar if they order 420 ships a year. Is it worth it to license the building of the ships to anther company and concentrate on higher profit items? Especially when we want to build bigger ships then frigates and troop transports and maybe take over the producing the Legionaries MK 2 when they come out.
 
argent said:
So for something total different cause we have Science to do and companies to run out of business.

How much of our production will be taken up if both the Systems Alliances and Hanar if they order 420 ships a year. Is it worth it to license the building of the ships to anther company and concentrate on higher profit items? Especially when we want to build bigger ships then frigates and troop transports and maybe take over the producing the Legionaries MK 2 when they come out.
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It's a small detail but 300 + 180 is 480 not 420.

That aside 300 Lite Laser Pyndas and 180 Zama come out to 32,324,273.4 production. Which is well within the ~58,000,000 spare production I'm projecting us to have in 2175.

Look at this way; the two Space Factory IIs we are building this quarter come online in 2175-Q2, we'll almost certainly start construction on a Space Factory III next quarter meaning it will come online in 2175-Q4, and we can easily afford another several more Space Factory IIs next quarter on top of the Space Factory III.
 
UberJJK said:
Look at this way; the two Space Factory IIs we are building this quarter come online in 2175-Q2, we'll almost certainly start construction on a Space Factory III next quarter meaning it will come online in 2175-Q4, and we can easily afford another several more Space Factory IIs next quarter on top of the Space Factory III.
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One thing I want to do sometime this year: Project Landfall. Basically, we go to the biggest 1,000 urban areas on Earth (there are currently 500 areas with populations greater than 1,000,000; by the 2170s the population will only get more concentrated, so an estimate of 1,000 cities large enough to support a Factory complex is not unreasonable) and put a 3x Factory III complex on them, with 2-3 admin buildings in every one (to ensure compliance with local laws, etc). Total cost: 3.01 trillion. We can do it in 2174-Q3 through 2175-Q1, and have them done by 2175-Q2-Q4, giving us the equivalent of 3 Space Factory IIIs but with only 3-5 quarters of build time instead of 6, plus we get Humanity First I mean Terra Firma off our backs for not creating jobs on Earth. Flawless Blackboxing, Hyper-modularity and QE Comms will let us use these to build starship parts, which we can then assemble at our space factories, as well as fill our other orders for non-starship parts.

Plus, this gives us enough privately-held land area on Earth to conceivably build a planetary shield at some point, assuming we can work out a way to make a What attack grade planetary shield cost less than 5*1019​ credits. :D
 
UberJJK said:
It's a small detail but 300 + 180 is 480 not 420.

That aside 300 Lite Laser Pyndas and 180 Zama come out to 32,324,273.4 production. Which is well within the ~58,000,000 spare production I'm projecting us to have in 2175.

Look at this way; the two Space Factory IIs we are building this quarter come online in 2175-Q2, we'll almost certainly start construction on a Space Factory III next quarter meaning it will come online in 2175-Q4, and we can easily afford another several more Space Factory IIs next quarter on top of the Space Factory III.
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Ok, I was thinking more on what happens if people want to make the MK 2 in house and what happens when we start making cruisers and bigger ships. But I am all for keeping as much building in house as long as we can meet demand.
 
Well, no one but me seems to be particularly interested in encouraging the SA to subcontract the Migrant Fleet to do colonial security, in exchange for Appia/Virgo powered modular space stations to alleviate their population problems, but I'd like to make one last attempt to persuade everyone.

First off, just making the offer, even if the Quarians decline, has a set of benefits:
Pros:
  • There is a political benefit to the Systems Alliance being seen as less tied to the whims of the Citadel Council. One of the reasons the Turians feel they can ignore our calls for them to do their jobs to protect us from Batarians pirate fleets is that they perceive humanity as xenophobic, and thus relatively isolated on the galactic scene, making the Alliance easy to play off against the Batarians. PI is already doing its part to change that perception, hiring aliens and even piercing the Litinana's famous isolationism; the SA trying to make a deal with the Quarians would take that a step further, maybe enough to persuade the Turians to get off their hands and show the Batarians what it's like to shoot first and ask questions never.
  • Gets SA politicians and diplomats used to thinking of the galaxy beyond the confines of the Citadel. The reality is that the Council, by encouraging SA settlement of the Attican Traverse, is setting up humanity as the gatekeepers between Citadel space and the Terminus systems. That being the case, the Alliance needs to learn how to deal with both sides of the divide, and when it comes to dealing with Terminus species the Quarians are, somewhat paradoxically, one of the easiest to deal with.
  • Opens the door to more deals with the Quarians. Getting access to their pool of engineers would be good for the SA as a whole, and PI in particular. Looking forward a bit, we're likely to need access to Quarian scientists in order to unlock the Quarian Immune System cure.
Cons:
  • As @Yog pointed out, even making the proposal to the Migrant Fleet is an admission that the Alliance is concerned about future "pirate" attacks, which could be seen as a sign of weakness. I feel this is somewhat mitigated by the fact that attacks have already happened over the last four years, and that since the Alliance does have a free press it's probably already well known across the galaxy that the Alliance is concerned.
  • It also paints the Alliance as being aggressively anti-pirate, enough that they'd make a deal even with the openly disdained Quarian species in order to better fight them. I almost put this as "Pro", but given that we've been going to so much trouble to paint humanity as more nuanced than "pink-skinned Krogans" this could cause a bit of backslide.
Then of course there's the Pros/Cons of the actual deal, should it go forward:
Pros:
  • There's the obvious: 50,000 ships, available within the year, to patrol SA territory. That's a fleet that will take a long time for the Alliance to build itself.
  • Again, opens the doors to more deals with the Quarians. Sure, humanity has been exploiting the mass effect for the last 30-40 years, but the Quarians have been plying the space-lanes for more than 300; I'm sure they still have things to teach those upstart humans.
  • The Quarians are not only, by necessity, trained from birth as excellent efficiency engineers, but are used to a nomadic, space-borne lifestyle: this makes them excellent candidates to kick-start the push towards asteroid mining on an industrial scale that some of us have been advocating for awhile now.
  • Mostly a side benefit, but we can get Tali to join up with our budding teenage runner team of Kasumi, Misaki and Jack. :D
Cons:
  • Slight loss of profit, given that even with the 150% markup Appia and Virgo have a lower $/prod value than many of our other products. Then again, nothing gives as much profit per unit production as our 400% markup Citadel Arc Reactors, and @Hoyr literally has to hard-limit us to prevent us from selling nothing but Arc Reactors on the Citadel market all day long.
  • Slight risk of the Quarians deciding to ignore their contract and throw themselves into war with the Geth again. Mitigated by the fact that we're not selling them weapons, and are in fact selling them products that are uniquely unsuited for making a planetary invasion, however good they would be for the aftermath.
  • Risk that the Quarians will object if/when we try to open relations with the Geth. I really want to make peace with the Geth, but having the Quarians looking over our shoulder while we're trying to talk to them will be, at best, awkward. Definitely have to get the immune system cure figured out before we even attempt this.
Anything I'm missing?
 
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TheEyes said:
It also paints the Alliance as being aggressively anti-pirate, enough that they'd make a deal even with the openly disdained Quarian species in order to better fight them. I almost put this as "Pro", but given that we've been going to so much trouble to paint humanity as more nuanced than "pink-skinned Krogans" this could cause a bit of backslide.
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Eh, I wouldn't worry too much about cutting a deal to improve our defenses pushing the "pink-skinned Krogans" perception too much. Now, if we were basically going to them and saying "hey, wanna fuck up the Batarians?", it'd definitely be a problem. But just paying the Migrant Fleet to shore up the patrols and quick-response forces isn't too bad.
 
TheEyes said:
  • There's the obvious: 50,000 ships, available within the year, to patrol SA territory. That's a fleet that will take a long time for the Alliance to build itself.
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The vast majority of which are not warships, or at least where not built with it in mind. The Quarians won't be particularly happy to be split up for different systems either.
 
It's not our place to be trying to dictate government policy either, there are quite a few influential individuals of the Council races that are wary of Paragon Ind. and the fact it's a large, rapidly expanding, cutting edge producer of military hardware that answers to a 20 year old human whose political views can be summed up as 'Hawkish'. And you want to try and have Revy actively try and dictate policy to the SA? even if they don't smack PI down for it like they should, it's going to set off so many flags that the council will almost certainly force some transparency on us. This isn't even going into how trying to hire a refugee fleet for military patrols is retarded.
 
TheEyes said:
Anything I'm missing?
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One thing: Quarians, or at least quarian fleet, is likely very risk-averse. Think about it. They have few, if any, dedicated warships, meaning ships specifically crewed by military personnel who are prepared to fight and die for their nation / race. Most of their ships are, essentially, life boats - houses with non-combatants in them. Quarians can't (easily) make large-scale repairs of their ships and (almost) can't replace ships they lose. They also have small population period. When not fighting Geth, they are likely to bevery risk averse, and they won't want to split their fleet. At all. Yes, quarians have 50000 ships, and yes, most likely those ships could smash even a professional armada. But they are all ships that are flying together, only ever in one place at a time.

If we want to approach quarians, I think we should go for a different approach. We need engineers and construction workers and such. We could, in principle, if we had a system of our own (or at least one not really claimed by onyone) negotiate for them to mine it for us, and hire some of them as engineers.

But as security / patrol fleet? No, I don't think that would work. Better to get them through non-military channels. And, really, I would like to work with them to design proper generation ships. Ships and fleets. Also, a mobile shipyard. That's important. Perhaps even negotiate something "you help me design it, mine asteroids for me, and in exchange you get the first/second mobile shipyard we make together"?
 
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