Shepard Quest Mk VI, Technological Revolution

Then quarians as a species out do the volus' propensity for sheer economic chops. Bringing in a new ship should not be considered something a single quarian is expected to bring in, the sheer value discrepancy is too great. Rather, if a new ship is brought in it's most likely a concerted effort by dozens if not hundreds of quarian pilgrims.

The 'things of value' that a Pilgrim usually brings is going to be information. Like claims that the Migrant Fleet can jump, or good deals for used parts. Everything else is just implausible due to sheer bulk, expense and other problems of acquisition and transportation.



... Yup, my math is wrong. Roughly a million would be about right, probably less.
There was one Quarian you met in ME2 who's saving up for a used ship, she's incredibly poor though, living in Turian homelessness shelters, and I guess it's more idle thought than anything, considering the Volus at the counter mentioning that she only ever looks at all the ships.
Mind you, bringing back a used ship usually means that the person to fetch it becomes the new captain.

It's implied to be a very rare occurance, though.

Who knows how they got their hands on them: Blackmail, finding one in a breakers yard somewhere, given one for outstanding work, got into a card game and kept winning, got into a firefight with slavers and ended up taking their ship.....could be anything.
The wiki says that you're not allowed to harm people for the Pilgrimage gift, though what Tali does makes me more than a little unsure, I guess she's not really working towards her Pilgrimage when she's murdering pirates?
 
There was one Quarian you met in ME2 who's saving up for a used ship, she's incredibly poor though, living in Turian homelessness shelters, and I guess it's more idle thought than anything, considering the Volus at the counter mentioning that she only ever looks at all the ships.

The wiki says that you're not allowed to harm people for the Pilgrimage gift, though what Tali does makes me more than a little unsure, I guess she's not really working towards her Pilgrimage when she's murdering pirates?

...It's not 'harming' if it's self defense~

Tali does in fact, say that all pilgrims go through self defense courses before leaving the Fleet.

'Self Defense' covers a multitude of sins...if done/spun rightly.
 
Besides, it's not like pirates are people or anything. Jeez, next you'll be saying slavers are people. :D

"It's not my fault he tried to kidnap/took offense to me! I just stabbed him to make him let go."

"In the face....repeatedly?"

"...and dumped superheated omnigel from my omnitool as well."

"And then stole his ship?"

"Not like he was using it after all of that...not to mention that guy had poor understanding of spam filters and anti-virus software.....I...merely appropriated it, in accordance with...er, certain salvage laws or rights?"

"...You have balls, I give you that."
 
Also, I think your math is wrong. 100,000 is only 0.5℅ of the Quarian population; I think you were looking for 5℅, a number I still see as too low.
... Yup, my math is wrong. Roughly a million would be about right, probably less.
Both numbers are highballing it, I suspect.

A stable population pyramid has anywhere from 14-20% of the population below the age of 20.
That means that right off the bat, 3.4 million Quarians are not eligible for Pilgrimage.
Then assume that the normal pool of emigres comes from the 20-34 years age group; that's around 10% of a stable population pyramid.
1.7 million people out of 17 million.

Then you need to consider that only a small percentage of a stable population can actually go on pilgrimage at all; has to be, because if a significant percentage of your young people emigrate, you won't have the manpower to train to run your ships.To train in your culture.
And a lot of emigrants won't ever come back.
Say 5% of the 20-34 age group go on Pilgrimage; that's 85k people out on Pilgrimage at any given time.
Hardly enough to get the kind of notoriety that Quarians actually have galactically.

I'm going to go out and suggest that the Quarian Fleet isn't actually a stable population.
It's an expansionist one where they fuck like bunnies and overproduce their life support, and Pilgrimage is a safety valve to let off excess population.
Most of the people who go on Pilgrimage never come back, and aren't expected to, usually from the young adult population; the restless, the troublemakers, the ones who buck the system.
The only ones who go back and are allowed back are the True Believers.

I mean, consider it this way:
People who are successful at Pilgrimage are people who are capable of working well in galactic society.
If you are a successful Quarian who has done well in galactic society, why would you move back to live on a bunch of century-old ships that have to be patched to keep working?

You still need to live in your suit anyway, even aboard the Quarian Fleet, so there's no change if you stay.
You can afford to have your life support maintained properly by professionals in Galactic society; the Hanar also use life support suits.
You can afford space in your dwelling for a clean room if necessary, depending on where you live.

Sex and reproduction won't even bring them back to the Fleet. Not in a galaxy where Asari are willing to shag Krogan.
I'm willing to bet that there are way more Quarians actually alive and scattered about the galaxy than there are on the Quarian Fleet; at least an order of magnitude more in population.
Enclaves of Quarians scattered about Citadel space and the Terminus are the only way all the stories of Quarians being used as cheap, smart labor make sense.

It would also explain the Fleet habit of dropping off "criminals" on planetary populations, as yet another method of removing excess population and troublemakers.
 
Last edited:
Mmmm
Well, Quarians on their pilgrimage are sorta a bit of a grey area, because they're not actually that good for the economy in which they go to unless they decide to stay there indefinitely (Which some do, as Tali mentions), they do, in fact, take jobs, if, say, there was an area which was a hotspot for Quarians on their pilgrimage, then that means that the local workers are phased out in favour of the much cheaper and more handy Quarian workers, problem is, however, is that most of those Quarians leave, they work until they can buy something that's good enough for a Pilgrimage gift (Likely some sort of ship) and bounce, but those workers I just mentioned are still there, they're just out of a job even though they've spent their lives there, and the Quarians aren't contributing anything apart from that because they don't live there, they're just visiting, unlike the immigrants in today's society who actually want to make a life where-ever they go.

Sort of like a guest-worker program, then? And how everyone knows about the problems with the Gastarbeiter program in Germany in the late 50s and 60s?

We want to help, it's just that rushing forward is not a reasonable action.

I don't hear many reasons why my specific plan is unreasonable. What I'm hearing is 'they won't thank us for it' (I'm not asking for thanks, I'm asking for a Quarian science team to build me space stations), that they'll take whatever aid we give them and use it against the Geth (I'm not sure how giving the Migrant Fleet a port of call in the Systems Alliance is directly threatening the Geth here), and that they are moon!nazis which...I don't know how to respond to that beyond 'so what?'

I'm willing to admit the plan isn't flawless. I'm willing to take constructive criticism, or entertain counterproposals. I'm not hearing a whole lot of those, though; what I'm hearing is that 'it would be hard so we shouldn't', which...puzzles me. I had thought that the Quarians had at least a few sympathizers in this quest (I'm not asking for apologeticists, just to be clear), that there was a general consensus that the Quarian people deserve help. I don't feel like the humans owe them anything; when the Morning War happened the Dred Scott Decision hadn't been made yet, and the best medical practice for curing gunshot wounds was "hope you weren't too attached to that arm".

What is a reasonable action for the Quarian Problem? OOC we know that them returning to Rannoch is a possibility, and I don't think that helping them do that in time is a horrible thing. Right now I'm hoping to shore up some of their civil vulnerabilities in exchange for brain sweat. If we instead opt to build, say, dreadnought sized live ships in exchange for that same brain sweat, I am okay with this.

I would like to help the Quarians. I am proposing a simple transaction that benefits both parties. What is the problem with hiring Quarian scientists?
 
The 'things of value' that a Pilgrim usually brings is going to be information. Like claims that the Migrant Fleet can jump, or good deals for used parts. Everything else is just implausible due to sheer bulk, expense and other problems of acquisition and transportation.
This has always been a dodgy claim when examined closely.

Information is stuff you barter for, and which can be time-sensitive; you don't rely on haphazardly sending several tens of thousands of people and hoping that they strike the jackpot in a galaxy of several trillion sapients, and then getting said information back in a timely manner to a fleet of ships that is constantly on the move.
Especially when your nation already has a reputation that will make people keep them away from sensitive information

New technology? Hire a tutor, or buy the notes on the legal or black market, jailbreak the DRM, and circulate it through the fleet; your IP laws are probably much more lax than those of the Citadel.
New mining claims? Deal with information brokers and buy the info on the black market while it's still hot and timely.
Or employ a fulltime intelligence service that you pay for shit like that.
Ships? How do you expect a pilgrim to afford a ship?

You don't send out young adults who are barely old enough to wipe their own asses and expect that they will have the smarts and luck and tradecraft to bring in vital information.
It's preposterous.

And callous in the extreme; because if there's anything that professional corporate security can do, it's sweep up amateurs who think they can play in the big leagues.
Especially since the Quarian state will not/cannot raise a finger to help anyone in trouble.
 
Actually...they 'sneak' ones like Tali into the pilgrimage and that one girl who thought she could play the stock exchange, while having qualifications in VI/AI programming/software.

There are intelligent Quarians, it's just that their levels of street savvy are scattered across the board.

Heck, Tali gave Saren's henchmen the runaround on the Citadel, while poisoned with radioactive substance which should have been tripping every sensor on the Citadel.

Sensor data that Saren should have access to.
 
What is a reasonable action for the Quarian Problem?
I dunno.
While I would like to help, a convincing case has been made that the Quarian state is not a rational actor, and is just as likely to fuck everyone else over, intentionally or not, in pursuit of it's goals.
The splash radius of some of their actions in canon hit everyone after all.

If you can think of a way to help the Quarian people without freeing up their military resources for them to go antagonize the geth further? Sure.
If you can't, it will probably have to wait until we can attempt to fix the Quarian immune system, or otherwise exercise enough political leverage to prevent them doing something fucking stupid.
I would like to help the Quarians. I am proposing a simple transaction that benefits both parties. What is the problem with hiring Quarian scientists?
Their loyalties are not to you, and their state has foreign policy objectives that are frankly destabilizing.

It's the same problem with hiring Israeli sympathizers in your nuclear program in the 60s and 70s.
Sooner or later nuclear material goes missing and there's a nuclear arsenal pointed at Moscow and it's allies using plutonium from your nuclear program and weapon designs from your military.

Besides, if it's space stations you want, why do you think the Quarians have especial expertise with them?
They have a talent pool of 17 million on the Fleet, counting the children.
Humanity alone has almost a thousand times that, and that's before looking at the Salarians and Asari et al.
If only 1% of humanity had the engineering expertise, you'd have almost ten times more experts than the entire Quarian fleet population.

Actually...they 'sneak' ones like Tali into the pilgrimage and that one girl who thought she could play the stock exchange, while having qualifications in VI/AI programming/software.
For every one like Tali and the other girl, how many other Quarians tried and failed?
Like I said, it's a remarkably callous and cost-ineffective way of gathering intel.

There are intelligent Quarians, it's just that their levels of street savvy are scattered across the board.
And it presumes that other nations are incompetent or stupid.
Or that if one of those people antagonizes a corporation , they'll let it go instead of hiring death squads or simply lodging complaints with their respective countries' intelligence services and legal systems.

One wonders whether the eviction of the Quarians from that garden planet had anything to do with the previous behavior of Quarians who were believed to be agents of their nation-state.
Sensor data that Saren should have access to.
For one thing, Saren was acting through proxies; shit happens when your proxies fuck up.

For another, it's the Citadel, where even stowaway Quarians like Tali'Zorah can bring mines on to the station and use them in combat without immediately getting C-Sec jumping on her.
The idea that there's some surveillance panopticon picking up things like high radioactivity simply isn't true.
 
Last edited:
Tali made those mines via her omnitool, if I remember rightly.

They were made out of omnigel that she complains was the last she had on her.
 
I dunno.
While I would like to help, a convincing case has been made that the Quarian state is not a rational actor, and is just as likely to fuck everyone else over, intentionally or not, in pursuit of it's goals.
The splash radius of some of their actions in canon hit everyone after all.

If you can think of a way to help the Quarian people without freeing up their military resources for them to go antagonize the geth further? Sure.
If you can't, it will probably have to wait until we can attempt to fix the Quarian immune system, or otherwise exercise enough political leverage to prevent them doing something fucking stupid.

Their loyalties are not to you, and their state has foreign policy objectives that are frankly destabilizing.

It's the same problem with hiring Israeli sympathizers in your nuclear program in the 60s and 70s.
Sooner or later nuclear material goes missing and there's a nuclear arsenal pointed at Moscow and it's allies using plutonium from your nuclear program and weapon designs from your military.

Besides, if it's space stations you want, why do you think the Quarians have especial expertise with them?
They have a talent pool of 17 million on the Fleet, counting the children.
Humanity alone has almost a thousand times that, and that's before looking at the Salarians and Asari et al.
If only 1% of humanity had the engineering expertise, you'd have almost ten times more experts than the entire Quarian fleet population.


For every one like Tali and the other girl, how many other Quarians tried and failed?
Like I said, it's a remarkably callous and cost-ineffective way of gathering intel.

And it presumes that other nations are incompetent or stupid.
Or that if one of those people antagonizes a corporation , they'll let it go instead of hiring death squads or simply lodging complaints with their respective countries' intelligence services and legal systems.

One wonders whether the eviction of the Quarians from that garden planet had anything to do with the previous behavior of Quarians who were believed to be agents of their nation-state.

For one thing, Saren was acting through proxies; shit happens when your proxies fuck up.

For another, it's the Citadel, where even stowaway Quarians like Tali'Zorah can bring mines on to the station and use them in combat without immediately getting C-Sec jumping on her.
The idea that there's some surveillance panopticon picking up things like high radioactivity simply isn't true.
Based from what your saying if look like we need to get political and economic influence among the quarian people before we can consider helping them.
I mean their government is a democracy so we just need to encourage the views of quarians like Koris who is the admiral of the civilian fleet.
I mean I understand that people blame the quarians for being irrational actors but we must remember that the decision to attack the geth only won by one vote which was admiral Xen the scientist
If we appeal to Koris and Xen through a mixture of benefits for the quarian civilians and new science for Xen
We will likely gain not only political and economic influence
But also the votes of two quarian admirals to balance out the quarian Warhawks
Naturally this will take some time
 
And if there was anything like a panopticon, that firefight would have been interrupted by C-SEC gunships and SWAT teams.
Not Shephard and his posse.

If I remember rightly, it was in a run down, out of the way, pokey little cramped area/alley were there wasn't anything to ID anyone when stuff went down.

Even then, Tali bails and suggests that Shepard does, because -someone- was bound to have heard the gunfire and reported it.

...I remember it being a -pig- to do, cause I always choose soldier, who doesn't have any major AOE attacks and everyone keeps dancing everywhere....

The number of times I've tried doing that with some cheap shotgun is....gah.

Also: Garrus tracks her down, he is technically C-Sec.

He just jumped on it, instead of dropping it like he was told to by his boss due to Saren.
 
Last edited:
If I remember rightly, it was in a run down, out of the way, pokey little cramped area/alley were there wasn't anything to ID anyone when stuff went down.
I think you underestimate just how comprehensive AI-driven surveillance on an artificial, sealed habitat in space can be.
Look at how small and cheap we got cameras these days; there would be nowhere on the Citadel without camera coverage.

Add audio sensors that would be listening for gunshot sounds and moving surveillance drones into that area.
And this would be run by VIs correlating face and gait recognition with biometric databases of everyone who's ever passed through Citadel customs or had an encounter with a C-Sec agent.
Big Data for the win.

The fact that Shepard had to go asking people questions instead of pulling a warrant and accessing Citadel surveillance records to track Tali's movements is the strongest single indicator that there is no surveillance network on the Citadel.
Followed by the fact that none of the criminals or assassins we see, from Urdnot Wrex downwards, ever bothers with equipment to hide their ID from cameras.
 
Oh, just thought about it:

What happened to that one colony controlled by the Leviathans ? Y'know the one which's peoples (human, asari, and some other species) lost more than 10 years? One meant to hide their technology and existence?
 
Hey guys I was wondering
How powerful are superdreadnoughts compared to dreadnoughts?
How would the rest of the galaxy react if we have them?
 
Last edited:
Oh, just thought about it:

What happened to that one colony controlled by the Leviathans ? Y'know the one which's peoples (human, asari, and some other species) lost more than 10 years? One meant to hide their technology and existence?
I do not believe that the colony is controlled by the leviathans yet
But I am not sure
 
How powerful are superdreadnoughts compared to dreadnoughts?

Under the current battlefield conditions when it comes to space battles? They're a big, ungainly target that offer marginal improvement at best over a dreadnought. And keep in mind that right now the strategic paradigm of the galaxy has been upset by our deployment of laser based Pyndae, which punch way out of their weightclass with lasers that trivialize an enemy's defenses.

Dreadnought sized ships and bigger are big, fat, juicy targets, and the incoming strategic doctrine is going to focus on small laser wielding ships tearing apart enemy formations with great ease due to the way the lasers turn shields into dead weight.

How would the rest of the galaxy react if we have them?

Big, humongous prestige project that may or may not be a case of sabre rattling.
 
Under the current battlefield conditions when it comes to space battles? They're a big, ungainly target that offer marginal improvement at best over a dreadnought. And keep in mind that right now the strategic paradigm of the galaxy has been upset by our deployment of laser based Pyndae, which punch way out of their weightclass with lasers that trivialize an enemy's defenses.

Dreadnought sized ships and bigger are big, fat, juicy targets, and the incoming strategic doctrine is going to focus on small laser wielding ships tearing apart enemy formations with great ease due to the way the lasers turn shields into dead weight.



Big, humongous prestige project that may or may not be a case of sabre rattling.
I see
So it seems that dreadnoughts have become obsolete
Like the battleships of the Second World War?
Does that mean we should focus on carriers
Because space fighters with lasers are more agile than any other ship?
Of course we should focus on pyndae production first

But is there anyway to improve the dreadnoughts?
 
Last edited:
Like the battleships of the Second World War?

Somewhat. Dreadnoughts are still useful, they can ship a lot of material and the bombardment capabilities of our laser frigates are unproven. However, they've certainly been made obsolescent as the go to ship for destroying enemy warships.

Does that mean we should focus on carriers
Because space fighters with lasers are more agile than any other ship?

....
HAH!

No.

Pyndae have what's basically a GARDIAN system that's cranked up to the point it's a valid threat to much larger ships. However, this also means that smaller ships than frigates which can't tank even a single shot of a Pynda's heavy lasers at range so it can close in are insufficiently effective to be worthwhile. The Pynda isn't the ship that killed that battleship and heralded the era of the carrier, it's the ship that proved torpedo ships are valid threats to much bigger, heavier armed and armoured ships and as such need to be accounted for in the doctrine.


However, Paragon Industries and the System's Alliance with them have Revy Shepard doing their R&D. This is a humongous advantage. In many ways we aren't iterating new designs and technologies from previous ones, we are utterly surpassing them in ways that were impossible just years before. And even under the best of circumstances noone in the galaxy can keep pace with the SA's technological development right now.

It will take much longer for other navies to fully replace their old equipment, and might even let most of it grow quietly obsolescent, extend their service life with upgrade packages and cycle new ships in in accordance with the old schedule, even as the ships that replace them are much newer. To put it quite simply rebuilding a navy is expensive, and unless someone is anticipating a fight with the System's Alliance there's not that much gain right now in doing a sweeping upgrade.

And there's also that it's liable to take at least a year before the real consequences in doctrine that is the development of the Pynda are identified and counters formulated. If it wasn't for the Hegemony-Systems Alliance War the Pynda would've been an interesting curiousity that quietly heralded the shift in doctrine instead of the shocking swerve it will prove being.
 
And keep in mind that right now the strategic paradigm of the galaxy has been upset by our deployment of laser based Pyndae, which punch way out of their weightclass with lasers that trivialize an enemy's defenses.
Note that this holds true for now; it may not hold true when the PC gets to actually tinker with ship protective systems.
And dreadnoughts have the ability to mount a ton of defensive systems as well as offense.
Dreadnought sized ships and bigger are big, fat, juicy targets, and the incoming strategic doctrine is going to focus on small laser wielding ships tearing apart enemy formations with great ease due to the way the lasers turn shields into dead weight.
Does not necessarily hold true.
Dreadnoughts can mount bigger, longer ranged lasers which can kill your small ships from well outside their effective range.
An SA dreadnought, refitted with secondary laser systems scaled for dreadnought use, would murder your Pyndas before they could enter effective range, because they lack the defensive systems to survive hostile energy fire.

Do not make declarations on the future of warfare based on the performance of an obsolete techbase faced with the first iteration of a new warfighting technology.
 
Dreadnoughts can mount bigger, longer ranged lasers which can kill your small ships from well outside their effective range.
Hmmm.
Someone dig up the maths we did on lasers.
One thing to keep in mind here though, is that at long ranges especially Lasers don't damage ships. They're used in wide beams to take out sheilds because in general space ships are small fast moving targets. Unless the effective range of the Dreadnoughts main gun is greater than the Pydnas laser system, which seems unlikely, I think you might be overestimating what they can manage.
 
Don't forget that TIR shield tech completely trumps lasers, and TIR shielding is even easier than our 1600-pt TIR stealth tech. Lasers are, at best, a short-term solution; they'll last us through the Batarian war, sure, but probably not much past that.
 
Back
Top