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Shepard Quest Mk VI, Technological Revolution

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january1may said:
...Um, I'm not really familiar with ME lore (or with ME anything at all, to be honest), but if their biology is that dependent on eezo, why would those subsequent generations be born at all?

Asari lifespans being what they are, I don't expect them to have especially high birth rates anyway.
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remember, ALL asari are naturally BIOTIC, which requires the body to have eezo INSIDE of them at birth, eezo infection in the womb was how Human biotics became a thing, and since eezo presumably can't be naturally produced that means asari babies get their eezo from their birthing parent.
 
Yog said:
Those are few people with a lot of money, not many people doing a lot of work.

But continuing the economic impact, we might also strongly affect asari colonization and food industries. Assuming Ansari don't synthesize it, they have to get eezo into their systems somehow during pregnancies, and possibly regularly until they are fully adult. This means either some manner of supplements, or food containing it. As I understand it, Thessia is rather unique in its abundance of eezo containing organisms. And in available eezo in general. This likely means that Thessia-forming biomes is prohibitively expensive right now. Not so with artificial eezo, potentially.

This probably strongly reshapes pharmacology food supplements, food transport industries of asari, and possibly strongly negatively affects their economy in general if Thessia is a major eezo source.
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Seems to me that the simplest explanation is that the Asari just naturally produce miniscule amounts of it naturally since anything else seems like it would have been brought up in canon.
 
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Red Bovine said:
Seems to me that the simplest explanation is that the Asari just naturally produce miniscule amounts of it naturally since anything else seems like it would have been brought up in canon.
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we must create asari farms to harvest them for their eezo! humanely of course, white picket fenced houses, 3 square meals of thessian imported meals, cable television, the works. We shall name it Project Asari Colony :V
 
Red Bovine said:
Seems to me that the simplest explanation is that the Asari just naturally produce miniscule amounts of it naturally since anything else seems like it would have been brought up in canon.
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That'd probably be an even bigger deal than the Asari merely being dependent on food that has been infused with eezo during their development years. We do know that the Protheans engineered the Asari species, specifically to be all-biotic shock troops for use against the Reapers; given that, would it be so much more unbelievable that they'd also engineer their diet as well?
 
TheEyes said:
That'd probably be an even bigger deal than the Asari merely being dependent on food that has been infused with eezo during their development years. We do know that the Protheans engineered the Asari species, specifically to be all-biotic shock troops for use against the Reapers; given that, would it be so much more unbelievable that they'd also engineer their diet as well?
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Don't see how that would be that big a deal, even if Eezo could grow in people it seems like it would be incredibly impractical for things like space travel considering it seems like it would take enough Asari mass to create several Reapers. Also note that they are not the only race to have biotics with some being born with them so seems like that kind of thing would come up in canon.
 
Yog said:
If eezo could be biologically synthesized, it would have been used commercially. Even if you needed sapient beings to do so.
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By that logic wouldn't plants that can be eaten by Asari like you proposed mean that you could do just that? Do note I stated that it seems like it would be immensely impractical to do so. Something like needing years maybe over a decade to get enough eezo to fill a person and the amount as mentioned would be immensely miniscule likely making research into that seemingly so expensive and impractical that no one really bothers.
 
Another thing I really like about this quest is watching the NPCs react to Revy and PI. One of my favourite parts was when Revy had to deal with the conspiracy nuts who were trying to ban Arc Reactors using pseudoscience bunk.
 
Red Bovine said:
By that logic wouldn't plants that can be eaten by Asari like you proposed mean that you could do just that? Do note I stated that it seems like it would be immensely impractical to do so. Something like needing years maybe over a decade to get enough eezo to fill a person and the amount as mentioned would be immensely miniscule likely making research into that seemingly so expensive and impractical that no one really bothers.
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If they take eezo from environment, then it's easier to just mine eezo directly, same as we mine iron, instead of extracting it from plants.

There's a very big difference from "eezo, like other elements, is absorbed into the body through the food chain" and "eezo is synthesized biologically". The second one requires entirely new physics to be introduced. It is far easier to believe that Thessia has abundance of eezo in reach of bioshpere.
 
Red Bovine said:
By that logic wouldn't plants that can be eaten by Asari like you proposed mean that you could do just that? Do note I stated that it seems like it would be immensely impractical to do so. Something like needing years maybe over a decade to get enough eezo to fill a person and the amount as mentioned would be immensely miniscule likely making research into that seemingly so expensive and impractical that no one really bothers.
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What I was implying is that eezo is just naturally present in Thessia's soil, having been put there by the Protheans, and its plantlife was engineered to pull it out of the ground so that the Asari could have it as part of their diet. Wiki says:

"Eezo is generated when solid matter, such as a planet, is affected by the energy of a star going supernova. The material is common in the asteroid debris that orbits neutron stars and pulsars. These are dangerous places to mine, requiring extensive use of robotics, telepresence, and shielding to survive the intense radiation from the dead star. Only a few major corporations can afford the set-up costs required to work these primary sources. Some planets have small eezo deposits or coalesced around a larger deposit during their formation. While these secondary sources are safer to mine, the yield from the ore is not as large. There are rumours that the Nemean Abyss has particularly rich eezo deposits. "

If there's a way to get eezo that doesn't require setting up asteroid mining operations around a pulsar, you can damn well bet that there'd be active and ongoing research trying to (and, after two thousand years, probably succeeding) to duplicate it.

HanEmpire said:
Another thing I really like about this quest is watching the NPCs react to Revy and PI. One of my favourite parts was when Revy had to deal with the conspiracy nuts who were trying to ban Arc Reactors using pseudoscience bunk.
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Heh heh, yeah, I loved that.
Hoyr said:
[X] Release a series of sarcastic mockumenteries, titled Please Do Not Lick the Arc Reactor, targeting all the silly rumors about Arc Reactor dangers, and let them go viral.

A woman in a lab coat begins speaking, backdropped by a high-tech office. She is wearing an arc-reactor strapped to her head "Recently PI complaints and feedback department has not gotten certain pieces of feedback, and have only heard about them via second-hand sources. We believe this is because they have been misaddressed to the galactic media, not the PI complains and feedback department."

"However, we can totally understand how this happened. The addresses are nothing alike, so of course the feedback will go to the galactic media. It's not like some one would be trying a public misinformation campaign." She pauses confused, "Or maybe it's because they can't find the contact address conveniently provided in the 'Contact Us' section of our extranet site. Just in case, a handy link is presented below."

"So because we do not have any addresses to send our responses to, we figured that releasing an informative series of videos would have to do."
…

"As you can see," the woman points to a torus of kinetic barriers filled with fusion plasma, "Thanks to the fusion torus being made only out of dark energy barriers, fusion reactors also glow. Unlike arc-reactors, they do not glow a pleasing blue color."

The woman receives a note from a man in a lab coat which she quickly reads. "Ah, marketing has discovered that not everyone likes the color blue for some reason." She looks confused, "Well to correct that, PI has created multicolored arc-reactors! Now available at the PI store."
…

"Now we will drop the fusion reactor into the water, just like the manual tells us not to do and see what happens."

The fusion reactor upon submersion shorts out and releases a cloud of bubbles filling the air with steam.

"And next, we'll test an arc-reactor!"

The arc-reactor is placed in another tank of water. It sits there and glows blue as the woman waits impatiently for a few seconds.

"Well, looks like nothing is going to happen. Clearly, arc-reactors are far more water safe then a fusion reactor, even without a water safety case. Of course, the PI manual for arc-reactors says that submersion may cause minor amounts of Palladium toxicity, but that's only if you have it sit there for a few weeks. Amazing! The manuals were right. Who knew?"
…

"As you can clearly see, firing a high-powered laser into a fusion reactor is about as dumb as doing the same to an arc-reactor. Amazing, destroying high energy equipment when it's on isn't safe. Learn something new every day."
…

"And that's why licking the power leads of an arc-reactor is dumb."

Your other less silly videos are far less popular, but you feel they've helped make the galactic public less inclined towards... well... stupid.
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Oh, also:
Hoyr said:
Dr. Shepard
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Eeeeeee. :D
 
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Yog said:
If they take eezo from environment, then it's easier to just mine eezo directly, same as we mine iron, instead of extracting it from plants.

There's a very big difference from "eezo, like other elements, is absorbed into the body through the food chain" and "eezo is synthesized biologically". The second one requires entirely new physics to be introduced. It is far easier to believe that Thessia has abundance of eezo in reach of bioshpere.
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Problem is that IIRC it's canon that every single Asari is biotic which would disprove your claims since it would logically follow that Asari would be born in places where there wasn't eezo let still had biotics since most Asari aren't born on Thessia.

TheEyes said:
What I was implying is that eezo is just naturally present in Thessia's soil, having been put there by the Protheans, and its plantlife was engineered to pull it out of the ground so that the Asari could have it as part of their diet. Wiki says:

"Eezo is generated when solid matter, such as a planet, is affected by the energy of a star going supernova. The material is common in the asteroid debris that orbits neutron stars and pulsars. These are dangerous places to mine, requiring extensive use of robotics, telepresence, and shielding to survive the intense radiation from the dead star. Only a few major corporations can afford the set-up costs required to work these primary sources. Some planets have small eezo deposits or coalesced around a larger deposit during their formation. While these secondary sources are safer to mine, the yield from the ore is not as large. There are rumours that the Nemean Abyss has particularly rich eezo deposits. "

If there's a way to get eezo that doesn't require setting up asteroid mining operations around a pulsar, you can damn well bet that there'd be active and ongoing research trying to (and, after two thousand years, probably succeeding) to duplicate it.
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First read the above in regards to my argument against eezo and the enviornment. Second just because people are probably trying to do something doesn't mean that it isn't stupidly hard. Nothing wants to make me slam my head against the wall than people coming up with all these ideas and yet continually failing to consider that if we were being realistic that some things are just really, really hard to do and takes a long time to research and simultaneosly forgetting that there is a ton of science that needs to be researced before some things even start to become plausible IRL.

Example why havent we found a cure for all diseases yet despite thousands of years of trying? Because it's hard. Why haven't we found a cure for cancer yet despite all the research put into it over the decades? Becuase it's hard. Why haven't we found a way to stop or even reverse aging despite humanity having spent thousands of years trying to find a way? Because it's freaking hard.

So why does canon Mass Effect still have those problems I mentioned despite several races having more advanced technology than humanity with thousands or even hundreds of years headstart? Because realistically a lot of problems take a very long time to solve because they are freaking hard.

Maybe people have been trying to find a way to reproduce Eezo but do to it being hard no one has found a commercially viable way to do so yet. Important note, the Protheans were way more advanced than the canon races of Mass Effect during Sheperds time so it doesn't seem odd that they would have found a way to mass produce the stuff.
 
Red Bovine said:
Problem is that IIRC it's canon that every single Asari is biotic which would disprove your claims since it would logically follow that Asari would be born in places where there wasn't eezo let still had biotics since most Asari aren't born on Thessia.
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Hence the deduced need for eezo-containing food supplements or Thessia (or similar planets, which logically should exist) exported food for pregnant asari. Maybe reduction of the amount of eezo the mother has during development in the womb, but that would imply needing eezo as they grow.

Certainly, this hypothesis requires much less world building than "asari can biosynthesize eezo".
Red Bovine said:
First read the above in regards to my argument against eezo and the enviornment. Second just because people are probably trying to do something doesn't mean that it isn't stupidly hard. Nothing wants to make me slam my head against the wall than people coming up with all these ideas and yet continually failing to consider that if we were being realistic that some things are just really, really hard to do and takes a long time to research and simultaneosly forgetting that there is a ton of science that needs to be researced before some things even start to become plausible IRL.

Example why havent we found a cure for all diseases yet despite thousands of years of trying? Because it's hard. Why haven't we found a cure for cancer yet despite all the research put into it over the decades? Becuase it's hard. Why haven't we found a way to stop or even reverse aging despite humanity having spent thousands of years trying to find a way? Because it's freaking hard.

So why does canon Mass Effect still have those problems I mentioned despite several races having more advanced technology than humanity with thousands or even hundreds of years headstart? Because realistically a lot of problems take a very long time to solve because they are freaking hard.

Maybe people have been trying to find a way to reproduce Eezo but do to it being hard no one has found a commercially viable way to do so yet. Important note, the Protheans were way more advanced than the canon races of Mass Effect during Sheperds time so it doesn't seem odd that they would have found a way to mass produce the stuff.
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Except mass cloning is canonically very much possible. Even assuming that only asari can biosyntheisze eezo, hell, even assuming that only sapient asari can biosynthesize eezo (presuming that the synthesis requires neural activity associated with active thinking), mass producing / breeding asari is cheap and easy. All you need is one asari and food. And you get eezo out of it. Eezo that, right now, is the main limiting factor for military and economic might in the galaxy, and has been such for more than a thousand years. Thousand years of post-industrial civilization.

No, I'm not buying it.
 
Perhaps Mass Effect is less than realistic and rather than having to divine the answer that the devs intended we need to take the conflicting nonsense they gave us and create a reasonable compromise.
I would perhaps suggest that natural Biotics need far smaller amounts of Eezo to be effective than ships, this allows Asari (and Krogan probably) to process enough Eezo from their diet in order to sustain their abilities however would be extremely slow and inefficient compared to mining.
The fact that Tuchunka also had sufficient Eezo present somehow to support naturally biotic species suggests that natural engineering by the Protheans is not necessary to justify why Thessia was able to support the Asari. And also the Mass Effect Wiki suggests that the Asari were already biotic when the Protheans found them.
I'll also suggest that not only could food be exported from these planets to non Eezo rich ones, not bioticially rich food could probably be processed to contain Eezo.
 
Red Bovine said:
Problem is that IIRC it's canon that every single Asari is biotic which would disprove your claims since it would logically follow that Asari would be born in places where there wasn't eezo let still had biotics since most Asari aren't born on Thessia.
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That is like saying humans naturally produce water because all humans need water to survive but some are born in places where there isn't any (deserts). It's massive leap in logic.

It would be far more reasonable to assume that Asari have a dietary requirement for a certain amount of eezo to be present in their food and that they ship food, or eezo supplements, to other places where they live. Which fits with what I vaguely remember of mentions on the Citadel about Asari food containing trace amounts of eezo.
 
UberJJK said:
That is like saying humans naturally produce water because all humans need water to survive but some are born in places where there isn't any (deserts). It's massive leap in logic.

It would be far more reasonable to assume that Asari have a dietary requirement for a certain amount of eezo to be present in their food and that they ship food, or eezo supplements, to other places where they live. Which fits with what I vaguely remember of mentions on the Citadel about Asari food containing trace amounts of eezo.
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And even then, they likely only need those supplements during pregnancies, and is seems that for an asari it is not unreasonable to have less than ten children in her lifetime, meaning a child per century. And while we don't know how long pregnancy is, I doubt it's more than two or three years. So, they'd only need eezo supplements for at most three percent of their lifetime.
 
Cite: Thessia in-game Codex Entry:

"The asari homeworld, Thessia, is the core of the largest economy in the Milky Way. The planet's reserves of element zero are so vast that they affect its price galaxy-wide. Because life on Thessia evolved in an eezo-rich environment, the world is home to a wealth of both biotically active and eezo-resistant species. Travel to the planet is strictly controlled, but smuggling remains an issue."

There's also mention online (although I can't get a definitive cite since the original page no longer exists) that some of the teaser materials for ME3 had:

"ALLIANCE ADVISORY: Dust-form element zero can be present in minute amounts in Thessian food and water supplies; however, this has no documented benefits to sapient non-asari species. Non-asari are encouraged to select "visitor" versions of local cuisine, which are kept free of eezo."

So, debate over, yes?
 
UberJJK said:
That is like saying humans naturally produce water because all humans need water to survive but some are born in places where there isn't any (deserts). It's massive leap in logic.
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Humans and other animals also create a number of chemicals in their bodies. Somethings can be synthesized easily and some can't. Example being that you can make some chemicals found in nature. What I'm suggesting is that eezo may have been something the Protheans figured out could be created through way of biological processes and engineered a race to do so.

IIRC there were science articles a few years back mentioning that scientists have found a way to engineer spiders to biologically create steel or a substance as hard as steel with their silk or something along those lines.

UberJJK said:
It would be far more reasonable to assume that Asari have a dietary requirement for a certain amount of eezo to be present in their food and that they ship food, or eezo supplements, to other places where they live. Which fits with what I vaguely remember of mentions on the Citadel about Asari food containing trace amounts of eezo.
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And yet this kind of thing has never actually shown up in canon and this seems like it would have been important to state. And I'd actually like a source since people can misremember things and I admit I've done so before.

Yog said:
Except mass cloning is canonically very much possible. Even assuming that only asari can biosyntheisze eezo, hell, even assuming that only sapient asari can biosynthesize eezo (presuming that the synthesis requires neural activity associated with active thinking), mass producing / breeding asari is cheap and easy. All you need is one asari and food. And you get eezo out of it. Eezo that, right now, is the main limiting factor for military and economic might in the galaxy, and has been such for more than a thousand years. Thousand years of post-industrial civilization.

No, I'm not buying it.
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*Slams head* This is exactly what I'm talking about. People seem to seriously underestimate how hard something would actually be and the possible limitations stated by science and practicality. We don't know how common cloning is or how expensive it would be to actually clone enough tissue and the cost of the facilities along with the time required to actually get any eezo from said tissue. It could very be a very complicated, expensive and time consuming process. There is a really good reason that cloned meat is so expensive even today and why it's a hell of a lot cheaper to just raise livestock.

It also may only produce a small amount of eezo. Like say that a 100, 000 asari have enough eezo in them to fuel the smallest space ship available for day or two with the cloning process taking a ton of time and money. Meanwhile you can mine that much eezo the old fashioned way in a way that gets the same amount far faster and far more cheaper than that particular method.

And as for why no one found a way yet I'm assuming that they are trying but again considering that disease, cancer and aging are still a problem for pretty much all of Citadel space even during Shepards time I'm going to chalk it up to some research is just that fucking hard:

Red Bovine said:
First read the above in regards to my argument against eezo and the enviornment. Second just because people are probably trying to do something doesn't mean that it isn't stupidly hard. Nothing wants to make me slam my head against the wall than people coming up with all these ideas and yet continually failing to consider that if we were being realistic that some things are just really, really hard to do and takes a long time to research and simultaneosly forgetting that there is a ton of science that needs to be researced before some things even start to become plausible IRL.

Example why havent we found a cure for all diseases yet despite thousands of years of trying? Because it's hard. Why haven't we found a cure for cancer yet despite all the research put into it over the decades? Becuase it's hard. Why haven't we found a way to stop or even reverse aging despite humanity having spent thousands of years trying to find a way? Because it's freaking hard.

So why does canon Mass Effect still have those problems I mentioned despite several races having more advanced technology than humanity with thousands or even hundreds of years headstart? Because realistically a lot of problems take a very long time to solve because they are freaking hard.

Maybe people have been trying to find a way to reproduce Eezo but do to it being hard no one has found a commercially viable way to do so yet. Important note, the Protheans were way more advanced than the canon races of Mass Effect during Sheperds time so it doesn't seem odd that they would have found a way to mass produce the stuff.
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Didn't read Eyes post before I posted afterwards but:

TheEyes said:
Cite: Thessia in-game Codex Entry:

"The asari homeworld, Thessia, is the core of the largest economy in the Milky Way. The planet's reserves of element zero are so vast that they affect its price galaxy-wide. Because life on Thessia evolved in an eezo-rich environment, the world is home to a wealth of both biotically active and eezo-resistant species. Travel to the planet is strictly controlled, but smuggling remains an issue."

There's also mention online (although I can't get a definitive cite since the original page no longer exists) that some of the teaser materials for ME3 had:

"ALLIANCE ADVISORY: Dust-form element zero can be present in minute amounts in Thessian food and water supplies; however, this has no documented benefits to sapient non-asari species. Non-asari are encouraged to select "visitor" versions of local cuisine, which are kept free of eezo."

So, debate over, yes?
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I wouldn't say the debate was over, all you just proved that a biotic species is likely to evolve on a eezo filled world and the qoute you mentioned only mentions Thessian food which is the planet the Asari grew up on. Considering that nowhere can anyone point to it being canon that they need to eat eezp filled food and that every single Asari has been noted to be biotic I would once again say no the debate isn't really over.
 
Food supplements for Asari not native to Thessia are lot easier to believe than 'Asari bodies somehow create Eezo'. Because the latter is 'magic, duh'.
 
Right, I think it's reached the point where I should chime in. As far as I'm concerned, eezoo is an isotope of some heavy element. That means it cannot be produced chemically, you need, at the very least, a nuclear reactor. So it cannot be produced biologically. So Assari need eezoo supplements for optimal health.

Incidentally, that has all sorts of interesting sociological implications. Why not speculate about that instead?
 
Red Bovine said:
Humans and other animals also create a number of chemicals in their bodies. Somethings can be synthesized easily and some can't. Example being that you can make some chemicals found in nature. What I'm suggesting is that eezo may have been something the Protheans figured out could be created through way of biological processes and engineered a race to do so.

IIRC there were science articles a few years back mentioning that scientists have found a way to engineer spiders to biologically create steel or a substance as hard as steel with their silk or something along those lines.
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You are confusing chemical compounds and chemical elements. Chemical compound is a combination of atoms bound into a molecule by electromagnetic force, a chemical compound is defined by what atoms in what geometric configuration comprise it. Chemical element is an atom with a certain amount of protons in its atomic nucleus. To produce chemical compounds you need chemical reactions, which involve electromagnetic force only. To produce new chemical elements you require nuclear reactions, which happen at much higher energies (and yes, all you physics nerds, I know of barrier-less nuclear reactions), produce much more energy, and also radiation. While obviously biological organisms can produce new chemical compounds, there is no evidence to support biological nuclear reactions as far as I know.

Eezo is not a chemical compound. At best, meaning "closest to normal chemistry" it is some form of neutronium allowed to exist by slightly different laws of Mass Effect universe. At worst it is a form of exotic matter involving both baryonic matter and dark matter.

Suffice to say that any claims of eezo being biosynthesized would require at least supportive evidence of biological nuclear fission.

Red Bovine said:
*Slams head* This is exactly what I'm talking about. People seem to seriously underestimate how hard something would actually be and the possible limitations stated by science and practicality. We don't know how common cloning is or how expensive it would be to actually clone enough tissue and the cost of the facilities along with the time required to actually get any eezo from said tissue. It could very be a very complicated, expensive and time consuming process. There is a really good reason that cloned meat is so expensive even today and why it's a hell of a lot cheaper to just raise livestock.

It also may only produce a small amount of eezo. Like say that a 100, 000 asari have enough eezo in them to fuel the smallest space ship available for day or two with the cloning process taking a ton of time and money. Meanwhile you can mine that much eezo the old fashioned way in a way that gets the same amount far faster and far more cheaper than that particular method.
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Factory farming is much cheaper, and is much easier to scale than asteroid mining in pulsar systems, which can't be scaled at all because you have a bottleneck of only so many viable locations. And, again, that assumes that only sapient thinking asari can biosynthesize eezo.

If, as you posit, asari can naturally produce eezo in their bodies, then you won't need complicated technology to make eezo. All you'll need would be an asari and someone willing to enslave and feed them. Like, oh, batarians. Quick googling gives me something in the range of a hundred to three hundred million cows killed per year for food annually right now. Asari are smaller, likely require less food than cows. This means that it would not be hard for an industrialized major world to support slaughtering 500 million asari per year for eezo. And that's assuming no additional improvements in efficiency technology may introduce. How little eezo do you think is needed for biotics? You said 100 thousand asari for a smallest space ship. So, five thousand such ships per year could be built with biosynthetic eezo. Batarian hegemony would be the king of eezo production in such a world, or long since destroyed by asari.
 
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