Shepard Quest Mk VII, Age of Revy (ME/MCU)
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HanEmpire
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I'm for fixing the Genophage so that it doesn't produce 1 healthy baby and 999 dead fetuses. Make it so that each pregnancy fertilizes a single egg and produces a single healthy baby. That way the Salarians get to keep their Krogan population control, and Krogan get to have females who aren't constantly traumatized.
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I'm going to ask you to reread what I actually said and suggested.
I'm not saying we get rid of the Genophage, I'm saying we retool it so that its method of population control isn't literally a massive trauma in every pregnancy as well as allowing for a very slight increase in population growth from where it currently is.
Mordin's job was literally this same type of modification, only to lower the population increase because apparently Krogans were adapting to it anyway.
If we can't bargain a reworking of the Genophage into something that gives us massive political leverage over the Krogan while helping found a unified government, then I don't know what to tell you.
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@Mannan this is how the genophage currently works
krogan sex
female has 1000 eggs fertilized and developing inside her
when birthed she literally releases 999 dead developed stillbirths and 1 living baby on top of a pile of dead babies
now imagine that for every female, for every single male krogan you see alive in the games. imagine how many dead piles of babies there are on tuchanka and how many times those females had to see those piles of dead
that is what they want to fix, not the genophage itself. population control was always a thing, the methods are not
krogan sex
female has 1000 eggs fertilized and developing inside her
when birthed she literally releases 999 dead developed stillbirths and 1 living baby on top of a pile of dead babies
now imagine that for every female, for every single male krogan you see alive in the games. imagine how many dead piles of babies there are on tuchanka and how many times those females had to see those piles of dead
that is what they want to fix, not the genophage itself. population control was always a thing, the methods are not
Oh it is on top? I always thought the live baby was buried under the corpses of its brothers and sisters and had to claw its way out of the corpse pile! That is far less traumatizing then what I thought it was!
That is one thing i always find ludicrous. 1000 Eggs? Really? How big are they? Kaviar sized?
Otherwise those Females would look like the Broodmothers from Dragon Age.
HanEmpire
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The 1000 dead babies pile thing is a slight exaggeration. Krogan females lay 1000 fertilized eggs per year, which means they either lay a few eggs a day or do staggered batches of a few hundred each. They might be like RL sea turtles that lay 200 eggs per batch.
Which is actually more traumatizing in a way, since that means instead of having a guaranteed surviving baby in every clutch, they're forced to dig through piles of dead babies for the hope of finding a single breathing one.
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Okay, well, i don't remember reading anything in the Codex about how long they carry their eggs. That is still a lot of dead eggs and a lot of Trauma. Better to let them have 1 or 2 Eggs each year. Still a lot, but they would be alive at least.
lbmaian
a thirsty squirrel
Stasis plate is also pretty important for countering lasers. Reaper tech combined with stolen v1 arc reactors are definitely capable of producing such weaponry, let alone whatever laser/power tech they can indirectly steal from PI (like any handheld weaponry).
Speaking of which, that's not the only potential anti-laser tech on the board. I forgot, do have that deep space lab yet for starting research on total internal reflection?
Space Lab began construction last quarter:
And so won't be ready until 2175-Q4 or 2176-Q1.
If we did develop artificial Eezo production, should we license it with the Citadel and try to assume the mantle of sole producer, or just make it a copyleft and release it into the wild for goodwill? Or is it likely that the Alliance would want it to be a secret patent for a few years?
To a degree it depends upon how much production volume we can generate but ultimately it really isn't our choice.
Eezo is a resource of vital strategic importance. The second they hear about the project the Alliance would declare it a military secret; likely on par with The Manhattan Project. When knowledge of it inevitably leaked to the Citadel it would be a political nuke. If the Alliance have a good diplomatic core and a semi-competent government they'll realize this is too big for the Citadel to allow humanity sole control and sell it at a high price. Otherwise we'd probably be looking at economic sanctions if not an outright military response.
Best case scenario we get a couple years of Alliance only sales while we both ramp up production and the bureaucrats bicker over what the Council will give in exchange (quite probably elevating humanity to a Council seat so that the technology can be restricted to Council races only).
Artificial eezo production will always be a thing we won't get to make the decisions about. The Alliance absolutely will dictate how it's handled, if with some input from Paragon Industries because you don't try to strangle the goose when it keeps laying eggs made of solid gold.
However, there is a wide scale of possibilities. If it's so expensive that even with arc reactors you literally can't make it cost effective relative to current mining? Plenty will care, but there won't be a lot of restrictions. It's useful, sure, but the total production won't be that much relative to other sources of eezo.
If it's 'print your own eezo bricks for free', not only will the Citadel care a lot, possibly up to military response, but the Alliance will be working hard to keep it under wraps and prevent it from being used too much because it would crash the entire interstellar economy of everybody if there weren't heavy restrictions on the use of that technology. And there would definitely be military responses from everybody else, before we even consider the absolute skullduggery that would be happening to gain or deny access to that technology.
There is, of course, a wide spectrum of possible results, depending on what, exactly, would be the cost of the process and the infrastructure investment required. We know that Mass Effect has massive particle colliders for the production of anti matter at the required scales, if you need similarly hefty investments and the production method only barely competes with the eezo mining market? The Alliance will be pressured to at minimum share the bounty of eezo they will create with this process. If it's cheap, but just requires we turn Mindoir into a massive industrial facility to make it happen? The infrastructure cost would inherently constrain it.
However, there is a wide scale of possibilities. If it's so expensive that even with arc reactors you literally can't make it cost effective relative to current mining? Plenty will care, but there won't be a lot of restrictions. It's useful, sure, but the total production won't be that much relative to other sources of eezo.
If it's 'print your own eezo bricks for free', not only will the Citadel care a lot, possibly up to military response, but the Alliance will be working hard to keep it under wraps and prevent it from being used too much because it would crash the entire interstellar economy of everybody if there weren't heavy restrictions on the use of that technology. And there would definitely be military responses from everybody else, before we even consider the absolute skullduggery that would be happening to gain or deny access to that technology.
There is, of course, a wide spectrum of possible results, depending on what, exactly, would be the cost of the process and the infrastructure investment required. We know that Mass Effect has massive particle colliders for the production of anti matter at the required scales, if you need similarly hefty investments and the production method only barely competes with the eezo mining market? The Alliance will be pressured to at minimum share the bounty of eezo they will create with this process. If it's cheap, but just requires we turn Mindoir into a massive industrial facility to make it happen? The infrastructure cost would inherently constrain it.
"I want to make combat-effective lasers to completely invalidate the Turian monopoly on force."
"No!"
"Alright, how about working on the genophage problem?"
"Aaah! No no no no!"
"Fine, I'll just make Eezo a mundanely-producible good."
*Salarian representative has a literal meltdown out of a combination of stress-induced heart attacks and aneurisms*
"So would this be a bad time to apply for an AI license?"
Upon a degree of reflection, I don't think I mind if the Alliance gets to keep Artificial Eezo in-house for a few years. I think we've established we're willing to play ball, and helping to create a 'Strategic Eezo Reserve' (or inflate it if it currently exists?) should help with the SA economy. How is the Alliance doing economically right now, anyway? I know we're still in the 'developing economy' range right now, but it sounds like we've got a lot of money coming in our direction as it is, and I don't think we're competing with other companies on most things (either because we just invented this new thing or because we're already the first choice of product. How many other shipyards are making LLPs right now?) so spreading money around is investing in better markets tomorrow, right?
HanEmpire
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Plus the Citadel economy might need some time to adjust to the coming Cheap Eezo Shock. IIRC all the helium refining companies in Citadel space transitioned to Eezo mining to save themselves after the Arc Reactor made fusion reactors go extinct. If we just up and dump cheap Eezo on them, they'll all go bankrupt and then the Citadel races might go into Depression in the middle of a war.
Fusion reactors aren't extinct yet.
They're definitely going to get replaced, but it's kinda important to remember just how big the galactic economy is, and how small Paragon Industries is relatively speaking. It would decades, if not centuries, to replace most of the fusion reactors, simply because a working fusion reactor works, and replacing it with an arc reactor is going to be more expensive than just keeping it working while it's still in its expected service life.
Artificial eezo will depend on how that tech works out. But we might see a notable decrease in the cost of it. Or just an increase in the supply without impacting cost much, that's also possible.
They're definitely going to get replaced, but it's kinda important to remember just how big the galactic economy is, and how small Paragon Industries is relatively speaking. It would decades, if not centuries, to replace most of the fusion reactors, simply because a working fusion reactor works, and replacing it with an arc reactor is going to be more expensive than just keeping it working while it's still in its expected service life.
Artificial eezo will depend on how that tech works out. But we might see a notable decrease in the cost of it. Or just an increase in the supply without impacting cost much, that's also possible.
They aren't. Arc Reactors are absurdly cheap compared to a fusion reactor. To provide a sense of scale a 5GW Arc Reactor goes for 250,000 credits or ~0.05 credits per kW while the cheapest real life capital cost for power is combustion turbines at $710 per kW. Even if fusion reactors were a thousand times cheaper that is still 0.71 per kW or over fourteen times more expensive. Going by the numbers used in the Ship Design V3 spreadsheet for Starships Fusion Reactors tend towards being more like 22,000 times more expensive.
Which is inline with them being priced like well reactors which tend to have large upfront capital costs. Mass Effect doesn't really change this since their cheat to fusion reactors is Eezo and one of the core staples of this quest's economy is that Eezo is expensive, at least on the industrial scale. For reference at 22,000 times more expensive a 5GW (Starship) Fusion Reactor would cost (22,000 x 50,000cr cost rather then our absurdly marked up sales price) around 1.1 billion credits and put it at 220cr per kW putting at noticeably cheaper in capital costs (let alone running costs) compared to real life power planets but still at the commercial power plant level of expense.
Meanwhile our Arc Reactors while expensive are in the price range you can put one in a suit of armor and still get good value out of it. There is a reason we are utterly destroying the fusion energy market.
"... we've reconsidered our stance on the lasers."
If I recall correctly it was assembled via discussion in-thread about 'hey this is a thing we could totally do' and people decided to start selling them to the Alliance the next turn. I mostly recall a bit about "The Alliance was expecting either an average frigate a bit cheaper or easier to build than was the industry standard or an expensive frigate they couldn't afford not to purchase because of all the bells and whistles you put in it. They had the budget for three frigates, but you offered them twenty for the same price and they're able to threaten the biggest, scariest ships in space."
...I should go back and reread that bit.
It's more that they were panicking over what a dreadnought scale pynda could do Andromeda where using it as a panicked attempt to contain the system's alliance/revy's power growth.
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yeah, before the main drawback behind producing a dreadnought was its relatively slow rate of fire, movement speed, and energy requirements, and most important of all a dedicated specialized shipyard to make it. but now with revy, anyone could basically stealth build mini dreadnoughts with commercially available goods. like a guy shopping at a car dealership and deciding to make a aircraft carrier out of the cars and spare parts