Terminus Quest: A CKII Mass Effect Quest

Simon_Jester · Mar 17, 2024

[blinks]

Okay, this goes a bit beyond the "barriers, yes/no" argument.

Because I feel like this is or ought to be an argument against the rachni being able to design starships at all.

A civilization of at most a million or so actual individuals augmented by billions of beings with the wits of a reasonably clever dog shouldn't be able to do that; we can do it but we have more professional engineers than they would have people.

I see two possibilities.

One is that the rachni have some way of putting their vast numbers of nonsapient brains to work on projects like this. Maybe there's a rachni strain that can be used like a machine learning algorithm, it's not really sapient but it can perform certain kinds of intellectual labor in a sapient's stead, with the role of the actual sapients being reduced to error-checking and prompting the big sessile brain-organisms to generate the right kind of output.

The other possibility is that the rachni have a lot more individual beings than we think.

The rachni simply could not build and develop starships if they don't have the means to work on starship designs in a useful-to-them manner. So if we assume they're too limited to be doing ongoing design and prototyping projects to test out new technologies, the logical conclusion is one of two things.

Either that they never design new ships in response to changing conditions in a reasonable amount of time (we have reason to think this isn't true), or they're getting their ships designed for them by the Reapers who have lots of ideas about how a ship works.

Thors_Alumni · Mar 17, 2024

It should be pointed out that the Rachni had to use the majority of their reserves to stop the citadel fleets at horsehead. those take time to replace. But they had enough reserves left to have a major fleet prepping to attack the citadel or other location that was spoiled by Virmire's fleet which subsequently escaped to warn the citadel thus ruining the Rachni's surprise attack. Both the Citadel and the Terminus are literally counting on Virmire's raiding fleets to keep the Rachni off-balance long enough for them to rebuild. which they have to be doing at a somewhat frantic pace. But now the Rachni are probing our defenses in the Maroon Sea and probably elsewhere. They are not out of the fight and can probably still launch a few attacks somewhere.

All of this and more is why we need the Volus banking clans help to build up Virmire's war economy so that we can expand the fleets and hopefully build a third fleet which we can in turn use to attack major Rachni fortifications to deal damage and keep them even more off balance. but that cuts both ways since the Rachni are not sitting still. They are also rebuilding their fleets as well. As for Barriers, as has been pointed out, It is not a win situation since the Rachni will have barrier's eventually. What the Galaxy needs is an ever growing tech tree with newer and better warships and weapons to combat the Rachni and eventually the cuttlefish hanging out in dark space.

Randino Treviani · Mar 17, 2024

uju32 said:
Interjection:
This is not true.

PoptartProdigy said:
Here, those offenses faltered and sputtered out as the Rachni poured more resources into the effort of smashing Virmire. Operation Resurgent Grace proved to be the final and decisive blow which put the Rachni on the defensive, and badly. The rescue of a Rannoch War Fleet and the damage done during the operation left the Rachni wholly incapable even of holding their current gains, and they had to voluntarily cede ground -- although this would not become clear on Virmire for years yet.

Operation resurgent grace put the Rachni on the defensive. It was 17 years prior to wrath of the swarm, easily putting it before a reasonable timeline in which the threshold of effectiveness Mira herself refers to in military review of Year 33 could have been passed. losses may have been accumulated after it, but any significant chunks of Council or Terminus Alliance ships which we're lost in brief skirmishes prior to WotS were likely older ships.

It feels reasonable to say the Rachni had few opportunities, and fewer successes killing and salvaging vessels of either super polity which were benefiting from the advances in Barrier tech which allowed Virmire to achieve a ratio of ship destruction slightly better than 10 to 1.

uju32 said:
They are.
Im assuming he misspoke.

PoptartProdigy said:
He noticed a few things, when he arrived. First, that the system was a wreck. Even stationary defenses were still being reestablished. Second, that any capacity the relay system had to sustain economic throughput was just gone. The Rachni will struggle to move goods in and out of the southern reaches of their empire until they repair the Horsehead Nebula's relay system.

Year thirty three, deep raid.

Dwergar said:
We know that they typically host one queen - maybe two - per battlefleet. Also, as of second battle for Hercules, when we retook that system, there was a single queen to handle all the needs of occupation.

Actually apparently every dreadnought has a queen, according to poptart at some point.

uju32 said:
Citation very much needed.

PoptartProdigy said:
Barriers have always been a mass-cheap way to improve survivability, but for Virmire -- and much of the wider galaxy -- they've always been a supplement. They're a booster to durability, and frankly, yours barely helped. But they've improved, and what you saw during the battle was that they offered a significant and enduring benefit to your ships' survivability. You've seen hints of this before, of course, but never has it been so clearly demonstrated, so consistently. The rachni came in numbers, without barriers. You came with barriers.

And you fucking slaughtered them.

The details come down to barriers being strong enough to repel fire and able to regenerate damage in between engagements. They've crossed a critical point of effectiveness, and things are changing. You have a significant advantage...but the rachni will be realizing this as well. They've resisted barriers up until now, presumably due to cost; after this, they will be able to deny no longer.

Here, also year 33. It says that barriers have passed a critical point of effectiveness which increases survivability. I'm sure a vessel or two was lost in 6 or so years prior to WotS, but probably not many vessels with the latest barrier tech.

Simon_Jester said:
The other possibility is that the rachni have a lot more individual beings than we think.

Between queens and brood warriors, just given the losses and the implications every dreadnought carries a queen, the Rachni likely have a good few 10s of thousands of individuals. How many of those individuals aren't of mostly similar mines do to indoctrination is frank guess work, and it seems unlikely Brood Warriors have any input on matters besides martial, but the individuals in question do exist.

Thors_Alumni said:
All of this and more is why we need the Volus banking clans help to build up Virmire's war economy so that we can expand the fleets and hopefully build a third fleet which we can in turn use to attack major Rachni fortifications to deal damage and keep them even more off balance.

First, keeping the Rachni off balance would involve building a fourth raiding fleets rather than a third battle fleet.

We are not dependent on the volus favor to expand our fleets. While the vote on what to do with the volus favor is very much steadily leaning towards investments and I doubt a switch will happen, I'm still going to point out this is woefully incorrect.

PoptartProdigy said:
Virmire's primary bottleneck on the size of its navy is the availability of qualified personnel. You have slack manufacturing capacity and a significant fiscal surplus; you are now at the point where you need to designate some commands as the dumping ground for the less talented.

As we clarify here, our current fleet bottle kneck is qualified staff, which we have done everything we can to account for already.

While some may feel inclined to say that the fiscal surplus will soon be used, I point you toward the 40000 we will regain from military schools when it completes, our developing colonies, FDO kuriks run investment that will result in new income, and most of all, loading and unloadings solid progress. Loading and unloading will revolutionize our logistics, trade, and resource collection, which will ease the cost of supporting all of our existing and any future fleets. Overall I'd expect to regain a fairly sizeable chunk of income once it completes.

Pittauro · Mar 17, 2024

Simon_Jester said:
A civilization of at most a million or so actual individuals augmented by billions of beings with the wits of a reasonably clever dog shouldn't be able to do that; we can do it but we have more professional engineers than they would have people.

there's always the "genetic memories", which implies that Rachni, while they still need to get good at stuff, they don't, say, need to attend school.

A newborn queen can probably just... study things from her memories, practice, and get goot at shipbuilding (for example) in a fraction of the time it would take most sapients.

That might very well mean they "learn" things as quickly as the Salarian, in some ways, at least as long as it's related to knowledge they have in their genes

AsuraAtlas · Mar 17, 2024

Continuing my reread from where I had to stop, and it's interesting how much the idea of us bringing the Republic into the Terminus is textual. It's not just a stretch goal questers came up with, as they often do. It's literally being floated by the Terminus at the moment of recontact.

And don't get me wrong, I think we have an extreme advantage there. It's certainly possible. But the Council is seeing all this too. And considering what happened with the Tamaras Rim, and how much losing Rannoch to the Alliance would hurt their national myth of racial governance...

Well when we finally take those actions, I expect to find out that Citadel diplomats have actions too.

KnightDisciple · Mar 17, 2024

[X][EXTINCTION] Bombard almost everything besides locations of particular value. While some locations the Rachni occupy hold value in mundane resources and infrastructure, they're nothing we can't replicate ourselves or get elsewhere with little issue. However a few places hold unique or extremely valuable resources that are absolutely worth the effort of taking by force such as Precursor ruins and significant Eezo deposits.
[X][MAROON] Conventionally. Deploy the 2nd Battle Fleet to Maroon Sea. Have one of your raiding fleets pick up patrol duties in Sentry Omega. That will provide a powerful deterrent to any attempts at moving in, and if the rachni try anyway, you should be able to hold long enough to bring in reinforcements.
[X][FAVOR] Ask for something on behalf of the Terminus Alliance, which they will pick, in exchange for one vote of your choice passed without a veto in the Council.

[X][PLAN] Plan Business as usual even if they are Ardat-Yakshi.

Dwergar · Mar 17, 2024

Simon_Jester said:
[blinks]

Okay, this goes a bit beyond the "barriers, yes/no" argument.

Because I feel like this is or ought to be an argument against the rachni being able to design starships at all.

A civilization of at most a million or so actual individuals augmented by billions of beings with the wits of a reasonably clever dog shouldn't be able to do that; we can do it but we have more professional engineers than they would have people.

I see two possibilities.

One is that the rachni have some way of putting their vast numbers of nonsapient brains to work on projects like this. Maybe there's a rachni strain that can be used like a machine learning algorithm, it's not really sapient but it can perform certain kinds of intellectual labor in a sapient's stead, with the role of the actual sapients being reduced to error-checking and prompting the big sessile brain-organisms to generate the right kind of output.

The other possibility is that the rachni have a lot more individual beings than we think.

The rachni simply could not build and develop starships if they don't have the means to work on starship designs in a useful-to-them manner. So if we assume they're too limited to be doing ongoing design and prototyping projects to test out new technologies, the logical conclusion is one of two things.

Either that they never design new ships in response to changing conditions in a reasonable amount of time (we have reason to think this isn't true), or they're getting their ships designed for them by the Reapers who have lots of ideas about how a ship works.

On the third prehensile hand, Rachni were an interstellar empire before, one that merited mention by Protheans as opposed to all other unnamed schmucks they exterminated, and they have genetic memories as a species.

We might actually be fighting some sort of Ork-Tyranid hybrid, possibly retarded by Reaper involvement, and the prudent course of action is to get to glassing until we're sure.

Otherwise... Well, there's telepathy, so usage of external specialised thinking units by queens is a viable hypothetical. However, if we're limiting Rachni to queens, we're making the pool to draw talent from even more shallow. Add in instant communication via telepathy... Singular queen is an individual. Are queens individuals when in telepathical contact with each other?
If not, it implies interesting things on capability; On one hand, multiple minds in telepathical contact likely may brutforce concepts that a feebler mind couldn't comprehend, on the other hand, who is to double check when there's no different mind of similar capability?

Randino Treviani · Mar 17, 2024

AsuraAtlas said:
Well when we finally take those actions, I expect to find out that Citadel diplomats have actions too.

Definitely, the thing is, the citadel didn't play host to a quarians fleet for a decade and half. That's enough time for babies to be born. Babies who might consider Sentry Omega every bit as much as a home as Rannoch. They also aren't sharing cutting edge military tech with their member races, the way we plan too. The council will have bribes and promises, but not "we'll make your Capitol ships so durable the Rachni will scream in frustration at how hard they are to kill" guarantees.

AsuraAtlas · Mar 17, 2024

Randino Treviani said:
Definitely, the thing is, the citadel didn't play host to a quarians fleet for a decade and half. That's enough time for babies to be born. Babies who might consider Sentry Omega every bit as much as a home as Rannoch.

Admiral Malan explicitly came down hard on pregnancy. Accidents undoubtedly happened, but multiple authors notes talked about how what you're describing would require recontact not occurring for much longer. I recall one talking about how such frustration inevitably lead to a great deal of Asari and Batarians getting lucky.

Randino Treviani said:
They also aren't sharing cutting edge military tech with their member races, the way we plan too.

I think "we plan to" is a bit of an exaggeration. It was much more controversial when it was brought up earlier.

And offering to share tech is exactly the sort of actions I would expect Citadel diplomats to take, if Rannoch is so important and they're coming in with such a disadvantage.

Randino Treviani said:
The council will have bribes and promises, but not "we'll make your Capitol ships so durable the Rachni will scream in frustration at how hard they are to kill" guarantees.

...I would love if we were able to make such guarantees, lol.

uju32 · Mar 17, 2024

Dwergar said:
Tbh, I'd say that for Rachni the cost of such a program is very great.

First, Id like to say kudos for bringing up something I didnt even consider.

===
That said? On consideration, I dont think it works.

The Rachni war started after they reverse-engineered a salarian FTL drive.
They re-achieved spaceflight on their own, and travelled to a different system where they mined element zero.
That required a ton of indigenous RnD capability to build a navy from first principles.

Well either that or the Reapers(or potentially the Leviathans, who can also indoctrinate people) literally doing their basic work for them, which doesnt compute, since they'd presumably give them better shit than the Citadel, even if its only Collector tech.

=====
Assuming that the Rachni have roughly the same productivity that everyone else does per capita?

Since they are fighting everyone at once(and were winning until recently) Im going to arbitarily assume they have a rough population of Virmire*10 + 20%. That would be a stable population of ~100 billion or so spread across every Rachni-held cluster; Eletania had 100 million, and it isnt a garden world.

Given a general ratio of 1 sapient to 100 drones/workers/soldiers, and 1 queen to 100 sapients?
That would result in around 1 billion sapients, with maybe 10 million queens to 1 billion or so brood warriors and around 100 billion drones, soldiers and workers. Of that billion, 10-15% being dedicated researchers seems supportable.

For comparison, according to UNICEF Earth had 8.8 million researchers in 2021, when the global population was 7.9 billion.
Which is closer to 0.11% of Earth's population.

Of course, we conquered Eletania, so we can probably have a reasonable guess about what the actual distribution is IC.
Given as we know Shalaya beat at least one Brood Warrior to death personally, we know they probably are more common than 1 in a million.

Randino Treviani said:
Operation resurgent grace put the Rachni on the defensive. It was 17 years prior to wrath of the swarm, easily putting it before a reasonable timeline in which the threshold of effectiveness Mira herself refers to in military review of Year 33 could have been passed. losses may have been accumulated after it, but any significant chunks of Council or Terminus Alliance ships which we're lost in brief skirmishes prior to WotS were likely older ships.

It feels reasonable to say the Rachni had few opportunities, and fewer successes killing and salvaging vessels of either super polity which were benefiting from the advances in Barrier tech which allowed Virmire to achieve a ratio of ship destruction slightly better than 10 to 1.

Resurgent Grace was Year 16/17.
However, the Caleston Rift Raid happened during the timeskip(date unspecified, sometime between Year 20 and Year 23), and the Citadel retaking Exodus and other clusters happened after that.

There has been ample opportunity to witness Citadel barrier tech getting better prior to the latest Horsehead fight.

Randino Treviani said:
Year thirty three, deep raid.

You wrote relay network in the original post. Not relay system.

System = planetary system where there's a relay.
Relay network = Relays, primary and secondary.
Hence my saying you misspoke.

Randino Treviani said:
Here, also year 33. It says that barriers have passed a critical point of effectiveness which increases survivability. I'm sure a vessel or two was lost in 6 or so years prior to WotS, but probably not many vessels with the latest barrier tech.

That assessment by Mira was in Year 33.
There's no indication that it had happened previously.

Randino Treviani said:
First, keeping the Rachni off balance would involve building a fourth raiding fleets rather than a third battle fleet.
We are not dependent on the volus favor to expand our fleets. While the vote on what to do with the volus favor is very much steadily leaning towards investments and I doubt a switch will happen, I'm still going to point out this is woefully incorrect.

The Rachni have spent time fortifying.
Someone has to kick in the door for raiding fleets through well-defended relays and hold the door open for their return, without depleting our ability to defend against counter-attack.

A 1-2 punch of a Battle Fleet to break through relay defenses, and 1-2 Raiding Fleets to go through afterwards to pillage and burn the enemy cluster has a synergy all its own. And you probably need a fresh Battle Fleet behind defending your own relay to prevent the Rachni trying to follow the raiders when they are depleted.

Similarly?
Being able to follow up a jab with a right hook, or a gut shot has its place in both boxing and war.
If nothing else, it induces uncertainty, and forces them to honor the threat by fixing defense forces in the area.

We really need at least three battle fleets as long as we have to hold two frontline systems.

Randino Treviani said:
As we clarify here, our current fleet bottle kneck is qualified staff, which we have done everything we can to account for already.

That education bottleneck vanishes in a year or two.
It takes significantly longer to grow an economy, or to build infrastructure, and the ability to support larger fleets and armies, and the earlier started, the more effects you see down the line.

For example,
In scenario A, our economy is growing at *checks* 4%,(Egypt 2023, 4.2% rounded down)
In scenario B, the Volus stimulus raises the growth rate by 60%, to 6.5% (India, 2023)
In scenario C, the stimulus doubles the growth rate to 8%(Samoa, 2023)
In scenario D, the stimulus triples the growth rate to 12 %(Libya, 2023 12.5% rounded down)
In scenario E, the stimulus raises growth rate by an order of magnitude to 40%(Guyana 2023, 38.4% rounded up)

Given a starting GDP of 100

COMPOUND		INTEREST	IS	A	REAL	BITCH
SCENARIO	GROWTH RATE	5 YEARS	10 YEARS	15 YEARS	20 YEARS	25 YEARS
A	4%	121.67	148	180.1	219.1	266.6
B	6.5%	137	187.7	257.2	352.36	482.8
C	8%	146.93	215.9	317.2	466.1	684.8
D	12%	176.23	310.6	547.4	964.6	1700
E	40%	537.8	2892.5	15,557	83,668	449,988

This presumably could also happen with the rest of the Terminus, mind.
But like I've said previously, the individual nationstates might not necessarily share our priorities, or be as good as we are at implementing them.

uju32 · Mar 17, 2024

Pittauro said:
there's always the "genetic memories", which implies that Rachni, while they still need to get good at stuff, they don't, say, need to attend school.A newborn queen can probably just... study things from her memories, practice, and get goot at shipbuilding (for example) in a fraction of the time it would take most sapients.

That might very well mean they "learn" things as quickly as the Salarian, in some ways, at least as long as it's related to knowledge they have in their genes

Maybe.
That said, they had to reverse-engineer a salarian expedition vessel to regain FTL.
That suggests that genetic/racial memory has bandwith limitations.

AsuraAtlas said:
Continuing my reread from where I had to stop, and it's interesting how much the idea of us bringing the Republic into the Terminus is textual. It's not just a stretch goal questers came up with, as they often do. It's literally being floated by the Terminus at the moment of recontact.

And don't get me wrong, I think we have an extreme advantage there. It's certainly possible. But the Council is seeing all this too. And considering what happened with the Tamaras Rim, and how much losing Rannoch to the Alliance would hurt their national myth of racial governance...

Well when we finally take those actions, I expect to find out that Citadel diplomats have actions too.

Unless they explicitly change a lot for this AU, the Citadel's diplomats arent particularly high pressure

They'll court you if you show up, but they dont appear particularly pressed if you choose to stay away.
They shrugged when the batarians left. Expelled the quarians, and let the death of several sapient AIs happen .
They didnt intervene for the drell either.

AsuraAtlas · Mar 17, 2024

uju32 said:
Unless they explicitly change a lot for this AU, the Citadel's diplomats arent particularly high pressure

Yeah, but in OTL there was no other option. The Citadel was ascendant, the true single galactic government. It was follow them or consign yourself to the fringes of galactic society.

In this quest the Terminus Alliance is a direct challenge to them and their legitimacy. In Canon, the disappearance of the Hegemony and the Republic was the disappearance of already problematic elements. Here, it's a fairly existential problem, if not an existential threat.

Randino Treviani · Mar 17, 2024

uju32 said:
Resurgent Grace was Year 16/17.
However, the Caleston Rift Raid happened during the timeskip(date unspecified, sometime between Year 20 and Year 23), and the Citadel retaking Exodus and other clusters happened after that.

There has been ample opportunity to witness Citadel barrier tech getting better prior to the latest Horsehead fight.

It was prior to year 16.

The citadel took those systems as the Rachni was put on the defensive in the aftermath of Resurgent Grace, likely ceding them with less contention than they could have managed in favor of conserving their forces for their push in year 32. Victories for the council taking clusters from the Rachni would offer little chance for the Rachni to kill and retrieve the latest, most advance ships of a polity, particularly if they had recently reached some point of Barrier tech granting significantly increased survivability.

The increased Survivability was only noticed by Mira after virmire contributed to 3 major naval victories with high ratios of Rachni Vessels to Virmire vessels lost, and still required a dedicated action in which Mira collected data from all 6 major battles in year 32 to identify and prove that barriers effectiveness had increased to the point where it merited an adjustment of virmire tactics and strategic use of Barriers as well as the development of anti barrier tactics.

PoptartProdigy said:
Barriers have always been a mass-cheap way to improve survivability, but for Virmire -- and much of the wider galaxy -- they've always been a supplement. They're a booster to durability, and frankly, yours barely helped. But they've improved, and what you saw during the battle was that they offered a significant and enduring benefit to your ships' survivability. You've seen hints of this before, of course, but never has it been so clearly demonstrated, so consistently. The rachni came in numbers, without barriers. You came with barriers.

The various polities in the galaxy may have noticed fewer casualties or other significant markers, but the data was too little or not sufficiently shared enough to reliably say the cause until a series of major, lengthy battle demonstrated the benefits irrefutably.

uju32 said:
You wrote relay network in the original post. Not relay system.

System = planetary system where there's a relay.
Relay network = Relays, primary and secondary.
Hence my saying you misspoke.

Fair.

uju32 said:
The Rachni have spent time fortifying.
Someone has to kick in the door for raiding fleets through well-defended relays and hold the door open for their return, without depleting our ability to defend against counter-attack.

A 1-2 punch of a Battle Fleet to break through relay defenses, and 1-2 Raiding Fleets to go through afterwards to pillage and burn the enemy cluster has a synergy all its own. And you probably need a fresh Battle Fleet behind defending your own relay to prevent the Rachni trying to follow the raiders when they are depleted.

PoptartProdigy said:
Raiding doctrine info page.

I'm not seeing this in the post defining Raiding Doctrine, nor does it match up to my memories of the quests narrated Raids.

PoptartProdigy said:
None of your fleets are precisely ready for action, but you prioritize repairs for the 3rd Raiding Fleet under Admiral Mordin Sentra. His fleet has the most experience in raiding, having been your favored formation for the task over the past decade. You want him on the mission. He rallies up the Explorer Corps, brings his fresh-out-of-the-docks vessels into formation, and travels off into the unknown. Operation Insight leaves at full strength.

The 3rd and the EC return weeks later, battle-scarred and missing ships, and Mordin's face is grim indeed as he tells you of what he found.

Mordin blitzed through the Maroon Sea and then to the Shadow Sea, mapping the defenses being established there before moving on after a brief skirmish.

It definitively wasn't employed for the deep raid.

uju32 said:
That assessment by Mira was in Year 33.
There's no indication that it had happened previously.

It was based on the events of year 32. We did not miraculously replace all the barrier tech just before Wrath of the swarm event. This implies that at some point prior to recontact or around recontact, Virmire passed this "critical point of efficiency" unnoticed without aid from the larger galaxy. Since the council and presumably some members of the terminus alliance have at least marginally better barrier tech than virmire had a the time, it's safe to assume that the council had passed this point as well a few years before Virmire.

uju32 said:
That education bottleneck vanishes in a year or two.

Our schools will open properly in a year. I doubt they'll have graduates ready until the end of year 39, especially with the slim success on military schools.

uju32 said:
It takes significantly longer to grow an economy, or to build infrastructure, and the ability to support larger fleets and armies, and the earlier started, the more effects you see down the line.

Yes, volus investments are undeniably going to benefit our economy, which gives us more to contribute to our various aims.

Randino Treviani said:
We are not dependent on the volus favor to expand our fleets.

None the less, this does not make my point that we do not need the volus favor to expand out fleets incorrect. Supporting our 6 existing fleets(EC counts) is set to become a lot cheaper, and some actions completing will put money back into income, as will certain foreshadowed passive effects. The voters seem to have ultimately decided the volus favor is best spent on the economy, but short some unforseen disaster, it was never going to be critical to fleet expansion in the near future.

Chimeraguard · Mar 18, 2024

[X][EXTINCTION] Bombard almost everything besides locations of particular value. While some locations the Rachni occupy hold value in mundane resources and infrastructure, they're nothing we can't replicate ourselves or get elsewhere with little issue. However a few places hold unique or extremely valuable resources that are absolutely worth the effort of taking by force such as Precursor ruins and significant Eezo deposits.
[X][MAROON] Conventionally. Deploy the 2nd Battle Fleet to Maroon Sea. Have one of your raiding fleets pick up patrol duties in Sentry Omega. That will provide a powerful deterrent to any attempts at moving in, and if the rachni try anyway, you should be able to hold long enough to bring in reinforcements.
[X][FAVOR] Investment. The finances of Irune are without equal. You want that money moving to prop up enterprises within your space, on generous terms.
[X][PLAN] Plan Business as usual even if they are Ardat-Yakshi.

Simon_Jester · Mar 18, 2024

Pittauro said:
there's always the "genetic memories", which implies that Rachni, while they still need to get good at stuff, they don't, say, need to attend school.

A newborn queen can probably just... study things from her memories, practice, and get goot at shipbuilding (for example) in a fraction of the time it would take most sapients.

That might very well mean they "learn" things as quickly as the Salarian, in some ways, at least as long as it's related to knowledge they have in their genes

Even if any given rachni queen has the knowledge of all her foremothers, how many rachni queens have a grandma who made a useful study of starship engineering?

Again, I just think the rachni must have some way around this unless they literally just have no R&D of their own and are dependent on whatever the Reapers give them. They've got to have some way to invent new stuff, and that takes more than a handful of isolated individuals doing design work.

Given recent innovations in machine learning, my working theory right now is that the rachni have a caste of "brainy bug" that may not actually be sapient in a normal sense of the word, but that can somehow be used to generate engineering diagrams (or almost-right iterations of engineering diagrams that can then be refined) if telepathically commanded to do so.

AsuraAtlas said:
Continuing my reread from where I had to stop, and it's interesting how much the idea of us bringing the Republic into the Terminus is textual. It's not just a stretch goal questers came up with, as they often do. It's literally being floated by the Terminus at the moment of recontact.

And don't get me wrong, I think we have an extreme advantage there. It's certainly possible. But the Council is seeing all this too. And considering what happened with the Tamaras Rim, and how much losing Rannoch to the Alliance would hurt their national myth of racial governance...

Well when we finally take those actions, I expect to find out that Citadel diplomats have actions too.

The big factor that makes it textual is that the quarians spent a long period of time largely cut off from the Citadel and might well have been overwhelmed if not for the Terminus Alliance. In-universe this makes flipping sides considerably more appealing to the quarians than it would otherwise be.

Dwergar said:
On the third prehensile hand, Rachni were an interstellar empire before, one that merited mention by Protheans as opposed to all other unnamed schmucks they exterminated, and they have genetic memories as a species.

Hm. This invites the question, though, of why they didn't reinvent starships before the salarian survey vessel made contact with them.

I can't help but speculate that the rachni genetic memory grows... hazy... over a period of dozens of millennia, to the point where they no longer would have clear memory of all the technology they once had. By extension, they would not have clear memory of how warship designs should work in detail, and would still have to re-engineer things from scratch.

I think that the "specialized co-processor organism" or 'brain bug' that can effectively outsource some of a rachni queen's intellectual labor is the answer here. Such a 'brain bug' would not necessarily require a much more developed brain than a rachni warrior or worker! After all, something about as smart as a dog or a chimpanzee has a LOT of neural processing power; it's just that most of this processing power is devoted to things like "managing the body in real time" and "processing visual and auditory input." A blind, deaf brain-creature that only lives by being literally spoonfed by other rachni would have a lot more capacity for thinking.

AsuraAtlas said:
Yeah, but in OTL there was no other option. The Citadel was ascendant, the true single galactic government. It was follow them or consign yourself to the fringes of galactic society.

In this quest the Terminus Alliance is a direct challenge to them and their legitimacy. In Canon, the disappearance of the Hegemony and the Republic was the disappearance of already problematic elements. Here, it's a fairly existential problem, if not an existential threat.

Poptart's interpretation is that in canon, the Terminus Alliance historically was broken up and digested by Citadel diplomacy after the end of the Rachni Wars (possibly with a few nudges to the krogan, and/or with the Krogan Rebellions finishing them off, I speculate). This would explain why we never hear anything about them in the games; they are an irrelevant polity that did exist but has not existed in a thousand years or more.

The thing is, that implies that Citadel diplomacy of the period was active, more active than in the game era, precisely because in 350 AD the Citadel actually had competition as a rival galactic power.

Mad0Slayer · Mar 18, 2024

PoptartProdigy said:
On the Terminus front, the Rachni seized every system bordering the Omega Nebula, and left the Alliance's capital under siege. Without a record of tangible successes, Su'val spent all of her time struggling simply to maintain the Alliance. As a result, she had no time or energy to secure the Tamaras Rim, and the Alliance slowly slipped down the rankings. By the year 509, the Alliance was a tier two power in practice, thanks to ruinous attrition and an utter inability to coordinate forces. When Su'val died, there was no clear successor, and any pretense of central control dissolved. The Alliance remained, and Omega never fell, but once the pressure came off, they promptly shattered into the Terminus Systems of canon.

Simon_Jester said:
Poptart's interpretation is that in canon, the Terminus Alliance historically was broken up and digested by Citadel diplomacy after the end of the Rachni Wars (possibly with a few nudges to the krogan, and/or with the Krogan Rebellions finishing them off,

I don't think so if I'm reading this right it sounds like they survived the war with the Rachni only for their internal politics to shatter due to the fact it lacked any polity with a proper government structure and no one working to stabilize it.

So the council probably didn't need to do anything, you'll probably find that they were to weak or tired to deal with the remnants becoming pirates or warlords which is why it's still a bunch of crime systems in cannon. Mostly just strong enough to be a costly issue that no one wants to deal with.

Simon_Jester · Mar 18, 2024

Mad0Slayer said:
I don't think so if I'm reading this right it sounds like they survived the war with the Rachni only for their internal politics to shatter due to the fact it lacked any polity with a proper government structure and no one working to stabilize it.

So the council probably didn't need to do anything, you'll probably find that they were to weak or tired to deal with the remnants becoming pirates or warlords which is why it's still a bunch of crime systems in cannon. Mostly just strong enough to be a costly issue that no one wants to deal with.

Who do you think would have been exercising soft power influence to ensure that the Terminus Alliance had no functioning internal government, could not remain stable, and so on? The Citadel had enormous incentive to make that happen, after all. It seems very hard to imagine that they wouldn't take steps to do that.

Asari diplomacy and Salarian intrigue are things we hear talked up a lot in the game era. I think there are reasons for that, and I think they were working to break up potential rivals to Citadel influence throughout the game era. We should keep our eyes peeled, rather than expecting them to be a passive hunk of roast we can carve slices off.

uju32 · Mar 18, 2024

Randino Treviani said:
It was prior to year 16.

The citadel took those systems as the Rachni was put on the defensive in the aftermath of Resurgent Grace, likely ceding them with less contention than they could have managed in favor of conserving their forces for their push in year 32. Victories for the council taking clusters from the Rachni would offer little chance for the Rachni to kill and retrieve the latest, most advance ships of a polity, particularly if they had recently reached some point of Barrier tech granting significantly increased survivability.

The increased Survivability was only noticed by Mira after virmire contributed to 3 major naval victories with high ratios of Rachni Vessels to Virmire vessels lost, and still required a dedicated action in which Mira collected data from all 6 major battles in year 32 to identify and prove that barriers effectiveness had increased to the point where it merited an adjustment of virmire tactics and strategic use of Barriers as well as the development of anti barrier tactics.

No, thats not true.
The Citadel took those systems during the timeskip; there's explicit text statement to that effect.
I quote:

First of all, clusters changing hands from last check:

As suspected, the Rachni did cede the Hades Nexus to the Terminus Systems.

The clusters the Rachni lost in the wake of the Caleston Raid were the Exodus Cluster, to the Citadel, and the Ninmah Cluster, to the Terminus. The Exodus Cluster has not been returned to Hegemony administration, and is currently run by the Council itself under military occupation, given existing Rachni holdouts and the presence of the front line.

Second change: as I have decided to officially name it, Kurik's Run. Kurik's run stretches from Sentry Omega to the Phoenix Massing. You'll see it as a winding, dotted line connecting the two, by way of denoting that it's a secondary relay chain rather than a primary relay connection.

Terminus Quest: A CKII Mass Effect Quest Sci-Fi

Here you have, it, folks; @Versharl's newest map! First of all, clusters changing hands from last check: As suspected, the Rachni did cede the Hades Nexus to the Terminus Systems. The clusters the Rachni lost in the wake of the Caleston Raid were the Exodus Cluster, to the Citadel, and the...

forums.sufficientvelocity.com

The Caleston Raid happened during the timeskip, not after Resurgent Grace.
Ninmah Cluster is home to the Remnant, and is why they are such fans of Mira.

As far as I can tell, the Rachni lost no other clusters due to Mira's activities.

Randino Treviani said:
I'm not seeing this in the post defining Raiding Doctrine, nor does it match up to my memories of the quests narrated Raids.

Randino Treviani said:
It definitively wasn't employed for the deep raid.

It wasnt employed because the Citadel Fleets(and the Terminus Fleets) had already done it for us.

This was immediately after the Terminus Alliance conquered Caleston Rift and broke the Rachni fleets there, and after the Citadel had first captured Horsehead Nebula, destroying the Rachni fleet, then losing it to the Rachni strategic reserve.
The Rachni front lines were shattered, the defenses were shattered, the infrastructure was shattered.

The 3rd and the EC return weeks later, battle-scarred and missing ships, and Mordin's face is grim indeed as he tells you of what he found.

Mordin blitzed through the Maroon Sea and then to the Shadow Sea, mapping the defenses being established there before moving on after a brief skirmish. Despite the combat, he was able to then pass through Argos Rho unimpeded aside from system defenses. He was suspicious, but he needed to push on; a raiding fleet that sits still is dead. So he pushed on, to the Horsehead Nebula.

He noticed a few things, when he arrived. First, that the system was a wreck. Even stationary defenses were still being reestablished. Second, that any capacity the relay system had to sustain economic throughput was just gone. The Rachni will struggle to move goods in and out of the southern reaches of their empire until they repair the Horsehead Nebula's relay system.

Finally, that there was an invasion fleet massing at the relay to the Exodus Cluster.

Mordin's ships immediately broke away when they saw that. Mordin almost jumped them straight back through the relay to Argos Rho, but thought better of it just in time; reinforcements were surely en route from the south via Ardat Yaal, and if he fell into the trap, he would be unlikely to escape. So instead he wheeled about and made for the relay to Styx Theta.

Captain Kurik privately tells you, later, that that battle was the most terrifying experience of his life; that in Hercules, he had at least been able to count on backup from Virmire's entire mustered navy. He tell you that having to run the gauntlet to that relay, hideously and suicidally outnumbered as Rachni vessels closed in from every side, was the first time in his life that he was sure he would die.

And he tells you that Admiral Mordin never even blinked. Directing his fleet with consummate ease, the salarian drove through the rachni's fragile, still-recovering defenses and made it to the relay just before he could be cut off. And then, they were through to Styx Theta. With rachni warships pouring through the relay after them, Mordin made for the relay to the Caleston Rift. For ten heart-stopping minutes, he battled the defenses there as warships closed in from behind.

Thats the only reason we pulled it off.

You dont just throw a raiding fleet at a defended system whose relays are fortified.
They're half the size of a battlefleet, and with significantly less firepower than half a battlefleet because no dreads.
They'll die.

Randino Treviani said:
Our schools will open properly in a year. I doubt they'll have graduates ready until the end of year 39, especially with the slim success on military schools.

Our schools arent empty now.
This is a reformation/reprioritization, not a setup from scratch.

Randino Treviani said:
Yes, volus investments are undeniably going to benefit our economy, which gives us more to contribute to our various aims.

Randino Treviani said:
None the less, this does not make my point that we do not need the volus favor to expand out fleets incorrect. Supporting our 6 existing fleets(EC counts) is set to become a lot cheaper, and some actions completing will put money back into income, as will certain foreshadowed passive effects. The voters seem to have ultimately decided the volus favor is best spent on the economy, but short some unforseen disaster, it was never going to be critical to fleet expansion in the near future.

You are forgetting the time factor.

This is a war and the other side is rebuilding at the same time we are. The quicker we rebuild, the faster we can exploit the existing window of vulnerability before it closes. And the more use we can get out of our Taylor-class Hero Admiral Sentra before he retires or dies; he's a salarian, and they have limited lifespans.

Ask me for anything but time, said Napoleon.
This is as applicable to maneuver warfare on land as it is to grand offensives in space.

Simon_Jester said:
Hm. This invites the question, though, of why they didn't reinvent starships before the salarian survey vessel made contact with them.

I can't help but speculate that the rachni genetic memory grows... hazy... over a period of dozens of millennia, to the point where they no longer would have clear memory of all the technology they once had. By extension, they would not have clear memory of how warship designs should work in detail, and would still have to re-engineer things from scratch.

I think that the "specialized co-processor organism" or 'brain bug' that can effectively outsource some of a rachni queen's intellectual labor is the answer here. Such a 'brain bug' would not necessarily require a much more developed brain than a rachni warrior or worker! After all, something about as smart as a dog or a chimpanzee has a LOT of neural processing power; it's just that most of this processing power is devoted to things like "managing the body in real time" and "processing visual and auditory input." A blind, deaf brain-creature that only lives by being literally spoonfed by other rachni would have a lot more capacity for thinking.

They did reinvent starships.
Its apparently canon that they rediscovered spaceflight several centuries before the salarians wandered into their tentacles. They apparently went to another planet in their home system and mined eezo

Kashshaptu is the first terrestrial planet the rachni visited after achieving spaceflight. Although most of Kashshaptu is composed of silicate minerals, the rachni made an important discovery when they charted "the howling gulf," an enormous crater near the planet's equator. The depression was caused by the impact of several dozen extrasolar asteroids containing large quantities of element zero. The rachni took samples of the new element back to Suen for further study.

Centuries later, when the rachni captured the Citadel expedition that opened the relay to their system, their research on eezo helped them reverse-engineer the ships' FTL drives. The rachni built faster-than-light vessels of their own and rapidly expanded beyond their own stars.

Kashshaptu

Location: Milky Way / Ninmah Cluster / Maskim Xul System / Second planet Kashshaptu is the first terrestrial planet the rachni visited after achieving spaceflight. Although most of Kashshaptu is composed of silicate minerals, the rachni made an important discovery when they charted "the howling...

masseffect.fandom.com

What they did not reinvent was FTL, which needed the salarians.

Is a brain-bug co-processor plausible? Yes.
Given the size of a queen, it would be comparatively equivalent to one of those lap dogs or cats that many people are fond of.

The problem, from my PoV, is that it would be precisely the sort of thing you would expect to be standard issue not just with research Queens, but with fleet admiral queens as well.
And I dont think we've run into any on any of the capital ships we've killed and salvaged.

Simon_Jester said:
Who do you think would have been exercising soft power influence to ensure that the Terminus Alliance had no functioning internal government, could not remain stable, and so on? The Citadel had enormous incentive to make that happen, after all. It seems very hard to imagine that they wouldn't take steps to do that.

Asari diplomacy and Salarian intrigue are things we hear talked up a lot in the game era. I think there are reasons for that, and I think they were working to break up potential rivals to Citadel influence throughout the game era. We should keep our eyes peeled, rather than expecting them to be a passive hunk of roast we can carve slices off.

Also an additional reason to get some volus investment in Virmire specifically.
Put some additional skin in the game on the part of the Citadel's primary bankers, in addition to the volus garden world we already control.

Simon_Jester · Mar 18, 2024

uju32 said:
They did reinvent starships...

What they did not reinvent was FTL, which needed the salarians.

...

[takes a deep breath]

Linguistic subtlety here: The term 'starship' is frequently used to refer to 'ship capable of interstellar travel.' In settings where FTL travel is commonplace, it generally refers only to ships equipped with an FTL drive. Furthermore, the link you provided is not even clear evidence of sublight generation ships being used for interstellar travel. It is proof only that the rachni had interplanetary craft, since both Suen, their homeworld, and the world humans now call 'Kashshaptu,' are in the same star system.

This is like saying "humans invented starships because they visited Mars and found the Prothean archive there." Yes, they went from Earth to Mars, but no, the vessels they did it in could not reasonably be considered 'starships.'

Furthermore, FTL is such a foundational technology for design of typical spacecraft in the Mass Effect paradigm. It seems very strange that the rachni would have clear, useful memories of how to build interplanetary spacecraft inherited from older times, and yet not remember how to use eezo to build FTL drives or barrier shield generators once they had eezo in their possession.

It seems far more plausible that any rachni ancestral memories of a time when their race knew how to build spacecraft 50,000 years ago are "blurred" to the point where the modern rachni had to reinvent the technology more or less from scratch.

Is a brain-bug co-processor plausible? Yes.
Given the size of a queen, it would be comparatively equivalent to one of those lap dogs or cats that many people are fond of.

The problem, from my PoV, is that it would be precisely the sort of thing you would expect to be standard issue not just with research Queens, but with fleet admiral queens as well.
And I dont think we've run into any on any of the capital ships we've killed and salvaged.

Two easy possibilities:

1) They're not necessarily independently mobile. It's entirely possible that the typical 'brain bug' is physically parasitic on some other organism, in which case we wouldn't be able to tell the difference between a dedicated co-processor organism and random three-kilogram hunks of brain tissue weirdly grafted onto some other organism.

2) They may exist separately forms that are hard for our scientists to distinguish from "rachni computer hardware" or something like that. Frankly there's a lot of details of how rachni tech works that we just don't see in-quest because those precise details aren't significant at our level of resolution.

Randino Treviani · Mar 18, 2024

uju32 said:
No, thats not true.
The Citadel took those systems during the timeskip; there's explicit text statement to that effect.
I quote:

Yes, I'm not disagreeing with when they happened, but instead pointing out that it likely happened as a result of Resurgent Grace's impact on the war.

PoptartProdigy said:
Here, those offenses faltered and sputtered out as the Rachni poured more resources into the effort of smashing Virmire. Operation Resurgent Grace proved to be the final and decisive blow which put the Rachni on the defensive, and badly. The rescue of a Rannoch War Fleet and the damage done during the operation left the Rachni wholly incapable even of holding their current gains, and they had to voluntarily cede ground -- although this would not become clear on Virmire for years yet.

With hindsight telling us they must have already begun building up their reserves by the point the mentioned clusters were being taken, it becomes obvious that the Rachni were ceding territory to avoid losses which would cripple their efforts to establish numerical superiority.

More to the point, Citadel and Terminus victories would be poor opportunities to kill and salvage the latest council or terminus ship models which could presumably be benefiting from barriers which had passed some "Critical point of effectiveness".

uju32 said:
As far as I can tell, the Rachni lost no other clusters due to Mira's activities.

The Timeline vs from lore screen, and simple hindsight, indicates differently. Resurgent grace put the Rachni on the backfoot and caused them to adopt a policy of ceding clusters to both super polities in the name of building up the previous mentioned reserve to use in some grand offensive. It is the best logical representation of events accounting for the majority of what we now know and what is told to us by various info posts.

uju32 said:
You dont just throw a raiding fleet at a defended system whose relays are fortified.
They're half the size of a battlefleet, and with significantly less firepower than half a battlefleet because no dreads.
They'll die.

Then the complete absence of mention of this part of the process should be corrected. Personally, breaching the Relay hours ahead of the raiding fleets feels like it would give too much warning and leave little time to carry out it's mission with reinforcements already en route.

PoptartProdigy said:
Toral looks up and immediately floats a datapad over to you with his biotics. "Two hours ago, the 3rd Raiding Fleet returned early from its scheduled raid into Hades Gamma. They reported a Rachni fleet, approximately the size of two Battle Fleets, massing there."

It also contradicts this piece of dialogue, as it would be a battle fleet spotting the massing citadel fleets if they were piercing ahead of raiding fleets. Given the attack on Hercules was the first warning of the impending escalated conflict over the next month, their is little reason Virmire would suspect the relay to be unprotected and break procedure, if Battle fleets entering first is procedure. Frankly given the failure to mention it in Raiding Doctrines info Pages and the evidence that contradicts it in the Opening of wrath of the swarm, this feels more like an assumption that the narrative hasn't conclusively disproven yet.

To resolve this satisfactorily, I'm simply going to ask @PoptartProdigy prodigy what role, if any, commonwealth Battle Fleets play in the commonwealths use of Raiding Doctrine.

uju32 said:
Our schools arent empty now.
This is a reformation/reprioritization, not a setup from scratch.

PoptartProdigy said:
[ ] Military Schools: While your educational system must, first and foremost, be for education, your decision to emphasize skills valuable to the military demands certain investments. One of your current series of test bed schools trains promising candidates for enlisted or officer service starting in mid-to-late adolescence. While your other test beds are closing down now, expand this set and formally adopt it into your school system. Time: 4 years. Cost: -40,000 yearly income. Chance of Success: 80%. Effect: Establish the specialized academies needed to produce trained recruits for the military right at the cusp of adulthood.

One of the schools is doing the job correctly, and we are changing all of the others, which indicates that the students of our other testbed academies will have to start an all new curriculum, with the exception of a single school(1000-2000 students maybe? Possibly less depending on what year size works best? ). Further more there is no way we have as many testbed academies as to teach the percentage of our population we expect to, especially given size would be a factor to tests. New centers of learning are almost certainly being created if it is intended to meet demand in a timely manner.

uju32 said:
You are forgetting the time factor.

This is a war and the other side is rebuilding at the same time we are. The quicker we rebuild, the faster we can exploit the existing window of vulnerability before it closes. And the more use we can get out of our Taylor-class Hero Admiral Sentra before he retires or dies; he's a salarian, and they have limited lifespans.

Ask me for anything but time, said Napoleon.
This is as applicable to maneuver warfare on land as it is to grand offensives in space.

Applicable, yes. Relevant in any way to the point I'm making? Afraid not. Also I'm forgetting nothing.

PoptartProdigy said:
Virmire's primary bottleneck on the size of its navy is the availability of qualified personnel. You have slack manufacturing capacity and a significant fiscal surplus; you are now at the point where you need to designate some commands as the dumping ground for the less talented.

Our shipyards are poised to build new fleets, there is no financial obstacle to there creation to be found, only a lack of bodies to hold us back. I'm not sure precisely what point your trying to make here that counters this, but simple observation of our recent actions and impending advances indicates multiple factors working in our favor to keep our income stable and even allow it to increase at points in the coming few turns..

As the situation stands, there is nothing we can do in the short term to accelerate the timetable of our Naval expansion, but finances are not a limiting factor and are not likely to become one. Volus investments serve as a means to somehow accelerate the process either.

I reiterate, Volus favors are not critical to expanding our Navy nor is there an existing lack of funds to serve as an obstacle to the expansion of our Navy. Neither can it be said that the arrival of any such instance of need or obstacle is imminent.

Pittauro · Mar 18, 2024

Randino Treviani said:
Our shipyards are poised to build new fleets, there is no financial obstacle to there creation to be found, only a lack of bodies to hold us back. I'm not sure precisely what point your trying to make here that counters this, but simple observation of our recent actions and impending advances indicates multiple factors working in our favor to keep our income stable and even allow it to increase at points in the coming few turns..

As the situation stands, there is nothing we can do in the short term to accelerate the timetable of our Naval expansion, but finances are not a limiting factor and are not likely to become one. Volus investments serve as a means to somehow accelerate the process either.

The way I see it it's true that this is our current bottleneck, but with the schools about to be done the bottleneck will change in 5 to 10 years, so the question becomes:

Do we believe our current ~~shop~~ ship production is enough for our needs and/or the best our economy can support, or do we want to start working on another expansion so that in a few years we'll immediately be able to further expand the navies?

We currently have 2 battle fleets and 3 raiding fleets, and they need to be refitted to ablative armor and yulair power (not sure if that's done automatically as part of the ~~tulair~~ Yulair action).

We want more. A LOT MORE. We want to double our current fleets quickly, I think, and to not stop there.

Considering we'll also have to work on repairs, retrofitting and so on, we might very well want/need to expand the shipyards again already.

@PoptartProdigy can you give us an idea of just how quickly we can now create new raiding or battle fleets, while also working on repairs, retrofits and defense platforms? Also does it still take dedicated actions? I think it was mentioned it's now done automatically, but I want to be sure.

Wiggy · Mar 18, 2024

uju32 said:
You wrote relay network in the original post. Not relay system.

System = planetary system where there's a relay.
Relay network = Relays, primary and secondary.
Hence my saying you misspoke.

Yeah, I misread that my first time through that chapter too, on a second look it's probably just talking about all the fueling and docking and repair infrastructure in system rather than the relays themselves.

Mad0Slayer · Mar 18, 2024

PoptartProdigy said:
The Koruns match the latest rachni heavy cruisers for speed, and significantly overmatch the rear-line garrison forces they most typically engage. In STL flight, they are nimble and fast, and large heat radiation banks enable it to remain in combat for far longer than most ships. Barriers also saw fierce investment, with the incredible new reserves of power along with incremental improvements in barrier technology enabling barriers that can soak five dreadnought shots before failing. The Korun's barriers are -- albeit barely, thanks to more sophisticated Citadel designs -- the strongest in the galaxy for the ship's size.

I don't think barrier tech has actually universally passed the threshold if we can field a ship with the galaxies strongest barriers for its ship class maybe our barriers are a bit more brute forced than our citadel counter parts but it's still stronger.

It's gonna be fun when we have to revamp the navy with the new tech that's for sure. We'll probably hold a nice edge over Rachni for at least a decade or two before it becomes less of an edge.

Randino Treviani said:
As the situation stands, there is nothing we can do in the short term to accelerate the timetable of our Naval expansion, but finances are not a limiting factor and are not likely to become one. Volus investments serve as a means to somehow accelerate the process either.

True though it will let us start exploiting our ridiculously rich system, also start getting our economy less focused on purely our ship building issue and probably be good for internal stability. In the long run it'll probably help us field a larger navy but I'm hoping to leverage our strong economy to start helping the weaker terminus systems also it should give us an in road with the Tamaris rim through trade and hopefully drag them into our sphere.

Also if we're stronger internally we'll be less likely to suffer some strange issue. I'm not gonna put it past the Salarian Union to try and undermine us. I'll actually put good money that well probably be target along with the Tamaris Rim and maybe omega to screw with stabilising our alliance.

Randino Treviani · Mar 18, 2024

Mad0Slayer said:
Also if we're stronger internally we'll be less likely to suffer some strange issue. I'm not gonna put it past the Salarian Union to try and undermine us. I'll actually put good money that well probably be target along with the Tamaris Rim and maybe omega to screw with stabilising our alliance.

Oh Salarians are already trying to undermine us. By giving money to our weakest political party to help them bribe people to oppose Democratic Reform.

PoptartProdigy said:
Troubling News: Shereel has reported to Counter-Intelligence Division that one of her fellow Dalatrasses has made reached out to her about their concerns about the shifting dynamics of social and political power in the Commonwealth, appealing to their shared positions of very traditional social supremacy in salarian society. Shereel says that the woman spoke of money and support for concerned citizens hoping to avoiding disruptive influences. A lot of money and support.

I kind of want to string them along by pretending it's working to trick them into forking over as much cash as possible and then just arresting the collaborators and seizing all that money as evidence.

Pittauro said:
Do we believe our current ~~shop~~ ship production is enough for our needs and/or the best our economy can support, or do we want to start working on another expansion so that in a few years we'll immediately be able to further expand the navies?

Between the personnel bottle neck, the fact that fleets are already going to be in production ahead of the academies finishing, we are a good several years, possibly as much as half a dozen, off from another expansion being advisable, let alone actionable.

PoptartProdigy said:
[ ] The Commonwealth Call For Aid: Your military strength was one of the things that the Alliance wanted to acquire. While repairs from the carnage of 511 GS have largely concluded and your shipyards are ready to hum into action, there's always more to be done, and with the Alliance's financial and industrial support, you can expand your capabilities even more. With the support of the Cooperatives and the loyalty of your own sub-faction, this should be easier to swing, if you focus on it hard. Time: 1 year. Cost: 10,000 credits. Chance of Success: 45%. Effect: Acquire aid for expanding and maintaining your military.

This action clarifies that industry is also a factor in our ability to expand our shipyards again. While some might suggest the volus investments will help us expand our own industry, that seems questionable to me.

PoptartProdigy said:
Between financial difficulties and the ever-hungry maw of the war effort, however, you have been forced to prioritize gains over reform time and again in order to accrue enough supplies for the war effort. Your budget is more secure now than it ever have been before, but that is largely the result of renewed trade with the wider galaxy and your increasing exploitation of resources within your own territory. To tell the truth, what you have is an inefficient mess, but you have had precious few opportunities to address that.

One of our big problems is the imbalance between military and civilian industry. Thus, I have my doubts that the Volus investments will develop specific industry sufficiently to enable us to expand our shipbuilding. The commonwealth call for aid action however seems promising, though since it looks like investments is winning, hopefully the action will change to just industrial support, since we no longer need the financial aspect, and terminus does.

Pittauro · Mar 18, 2024

Going through all the informational threadmark a again, as a bit of a personal recap.

A few things I'd like to mention

PoptartProdigy said:
As of Turn 36, in part due to costs getting away from me, you may now do this with two options in a given year.

Poptart, to be clear, can we take 2 of EITHER double down and/or expedite, or does it have to be one DD and one EX?

PoptartProdigy said:
For every action you take relating to a hero's area of specialty, I roll against twice the option's DC, with no bonus. If that check passes, the hero applies their full relevant stat to the main roll for the option in addition to personal or adviser bonuses. Heroes can appear multiple times in a year with no penalties.

I nearly forgot this is how heroes are randomly triggered. I wonder, do we have an uncommon number of heroes as far as polities go? Hard to say.

PoptartProdigy said:
Year votes in particular, but all votes in practice, will permit write-ins. I reserve the right to moderate these write-ins for how much of a load they impose on my end. This applies whether or not write-ins are explicitly listed among your options.

Wait, WRITE-INS are allowed in turn votes? I absolutely did not remember that!

Below, what our heroes trigger on

PoptartProdigy said:
Kurik may activate for scouting operations, military skirmishes, survey missions, and covert operations.

We sadly didn't have any of those super-recently...

PoptartProdigy said:
Mordin may activate for military-facing missions, particularly raids.

Who knows, maybe we'll get lucky in the Maroon Sea...

PoptartProdigy said:
Talani Shalaya may activate for any mission relating to her duties as the Commonwealth's ardat-yakshi specialist.

PoptartProdigy said:
Martial: 22
Diplomacy: 5
Stewardship: 8
Intrigue: 17
Learning: 12

War Demon: An ardat-yakshi who has spent decades harvesting battlefields of dying rachni, Shalaya is a being of horrifying power, and a trained commando of impressive skill. She is an overwhelming opponent against nearly any opposition. She adds triple her Martial score to any combat checks.

I forgot just how terrifying AYs can become. That's a large bonus...

Randino Treviani said:
Between the personnel bottle neck, the fact that fleets are already going to be in production ahead of the academies finishing, we are a good several years, possibly as much as half a dozen, off from another expansion being advisable, let alone actionable.
This action clarifies that industry is also a factor in our ability to expand our shipyards again. While some might suggest the volus investments will help us expand our own industry, that seems questionable to me.
One of our big problems is the imbalance between military and civilian industry. Thus, I have my doubts that the Volus investments will develop specific industry sufficiently to enable us to expand our shipbuilding. The commonwealth call for aid action however seems promising, though since it looks like investments is winning, hopefully the action will change to just industrial support, since we no longer need the financial aspect, and terminus does.

Keep in mind that building new (or expanding old) shipyards would take years, especially ones capable of building Dreadnoughts and Battlecruisers.

So by the time they were done we'd likely be also done with the school expansions.

There were also a few interesting tidbits in the technology tab of the lore screen, mostly about the raising value of barriers and on defense catching up to offense (where before, especially for infantry, armor was kinda useless, not even reliably stopping pistol shots)

PoptartProdigy said:
The answer to that is a little less immediately apparent, but it's obvious in hindsight. It is true that the Rachni control massive swathes of the galaxy. However, they have not penetrated any of the Citadel's core space; the territory they have taken is colonial space, nearly bare of heavy industry. Whatever they have, they will need to have constructed themselves while paying the immense costs of an attrition-based naval doctrine against the entire galaxy. Given the state of Hercules -- scans of Eletania, a near-garden world if it weren't for the allergen issue, about which Rachni would not care, indicate precious little extensive development -- it is clear that they have not been able to build much.

From this, Beshkar concludes that while the Rachni may or may not run extraction operations within their controlled space, the bulk of their production centers are back in their home systems. Thus, basically the entire rest of their space is composed of supply line.

This is significant. Virmire can field its fleets on permanent active status because it does so within a thirty minute jog of a heavily-industrialized garden world. If a ship is damaged or needs refuel and maintenance, it can turn around and fly home, and be back in the fight soonest. Even just moving to Hercules, establishing local ship basing has already proven to be valuable -- relay travel is not stressless, and damaged vessels are much better served by local shipyards than further sharp jolts before a safe berth.

Reminder that, as we conquer new clusters, we want local heavy industry to repair and tend to local fleets.

So maybe we'd want to consider an action to build up industry in the Maroon Sea once it's a bit more secured?

PoptartProdigy said:
Therefore, when Virmire's regular fleets jump through a relay to clear a path for raiding forces, they will face a far more limited array of forces than the Rachni's on-paper strength would suggest. The key to Beshkarian Doctrine is in exploiting this vulnerability. If Virmirean forces were interested in securing a system, they would need to face the entire strength of the enemy fleet one way or the other. Under the raiding doctrine, they are not so interested. They are interested in sweeping aside the tripwire forces at the relay, calling through the raiding fleet, and then firing salvos at local ship basing and planets, forcing hostiles to screen with their own ships for hours or days as the rounds crawl through space. Meanwhile, the raiders jump to the relay they wish to use and then flash away, behind the main defenses and able to run roughshod over rear echelon garrisons. Once your raiders are on the secondary relay network, they can just keep jumping until they find a juicy and vulnerable target.

You may ask: how do we get these forces back? Well, that's a matter of careful scheduling; the raiders get a timetable of [insert duration here] to return to the same system, whereupon your forces launch an assault to make room. This is the difficult part, but with the raiding forces coming in from the flanks, you actually have a decent position.

Just a good reminder of what the raiding doctrine is good for. We keep the Rachni occupied for days or weeks, let them burn resources, destroy their infrastructure and/or have them shield it with their own ships, and then use a battle fleet attack to open a way back for the raiding fleets.

I wonder if barriers could be a counter, by allowing the infrastructure to "absorb" the incoming hits, freeing the ships from having to worry about it.

Or, you know, as the shots will take hours to days to reach the target, maybe you could work on point-defense systems. Or one-use overloaded shields that will only work on the point of contact...

Terminus Quest: A CKII Mass Effect Quest

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