So I'm not exactly super great at sciency stuff, and I didn't do physics in my senior years, but my understanding is that gravity is a fundamental force and not the kind of thing you can just... switch off.
This is hilarious given the next setting rolled. And has given me some interesting stuff to research. Which is bad, because I really should be studying. Oh well.
So I'm not exactly super great at sciency stuff, and I didn't do physics in my senior years, but my understanding is that gravity is a fundamental force and not the kind of thing you can just... switch off.
A purely theoretical thing called negative energy could, in theory, do just that. Not by turning off gravity really, but by reversing the space warping that it causes.
You could use it to blow up a black hole if you have enough.
So I'm not exactly super great at sciency stuff, and I didn't do physics in my senior years, but my understanding is that gravity is a fundamental force and not the kind of thing you can just... switch off.
This is hilarious given the next setting rolled. And has given me some interesting stuff to research. Which is bad, because I really should be studying. Oh well.
A purely theoretical thing called negative energy could, in theory, do just that. Not by turning off gravity really, but by reversing the space warping that it causes.
You could use it to blow up a black hole if you have enough.
So I'm not exactly super great at sciency stuff, and I didn't do physics in my senior years, but my understanding is that gravity is a fundamental force and not the kind of thing you can just... switch off.
You describing your technology as "breaking physics." And then you want to complain about physics being broken?
Conservation of mass/energy is a pretty serious thing in real-life physics, but pretty much every Commander SI immediately throws it to the curb. And somehow that gets a pass compared to turning off gravity for a bit?
You describing your technology as "breaking physics." And then you want to complain about physics being broken?
Conservation of mass/energy is a pretty serious thing in real-life physics, but pretty much every Commander SI immediately throws it to the curb. And somehow that gets a pass compared to turning off gravity for a bit?
If you think that's horrifying, @Yog did some calculations in the Shepard Quest where he calculated what would happen if you used Mass Effect projectors to expose the singularity of a black hole. Singularities, being shy and hiding behind an event horizon, do not like being exposed. Doing it with a small black hole results in a hundreds to thousands of lightyears large bubble of hard gamma radiation expanding from the former position of the black hole that suddenly stopped being a black hole and became hard radiation. This kills everyone in range from sheer radiation exposure and knock on effects in the atmosphere and biosphere.
Doing this with the black hole at the center of the Milky Way galaxy means everything dies.
If you think that's horrifying, @Yog did some calculations in the Shepard Quest where he calculated what would happen if you used Mass Effect projectors to expose the singularity of a black hole. Singularities, being shy and hiding behind an event horizon, do not like being exposed. Doing it with a small black hole results in a hundreds to thousands of lightyears large bubble of hard gamma radiation expanding from the former position of the black hole that suddenly stopped being a black hole and became hard radiation. This kills everyone in range from sheer radiation exposure and knock on effects in the atmosphere and biosphere.
Doing this with the black hole at the center of the Milky Way galaxy means everything dies.
Why be so wasteful with that star, instead turn it into a planet killing laser beam. This is assuming that our sun gets this treatment and the beam is a meter across when it hits Earth.
So either precision kill a planet within a couple of light-years if you're patient. Or use it to launch gigantic solar sail bombs. Much cheaper than blowing up a black hole
A continued beam from the Mercury's spinal Focus Laser, or the combined fire output of the Mercury's SAFE-TY Net, is already at 'melt through planets' stage. Trying to wrangle a dyson sphere into place just to make a single, albeit huge turret seems like a huge waste when with the same metal one could create tens or even hundreds of thousands of Mercuries. Or other, less inefficient weapons of mass destruction. Heh. #Spoilers.
Incidentally, the link to the most recent Shepard Quest index is here, but god help you if you're trying to find a specific post. Maybe someone more active in that thread who remembers the post in question would be able to point you to the right general area.
Gosh now I feel like one of those NPCs who's entire purpose is to point people to the actual quest giver uegh.
To get an idea on how bad this is; the nearest black hole to Earth known to man would result in a hard radiation energy flux of 3.4 MegaWatts for as calculated 10 seconds. This results in a flux of 34 MegaJoule in total.
Normally radiation dose is measured in miliSieverts, or 1/1000th of a Sievert, which is 1 Joule per kilogram. Gray is also used as a unit for this, and uses the same energy per mass definition.
Looking at Wikipedia, doses of 5 Sievert and up are lethal without treatment, even if you don't necessarily keel over immediately. Doses of 8 Sievert and up are just plain lethal, treatment or not.
Part of this radiation will be blocked by the atmosphere. Even if 99% gets blocked by the air the surface of the Earth is still going to be hit by multiple kiloWatts of energy, and annoyingly enough water and complex organic molecules are much better at absorbing ionizing radiation than air. Radiation sickness will be widespread at best and kill much of the biosphere, shortly followed by humanity in all liklihood.
This is not as bad as the situation with the Sagittarius A, the central black hole for the Milky Way. Calculations result in 170 GigaWatt, and total energy flux at 1.70 TeraJoule. Or approximately 5 000 times as much.
Really, the atmosphere is no protection, the mass shadow of the Earth might result in people on the other side not dying, and the interactions with the atmosphere will probably result in a massive cloud of noxious nitrogen oxides smothering the rest of life on Earth.
A continued beam from the Mercury's spinal Focus Laser, or the combined fire output of the Mercury's SAFE-TY Net, is already at 'melt through planets' stage. Trying to wrangle a dyson sphere into place just to make a single, albeit huge turret seems like a huge waste when with the same metal one could create tens or even hundreds of thousands of Mercuries. Or other, less inefficient weapons of mass destruction. Heh. #Spoilers.
Incidentally, the link to the most recent Shepard Quest index is here, but god help you if you're trying to find a specific post. Maybe someone more active in that thread who remembers the post in question would be able to point you to the right general area.
Gosh now I feel like one of those NPCs who's entire purpose is to point people to the actual quest giver uegh.
Alternatively, make a Dyson sphere with nothing but solar panels on the inside that isn't much bigger than whatever star you are using, and then coat the outside in as many SAFE turrets as you can fit. Bonus points if you use some sort of wormhole system to make the beam come out really goddamn close to whatever you are shooting at to make it even more effective.
It is, as has been noted, happening. This story will shortly and briefly converge with Fusou's, so fair warning - if you follow both, things might get a little samey for a chapter or two.
73 - Problems
The worst part about utilizing Eezo-based FTL was how painfully slow it was. Being that we were going full incognito, we didn't bother using our own drive even to jump to Antaeus, the nearby system that housed the Mass Relay.
It meant painfully slow travel times there, more slow travel times to reach the Relay itself, and then the first of several Relay jumps, leading to the Exodus Cluster. From there, it was another cross system jaunt and then a series of rapid Relay jumps - since those jumps were between Secondary Relays, the only time between jumps would be the time to get back in range of the Relay after accounting for drift. After five jumps, we'd arrive at the Serpent Nebula and from that Relay it was a presumably short travel distance to the Citadel itself.
And whilst such delays were incredibly painful - I could have made the jump from Jartar to the Citadel in a tiny fraction of the time, using the FTL Phase drives and a decent set of ion thrusters, - they did have one huge advantage.
That being, it gave Hope and I a chance to actually populate the ship. A cruiser crewed by two people would ping so many people's radars for all the wrong reasons, after all.
The Jacob Keyes' medical bay held thirty medical pods, and each of those could pull double duty as a production centre for a NeoAvatar - which equalled thirty NeoAvatar units every thirty or so seconds. Given we wanted about two hundred and fifty crew - well, two forty was close enough. Eight production runs, so four minutes, give or take. Since Hope and I didn't feel like custom making two hundred and forty faces, we cheated, utilizing pre-existing data and medical records we'd… uh, borrowed from the FTLverse to fill out the ranks, saving us a great deal of both time and effort. Hooray for efficiency.
Of that number, one hundred and eighty were 'crewmen' - in the same vain as the Starsong's crew, each of the androids wore a skintight vacuum suit underneath more regular clothing - in this case, a casual style 'uniform' in a similar style to those that were worn by Cerberus… or that would be worn by Cerberus, if they even existed. I vaguely recalled that their origin was somewhere in the First Contact War, and since that hadn't happened…
Well, on the bright side, they weren't likely to complain that I was stealing their uniforms. And besides, mine were different colours anyway. Grey and green was so much better than their white and orange bullcrap.
For one thing, it had green in it.
The other sixty members of the crew were the ship's security compliment - marines, basically. They would be the ones carrying around assault rifles and beating up boarding parties. Probably in that order, too, given what I had in mind for their weapons.
They wore a newer design of light armour compared to my older combat models. It was also significantly less protective - it was made of Elysion Alloys, not Progenitor Alloys, which meant it was remarkably tough but not indestructible, and it covered less of the body as well, leaving the arms and stomach largely exposed. The flappy cloak over the left shoulder was likewise rather ineffective defensively, but that was more for the purpose of looking pretty than to provide any real function.
Their weaponry was based on an idea I'd been toying with for a little while - ever since I stole Elysion's weapon technology, actually. The Bright Foundation had developed a Tesla Rifle which was… well, exactly what it said on the tin, really. It was easily capable of switching from 'lethal' to 'painful as hell' to 'light sting', had two firing modes - continuous current and miniature lightning bolt, of which the latter had significantly longer range, - and chained to nearby targets.
Compared to the Batarian's standard issue assault rifle, the designs for which I stole from their cruiser as it passed through the Antaeus Relay, the Tesla Rifle was only slightly less powerful. Of course, the comparison was a little flawed in that one was a kinetic weapon and the other a laser-guided lightning bolt, and both used slightly different means of causing damage, but it was close enough.
So close, in fact, that I didn't even bother upgrading the thing. The power core was decent enough to last for several hours of sustained combat, and the NeoAvatars could charge it off their internal generators if necessary.
Just for shiggles, I supplemented the marine's Tesla Rifle with a melee weapon that utilized a similar system - a taser stick, basically. Although it was more of a taser staff. Wait, no. Stun gun staff. Because tasers are the ones that can shoot. And stun guns are the ones that can't. For some reason.
Like everything else about the second generation NeoAvatars, the Stun Staff was built from Elysion Alloy - both lighter and cheaper than its Progenitor counterpart, with the added advantage of not being obviously far beyond the manufacturing capabilities of the Mass Effect society. Which was good, since I was trying to avoid drawing too much attention to the Progenitor side of my tech tree. Something butterflied something somewhere along the line, and until I found out what, I was going to try and keep my true capabilities on the down low.
Which lead to my next point.
The alloys the Bright Foundation used to make their ships were similar in resistance to the ceramic/carbon hybrid plating the Batarian cruiser was equipped with. Unfortunately, the two materials seemed too different to reasonably fuse without actually losing on some durability, but at the very least it meant that if I replaced the hull of the ship with Bright Foundation alloys I wouldn't be crippling the ship. And the Marauder Shields were more than capable of making up the difference.
After taking a fraction of a second to explain my plan to Hope, we initiated the auto 'repair' function of the ship, and the small number of internal fabricators began spewing out nanites. The little constructors made relatively short work of the task - by the time we reached the Antaeus Relay, almost the entire interior of the ship had been retrofitted. The nanomachines paused for a moment as we finalised our approach - I didn't want the Mass Relay to tear holes in the seams of the ship, and whilst I wasn't entirely sure that was a thing that could happen, I didn't see the point in taking chances.
Hope and I watched through the bridge's forward viewscreen as the Mass Relay's hoops began to spin, faster and faster until they were effectively just a blur. The Relay flashed with blue light - it wasn't even an all-consuming blue light, just the Relay, - and suddenly our view of space was different. The CommandNet and QRN flailed for a fraction of a nanosecond before reestablishing connection, bringing the ship's reserves of metal and energy up to full and reconnecting myself and Hope to the rest of our constructs.
Between the drift from the Relay jump and the generally fucking huge nature of space, we'd managed to arrive in a pretty much empty section of the system, although there were several other ships visible in sensor range. They seemed content to ignore us - or perhaps they hadn't noticed us yet. I seemed to recall that one of the problems with combat in the Mass Effect universe was that the signals their sensors sent and received to detect things 'only' went at lightspeed.
Since no one immediately jumped our vessel, we resumed our prior course and activities, the nanobots resuming their work on the ship. As they reached the outer hull, their progress became visible in the form of a faint green shimmer, spreading across the surface of the hull.
As the wave of light spread past the bridge and disappeared down the wings of the cruiser, I turned to Hope, who was lounging in one of the command chairs idly.
"Whatcha doin?"
"Just finishing these subroutines for guiding the avatars. Realised we only really need to program one third or so of the units. We can just copy paste and change the timestamps for the others. Shifts, and stuff."
"Huh. That's actually pretty smart. Nice."
"Also, one other thing… I get we're going futuristic with the art style, but I can't help but feel endless grey walls with the occasional green stripe is kind of boring. And same with these chairs and stuff. It's like you said before, we're supposed to look like Cerberus, not a military."
"So basically you think we should pretty the place up."
Hope shrugged and ran a hand idly through her hair. "I mean, it can't hurt, can it? So what if our ship has leather chairs and faux wood floors, so long as it works."
I considered that for a moment, weighing up the pros and cons.
Pros - looks awesome, doesn't affect the actual capabilities of the ship in any way, makes the ship more comfortable for any non-robots aboard.
Cons - takes about thirty seconds of applied nanobots to install.
Hm.
---
Twenty seven seconds later, Hope sat back down, the nanomachines in the bridge having finished their task. The leather chair made not a sound as she slouched back into it. I followed suite, collapsing into my own chair next to hers. Around us, a number of the NeoAvatars were now idling, sitting back in their own leather seats and tapping away at meaningless buttons for absolutely no reason.
"Hey, Faith," Hope said suddenly, sitting up straight. "I'm going to go check on my project real quick - back in a sec."
Almost before she'd finished speaking her NeoAvatar's eyes dulled, and all semblance of life vanished from the robot as it slumped back into the chair.
Given we still had, oh, twenty minutes or so until we hit the Citadel… that wasn't really much of a problem. Whilst she went off to play mad scientist, or whatever it was she did on her little biolab station, I turned my own attention to the internet. Extranet. Whatever.
Now that we were one jump closer to the Citadel, the lag had reduced a fair amount. Not a huge amount, but a noticeable amount. Enough that I bothered accessing it again - not Space!Wikipedia, because that had lagged like an utter bastard. The Codex, on the other hand, was a far less informative, and far less reliable source - but at least it didn't lag. This made it somewhat less useful, but right now I didn't need specifics - I knew absolutely nothing about the cause of these butterflies, besides a general reference to 'the fleet'. Which fleet, exactly, I had no fucking idea, but it was a hyperlink, so I clicked it.
Luckily, as promised the Codex Entry loaded quite quickly.
[Codex Open > Aliens: Non-Council Races > 'The Fleet']
Highly classified and mysterious are the usual words that come to mind in regards to 'The Fleet' as it has come to be known. While The Fleet is known to have been interacting and reading with Humanity since the year 2149, the full extent of just what they have traded to Humanity and what they have received in return is known to only a few high ranking individuals in the Systems Alliance.
What is known for sure about the 'The Fleet' is that their technological prowess is far in advance of that of any other known species in the galaxy, including the rarely seen Collectors. 'The Fleet' has demonstrated -at minimum- the capability to build vessels in excess of ten kilometers in length, which do not require element zero cores to function. Beyond that, they are known to be responsible to providing the foundation to several of Humanity's most important technologies; among which are their development of Dumb AIs, Titanium-E armor, and the still highly restricted -and much sought after- slipspace drive.
The long terms plans of 'The Fleet' are guesswork at best, however it is known for a fact that 'The Fleet' considers Humanity to be under their protection after the Relay 314 Incident and several much smaller incidents since then.
And my, what an interesting read.
Enormous vessels, dumb AIs, Titanium armour - hadn't seen much of that around, surprisingly, but I hadn't exactly been looking, - and, of course, the biggest worry. Slipspace.
Hope returned shortly after I delved into further research, and was quick to join me.
---
As we drew close to the Mass Relay that would take us to the Serpent Nebula, Hope raised a very valid question.
"You think this is going to cause us problems?"
There was no hesitation before I answered. "Oh, almost certainly."
Hope frowned.
"But, hey," I continued. "Nothing ventured, nothing gained, right? Besides, what's the worst that could happen? They blow up the Jacob Keyes and we switch across to your plan? Unless they're capable of utterly annihilating the ship and these two avatars before we can even react, in which case we both die… in which case I'm not sure what we're worried about."
Hope conceded the point with a shrug as we entered the Mass Relay's range.
A flash of blue lit the room, and suddenly we were enveloped within a cloud of gases drifting through space. This would have been mildly problematic, in that it blocked or restricted the operation of at least two thirds of the ship's sensors, except that the remaining third were more than capable of locating the enormous five-armed space station and the accompanying fuckton of starships.
They kind of stood out, compared to the space gas.
First things first, infiltrate the Citadel's systems. The Jacob Keyes' hangar bay fabricators quickly threw together a stealth-capable, FTL-capable Orbital Fabricator, and from there it was a simple matter of making a precision jump to the Citadel and applying nanobots before disappearing back to Jartar to help build up more orbital infrastructure.
Once I had access to the Citadel's computers, and thus their records, I set to work faking our own whilst Hope completed the legal side of our arrival.
"Citadel control, this is the FFV Jacob Keyes, requesting permission to dock."
Slow is relative. Mass Effect FTL is about 15 lightyears per day for a fast ship (30 for Reapers). For comparison, a Star Trek ship at Warp 9 is a bit better than 4 light years per day.
While The Fleet is known to have been interacting and reading with Humanity since the year 2149, the full extent of just what they have traded to Humanity and what they have received in return is known to only a few high ranking individuals in the Systems Alliance.
