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Incompatible System

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Sleepyfoo said:
The problem is they're not dealing with a celestial body tens of thousands of Kilometers across with a mass measured in high exponents (with appropriate gravity effects). They are dealing with an object 5ish Kilometers at the longest point (and not spherical) with no mass worth mentioning. Maybe if it was active, the Eezo could have had enough exotic effects to allow for that sort of imaging.

It was itself also dark, and we have trouble spotting 5 km objects in our own system, let alone others. So I think it's a fair cop that, after about a year without notice, they lost the ability to see when it left.
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The smallest planet we've found in real life using this method was the size of the moon at 215 lightyears. So if you know what you're looking for, you can find pretty small objects using the method (btw Mass Relays are 15km long, the rings alone are 5km). So using much more advanced telescopes with all the data at merely 20 lightyears and knowing exactly where and when to be looking, they should be able to tell whether or not it's there.

They won't see details, but they'll be able to read a decrease in luminosity when it enters transit. If they get really really lucky, they'll catch when it gets removed and see a sudden spike in luminosity rather than the curve of the Relay leaving transit.
 
I love that the Migrant Fleet is actually the most up to date on the situation, while everyone else is effectively writing them off. When it all comes out all the Council intelligence agencies, but especially the STG, is going to have egg on their face.
 
mp3.1415player said:
There was no way four Relays could vanish without someone doing something to them. All four were spread widely, all four were aimed right into the unknown sector, and all four were dormant. It was definitely the result of someone inside that area wanting their privacy and making damn sure they got it.
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I am ever so amused that the most informed groups of the most informed races are worried about 2 or 3 missing relays, and think the Migrant Fleet only knows about 1 of them.
Meanwhile the Migrant Fleet is aware of 4, and has moved past 'worried' into 'active concern'.
WarriorServent said:
Question!

We, with our shitty hunks of glass, aluminum, and decades old hardware in orbit can see other galaxies and observe exoplanets to the point that we can see the composition of their atmospheres.

Why aren't the Salarian or anyone else pointing THEIR insanely good, stupidly advanced cameras at where the relays USED to be... let's say 10 - 20 light years out and waiting for the light to reach said cameras to see for themselves what happened?
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What you're suggesting is that the Citadel races, in order:
  1. Find a spot, let's call it 20 years since that's their maximum window, so 20 light years out (already a task in and of itself: They have to physically travel there),
  2. set dozens of high end scanning devices all pointing at one spot,
  3. pray they have the right spot,
  4. have some poor ass scour every minute of the next 20 years of data (which will take longer than 20 years) for the one day that the Relay decided to walk away.
  5. And then they have to pick all the data from that day apart and hope they understand exactly what it all means.

Which is doable, certainly. But it's so impractical and unlikely to work that there's no point to doing it.
Remember: We can only receive data from distant stars at the speed of light. Since light travels at, well, light speed, and they don't have a precise snapshot of when the event happened, there's no way for them to just go to the right light-distance, record for a day, and decode the event. More importantly, the data won't travel to them faster just because they have better receiving tech.
When the scientists say they've missed the window to do that, they're saying 'the time frame we're looking at is too large to get any precision data or information to you in the time you'd need it to arrive in for it to be useful.' Not 'It's impossible.'
 
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I want to see the Hanar reaction if they get the idea that there may be living Protheans out there. Some would want to go looking, and they already have at least one death-cult expecting the Protheans to reappear and cleanse the galaxy.
 
Your Salarian voice is a little bit stereotypical; people remember them talking like that because Mordin talks like that, but the majority of Salarians speak fairly normally. Mordin's just a weirdo whose mind works at triple speed even compared to regular Salarians, so he uses that clipped, rapid, hyper condensed mode of speech.
 
Blaflaix said:
I wouldn't call it a bizarre form of attack.
It simultaneously blocks logistics and does commercial warfare.

If you have the opportunity, the best way to conduct a war is to set up the conditions for victory before anybody realizes they're at war.
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The Relays are not only travel for people and cargo. They are also the primary (read: only) method of FTL communications that the Council has. The Extranet, the internet equivalent for the Eezo-using portion of the galaxy? It piggy-backs off of the Relay's internal communications. Granted, said piggy-backing is designed to be allowed, as it gives even more control to the Reapers, but still.

Useless Writer said:
I'm surprised no one came up with the idea that maybe the relay network was a test from the protheans. That removing the relays was a taciturn implication that they should now try to grow beyond he gifts of old and build something for themselves. But as I write this, it now occurs to me that only the hanar would come up with such an idea.
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The Enkindlers have brought us from the seas, to the sky, to the void between worlds. And now, they take away parental controlled hoverlift (Hanar require them to live out of water) so that we may learn and grow on our own. And then they find out that not only is it NOT the Enkindlers that removed the relays, but in fact the Protheans/Enkindlers saw the Hanar as a delicacy, much as the Japanse see squid.
 
Finagle007 said:
That would explain why the Reapers haven't realized the danger of WIMP tech; every race that stumbled upon it in the past ended up destroying themselves when one of their ships got too close to the relays in their home systems, so they never emerged into the wider galaxy and the Reapers never found out about their discovery. So this is going to catch them even MORE off guard.
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You need a knowledge of WIMP theory to even build a Relay. They know exactly what they're working with and how volatile it can be under certain circumstance, and it's probably a deliberate choice on their end. You show up in system, fire a WIMP pulse from the Relay towards the local primary, and effectively nuke a solar system when all the drive cores, guns, and biotics explode. Then they just sweep for survivors and move on to the next stop.

Efficiency at its finest.
 
Okibruez said:
When the scientists say they've missed the window to do that, they're saying 'the time frame we're looking at is too large to get any precision data or information to you in the time you'd need it to arrive in for it to be useful.' Not 'It's impossible.'
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It's also the fact that, for the Salarians at least, just the potential data gathering would be a lifetime project. Sorting through that data would be another lifetime's work. How would you feel if, after your grandfather and your father spent their lives trying to figure out a mystery they narrow it down to the exact time the Relay got removed, only to find that it was literally there one second and gone the next.
 
YuffieK said:
It's also the fact that, for the Salarians at least, just the potential data gathering would be a lifetime project. Sorting through that data would be another lifetime's work. How would you feel if, after your grandfather and your father spent their lives trying to figure out a mystery they narrow it down to the exact time the Relay got removed, only to find that it was literally there one second and gone the next.
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I very specifically didn't mention that since it was more emotional conjecture, but also because it was a bit painful to consider.
Report reads as follows: "Ships showed up from nothing in a single second. Then the ships vanished back into nothing the next second, and took the Relay into nothing with them. Nothing else happened, our sensors picked up nothing at all beyond the visible, and I personally shat my pants and am tendering my resignation to go live under the biggest rock I can find."
 
Okibruez said:
I am ever so amused that the most informed groups of the most informed races are worried about 2 or 3 missing relays, and think the Migrant Fleet only knows about 1 of them.
Meanwhile the Migrant Fleet is aware of 4, and has moved past 'worried' into 'active concern'.
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And it makes total sense, too. The Migrant Fleet being, well, migrant means that of course they pay close attention to the integrity of the relay network, closely monitor galactic political, economic and military trends, and maintain a constant and diligent vigil in all things Intelligence related. The safety of the Fleet, and therefore the survival of their people actively depends on it.

After all is said and done, I think all the Citadel military and domestic intelligence organs, again especially the STG, will be kicking themselves so hard as to taste their own toejam for this glaringly obvious oversight on their part. The Quarian people are without doubt the best and most experienced explorers and spacers around, Humans and Thranx included, with all that entails. And everyone in Citadel and Terminus space writes them off because of parochial racism. In terms of the feats in engineering, resource management and damage control I think even the humans and thranx engineers will have more than a few moments of silent awe over what the Quarians and the Migrant Fleet have achieved even on a day to day basis, plainium or no. And I don't even want to speculate on what the social scientists and economists would think. My best guess would be entire panels of PHD's going "buhwuh?!??"

Quarians are the penultimate survivors of the Mass Effect galaxy. They'd probably have a pretty good chance of even surviving the Reapers by having nothing static to defend and the ability to say "fuck this, we're out" and hauling ass off into the void.
 
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Just a reminder of the way you check to see where you lost a signal.

Go to 1/2 way between the origin of the signal and the end point. In this case if you last check a Relay 20 years ago then the end point is 20 light years away from the signal origin and your first check point is 10 light years from the system with the Relay.

Check for signal.

If signal then move forward 1/2 way. Towards the Relay.


If no signal then move 1/2 way back. Away form the Relay.

Repeat as needed to find where the signal stops.

Saves time/work. :)

Remember, Humanx did not get their ship(s) close to the inactive Relays. They talk a lot about not getting close to the Relays. Close in blink drive terms. They used probes and most of the probes did not get close. The only probes that get close when moving a Relay are the automated transfer probes. The Humanx use probes to work close up on the Relays at the Planium Device Test Area that is true but not before that. Safety first.

That said.

No one was using the inactive missing Relays. So there is no disruption of traffic or commerce.

The inactive Relays are considered gateways to unknown dangers (Rachni Wars) and resources were spent to guard the dangerous gateways. (Color and Rachni Wars added as part of Edit 1.1) Some of the inactive (dangerous) Relays have gone missing and rejoicing was not heard on the Citadel side of things. :rolleyes::rofl:

Edit 1.1: The Citadel crew do not consider that someone is protective them from danger only that it is threat. :rolleyes: They should pop all the inactive (and therefore dangerous) Relays that are in uninhibited system and remove that threat themselves. :)
 
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Contact between the two groups is gonna be interesting. Citadel is freaking out, Humanx is digging a moat, and their corner of the galaxy pretty much has a "here be dragons" sign on it.

and i think a better descriptor for the interaction between the systems would be "hypergolic".
 
Frogs321 said:
Edit 1.0: The Citadel crew do not consider that someone is protective them from danger only that it is threat. :rolleyes:
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They have no reason to even begin to have the line of thought. So far as they're concerned, Element Zero isn't a threat because they have appropriate safety measures and procedures in place that are themselves always improving. Keeping eezo safe is an engineering problem, nothing more. Thats a blind spot on the Humans' part here. They see E0 and go into Holy Shit Mode, apparently never considering that it is literally Tuesday for everyone in Citadel space. It's normal for them. Safe, day to day, reliable, ubiquitous, and so common as to be forgotten as not even background noise.
Mossconfig said:
Ahh yes, idiot ball turians who want to charge a polity that has the ability to move mass relays. I hope first contact has them shown to be idiots
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:rolleyes:
 
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eric1505 said:
Contact between the two groups is gonna be interesting. Citadel is freaking out, Humanx is digging a moat, and their corner of the galaxy pretty much has a "here be dragons" sign on it.

and i think a better descriptor for the interaction between the systems would be "hypergolic".
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Hypergolic is still too much of an understatement, I'd rather juggle containers of Chlorine Trifluoride, hell I'd rather deal with antimatter stuck in a magnetic bottle, at least letting more than a few parts per billion loose in the local atmosphere would only be dangerous in the near term, what's really scary about Planium contamination is that in theory, you could get quite a bit of the stuff in your body and not die. Just so long as the WIMP shielding never flickers for an instant while you're in the same building as any Humanx equipment... because if that breaks, there goes the whole neighborhood continent planet.

Now I have a mental image of a biotic suicide bomber deciding to take a trip to the nearest dormant supervolcano to see if they can crack the mantle when they pull the trigger...
 
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Frogs321 said:
Just a reminder of the way you check to see where you lost a signal.

Go to 1/2 way between the origin of the signal and the end point. In this case if you last check a Relay 20 years ago then the end point is 20 light years away from the signal origin and your first check point is 10 light years from the system with the Relay.

Check for signal.

If signal then move forward 1/2 way. Towards the Relay.


If no signal then move 1/2 way back. Away form the Relay.

Repeat as needed to find where the signal stops.

Saves time/work. :)

Remember, Humanx did not get their ship(s) close to the inactive Relays. They talk a lot about not getting close to the Relays. Close in blink drive terms. They used probes and most of the probes did not get close. The only probes that get close when moving a Relay are the automated transfer probes. The Humanx use probes to work close up on the Relays at the Planium Device Test Area that is true but not before that. Safety first.

That said.

No one was using the inactive missing Relays. So there is no disruption of traffic or commerce.

The inactive Relays are considered gateways to unknown dangers (Rachni Wars) and resources were spent to guard the dangerous gateways. (Color and Rachni Wars added as part of Edit 1.1) Some of the inactive (dangerous) Relays have gone missing and rejoicing was not heard on the Citadel side of things. :rolleyes::rofl:

Edit 1.1: The Citadel crew do not consider that someone is protective them from danger only that it is threat. :rolleyes: They should pop all the inactive (and therefore dangerous) Relays that are in uninhibited system and remove that threat themselves. :)
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Reminder that if transit luminosity is the only way to detect something, you'll need to catch a very brief moment in time. You're not going to be getting a constant signal.

That said, a minor extension of this: start 20LY out shortly before transit starts in the direction of that transit and look for a change in luminosity. Then do a binary search along the spiral path with radius "X light years from relay" and direction "straight line from star to relay X plus a squidge years ago".

Actually, if you path it right and can account for luminosity vs distance, you could probably trace that spiral from outside inwards and look for an unexpected luminosity change.
 
Mossconfig said:
Ahh yes, idiot ball turians who want to charge a polity that has the ability to move mass relays. I hope first contact has them shown to be idiots
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This is the same species that, upon making first contact with an entirely new alien species, decided that the best way to inform said species that they were breaking a law that they could not possibly be aware of was to open fire and then invade their planet, without even bothering to attempt to establish communications.

People blame the Krogan for being warlike, but honestly they ain't got shit on the Turians; at least the Krogan have the excuse that they literally didn't know any better.
 
mp3.1415player said:
We have enough data left from the Kartcha system to be fairly sure that's what happened to it some fifteen thousand years ago." She looked seriously at the other two. "Which is why there are no more Kartcha. Whatever it was that they did triggered a detonation that is best expressed in significant fractions of a nova. The entire system was sterilized of all life.
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And there we have the secret of why nobody else seems to use WIMP tech: in a galaxy that is basically a literal mine field for anyone using it, discouraging its use tends to be self-selecting. People who try often do not live very long.

mp3.1415player said:
"Yes, Primarch," General Exasperus replied
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Yes! You did it! Haha.

Neruz said:
People blame the Krogan for being warlike, but honestly they ain't got shit on the Turians; at least the Krogan have the excuse that they literally didn't know any better.
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As much as I dislike it when species are handed the idiot ball, the Turians are probably the one that most deserves it.
 
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Blaflaix said:
I wouldn't call it a bizarre form of attack.
It simultaneously blocks logistics and does commercial warfare.

If you have the opportunity, the best way to conduct a war is to set up the conditions for victory before anybody realizes they're at war.
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The bizarre part is that they're sneaking them away, not exploding them on-site. Also the Turians may be disregarding the possibility that they could move between systems quickly without the relay, they imagine disabling a relay hurts them as much as the Citadel races.
 
Arden said:
And there we have the secret of why nobody else seems to use WIMP tech: in a galaxy that is basically a literal mine field for anyone using it, discouraging its use tends to be self-selecting. People who try often do not live very long.
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whichever tech you use, you rapidly get to a point that poking the other stuff has explosive results. i still find myself sort of staring at that 800MT/g figure given earlier.
you have a TINY window where you can sort of poke both, but things seem to be worse for those starting with E0.

start with E0? your first WIMP experiment will at the least leave a large and creatively and/or ironically named crater.
start with WIMP? at some point you are going to find an E0 cache by detonating it.
In either case, you hope you dont pop the relay in your home system.
Any survivors from a lesser event will have a strong encouragement to ditch the non-established tech, get it as far away as possible, and tell everyone they can to stay away.

With Kartcha's mention, we now have an example for both starting points.
Kartcha started with E0, and apparently detonated their relay.
Humans started with WIMPs, and got lucky in that they blew up Mars first.
 
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mp3.1415player said:
"We can see no way that a Relay could be moved with current technology, from us or any other known species," Raana replied. "Not without leaving a lot of evidence behind, and quite likely causing a disaster that could potentially destroy half a system. We have enough data left from the Kartcha system to be fairly sure that's what happened to it some fifteen thousand years ago." She looked seriously at the other two. "Which is why there are no more Kartcha. Whatever it was that they did triggered a detonation that is best expressed in significant fractions of a nova. The entire system was sterilized of all life. That is why we don't interfere with Relays, aside from them being far too important to risk."
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Interesting, that kind of puts a tentative lower bound of 3-4 species developing wimp-tech each cycle and wiping themselves out. So the Reapers would have to be producing at least four relays each cycle just to keep the number of relays stable. Depending on just how difficult and time-consuming it is for E0 to be synthesised, they may not be able to increase the number of relays too far beyond the current numbers, as that production is going into replacements.
 
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