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Perchance to Dream (Mass Effect / Commander)

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Anti-No said:
What I find weird is that reducing a ships mass would make it blow up. Their structural strength is not changed. No mass means the momentum of those movements in all directions would be reduced to nothing. And if it had worked, it should have worked on every single ship that reduced its own mass to almost nothing, too?
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It's not just mass-reduction, but also the mass-reducing field itself adding kinetic energy to the reduced mass.

Now, velocity is a product of mass and kinetic energy, (Specifically: Velocity = Square Root of ( Kinetic Energy / ((1/2)*Mass)) ) so when you add any amount of kinetic energy to masses that are so close to zero that you need scientific notations in the hundreds to properly express how close they are, you get stupidly high velocities. Things get weird with apparent mass being dropped but present matter still being extant, but that doesn't stop molecular bonds from breaking. The ship, therefore, 'detonates', though somewhat more specifically stops being a collection of organised matter, and starts being a cloud of particles rapidly moving away from the source point of the effect; that being the Reaper's Mass Engines.

The field weakens dramatically as it expands, though, so by the time they hit the incoming particle beams, they are significantly less effective and only produce fractional deflections, further complicated by psi-nonsense that the Protheans are using.

Funky things happen when you fuck around with Mass Effect.

Not to get into the whole "1500 ships ripping apart trillions of equal ships in a moment".
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They didn't. The Prothean vessels specifically targeted the remaining active Reapers, and left all the inactive ones alone, as they weren't a real threat on their own.
 
Jormuungaand said:
Meh, what could a paltry thousand reapers do?
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One Reaper takes on the Citadel races' finest and largest single fleet in ME1 and the Council only survives it if you save them. And that Reaper wasn't trying to kill anyone directly, just clearing obstacles on the way to its objective.

Against a psionic species, one Reaper isn't much. A thousand aren't much. But not everybody in the galaxy is psionic.

I just write said:
The thing is that these particular Reapers are being hunted by an entire technologically superior galactic civilization.
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Mass Effect: Andromeda is going to be much, much uglier in this timeline.

Anti-No said:
If those ships had been in the atmosphere of a planet, and unpowered, reducing their mass to zero would have made them float up to the top of the atmosphere like bubbles, instead of crashing to the surface. But implode? No. Why? Unless the pressure was already enough to crush said ships beforehand, of course, but if so, why use mass effect fields?
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My take on it is it's the further ships from the Protheans slamming into ones nearer and creating a gigantic relativistic shotgun. Trillions of dead Reapers are an awful lot of buckshot.
 
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7.3
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    • 7.3

    +++

    Vengeance, Javik muses, is sweet.

    He stares out a viewscreen, where the dark and quite dead form of a Reaper floats. The ancient, malevolent machine has been sliced apart, small drones scalpelling off fragments of the hull even as he watched.

    Three centuries of war, death, and destruction... The end of an empire, his people, and now...

    A scything beam shifted over the Reaper. It's soundless, but not too hard to imagine how the creature groans as superstructure falls apart. A trio of drones come up, pulling in three different directions, and the Reaper's internals are exposed. A fourth drone floats closer to them, and a Mass Effect field briefly flashes as the entire assemblage compacts into a ball of metal. It will be taken to a nearby processor, which will rip the entire thing apart into its basic elements, extracting the valuable Element Zero contained within, while the rest of the mostly useless hull will be blasted into energized particles.

    Now, it is the Reapers' turn to face a harvest.

    The beauty of the irony was marred solely by the fact that they weren't all dead yet. Which, if he was being honest, he wasn't too upset about. The situation was almost poetry; the Reapers had been suddenly slapped in the face by an outside context problem, were now just as hilariously outnumbered as they had hilariously outnumbered the Prothean Empire, and faced an entire galaxy united against them.

    He was feeling almost... generous, he'd dare say.

    Javik straightened up, crossed his arms, and prepared a retort for a comment that was all the more the jarring when it didn't come.

    ...

    He'd spent too much time around the Human. He'd been so prepared for Marcus' commentary that he'd been put off balance when it didn't happen.

    Javik frowned.

    "Something the matter?" Sparatus asked. "You seemed quite happy to see all these corpses a moment ago."

    Javik grunted. "The task isn't finished yet."

    "I am aware." The Turian smiled. "But even I can acknowledge that a 99.99999..." Sparatus checked his omnitool "-999999702% destruction rating is an achievement worth celebrating." The Turian's eyes flicked back to Javik, narrowing just a bit. "In fact, given your smile, I'd say that this was caused by something entirely different."

    Javik had once been feared. Far too much time had been spent around the Human, if Sparatus was so willing to goad him. There was nowhere else anybody would get the impression that such a thing was allowable.

    "Perhaps because of the fact that there are still a thousand Reapers that intend to kill everything in the galaxy." Javik returns. "And the most effective weapon against them has been removed."

    "You know as well as I do that it is just a matter of time before this ends." Sparatus said, neutrally. "It will take them months to even arrive at the galaxy. When they do, whatever system they end up in, the local Star Rail will reveal their presence, and then a fleet will fall on top of them not long after. They have no industry, and no ability to start an industry because there is nowhere to start an industry that we won't notice. They cannot replace themselves, nor increase their numbers anywhere in the galaxy. Once they're found, Psychics will be chasing them the entire time, something which we know they're very vulnerable to. They are outnumbered a hundred to one, outmaneuvered strategically, and overpowered tactically. This is over. All the advantages that they've ever wielded, secrecy, numbers, indoctrination, have been utterly ruined. The only question is how long it will take to kill them all, because, to put it crudely, Humanity fucked them. Sure, Humanity is now taking a power nap, but they just won that war for us."

    Javik frowned. "Thoughts like that promote arrogance. The Reapers are still a danger."

    Sparatus nodded. "They are, yes, but they're a local danger. A threat to systems and planets, not to civilizations and the galaxy. So long as we stay on top of the problem, it's done. Their best bet for achieving actual damage is a total attack from each ship in a different place, but even that isn't going to work too well. Half the preparations for the leadup to this was colony-scale defences, preventing FTL hit-and-runs, which means they need to commit forces, and once they do that..." He trailed off.

    "Our own fleets commit." Javik scoffed. "I know. I was one of the ones who made the plan. It is never that easy."

    "If they can somehow come back from this with everything arrayed against them, then something has gone very, very wrong. The best thing they can do is run, and keep running, but in the end, even that isn't going to work forever." Sparatus pointed out. "Literally the best option for them is to turn around and head to another galaxy, except even that isn't going to work, because by the time they get there, build an industry, and come back, most of the galaxy will be Psychic, and the things that make them a concern aren't going to exist anymore. There is no winning move, here. They don't have any options other than to fling themselves at us and try to do damage while they can, but that isn't their goal, so they won't do it. The longer they wait, the more powerful the rest of the galaxy gets, and if they wait too long, then Humanity is eventually going to wake up and dedicate themselves to finishing the job. One way or another, they've lost. It's only a matter of time."

    Javik grunted again. Try as he might, there was no fault to find in the Turian's words. Still... three centuries of battle, of being systematically crushed by the Reapers, had left its mark. Logically, he couldn't find a way for them to come back from the blow that had been dealt, but even so...

    Javik turned away.

    Sparatus looked out the window, at the disassembled Reaper. He spoke, after a few seconds, a considerate tone in his voice. "Well... there is another option, I suppose. Either Humanity wakes up, or their god will."
     
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    • Drich said:
    Sparatus looked out the window, at the disassembled Reaper. He spoke, after a few seconds, a considerate tone in his voice. "Well... there is another option, I suppose. Either Humanity wakes up, or their god will."
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    Honestly, I just really want to see what everyone is thinking about when it comes to the Dreamer. Like... you have this literal god like race running around who apparently worship this thing that is even greater then they are.
     
    Their god wakes up, pokes humanity awake, waves at the rest of the citadel races, then takes out the reapers trash while whistling a tune.
     
    Crystalwatcher said:
    Honestly, I just really want to see what everyone is thinking about when it comes to the Dreamer. Like... you have this literal god like race running around who apparently worship this thing that is even greater then they are.
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    I think they either don't think about it out of existential terror, or rationalize the Dreamer as a powerful Psychic. That latter isn't even WRONG, for all that it isn't RIGHT.
     
    7.4
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    • Drich: I'm going to finish this soon.

    Also Drich: *Starts playing Breath of the Wild again*.



    7.4

    +++

    In the absence of a Relay, it takes one hundred and seventy eight days to cross the five thousand four hundred light years that separates their resting place from the greater galaxy. The Ascended have a plan, and the first step of that plan is to find a source of matter and start repairing all the damage they have taken.

    Which is why it comes as an unwanted surprise when they drop out of FTL at the first system they find, a small star right at the edge of the galaxy, and find no less than forty Relays already present. There's six for each of the five celestial bodies, and then a ring of them scattered in the system's asteroid belt. Each one is active, though there is nothing else in the system.

    They move to the asteroid belt, halfway between two of the Relays. They intend to harvest an asteroid to supply the necessary matter to self-repair.

    They have only just arrived when a fleet transitions in. The ships are numerous, dark grey, and run at temperatures far too low for any organic species to survive. They are emitting no signals, but attack in perfect coordination. The first indication they even have that they're under attack at all comes when pulse lasers contact their hulls.

    If not for the fact that the Ascended had begun to move out the moment they'd appeared, that attack might have been the end of them. As it is, their fields diffract, refract, and scatter the lasers significantly, but so much energy is introduced so quickly that even the material of their hulls doesn't melt so much as detonate when it arrives. The closest to the Machine Intelligence Fleet die outright, and nine hundred and ninety nine Ascended drops to eight hundred and twelve.

    The rest escape. Most have their hulls significantly damaged, but are otherwise stable.

    The next system in fifteen light years away. Half a day's travel.

    There are Relays there, too.

    Harbinger sends a command code, and, predictably, gets no response.

    They move on.

    The third system also has Relays.

    The fleet splits up.

    Every system within five days of travel time is full of Relays. Every easily found major source of matter is protected under threat of sudden fleet arrival.

    They recalculate the plan.

    Stars are beacons, but there are countless billions of rogue celestial bodies in deep space. Indeed, it doesn't take very long for them to find one, and it's only a few days of harvesting afterwards before they're completely repaired. The sole problem with it is that there is no mass-effecting material, which is the one thing they cannot synthesize easily.

    Mass-effecting material is not easily acquired. It does not form in large amounts, and the properties of the material mean that, when it does form, the supernova conditions which formed it energize it and force it to clump together rather than spreading out like every other element. This is why it is mostly found in large clumps of converted matter, rather than trace particles of it being spread through the universe.

    Finding mass-effecting material in deep space was severely unlikely. The amount of time it would take would be on the order of decades, and since the civilizations of the galaxy had much easier access to much larger supplies of material, this was an equation that favored them innately. They could not afford the time, and action had to be taken as soon as possible.

    Centuries ago, when the Anomaly had first appeared, the Ascended had examined the state of the galaxy. They had determined, then, that the civilizations that had existed were not yet meeting the conditions to start the Cycle. In the absence of more modern information, they have to rely on what they learned from then. Records indicate that there is a colony within fifteen hundred light years, and an Ascended Relay in the system.

    The latter is probably no longer true, given prior experience. The colony, however, has no reason not to be there.

    It takes fifty days to travel the distance. In terms of reducing the Ascended's ability to enact the Cycle, subverting the Relays is exceeded only by the extreme reduction of their numbers.

    The system they arrive in is inhabited, as anticipated.

    What is not anticipated is the degree of that effort. Both the first and second planet are garden worlds, and surrounding both of those planets are orbital rings.

    Orbital rings that shimmer with dark energy, fields stretching around the entirety of them and extending sideways to cover the rest of the planet. It's a pair of protective barriers on a scale that, until then, the Ascended had only seen theorized, as no civilization had ever been willing or able to gather and expand the quadrillions of tons of mass-effecting material that would have been required to generate it.

    There are two, in this single system.

    It is impossible, with their current resources, and their current ability to acquire resources, to breach those barriers in a timely manner. The system itself, to the best of their knowledge, is not particularly special, or particularly important. There is no reason to expend a greater amount of effort or material here than anywhere else. Given that Relays have been placed in every single system they've come across, the only conclusion is that the current civilizations have the ability to generate mass-effecting material in arbitrary quantities.

    They recalculate the plan.

    They leave just as another fleet drops out of FTL on top of them.

    The current Cycle is prepared for them moving as a group. It is prepared for them attacking planets. It is prepared for them trying to acquire easy matter. Quite simply, there is no short or medium-term option they can take. The only actions they have left to take exist on the long-term.

    It is simply impossible to continue their current strategy. It will not achieve anything.

    The Ascended must now explore other options.

    Moving together has been prepared for. They will split apart, and operate independently, making full use of their mobility. They will be outnumbered, but that is not a change.

    They cannot attack planets. Instead, they scout systems, and attack softer targets. Ships, drones, asteroids, mining platforms, discharge sites; anything to cause chaos. If nothing else, it will force the current civilizations to slow down their efforts in order to preserve their assets.

    They cannot acquire materials within the vicinity of the galaxy's stars. Some of them will devote their efforts to locating resources in deep space. It will be a time-consuming effort, but even a single rogue celestial body with mass-effecting material will increase their capabilities, and that makes it a necessary venture.

    Three Ascended will be sent out of the galaxy. They will travel to the closest galaxies, and build up there. That is an endeavour that shall take centuries, but it shall be done.

    The Cycle will continue.
     
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    • Synth said:
    Honestly, can you blame them? BotW is fantastic. And who knows, it could end up inspiring the next story. I've yet to see a Drich story I didn't like, and I'd devour something in the Zelda mythos. (I might be slightly biased by finding a BotW remix I really liked recently, though.)
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    So what you're saying is that the next stop on the Drich Inter-Reality Express after Mass Effect should be BotW Hyrule. :V
     
    Drich said:
    Three Ascended will be sent out of the galaxy. They will travel to the closest galaxies, and build up there. That is an endeavour that shall take centuries, but it shall be done.
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    Huh. Can they actually do that without harvesting biologicals? At a rate of 'one race per capital ship'/'a few billion individuals reduced to slurry minimim'?

    Something they prooobably could do is creating drones, and if you pour in enough millions of those you probably don't need that many capital ships. So probably doable, yes. Unless someone follow them, of course, or someone object in the target galaxy.

    A pure machine intelligence would have it much easier when it comes to making reinforcements.
     
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    Anti-No said:
    Huh. Can they actually do that without harvesting biologicals? At a rate of 'one race per capital ship'/'a few billion individuals reduced to slurry minimim'?
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    Sort of, they can build fully robotic units; a lot of the 'lesser' Reaper units are synthetic AIs rather than the cybernetic horrors of 'true' Reapers.

    But no, they won't be able to build many more actual Reaper units; if they get lucky and a galaxy has several viable species they might be able to get maybe half a dozen plus new Reapers out of it, but as seen with the Collectors there's no guarantee that a given harvest will produce any new Reapers at all, as some species just aren't compatible with Reaperization.


    The Reapers primary advantage was the massive amount of buildup they had achieved thanks to over a billion years of harvests, that advantage is gone now and without it they simply don't stand a chance against 'living' societies that will continue to grow and advance further while they inevitably stagnate.

    Sparatus was correct in the previous chapter; the Reapers are no longer a strategic threat, they are a tactical threat, a local danger, but they no longer possess the capability to threaten the entire galaxy and they're already too far behind to win an exponential growth Von Neumann race.


    Plus there's no guarantee that the Reapers will have things go their way in the new galaxies; the Kett could probably take out a few Reapers for example, it would cost them, but as an intergalactic polity they could take the losses.
     
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