But we don't know what would happen, even remotely so. And that doesn't work as an effecient plot device because it would look like an Ass-Pull or a Handwaving to get the story going which is a turn off from the story itself.
Come and get it! Come and get it! Fresh out of the 4chan /vg/ We-Hate-the-Mass Effect 3-Ending-Factory: For the hell of it, an alternate Mass Effect series that has no Reapers. >Mass Effect 1 A turian nationalist together with other turian war-hawks attempts to overthrow the Council and subjugate humanity, whom he sees as a rising threat to turian dominance. >Mass Effect 2 The increasingly desperate batarians have fallen to extremism. They are funding terrorists who are destroying entire worlds. Shepard must undo their schemes and forge an uprising in batarian space to overthrow the Hegemony and prevent a larger war. >Mass Effect 3 The quarians have developed the technology to reclaim their homeworld from the geth. However this technology could be a double-edged sword. >Mass Effect 4 A cabal of human nationalists and industrialists have orchestrated the take-over of the Citadel and now hold the galaxy hostage. As the alien species gear up for war with humanity Shepard, now a fugitive, must find a way to undo the human tyranny and also prevent a bloody alien retaliation that would devastate the human race. ... ... ...I'm throwing money at my monitor but it's just not working!
No, wait, I got this: What if, we take three mass relays, and sent two through the third, and while the two are in transit we sent one through the other. And while the last relay is in double-transit, we send a ship through it. No. It wouldn't work. The entire premise of these games is interesting, original, non-generic as in not "an ancient evil has awoken", the main character wouldn't be made into a galactic superhero that saves everyone, it would be thought-provoking and dabble heavily into politics and human (and alien) nature. No major studio would ever touch this shit.
At this point its just a constant, steaming mountain of shit being pumped out in an effort to cover up the smell of a much smaller hill of shit. Can people just SHUT THE FUCK UP ABOUT THE ENDING FOR ONE GODDAMN DAY? The vast, endless sea of whining has made me come to loathe the greater ME fandom to the same degree as I loathe Twilight fans. Every whinge about the ending now just adds to the tremendous, cosmic scale of the mass of pure, glowing HATE I feel now. Not because I feel anything but empty apathy for the ending, but just because of the sheer goddamn hate I have that people won't shut up about it. The ending didn't ruin Mass Effetc for me. It was the goddamn fandom that ruined it for me. I hate these people. I hate them so much I have difficulty describing it. I can't even approach anything related to Mass Effect without remembering how much I hate the fandom now. Hatehatehatehatehate. I need a cannon to fir emy hate out of because I have so much hate now. Grr. But at least its an equal-opportunity hate. I hate you all equally. So....Mass Effect: Modern Warfare.
Huh, yeah, sure seem like it. It has its...well, some of it is interesting, but i personally think that a trilogy is somewhat better than a quadrilogy. The first two deal with alien threats. the last deals with a very real human threat lead by the Illusive man. Maybe mix the last two together, the quarian technology is needed for the humans to be successful. Maybe a linear mirror storyline like the Krogan genophage that makes its way through all three games. Quarian technology is more advanced, and thus exploited for the other races means whilst the Quarian remnant just want to use their technology to retake their homeworld.
Look, we can all just get along if we all hate each other equally. I'm just angry that I can't do anything related to Mass Effect without getting angry. I think I know what Asura feels like now, because even thinking about Mass Effect pisses me off. I can't even look at the manuscript for Renegade or Harbinger without getting pissed because of how much I hate everything associated with the series because it reminds of the fandom that I so furiously hate. Hatehatehatehate. I also hate the FEAR fandom too, but to a lesser degree, so Harbinger makes me extra pissed. But at least I don't hate the ME fandom as much as I hate the Dragon Age and Call of Duty fandoms. HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAATE. Honestly, I consider the Modern Warfare series to be pretty damned good at storytelling, no joke. Ignoring the silliness of the Russian teleportation and questionable political reactions to certain events, the story surrounding Soap, Price, Makarov, Yuri, Zakhaev, Shepherd, and those other American guys over there is pretty damned compelling. It tells a good story from their perspective as individuals, and I think that would translate well into similar themes with the Mass Effect setting, with the added benefit of making the war and political background a lot more plausible than in the MW series. (then again, that might just be me; I'm somehow able to divorce one implausible element from a storyline in order to remain engrossed in the rest without it wrecking my SOD. MW has great writing on the individual level, poorer on the worldbuilding aspect, and I focus on the former instead of the latter)
While I assume this is a sarcasm, I'll respond as if it was not. It wouldn't work due transit time between relays being effectively zero. Another thought: Crucible shows (much to my dismay) that Mass Relays are capable of transmitting signals that are capable of solar-system wide electronics eradication / spacemagic. What if, using mars archives / temple of athame galactic races figured it out early in the timeline? Not on galactic level with self-propagation, but on the more local level. This could lead to several possibilities. Either it needs citadel to act as the transmitter. In which case it becomes not only the seat of the government, but also galaxy's greatest military center, possibly mobile one. Or it may end up with a specialized class of ships that have only one function - remote detonation of mass relays (or remote activation of space magic). They would be an analogues of nuclear submarines in space. WMD deterrents. Where is the story here? Well, let's see. During the days of the Rachni war, when the future seemed blick and days of civilizaed races were counted in hundreds, less then a week before the Citadel Council would have approved salarian plan to uplift the newly discovered krogans, a discovery was made. In the Athane temple archives the partial schematics of prothean superweapon were found. Utilizing the cornerstone of prothean prosperity - mass relay network, this was the weapon of the last resort, used, likely, to prevent any possible invasion of their empire through their own transport system. It was called "the Crucible", and, while very little data about it was found,even vastly inferior the reverse engineered version of it would change the course of history forever. Prototype built on the principles discovered cost more than a fleet of dreadnoughts, with a mass relay core of the size comparable to that of the primary Mass Relay and power requirements of a small continent. It's main function was solar system eradication. By using it on one of the secondary relays, it was possible to induce a specific discharge in its twin, which would both fully deplete the core of the receiver relay, and make it emit a pulse of specific parameters, eradicating all organic beings and frying almost all but most shielded electronics within one light year around the relay. The archives spoke of the final version of this technology, that could affect the whole galaxy at once. So, yes, the idea would be: During the Rachni was Asari discover some of crucible schematics (very little of them). They build inferior version of the crucible, that can fire through secondary relay to affect its paired twin (and the system it is in). That crucible is insanely expensive (core the size of mass relay, super power intensive). It depletes (evaporates) target relay's core. It would be basically a weapon of last resort, ala strategic fusion bombs.Asari (and salarians, likely) know that protheans had far more advanced/complete version, that was able to affect not only one relay at a time, but all of the network at once, including dormant relays, and was controlled (they can only wipe everything out in the system, they can't do spacemagic... yet). This means that krogans are not uplifted, or can be put down/contained more easily if they are already uplifted by the point of the discovery. Nazara may or may not die in the rachni wars due to the pulse. If it didn't, than I bet it would be very interested in finding out about the completed version of the crucible. Every prothean information storage artifact is required to be disclosed to the council on the pain of war (same as with nuclear/WMD research today). Crucible ships may or may not have been used in the morning war. Likely they weren't, since it would make Rannoch uninhabitable (by sanitizing the biosphere). Plus, quarians could have not had any Crucible ships and council would have refused to lend them to quarians without geth attacking council space. Some political intrigue could happen here - Admiral board trying to develop/steal/buy their own Crucible, geth rejecting Nazara due to Crucibles stationed right outside their systems, geth developing counter-measures / leaving systems altogether for interstellar void, towing relays out of systems. Interactions with humans will be different - we have mars archives. We could have understated its size, and have found the crucible designs already. Much political struggle here. Discovery of the beacon, prothean information cache will get tons of attention. You can play it from here. What do you think?
Random thought just occurred to me while reading the latest update to Glorious Shotgun Princess. What would a Mass Effect crossover with Adventure!/Aberrant/Aeon Trinity look like?
And now I have to repost this bit, despite it's utter silliness Sometimes she has trouble convincing herself that this isn't a dream. That she didn't die on the Citadel when the Crucible fired, destroying every synthetic in the galaxy, that this wasn't all some elaborate hallucination thrown together by her dying mind. It certainly didn't feel like Williams' Heaven. And while she knew some people that might joke to the contrary, she was pretty certain 21st century Russia wasn't Hell. Not yet at least. She was lucky, she supposed, that the academy still required foreign language courses despite the near universal availability of translators. Her Russian was atrocious, but she could usually get the point across. Even luckier that the old couple that had nursed her back to health had not had the medical equipment to notice her decidedly augmented physiology, and had the grace to not comment on her impossibly fast healing rate. They'd even given her a little money and some clothes to get to the city. Moscow was a new experience for her. She'd never spent much time on Earth; in fact her period under house arrest had been the longest time she had spent planetside since her that fateful day when she had walked into the recruiter's office on Mindoir. Even more refreshing was the people; while some had been rude to her, she was almost absurdly pleased that there hadn't been a single whisper of “Holy Shit, it's Commander Shepard.” That was kind of to be expected since the Battle of the Citadel wasn't scheduled to happen for another 167 years, but still, anonymity was nice. Pity she was about to throw it all away. A quick glance at the Terminal's clock showed it to be 8:39. Just about time then. She got up from her seat and began to walk quickly to the elevator bank. With a quiet ding one of the elevators opened, and her Cerberus enhanced hearing picked up what sounded like“-ber – no Russian.” She paid it no heed. She was far more concerned with the fact that all four of the men in the elevator was carrying automatic weapons. One of them on the right was quicker off the mark, shouldering his rifle and putting a three round burst right to her center of mass. It was quick, professional, and utterly ineffective against her Biotic Barriers. She responding by jerking through the abbreviated mnemonic she used for lift fields, and all four of the Terrorists suddenly found themselves upside down 2 meters off the floor. She let them hang their for a few moments, ignoring the screams as the patrons of Zakhaev International Airport fled before abruptly slamming the four into the tile floor. Two were knocked unconscious immediately, and a few steps brought her to the closest of the two that were still ambulatory. A sharp kick knocked him unconscious, but his remaining comrade managed to stumble to his feet and pull his sidearm. Three shots deflected off her barrier as she closed the distance, before she gut-punched him with an biotically enhanced fist. He was unconscious before he hit the ground. It was at this point that the Airport security finally managed to respond, and as she turned around she was faced with over a half dozen police pointing pistols at her. More than a few were noticeably trembling, but the ones on the PA system were yelling for her (and the men on the floor behind her, she supposed) to throw down their weapons and come out with their hands up. A sudden thought struck her- Joker would have killed her if she missed this opportunity. So she raises her hands, and then slowly, in the best Russian she can muster says, “Take me to your leader.” And that is how Commander Shepard stopped WW3. Probably not quite what you meant, but oh well. No idea where it would go from there, though presumably Battle of the Shepards and a second space race are involved.
And I actually realised what was bothering me about your story finally! I Love the MW story, it is very engaging and is well told, not to mention full of WTF Tweests, like when Shepherd pulled that gun and killed Roach and Ghost? I'm like...WHAT?! WHAT??! That was awesome storytelling. but the campegn was so short, it was intense though. And yeah, it wasn't the Russians that kept teleporting.
re: Uplift The council tends to treat uplift on a case by case basis...remember, the krogans, elcor and hanar were all uplifted species...The main issue I got from reading CDN and the codex was that the responsibility for the uplifted species was one that everyone debated over...see the biotic bugs from CDN and the issues with regard to uplifting them... EDIT: Post ME3 Even if the ending has been the greatest ending ever, not sure how ME expected to go on since ME3 potentially changed the entire galaxy...You could have a resurgent krogan with geth-quarian society on the upswing but a galaxy where the krogans and quarians are slowly going extinct was also a viable possibility... As a writer, not sure it's possible to incorporate BOTH ideas in any post ME3 work... EDIT: Galaxy of War Update again from galaxy of war...Really like the fact that the author is willing to kill off characters left and right and nice use of the renegade/paragon method...
I don't know what happened with the elcor but the krogan were technically upteched rather then uplifted since they had the industial capacity to nuke themselves before the salarians found them, and the hanar were uplifted by the Protheans so a) they were their usual incredibly polite selves by the time anyone else met them, and b) the 'Enkindlers' were long gone. Humanity playing uplifter would be an example of a species that a) had made other species sapient, b) was still around, and c) interacted directly with those they had uplifted. That's one of the reasons why I wish they actually got more use out of it rather then just mentioning it in the codex since if that particular bit of canon had got more attention there would have been all sorts of interesting possibilities, for example interactions between the various uplifted species and the hanar could've made for some rather amusing background events since for the hanar the Enkindlers are a matter of religion, while for a sapient dog its uplifters are the species he lives and works with everyday.
I would love to see the alien reaction to the fact that a newly discovered species uplifted a half-dozen of other species. Idea, instead of joker being human instead make him being simultaneously the first dolphin pilot and the best pilot in the alliance fleet.
D'OH! I obviously put too much faith on the cutscenes where they always arrive bow first. If the warpfield is turned off, the ship is suddenly going at significant fraction of c in normal space and hits both random hydrogen atoms and incoming radiation which is shifted to lethal levels and it has already been said that ME barriers are not very good against EMR. That still sounds iffy given how FTL is supposed to work, but at least it doesn't contradict bullets. ??? Sure, if your inorganic tech is generations ahead of the opposition, you'll have an advantage, but by same logic mecha are practical war machines just because a Gundam would slaughter WW1 tanks. Considering how many current machines need to be kept powered up on standby mode and given regular servicing even when not in use, replacing them with self-upkeeping organic tech of equal or better capabilities is not a problem. Nanotech and biomimetics are organic tech, and growing some device so you leave the nanites in to repair it qualifies it as not only organic but living, as it can technically procreate by cloning itself. So why exactly is an inorganic ship lacking those technologies that needs to keep it's crew alive and requires a constant supply of spare parts for upkeep so superior to a living ship that uses the same superalloy or ceramic armor as bones and skin, eats electricity, is tougher than your crew and can digest and regrow any broken parts? Also, more are constantly being grown with minimal need for workers, possibly even crew. And this assumes the organic tech is only equally capable to the inorganic. Why do people assume a creature designed by technology far in advance of ours and with abilities not known on Earth, possibly in an universe with different physical laws, would have any parts as squishy as weakling humans are? Just because your cells, which were never designed for immortality, are made of easily broken fats and proteins does not mean that anyone else is restricted to those materials. Why wouldn't the same bio&nanotech that will turn Joe Average into an immortal genius superman be able to boost other species to same level? Here's a purely natural Earth animal: http://www.popsci.com/technology/ar...tis-shrimp-claws-could-lead-better-body-armor Yes, they are going to replicate the trick the shrimp uses to make its shell to make bulletproof armor. No, they do not think biomimetics stops working because it's organic technology. What of their reaction to finding out the creators of the newly contacted species, who they think are myths or Protheans, are living in the next system? Then again, Citadel FC team mistaking Terragen crew as Turian type multspecies empire is more plausible than Dolphin crew doing FC forgetting to mention Humans are not their gods... unless they are practical jokers.
Other species has their advantages asari biotics, krogan redundant system, salarian super intelligence etc, we humans however have one which other species call magic, while we call it science, we have alchemy. The world is full metal alchemist, with automail, chimera, homunculus and all that craziness.
Rather, the logic is that swords built with modern technology will still get you killed up against somebody with a flintlock rifle. Doesn't matter how advanced your biotech is, it's operating using constraints that make it utterly terrible for starship combat, much as swords operate using constraints that make them utterly terrible for the modern battlefield. This is why we have, you know, support vessels. The fact that organic tech might in some ways need less maintainence does not make up for how utterly terrible of an idea it is, nor for the fact that it's going to need food. In fact, it's almost certain organic ships would require more logistical investment, since food is far, far less energy-dense than anything an actual warship would use. Stop changing the goalposts. That's inorganic technology; it might succeed a technical definition of life, but the direction it is approached from renders it inorganic in context. Because organic ships have a spectacular energy-density problem, a huge problem using large amounts of energy efficiently, lacks viable sensors, communications, and computing power, and would not regenerate as rapidly as you postulate, minimizing the one possible advantage it might have. Automation is a wonderful thing. An absolutely ludicrous postulate. Because of fundamental physical laws, such as the square-cube law, rendering bio-ships impractical. No biochemical-based warship will be able to fight at anything resembling parity with an inorganic warship. Change it to nanotech, and you're changing the goalposts. See above. Without postulating a fundamental basis radically at odds with current life, you're stuck with DNA (which mutates, inevitably leading to cancer in macroscopic organisms), and the other basic biochemicals such as proteins. There's some interesting things you can do with those, but a warship they do not make. Changing the goalposts. Again. There's nothing preventing you from growing organic materials in a vat and applying it to the exterior of your vessel. Furthermore, if I understand that article right, it's less about the materials, than how it's constructed, which could probably be inorganically replicated.
Alchemy is stupidly broken when you think about it and get up to carbon polymers (nanotubes, graphen) and things that require clean materials (do you know how expensive clean silicon is?). Alchemists could transmute any random stuff into eezo (transelemental transmutations are possible, but hard - alchemists are forbidden from creating gold by law). On the other hand, Alchemy won't work in space without philosophical stones to power it (no tectonical movement). It also won't work on geologically dead worlds. It is actually likely that it won't work outside FMA!Earth since I, for one, believe, that it is a post-singularity (and instrumentality) world, with "The One" being transsapient supercomputer that saturated the planet with nanotech. Alchemy gates are interfaces to the computer. But it would be very fun to watch. Also, Reapers are pretty much flying philosophical stones.
Or there could have been a translation error since those it'd probably take quite a while to work out all the bugs. Here's a relevent post from the 'Humanity as Engineers' thread: I'm still opposed to the idea of uplifting dolphins though because, as has already been pointed out, they almost out do us in terms of dickishness.
Actually, if you think that there is something ("Truth", "The One", "The God", "The World") that is administering the alchemy (through application of matter synthesizers and nanotech in the atmosphere), plate movement as a power source makes total sense. You have, deep inside the planet, this huge technological super-installation, that uses geo-energy to power itself. Humans on the surface have uplinks to it (gates of Truth, which, when opened, initiate download of information and give you administrative rights). Circles are basically programming language, with pattern recognition software installed into nanotech that saturates the atmosphere (which is why moon shadow can be used as a circle). If you are uplifting someone and not meddling with their brain-chemistry to make them not be dicks to you, you are doing it wrong. Though, yes, from aquatic species, octopuses or something related (basically, something with appendages/tentacles) would be more useful. Dolphins are easier, though. I would also like to say, that anything sapient without hands would be vastly inhuman.
Wouldn't that mean that Earth and everything on it was made by someone/something else? Specifically a really, really, powerful and advanced something else. Which is why I was thinking of using dogs, which we've already done a pretty good job of humanising in the course of molding them into our best friends (not to mention that the hands issue would fall under the terms of our partnership), and elephants, which do have a 'hand', along with mostly agreeable personalities. As for dolphins, given that they may already be sapient any uplift on that front might be more like overcoming the language barrier, although you have a point about us artifically reducing their gittishness.
Really, for me FMA seemed like a post-singularity and post-instrumentality world (it cab be easily crossed with evangelion for example). I am basing this on the portrayal of Truth and its reaction to Edward giving alchemy up. He "defeated" it in the same way one defeats a test, and truth, as an administrator of the test, was happy to get such a smart student at last. Alchemy really seems like something of a sociological experiment, where scientific knowledge is directly linked to both wealth and military power. The ryule of equivalent exchange being another test. Plus, I am pretty sure that Truth administers afterlife, and wouldn't be surprised if all living humans were just downloads of basic patterns of souls stored within truth (basically, when you are born, your overself becomes your Truth, when you die you join with your overself). So, yes, that's my theory. On uplifts - aren't elephants at least as smart as dolphins? If we are uplifting dolphins/octopuses to inhabit aquatic areas, and elephants/dogs for other places (I am against apes due to them being too similar to us - they bring too little and contest with us for living areas too much), we need to uplift something flying.
They're not entirely sure about elephants, mostly because they haven't been seriously studying their intelligence for all that long. So far however the evidence suggests that they'e at least on the cusp of sapience. As for something flying, I'd go with corvids and/or some of the parrots since they're also already up there in the intelligence stakes.
