IA IA disclaimer fhtagn!

Author's Note: Yes, this is an alt humanity fic. However I'm also buffing the Council. If you want to know how I've buffed the Council please look at Over Analysis (one of my other stories). However due to some meddling by the Protheans this cycle will be a MAJOR Out-Of-Context-Problem for the Reapers in terms of raw firepower and how decentralized humanity is (for most cycles Reaper influence keeps the younger races from munchkining the Mass Effect to its maximum potential).


Codex: Human Space

Humanity, at a glance resembles the Quarians in terms of lifestyle, traversing the galaxy in massive ships with permanent populations in the 10,000s for the smaller craft. On closer inspection, the differences become apparent. Each non military human vessel longer than 3 km is a colony in and of itself, with a sufficient industrial base to refine raw materials from asteroids, fabricate appropriate components, and produce new ships. By contrast the Quarians are stuck on decaying obsolete rust buckets without the infrastructure to manufacture new ships. This arises from the differing reasons for their nomadic lifestyle. The Quarians were forced off their home world in a hurried evacuation to escape the Geth. The Humans deliberately left their planet out of paranoia about getting hit with RKKVs, and thus avoid staying in one place for extended periods.

In terms of government, each hab ship is mostly treated as an independent sub-nation which is a part of a larger Alliance, with communications being maintained using a massive network of micro-wormhole communicators. It is common practice for every hab ship in a 20 Light Year radius to congregate in a single system for about a month every 10 years, allowing exchanges of population and technology while enabling newer ships to get connected up to the communications network aside from the initial link to their 'parent' ship. The most common governmental structure aboard a human hab ship is a semi-anarchic (there are some authorities to make sure people stay efficiently organized on whatever they're doing, but they don't have any real power) reputation economy. Capitalistic democracy, socialism, and even dictatorships are not terribly rare however. To keep whoever winds up in charge from going overboard however every human hab ship has a hard-coded VI (to get rid of it you'd need to go through such an intensive process that you might as well just build a new hab ship) that will, if it detects that its citizens are being oppressed without good reason immediately suborn the government's neural interfaces. If the government doesn't have Neural Interfaces the VI will rendezvous with the nearest hab ship that meets the necessary standards and inform them of the situation, seeding and supporting a revolution on the way.

Codex (category: human-produced technology)

Space-time manipulation technology

Much of humanity's travel and communications infrastructure works by twisting space-time into exotic shapes. As gravity is a specific type of spatial distortion, and humanity are quite competent spatial architects, it makes sense that they would have the ability to manipulate gravity. This is often used the way one would expect for gravity and inertial dampeners. It's also a normal part of human mining techniques of all things, with them using gravitational shear to rip chunks out of uninhabited rocky planetoids which are then refined into usable materials. fortunately the 'gravity hook' as it is often known only has a range of a few thousand kilometers. Human based gravity manipulation is incapable of violating Newton's 3rd law.

Lastly, unless it is actively being manipulated or messed with, human-produced space-time engineering is static meaning it doesn't require any further energy input to continue existing. However in the case of wormholes, conduits and open-cycle gravitational accelerators (NO FREE ENERGY 4 U) using them counts as 'being messed with' and requires active manipulation to sustain.

Conduit drive

Humanity uses an alternate form of eezo-free FTL, which works by altering the geometry of space. When active the conduit drive contracts distances to an insane degree in the direction of travel (for a 'shitty' drive each meter inside is equal to 10,000,000 meters outside, the current-gen average is 16 times that) while also shrinking its external dimensions perpendicular to the direction of travel such that the conduit could easily slip between the quarks making up a proton without disrupting them overly much. Due to tidal effects, traversing a conduit with an internal speed higher than 3 km/s is generally a bad idea if you want to come out the other end in one piece. With the internal diameter/stability being a trade-off with distance contraction each % of a human ship's mass that is devoted to FTL drive with the current 5th generation drives is roughly equivalent to 400 c of economical cruising speed.

Worth noting is that a ship/drive does not necessarily need to go through the conduit it generates for itself. This leads to human combat doctrine best being summed up as "zap/blast 'em with teleporting lasers/bombs from light hours away then move before they can catch you". It has also led to the creation of massive 'transit devices' similar to the Relays that can slingshot hab ships around at an effective external velocity of 400,000 c (~45 light years per hour) with smaller ships going even faster. The reason for this is that each % of a ship's mass that is dedicated to FTL drives gives 400 c with 5th gen drives, and a transit device devotes 1,000% of a hab ship's mass (about 3,760 trillion tons) to FTL drives.

Compared to Mass Effect FTL, the Conduit drive is slower, cannot directly be used as a WMD and uses far more energy, but is almost impossible to detect and scales up better. Add in it not needing eezo to work and it's also cheaper.

hardened space-time armor

Technically something of a misnomer as space-time is not in fact matter and thus cannot be hard, hardened space-time armor nonetheless provides the main passive defense on human spacecraft. Though the details are still unanimously classified by the human governments, HSA has been confirmed to be a tessellation of some form of exotic matter which both pins said exotic matter in place and produces a black-hole level gravitational field away from itself with an extremely sharp cutoff (to keep from crushing the insides of the ship into a singularity). This results in HSA behaving pretty much like a completely rigid solid object (density of 15 g/cubic cm) without actually being such. Worth noting is that HSA acts in an ablative manner, as HSA is unpowered space-time engineering, with getting shot at definitely counting as 'being messed with'. Despite disintegrating under fire HSA is still extremely durable, with destroying a single cubic meter of the stuff requiring energy equivalent to 2.8 million tons of TNT directed at it with 100% efficiency (if using unfocused weapons at least 20 megatons per cubic meter is preferable) for current generation armor. Add to that the fact that it is internally configured in such a way as to spread the damage around as much as possible, meaning that you aren't trying to wreck only the armor in a straight line through, you're also trying to wreck all the other armor in a 45 degree cone from the direction your shot was going (assuming it was a kinetic, energy weapons interact weirdly). In general, using a space-time disruption weapon tends to fail utterly, and HSA cannot be penetrated by a Conduit drive.

Micro-wormhole communicators

Quite bluntly, this is just a bundle of cables shoved through a small wormhole (usually about 10 cm in diameter). Worth noting is that with the proper equipment it is possible to remotely establish a direct connection by moving one end of a millimeter scale wormhole through the pre-existing network to the destination ship then inflating it to normal size, though this is limited by the availability of pre-existing connections. Worth noting is that the humans Could theoretically make a wormhole of arbitrary size, but each end would need to be manually moved into position, and keeping the whole thing stable is usually more trouble than it's worth. Thusly humanity mostly prefers the increased flexibility granted by a Conduit drive.

fusion-pumped lasers

As previously detailed, HSA is virtually immune to spatial disruption weapons and takes an excessively large amount of 'conventional' firepower to penetrate. As humanity has had at least 2 internal interstellar wars before first contact, they needed to develop weaponry capable of practically penetrating their own armor. To this end they could use ludicrously oversized Conduit-displaced nukes when within a few light minutes, but getting that close had the potential to be tricky to say the least, especially when your enemy was constantly moving around explicitly to deny you such an opportunity. To deal with this the humans developed what could best be summed up as a reusable bomb pumped laser. For a unit roughly 40,000 tons in mass (what the humans consider 'point defense'), 11.5 tons of deuterium is cycled through the weapon during firing. 80% of that deuterium undergoes fusion, and a further 80% of the energy released actually ends up in the beam (2.2 gigatons worth of energy for a 40,000 ton laser). This still results in the insides of the laser being full of super-heated helium/deuterium plasma, which must be disposed of. To that end, the plasma is summarily ejected from the front end of the gun in a highly visible 'muzzle flash'. Despite this it still takes quite a long time (around a minute) for the weapon to cool down enough for a full power shot after firing. 1% power shots can, however be fired in quick succession (though there isn't normally a point to doing so). Add in the beams being given a massive shortcut to their target thanks to the conduit drive, and the humans have a highly effective (and super-luminal) weapons system. Please bear in mind that the stated mass includes a designated conduit generator.

Neural Interface

The humans also don't use the 'normal' holographic interface as the council races, as they instead have opted to receive and manipulate data through a brain implant. Functions of a Neural Interface include: browsing the extranet/equivalent, highly detailed VR, remotely controlling machinery like it was an extension of yourself, and transferring an organic's mind between bodies. That last one is apparently a recent addition, but the humans have refused to say where they got it.

Category: human-built ship classes (NOTE: these are only the most common, (private) ships under 100 meters come in a near endless number of variants)

Scouts
Mass: 4,000,000 tons
Length: 100 meters
Diameter: 50 meters
30% fusion reactor/torch drive
40% fuel
6% conduit drive (may be used to increase effective range of lasers or for FTL sensing) (effective travel speed: 2,400 c)
8% heat management systems
10% Hardened Space-time Armor
1% computing/maintenance supplies
1% sensors (effective real-time information feed range: ~0.2 light hours)
(4) 40,000 ton Fusion-pumped lasers

Scouts are just that, scouts. Despite being able to duel a council frigate on more-or-less even terms, they are often deployed more like fighters (I.E; in huge swarms). This includes the 'pilot' actually uploading their mind directly to the scout's computers, and thus it's less that they're flying the scout and more that for the duration of the mission they are the scout.

Direct Combat Units
Mass: 500,000,000 tons
Length: 800 meters
Diameter: 400 meters
20% fusion reactor/torch drive
30% fuel
4% conduit drive (may be used to increase effective range of lasers or for FTL sensing) (effective travel speed: 1,600 c)
6% heat management systems
20% Hardened Space-time Armor
15% maintenance supplies (computing is an insignificant mass usage at this point)
1% sensors (including conduit generators explicitly for this purpose only) (effective real-time information feed range: ~2 light hours)
Mass left over for weapons: 30,000,000 tons
most common weapons loadout
(90) 40,000 ton fusion-pumped lasers (point defense) (3,600,000 tons)
(10) 800,000 ton fusion-pumped lasers (energy delivered in TNT equivalent: 44 gigatons) (total 8,000,000 tons of mass)
(1,750) 10,000 ton nukes (yield: 0.95 teratons) (nuclear shaped charge/casaba howitzer [look it up]) (total 17,500,000 tons of mass)
(5) railguns/conduit generators (for the nukes) (projectile mass: 10,000 tons) (muzzle velocity: 3 km/s) (effective external velocity in conduit: 40,000 c) (effective range: ~10 light hours) (total rate of fire: 10 nukes/second point blank, 1 nuke/second at maximum effective range) (mass: 900,000 tons)

Direct Combat units are the human equivalent to cruisers. They are formidable combatants and are generally capable of downing a dreadnought if they can stay at their preferred (long) engagement ranges. Unlike Scouts, Direct Combat Units are too complex for a single individual to control, however the 'crew' is still uploaded.

Juggernauts
Mass: 7,550,000,000 tons
Length: 3 km
Diameter: 1 km
25% fusion reactor/torch drive
32% fuel
5% conduit drive (sensors and weapons have their OWN conduit generators) (effective travel speed: 2,000 c)
5% heat management systems
15% Hardened Space-time Armor
10% maintenance supplies (computing is an insignificant mass usage at this point)
2% sensors (including conduit generators explicitly for this purpose only)(effective real-time information feed range: ~6 light hours)
6% weapons (including conduit generators explicitly for this purpose only)
Mass left over for weapons: 453,000,000 tons
most common weapons loadout
(3,000) 40,000 ton fusion-pumped lasers (point defense) (total 120,000,000 tons)
(24) 10,000,000 ton fusion-pumped lasers (energy delivered in TNT equivalent: 550 gigatons) (total 240,000,000 tons)
(6,000) 10,000 ton nukes (yield: 0.95 teratons) (nuclear shaped charge/casaba howitzer [look it up]) (total 60,000,000 tons of mass)
(300) 100,000 ton nukes (yield: 10 teratons) (nuclear shaped charge/casaba howitzer [look it up]) (total 30,000,000 tons of mass)
(15) railguns/conduit generators (for the 10,000 ton nukes) (projectile mass: 10,000 tons) (muzzle velocity: 3 km/s) (effective external velocity in conduit: 40,000 c) (effective range: ~100 light hours) (total rate of fire: 30 nukes/second point blank, 3 nukes/second at maximum effective range) (mass: 2,700,000 tons)
(2) railguns/conduit generators (for the 100,000 ton nukes) (projectile mass: 100,000 tons) (muzzle velocity: 3 km/s) (effective external velocity in conduit: 10,000 c) (effective range: ~25 light hours) (total rate of fire: 30 nukes/second point blank, 3 nukes/second at maximum effective range) (mass: 300,000 tons)

A juggernaut is the human version of the dreadnought. Due to the (deliberate) lack of eezo-based ANYTHING in the design, this is the largest humanity can build a combat ship capable of turning well enough for their high-mobility combat doctrine. It, like the others has an uploaded crew.

Hab Ships

Mass: 3,760,000,000,000 tons

Length: 240 km

Diameter: 50 km

20% fusion reactor/torch drive

30% fuel

4% conduit drive (sensors and weapons have their OWN conduit generators) (effective travel speed: 1,600 c)

4% heat management systems

7% Hardened Space-time armor (it's still about 5 km thick)

14% factories, mining equipment, etc.

15% habitation space (includes computing and agriculture)

1% docking facilities

3% military fleet (112,800,000,000 tons) (usually 5 Juggernauts, 120 Direct Combat Units, and 3,760 Scouts)

sensors are an insignificant mass expenditure at this scale (effective real-time information feed range: ~6 light hours)

2% weapons

Mass left over for weapons: 75,200,000,000 tons

most common weapons loadout

(498,013) 40,000 ton fusion pumped lasers (point defense)

(3,984) 10,000,000 ton fusion-pumped lasers (energy delivered in TNT equivalent: 550 gigatons)

(996,026) 10,000 ton nukes (yield: 0.95 teratons) (nuclear shaped charge/casaba howitzer [look it up])

(49,801) 100,000 ton nukes (yield: 10 teratons) (nuclear shaped charge/casaba howitzer [look it up])

(2,490) railguns/conduit generators (for the 10,000 ton nukes) (projectile mass: 10,000 tons) (muzzle velocity: 3 km/s) (effective external velocity in conduit: 40,000 c) (effective range: ~100 light hours) (total rate of fire: 4,980 nukes/second point blank, 498 nukes/second at maximum effective range)

(332) railguns/conduit generators (for the 100,000 ton nukes) (projectile mass: 100,000 tons) (muzzle velocity: 3 km/s) (effective external velocity in conduit: 10,000 c) (effective range: ~25 light hours) (total rate of fire: 664 nukes/second point blank, 66 nukes/second at maximum effective range)

Hab Ships are THE SINGULAR reason that humanity just doesn't care about garden worlds. Each Hab ship can have a population anywhere from 50,000 for newer ones that just split off their 'parent' ship to 750,000,000 for overpopulated pseudo-nations. The internal habitat takes up a full 3rd of the ship's internal volume (being 40 km in diameter and 80 km 'tall'), the 'bottom' 25% of which contains an absurdly densely packed hydroponics array, ensuring a lack of food shortages. Aside from the agriculture section, the habitat is built in layers 1 km thick each (including the 'floor) with the layers being anything from heavily developed hyper-metropolises, through suburban towns, to breathtaking 'natural' vistas. The total land area is around 75,000 square kilometers, and the habitat's interior is designed to mimic life on a planet as closely as possible right down to having EXACTLY 9.80665 m/s/s of gravity and genetic profiles for every animal that was ever on Earth at the time of the first Hab Ship being launched.