Author's Note: This is the sequel to my other fic Synthesized. If you haven't read that, I recommend it, as it will help give you some backstory. I'm starting off with a Codex-ish chaper for Exodus 2.0, the only difference is that the book is now Wikipedia 5.
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Category: weaponry
Annihilaser: An Annihilaser is an energy weapon that works by using antimatter to ignite extremely high energy fusion in a much larger amount of fusion fuels. The x-rays released by this reaction are focused into a coherent beam, with a range in the light-minute to light hour range based on size. The beam also packs a blast ranging from 40 kg of TNT for an infantry version, to 35 gigatons for a Cycle-Breaker's massive weapon. Though individually X-rays don't interact with baryonic matter very much, that lets them penetrate armor very well, and Annihilasers also compensate with the sheer amount of X-rays they project at the target.
The process also generates a sizable amount of waste heat in the fusion fuels, which cannot be safely disposed of using conventional heat-sinks and radiators. The solution to this is to eject the now super-heated fusion fuels from the weapon at high velocity, which produces a highly visible 'plasma bolt'. This has led to Annihilasers being confused with plasma weapons by the recreational simulations industry, much to the scientific and engineering communities' dismay.
Relay Gun: A relay gun is quite simply a miniature, reverse engineered Mass Relay (with the principles behind them being provided oh-so-helpfully by the Reapers), which is then pointed at a target. This results in a projectile traveling at 1,000,000,000,000c slamming into the target and delivering an utterly absurd amount of kinetic energy to the target, even accounting for it having mass just barely above 0. A 'standard' Relay Gun 1 km long delivers energy equivalent to roughly 1 teraton of TNT.
Superluminal Antimatter Torpedo: This is a super-heavy missile, intended to utterly vaporize anything it is fired dodges most point-defense fire by moving faster than the speed of light (about 500c for the older ones, though newer versions hit about 6,000c) and therefore arrives at the target before the target learns of its launch if they don't have FTL sensors. The famous 'Trump Card' SAT from the pre-exodus era had a warhead consisting of 100 tons of antihygrogen, and therefore had a yield of roughly 4 teratons. Interestingly, smaller variants equipped with small FTL sensors are used to shoot down incoming anti-ship variants in place of a Relay Gun CIWS.
Category: defenses
FTL sensors: The Alliance had a need to see targets in FTL before they exited FTL and got the jump on them. The solution to this turned out to be to hybridize the old LIDAR active sensor with a com buoy. The result is a sensor that can detect targets in real time out to ranges of 1 light hour for a cruiser-scale unit, with fidelity and range only improving as the system is made bigger.
Energy Screens: These barriers used to defend against energy weapons, reflect 80% of all incoming electromagnetic radiation back into space, and therefore look like a mirrored bubble from the outside. Not even the people who made this system have the slightest clue how the physics behind it work, and the topic is considered something of a joke among the scientific community. Though an individual layer of energy screen only reflects 80% of any given shot, this can be remedied by applying several layers of energy screen. Worth noting is that the power draw of an energy screen is directly proportional to the amount of energy that screen is being tasked with deflecting, and an energy screen drawing too much power typically winds up shutting down as an emergency fuse melts or a circuit breaker trips. This leads to the term of a ship's screens getting 'fused', meaning that the emergency fuse melted or the circuit breaker tripped.
Relay Alloy Armor: This material was used by the Reapers to make the original Mass Relays (though not, humorously the Reapers themselves.) It is a composite containing various types of exotic matter sandwiched together between layers of synthetic diamond and carbon nanotubes. The material was only replicated in the last 30 years of the Exodus, and has only been used to replace the top 10% of the armor layer of all Alliance vessels due to the general scarcity of intergalactic space. This still means that a cruiser can withstand a direct hit from a relay gun and keep fighting.
Category: Transport
Improved FTL drives: These improved drives never need to dump charge due to having a floating-ground system, and are capable of hitting roughly 15,000c on average, with the Arks managing 20,000c. This works by using both highly upgraded reactors and a grossly enlarged eezo core, only made possible by synthetic eezo.
Open-Ended Relays: These devices were developed using technology created during the development of Relay Guns, they are effectively a full-size (or sometimes merely Conduit-Scale) Relay, that doesn't need a receiving relay. This has resulted in the successful deployment of several probes and small construction vessels to the Triangulum galaxy roughly 25 years ahead of schedule, where a nomad city has been successfully created and is now awaiting inhabitants.
Category: Industrial and civilian technology
Synthetic Eezo: This technology is a means of producing the basis of most of our technology (namely element zero) artificially. The full details on the relevant techno-babble theory can be found in the 2165 edition of the now defunct Asari Codex.
Stasis fields: The stasis technology used by the Arks and other vehicles on the Exodus is not based on the use of cryogenic fluids and antifreeze, as that has too limited a shelf life. Instead it uses a hyper-dense mass effect field to induce heavy time dilation, such that 1 second inside is roughly equivalent to 10,000 years outside. This is also the technology that was used by the Protheans to preserve members of their species for the next cycle.
Mind Augmentations: In keeping with the old Alliance's grand tradition of rectifying what they consider "manufacturing defects of biology", recently a technique was developed to slowly reconfigure an organic's brain to increase their creativity and problem solving skills, along with working memory by a full order of magnitude. An equivalent upgrade program is available to synthetics.
Category: Technology in development
Jump Drive: Ever since the development of open-ended Relays, it has been kicking around in the minds of several scientists that maybe a Relay could move itself along with a ship built around it, leading to a vessel capable of near-instantaneous transit within a galaxy and crossing the void between galaxies in mere seconds. The theory seems rather solid, however no-one wants to test it aboard an Ark as that means effectively firing off a Relay gun inside a heavily populated vessel (NO THANKS!). No-one is able to test it with an existing ship due to the theoretical device needing to have a ship literally built specially to accept it. And finally no-one can build a new ship to test a Jump Drive due to the general resource scarcity of intergalactic space, so the device will just need to wait to be tested.
VoT reactors: The Violation of Thermodynamics reactor is a device found in the original Relays to SOMEHOW generate more energy than the process requires without requiring any fuel. A few working prototypes have been constructed by entities with mental augmentations so extreme that they are as far above a baseline organic as a baseline organic is above a single-celled micro-organism, but there aren't enough resources in intergalactic space to build a full-scale one, and like energy screens no-one really has a clue about how the device works.
Category: Derail the next cycle plans
The Gateway: Near a rogue planet known as Hades, there is a Relay on the scale of the original Citadel. This Relay was created before the development of open-ended Relays, and has its pair aboard Ark 1. It was originally intended to be a means to re-invade the Milky Way galaxy during the next cycle, but open-ended relays have rendered that unnecessary. It will still be useful if the Re-invasion goes completely wrong as a way to evacuate back to the Triangulum galaxy, with the Reapers pursuing being highly unlikely due to it having a quite comprehensive self-destruct sequence.
The Pylons: Similarly to the Protheans planting a database on the home world of the Asari, the home worlds of several primitive races have had self-maintaining comm. buoys buried on them. These comm. buoys are designed to un-bury themselves if they detect the locals entering the information age, and inform the locals of the predicament they are in pertaining to the Reapers. One of the species that was NOT given a pylon were the Yahg, who were instead given a sort of anti-pylon so that they would venerate the Reapers as gods and fall for EVERY SINGLE TRAP the Reapers set, in the hopes that that they wouldn't be strong enough to subjugate the other races of their cycle.
The Beasts: The beasts are a type of von Neumann self-replicating war machine, roughly equivalent to a Mk. 5 cruiser (Relay Gun, Relay Alloy Armor, 6-layer energy screen, improved FTL drive, 500 Trump Card yield SATs), but capable of evolving into something significantly more advanced. They are programmed to avoid actual stars and consume rogue planets for mass and materials to self-replicate. The Beasts are intended to destroy Reaper artifacts away from the gaze of Galactic civilization. The Beasts, however, are authorized to do something obvious if the leaders of the cycle's civilization get indoctrinated or something similar happens. "Obvious" acts include blowing up a Citadel or destroying a Relay.
Category: Ship Classes
Frigate: This class of vessel is roughly 650 meters long, it carries a small Annihilaser for self-defense more than anything else and has only a single layer energy screen. They are primarily used as scouting vessels, as their massively up-scaled eezo core allows them to pull 30,000c on a regular basis.
Cruiser: This is the primary combat vessel used by the Alliance. The current version in use is technically the Mk.5, but most of them are currently Mk. 4.5 as the Alliance has not yet fully converted their armor layer to relay Alloy in most cases. A cruiser is 2 km in length.
Battle-Sphere: These spherical warships 10km in diameter are designed to be capable of killing entire fleets. The most current model carries a series of 8 forward-firing Relay Guns, along with 1,000 SATs. On the defensive side each Battle-Sphere has a 12-layer energy screen along with 1 km of armor.
Cycle-Breaker: These massive 35 km long warships are absolutely terrifying. They're equipped with a massive broadside of 72 Relay Guns each, and their 3 spinal Relay guns are capable of delivering 50 teratons of SLAM! in a single shot. They carry 3,000 SATs, and are defended by a 16-layer energy screen and a 3 km armor layer.
Nomad cities: These are quite bluntly just Alliance cities with engines and FTL drives just bolted on. Nothing too remarkable there.
Arks: These 120 km behemoths are what truly made the Exodus possible. Each contains 12 internal cities along with a massive eezo synthesizer, a small craft bay capable of holding an entire battle group, stasis units for 1,000,000,000 organics, and facilities to mine and refine any known material.