Chapter 3: Overarching Plans for the Galaxy (Part 2: The Present and its Untapped Potential)
"I see. Don't leave us in suspense." said Thane. "How are we going to prepare?".
[Recommended Music: Mass Effect - Uncharted Worlds (1 hour) / watch?v=6TICn16U-rI]
"Firstly, by improving our weaponry as much as possible. And I just so happen to know of a way to make weapons much deadlier rather easily.", I casually asserted, thinking back to LittleSeraphim, the author of a fanfic I once read by the name of Mass Effect: Logical Conclusions. "It only requires a change in perspective and it's something special that I like to call 'the best defense is a good offense' or 'kinect barriers are broken and no one noticed'. Think about it, guys, how do 'Mass Effect firearms' work?".
"Weapons that utilize mass effect technology reduce the mass of the slug before accelerating it. When the projectile leaves the mass effect field, it regains its mass, but retains its speed, enough to make grain sized shaved metal slugs deadlier than normal gunpowder bullets.", Thane took on the task of answering my question in a summary, considering that his profession required intimate knowledge about weapons.
"Trading mass for velocity. Basis of all modern travel, FTL included.", Mordin added.
"Yeah, Thane, they work because of that 'extra' speed we get with eezo. And this increase in velocity we get after leaving the mass effect field means the slug can be easily accelerated with electromagnetism.", I continued, thinking to myself how none of the MEverse weapons would make sense if the speed returned to normal after leaving the barrel of the gun. "Otherwise, there'd be no point to eezo on guns at all, not even as a sort of recoil dampener, since we could probably get the same result by just having the slug suspended in a magnetic field powered by the electrical energy that we'd send to eezo. It'd even be cheaper. So, given that, now think: how do 'Kinetic Barriers' work?".
"Let me answer that. Kinetic barriers or shields, as we usually can them, work by decelerating/halting incoming projectiles until they are brought to a stop. They only activate against things going beyond a certain speed, so that we don't knock away chairs. Oh, they're generated by tiny emitters on the suit and bigger ones on warships.", Liara responded after having raised her hand, then got a bit shy when thinking about something else. "Actually, a biotic barrier works on the same principle. I-, I know because mother taught me how to do it.".
"Good explanation, Liara. Right, that's also how I've understood them, but there's something else we can infer from those explanations put together: the shield generators have to exert enough opposite force to equal the incoming slug's.", I stated after praising her succinct summary. "And, in physics, acceleration and deceleration are the same thing, as Newton's Third Law of Motion describes. So, why don't we just put some tiny 'reversed' shield emitters on our weapons and use gravity to accelerate our bullets rather than use electromagnetically accelerated rounds?".
"Can't see why. Electromagnetic coils enough for current needs.", Mordin frowed, casting some doubts on the idea. "Already close to reaching limits of reasonable speed. Recoil problems otherwise.".
"Mordin, there's a blindspot in your thinking. Kinetic Barriers, just by themselves, are capable of matching the acceleration of a slug that's going even faster than its initial electromagnetic acceleration, because of that eezo speed boost.", I pointed out with a smile. "And they don't just stop one, but many of those 'boosted' shots, which makes them way more efficient 'decelerators' than those coils/rails. Therefore, we can use their gravity fields for acceleration instead and then further 'boost' it with eezo!".
After finally comprehending what I had said, Mordin just… froze, as if his mind had been blown. He had his mouth open for like… 5 whole seconds! Thane and Liara, too, were looking at me as if I was some kind of alien from another Universe, until they realized that: yes, actually, I was. On both accounts.
"Incredible! Power draw and heat problematic. Wait, no! Shield working principle different. Gravity field based. Much more energy efficient. Likely result of eezo interference.", the Professor finally snapped out of it, rambling on his thoughts. "Yes! Theoretically feasible. Much more powerful shots. Or vastly lower power consumption. Depends on energy applied. Recoil still an issue.". He took a deep breath. "Must go back. Review other 'established' ideas. Find out what else we missed.".
"That… it's almost shameful how we've not considered this.", Thane also came out of his revelry, somewhat lamenting.
"Do you know how big this is?", Liara interjected with a question. "This can… revolutionize firearms, not much differently than when eezo was first introduced to humans, only now it would be the entire galaxy.".
"Oh, but we won't show and/or hand over this concept to the rest of the galaxy just like that. Otherwise, it might be turned against us and the Reapers would also know.", I quickly cut that idea down, lest she actually decide to go through with it. "And only firearms? Why stop there? Ships also use electromagnetism in their mass accelerators. Heck, even the Reapers still do, just applying it a little differently.". This time, they were really spooked by what I was implying. "Basically, we can swap it for gravity acceleration based on 'reversed' kinetic barriers and, as such, the ship could pack the same punch as normal, but only be a fraction of its original size, since the mass accelerator would be much more compact. This means that, as long as enough energy is provided, a Frigate could get the same amount of acceleration as the main (spinal) gun of a Dreadnought, because of the mass-reducing field and the compactness of shield emitters. Or we could keep the ship at the same size, but add a lot more 'reversed' shield emitters along its mass accelerator, getting ludicrous speeds as a result!".
"By the Goddess!", exclaimed Liara fearfully, now finally understanding the full implications of this concept. "Wouldn't that mean we could create weapons even more terrible than the main gun of Dreadnoughts!?".
"Yup! Even with a lazy implementation of this idea, we'd be able to field a lot of Frigates and Cruisers that are basically mini Dreadnoughts and mini Super-Dreadnoughts. Or we could fit a Frigate worth of power in, let's say, a light aircraft, at the very least.", I said with a smile, which slowly morphed into a grin. "All that matters is how much power we can supply to them. So, what I've said stands: the best defense is a good offense!".
"Correct in assessment. Kinetic barriers much more compact than magnetic coils. Can fit into smaller warships while retaining impact power.", Mordin took less time to confirm this concept. "Still, forgetting something. Will need to match power draw in smaller space. Or match force of original ship-class, but lose advantage of mass-reducing field. Not big deal. But still necessary. Also, more heat produced. Need to account for that.".
Mordin was right, as one would probably expect from one of the most brilliant minds of this generation. In a chat with that author from back home, she told me that the real challenge with shields wasn't power generation or even size, but heat dissipation (the more electricity in your craft, the more heat due to resistance). Right now in this Universe, civilian vessels use large, fragile radiator panels that are impossible to armor, while warships use a tech called "Diffuse Radiator Arrays" (Liquid droplet radiators), with those being ceramic strips along the exterior of the armored hull. To heat sensors, they look like warpaints, something humans used to spook the pirates of the Terminus. When in combat, tanks of liquid sodium/lithium absorb heat within the ship, which are vented from spray nozzles near the bow as a thin sheet of millions of micrometer-scale droplets. Then, the droplets are caught at the stern and recycled into the system. This droplet system is supposed to sink 10-100 times as much heat as DRA strips.
"Now, heat will always be an issue. There's no way that I know of to break physics there like we can do with eezo.", I admitted to them, who were somewhat disappointed thinking back on how high I'd set expectations. "What we can do is, for example, research ways to make the 'reversed' shield emitters more power efficient. Prothean schematics can help with that and don't forget that we still have our sleeping Reaper, Steve, to poke around and learn things from.". Yet, wearing a craftly smile, I still met their expectations. "But I do have a few… ideas on how to better manage the heat issues that I've… hmm, borrowed from someone else.".
That energized them right up, a situation I found to be a bit entertaining. Either that or they were starting to become interested in how much I seemed to be able to break, unravel or otherwise flip the common sense of this Universe.
"Well, do go on.", Thane urged. "I promise we'll listen very carefully and won't judge if the ideas aren't all that good.", he added, turning to his other two companions, who nodded their agreement. Mordin much more so, excitement abundantly clear in his eyes.
"From the point of view of Humanity, our Universes are pretty similar, with the exception of this one having Element Zero and, well, you guys and the Reapers.", I began by bringing up this fact, for context reasons, which they seemed to have forgotten given my previous revolutionary concept. "This means that your Humanities' past is, in a great many ways, my hometown's present. And, back there, there was a technology being developed to use tiny particles as coolant, which are then manipulated by a plasma field, allowing them to pick up heat in a heat exchanger, be moved out into space, where they cool down, then be collected again to be reused. This tech was called 'dusty plasma radiators'. Perhaps this also exists in this Universe, so you could dig it out of our archives. Moreover, instead of using ceramics for our radiators, we could just use graphene or carbon nanotubes, since they're far more efficient and capable of dumping way more heat than ceramics.".
There wasn't much reaction to the first idea, since they hadn't seen it, but the second one made them pause once again in thought. Mostly, it was a thought of "Wait, why aren't we doing this already? Why isn't this a thing?". After all, carbon nanotubes had been invented in the MEU, since Silaris Armor, an upgrade for the SR-2 Normandy described as "nearly unsurpassed in strength because [of] its central material", uses sheets of them "woven with diamond Chemical Vapor Deposition". It would even become cheaper to construct during the ME2 period.
And there was another benefit to using dusty plasma radiators, one that I didn't tell them. They let us form huge, glowing wings in, say, a suit of armor using them to vent the waste heat produced by its jetpack. Basically, it's a good technology that also allows for the Rule of Cool. And this can explain the absence of visible radiators on most sci-fi spacecrafts, especially whatever those things were supposed to be on Gundams.
"As for infantry weapons specifically, maybe we should do something other than 'shooting grains of mildly angry sand', like most armies of this galaxy do right now.", I said with a smile. "You know, when Humanity discovered gunpowder, it made projectile weapons that needed the manual insertion of the bullet and black powder. That lasted until someone had the idea of putting the 'gunpowder' inside the projectile itself. So, eventually, modern firearms were born with smokeless powder cartridges that are simply primed by the gun. However, when we get our hands on something as busted as eezo is, people thought it was alright to just shoot grain-sized metal shavings whilst having to deal with overheating problems and account for electricity needs, instead of just using cartridges with a single-use capacitor to power the shot and liquid helium under pressure to cool the weapon down…". That, once again, seemed to have stirred them into contemplation, more so with how simple this was, save for the inevitable issue of supply, of course, which I also accounted for. "So, what we are going to field to our forces are weapons that fire 'full sized' rounds at ludicrous speeds, which can be anything from seeking micro-missiles, nanites, homing bullets to, if you're feeling crazy, antimatter and so on. Due to the shields' compact nature, we'll have no problem leaving the metal shaver inside, so we can switch to a more traditional firing ammunition when running out of bullets.".
Contemplative silence was their only answer for a long while. After all, this was completely not what they were used to. It was different from the common logic of this era. Even in the games, I thought to myself, the ME species get all kinds of creative with their "grains of sand", but that still doesn't get close to the crazy things I've just hinted at here, like shooting stuff on the same level as a Bolter/Boltgun from the WH40K Universe, which was a literal rocket, basically, but at hyper velocity speeds!
And the creation of those single-use micro-capacitors shouldn't be anything impossible, as can seen from the suits of armor of the MEU having micro-capacitors capable of powering their shields, stopping many, many shots from guns which went through that eezo speed boost. I even remembered the existence of pieces of gear like the Capacitor Helmet and the Kassa Fabrication, both of them having those micro-capacitors to give a bit of extra juice to the kinetic barriers and, as such, stop a lot more supersonic shots. There's no good reason to believe micro-capacitors can't fit inside of a bullet, or something to that effect. On this front, the MEverse was quite advanced, I had to give it to them. Besides that, energy was never brought up as an actual limiting factor. Heat and recoil were.
"This… doesn't that mean we almost don't have to worry about heat and energy needs anymore?", Liara broke the silence with a question.
"Seems so, but supply lines only issue.", Mordin answered before I could. "However, would still be better than just those... thermal clips.".
"And the versatility that comes with it is unparalleled. I can't think of anything surviving a high-powered shot from a sniper rifle with an antimatter bullet.", Thane went straight into applications for assassination, because that was very much like him. "Besides, it's not like we wouldn't be able to use our weapon after running out of bullets, since, as you pointed out, there's still the metal shaver inside.".
"Sure. And we can increase the tungsten content of those shaved off metal slugs, include one module in the mass effect field generator to surround them in a phasic envelope and design them to fly aerodynamically.", I mentioned some upgrade ideas that I saw during ME2 as well. "Oh, and try to have them spinning; that's a neat trick! But you know what? As far as energy is concerned, we can do even better with starships!".
Their expressions of "here we go again…" and "what's this madman going to come up with now?" were very telegraphed and funny, as was them turning to see each others' faces to confirm that, no, it wasn't them who were out of touch with common sense.
"To summarize the summary: slugs lightened by Element Zero impact with more energy than was put into accelerating them and this is accomplished by reaching higher velocities than normally possible.", I brought up this point for the sake of context. "So, given that, why can't we design a system that uses our weapons technology to pull energy like it does, recycle that 'extra' energy into itself, in the same vein as a perpetual motion machine, while sending the excess energy somewhere else for us to use? After all, it's basically free energy!".
They stood in silent contemplation for an even longer time than before, either processing it or maybe even coming up with schematics for this concept, in the case of Mordin.
"I mean, you guys must have wondered from where do the Mass Relays get the energy to create a 'virtually mass-free corridor of spacetime' hundred of light-years long, right? Heck, they even do it while producing no waste heat!", I reminded them of this little fact that few people focused on, since it was just everyday life for most folk here. "So, while they were dumb in not using eezo generated gravity fields for mass accelerators, especially when their shield tech is one of their OP traits, I personally think that those broken machines have developed and use something like a perpetual motion machine for energy generation.".
"Can't believe no one thought about it before. Maybe can even be done with just dynamo.", Mordin muttered quietly. "Must have reason for no development. Perhaps energy corporations' sabotage? Or political reasons?".
"Actually, now that I think about it, that could even solve whatever power draw issues we may still have with directed energy weapons (DEW), like the Prothean Particle Beams and other high-powered lasers. So, yeah…", I casually dropped yet another bomb and, before they could recover from the frist mind-blowing one, thought of something else. "What's more, with free energy readily available, there's another fun thing we can do. Guys, how is Element zero produced again?".
"Generated when solid matter is affected by the energy released by a supernova.", Mordin responded automatically, while still absentmindedly thinking about the concept. "Commonly found in asteroid debris orbiting neutron stars and pulsars.".
"Then, with that neverending energy, can't we create particle accelerators that mimic the near "c" (speed of light) particle collisions created during those novae, which would let us synthetize eezo?", I asked them nonchalantly, as if this concept didn't have the potential to completely crash the Element Zero market/economy and screw the asari, for instance. "At the same time, we should also use some extra eezo to cancel out the mimicked supernova gravity fields so absolutely no gravitational waves are emitted to tip anyone off, especially the Reapers.".
Even if we discarded the idea of getting free energy from eezo, there's still solar panels, automation (at least in the form of fabricators), better materials to resist solar radiation and easy FTL travel to any star in the MEverse (with a fusion reactor in each ship), so energy shouldn't ever be a problem for us.
"I mean, it isn't magic! Wait, poor choice of words… Let me try again. Magic space rocks though they may be, but they're magic space rocks that are created when normal matter is under certain strict conditions. If we can 'mimic' those conditions, then we can synthesize them artificially.", I laid it all out to them. "Heat will still be an issue in that machine, but I believe you guys are smart enough, surely smarter than me, to figure out creative ways to get around that. Even if we can't use dusty plasma radiators for some reason.".
"Thinking of giving up.", Mordin finally broke his stunned state, declaring jokingly. We all laughed at the Professor's little joke.
"Someone must have thought of that, but didn't succeed in the end or the result was just underwhelming.", Liara said suddenly, after recovering herself, to try to justify this lack of eezo synthesizing. "Perhaps… we should give it a try.".
"Maybe it never saw the light of day because some someone powerful had personal interest in preventing it, someone like the asari, who would lose their current position and advantages after having their main market collapse.", Thane offered his suggestion, going into a darker direction about the reason for this lack of artifical creation of Element Zero. "After all, they hid a Prothean Beacon from the galaxy while creating severe laws against against such an act.".
Liara opened her mouth to rebut, but chose to let it go, as there was no excuse to be made there other than it being the sin of the Matriarchs.
"Now, those weapons we'll be developing will still pack quite a punch or, from a certain point of view, will have as much recoil as the energy we decide to give them. This brings me to the next part: the warriors that'll fight against Reaper's forces. I call it Project Angels of War.", I declared with ambition, which quickly morphed into a sigh. "You know, just like how you're not using eezo as smartly as you could, the way you guys are doing ground warfare is kinda stupid.".
They had mildly offended expressions, but not by much, maybe because of everything I had delivered so far.
"Seriously, ignoring the fact that aerial and orbital supremacy means ground warfare is almost worthless, the way armies work now is by giving a lot of normal grunts some basic weapons and armor when a swarm of drones would probably do their work much better. And the lack of decent vehicles, artillery and aircraft is more evidence of this. When those Destroyer-class Reapers land and start behaving as Heavy Walkers, you'll want your tanks to be at least like mini-BOLOs. Plus, you guys haven't even figured out true power armor.", I mercilessly listed just a few examples of this. "So, here's what I'm thinking we should do: focus on supersoldiers, which will field the best gear and have the best augments, working as a very mobile and destructive commando unit of a few elites, with a swarm of drones to deal with numbers. As a foundation, we'll take the base genetics of our warriors and push it to their limits, but with no additions… at first. To complement that, we'll include the most benign cybernetic implants, using technology to strengthen the skeletal structure, act as synthetic extra muscles, improve all parts of the body and so on…".
"All current armies already using genetic and cybernetic implant technologies.", rebutted Mordin without much ado. "Even Alliance has gene-mods for soldiers. Your implementation ideas different? Interested in revolutionary concepts. My area of expertise.".
"Yes. You're right, Mordin. For instance, there's at least one area where they're completely lacking: Nanomachines, son!", I exclaimed with open arms, not managing to resist making that particular reference, but they didn't get it, so I continued with a sigh. "You guys are no fun. Sure, they all have their own, say, gene therapy and implants, like translators, and it's quite neat… for someone living in the 21st century of Earth. The problem is that it's all too little, almost to the point that it becomes worthless. And it takes years for gene therapy to really take effect. It's even illegal to add abilities like, for instance, asari's mind meld, prothean's 'psychometry' or even just krogan's life extension. Basically, it's like The Powers That Be have it out for transhumanism, pardon the term. We can't have that.".
Personally, I found that there was such wasted potential when considering the technology they had access to here. One can feel it more clearly in the case of radical life extension, especially the salarians, who had been spacefaring for millenia, yet "could not" figure out a way to live longer than an estimate of 40 years. I mean, this is the Universe where it's possible to bring someone from the dead, but it's just impossible to get creative with, say, telomeres and senescent cells when we've got DNA of species (asari and krogan) that live for many hundreds of years, apparently. Now that I thought about it, this was a recurring theme on a lot of major sci-fi (Halo, Star Trek, Star wars and so on), in which a method of FTL travel is a mild engineering challenge at best, but humans and aliens in the settings are universally confined to their baseline life expectancy.
It doesn't help that a polity like the Citadel Council puts a chokehold on any kind of tech that might lead one to trans[speciesism], almost like they are softening themselves up for the Reapers… I knew that was the case because something as incredibly good as medi-gel is banned by its Conventions, but allowed to be used only because it's simply too good not to. A law that finds issue with that has got to be very limiting. And, even when we get people trying to "push the envelope", they are ones who pretend to be the "end justifies the means" kind when, in truth, they are moronic idiots who have no idea of what they're doing. So, with a shake of my head, I began indicating to them how we could begin to do things differently...
"No, what I'm thinking goes way beyond mere improvements. Just consider for a moment all the stuff the Reapers can do with nanotechnology…", I began by mentioning that, which caused Liara to flinch a bit when remembering husks and reaperized forces. "Yeah, I know, Liara. Those things are horrible, but try to ignore the brutal, evil and body mutilation parts of the tech, and focus on what it can do objetively: with human husks, we see that it can convert organic materials into cybernetic ones and even technological implants; with scions, it can grant biotic powers to non-biotic ones; with all of their forces, they can make them faster, stronger, tougher, etc. And this is just off the top of my head…".
"You're suggesting putting someting like nanites in us, right? I don't know how I'd feel about having tiny robots inside of my body.", Liara revealed to us with an expression of reluctance. "All of those… things that are not me.".
"But, if your biology is anything like mine, you already have trillions of inhuman, or inasari, machines running through you right this moment.", I said with a smile and turned to the Professor for confirmation, which he gave in the form of a nod. "It's just that we call them gut bacteria, mitochondria and viruses, in the human case.".
"That doesn't help much!", she exclaimed. "Goddess, now I'm going to feel weird for a few days.". We chuckled a bit at her small joke.
"There's something else to be said here. Inevitably, we tend to see nanites as 'metal' or a material analogous to that. This doesn't have to be the case.", I asserted confidently, with the inspiration coming from another Sir Isaac. "Organic life, especially amino acids (carbs, fats, proteins…) serving as life's building blocks and fuel, is a good basis for comparison and reference to the development of those nanites. The same is true for the specialization we see in nature. So, we should look towards creating biocompatible nanites that can help with healing, regulate heat, protect against radiation, 'mimic' the immune system of other species in complementary ways, train muscles… and so on, each one built for a specific purpose. And it'd be just as easy for this technology to rebuild neurons, fix 'cancer' and even extend one's life. Besides taking Reaper Tech™ and keeping only the benign parts, we can also take Prothean tech as reference, since they also developed nanotech quite far. Eventually, we might not use organic life as a mere analogy, but achieve something in the same level of smart and programmable matter, such that the future of nanotechnology might not just be intertwined with ours, but what many of us may, in time, become!".
The trio was mesmerized by the way the idea evolved as I went on. This was but merely a path towards trans[speciesism] or, even, post[speciesism]. One which would guarantee, by its mere intrinsic nature, biological immortality, since any part of you that "failed" could just be replaced and/or rebuilt exactly the same by many indivisible pieces of matter that could rearrange themselves in any way, shape or form, even as neurons. There would be no real difference between "organic" and "synthetic" matter, and it'd be a clearer, more controllable and more ethical framework than "we all have silly circuits and glowing green eyes now!" (which was just an appalling misinterpretation of something like transhumanism). In a way, medi-gel was a product which was beginning to blur this line, since it uses medical nanides that could heal both organic and synthetic beings. That only goes to show how this Universe had tech with potential that was just squandered…
This was very ambitious, I couldn't deny to myself, as it scratched the ceiling of the technological footing/groundwork I'd found here, but one doesn't get far by aiming low. In order to face the Reapers, I was aiming the highest possible.
"This is but one of the things we can do. And we'll always be updating the augments.", I waved at them casually, deciding to wrap up this topic and get to the next one. "In the near future, our warriors will have mind-computer neural interfaces, perhaps built using those very same nanites which flood their system, that speed up their thinking and allow them to interface directly and safely with technology, skeletons stronger than most materials, regeneration that makes the krogan envious and so much more. The idea is that, just by themselves, they'll be strong enough weapons, with solid foundations to fire the gravity based weaponry which has more recoil, for one, and the power to wield the other part of the Project: the suit of power armor.".
"There's more?", Liara asked with an incredulous tone and expression.
"Oh yes, most certainly. The supersoldier is just half of the equation. The other is the suit of power armor.", I confirmed it, to her stupefaction. "Basically, we'll give the 'operator' side of things as many augments as possible and add to that by using a suit that will be like an 'extended body', not just an exoskeleton. That's one of the reasons the body must have a strong enough foundation, to actually use the armor without injuring itself. And, when I say 'power armor', I mean one way beyond even our current 'heavy' armors, regardless of how many addons it has. To start with, it'll be powered by small eezo 'free energy' generators, which I've considered naming E-Reactors. Now, with unlimited energy at our disposal, we'll first remove a problem that almost all suits of armor still have: the inability to fly. All of the suits must have an eezo based 'jetpack', with the waste heat being vented by miniature dusty plasma radiators. It'll have the same 'features' as normal armors, such as navigation, and much more, like artificial eezo nodules. A good portion of it will be 'synthetic' muscles, with an inner layer of fabric woven (perhaps) with carbon nanotubes and an outside layer using whatever nanomaterial currently offers the best protection. All of it will be driven by mind-computer neural interfaces, with trillions of nanomachines for all sorts of functions, especially repairing. The shields are deflective, rather than repulsive. Also, it works as a full EVA suit and the helmets must have faceplates, with outside cameras for vision, because 'glass' visors are just a structural weakness.".
After finishing listing just some of the basic features, they just stared at me like was rambling crazy stuff. I couldn't blame them, really, because it was so over the top when compared to what we've got right now that a rookie soldier might even be able to defeat a well established Spectre on the basis of "pay-to-win". This wasn't of the category of armor anymore, even its heavier types, but more of a wearable mech – and a very OP one at that. In my opinion, that just made it cooler to think about!
"The cost for such a… suit would be many times higher than just arming a squadron of soldiers with the best gear available today, such as the Colossus line of armors.", Thane was the first to recover. "And we'd be able to arm an entire platoon. Perhaps even more by using the same amount of credits.".
"That's the point. It's a force multiplier that renders most current armies moot, especially with cheap drone support, and something against which the Reapers don't have a really good counter!", I emphasized the last part, since it was what actually mattered right about now. "Plus, the bulk of the cost of this can be found in the starting development phase, with it becoming much cheaper as the technologies mature and we begin to mass-produce its results.".
"Correct on assessment, mostly. Salarian doctrine somewhat based on this concept.", the Professor added his own experience in the STG. "Seek cutting-edge technology. Make up for lack of quantity with quality. Gets much cheaper with time. Universally observed situation.".
"Mordin, you've had time to study many religions, and not just human ones, right?", I threw a seemingly random question, to which he merely nodded, and paused to put into words my meaning. "You see, I'm also going for some symbolism here. How? Because all of this together will be our answer to the hordes of Reaper forces: beings that are so much more powerful than baseline species that they might as well be Angels.".
"Ah, I see. Like one of the warrior-angels of the goddess Arashu, siha.", the stoic assassin said. "Fierce in wrath. A tenacious protector.".
"Intriguing plan. Going for psychological effect, I presume.", Mordin commented. "Many species' religions have such transcendent beings. Turians, for one, have their Titans.".
"Something to that effect, yeah…", I responded, but leaving it at that. "Honestly, If we had the time to truly develop these technologies, it could probably result in a supersoldier that can rival a modern Frigate. I'm not joking; eezo allows for that.".
"Forget about a Frigate…", Liara interjected, finally adding her thoughts. "It's almost like you are planning to face the Reapers directly. Wait, are you?".
I just smiled at her in response. Maybe… Who really knows?
"That's almost it for ground warfare. Then, all that's left are drones, flying platforms where we can put anything we want, mostly guns. Which brings me to the part of how we're going to build most of our new stuff…", I began to segue into the next topic all the while trying not to come off as reapproaching, but gave up halfway and decided to just say it. "Help me understand something: how come your fleets are so 'small'? Guys, come on! You've been spacefaring for millenia. By all rights, your navies should have millions of military vessels, at least. Automation, fabricators that can even be miniaturized into quite cheap hand-held devices, self-replication, VIs and extremely low cost of asteroid mining should guarantee that you'd have a lot more vessels of all types, much less swarms of drones. However, the biggest fleet around is the Migrant Fleet and most of their vessels are civilian craft, barely holding themselves together. Just… how?".
"Culture built around rigid belief that only equipment using element zero useful. No reason to build otherwise. Supply, however, limited.", the Professor bit the bullet and answered, somewhat breaking the awkwardness. "Starting to see issue. Supply not only limited thing. Thinking too. Misconception that must be revised, like eezo uses.".
"Yeah... you're starting to get it. Drones, especially the infantry ones, don't really need eezo. They are just a gun slapped together with some rotors for flying.", I said with an approving nod. "So, we can mass produce them on the cheap, link their control chips to the suit and basically cover whatever deficiencies were still left of smaller units. And this still allows us to better use the eezo which would have been spread out between many 'grunts', focusing it on a smaller number of drones that'll be special. At least, we might need to do this when eezo supply is still limited.".
"And I presume you've also thought of a way to improve our manufacturing capabilities, correct?", the suave drell hitman asked.
"Well… you know how the volus have their fabrication units that can mass-produce goods currently in demand, because of their modularity, and can just switch their production lines from arms to housing and so on…", I brought up this tidbit of information I learned about after scanning the planet Cherk Sab, Aru System, of the Aethon Cluster. "Therefore, why can't we just take fabrication technology like that (which is basically the next level of 3D printers from my time due to it being much more efficient and mass effect fields allowing the manipulation of very dense materials), and add to it those nanomachines that can even turn organic material into high-tech cyber implants to help with assembly, with all of it being powered by E-Reactors? I even came up with a nice name for it, in reference of a novel I used to read: Fabrication Engines!".
As a certain futurology master named Isaac would say, "you don't use a ton of robots to make a gun barrel out of or a metal refinery; you use them to build a gun or metal refinery out of dumb matter and then go build other stuff". And, in the MEU, fabricators are already able to build that gun out of dumb matter, as can be seen from the exemple of the Krysae Sniper Rifle (a turian antimaterial rifle whose schematics was released over the extranet, allowing "nearly anyone with a fabricator [to] manufacture this weapon."). So, I though to myself, what if we added the precision and speed of "Reaper" nanites/nanobots to it...?
"Would speed up production, even of bigger equipment like crafts. Not limited to omni-gel and similar substrates anymore.", Mordin quickly summarized the benefits of this. "Ha, yet another revolution, in theory. Excited to explore possibilities.".
"As such, something very important going forward is: our entire technological base can't only be found in schematics, but also must be modular, interchangeable, self-repairing and, in some cases, self-replicating, allowing us to come back from the ashes just as a Phoenix would. Oh, that's a nice way of calling it… The Phoenix Doctrine.", I added the finishing touch to this topic. "That's because we must expect to lose ground, entire Systems and our entire industrial base, at any and all times, and not just against Reapers, but also another future threat that might show up.".
"Using nanomachines is one thing, but self-replication…", Liara said. "Don't we run the risk of creating something like gray goo?", asked Liara.
"Only if we go at it in The Cerberus Way™.", I joked to lighten her worries. "A good way to reduce much of the danger is to simply build nanorobots with specialization in mind and control their self-replication with a Fabrication Engine made solely for this, not make it an in-built feature of literally everything. And that's just one idea…".
"If the Citadel Council found out what we are going to do, they would throw a massive fit.", commented Liara, essentially accepting herself as an accomplice.
"Before coming after us, of course.", Thane complemented.
"Now, I've said pretty much what has to be said about the planetside stuff and everything about it is over-the-top, I know, but it's still time to blow your minds once again.", I said that so the Professor could prepare his heart for what would come next. "Mordin…".
"Be careful.", Thane said with a little smile. "If you keep going like this, we might lose the Professor.".
"How would you feel about creating two new types of FTL travel?", I paused for dramatic build up, slowly showing a grin. "Both of which can easily revolutionize space combat?".
[Science Time!]
How does Mass Effect firearms work?
Here's where things get complicated, theoretical and almost speculative. Why? Because the writers never really bothered to explain how their magic rocks worked when used in firearms. Sure, they tell us some things in the Codex, but not the whole picture and never how things work step-by-step. And, this I admit, I'm working under a premise: that there's a worthwhile benefit to using eezo on weapons, one that, at the very least, offsets the cost of adding eezo. Could it be that the millenia old alien civilizations of the MEverse only use eezo in their guns for little to no benefit? Perhaps, but it'd mean they're morons of the highest order, 'cause eezo ain't cheap. This isn't to say that my source is that I made it the fuck up! No, there's enough reason/logic and bits extracted from the Codex to justify what I'm going to take as the way eezo actually works. Let's get on with it…
In a detailed summary, this is the sequence of events I've come up with after researching this topic (taking an assault rifle as the reference): a mechanism of the rifle shears a slug, approximately the size of a grain of sand, from a block of metal; this miniature slug is then suspended within a mass effect field and lightened by a considerable amount; magnetic force (Kinetic Energy – KE), which is created by the rifle's coils, is used to propel the slug (mass – m) to much higher speeds (velocity – v) than it would normally achieve, since its mass was lowered while the force applied wasn't affected at all (KE) and energy must be conserved (KE = 1/2mv²); the slug's velocity increase is proportional to how much mass was lowered and creates recoil equal to its impact energy, but keep in mind that the impact energy (KE) is still the same as if the mass was never lowered (we only messed around with the mass and velocity – 1/2mv²); the slug then travels down the barrel, leaves the rifle and, therefore, the mass-reducing field, getting its mass back, but keeping its "increased" velocity; this effectively raises the kinetic energy from the slug's original acceleration, meaning its impact damage is also higher than the recoil given when it was back in the barrel.
You can see that pretty much everything that was said in the Codex was also shown there: acceleration is done by magnetic force (electricity is supplied by the gun's capacitors to its coils); mass is lowered by eezo which, in turn, lets the slug be "accelerated to greater speeds, permitting projectile velocities that were previously unattainable" (read this in the Codex's guy voice), because the energy supplied (magnetic force) must go somewhere in the equation for Kinetic Energy (KE = 1/2mv²), so its goes to v; in order for those "previously unattainable" speeds to be real, the increased speed must be kept, which means that energy comes out of nowhere to make up for the returned mass.
To do this differently, such as by having the mass return to normal and the velocity be reduced proportionately, you'd get pretty much nothing to show for having added eezo to your gun, since the kinetic energy/momentum is going to be the same as if you fired the slug without it in the first place. Why? Because the energy would be conserved in that case! The same problem would happen if, somehow, the mass effect fields latched onto the slug and kept its mass lowered, only increasing the velocity. There'd be no difference in kinetic energy, as you've merely traded mass for velocity. This hypothetical scenario would mean that eezo's only worth would be in increasing accuracy. And guess what? At no point during the entire OT was it stated that accelerator designs were "revolutionized" by Element Zero for that one reason. It had always, always been about velocity.
Then what about momentum? Is it also conserved within a mass effect field like (kinetic) energy was. If not, why didn't you "choose" it over conservation of energy? You might ask. Well, in a short answer, momentum is variable during the entire process of shooting a slug (meaning it's not conserved), we can only have one or the other inside of the gun's mass-reducing field and I ultimately chose (kinetic) energy. Why? To do otherwise would mean contradicting how Disruptor Torpedoes work in-universe and because there's no difference in the sense that we'd still have bullets/slugs that hit harder than they would have without eezo. Actually, we'd get more punch if it was momentum that was preserved inside of the mass effect field. It's all in the numbers (and equations)! Let's consider a practical example where the mass of a slug inside of a pistol is lowered to a quarter (1/4) of its original mass (m, which is "8"), with an original velocity (v) of "4", before and after leaving the gun, from the point of view of momentum (p = mv) being conserved or of energy (KE = 1/2mv²) being conserved:
1) the original momentum is "32" (8 x 4) and kinetic energy is "64" (4 x 4²), which means that, when the mass is lowered from "8" to "2", momentum has to balance itself out, so the velocity becomes "16", resulting in "p = 32" (2 x 16). However, kinetic energy has changed to "256" now, since mass is "1" ("2" already halved by the 1/2) and velocity is "16" (which is squared). After leaving the mass-reducing field, velocity continues at "16", because of what we talked about (Element Zero allowing for speeds "previously unattainable"), but mass is now back to "8", which means momentum (p) is now "128" (8 x 16) while kinetic energy (KE) has become "1024" (4 x 16²);
2) the original momentum is "32" (8 x 4) and kinetic energy is "64" (4 x 4²), but now we are considering the point of view of energy, which means that, when the mass is lowered from "8" to "2", kinetic energy has to balance itself out, so the velocity becomes "8", resulting in "KE = 64" (1 x 8²). However, momentum has changed to "16" now, since mass is "2" (not halved by 1/2) and velocity is "8" (which is not squared). After leaving the mass-reducing field, velocity continues at "8", because of what we talked about (Element Zero allowing for speeds "previously unattainable"), but mass is now back to "8", which means momentum (p) is now "64" (8 x 8) while kinetic energy (KE) has become "512" (8 x 8²).
As you can see, when eezo is added to the equation, regardless of which one you decide to pick and force conservation on its ass, the other one will not be conserved. That's due to the fact that velocity is squared in the equation for kinetic energy (KE), while not in the one for momentum (p). And, even if we go with momentum staying the same inside of the mass-reducing field of a firearm, the result is still a projectile that hits harder than it would if no eezo was used. So, the one I've "chosen" for this fanfic is actually weaker than it could have been, albeit with not as much recoil as the momentum scenario. As for that bit about Disruptor Torpedoes, I'll get to it soon!
But all of that breaks the first law of thermodynamics (conservation of energy/momentum)! Yes, anon. It does. And that's the whole point of it! It can make shots stronger, by making the bullet/slug reach "velocities that were previously unattainable", and it must get that extra energy somehow. Lowering the mass was how the ME writers justified it.
But the ships in the cutscenes show us that they come to an abrupt halt when shutting down FTL… which means that, when the mass effect field is removed, the ship's mass returns and, in order to obey the first law (or momentum?), it has to decrease the velocity by a lot – proportionally. First law saved! Gotcha! Are you really going to use cutscenes as irrefutable evidence? The same ones that entirely disregarded the Codex in favor of Star Wars style pew-pew fights at close range? Because, let me give you a bit of trivia, the guy who wrote the thing, Chris L'Etoile, was sidelined a lot in favor of "Rule of Cool" and even more or less "complained" how they basically butchered his boy (Codex), leaving Bioware shortly before ME2 was released. I won't say much about this point, more so because FTL is also going to be decrypted later (yeah, the writers dropped the ball there too), besides that the situations seem to be different: in the weapon scenario, the slug leaves the mass effect field, getting new energy during the process; however, in the FTL scenario, the ship never leaves the mass effect field (the "bubble"), only shutting it down. Remember that I've kept conservation of energy when the slug was still within the eezo's field (this was, in fact, the reason why velocity has no other choice but to increase as mass is lowered!).
Another mental exercise which lets you comprehend that eezo "pulls energy out of the air" can be found in normal, everyday transportation. Take a shuttle, the Kodiak for instance, and imagine, think really hard, how its journey from the surface to the orbit of a planet works, step-by-step. This is not a problem of the type of energy per se. Let's say you've got that shuttle with just enough fuel to leave the gravity well of Earth. Now, consider you are on the ground and turn on your Kodiak, activate its mass-reducing fields, so the shuttle is now very, very light, and begin takeoff in a vertical line. After some time, you finally leave the gravitational well of Earth and shut down the mass effect field, noticing that only 1% of your total fuel/energy was used. Question: what happened to the other 99%? Why wasn't it spent? Remember that the entire tank was needed to complete this hypothetical trip. If you're just going to say that it's in the electrical current applied to the eezo core, then we're back to the problem at the start: what's the point of mass effect tech if there's practically no difference between using it and not? Some people cite the increase of 1.500 kilocalories per day needed by biotic soldiers as "proof" of conservation of energy, not noticing how this basically disproves their point, since that is way less energy than would be required to, say, create a singularity or just freely fuck around with gravity in general.
If you really get bothered by it, then I've also got a solution. When that energy pops out of nowhere, you can imagine that it's actually being converted from dark energy (that's a little funny in view of the dropped "Dark Energy Plot", 'cause we'd be reducing dark energy by using eezo). After all, eezo "can increase or decrease the mass content of space-time when subjected to an electrical current via dark energy" and, when it's "subjected to an electrical current, releases dark energy which can be manipulated into a mass effect field", as per the Codex. Does that, which is borderline headcanon, sound OK to me? No, not at all. It's the job of the writers to come up with these kinds of explanations, not the fans, especially with something so important, so central to their work, like eezo is…
So, this is how guns should work in the MEU. Deal with it! Element Zero is busted, the first law is dead and you know what? I'm going to do a pro-gamer move and abuse the shit out of this reality bug/glitch, like any proper gamer should.
...
How does Mass Effect Kinetic Barriers, or Shields, work? And why would they be better for weapons?
If you search the wiki or the Codex, you'll find that they say two things about "Kinetic Barriers", colloquially known as "shields". Two very contradictory things: 1) "kinetic barriers are repulsive mass effect fields projected from tiny emitters."; and 2) "these shields safely deflect small objects traveling at rapid velocities.". If you know your dictionary well, then you'd know that repulse means "drive back (an attack or attacking enemy) by force" while deflect means "to cause (something) to change direction by interposing something or turning aside from a straight course.". They are not the same. Which one do I think is the applicable one? The repulsive one, for two reasons: 1) disruptor torpedoes are said to be "too massive for enemy kinetic barriers to repulse."; and 2) ship's kinetic barriers that can actually "deflect" enemy rounds showed up in a technology which was developed/introduced only during ME2 (around the year 2185), Cyclonic Barrier Technology (CBT), an upgrade for the SR-2 Normandy that "violently slaps aside rather than halting incoming linear force.".
Another way in which shields don't function is by lowering the mass of the incoming enemy slug, because something similar to what I'd described about shooting a gun would occur: the projectile would have its mass lowered to, let's say, 1/64 of its original, which, because of conservation of energy (remember what is going on inside of the mass-reducing field), would increase the velocity by 8 times (v is squared in the equation for kinetic energy). So, the slug would still hit with the same impact energy as it normally would, but only reach its target a little bit faster than if no shield was activated. Even if you subscribe to the idea that weapons in the MEU don't really create free energy, it'd still apply, as the energy had to be preserved within the ship's shields. All that was changed by doing "shields" like this was the momentum, which is reduced if mass is lowered and increased if the enemy projectile was made heavier. But you'd still get hit.
Therefore, it's safe to say that ship's shields normally work by slowing down/decelerating incoming projectiles. This leads to a very interesting situation – and one that utilizes what I've written before about the way "Mass Effect firearms" work: the shield emitters of a suit of armor must generate as much acceleration/deceleration as, at the very least, one of the slugs coming from the enemy – and, given what we've experienced during gameplay, the shields have enough juice to stop a lot of shots. That is, of course, if we don't consider the cutscenes where everyone has a Magic Pistol/Rifle with plot bullets that one-shot people as if they were wearing paper (except when the animators remember that their story has, ya know, these cool high-tech shields and stuff, like when getting shot by that Eclipse merc named Elnora).
And do you know what the best part is? Those shots repulsed by shields are the ones after getting "buffed" by free energy, meaning kinetic barriers can easily stop projectiles that had been boosted by eezo. Note that deceleration is just acceleration in the opposite direction of your current velocity. So, what would happen if, say, we switched the electromagnetic accelerator of a weapon for some shield emitters/generators repurposed for acceleration rather than deceleration and added a mass-reducing field on top of that? The result would be normal "bullets" that could rip right through shields. And it can be done (they'd fit in a gun), since those emitters are a bit tiny. Just look at a suit of armor. Its surface is filled with those, creating a roughly human shaped shield rather than a bubble.
I'm not actually a scientist, just a guy who's interested in science and futurism, but, given all of this and according to my understanding, kinetic barriers likely generate a gravitational field which "pushes" an incoming projectile until it is stopped/grinds to a halt. And, as such, they must work on Sir Isaac "Deadliest SOB in Space" Newton's Third Law of Motion, which states: for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. When something is decelerated by gravity, the force exerted on that object is also exerted upon the gravity's source. This is why "Disruptor Torpedoes" work against shields! They are "cold-launched" from a fighter and, a second later, engage their thrusters and a mass-increasing field, resulting in a very sluggish acceleration. That means momentum, which is equivalent to the force required to bring an object to a full stop in a given unit length of time, is also increased by a lot. Remember: momentum is variable within such a mass effect field, while the (kinetic) energy is conserved, so velocity (v) is being reduced less than the mass (m) is increasing, proportionally speaking, because the applicable velocity is the one from the "KE = 1/2mv²" equation, in which "v" is squared. That is what makes them "too massive for enemy kinetic barriers to repulse", as written in the Codex.
Gravity, as a fundamental force, is weaker than electromagnetism. However, it seems that eezo flips the situation on its head. And this can be seen in the way shields work, like I've just (hopefully) shown, because their mechanism must be capable of generating a stronger opposite force to halt projectiles accelerated via electromagnetism. Why is their opposite force stronger? Because they haven't been "boosted" by eezo like the electromagnetically accelerated slug was, yet still managed to stop it. And they do it in a much more compact area (it's easier to imagine when considering, say, the length of the main gun of a Cruiser against the length of its shields and the hull). The funny thing is that no one, not even the Reapers themselves, realized this, since they rely on their own size (a spinal mounted gun 2 kilometers long) and a "magnetohydrodynamic" cannon to beat people who only base their tech on scavenged scraps from the previous cycles. Even the writers did not notice how, in order to conjure an effective protection against their new 'and shiny weapons, they basically introduced a plot element which rendered the way those weapons get their acceleration moot. So, we'll eventually use gravity in all of our mass accelerators.
Moreover (do take this with a grain of salt since I'm not exactly sure), we'll actually get a bit more punch by feeding into a weapon (with a mass-reducing field activated) the same energy required to halt a normal (meaning accelerated by electromagnetism) slug with a kinetic barrier, because momentum had been lowered by the eezo (inside of the barrel) and, remember, gravity acceleration works off of that. Therefore, with the energy they'd be getting, the "reversed" shield emitters would be able to exert more force on the lightened slugs, which creates higher acceleration than when the round's mass was lowered, or, if you want, they could exert less force on the slugs and end up using less energy to create the same impact energy!
...
How can one make Frigates hit as hard as Dreadnoughts?
Remember how shields are projected beyond the armor of the suit of armor/starship since they grind incoming projectiles to a half before impact? Well, those projectiles were fired by much bigger "barrels" than the distance that was necessary to stop them, especially in the case of a space battle (a barrel could even be as long as 1 kilometer). Keep in mind that, in order to put a stop to a certain amount of force (like, for example, the one caused by a shot from a Dreadnought), you need an equal and opposite amount of force. Shields do that, but in a much smaller area. Therefore, one does not need a super long ship to get the same velocities as the main gun of this hypothetical warship.
And, as the Codex guy states, bless his voice, "whether on a starship or a soldier's suit of armor, the basic principle [of kinetic barriers] remains the same.", so can we easily extend what I've said about "Mass Effect firearms" to starship weaponry too. We don't even need to worry about the massive increase in "knockback", because of crazy stuff like inertial dampeners, which already deals with the insane increases or decreases in acceleration that's caused by FTL travel.
So, if you've got a shield and have provided it with enough energy to decelerate and bring a 1 km long Dreadnought's shot to a dead stop within 50 meters of your ship's hull, then that's all the size you really need for a spinal mounted accelerator when using "reversed" kinetic barriers. After all, there's no real difference between acceleration and deceleration, as far as gravity is concerned. And ME shields are just gravity fields. Basically, you'd just need a warship that's big enough for the power generation elements…
Therein lies another great benefit of using "reverse" shields: the accelerator is much more compact. So, we can make our weapons, like assault and sniper rifles, much smaller – or, and this is what we'll be going for, not change the size, meaning we now have space to add more goodies, like more "reversed" tiny emitters (better acceleration), more capacitors (for more energy), better heatsinks, recoil dampener systems, more features, etc.
As for starships, the benefit is due to another reason: FTL drive core size is a problem in the MEverse. The amount of eezo and power required for a drive increases exponentially to the mass being moved and the degree it's being lightened. Very massive ships or high speeds are prohibitively expensive. That's why we don't see any ships that are, say, five kilometers long and why the Destiny Ascension is so unique. When making their flagship, the asari just went "Screw the Rules, I have Money!". It must be evident where the benefit lies now: we can make our ships much smaller while still delivering the same punch as if they were "full size". Plus, don't forget that we could still shoot with the same force as the shield could decelerate even before the slug had entered the mass-reducing field (and, therefore, went through the whole process of getting a higher velocity to account for the lowered mass, leaving the eezo field, keeping the speed, but having its mass come back). Can you imagine how much more powerful the shots would become in that case? It only needs the energy to be provided.
Or we could match the process with the eezo already added in to only use as much energy as the "reference" ship-class (like, for example, a Frigate using a little bit of energy, but still getting a Dreadnought's firepower because of the eezo mass-reducing field), yet still make the starships "full size". We already had a Dread's firepower before, when the starship was only the size of a small Frigate, so how much more firepower does it have now that the mass accelerator (gravity based) was extended to 1 kilometer long…?
As for "fusing" all of this with Thanix weaponry… a tiny Seraphim once told me that Thanix cannons were silly, because they're just fancy shaped penetrators and because that, at the velocities we'd be dealing with, everything was a fluid (nothing remains solid at impacts of relativistic speeds), so the fact a Thanix fires liquid metal was irrelevant. It'd all boil down to velocity, density and mass.
...
Why does Element Zero allows for Free Energy?
I'm also no engineer, so no guarantee about an example I wish to share, but I'll mention it here anyway to better illustrate this point. By the way, it comes from a fanfic named "Free energy", made by Lost Lantean.
Think of a machine that circulates a powerful, permanent magnet indefinitely, with an eezo enhanced mass accelerator in the furthest tunnel. The magnet has its mass of 500 grams reduced to only 5 grams by the mass effect field and is accelerated to 50 m/s while inside of it, resulting in a kinetic energy of 6,25 Joules. When it leaves the field, it retains that 50 m/s velocity despite the mass returning to 500 grams, resulting in a big increase of kinetic energy to 625 Joules. The closest tunnel has what is basically a coil around the track and, when the magnet moves through it, its magnetic field induces a current in the coils, with the kinetic energy being transformed into electrical energy. The magnet exits the generator tunnel at just the necessary speed to reach the mass accelerator again. Let's say that this second generator is 80% efficient, so it extracts just under 500 Joules of electrical energy, and the eezo system and mass accelerator only require 200 Joules to accelerate the magnet, which means a net gain of 300 Joules in merely one cycle.
Now imagine doing it again. And again. And once again… I'm not saying this is what we'll use. It's just an exaplanation to make things clearer. As a compact Seraphim once told me, we can simply use a a dynamo with an eezo gravity gradient in it that would spin forever; we could keep accelerating it while generating energy right up to our material limits (when the thing would fly apart from stress).
:)
Author's Note: And there it is: how to break Mass Effect, the first half of it - and this is merely the tech side of things... Ha, I bet there's at least one thing there you've never read in any other fic!
I know it's somewhat exposition heavy, but this is a necessary evil. As Bisaster said in the "Reviews", the MC has to put all his cards on the table right now to the people who have just learned of the Reaper threat. Moreover, I personally think it'd be better than just writting "they talked and decided they were going to do this and that...", then crazy stuff happens later on and the readers would be all like "Wait, where did that come from?", "What, this isn't how it works..." or "The author is just making shit up now!". If you're like me and like the Mass Effect Universe (enough to spend your precious time reading my fic, or writting it), then you can even think of this as an opportunity to understand it better - on a deeper level. And then you guys can actively engage in discussions with me going forward!
Regarding the Drones, this was yet another example of the MEU fracturing into two Universes: the Codex one and the gameplay/cutscene one. The Codex states that all "modern armies rely on veritable fleets of drones for routine soldiering" (with it being "a key element of the Alliance's military initiative"), which had fixed/minimally adaptive programs, were poorly armed and armored, and tended to be deployed in wings as "cannon fodder" to create distractions for the marines, but we just don't see that in the games. In fact, it's said that police utilize "dazzler drones" equipped with strobe lights to disorient and subdue intruders using nonlethal force, yet we never see C-Sec use something like that (well… it could just be their incompetence at play there).
Essentially, drones are only ever sparsely seen in the OT, with the Geth being the faction that uses them the most. Even in the last battle, in which the fate of the galaxy hung in the balance, the coalition of species only used manned fighters against Oculus Drones (color coded, of course, in blue vs red, so we could know who the good and bad guys were!). Therefore, for this Universe, I'll consider a middle ground: drones exist and are used by all militaries, but only for scouting or support roles, with most of them utilizing eezo (we can see shields in pretty much all that show up) for levitation and better mobility, and this being the reason their numbers are kept so low. That, ask anyone who has ever seen Amazon drones, does not make much sense, since we don't need eezo to make the buggers fly well. But this is where our uniqueness will come into play - and we might end up influencing things on a galactic scale with time...
As for the two "new" FTL, don't worry guys. A little "spoiler" is that they have absolutely nothing to do with those fantastical (if not downright nonsensical) FTL methods people use their incredible creativity to conjure up. One of them, in fact, had been made "canon" by Andromeda, while the other... well, if you've got the first, then you can have the second one too! My approach will always be: modern science (hard sci-fi, as much as I possibly can) meets the MEverse. Problem is that Element Zero is busted! Thus, it reflects on things we can actually do. Remember the things I've said in the prologue, since I'll goddamn try to stick with it! If I slip up, don't be shy and remind me.
Like always, I'll be open to suggestions for ideas and better names for stuff, especially considering that the next chapter has (minor spoilers incoming) talks about Company creation.