Sorry for the long wait, my brain decided that version 2 was not good enough, then version 3, and 4, and 5, and all of the rest until I am now at version 10.1. I decided that going insane and reaching version 50 wasn't going to help, so I'm solidifying the timeline decision so I can move on... until I probably decide to change it in a week.
April 2148: Mars Ruins discovered on Mars. Discovery shocks humanity
May 2148: Negotiations for the formation of the Systems Alliance begin. UN peacekeepers are deployed as temporary caretakers for the Ruins.
June 2148: The first vessel with technology from the Ruins and eezo is finished. Mars Accord signed by 41 nations, banning the construction of any warships using eezo for a year; signatories include most major nations. The accord is partially meant to stop potential conflicts between nations that quickly built eezo vessels and those that fall behind, either the eezo nation exploiting their advantage or the behind nation striking before the former can exploit it, and partially to ensure the nations don't east money on vessels that will be obsolete by years end.
September 2148: The first FTL-capable vessel, the Stargazer, is completed
December 2148: Far Point Expedition launches, reaching Alpha Centauri a few days before the new year.
February 2149: Merriweather Lewis class Exploration Cruiser begins construction by the UNAS. If needed, the class is designed to be equipped with weapons, a workaround of the Mars Accord.
March 2149: Systems Alliance created by the 18 largest nations on the planet. Information on the Charon Relay is discovered in the Mars Ruins. The SSV Constellation, Captained by John Grissom, travels through the Charon Relay late in the month.
May 2149: Von Braun Station, the first human outpost outside the Sol System, is completed. The Station is a staging point for further exploration beyond the Charon Relay. Demeter is discovered, being the first Garden World discovered by humanity.
June 2149: Mars Accord warship hiatus ends, construction of the Chimera class Fast Attack Corvette, Heartbreak Ridge class Frigates, Annapolis class Cruisers, and Einstien class Carrier, what would come to be known as the first generation warships.
July 2149: Cerberus base begins construction, a defensive installation on Pluto.
January 2150: Expeditions beyond Arcturus commence using the information found within the Mars Ruins, with Primary Relays going to the Exodus Cluster, Mkali Pools, and Apollo Alpha being activated. Terra Nova, Yandoa, and Eden Prime are discovered. Construction of the Everest begins.
February 2150: Benning discovered. The SSV Bunker Hill finds MSV Herbert Green in the 82 Eridani System. The vessel attempts to flee, but Bunker Hill captures it. The ship started a small colony of only a few dozen people on the system's second planet. Interrogations reveal that the pirates were part of a cult that wished to separate from humanity.
March 2150: First civilian traffic outside the Sol System occurs when an independent science ship travels through the Charon Relay with Alliance approval.
April 2150: The MSV Herbert Green, a science ship preparing for an expedition to the Sirius System, is taken over while in dock. The vessel escapes the Sol system.
May 2150: A (relatively) efficient method for producing antimatter is discovered within the Mars Ruins. While it does not make antimatter a viable fuel source for civilian vessels, it makes antiproton drives viable for military use. The drives are far more potent than fusion torches, even at smaller sizes. While the drives are good for when high speed is needed, antimatter is still too expensive for common use, meaning that vessels usually also carry fusion torches for use in normal situations, while the antiproton drives are used for combat and emergencies.
June 2150: The F-50 Trident begins production. The F-50 includes antiproton drives as its primary propulsion, increasing performance but limiting its uses outside combat due to high fuel costs.
September 2150: Alliance announces a moratorium on Primary Relay activation to give time for the expansion of the Alliance Fleet and to survey what has already been uncovered. The Acheron gateway station begins construction to deal with civilian traffic through the Charon Relay, with similar, though smaller, Stations starting construction in Arcturus over the remainder of the year.
January 2151: Sirona is discovered. The Cerberus military base is completed.
February 2151: PF-51 Bident Patrol Fighter begins production. The class is almost identical to the F-50, except for using fusion torches instead of antiproton drives. Pirates take over the ISS (Irish Space Sevice) Le Maev and leave the Sol System. Later in the month, the Maev attacks the MAV Demos, discharging its drive core in orbit of Persephone, only to be intercepted by the SSV Unicorn, a Chimera class Corvette, which had just finished discharging. The Battle of Persephone is the first space battle between two eezo warships. The battle ends when the SSV Salamis arrives, leading to the surrender of the Maev.
March 2151: The Farwatch class Mobile Outposts begin construction. Small by ship standards, the Outposts are designed to patrol and defend minor planets. It carries 2 UT-29 Ungava Unltrlight Transports (usually known as Shuttles), 32 PF-51 Bident Patrol Fighters, and 8 F-50 Trident Fighters. Construction of Arcturus Station begins.
April 2151: The drive core of the MSV Pacific ruptures after leaving the Singapore International Spaceport, leading to eezo contamination across the city.
January 2152: The SSV Einstien is completed and begins preparations for a colonization mission to the Exodus Cluster. The Delta Pavonis Foundation colonizes Demeter; 2500 colonists travel on the MSV Spring Dawn and set up Thesmophoros City, a permanent settlement instead of the small outposts set up before, non intended to hold a permanent population with families. First second-generation Cruisers, the SSV Geneva and her sisters, begin construction. The Genevas, alongside all other second-generation designs, benefit from a more thorough understanding of the mass effect and new technologies, both created by humans and found in alien ruins, including antiproton drives, combat-grade Kinetic Barriers (to be added onto gen one ships), and artificial gravity (to be added to select gen one ships).
March 2152: The Einstien sets off to the Exodus Cluster. Terra Nova is colonized by the Einstien.
April 2152: Eden Prime is colonized by the Einstein.
July 2152: Sirona and Benning are colonized.
August 2152: Additional gateway station is created to deal with the increased traffic at the Charon Relay.
November 2152: First appearance of a type of pirate ship called a Skiff, an extremely fast vessel built to board civilian ships by ramming them. The MSV Orion attack by one such craft, leading to the deaths of three crewmembers and the theft of millions of credits worth of cargo.
December 2152: The crew of the MSV Starry Night is caught selling the cargo stolen from the Orion on Earth. Interrogation reveles that the ship rendezvoused with the pirate ship, named the Dagger, and picked up the cargo in deep space on its way to Earth from Demeter.
January 2153: Several vessels of similar design as the Dagger begin to appear around the Local Cluster and Arcturus Stream. Demeter celebrates one year of colonization.
February 2153: Task Force Broadsword is created by the Alliance to find the producer of the small Skiffs.
March 2153: The main crew supplier for the Skiffs is discovered. Similar to several colonization programs, the pirate groups are offering people from impoverished areas opportunity in exchange for working as pirates, gaining them a sted supply of crewmembers and troops. A major pirate base is attacked in the first major action of the Alliance Marine Corp, taking out 3 Skiffs and over two hundred pirates.
April 2153: SSV Tsushima is attacked and taken over in a Skiff attack near Pluto, pursuit is delayed by an attack on Acheron Station. The take over is successful, but the pirates did not take into account the brand new technology integrated into the Frigate, a FTL Communications device, or that one of the final acts of one of the ship's crew members before being captured would be to program the VI to send a signal to Sol after a delay, giving away the location of the pirate's main construction facility, where they were taking the ship apart for military grade components. The Alliance receives the message in the final days of the month and begins to plan. Amaterasu discovered.
May 2153: The Alliance attacks the pirate facility where the Tsunami was taken, a large shipyard in Sol's Oort Cloud. The Alliance manages to capture the facility, the remains of the Tsunami, thousands of pirates, and almost a dozen Skiffs, both complete and incomplete. When the Alliance captives were freed, and the events of the boarding were fully revealed, Serviceman 3rd class Steven Hackett was commended, and promoted to Servicemen 2nd class.
June 2153: Antimatter containment on the SSV Nairobi fails, leading to its complete destruction, causing the deaths of not only its 300 strong crew, but the 4,500 souls on board the Acheron Gateway Station, which the Nairobi was docked at. All antimatter equipped warships are forced to return home for a safety inspection and, in the case of most of the Geneva-class, a refit with improved antimatter containers.
August 2153: The Battle of the Charon Relay sees a force of over a dozen Skiffs attack the Alliance Cruiser Bagdad, an older Anapolis-class vessel, through the Charon Relay, arriving from the poorly guarded Lenus Omicron Relay in the 61 Ursae Majoris System. Several of the Skiffs manage to board the Cruiser, but the operation fails as the boarders are repelled. The Local Cluster sees a notable decrease in pirate attack as the force destroyed in the battle represents a large amount of the Skiffs produced.
October 2153: An expedition is proposed, sending a large force past the Zion Gamma Relay, a Primary Relay that goes far beyond known space. The expedition is approved and the Einstein is approved for the expedition. The Relay is chosen due to being farther away from Arcturus, being in a system lacking a direct connection to the local hub, yet only being two or three Relays away from a response in case of an emergency.
January 2154: SSV Everest is completed
February: The Joint Naval Exercise commences, a fleet exercise consisting of forces from the Alliance and over two dozen national navies (those of the nations that have not joined the Alliance). The exercise has the Alliance acting as an invading alien force moving attacking from beyond the Zion Gamma Relay, with the goal of reaching Earth.
March: The Joint Naval Exercise ends in a major upset as the Alliance fleet reaches Earth and (simulated) bombs it. The exercise shows several major weaknesses in human ships, doctrine, and naval tactics in real fleet combat, as shown in several embarrassing events on both sides. The Everest performs above and beyond all expectations and, with both its excellent showing and the horrid showing of the Combined Fleet, approval for the construction of another Everest-class Dreadnought is given. The expedition is delayed by half a year due to the results of the exercise.
June 2154: Second Einstein class Carrier, the Curie, is completed. Work on the SSV Hawking begins.
July 2154:The reactor of the MSV Kami explodes as the vessel lowers into Earth's atmosphere, causing debrief and eezo to be scattered over siberia.
October 2154: The Farpoint Expedition launches through the Zion Gamma Relay, landing in the Michael System of the Seraph Nebula, several thousand light years away.
November 2154: Babel is discovered in the Gabriel System, the Garden World being covered with ruins, mostly arcologies, giving the world its name. The ruins are so severely damaged that they hold little technological value compared to the Mars Ruins, but they are still of major interest do to being a major center of Prothean civilization.
December 2154: The expedition goes through the Jeraco Zeta Relay to the Ymir System of the Ginnungagap, which includes the world of Midgard. There they discover two more Primary Relays. After surveying the system, the expedition travels through the first Relay, reaching the Leto System of Zeus Beta. The second Relay is also opened and leads to the Brand System of the Flame Nebula. The expedition continues its operations while split between all three Clusters, though to a more limited degree.
January 2155: The Io System is discovered with a Primary Relay. The expedition travels through it only to find itself in the Daphny System of Apollo Alpha, being greeted by a large number of terrified humans and the Alliance First Fleet, due to them thinking it was an alien force opening the Relay. After that, the expedition went back to surveying the Ginnungagap. Late in the month, the Utgard-Loki System is discovered, including its Primary Relay.
February 2155: The expedition travels through the Roskva Omega Relay in the Utgard-Loki System, arriving in the Da Ling San System of the Xingyun Cluster. The Garden World Shanxi is discovered. After four months, the expedition ends, lacking the ships to spread itself even further thin, leaving behind the farthest outpost in human space, over 10,000 light years away from Sol. The SSV Einstein and a large number of the expedition's vessels return to Arcturus, while others continue operating in the newly discovered Clusters, surveying whatever they can find.
March 2155: Alliance begins to occupy completed areas of Arcturus Station
June 2155: Reports begin to surface in Siberia of "Magic Ants" capable of what would later be known as biotics, using mass effect fields to carry several times the amount of matter they should and ripping materials to pieces.
July 2155: Skiff attacks intensify, with four major attacks this month. Most notably of these is the Nebula Hostage Crisis, where the Passenger Cruiser MSV Nebula carrying tens of thousands of colonists to Benning is taken hostage, leading to the Delta Pavonis Foundation having to pay millions of credits for the ship's release.
October 2155: Operation Candlelight sees the Alliance destroy dozens of Skiffs and several major pirate bases.
February 2156: Arcturus Station is completed and inaugurated.
March 2156: Yandoa discovered.
May 2156: First report of children with telekinetic abilities appears.
August 2156: General Douglas Williams is appointed as the Governor-General of Shanxi and the Xingyun Cluster.
September 2156: The New Frontiers Development Corporation, a Chinese corporation originally made to facilitate the creation of Lunar infrastructure, begins the creation of New Taiyuan, several towns, and large amounts of infrastructure on Shanxi, under Alliance supervision.
January 2157: SSV Hawking is completed. An expedition beyond the Urania Tau Relay in the Mnemosyne System of the Zeus Beta Cluster begins planning.
February 2157: Baikonur is discovered in the Da Ling Er System of the Xingyun Cluster. The planet is of great interest due to the dextro amino acid base of the planet's life, an oddity not found anywhere else in human space.
March 2157: The SRV (Scientific Research Vessel) Galen is sent to Baikonur to study life on the Garden World. It sets up an outpost on the planets surface. A small unit of Corvettes are sent to patrol the system and protect the Galen. On March 19th, alien ruins are discovered on the planet, all dating back to several hundred years ago. Urania Tau Expedition launches, arriving in the Antaeus System of the Hades Gamma Cluster.
April 2157: Task Force 92, a small force consisting of a trio of Frigates from the 9th Scout Flotilla and a pair of civilian vessels, launches from Shanxi to activate the Da Ling Liu Beta Relay, known to the Turians as Relay 314. A Hierarchy patrol is set to arrive at the Relay on April 4th.