Leaving from Earth with the Ark ships isn't going to work...

Apparently leaving Earth with the ark ships isn't going to work.

Call it off, Bioware.

The Wiki says that the bigger the drive the more range it has but, yes, the bigger the drive is vs. the mass of the ship the faster it can be. Of course the expedition will presumably be limited to the speed of its slowest ships but there's no hurry, is there?




Where did the 220 years figure come from? All we know is that it was hundreds of years, we don't know how many hundreds.

Even today, assuming we had a way to induce cryo-sleep and a way to power it for long enough, we could travel to Andromeda. Just head in the right direction and you will continue to accelerate until you get there (unless you bump into something, of course!). The limitation is the time it takes not the ability to do it. Usually, it's just not practical to take hundreds of years to travel places but, in this case, it doesn't matter.

I see no reason why we would need Reaper technology to do this.

Would a plasma contactor be able to handle a buildup as rapid as what seems to come from an eezo core?

Fusion torches may be able to steer a ship, but to move at ftl speeds, it has to be eezo.

"...equipped with their own discharging facilities..."
LOL,
That's what I said.

I think this is where it'd have to be a joint venture by multiple species. If they were built simultaneously, it would likely take two years, at least based on human dreadnought construction per the Wiki.

The longer you stay in space, the more likely it becomes something will go wrong, so yes, there's sort of a hurry.


2.5 million (light years) / 30 (Light years per day) = 83333.3333333 (days) = 228.159105 (years).

In other words, at max speed, it will take Reapers 228 years to travel to Andromeda.



There is no such thing as powerless drift in FTL because turning off the FTL drive mid-flight destroys the ship and everyone in it. As a result, the FTL drive must be activated from start to finish.


Because our technology is vastly inferior at 4380*c compared to the Reapers 10950*c. The journey that would take them 228 years would take us 570 years. 570 years is a damn long time for things to go wrong.

Are you sure he was not just referring to Bioware (metaphorically) fleeing the Milky Way?  You know, hands in the air, squealing 'oh noooooo, they hated the endings and we can't go back there'?

I would love that interpretation! I hate the idea that we're going to Andromeda only to evade the Reapers, that would be a big retcon to ME3.

this makes sense

Yes, when you are traveling FTL you need to utilize the drives constantly to keep you there since they are what allow FTL travel. Newton's law only applies to sub-light travel in this regard. And we know we aren't travelling sub-light because we know that the trip is only going to be a few centuries rather than over 2,538,000 years. 

Actually, we do. Several, in fact. The Shroud for example has been operating nonstop since first contact with the Krogan, helping stabilize Tuchanka's atmosphere for about two millennia. Then there are some of the ships in the Quarian flotilla, that have been operating since the Morning War, so three centuries. 

As for you saying even Reaper technology is incapable of reaching Andromeda, where are you getting this information from? 

Both those examples have the benefit of regular maintenance and access to planetary resources. In the case of the Shroud, it's a fixed structure on the surface of the planet, which can't really be compared to the Arks - and in the case of the Migrant Fleet, they make use of the Mass Relay system, rarely travel for long durations of time and basically stop by every planet with available resources - none of which are applicable to the Arks.

The Arks cannot be maintained for the length of the journey to Andromeda because they couldn't possibly bring along enough resources to cover all the myriad of problems that could arise - and all added mass just makes the FTL drives less efficient. This is of course besides the point that the colonists would be in cryo-sleep for the duration, or they would have to bring along food and other vital resources, which adds further mass and strains an already impossibly strained FTL drive.


As I said earlier, if they had the energy capacity to travel that far, they would not limit themselves to a measly 30 light years a day. Their speed limit is not arbitrary. I also take into account the Reapers design - they are built solely to harvest and destroy galactic populations. We have absolutely no reason to believe their designs would incorporate technology allowing long-distance journeys to other galaxies. As the Reapers guide every cycle into a crippling dependency on the Mass Relay Network, they ensure their victims don't develop technology that would allow them to flee during a harvest.

And before you retort by mentioning their little hangouts in dark space, allow me to remind everyone that it took two and a half years for them to reach the Milky Way from wherever they were hiding in dark space. 2.5 years = 913 days = 913 days x 30 light years per day = 27,390 light years out from the edge of the galaxy.

What is 27,390 out of 2.5 million? 1%. They would need to go 99 times further to reach Andromeda.

I just don't buy the idea that the Reapers are massively overdesigned for the purpose they were built for. This would be the equivalent of going to the moon with a rocket built to go all the way to Pluto. It's wasteful, and machine intelligences are never wasteful.