Genophage again

I still feel the same way I did first time round, it was a sad necessity and better than genocide. My canon Shep doesn't cure it and neither would I.

I would make it less harsh however as their numbers are dwindling.

It's odd that several Krogan are shown to alter their own genetic structure to overcome the genophage
they did so in the past, which is what resulted in the modified Genophage...

while I always cure the genophage (because I'm a sucker for doing good and getting happy endings ), who's to say they can't adapt against it again?

Unleashing the genophage fails every one of Kant's Categorical Imperative formulations and is super, super bad.

(This opinion brought to you by my need to justify my B.A. in philosophy.)

Imo the answer depends very much on the circumstances.

In a pre Reaper invasion milky way the genophage is very much needed, as otherwise the Krogan would again 'outgrow' what their planets can sustain and go on to invade and attack other worlds. The actions and spread of the Bloodpack in particular seem to indicate that even with the genophage in place that is not too far off from happening.

*During* the Reaper invasion the genophage is detrimental. As far as everyone knows that fight might take centuries or even longer. To be able to fight that long, the krogan are needed with their original fertility. Otherwise the MW runs out of troops after a decade or so.

In Andromeda? I'd say a fertility limiting is needed for pretty much the same reasons as in the pre reaper MW. Though probably not quite as drastic, as the krogan population is still very small, and the dangers of scourge, remnant and kett (not to mention the typical krogan loners and mercenaries that are killed by the dozens) seem to take a toll on their colony already.

Goes to show you how "peaceful" the Council really is.

Adding up all the various population data provided in the Codices from all three games and the Wiki for each of the species mentioned.  I did that exercise about 2 or 3 years ago and posted the totals here or on the old BSN (can't remember).  My post may or may not still be there since heated threads were sometimes deleted by admins.  The humans, Asari, Turians, and Salarians all had, as I recall, about 11 billion listed and the Krogan way, way less than that (IIRC).  It's what drew me to my conclusion about it.  I'm not about to redo the exercise myself and you're entitled to whatever opinion you want to hold on the matter.  Of course, you're welcome to replicate it if you want.  It's all public data.

Did you estimate the completeness of the data and fit Pareto distributions to the datasets or just assumed that the map shows all the inhabited planets in the galaxy?

I'm not certain of the growth rate of Krogan, so I'll estimate it would take 30 or 40 years for a Krogan to reach "fighting age". Asari have a similar life span and they are considered too young to move out of their parent/s home until around age 60. The major difference is the natural birthrate of the Krogan. While an asari could have one child a year, the short pieriod in which you can cure the Genophage and the point females are already having children is extremely short. A pregnancy that only last a month or two. Then there are the number of children in a single birthing. Several hundred at a time. If a single female has a healthy "clutch" she could populate an entire clan on her own.

Nothing in ME1 or ME2 gives me any confidence that the Krogan could or would try to institute their own population controls. I'm not really concerned about them going extinct either. The Krogan seem to be relatively easy to clone healthy subjects in mass. If their numbers get too low, they could invest in cloning tech, or even hire (kidnap?) someone, to bolster their numbers.... Or they could just stop slaughtering whole clans at a time on Tachanka over political disputes.... Just a thought...

That number seems really low, considering there are trillions of lives at stake in the Reaper War.

It's an ideal population size in the situation they live in, namely when there are no resources to maintain more.


But your numbers lie on an assumption that the map shows all the habitated worlds in the galaxy or that at least all the species are equally represented on it, which is plain false.