Fighting Amongst Ourselves

And this being a worse plot device than something like  The Crucible or Synthesis? Come on.

[to quote the ever lovable river song...spoilers.

Wow, this was bugging me since the prologue section on the Nexus. Why did a load of scientists, geologists, xenobiologists and engineers suddenly take leave of their senses and attempt to doom the AI with ridiculous demands on stasis policy then turn into space pirates. Worse, I thought was 'hell is it only me who is bothered by this?' as nobody on the nexus seems to be questioning how nuts the whole scenario is.

So... I never completed ME:A but I'm assuming that as soon as this bombshell is revealed to the Nexus leadership this changes everything, all their plans going forward, knowing that the schism can never be reconciled because half the awakened population are incurably space crazy? To make matters worse another 60'000 stasis pods have turned up! How do they deal with the problem that significant proportion of the Ark Ship inhabitants, perhaps given the size of the exile group, over 50% are going to have the same condition!!! Are they going to screen them? what if they fail screening, exile, return to cryo or euthanise? "Sorry to wake you from stasis with such terrible news Mrs Jones, but your husband and son were both sick with Cryo-Rabies and we had to exile them, now please proceed to orientation on the command deck."  I mean they couldn't continue with a business as usual policy, releasing tens of thousands of psychopaths into the Andromeda galaxy, that would be disastrous... suppose you could keep them in cryo and hope that anyone capable of curing them wasn't also affected. 

*point at entire human race.
*points at the giant mess of conflit in the milky way.

How is it so hard to understand ? do people have so much faith in humanity that they think that in a time of crisis people don't lose there shit in mass?

seriously, this is not hard to understand.

I don't know, didn't seem like it was so much a crisis as a delay.  So the leader had died and the initial batch of planets weren't working out as expected.  There was no imminent threat to throw people into a panic, help was coming they knew this, all they had to do was wait it out until the Arks arrived so they could plot their next move, its not like they could return to the MW before the Arks got there.    It's like they were passengers on an aeroplane who discovered that the pilot had came down sick and there was a snow storm at their intended destination forcing them to divert.  Yeah, 'someone' might freak out, but you wouldn't get 1/3 of the passengers demanding that the co-pilot step down or that they should try landing on the snowbound runway regardless and when their demands weren't met they suddenly try storm the cabin or pry open the outer door!


 I understand people can panic en-mass and when they do it is often disastrous, but they were not in a situation of imminent peril that would cause that kind of reaction.   It's not like a fire in a crowded theatre, or a angry bull loose in a narrow street, something that requires a split second decision.  They had time to think and weigh up their response, days, several weeks even.   They would also have been trained and prepped for this kind of scenario and they would have all been well educated professionals, able to comprehend the situation.   Instead we are to believe that a significant enough portion of them to initiate a mutiny, started acting like petulant children making demands that would obviously only worsen their situation. 

obatalaryder
I get it, you, the game, the book, still the premise is wrong. The answer is realy very simple: survival > liberty.
There were millions slaves throughout humans history and most of them choose pain and suffering (no liberty) over a quick death (survival), why do you think is it so? Why are there so many people who actualy realy believe in it? I have no answer, though (and this is not meant as insult or personal attack) I talked to my nephews 17 (plays MEA) and 12 (plays not) years old. They both understand it and agree with it, it seems they, for whatever reason, value liberty and (personal) freedom very high and both have problems with Tann and Addison, on the other hand, I told the story to some people (sister, mother, father, a few friends) all 40+ and not one of them takes it. They know humanity and they know profesionalism (dreman999 btw, if some low grade factory workers have such a tight security, what do you imagine how it looks like when working at something as BIG, and AI is bigger then big, as the Nexus, hm??), this is not how things work.

You say Garson invited people who just want a new fresh start. Yup. But gues what? Garson was no longer the one funding the AI and thus not the person making the big decisions. This "startes" are the major bulk of the colonists, still in cryo on board the arks, but not the Nexus. ANY low, mid and higher level manager will tell you this. With an endeavor as huge as this, you will make damn sure just experts, profesionals and very reliable people are on the Nexus, because you know the chance everything goes south is extremely high (and with extremely high I mean above 90%), so in order to improve your chances, you ahve to make sure that forward station is up and running when the arks arrive and the only way to do it is to get the best people you have available. The second problem with this is... people who want a second chance do NOT waste this second chance. Also, said it earlier a few times now, survival is rated higher then personal freedoms and liberty, people would make sure everything is up and running before aiming for something ideological like a utopia.

At the moment of the uprising, there are no golden worlds, there are no Angara, there are no arks, there is just a heavily damaged Nexus and the Kett. Do you realy believe people would take the chance, board a few hundred shuttles and fly into the unknown, rather then suck it up, work with Tann and make the Nexus "livable"? When the Nexus is up and running and they still have a problem with Tann, they can still leave. But right now, a slim chance with an unpopular leader is better then no chance, working with and for idiotic leaders is what "grown ups" have to do on a daily basis, some may have luck and have a good boss, but most have not.

Oh and btw, without a proper "staff" you can be the best leader of the whole galaxy and still accomplish nothing. So Sloane with all this poor poor misunderstood exiles (You know Calix is no soldier, his people neither, what the hell do he think he can accoplish with this riot? He can not think he can overhrow Tann with his "charisma" and he can not overthrow Tann with brute force, so what the f... do he thinks he can do? Oh and he is dead, as most of his team) was capable to repelling the Kett and conquer Kadara Port... wow, I gues our mutineers are some serious folks even without Calix and his merry band of morons.

You (and others) have just to think about it, not some space and another galaxy. High seas and some abandoned little undiscovered island in the pacific. Your ship or plane crashes and now you and some others are now on that tiny island. What is your first thought? Political intrigue and the wish for democratic leadership or securing survival? The answer is simple, I hope you made the right one, because if not, I realy hope you are never experience an accident like this, you secure survival and THEN you go for the leader. And what do you think how high your chances are when this leader, as incompetent and uncharismatic s/he is, managed to secure the survival of the group?

I can and do accept the uprising as a plot device simply to enjoy the game as much as possible, still, the situation is BS and BioWare could have done better, much better.

The problem with the exiles is that there isn't anything clever to them, they are the quintessential dregs of society that Walters seems to love so much, even though their backstory is wholly implausable.

Just to illustrate but somehow these bloodthirsty maniac's with limited equipment found and setteled multiple outpost on Kadara, Eladeen and  H-047c while the initative proper sits on the Nexus and on the radiation infested Eos having to cope with logistical and military problems that the exiles seem to have no problem with.

Except they weren't driving off a cliff.  14 months after arrival they are still there, still surviving when the Hyperion shows up.  They must be doing a lot of somethings right for the station and all its inhabitants to still be there, still be safe and alive despite dangers from the Scourge and the Kett and hostile worlds.

I didn't read the book but the game gives the impression the mutiny happened pretty soon after the Nexus arrived, Tann specifically talks about criminals taking advantage of the scourge disaster and the exiles have had time to start and build up colonies, factions, outposts, mining operations, etc. all over the cluster before Ryder even arrives.  So this isn't a case of the Nexus leadership showing a long term pattern of incompetence or wasting resources or whatever, its only been a few weeks they wouldn't even have had time for that yet. 

Yeah things are bad already soon as they arrive but what did these people expect?  That they would cross 2.5 million lights year worth of dark space into an unknown galaxy and everyone would just start crapping rainbows the moment they woke from stasis riding unicorns across star speckled space bridges to live in their new fairy tale dream castles atop mountains of fluffy clouds?  Really?  Everyone would have known before they even left the MW that things were going to be hard and dangerous, that they were going to face shortages and that if the AI was to be successful it was going to require sacrifice and hard work from everyone.  Along with a few bucket loads of luck.

I dunno, I can see a few dozen idiots being in the mix and needing to be put back in cryo or exiled in extreme cases but not on the scale and in the numbers the game depicts.  If that many of the initial waves of people that were woken up turned out to be such colossal bone heads I don't see anyway that the Nexus would still be operational with actual living people still aboard by the time Ryder arrived.  The whole thing would have collapsed on them.

Except they weren't driving off a cliff.  14 months after arrival they are still there, still surviving when the Hyperion shows up.  They must be doing a lot of somethings right for the station and all its inhabitants to still be there, still be safe and alive despite dangers from the Scourge and the Kett and hostile worlds.

I didn't read the book but the game gives the impression the mutiny happened pretty soon after the Nexus arrived, Tann specifically talks about criminals taking advantage of the scourge disaster and the exiles have had time to start and build up colonies, factions, outposts, mining operations, etc. all over the cluster before Ryder even arrives.  So this isn't a case of the Nexus leadership showing a long term pattern of incompetence or wasting resources or whatever, its only been a few weeks they wouldn't even have had time for that yet. 

Yeah things are bad already soon as they arrive but what did these people expect?  That they would cross 2.5 million lights year worth of dark space into an unknown galaxy and everyone would just start crapping rainbows the moment they woke from stasis riding unicorns across star speckled space bridges to live in their new fairy tale dream castles atop mountains of fluffy clouds?  Really?  Everyone would have known before they even left the MW that things were going to be hard and dangerous, that they were going to face shortages and that if the AI was to be successful it was going to require sacrifice and hard work from everyone.  Along with a few bucket loads of luck.

I dunno, I can see a few dozen idiots being in the mix and needing to be put back in cryo or exiled in extreme cases but not on the scale and in the numbers the game depicts.  If that many of the initial waves of people that were woken up turned out to be such colossal bone heads I don't see anyway that the Nexus would still be operational with actual living people still aboard by the time Ryder arrived.  The whole thing would have collapsed on them.