So How Are We Getting There? Part 2

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I'm of the opinion that FTL drive tech is NOT static. I'm thinking of the Star Trek Warp drive where improvements were made over time.

I have not read any LORE that said FTL improvements is impossible. Only that Reaper FTL was better than the Alliance. However, I can postulate that the Reapers / Star Brat stopped research once they were satisfied / concluded its "current" tech was sufficient to handle newcomers. Once the "newbies" discovered the Relays, they became ripe for extermination and therefore, would not come across anything faster. This logic proved itself true until Femshep.

How did we get there?.. via stasis pods and centuries of travel. Besides, the 600 year journey may not be accurate. We could arrive many, many centuries later.  Also, these huge ARKs can be equipped with their own discharge facilities (ie: Citadel anyone?).

Personally, I wish Bio introduces  an innovative FTL drive suitable for intergalactic travel. Maybe that's why the ARK's engine is so huge.

Most likely. As well as have a bunch of mechs in storage in case something needs to be physically fixed. I would love for them to be Geth, but if not I suspect a group of VIs to be doing it. 

Pretty much what Sartoz said. They have the ability to discharge cores with out landing/getting in the field of some planet to deal with it. Not on ships though, but spacestations (and the citadel) have the ability to allow ships to discharge so that tech 'exists'. I'd imagine the engines are that large because A, it's a big ass ship, and B to give room for it's own ability to deal with the static build up.

I mean as far as I'm concerned the static build up is just electricity. I mean it's basically the excess leakage due to running a current through an Eezo Core. So they just need away to grab/collect that excess electricity and move/use it for something.

I'm actually not sure why other ships don't do that to be honest. You have this excess and they just let it build up then 'discharge it'? It's freakin' energy they could be using to power other systems. I mean look at our hybrid/electrical cars. We, in current day, are constantly finding ways to recharge the battery 'while' your using the damn thing lol. Take the shit, store it in reserves and use that to run through the Eezo Core when it gets full enough.

Since perpetual energy is impossible it'll eventually run it's self out blah blah something something psuedo-science babble.

So yeah my bets on some kinda discharge-recycler. Also 600-800 year trip.

It is an assumption.

I mean, we know they can go LONGER without discharging (2-3 years or so, since they flew in from dark space).  But we don't know if they can go indefinitely or not.  We do know that Reapers have been reported as being "wreathed in lightning" when landing on planets.

I highly doubt it's collectors for 2 main reasons. 1 the only person to ever get onto, or deal with a collector ship was Shepard and depending on a 'choice' it was either blown the shit up or not and they kinda wanna avoid any 'choices'. 2 the time between ME2 and 3 is very, very short. We're talking a few months from relay exploding in the DLC (which can happen before or after you do the whole Omega relay).

Anyway, point is it would have to take place 'after' ME2 but before ME3 which is like a period of.. 3-4 months? No way the ARK project is started 'and' finished with super new untested tech in 3 months. I don't care how futury the future is it aint taking 3 months to theorize, test, and be like 'yup it works lets do this' while making multiple ARK ships lol.

I think the ARK project makes far more sense to start (not when we play) sometime after ME1, theres a whole year lost after Shepard dies. And considering some of the top brass believes Shepard prior to that it's likely they decided on some backup plan, and it probably got the greenlight when Shepard was 'killed'. And I'm sure the Alliance got there hands on some pieces of Sovereign for study.

That's true, we don't even know when it takes place. My thinking is that humanity is in the start of another high tech industrial revolution. We're building things so fast that nobody can keep track of all the stuff out there. This is all through out the games, with the Normandy being the tip of the iceberg.

So, that being said, a ton of people came up with some very creative ideas that for one reason or another didn't make it to today. Now fast forward to ME time. At the very start of another industrial revolution, we would have all sorts of ideas. One of those ideas could be Hyperion engines, an engine that doesn't have to be discharged.

I'm glad I was able to show you something new.

Mass Effect 1 takes place during the year 2183. A month after the end of Mass Effect 1 the Collectors attack the SR1 and Shepard is declared KIA. Two years later in early 2185 Shepard is revived and the events of Mass Effect 2 occur. In early 2186 the events of the Arrival DLC occur. Six months later the events of Mass Effect 3 begin and the war ends a few months later around the end of the year. So since we know we are leaving before the endings, that gives us a total of about three years between the events on Eden Prime and the Crucible firing. 

And yeah, I'm not saying that the project had to start after the events of Paragon Lost. The theory just supports that either that and/or the data Shepard gathered during ME2 provided the final piece of the puzzle for the project. It's a nebulous theory. 

True, so then two and a half years since ME1 and one year since PL and the beginning of ME2. Though to be fair that scene may just be when we get aboard, but it leaves the galaxy later. Though yeah from the position of the horizon line it takes place a few hours before the beginning scene in ME3 where the shuttle goes down to Earth. 

I definitely think they started after ME1. The Citadel DLC shows that while they publically denied it, the Council accepted Shepard's story about the Reapers. And if not and it took PL or Arrival for them to realize, that still gives them more time that they had with the Crucible, a project that dwarfs the Arks since it is the size of the Citadel. If they can build that in a few months, if we had the knowledge we could build the Arks in half to two and a half years. 

Except ME time is NOT an high tech industrial revolution.  IF anything, it's stagnating.  Nothing]s being really discovered, they're just reverse-engineering Prothean tech.  It's why humans and turians were so close technologically speaking when one's been out among the stars to 2000 years and the other for a single generation.

No, it would be a tech industrial revolution if simply because of making parts for the engines.  Which would spark other people to think about it and come up with offshoots of said inventions.  It may not be as large an industrial revolution, but it is one.

In addition to the eezo core, you'll also get electrostatic build up from more mundane sources like space radiation, plasma sheets, and regions of space with charged particles. The ships could be fitted with plasma contactors to neutralize electrostatic build up, basically what the ISS uses, but scaled up appropriately for the colony ships.

No space magic required.