Why the nexus and arks were not armed (theory)

Of course it makes sense. I’ve driven all over the eastern part of the country, but I’ve only actually been to a few cities and towns. The places I passed as I stayed on the road are still completely unknown to me. The Relay Network is like FTL roads. You can go only where the relays take you, and as far away from that Relay as current tech/logistics allow. “Current” FTL is about 13LY/day. Prior to the ODSY drive, which eliminated the need to regularly discharge buildup, exploring vast tracts of the MW really wasn’t feasible. There is nowhere to discharge in interstellar space. While you could theoretically live long enough or sleep in stasis until arrival, the vessel would cook long before arrival. That was the barrier, not time.

EDIT: I see this conversation was already taking place. I think you phenomenally underestimate the vastness of interstellar space, and phenomenally overestimate the commonality of habitable worlds.

You’ve missed the point of my illustration and then reapplied it to support a flawed argument. Space exploration can’t really be compared to terrestrial exploration in this case.

These regions are not “next door” on any practical scale. What you’re calling next door is separated by insurmountable distances due to current/non-ODSY FTL tech. That’s why everyone has to stick to the roads/the Network. The nearest potential place of interest is generally way too far off to be reached before cooking inside your ship. Your vision of heavily populated stretches of space, celestial urban sprawl, is based upon neither the realities of space nor the state of things presented in Mass Effect. Such stretches could certainly exist. In general, though, habitable worlds and accessible rest-stops (discharge points, refueling stations, etc...) simply don’t exist in the required numbers. It’s space, not Earth. It’s largely empty and inimical to life.

This is why species have settled for exploring and colonizing any worlds remotely habitable along the Relay Network. Before ODSY, anything else was out of reach. With ODSY, many more places now become accessible since they’re only a few FTL-years away. Now you can journey 6 months off the beaten path since you won’t cook inside your ship.

You're simply failing to see that if anything of interest is beyond 50 LY from all those known relays, you have a bunch of explored and confirmed unexplorable empty space up to the 50 LY limit that is eating away at your 99% unexplored galaxy.  You're also failing to see that every cluster found within that 50 LY limit extends the limit 50 more LY in every direction from that new point (there are no roads or terrain, just space).  With centuries to do it, more of the areas around those relays would be fully explored and either confirmed as dead space or extending the limits out into new space and then a new 50 LY radius around the new point would also be fully explored and either confirmed to contain another new point that further extends that 50 LY limit or confirmed to be dead space.  With multiple space faring species with populations in the trillions coming starting from points that extend all around the galaxy and centuries of time, the areas around your relays would be 100% explored and the areas around even the farther clusters shown from those relays would also at least be well on their way to being 100% explored. 

As I said initially, I find it believable that the people of the AI then would feel that everything inside the known limits had been explored and they desired to break free of those limits.  What they saw in Andromeda was a higher than normal looking abundance of "golden worlds" and that enticed to try to break free of those old limits by more than a little margin... in spectacular fashion.  There were lots of mountains closer to Edmund Hilary's home that he hadn't climbed yet... but it was Everest that had his attention.  So, he skipped over all those smaller mountains... leaving them for others to climb and he set off to climb Everest in far off Tibet instead.  It was one mountain he knew no one had climbed before him.

mu impression was that the 1% figure included those 50 LY extensions.

How many clusters are in Citadel space, anyway. Far more than we ever get on the maps. We don't even see most human colonies.

That’s a fair point. Still while you are correct that there are systems left unexplored I hope they continue showing us what Andromeda has to offer.

Shepard actually does call the Normandy to pick him up on Therum, and perhaps Virmire.

As with all such things, the Normandy can show up wherever the plot lets it. Should the plot have let it shoot down the geth drop ships? Or more likely, just not have the drop ships? Would that have made the missions better, or worse?

"Barrier" doesn't imply impossibility, merely difficulty.

Again, the lore says what the issues are, and that lore says that those issues are surmountable. Remember, travel via normal FTL to Ilos was impractical rather than impossible.

When Ryder first encountered Archie, the scrouge worked in the tempest favor that prevented the kett fighters from possibly destroying the tempest. When facing Archie a second time, when approaching Meridian, the kett had enough firepower to wipeout Ryder and the others, but again, the scrouge worked in Ryder's and the tempest favor.

But, again, a dreadnought or two can't actually protect you. Any species which has the capability to attack an unarmed ark will almost certainly militarily outclass an armed ark, or several armed arks. (Although there is a very narrow parity window where the hypothetical hostiles have only just started building warships.)

And as mentioned upthread, being armed shouldn't be necessary to protect any FTL-capable ship in the first place, since the sensible move is simply to disengage. (Edit: how this played out with the non-human arks is a serious writing problem.)

I think you had a bad edit there.

I think the idea that armaments wouldn't help on the arks is odd. Sure you goal is to just flee, but it is easier to flee while shooting than it is to flee when you aren't shooting. It's not about winning the fight, but making flight more successful of an option.

Also it allows you to stop a range of attacks from just happening in the first place. A huge range of vessels just wont try to attack you if you show a proper defense. Something that massive but showing no defense is just a incredibly tempting target to any potential hostile. Comparatively small pirate vessels would attack an unarmed massive ship because even taking a small % would be a massive haul.


The main issue as mentioned is why they couldn't just FTL away. Now there could be a variety of lore friendly reasons for that as I don't think ships of this size are detailed much. So it is possible larger ships can't just jump to FTL that it has a lengthy wind up period which is problematic to pull off while under assault. But the why just never was gone into. And as pirates are seen as a threat to ships in the MW it owuld make sense that you need to do something time consuming to jump, as otherwise you almost always would be able to flee. It was implied in the Asari ark that they needed something like a long straight away while not under fire, but it was pretty vague. The Kett did show some ability to shut engines down when they first encountered the archon, but again it wasn't explained and up to this point tech like that I was unaware of existing. So some kind of WTF comment would have been nice. It's a new galaxy so new tech and abilities is fine but explain that.

Now if it is just a hit a button and you instantly leap into FTL with no known way to stop it I can see weapons being seen as unnecessary. As you'd always be able to escape. But, I don't think it has ever been implied its always that easy for all ships.