Your guess: construction start/end dates for MEA Arks?

If that's the case, just stay in the Milky Way
Its my biggest concern. Even though I'm preordering the game, a good explanation at the beginning to know the who/why/when would help. If the explanation is lame, what does that say about the rest of the game?
I don't really have any expectations once Ryder arrives in Andromeda. Just looking forward to what the species look like that Ryder encounters
I will use the answer the catalyst gave Shepard

You don't need to know when they were constructed, and there's not enough time to explain.

I agree that everything indicates a pre-Reaper construction.

Dad sounds kind of mature, and has grown children, so I'm betting he's a veteran N7, rather than someone newly risen to the designation. One of the earliest pieces of material we got regarding this game was that "family of three" photo that reasonably clearly looked to be a parent and two children. We don't know which parent is in the photo, but we can assume who the children are, as we correctly guessed then.

I'm wandering off-topic, now, but I'm curious as to whether minor character backgrounds might be selectable based upon what your Ryder has done before enlistment. A bit of University first, or enlistment at 18? That sort of thing. (I know people keep insisting we aren't military, but that isn't what has been said by devs. We clearly are the military arm of a multi-purpose mission.)

Anyway, on topic, I'm in the ballpark with your timeline. I'm thinking that the Ai was likely in the pipeline for decades before construction. I don't believe it is a human endeavor at all. (That's likely game marketing.) I believe we are seeing the construction of the human Ark above Luna, just as we'd see something similar above Asari, Salarian and Turian worlds. Things might be weird if we weren't a "Council Race" in MEA, after earning as much in the first trilogy. Maybe that is an indication that 2183 is the earliest that we'd depart the Milky Way?

I'm just throwing guesses into the air, honestly. If I were writing this presently, I could choose any one of several different paths, so it's impossible for me to say, "They've definitely gone this route". I look forward to finally getting some real answers, soon!

Agreed on the reboot. I hope the majority have this outlook. I'd hate to have an otherwise great game beat down in a wave of Internet hate because the first 10 minutes of exposition didn't measure up to the retcon-standard they'd imagined.

I really hope that the Andromeda Initiative in no way involves the Reapers. I hope it was developed with no foreknowledge of the Reapers; and I especially hope it does not launch as the Reapers invade. I love the original trilogy, but I'm finished with Reapers. I'd rather not hear much more about them. Plus, the Reapers would be crazy to let the Arks escape. It wouldn't make much sense. It would be one more thing in Mass Effect that doesn't make any sense. I don't want to add to that list.

We don't have much info at the moment, so it's all just speculations. I think that it should begin AND end before ME1 (with some slightest overlaping may be).

1. It completely removes Shepard out of the picture. Ryders might've heard about Elysium\Acuze, but it's just 'one of those good N7 soldiers', not a 'legend', 'First Human Spectre', 'Hero of Citadel' etc.

2. It could have been a joint Alliance-Citadel effort, like SR1. Yeah, I know that we've never heard about it, but why would we? I mean Shepard had possibly heard somethign about some other project\expedition etc, but it was pretty much irrelevant for the mission&plot. There are billions of things that had never been mentioned in ME123, which does not mean that those things never existed. Plenty of those things (big&small ones) are well known to the characters, but not the player (unless headcanoned).
2.1 That would explain the resources and high-tech, pretty much not typical for the pre-ME123 Alliance.
2.2 That would explain aliens aboard the project. Makes more sense than with the 'human-only' project.

3. Reapers? Never heard of them.

This pretty much nails why the Arks make no sense in any timeframe whatsoever before ME3's ending. (If you want to consider the Mass Effect universe a real, logical one, that is).

Moreover, buildings Arks would be impossibly expensive. Not to mention the impossibility of keeping such thing a secret. It's like someone on Earth building, right now and in secret, a ship capable of going to Alpha Centauri.

The only way around it is some kind of external help. We know the Tempest had other influences that the Normandy didn't have, so it's possible. By choice would be the Leviathans in some obscure scheme. But it might just end being "we found blueprints in a ruin". 

My thoughts are that this may have been a covert Cerberus-funded plan, a last ditch effort, to save humanity (primarily) and all other organic species.

They would of course use a different company name, and this project would be under the guise of a desire to explore, adventure seek, etc. Considering we still have so much of the MW to explore, however, that would strike me as strange for a exploration project proposal. Maybe there has been some new discovery that is driving this desire to go to Andromeda (ex. we have recovered evidence that the Protheans may have journeyed there, let's find out why!).

^Just my little bit of crazy fan fiction theory!


I assume then this project started after Shepard's death, which I believe is 2 months after he/she saved the Citadel from Sovereign/the Geth, and completed just around Shepard's arrest/trial/or imprisonment after ME2. They probably would depart the MW sometime in early 2186, just before the Reaper's invade. I would still be fearful of running into a fleet of Reapers resting in intergalactic space though.

Oh, I like that, fits quite well into what we know so far. Besides someone else might have gotten it wrong.

Excellent. And Ryder is an undercover Cerberus operative. excellent. I like dual excellents

Gotcha. I don't follow Twitter with much zeal. Above, I was diplomatically allowing wiggle room for an idea with which I flatly disagree. There's no logical way that the Ark could be built in secret above Luna. Now that I know that they've confirmed that location, which is something I'd truly had no reason to doubt anyway, I believe we can toss the "secret construction" idea into the waste bin.

I think the little evidence we've been given points toward a public effort with public recruting. I like it, personally. People will bitch and moan, "but why didn't we hear about it during the trilogy?" Clearly, because the concept did not exist in the real world, which is going to be true regardless of the story they now choose. I hope the Ai is a huge, public initiative that has absolutely nothing to do with the Reapers and never involves them in any way.