Mass Effect Andromeda books & comics (Nexus Uprising 'soon')

The problem isn't that the tech can't function for X amount of years, that's solved by self-maintaining hardware, the problem is that FTL becomes exponentially more expensive and less efficient the bigger the ship is, so to store enough energy for an Ark to last the entire journey to Andromeda, you'd have to massively expand the Arks energy and fuel storage capacity... but that means adding more mass to be reduced by the FTL drive, which makes FTL even less efficient, which requires even more energy and fuel storage capacity, and so on.

Basically, there's only really one solution to this problem, which is to build vastly more efficient FTL drives, the likes of which not even the Reapers possess. There's also the issue with the Arks being built in an incredibly small timespan between the end of ME1 and the beginning of ME3 - even if they had the technology, it's not nearly enough time to build the Arks, which almost look to rival the Mass Relays in size. How they funded them and kept them secret from the public are additional questions that need answering.

The ideal scenario would be to set the exodus to Andromeda a bunch of centuries AFTER Mass Effect 3, that way the galaxy has time to discover the necessary technology for them to make the journey, and ample time to build the Arks without having to keep them a secret. But then you lose the entire impetus for leaving the galaxy in the first place - the impending Reaper War - and even the goal of exploring the Andromeda for the pure purpose of knowledge makes very little sense when 99.99% of the Milky Way remains unexplored and likely will remain largely unexplored for tens of thousands of years to come.

And going with a "They discovered ancient technology"-explanation obviously doesn't work either when not even the Reapers can go faster than 30 light years a day, a speed at which it would take them 228 years of constant FTL to reach Andromeda.

Also, just to clarify:

When I'm talking about the logical integrity of the Mass Effect universe, I'm not demanding they make it a 1:1 replica of real life - that's not what fiction is about. I'm just asking them to hold themselves to the standards they themselves set in the first game, to keep the universe consistent. For some reason people seem to think that is too much to ask for.

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Plus there is nothing preventing the discovery of another means of travels between point A and B.  Tech, ideas and inventions have always existed. (ie: the horse, chariot, car, train, airplane, missiles, ion drives... etc. Scientific discoveries in science have occurred by accident, a few times).

So, I won't be surprised if the prequel novel says the Alliance discovered something new.

"Unlike Citadel ships, Reapers do not appear to discharge static buildup from their drive cores, although they sometimes appear wreathed in static discharge when they land on planets."

Considering that little bit of lore, it sounds less like a flaw inherent to the very nature of Mass Effect drives, and more like a limitation the Reapers intentionally built in to the Mass Effect drive technology they left for organics to find. (Or simply an unintentional consequence of their having a greater understanding of Mass Effect technology - their technology - than any other race.)

I'm thinking the Andromeda expedition Ark-ship drives are based on drive core tech reverse-engineered from the wreckage of Sovereign. Going by the speculated travel time of about 600 years, the Ark drives are probably a half-step between the Citadel races' drives and Reaper drives. They can manage about twelve light years per day - top speed of the best Citadel drives during the Reaper War, but less than half a Reaper's top speed - but don't have to be discharged.

It's not that much of a stretch, lore-wise. Nowhere near as egregious as the whole thermal clip thing. (Which, truth be told, didn't really bother me either...)

Codex link for quote: masseffect.wikia.com/wiki/Codex/The_Reapers#Reaper_Capabilities

What I would love to see, and never will - for obvious reason - is Mass Effect novel written by R. A. Heinlein. Now that would be interesting.

A Hugo award winning author writing the book might have tempted me to read my first Mass Effect book.

A Hugo award winning author that is Jemisin seals the deal.

Yes there is, it's called time. No amount of money and manpower can force a discovery. Real life is not Civilization. All money and manpower does is increase the likelihood of *a* discovery, not necessarily the discovery you were looking for.



Sartoz, no piece of technology is the sum of a single scientific discovery. It's not a matter of randomly stumbling upon a new FTL design. Nobody is going to get a sudden surge of inspiration and design a heatsink that is 8 million times more efficient than the commercial standard.

Technology is subject to evolution just like we are. You can't just skip a step.

Bioware's treatment of Mass Effect based FTL travel was an inconsistent mess anyway. Rebooting it could be a good thing, if it gives them some consistent rules that apply to both codex and cutscene.

It's a great opportunity to just make a new setting instead of this cashgrab, that isn't even done without several of the main creators or doctors around.

But hey, whatever.

Like, literally right? lol

It seems people just want a logo or something.

In regards to the the method of traveling to Andromeda, I've personally always been a fan of the species of the galaxy uniting to create their own version of a Stellar Engine, using existing tech.

While trying to move an entire main sequence star and its corresponding solar system would be out of the question, something smaller, like say a brown dwarf, or 'hot' Jupiter would fit the bill nicely. The benefit of using the stellar engine lies in the fact that it is self sustaining; the host star itself providing the thrust. Plus, as an added bonus the system of the star in question will be dragged along with it; which depending on the type of planetary bodies present will mean the Andromeda colonists will be carrying along their own living space and/or fuel source.

Clearly, a system rich in ezzo would be the best candidate, like something with a (relatively) small asteroid belt orbiting the star. That will provide the fuel necessary for the maintaining of the mass effect fields, as well as being a perfect place to discharge any static build up and providing ample living space for the colonists.

Now the obvious question would be in how the galaxy is going to move a brown dwarf; which despite it's small relative size is still a massive stellar body. The answer of course is the use of mass effect fields, large, mega-industrial sized ones. Now where is the galaxy going to field something that powerful? Easy, with the use of several generators not unlike the ones the Turians used to provide the entire moon of Merene (sp?) with a gravitational field strong enough to hold an earth-like gravity and atmosphere across it's entire surface. Get fifteen to twenty of these generators in position around a target brown dwarf and you would be able to substantially reduce the star's mass, but not it's solar output.

All of this combined will mean that the system in question would be able to get 'up to speed' in a reliable time frame, and seeing as how the use of a stellar engine is more or less unlimited in terms of acceleration; due to a constant thrust being applied by the star's own radiation output; would mean that this 'vessel' could reach Andromeda in roughly the same amount of time as it would with BioWare's current method, but wouldn't be relying on the creation of hereto unknown technological advancement. Also, it would provide the colonists a ready built home system to operate out of once they reach their destination.

Plus, how much cooler would it be to pull up to Andromeda driving a freaking STAR, than some measly little ark ship?

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What exactly is Mass Effect to you? Element Zero? The Reapers? the Relays?

If you read some of Bio's interviews, that is not what a Mass Effect game is to them.

It's a placeholder, even the title might end up being different (Mass Effect: Andromeda Initiative).

The armor you see is the armor that belongs to the Pathfinder*. It's the same armor 'N7 guy' has. Ryder isn't N7 guy.

*source (from 19.39):