Krogan births and the genophage

All of this was brought up on the old forums and it was revealed that the krogan do in fact lay eggs.

Wouldn't be surprised if it has since been retconned because nobody gives a shit about eggs lol

Altering them so they only lay a few eggs rather then still lay hundreds that die off would be theoretically possible. But it would require the entire race to accept genetic alteration. Something that during a war would be impossible to do. Certainly not anything the Genophage could do given how it was spread.

There was no way to know they would be incapable/unwilling of/to control their birth rates on their own.  Heck a human female would be capable of giving birth to a single child every 2 years.  Having ~18 kids in their life time.  If every family did that then the population growth would massively skyrocket.  How ever we tend to keep smaller family groups of 1-4 depending on were you life. Purposefully holding back on how many kids we spawn.

Their actions made sense before they were uplifted but no one could predict they wouldn't adapt to it and would still reproduce at such a massive rate. 

And it would take far more then just a shot to completely rewrite how they reproduce.  We are talking serious  Jurassic Park level genetic manipulation.

In ye olden days people had large families because they had to. The mortality rate and effort needed to earn living/grow food required large families to sustain themselves. Fast forward to day and the same is not true. So we adapted to new surroundings. Krogan failed to do the same.

Gonphage messes with hormone production in the Krogan to reduce viable number of eggs for any given clutch.  This is vastly different from reducing a clutch from say 50 eggs to only 3 eggs.

How do eggs tie in with the stillborn births the krogan are said to have had?  Do they "hatch" stillborn?  Does a pile of unhatched eggs really have the same impact as a small body that never breathes?  Kind of curious here because the dialogue doesn't really line up regarding eggs and stillborn.

How many eggs does a chicken lay at a time? I'm not sure but I know it isn't a thousand. That number is absurd. The mortality rate on Tuchanka must be insane. How many krogan reached adulthood out of the thousand that hatched? Pre genophage i mean. Not many i imagine. Seeing each other be brutally killed by predators was a normal everyday part of krogan existence. Surely that's more traumatic than an egg not hatching right? Yet you never hear them complain about the harshness of Tuchankan life. They instead seem proud. Proud of surviving such an incredibly dangerous environment. If they can thumb their nose at Tuchanka, why can't they do the same with the genophage? Okeer did. I wonder why more krogan don't share his mindset. He was a true visionary. Not Wrex.

I think that there is an attempt here by Bioware to portray the issue with the Krogan being based on a lot of widespread misinformation about the Krogan existing throughout a population that just generally fears them.

For example, the Krogan numbers are said to be so threatening... yet, if one adds up the population numbers of the various species in the galaxy based on the information you see when you call up the various planets in the three games... the Krogan popular is actually about 1/4 the population of any of the other species (except the Batarians).  This despite Mordin's assurances that the genophage was design not to decimate the Krogan number but to stabilize them at pre-uplift numbers.

Another thing to consider, they are supposed to be such a galaxy wide threat yet they don't have any fleets to even allow them to travel in large numbers to worlds outside of Tuchanka; and because of food and the other issues with transporting them (fighting with each other when aboard ships), it seems unlikely that they are a species that would ever develop a large fleet of ships.  So, with their population actually at a 1/4 of almost every other species in the galaxy and limited ability for transporting themselves in large numbers... say again how it is that they are supposed to be such a huge threat to every other species in the galaxy?

Finally, there's this conundrum about this "alien" way in which they give birth.  People naturally fear what they can't really understand... and I honestly think that's why Bioware set the Krogan birth process up the way they did... It's not meant to be completely understandable by us... causing some of us to more readily fear Krogan expansion when contemplating whether or not to allow our Shepards to cure the genophage or not.

Surely, the Krogan themselves propagate some of the misinformation... they brag about "how fast they could breed without the genophage" and the brag about how tough they are.  They have a culture the prides strength... but are they really so uncontrollably violent?  The "headbutt" each other (a clear euphemism for merely arguing in human terms) but we don't see them randomly pulling out weapons and just shooting each other over those "headbutting" arguments, do we?

On the other side of the coin, the salarians are a rather paranoid bunch that regularly engage in uplift for the sake of uplift (shown by the variety of experiments happening on Sur'Kesh in ME3).  The revel in the "science" of manipulation.  They are adept at infiltration and sabotage.  They also have a motive in focusing the fears of the other species away from themselves... While the other races are watching the krogan in fear... they'll likely "never see them (i.e. the Salarians) coming"... and this "philosophy" is clearly expressed in the game... by Mordin when you first meet him in ME2 and again by Kirrahe if you talk again with him on Sur'Kesh (who tells Shepard outright that Salarians always expect trouble; and furthermore, deal with a lot of it by making trouble for someone else (i.e. diverting attention away from themselves).

So, for me, it comes down to Bioware trying to present things in such a way that it is possible to lean either way on the issue.  It comes down to who are the Krogan themselves really?  Here, Bioware shows up a multitude of differences in Krogran "personality" throughout all three games with a clear intention in ME3 in the writing to have the presence of Wrex and Eve be the final tip of the scales.  If Wrex is in control and Eve is alive... then the probability of the krogan having a stable government is higher.  If Wreav is in charge and Eve is dead, then it is likely that the government will be less stable and more inclined towards just violently trying to take revenge on the other species.

I know that looking at the numbers I've theorized that this could be true, but is there in-game evidence that the genophage was designed to bring them back to pre-uplift numbers?  I don't recall that ever being said.

This ones rather easy, actually.  There are always krogan off-world.  They're apparently free to travel.  Get 100 pregnant females onto other planets and before long you have huge populations of krogan literally everywhere.  Sounds like a threat to me. 

It's not that alien.  Salarians lay eggs as well and I believe most of those don't survive either.  It's not how they give birth that's the main issue it's how they behave.  They decimate entire ecologies and then move on to the next.  Some of the codices on planets krogan once inhabited mention how other races have tried to restore the environment.  Krogan are disastrous for environments.

Why spread misinformation that keeps you down?  That makes no sense.  The Krogan Rebellions are the reason for the genophage.  If feel like you're theorizing against known facts in the game.  Remember, there are asari alive who were around back then so it's not all hearsay.

Bakara outright states that the krogan destroyed their world even without the help of the salarians.  Bakara also calls Wrex a "mutant" for being different from most krogan (Charr being another obvious example).  I don't believe the krogan are genetically aggressive but instead follow the path they "know".  If not for feelings of hopelessness, we might see a lot more like Wrex and Charr.  So the genophage was created for a reason that galactic society finds useful but it makes things worse for the krogan themselves.

Chickens tend to lay 20-30 eggs a year.  In a predator/starvation/disease free environment the growth of the population would develop exponentially due to that.  Think about it two breeding pairs would produce 40 eggs a year. If the young were evenly divided between male and female  that would create 20 more breeding pairs. Who would then produce 400 eggs. Divided evenly male and female would produce 200 breeding pairs who would lay 4,000 eggs, and so on and so forth.

Killed by predators, illness, murder, etc would most likely result in only a couple of any clutch growing to adult hood. Then due to the Krogan nature they would be killed off in fairly large amounts.  That is generally how high birth rate animals compensate for their high birth rate. By having a high mortality rate of babies or their race over all. Much like Chickens who are targeted by predators as eggs and adults.

Well if the Shaman in ME 2 have anything to go on for the general mindset of the Krogan. They view death as culling the weak. The ancients were destroyed because they were not strong enough so they died. And thousands of generations of Krogans will die unless they are strong enough. How ever the Genophage is an outside force holding back the Krogan from being able to get stronger. They aren't dying because they are weak. They are dying because the Salarian's messed with their reproduction set up.