Bioware story hole how that Massive Nexus station reach Andromeda? (not spoiler)

When I finished the ME3, I always wondered, what would have happen to all the people surviving the last battle since the Massrelays was destroyed.
Did all of them settle around earth system, or did the build new relays, and how long time would it take for one ship to reach to the receiving end of the the relay and build a new one? Would have been a great game to rebuild the Milkyway. But apparently there was extremely good engines back then so no relays was needed.

This is relatively simple. Aside from any arbitrary restrictions on how many SAM AI they wanted, the answer is because the Nexus was supposed to be neutral, and the Arcs were supposed to arrive concurrently.

There's a one-pathfinder-per-Arc designation because the Arcs are- by and large- supposed to represent the 'one race one polity' rule that the Milky Way galaxy is based around. The Human Pathfinder scouts for Human colonies and Human interests. The Salarian arc for Salarian interests. Etc. The Nexus, however, is supposed to be neutral- and so having a pathfinder who will be presumed to reflect the interests of their races like the rest would create imbalance.

Secondly, the arrivals were intended to be concurrent, conditions in the Milky Way permitting. There's only limited utility in having the scouting functions of the Pathfinder setup duplicated on a ship that wouldn't really have a need for them. If the Nexus does everything the Arcs do, it largely eliminates the need for Arcs- even as the Initiative, from the start, was supposed to be cooperative and self-reinforcing.



The Nexus does provides resources to the Arks- just not power. And the Nexus has enough power to operate without them, even if it's just rationed.

The areas that the Nexus that aren't self-sustaining in- food and raw materials- are also the areas that the Nexus wouldn't have had a real problem with if the Scourge hadn't fucked with everything.

The ODSY drive doesn't make a whole of sense even with their pseudo science explanation. I'd like to see if anyone can make sense of that to me.

Yes its Finbarr Galedeep, Mariel and Dandin on the cover of The Bellmaker. I'm a huge Redwall fan even as an adult and have every book signed in hardback.

All eggs weren't in one basket. All eggs (Pathfinders, as we we talking about) were evenly distributed across the same number of baskets in the name of both redundancy and political fairness, which was an important implicit requirement for everyone involved to agree to be involved in the first place. The Andromeda Initiative had to be a multi-racial effort to set up an entirely new administration, but no species was going to pay for the privilege of having only one pathfinder if some other race was going to get two.

The racial and societal politics of the origin setting are what determine what sort of Initiative-founding agreements were possible, but every Arc being mixed-race for maximum racial survival wouldn't have been politically feasible. If all Arks were mix-species, the Arks wouldn't have gotten the funding and support to be built, because the Milky Way societies building them are xeno-nationalist. The believe in a properness of one species, one polity, and that was their intent of how to organize the Andromeda Colonization effort. Even aside from the technical reasons to want to keep mixed-raced Arcs to a minimum (costs and difficulty per vessel go up the more races/species that must be supported), the political underpinnings are something that must be planned for, not simply blamed as a lack of planning.


The Initiative had five-fold redundancy for Pathfinders as it was. The Pathfinders wouldn't have even been crucial had it not been for the Scourage, which was a phenomenum completely unknown as even a possiblity within the realm of physics (and thus can not be planned for). The Pathfinders are largely irrelevant in case of a hostile aliens after first contact, because if the Initiative arrives in Andromeda to any kind of established, hostile space-faring alien species of roughly equivalent level, it's screwed anyway. If all five Arcs are destroyed by wonky changes to the understanding of physics and/or hostile species, the Initiative colonization effort has problems beyond what one more Pathfinder might reasonably resolve.


Which brings back to the point of the Nexus itself. The Nexus itself is not the colonization effort, and was never intended to be. The Nexus was intended to be the capital-heavy colonization facilitator of pre-fabs, equipment, and politics. The population it a backup for if the Arcs don't make it, a sort of continency to avoid extinction by Arc loss, but it's primary purpose isn't colonization- it's to be a skeleton crew to oversee a pre-positioned stockpile and staging grounds. Which is a pretty common logistics technique for any given effort- you don't send equipment and people evenly mixed in all respects, because it's easier and more effective to organize equipment otherwise.

Each Arc had things to start with in case the Nexus didn't make it. Tehy aren't dependent on it. The Nexus is just a pre-positioned stockpile to help the colonization go faster overall, no matter who arrives... and who doesn't. That's a lot of resources which every Initiative species had to buy into, and the leadership overseeing the allocation of those resources needs to be trusted to be as politically neutral as possible for the races involved. That's going to be undercut if the arrogant Asari/shifty salarians/imperialistic Turians/ambitious humans and their second pathfinder gets extra influence in allocating the lion's share of resources from the Milky Way.

That's a political compromise. It's also really good planning, because without that sort of political compromising and public trust the Initiative not only falls apart- it never starts in the first place. Human/turian/salarian backers in the Milky Way aren't paying for their descendants to be privileged vassals to Asari Andromeda. It makes sense to make a compromise for political stability and existential viability... especially when the compromise doesn't compromise all that much if the Arcs don't make it for mundane technical issues.

If the Nexus arrives and finds contact with local aliens, the political leadership of the Initiative is on-hand to open negotiations.
-If the aliens aren't willing to negotiate and go to war, a Pathfinder is pretty much irrelevant. The Initiative doesn't have the means to carry and conduct war.

If the Nexus arrives and the Arcs don't, the Nexus has breeding populations and the means to start basic colonization efforts on its own.
-Said colonization efforts only require Pathfinder assistance on exceptionally difficult terrain... which the Nexus wouldn't have been stuck working with had it not been for the Scourge damaging both equipment and worlds.


The issue of the Nexus isn't the lack of a Pathfinder being brought along in case the Arcs don't make it- there's real and valid reasons not to, and it wouldn't have mattered in most plannable situations anyway. It's the things by which their nature can't be planned for- like the Scourge, which broke Milky Way understanding of physics- and lambasting the planners for not having a Pathfinder handy to deal with that is about as compelling as lambasting them for not having ginger stockpiles to pacify space-Cthulu in the next sector.

Did they ever explain why the Hyperion arrived a year after the nexus? I mean they all left at the same time right?

I assume it's something to do with the data pad you can read when you first wake up which refers to course corrections? Went slightly off course and the correction took the extra time?

Which part? Drive charge is known to be a soluble problem. Intergalactic hydrogen for fuel is known to exist (although there is some debate about the density IIRC.)

As for why the drives aren't in common use, well, first, they're new. Second, we don't have any figures on cost and size, so they could easily be impractical for normal use in the MEU. And if an experimental ODSY-drive dreadnought or two existed in the MEU, they wouldn't have had much effect on the war. They'd be great for raiding rear-area bases, but the Reapers don't have any.

I think the slides show you everything you need to know.  The mass effect relays were rebuilt quickly.  Even the Catalyst says that any tech destroyed could easily be rebuilt.  So there's no reason anyone would settle near Earth involuntarily.  Besides, an extended stay by turians and quarians would be a death sentence.

As for ODSY, apparently it was secret technology.  Sort of like how QEC only existed on the Normandy in ME2 but was everywhere in ME3.  Assume ODSY was something new that the AI developed.  Perhaps post-ME3 the other races would begin to develop it.  My vote goes to a non-Council race who can use it as leverage to get onto the Council.