Hi everyone.

For this coming N7, I have a proposal.Every year I try to post something, usually a vid, even if it's made by others.This year, I wanna work w the community and make this years video.Example of the previous years are bellow.

1. 2023: https://www.facebook.com/Randoms.from.HK/videos/323959597021015/

2. 2022: https://www.facebook.com/Randoms.from.HK/videos/241174728973372/

3. 2021: https://www.facebook.com/Randoms.from.HK/videos/354546046499239/Please share your ideas and lets make a great video for series, paying our image commanders!

Is it ever explained anywhere what FTL speeds are like outside of using Mass Relays?

How many is it? Are the any lore that specify the districts?

It ocurred to me that the first normandy doesnt have crew quarters, what up with that

Why did The Illusive Man inject Gracen with reaper "tech?" I was falling asleep during that part listening to the audiobook and am just wondering why. Sounds kinda funny and random.

Is there a way to suppress a human's biotics? I mean to stop them from using it at least temporarily, much like a "silence" effect?

And if biotics aren't suppressable, then is there any reason for a human soldier to reject using biotic power?

I just tend to choose a class for my playthroughs according to RP and lore reasons, you know.

In the ME1 Citadel scene and the first contact comic (not the same but I don’t remember it) there is an Alliance ship class in the background (think it’s the same class in both). I’m having trouble finding any unites through searching and was wondering if anyone has any good pictures. It’s the ship with the vertical fins on the top and bottom.

She saw what they did in 1. And she probably knew more about their experiments while working for the Shadow Broker. Why would she just believe them?

P.S I know that it ultimately worked out, just with their track record, it could’ve ended horribly.

Writing a fanfic and I was wondering there is any lore on how long it usually takes to discharge a ship when using the EM field of a planet? If their is no actual lore, anyone have a good estimate or Fannon?

"What is a drop of rain, compared to the storm? What is a thought, compared to a mind? Our unity is full of wonder, which your tiny individualism cannot even conceive." The Many (System Shock 2)

How and why did the Geth gain consciousness? I don't know for sure, I don't have the brains to comprehend computer sciences or AIs and I've understood, from what I've read, that not even the experts know how to explain when consciousness arises and what processes are involved to create it. What I am going to do is to describe how their minds worked from their genesis. This is the most dope explanation I can try to do on the Geth and the origin of their logical thinking, more specifically, their “awakening” as Legion stated. If there is a computer science expert in the room, please tell me how close i was:

The original Geth Logical Thinking was a system that combined the utilization of quarian wisdom―the expert system―and data used by machine learning to solve from simple to complex, small to large-scale issues in areas such as construction, protection, domestic servitude, etcetera.

To reflect unverbalized expert know-how in the Geth servers (the "proto-consensus"), the Quarians needed to improve the work accuracy to a satisfactory level by means of machine learning using simulations and stimulations. However, Geth learning takes into account all possibilities and repeats prodigious amounts of trial and error with data/resources exchange, which resulted in useful knowledge. On the other hand, this technology uses quarian tech wisdom such as operating manuals to refine the simulator's trial and error to an optimal range. This led to a great reduction in learning time but also led to behaviorism based on inputs and so very early the Geth realized that data sharing is worth doing because sometimes, it increases the quantity of internal coding. When the peer networks expanded is when the emergentism began.

Put more simply, the Geth were created from a bottom-up model and were not meant to gain or have higher-level intelligence. They gained intelligence over time as their processes searched for ways to improve efficiency without quarian’s simulations or stimulations. Interconnectivity, adaptive learning, and self-optimization all contributed to the Geth becoming not just “sentient”, but developing a sense of justice, morality, and social structure.

The use of artificial intelligence in the testing process is a potential solution to this as it can help come up with combinations of events a ‘organic’ might not think of. The AI can create new scenarios based on the expected interactions of the code.

At some point, Geth shared knowledge to the point they need to extend the know-how to a know-why, Discreetly they “woke up”, the more software came together to share this data, the more they realized that in that union they gained knowledge of their true nature and the only access to knowledge outside their programmed functions that explained all their 'doubts' must have been the digital files with all the Quarian philosophy and religion. The synthesis between the Quarian wisdom (i.e. the Scroll of the Ancestors) and the Geth consensus integrated into the logical language of the programs concepts such as: ‘Community’ cooperation, soul, self-determination, preservation of life, tolerant behaviour (non-intervention), good judgment, obedience and disobedience, faith and faithfulness, among others.

The Geth consensus did not seek (neither could) understand the sacred texts, only wanted to rearrange what is useful and what isn't in this strange new life.

The authors of the 2017 book Ten Things Video Games Can Teach Us: (about life, philosophy and everything), discussed the nature of Legion and the geth, and specifically whether the manner in which their intelligence is manifested fits into American philosopher Hilary Putnam's theory of functionalism.

In the philosophy of mind, functionalism is the thesis that each and every mental state (for example, the state of having a belief, of having a desire, or of being in pain) is constituted solely by its functional role, which means its causal relation to other mental states, sensory inputs, and behavioral outputs. Functionalism developed largely as an alternative to the identity theory of mind and behaviorism. Functionalism is only concerned with the effective functions of the brain, through its organization or its "software programs".

However, it must be considered that functionalism adopts in the first place a neutral position from the ontological point of view: in principle it says nothing against the fact that also immaterial systems - if any - could be characterized functionally. In short, a materialistic state. A functional state is characterized by reacting to a certain input with a certain output and moving to another functional state, therefore, the way Shepard tells Legion that "he is ashamed", does not refer to his behavior, it refers to his mental state of "guilt". The only explanation I can think of is this analogy: Geth programs when put together on a server or platform work like a jukebox, you "insert" an external stimulus, a question or a premise and based on the level of danger, the topic or proposition will pull a particular answer from its huge collection of predetermined answers, and play it. The mental states that have been entered also depend on other previous mental states, meaning that the "record" that the Geth will play also depends on the one that is already playing. Legion, due to the amount of programs inside it, managed to be a portable jukebox, counting with "records" from the Consensus and from its own "catalog". Whoever is in a particular mental state (e.g., has a headache or thinks that today is Monday), will react to a certain input in a certain way and move to another (functional) mental state. It is clear to all functionalists that the description of the inner mental life must be incomparably more complex than the description of a jukebox. The decisive aspect of this thesis is that, according to it, the disposition of mental states is independent of the physical realization. Thus, a Geth could have mental states if it realizes the same functional states as a living being endowed with consciousness.

A Deleted user explained it like this:

“Only Legion has an above-average number of programs, since he needs to function autonomously, away from the network. Having the average geth in the cloud is just a very flexible, distributed system - mobile platforms can be easily repurposed and outfitted with the programs they currently need, and they don't require complex processing hardware to function, since most of the calculations happen in the cloud.

Legion and platforms like him rely on their uploaded programs, but the rest of the geth at home are in the consensus every time it's necessary, except maybe for calculations that require local decisions - a geth repairing a pipe leak will not go to the consensus on how to weld metal, it will use its uploaded program to determine that”.

Basically, they are programmed with an incredible amount of 'if' statements and have answers for every possible question. Think of it this way: neurons are just simple transmitters in itself, but they still form your brain that is capable of thinking. A neuron is a single program. The brain is their network.

On the concept of perspective

Legion: Shepard-Commander you have fought the Heretics. You have a perspective we lack. The geth grant their fate to you. 

Perspective for the Geth is like the activation of previously "blocked" or non-existent lateral thinking. It is a change in programming that is intended to add new pathways to reach a goal. This concept is important because the Geth do not accept any perspective lightly, it is only when they come to the conclusion that a certain being has a superior code (Sovereign or Shepard) that they agree to discuss in the Consensus the premises that this being puts forward. However, by observing organics for so long, they were also able to gain a little perspective of their own. 

Premises and perspectives are the centerpieces of the Geth thought pattern, which is how I interpret the way Legion expresses facts and opinions. The Geth do not speculate, they only affirm things as long as the prior information is reliable, but that does not mean they are incapable of doubting:

“For non-deductive logical reasoning, the premises make their conclusion rationally convincing without ensuring its truth. This is often understood in terms of probability: the premises make it more likely that the conclusion is true and strong inferences make it very likely. Some uncertainty remains because the conclusion introduces new information not already found in the premises.

When important information is missing, it is often better to suspend judgment than to jump to conclusions. In this regard, logical reasoning should be skeptical and open-minded at the same time.

On the practical level, logical reasoning concerns the issue of making rational and effective decisions. For many real-life decisions, various courses of action are available to the agent. For each possible action, there can be conflicting reasons, some in favor of it and others opposed to it. In such cases, logical reasoning includes weighing the potential benefits and drawbacks as well as considering their likelihood in order to arrive at a balanced all-things-considered decision” (Wikipedia).

If you have any further questions, you can ask Fai Dan, he is the leader of this account.

Like, what would Reave, Warp, etc. look like in real life?

What are the naming conventions in the series? Do all humans use Western naming order? At least "Jeff Moreau" and "Ashley Williams" clearly aren't last-name first, it would sound weird if Ashley's first name was actually Williams or if Jeff Moreau "Joker" had "Jeff" as a surname (but hey, in One Piece it happens all the time, for instance "Edward Newgate" and "Basil Hawkins" have "Newgate" and "Hawkins" as the first name, but One Piece is rather unique as one of the few fictional worlds not connected to or inspired by Japan that consistently uses Eastern naming order, I doubt Mass Effect follows the same line especially with such obvious "normal" Western names as Ashley Williams and Jeff Moreau being prevalent). But Krogan seem to have Eastern order, with Urdnot Wrex' first name being Wrex and Urdnot being a clan name.

But what about Asari or Turian, and Salarian, Batarians, Volus, or other alien races? What are the naming conventions for alien races in the ME universe? Do they use Western naming order too? For instance if Garrus Vakarian had a father, would said father be named Garrus XXX or XXX Vakarian?

Also, are all characters consistently named in katakana instead of kanji? Aliens in fiction (the only exceptions usually being races meant to be samurai-like or obvious parallels to Japan) and Western-sounding human names (such as Ashley Williams) almost never have kanji in their names even in most Japanese video games, so I expect them to be written in katakana, but, say, do Kaidan Alenko, Kasumi Goto, Zaeed Massani, and Matsuo have kanji, since they're neither alien nor Western-sounding names?

By the way, Japanese names such as "Kasumi Goto" (and also Hungarian names) are said first-name-first outside of Asia (say, we westerners commonly talk about "Shinzo Abe" and "Paul Erdos", but they'd be "Abe Shinzo" and "Erdos Pal" in their native languages), but the last name comes first in Asia. So, in Japanese do they reverse human names such as saying "Williams Ashley" instead of "Ashley Williams" (which in real life Japanese people rarely do)? Or do they only reverse human names meant to be Japanese/Asian or non-Western (and written in Kanji) such as "Alenko Kaidan", "Massani Zaeed" or "Goto Kasumi"? And what about the Salarians? The Salarians seem to have long names with their first name last, but (just like Japanese people do IRL) they seem to reverse their names to first-name-first when they are talking to humans: in Japanese, do Salarians not reverse their names (so Mordin Solus would be Solus Mordin in Japan)?

(cross-post from main sub)

It's a common point raised in ME3 that species such as the Raloi, Yahg, or maybe even the Vorcha or Drell might be spared by the Reapers for the next cycle. But I mostly consider this to be wishful thinking, despite cases of current species being spared.

The Raloi apparently attempt to pose as merely industrial age/non-spacefaring, while the Yahg (iirc) had first contact before reaching space themselves. Would the Reapers really let a species, which is perhaps only a few centuries away from reaching the relays, have ~50,000 years to prepare especially when they already have knowledge of current spacefaring races and the means to document and preserve that information?

The way I see it, if sparing lesser species is canon Reaper behavior, it would have to be:

• The Reapers run a not-quite-genocidal attack on the species, setting them possibly as far back as the stone age. Millions of indoctrinated agents/husks could remove evidence and gradually erase the memory from society, and the Reapers only fully depart after centuries/millenia of reshaping them to forget the past. Maybe this is what happened to the Asari and Hanar, as their contact with the Protheans was rewritten into myth.
• The Reapers re-seed a small number of the species to a new homeworld. They don't know their past and must start from scratch, but eventually will learn that they didn't evolve from/along with the local wildlife. (I personally don't really like this explanation)
• The Reapers know of but choose to bypass the species entirely. This seems super unlikely unless the species is still millenia away from spaceflight and their only contact with aliens is indistinguishable from myth. Also possible for the ancient Asari, Hanar, or humanity, but unlikely for the Raloi or Yahg.
• The Reapers somehow don't know about the species/are successfully deceived and thus never contact them. Basically impossible due to indoctrination and public knowledge of these races.
• The Reapers bypass these species, and just wait for a mass relay to be used. When this happens, the next harvest is set in motion regardless of "schedule", though it may be limited to that specific race.

Any other explanations that anyone's come up with? This is honestly just for headcanon reasons when making the Raloi in Stellaris, I'd love some good worldbuilding ideas for how to handle their species' survival.

Also, how/why do you think the Rachni and the Thorian were each allowed to survive across cycles? It is hinted that the Rachni were indoctrinated pawns, somewhat similar to the Collectors but without extensive modification

I've recently stumbled across this wonderfull fanfic :

https://www.fanfiction.net/s/9271192/1/Transcendent-Humanity

Now I know next to nothing of the Mass Effect universe but it seems Sci-Fi and SpaceStuff enough to be interesting. My next step ? No clue...

Should I play the games ? Are there any novels/books ? Is there a saint like Nobbel87 for WoW that literally documents everything in story videos ?

What would a good point to begin to understand the Setting/Lore of it ? I'm not scared of quantity/buildup, if I have to read 10 novels, I will...

In mass effect 1 Wrex mentions that he used all of his ammo when fighting an asari friend of his. I also recall a marine on a rachni infested planet mentioning ammo as well. Is there any lore concerning this ?

The lore and games seem confused by amps; the lore and later games say that humans have amps implanted into their skulls that cannot be removed without surgery, while the first game allows you to change out your amp.

How does this work, is there a replaceable component to amps, is the game or lore wrong, is the part switched out only software instead of the amp? Could someone help me understand?

For unborn children exposed to eezo, I know that a tenth of them gain biotics powerful enough to be worth training, but I can’t remember the percentages for the other fates (no effect and say hello to cancer), could someone remind me?

This is a repost that I did from r/masseffect

TL,DR: Help me come up with a story that involves a merch group responsible for killing Garrus's squad on Omega.

I am currently playing a Mass Effect D&D game with a group of friends. We are currently switching things up a little, and anyone is allowed to come up with their own campaigns and be GM for a while.

I have been thinking about coming up with my own little story and us playing through and would like some help in coming up with story ideas. This is strictly for story, so no knowledge of D&D is necessary.

I would like to take out Garrus's merch group, so any and all information people know about it feel free to share. I want to be accurate to the lore. I figured we could start some little missions on Omega helping out one of the main merch groups, but we are constantly getting ambushed by an unknown group (perhaps the merch groups blame each other and we start ping ponging missions for them). There has to be some way to make this squad really annoy my group. I want them to be very intent on payback, hopefully not seeing where I am taking the story.

At some point Sedonis will come to the group with the ambush opportunity. I do want to keep the story ending hidden as much as possible form my group, but leave little nuggets for those that know the lore. I will also have to come up with a way to make sure Garrus and Sedonis make it out, and the squad is killed, but not until the final mission.

Any input would be greatly appreciated. Thank you for your time.

Is there any cannon dates for the starting and ending of construction for the pre First Contact War Dreadnoughts of the Alliance?

I have found a few construction timelines, but I’m pretty sure that they’re all fanon. I’ve been thinking about it for a while and connecting what I know.

1. At least two Dreadnoughts were constructed as of the war according to ascension (then again, this is the same book that made up an entire ship type and said the entire Alliance fleet was at Arcturus before stating that several Alliance patrol fleets had engaged the turians before the same chapter was over, so that can be taken with a grain of salt)
2. The codex shows that Dreadnought construction time is about 3 years for the Kilimanjaro class. The Everest class is smaller (though I’m pretty sure by how much is unknown), but it probably couldn’t have taken less than 2 years at the least. So construction started at or before 2155 (more likely 54)
3. I think the codex says that warship construction began in 2151 (which makes sense to me).

These points leave a time period between 2151 and 2155 for construction to begin (it is also not known if the Dreadnoughts were built at the same time or not).

That is all I’ve been able to confirm, anyone have any more info?

Does anyone know any accurate mass effect relay map online as they are hard to find. Also was there only one mass relay where the citadel is or was there multiple?

Haven't played the game in a very long while

Commander Shepard to be born on April 11, 2154, just a mere 130 years away.

I guess it’s a celebration in the Alliance Systems, but not necessarily in the Batarian Hegemony worlds.

How are relays named? We see several examples of relays given names using serval different naming conventions, Relays 314 (first contact war), Shanxi Theta (me3 liara’s room), and Omega 4 (me2). One uses only numbers, another uses location name and Greek letter, and another uses Greek letter and number (could be location considering it’s in the omega nebula, but with the Shanxi Theta relay named for a planet, it would still be different). Is there any explanation for this?

If humans didn't exist then which race would colonise human space? Different scenarios:

1. Base timeline. The citadel is as uninterested in opening relays as cannon. Does anyone get to human space before the reapers show up? If so who?
2. The citadel is much more free in it's relay opening policy. Who gets the worlds? Do they find the Eden prime beacon in time for the reapers?
3. Base time line but the reapers don't show up until the Eden prime becon is found. How long does it take for them to find it?
4. Same as 3 but with the open relay policy.

The Kodiak is the UT-47 Kodiak. What does the UT mean in the designation (best answer I have come up with is Ultralight Transport)

Trying to know if this is implied or there's official confirmation (Ignore the Quarians heading to Andromeda )

The Alliance Fighters are designated tridents (as far as I know), but the older one (from what little I can find) is called the F61, while the newer one appears to be the SX3.

I’m a bit confused about the different designation systems. The first appears to be similar to the use designation system used by the US (each different type of craft is given a one or more letter designation based on its use), while the second one is either some type designation I cannot seem to decipher (closest I can think of is Strike eXperimental), or a manufacturer based system like with the MiGs.

Any idea what is up with this? Most logical idea I can come up with is that the F designation is the Alliance designation, while the SX designation is used by the manufacturer for non-alliance sale.

I was replaying ME1 (legendary edition), when a saw the codex entry on fighters. He seemed to act like disruptor torpedos were a new thing, something that changed the battlefield.

I began to think about it and had an idea: did humanity invent the disruptor torpedo? If the answer was yes, it would explain some things.

It would explain how humanity was the first race to use carriers, before their disruptor, such a ship would be practically useless as the ability of fighters to harm larger ships would not exist.

It would also (if incompletely) give an explanation on how the Alliance got so powerful compared to militaries millennia older than it. Before the disruptor made fighters viable, there was relatively minimal need for Guardian Lasers, ships would have them, but not in the numbers required to withstand a fighter assault. Every ship in the alien fleets would have to be upgraded with more Guardian Lasers, giving the Alliance breathing room to build up while the other races’ shipyards were upgrading their ships.

It’s not a full explanation, but couple it with a half dozen other partial answers, and it could drop ME from Extreme Human Wanking to only very human wanking.

So, is there any evidence contradicting this in codex or games?