Listen to Liara's final message again. She is with Shepard, they are building a "super weapon" (catalyst), and she is not optimistic they will win. I can even narrow it down to where in ME3, at the earliest, that conversation would be possible.
One of us is getting the final message from Liara wrong; I don't think it is me.
They could of left this message out, and then I wouldn't argue the point. To intentionally include a hook that ties into the original series is a choice - but need to do so in a way that makes sense / needs to be intentional as well. To argue that I should ignore the timeline of the whole first series is silly. It is the reason I started this series in the first place. When they include it AND then immediately ignore it... that does not make sense to me.
I do know the timeline of the first series.... we all do. IS, by and large, why we are playing this game. I hope they resolve it without anachronism or deux ex machina.
I am talking about shuttles. They do explain the Tempest has a drive like an ark or the Nexus, just smaller. There are easily hundreds (if not thousands) of shuttles and they are the primary way to move anything in Helius, people and cargo, for everybody. Are you saying there is no scale to the Starmap? Deux ex machina? That there is a fleet of freighters and frigates they don't mention in the game?
The two shuttle instances mentioned, one was an emergency escape and mentions no distance or time frame and the second doesn't even tell you where the shuttle went. BOTH were convieniences to allow the plot to unfold as desired.
Second is still spoiler tag, since it toward the end and I'm thinking neither of you got that far yet:
Liara clearly sends the final bit from within the ME3 time frame. First, how is that even possible? Quantum entanglement could explain how, but not why you only get the one last bit. I am also not buying "worrying about Reaper intercept giving you away" or loss of comms - since sending *any* message negates that. Again, she sets up time capsules with specifics and leaving out specifics would negate the whole purpose of communicating in the first place... unless you think she just called your dad to say "hi/goodbye".
Why do that for future unknowns but not for people you know exist?
Liara is the Shadow Broker, after all. That's how she could do it before going dark, doing her tricks with all resources she had. I remember the reporter commenting we had comms which could reach Earth, that got her interest. Apparently, the Normandy had its own perks.
Another thing that could explain is that the Arks or the benefactor himself, could have made the arks unplottable, for security purposes, given they would all be sleeping. Being impossible to track and deliver updates on information. That decision might have been his own in the end, not an Iniative protocol. But again, just speculation. I'm choosing not to hate everything about the background story just now.
If you remember back then, most of characters, NPCs, and whatever else we encountered had no hope at all. It got very bad, until it improved a bit. Even if we had the best gameplay and Asset ponctuation, and Galactic Readiness, the odds would always be near 50%-50%, without counting those many worlds lost, including Tessia, which was thought to be so protected.
The benefactor might have interceptedthis message, and made the initiative go dark, untraceable. Given we don't know who the benefactor is, which could be even an AI, one could create a plethora of means to explain why no one knows the fate of MW. Besides the fact that they don't mention much comms systems with QE, only getting the feeling that SAM uses it. So, I'm not sure how easy or common would it be to have a comms system that equals those used by the Normandy or the Tempest.
I am talking about shuttles. They do explain the Tempest has a drive like an ark or the Nexus, just smaller. There are easily hundreds (if not thousands) of shuttles and they are the primary way to move anything in Helius, people and cargo, for everybody. Are you saying there is no scale to the Starmap? Deux ex machina? That there is a fleet of freighters and frigates they don't mention in the game?
The two shuttle instances mentioned, one was an emergency escape and mentions no distance or time frame and the second doesn't even tell you where the shuttle went. BOTH were convieniences to allow the plot to unfold as desired.
Second is still spoiler tag, since it toward the end and I'm thinking neither of you got that far yet:
Liara clearly sends the final bit from within the ME3 time frame. First, how is that even possible? Quantum entanglement could explain how, but not why you only get the one last bit. I am also not buying "worrying about Reaper intercept giving you away" or loss of comms - since sending *any* message negates that. Again, she sets up time capsules with specifics and leaving out specifics would negate the whole purpose of communicating in the first place... unless you think she just called your dad to say "hi/goodbye".
Why do that for future unknowns but not for people you know exist?
Liara is the Shadow Broker, after all. That's how she could do it before going dark, doing her tricks with all resources she had. I remember the reporter commenting we had comms which could reach Earth, that got her interest. Apparently, the Normandy had its own perks.
Another thing that could explain is that the Arks or the benefactor himself, could have made the arks unplottable, for security purposes, given they would all be sleeping. Being impossible to track and deliver updates on information. That decision might have been his own in the end, not an Iniative protocol. But again, just speculation. I'm choosing not to hate everything about the background story just now.
The Normandy had the quantum entanglement thing which was a point to point com with earth. They could only use it to communicate with a specific location on earth and vise versa. They are also expensive to make which is why there wasn't more of them.
Because of TIM the SR2 already had one installed for communication with him, earth built one after Shep was placed in custody before the reapers attacked.
SAM uses this technology also to communicate so it is possible Liara could have sent the message to them via SAM.
It would have taken time to reach its destination more than likely, but faster than the arcs speed is my theory. Plus they were only about a year or two out by the time the crucible was started.
[Edit] My biggest question is how delayed was the Quarrian Arc. If post war, anyone could be on board ... they could also have knowledge of the wars end. Just interesting.. and maybe even a little too hopeful :D
The "last message" from Liara (2186) is only 1 year OR LESS after Andromeda Initiative took off (2185). It is absolutely possible that Liara used a courier or some FTL vessel to reach to Hyperion and send the message to Alec. Initiative people were already in stasis, but receiving a message does not require an operator. Or SAM could have processed it. Or heck, I still believe that there should be some technicians left on Arks all the time to supervise the voyage, probably rotating with other sleeping technicians from time to time.
The "last message" from Liara (2186) is only 1 year OR LESS after Andromeda Initiative took off (2185). It is absolutely possible that Liara used a courier or some FTL vessel to reach to Hyperion and send the message to Alec. Initiative people were already in stasis, but receiving a message does not require an operator. Or SAM could have processed it. Or heck, I still believe that there should be some technicians left on Arks all the time to supervise the voyage, probably rotating with other sleeping technicians from time to time.
No matter what, I/we are searching for a plausible explanation instead of being given one. I'm sure they wrote an interesting story. I am also sure they want to pull you in and get you invested. I am also sure they have left many, many hooks in the water with unresolved and unadressed plotlines. Every bit spoiler:
Window of up to just short of two years, but that's not a lot of wiggle room. No way everyone's in stasis until they fire the engine (just as there's no way everyone is still in stasis when you emerge in Andromeda). Not saying it is impossible to get a message out to an ark. AM saying the game throws the line in there, "BTW, the milky way was probably destroyed" and then completely ignores it. They now have yet to explain how it got there in the first place, why it is incomplete, and why you couldn't care less/want to keep it secret in addition to them deciding what actually happened in the Milky Way. The last bit is a raw rub, since the selling point of ME is you are supposed to be able to make your own decisions that make sense to you in the game and effect outcomes.
Nothing short of QE is going to catch up to you once the engine is fired. However, QE will always catch you. If that is the means of communication it should be current with the post stasis calendar date you emerge on. If it is not current you have to hypothesize that either: Liara is dead, Liara is willing to prank you by calling to say your race is dead and hanging up, somehow you can intercept QE messages, or if non QE, that someone on the Hyperion is both competent enough to partially erase messages but not competent enough to erase all of them.
Add: QE is almost automatically eliminated, now that I think about it, since you have to believe both Liara wouldn't follow up on her message and that nobody else would either.... or think of following up for six hundred years if anyone in the Milky Way survived. I am already being asked to believe something that doesn't make sense no matter how I look at it with QE as a functional means of communication regardless of how you get the message in the first place. The only window I can even begin to see them climibing out of with it is to make Dad an even bigger villiian with the "secrets from you" angle.
.... come to think of it, what do you think is the unexplained reason we cannot communicate SAM to SAM with QE? We don't have each other's email address in the new galaxy?
It has to be a reason why SAM can use it for us but not peer to peer.... yet suddenly works peer to peer when we find them.
QEC requires two (and exactly two) synchronized devices. It is how it works. It is not a phone where You can dial a number and connect to a number of terminals. You can communicate A to B, and B to A - that's it.
In the result it is absolutely possible that Liara sent a message to Hyperion with QEC but then *her* terminal was destroyed (well, those Reapers were destroying a lot of things, right?). It would mean there is absolutely no way for her to employ QEC to communicate with Initiative-embedded QEC terminal again.
In a similar way, it would actually require SAM to have implemented several QEC terminals to be able to communicate with several other QEC terminals. And since QEC is described as super-expensive state of art technology, it is actually surprising that there are so many QEC terminals in Andromeda already...
The problem with the whole QEC theory is that QEC works in pairs, and that's it. They don't work with other pairs; as EDI says, it's "strictly point-to-point." That is, if you wanted to have a group chat with all participants in QEC, you'd either need a hub-spoke network where the hub has half of all the pairs (which was probably how TIM did it), a round robin network (which is dumb) where each participant has exactly two halves of two pairs, or a mesh network where there's a pair for each participant to each other participant, which is the most expensive but also the most resilient.
While it's conceivable that Liara and Alec could've communicated via QEC, that would rely on Liara and Alec having their own QEC pair with eachother, which would be something of a dead giveaway to Alec that Liara is a lot more than she seems if she could afford that kind of expense, especially for archaeological correspondence.
What we're left with, however, is the other problem with the QEC theory: a plot hole, if the communication wasn't done via QEC: the extranet relies on lasers combined with FTL comm buoys (which the codex describes as "little more than a cluster of primitive, miniature mass relays"), so Liara could've gotten a transmission off to the Hyperion the normal way prior to it leaving the Milky Way via FTL. Once the Hyperion jumps to FTL, communications in this manner would be rendered impossible - sure, she could've fired off a message, but it would never be received, because the ship would be traveling faster than the light of the laser.
If this was the means of communication, then the Hyperion would have to have left while the Reapers were invading.
EDIT: The other plot hole, and something that bugged me a long time ago, regarding QEC: why not have separate QEC pairs in the aforementioned hub-spoke configuration between the SAMs of the Arks, and the Nexus? So that if the Arks don't show up where they're supposed to, which is entirely foreseeable, they can still communicate with the Nexus as well as eachother.
It's like, most of the plot of the game could've been avoided entirely if the whole of the Andromeda Initiative wasn't handed an idiot ball coated with superglue.
Actually Liara could have sent a courier. While Hyperion already traveled in FTL in 2186, ODSY drive is not necessarily the fastest one - it is simply supposed to be able to self-propel for 600 years. So a courier *could* have travel in FTL much quicker, and easily reach Hyperion as long as it was not too far on its way.
Actually Liara could have sent a courier. While Hyperion already traveled in FTL in 2186, ODSY drive is not necessarily the fastest one - it is simply supposed to be able to self-propel for 600 years. So a courier *could* have travel in FTL much quicker, and easily reach Hyperion as long as it was not too far on its way.
Given we're talking about a distance of roughly 2.5 million light years between the Milky Way and Andromeda (or more specifically, Earth and Andromeda), 600 years total travel time, 4167x the speed of light, so presumably 4167 light years per year, or roughly 11.4 light years per day. It's not much slower than the Tempest, rated at 13 light years per day, with 15 light years per day being the rough maximum for any Citadel race (as the Reapers are rated at twice that).
If we're presuming that the Shadow Broker can send a courier 15 light years per day out into an area with no gas giants to discharge into, and we assume the Hyperion has been running at its regular FTL speeds for a solid year, it would take 265 days for a courier to do a straight FTL burn to catch up to the Hyperion.
((4167 x 365) / 5745)
I'm reasonably sure no standard FTL ship in any Citadel race's arsenal can handle close to nine months at a solid FTL burn without discharging.
Obviously this is fudged quite a bit because 2.5 million light years is the distance between Earth and the Andromeda Galaxy, but I'm also dropping a lot of decimal points in these approximations, so it probably doesn't make much of a huge difference.
