Mass Effect

[Tobias]

Kind of funny that the fourth and fifth biggest human colonies are Mars and the Moon. It's like colonizing the garden shed.

actually that makes sense. Terraforming (or alternatively getting a self sustaining structure launched) takes time to do. Presumably mars and the moon were the earliest targeted by such methods and thus the first to get completed. As a result their colonies have had more time to get settled in and expand.

[Mcjon01]

It's still a little weird given that from what they show us at least, Mars (and the moon, too, presumably) are still just as completely inhospitable to life as they are today, while the Mass Relays give easy access to an entire network of habitable worlds ripe for colonization. And it's not like they're major construction projects, either, just plunk down a bunch of prefab units with standard issue waist-high walls and you're good to go.

[Tobias]

Yeah I thought about the moon to which is why I covered my bases with the self contained structure thing.

my take is that they probably started moving off earth as soon as they could get their feet off the ground which was before tech was as good as we saw it, hence mars and the moon being simpler to get colonies going by sheer virtue of being just a jump away.

of course I am just guessing, I'm to lazy to look up the travelor's guide to mass effect, but I am probably right.

[asterism42]

IIRC they'd already begun to colonize Mars (and presumably the Moon also, seeing as it's nearer), since that's where the Prothean Archives are.

[Five_X]

Isn't that the same for every species though? The homeworlds are waay more populated than the colonies. Like, even the asari worlds, which presumably have been inhabited the longest.

- - - Updated - - -

OK, from the stats I trawled from the wiki, the most populous asari colony has a pop of 2.2 billion compared to Thessia's 5 billion. And that's after (presumably) thousands of years.

I don't know about every species, but humans are the ones mainly in question here.

The colony in question (Lusia) does have a population of 2.2 billion, but not "thousands of years" in this case: 1600, and from looking at other colonies, we can see that they didn't all grow at the same rate. This one settled in 2044 has a population of 188 million despite being mostly uninhabitable, whereas this one has a population of 260 million despite being nice and green and founded in 322. Illium has a population of 84 million even though it's 500 years old.

We can infer that, relatively speaking, asari don't have many children despite living to be 1000. They typically don't start until they're 300-odd years old, and from what we've seen have a tendency towards monogamy. Taking this into account, it's likely that most asari moved from Thessia and spread out into the galaxy, with Thessia likely having had a much larger population in the past, possibly near Earth's. In that case, you just have to consider the population ratio: Thessia's 5 billion, compared to a fairly recent (by asari standards) colony with 188 million. Earth's largest colonies have at most 5 million, while Earth herself has nearly 12 billion and is still struggling with issues of poverty and overcrowding despite technological advancements. Humanity started colonizing in 2069 with the moon and 2103 on Mars, but only became part of the larger galactic community in 2157, almost 30 years before ME3.

To give a historical comparison - not completely relevant, but as close as we'll really get - we can look at immigration figures for the USA:

The peak year for admission of new immigrants was 1907, when approximately 1.3 million people entered the country legally.

According to the same link, approximately 20 million recorded immigrants came to the United States over a 40-year period from 1880 to 1920. That's already close to how many people are living on Earth's colonies in the 2180s, but Eden Prime, a world described in nothing but glowing terms, has only about 4 million inhabitants more than 30 years after having been established. To return to Leo's point, we've very specifically seen mentions of countries from Earth having had political tussles with each other over resources, mining rights, so on - but little else despite these countries being way more populous than Earth's colonies. Considering that we know that the colonies and extraterrestrial holdings are by far the biggest source of Earth's wealth, and the colonies themselves simply aren't large enough to have any considerable political power, Earth nations are kind of underrepresented. Those that still exist in 21XX, that is. Not even one human colony has a higher population than modern day Switzerland.

But that's not important now, we're in a different galaxy, and we brought Natalie Dormer along.

[Ace]

did they spend their entire face budget on celebrity voices

[Seika]

Earth was an overcrowded shithole (at least in the poorer countries), but space tech and colonial wealth were changing that well beyond the simple export of a few hundred million people. Environmental mismanagement was being repaired, gen-eng was massively improving quality of life, and mass-effect fields' use in architecture meant cities could give the same number of people twice as much living space.

Remember, ME was conceived in the vein of optimistic, romantic sci-fi serials. You're always the hero, no matter if that's Dirty Harry or Galahad. Even as other things faded and changed, the background details of the setting tended to keep reflecting that (pre-)ME1 vision.

[Five_X]

You'd think that the same romance would be reflected in more people venturing out into space and onto other planets.

[SeiKeo]

did they spend their entire face budget on celebrity voices

Remember when they made a huge deal out of Yvonne Strahovski and then screwed up her ​face?

[mewarmo990]

Earth was an overcrowded shithole (at least in the poorer countries), but space tech and colonial wealth were changing that well beyond the simple export of a few hundred million people. Environmental mismanagement was being repaired, gen-eng was massively improving quality of life, and mass-effect fields' use in architecture meant cities could give the same number of people twice as much living space.

Remember, ME was conceived in the vein of optimistic, romantic sci-fi serials. You're always the hero, no matter if that's Dirty Harry or Galahad. Even as other things faded and changed, the background details of the setting tended to keep reflecting that (pre-)ME1 vision.

right, I remember the ME1 voiced codex saying something about how crappy near-future Earth transitioned into a golden age with the discovery of alien tech.

And I assume the status quo in the games is not too far removed from that. In any case, it's barely a concern to the player Shepard. If you picked Earthborn as your origin, then you grew up in the slums of (IIRC) Chicago before joining the military.

I'm replaying ME2 and ME3 now and some of the random news bits and planet entries do mention nations on Earth playing various roles in the sci-fi history. Like Russia being dominant in certain sectors of space exploration, for example. There is still national representation in the Systems Alliance, politicians get assassinated, etc.

[2Bad]

The press got to see the game
http://www.giantbomb.com/videos/unfi...17/2300-11888/

[Mattias]

Unfinished as in the build is still not finalized, or unfinished in the No Man's Sky way?

[2Bad]

The former is what they use the designation for, though in this case they're just talking about the press demo and showing the b-roll EA have to the press.

[SeiKeo]

People of the Milky Way, meet your savior, live on galactic cable: the goddamn Terminator

[2Bad]

I like how there seems to be only one new race party member.

[asterism42]

Well I mean

A lot of people like the turians and the asari and the quarians and whatnot. Gotta rake in the waifu money.

[eddyak]

I'd like to have seen more of a variety in alien types, myself. When it turned out that most of the species in ME were basically bipedal vertebrates with the same general layout (limbs, senses and whatnot) I was kinda disappointed. The Hanar were a nice surprise, but honestly, I wouldn't count on seeing much other than Asara, Krogan, Salarian, Quarians and such, just because they're easier to keep in line with the rest of the story. Just imagine having a crew member whose alien biology meant they'd take several minutes to run to the ship in an emergency, or an alien type who does most of their communicating through pheromones and sign language.

And now I'm imagining that one bit where basically everybody Renegade punched that reporter, only she's been replaced by an Elcor.

"Concerned. Shepard. Is your hand uninjured."
"Fuck off, Khalisah."
"Snide. Perhaps you should have your hand checked out."
"Don't make me shoot you."

[Mcjon01]

Hanar romance or bust

[asterism42]

Elcor are the best. I especially like the one who hacked his translator to give false emotions.

[Sesto]

The squadmates seem lackluster, to be honest.

I really wish two of the slots weren't wasted by humans. Who the hell plays Mass Effect for the humans