Definitely a spoiler....advice?
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@VladVonCastein wrote:
Since there's talks about Krogan, here are some facts of krogan reproduction based on the previous ME series:
Without the genophage(or after the genophage cure): EDI mentioned in ME3, a krogan female of breeding age can produce up to 1000 fertilized eggs a year.
With a full-blown Genophage(not cured and no modifications): Mordin mentioned that the Genophage keeps checks population growth at 1 to 1000. Which basically means mathematically a female Krogan even without curing the genophage could have 1 child per year. Say if the chances improve due to the 600 year voyage, that number should go up...
Out of a 1000 year lifespan lets say 50% of it is spent as a sexually active adult, that's 500 kids per Krogan female during their lifetime. In a couple of century Krogans will outnumber not just the milky way species but eventually the angarians as well!
Eh... It makes no sense.
So basing ON THE VERY SAME assumptions You are using, human female lives 100 years, and is able to deliver about 1 child per 9 months. Out of 100 year lifespan lest say 50% of it is spent as sexually active adult, that's 67 kids during lifetime (starting to see some "issues" with Your assumptions?). On occasions there are twins, so number should be even higher... ;-D
Now, get real. Even if we assume 500 years of sexual activity for Krogans, as per EDI each female usually breeds only 1 girl in her lifetime (chances of Krogan female to give birth to 2 girls is like 1 to 2000). So it would mean that in 1000 years 1 Krogan female gives birth to 499 boys and to 1 girl. Now, let's assume that we have Krogan female A, and that she gives birth to a girl when 500 year old. The girl - or Krogan female B - will give birth to another 249 boys and 1 girl in remaining 500 years, which completes 1000 year cycle. So to summarize: from a single Krogan female we have 499+249 boys (or 748) and 2 girls in 1000 years. Please note that Krogans are warmongers, they live dangerous lives, and it is hardly probable that more than half of 748 boys survive until adulthood.
If birth rate is improved to, say, 10 per 1000, it would result in 4'990 boys and 10 girls per female. Assuming that girls are born when mother is 500, it would give those girls another 500 years to breed per 1000 year cycle. So in 1000 years we would have additional 10 * 4'990 / 2 boys and 10 * 10 girls. Which means 29'940 boys and 110 girls in total. Sounds reasonable.
If birth rate is improved to 100 per 1000 (which means it is *almost* completely cured - which is probably not the case), it would result in 49'990 boys and 100 girls per female. Assuming that girls are born when mother is 500, it would give those girls another 500 years to breed per 1000 year cycle. So in 1000 years we would have additional 100 * 49'990 / 2 boys and 100 * 100 girls. Which means 2'544'900 boys and 10'100 girls in total. That's a lot.
It gets much more interesting if Genophage is cured *completely* (which is obviously *not* the case). 1 female would give birth to something like 499'000 boys and 1'000 girls in a lifetime. Assuming those girls are born when mother is 500 years old, we will have 249'999'000 boys and 1'001'000 girls in 1000 years. Which makes more than 250 millions of Krogans from a single female. With Krogan tendencies their infighting would probably grow more intense in such a case, and thus death rate would grow as well - but it would be overwhelming, nevertheless.
Now, look at human beings. It's reasonable to assume that 1-5 kids are bred per female's lifespan. Andromeda is dangerous, so let's assume 3 kids per lifetime - which is still a lot. Those kids are usually bred between mother's age of 25-50. For easier calculations, let's assume that those are 3 kids at mother's age of 33. So, 1 female brings us 3 kids in 33 years. Let's assume that half of them are girls (which is 1 or 2 really), so in another 33 years we have another 4.5 kids (which is 3 or 6 really). Half of them are girls, so we have 6.75 more kids in next 33 years, and half of them are girls again. Etc. So to just sum it up: there should be like 1.5^(1000/33) - or 216'280 - fertile female descendants from a single woman in 1000 years. Assuming that people live up to 100 years the total number of all the living descendants of our original female would be like 404'808 males and 404'808 females at that time. Even taking into account 50% death ratio, it would mean more than 400'000 living descendants of 1 human female - which beats Krogans for sure *unless* Genophage is cured or almost cured.
BUT, let us add breeding programs, which e.g. encourage young woman to have children at 25, and to have circa 4 children as early as possible. We can also supplement our numbers with clones, in vitro, and other breeding technologies. In the result we will *easily* reach 2^(1000/25) - or a whooping number of 1.1E+12 (which is more than 1 billion for countries using long scale like most countries / more than 1 trillion for countries using short scale like US and UK ) fertile females in 1000 years. At that time total number of all living descendants OF A SINGLE WOMAN should be something like 2.1E+12 (or more than 2 billions / trillions) assuming 50% death rate and limit of 100 years of life. It *easily* beats Krogans, even with Genephage cured *completely*... ;-D
@Kondaru wrote:
Eh... It makes no sense.
So basing ON THE VERY SAME assumptions You are using, human female lives 100 years, and is able to deliver about 1 child per 9 months. Out of 100 year lifespan lest say 50% of it is spent as sexually active adult, that's 67 kids during lifetime (starting to see some "issues" with Your assumptions?). On occasions there are twins, so number should be even higher... ;-D
I am sorry but you make absolutely no sense. You are comparing a Krogan to a human being, Krogan have 2 hearts, organ redundancies, they produce clutches of 1000 eggs per year. They live for a 1000 years. Do you see humans doing that? Go replay ME3 and see what Wrex has to say. When they cure the genophage he's negotiating with the council for 10 planets as that's fast they can "POP" them out. BTW you are 2 short of the current world record of humans born to the same mother.
http://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/world-records/most-prolific-mother-ever
Anyway it's pointless to argue about this, if you want to use words like I make no sense when we are all talking about MASS EFFECT, krogan, asari who makes no sense in today's context, then I wont bother to engage you further.
@VladVonCastein wrote:
@Kondaru wrote:
Eh... It makes no sense.
So basing ON THE VERY SAME assumptions You are using, human female lives 100 years, and is able to deliver about 1 child per 9 months. Out of 100 year lifespan lest say 50% of it is spent as sexually active adult, that's 67 kids during lifetime (starting to see some "issues" with Your assumptions?). On occasions there are twins, so number should be even higher... ;-D
I am sorry but you make absolutely no sense. You are comparing a Krogan to a human being, Krogan have 2 hearts, organ redundancies, they produce clutches of 1000 eggs per year. They live for a 1000 years. Do you see humans doing that? Go replay ME3 and see what Wrex has to say. When they cure the genophage he's negotiating with the council for 10 planets as that's fast they can "POP" them out. BTW you are 2 short of the current world record of humans born to the same mother.
http://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/world-records/most-prolific-mother-ever
Anyway it's pointless to argue about this, if you want to use words like I make no sense when we are all talking about MASS EFFECT, krogan, asari who makes no sense in today's context, then I wont bother to engage you further.
Ugh... Have You actually read my post? You gave some *numbers* to suggest that "in a couple of century Krogans will outnumber not just the milky way species but eventually the angarians as well!", and I *proved* that using some very basic math (similar to one that You have used) this is not necessarily true. I was not trying to be offensive (please note that I opened my previous post with "IT makes no sense" rather than with "YOU make no sense"), and I really cannot see any reason for You to take my previous post personal.
How does it matter that Krogan has two hearts or four testicles? Reproduction cycle is hardly impacted (*even* with four testicles) with number of visceral organs. The fact that there are 1000 eggs per clutch also means simply that there are reproductive *surges* than anything else. Do we know at what age Krogan females can actually clutch eggs and for how long? We do not. Do You believe that 1 year old Krogan female can clutch eggs? Or that 1000 year old Krogan female can clutch eggs? I doubt it to be possible, but without the knowledge we really can only guess. What we DO know is that there is about 1 Krogan girl born per 1000 Krogan boys. Which means that Krogans are still limited *as far as reproduction is concerned* to number of fertile females.
I do find Wrex to be over-optimistic. There are obviously some additional factors that were not take into account with both Your and my calculations, but I have always perceived those "10 planets" as more of a political gambit than actual need. Sure, having Krogan female clans in Milky Way that are oriented mainly on breeding helps a lot. Humans in Milky Way (even while being perceived as quickly overrunning the whole galaxy due to their fast reproduction) are not truly procreation-oriented, so yes: if Krogans still *focus* on reproduction, and humans do not then Krogans can probably gain some ground. As far as I can tell female Krogans in Andromeda are aiming for emancipation, however (like Kesh, right?), so it seems to be a different case.
Some other factors that impact both human and Krogans are: available living space, available food, death rate (so yes, Krogan can easily live *up to* 1000 years, but absolute majority of them die young due to wounds, infighting, military casualties, etc), diseases that tend to easily spread in overpopulated locations...
What I tried to show is asymmetry between Krogan procreation being female oriented and human procreation requiring heterosexual pairs.
Humans grow up to adulthood quickly and thus can *multiply* quickly. Demography is one of the biggest issues for our current governments, with a number of people being afraid od "demographic bomb" originating in relatively poor areas; and quite a few so-called "well developed" countries having a lot of issues with their dropping birth rates. There were periods when Earth population raised promptly, and there were periods when it slowed down - mainly due to limited resources and changes in life conditions, but also due to wars, diseases, and natural disasters. Please note very high peaks in birth rates immediately after before-mentioned wars, and disasters - people are able to reproduce really fast when given a reason and possibility to do so.
In contrary, Krogans cannot really *multiply* as there are so few female Krogans. They tend to easily overpopulate their space with *males* which is one of the reason why those males are prone to in-fights, wars, and hazardous behavior. At the same time Krogan females are still rare, which significantly impacts how fast Krogans can really grow in numbers. Death of one single Krogan female is much worse for Krogans than death of entire families for humans - which is one of the reasons why Wrex went ballistic over Eve.
In some circumstances Krogans can beat humans in their growth rate; and in some circumstances humans can beat even completely cured Krogans in that respect - there's no arguing. But if You are bringing math to discussion, please respect it Yourself.
I am certainly interested in continuing the discussion - if there are any new arguments given - but I am *not* interested myself in making it any more personal. So thank You for Your opinion - and please accept that mine is much different.
Interesting argument, although I will note that some of your ideas for increasing your population growth rate, such as cloning, would work for Krogan as well
On the other hand, from what we learned from ME2, it seems like 1 in 1000 is a live birth is just a statistic, and the true effects are that some Krogan are rendered partially sterile and some are fully sterile.
You say that Humans get to adulthood fast (compared to the others). However as we don't know when the other races gets to adulthood that is pure spekulation.
We can guess at the Krogans being really fast as the Genophage was produced to end the war by stopping the availability of new Krogan troops. If adulthood was say 100 years the Genophage would not mean much as the Krogans would lose too many Troops anyway. The Genophage however is said to be the main reason for ending the rebellion.
Finally there is the matter with the number of Females in the Krogan colony. As you say only 1 in 500 should be female. However walking around New Tuchanka I have seen many Females and it is said there are "a hundred odd Krogans" in the colony, so that number doesn't seem to be accurate.
