VAULTS | Their real purpose. Your thoughts?
I was mulling over this idea – surely, most likely wasting my time with it – of the purpose of a Vault.
The story we have is:
Long range scanners identified potential worlds, 600 years back. ...
Forum Discussion
EgoMania wrote:Well we don't know of course how the opponents found them, but if they hadn't protected themselves against long range scans that'd be really stupid. Not impossible but stupid.
Of course there is another possibility. What if the opposition was created by the terraforming or something else the remnant did while in Heleus?
And what caused the vaults to stop working? Was it the scourge or was it the Kett?
Not necessarily stupid. For example, if we had an intelligent alien race scanning another planets for life, and their range of technology and knowledge would make their scans pinpoint only planets with Nitrogen, other lifeforms in planets without Nitrogen would be unchecked. However, we, humans, having Nitrogen on our atmosphere, how the heck would we supposed to block any scan from reading our whole atmosphere? Both sides lack something, you see, we lack technlogy to block our entire planet of being scanned, while the alien race lack technology to read and identify lifeforms which are not based on a planet with Nitrogen, similar to our own inability to identify or base our hopes on life ever being considered organic, needing water etc. So, even if they had advanced technology to block long-range scans, sometimes they cannot block everything, because of their limited perception upon something.
Like a reaction? That would mean that the scourge-creating power would be dormant in those planets? That is a possibility. For the vaults stopping working, I'm not sure, but perhaps because the jardaan needed evacuated and hid Meridian somewhere else. I think that part would explain the vaults started to be synchronized. Or so I understood.
All this and more in the next episode of ... Speculations on Heleus.
Well the vaults could be restored without Meridian as you know from playing through the game. If they would've stopped working because of what happened with Meridian, then they wouldn't be able to work until Meridian would be restored I would think.
I was also thinking about the Angara who had AI technology in the past as we found out on Voeld. Well if Ryder can operate remtech with AI, were the Angara also capable of that? Perhaps the old Angara are the opponents? Maybe they lived to close to their creators and found out about their origin and wanted to break the bond with their creators (very Geth I know) and they created something they couldn't control which hurt them as much as it hurt the Remnant. Perhaps that's how the AI tech was lost to the Angarans overall.
Or maybe there were some Remnant that malfunctioned and got their own ideas and started creating other types of things than they were originally made for and instead of creating life, they did the opposite, making them the opponents. Perhaps that's the power the Archon was after.
Oh well, just more from speculation station Alpha Two Beta 😉
@EgoMania wrote:
Well the vaults could be restored without Meridian as you know from playing through the game. If they would've stopped working because of what happened with Meridian, then they wouldn't be able to work until Meridian would be restored I would think.
Yeah. That's why we reset them, right? To restart its functions. Probably taking Meridian would make all resetting synchronized system-wide, but we just find it in the end.
The angara, I think those in Havarl? Some of them explain they can interact with it, but they take too long to understand it, and yet, not entirely.
I just hope it's nothing related to AI going rogue. Everything is going rogue in that game, including the Archon.
#speculatingmode
Exactly. We just perceive and look for things we understand. How would we detect a civilization in which its entire lifespan was 1 milisecond, for example? We have limitations that cannot cover all possible outcomes if something more advanced and perceptive than us is lurking around.
@PandaTar wrote:Yeah. That's why we reset them, right? To restart its functions. Probably taking Meridian would make all resetting synchronized system-wide, but we just find it in the end.
The angara, I think those in Havarl? Some of them explain they can interact with it, but they take too long to understand it, and yet, not entirely.
I just hope it's nothing related to AI going rogue. Everything is going rogue in that game, including the Archon.
#speculatingmode
Yeah but since we reset them before we get to Meridian apparently they can function with Meridian being functional, so I wouldn't know why the vaults would shut down by what happened with Meridian. Of course what is possible is that as part of that event they were turned off on purpose.
Maybe to punish the Angara for rebelling as per my speculation or for some other unexplained reason. They did say in game that the core of Meridian was left behind to take fire while the rest escaped. Now the scourge doesn't seem to do much firing at things. Perhaps the scourge is the nasty side effect of a very nasty BFG or something. Kinda like nuclear fallout on a galactic scale.
The Scourge has a protomolecule vibe about it. At least it doesn't look like it feeds on radiation, nor repurposes things or lifeforms like Exaltation. For now.
@PandaTar wrote:
@EgoMania wrote:
Well the vaults could be restored without Meridian as you know from playing through the game. If they would've stopped working because of what happened with Meridian, then they wouldn't be able to work until Meridian would be restored I would think.
Yeah. That's why we reset them, right? To restart its functions. Probably taking Meridian would make all resetting synchronized system-wide, but we just find it in the end.
The angara, I think those in Havarl? Some of them explain they can interact with it, but they take too long to understand it, and yet, not entirely.
I just hope it's nothing related to AI going rogue. Everything is going rogue in that game, including the Archon.
#speculatingmode
Exactly. We just perceive and look for things we understand. How would we detect a civilization in which its entire lifespan was 1 milisecond, for example? We have limitations that cannot cover all possible outcomes if something more advanced and perceptive than us is lurking around.
There's got to be some meaningful way to interact with them though. Otherwise you're stuck with "The Things", "The Forever War", or "Horton Hears a Who!" for plotlines. Balancing the truly alien, without an entire story to flesh it out, would be tricky.
@PandaTar wrote:
The Scourge has a protomolecule vibe about it. At least it doesn't look like it feeds on radiation, nor repurposes things or lifeforms like Exaltation. For now.
Interesting idea.
Was thinking about the Scourge some more and then I remember it actuall grows when you get close to it. So presumably it's attracted by technology, so it might be a weapon by itself rather than just a nasty side effect.
@jpcerutti1 wrote:
There's got to be some meaningful way to interact with them though. Otherwise you're stuck with "The Things", "The Forever War", or "Horton Hears a Who!" for plotlines. Balancing the truly alien, without an entire story to flesh it out, would be tricky.
Of course, of course. We were discussing an issue on how we can't really block or conceal our existence from everything without knowing everything there's to know. For a gaming purpose which is based on interaction and galactic species and civilizations, it's surely not very easy to simply introduce something players can't understand nor interact with, unless it's something too exotic and subtle that will, eventually, be cohesive to our understanding. Scourge, for now, is something that we have no proper understanding.
@EgoMania wrote:
@PandaTar wrote:
The Scourge has a protomolecule vibe about it. At least it doesn't look like it feeds on radiation, nor repurposes things or lifeforms like Exaltation. For now.
Interesting idea.
Was thinking about the Scourge some more and then I remember it actuall grows when you get close to it. So presumably it's attracted by technology, so it might be a weapon by itself rather than just a nasty side effect.
It is drawn to Remnant (Jaardan) tech, which you use in the climatic space battle to take Meridian. It's literally space-warping magic attracted to their enemies tech and energy.
@EgoMania wrote:Was thinking about the Scourge some more and then I remember it actuall grows when you get close to it.
Maybe it just likes you? 😎
i was wondering if the jardaan were actually building entire planetary systems from scratch, planet by planet? as this cluster seems to be about 10 times as densely populated by star-systems as anywhere i've seen in the ME trilogy, and a good chunk that we can't see was buried/destroyed by the scourge. is that just the way andromeda is built, or is it unique as well as naturally occurring? thoughts?
@CasperTheLich wrote:
i was wondering if the jardaan were actually building entire planetary systems from scratch, planet by planet? as this cluster seems to be about 10 times as densely populated by star-systems as anywhere i've seen in the ME trilogy, and a good chunk that we can't see was buried/destroyed by the scourge. is that just the way andromeda is built, or is it unique as well as naturally occurring? thoughts?
Heavily Jardaan-formed, IMO. Read the codex on the Jardaan and it mentions that they arrived in Heleus in 1600 BCE and that the Scourge hit about 600 years ago. So the Vault worlds were probably reverting to their original state.
@arthurh3535 wrote:
@CasperTheLich wrote:
i was wondering if the jardaan were actually building entire planetary systems from scratch, planet by planet? as this cluster seems to be about 10 times as densely populated by star-systems as anywhere i've seen in the ME trilogy, and a good chunk that we can't see was buried/destroyed by the scourge. is that just the way andromeda is built, or is it unique as well as naturally occurring? thoughts?
Heavily Jardaan-formed, IMO. Read the codex on the Jardaan and it mentions that they arrived in Heleus in 1600 BCE and that the Scourge hit about 600 years ago. So the Vault worlds were probably reverting to their original state.
i'm pretty much on the fence about that. yes it's a very short amount of time, and we don't really know about the rest of the galaxy, though this cluster kind of reminds me of the entire galaxy map in me1-3...
---edit
but, more so of ME3
Well, with the 1600 BCE, we now know that the Jardaan were here for over 2,000 years. So planets reverting back to the way they were in 600 years is not unreasonable.
i'm not saying they simply altered/terraformed the planets. i'm saying they created entire planets from scratch somehow... like by gathering galactic dust-clouds and condensing them at an accelerated rate to create stars, then entire planets, or something.
@CasperTheLich wrote:
i'm not saying they simply altered/terraformed the planets. i'm saying they created entire planets from scratch somehow... like by gathering galactic dust-clouds and condensing them at an accelerated rate to create stars, then entire planets, or something.
They didn't say the number of planets was unusual, but the number of 'Golden Worlds' ie. habitable planets.
@arthurh3535 wrote:
@CasperTheLich wrote:
i'm not saying they simply altered/terraformed the planets. i'm saying they created entire planets from scratch somehow... like by gathering galactic dust-clouds and condensing them at an accelerated rate to create stars, then entire planets, or something.
They didn't say the number of planets was unusual, but the number of 'Golden Worlds' ie. habitable planets.
i guess... though just because that isn't mentioned, doesn't mean it's false. the only comparison to this cluster is the clusters back in the milkyway, so i don't know if this cluster is normal or abnormal for andromeda... i just know it's several times bigger then anything we've seen thus far (in most cases at least ten times or more).
@CasperTheLich wrote:
I guess... though just because that isn't mentioned, doesn't mean it's false. the only comparison to this cluster is the clusters back in the milkyway, so i don't know if this cluster is normal or abnormal for andromeda... i just know it's several times bigger then anything we've seen thus far (in most cases at least ten times or more).
Eh, it's not like you can run to the nearest Mass Relay to shoot yourself 20,000 light years away in minutes. Though I *think* I remember that one of the Ice Runners bragged about going from Voeld to Eladaan in only hours, so they can't be very far apart at shuttle speeds.
i'm just saying there seems to be way too many star-systems populating this single cluster; and is that somehow the jardaan's influence? if not creating entire planets from scratch, perhaps somehow moving star-systems closer together to make this super cluster, or is it natural, and unique, or natural and just common place for andromea?
it wouldn't surprise me to find out this is in fact the case, but the writers just didn't think it important enough to put down in the codex.
---edit
when i first looked at the actual starmap on the tempest the very first time, my first though was... i though this was just a single star cluster, not an entire galaxy. turns out, it was just a star cluster, a very, very, *says very 8 more times*, big star cluster.
There are actually 90 stars (or similar celestial objects) with 20 light years of Earth. It's not really that impossible, especially with how many planets we can detect already.
@arthurh3535 wrote:
There are actually 90 stars (or similar celestial objects) with 20 light years of Earth. It's not really that impossible, especially with how many planets we can detect already.
i'm not an astronomer, so i'll take your word on that. did i compare MEA to actual reality? if i did it was not my intent. i was just trying to point out that in the previous trilogy there were typically only 3-4 star systems in a cluster, i think the smallest was 1, and the most was something like 7... so now in this single cluster we have 38 star systems. is there anything to that?
@CasperTheLich wrote:
@arthurh3535 wrote:
There are actually 90 stars (or similar celestial objects) with 20 light years of Earth. It's not really that impossible, especially with how many planets we can detect already.
i'm not an astronomer, so i'll take your word on that. did i compare MEA to actual reality? if i did it was not my intent. i was just trying to point out that in the previous trilogy there were typically only 3-4 star systems in a cluster, i think the smallest was 1, and the most was something like 7... so now in this single cluster we have 38 star systems. is there anything to that?
Well, I do have to say that BW have gone out of their way to make it feel more closely related to our reality. I mean those shots on the moon and the whole NASA link was pretty obvious to me. Also using the periodic table for materials is a nice touch there.
Maybe you didn't compare it to actual reality but BW certainly did.
They didn't with the previous games so much and I think that the difference there is that this game is more about exploration than the previous ones and therefore more star systems end up on your map. I wouldn't say that they didn't exist in the previous games, they were just limited as the content was a bit more limited overall. It certainly was more story driven and ME:A is more exploration driven. So I wouldn't see the star maps in the previous games as meaning that that's all there was. It was simply all that was used in the game.
At least that's how I interpret it.
@CasperTheLich wrote:
... so now in this single cluster we have 38 star systems. is there anything to that?Probably a reminder on how astronomy is finding exoplanets, much more common than it was ever thought. However, the point is finding viable planets at short distances. Even our nearest star neighbors have planets, and slowly we discover more.
Andromeda is bigger than the Milky Way, have the double or more than the double of the number of stars, it is also much more massive, so it might be a but more cluttered, depending on where they pick to explore. Besides that, they have Meridian, something that doesn't have in MW, which makes a chained effect of terraforming. Having a Meridian in Milky Way would probably change the galactic starchart a little.
Speaking of which, some crackpot might want to steal Meridian and carry it to the Milky Way.
PandaTar wrote:Speaking of which, some crackpot might want to steal Meridian and carry it to the Milky Way.
and there's our plot for MEA2... no, no, no... just no. i should just shut up before i give the devs more bad ideas.
CasperTheLich wrote:and there's our plot for MEA2... no, no, no... just no. i should just shut up before i give the devs more bad ideas.
Hahaha, yeah, I think you should stop it right there 😉
Oh no... this has somehow devolved into Astronomy class... I feel like I need to go back to college just relate to the last half of this thread 🙂
My answer is simple: the vaults make things workey-workey on the planet thingy-ma-bobs so that life can find a way...
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