Ame no Akai wrote:
Good point, I had to look deeper into ME's FTL. Traversing twelve light years in a single day is certainly a feat, though still less than ideal. Figured I could do some more research.
FTL travel is not free. A ship going FTL still needs conventional thrust to provide motive power, which means there's the standard fuel troubles. The FTL drives themselves build up electrical charge as they're being used; this varies according to the size and mass of ships (making the drive work more or less), but on average they can go for 50 hours before needing discharge. Depending on the location of discharge (gas giants, moons, empty space) it can take anywhere between a few hours to several days until the drive is ready to go, which needs to be calculated into travel time. Now think not only of the time it takes to go to ideal FTL speed, slow down again, discharge, and repeat the process, but also the cost on both conventional fuel and eezo for the drive. Now think of doing this for journeys across the galaxy. Still takes a long time and has considerable expenses. So we do really need Mass Relays.
However, the Protheans did not build miniature Relays: they built a single one-way Relay (the one on the Citadel could only receive, not send). Very different from building a network. Note we don't know how long it took; if it can be done, it won't be a one-two-three thing, especially since they have to replace every Relay manually, and the Protheans were actually more advanced than current species. At this point it's not about figuring out how to build them (which none of the current species have experience with), but also about restoring the network to how it was before, which means repeating the process many, many times.
While FLT isn't free, the galactic economy is completely crashed by this point. We already know there are fuel depots scattered around the universe. cheddar is worthless. Logically, they'd still be there. Not only could they be drained of what they have left, but they could also be refilled by nearby planets. We also know that ships have probes they can use to find eezo AND fuel. While it would take some time still, it wouldn't be impossible.
There's also the bit where entire species didn't go to Earth. Entire ARMIES did, possibly all the male krogan although unlikely, but there are Quarians on Rannoch and Asari on Thessia and Turians on Palaven and ect. ect.
It wouldn't be a one-way-plat-mass-relays-everywhere-in-one-go, it'd be more like setting them up at opposite ends around the same time. All they need to do is figure out HOW they work exactly, then send over blueprints with their still-working communications. They could set up parts of the network at the same time.
Also the Conduit is a one-way Relay because that's what they needed it for. A backdoor to the Citadel to try and ruin some Reaper plots. I would like to bring up that it was not only in miniature, but half-way across the galaxy, and in the Renegade ending it'd still be there. Building full Relays would be much easier, and they've got so much advanced tech around, along with the brightest minds in the galaxy. I'm not saying it would be easy, might take a few years, but I don't doubt that it couldn't be done.
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