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The various industrial capabilities of the Alliance would also be valuable to the Federation, without even taking military applications into account. Many a redshirt/goldshirt may be saved by medi-gel application. Medi-gel, however, would probably be seen to have great value, as it is some magical stopgap for injuries. Not only do unborn children go through gene therapy, recruits into the military (supposedly) get even more "upgrades". Their whole "no genetic modification" flies in the face of the Alliance's seeming mandatory gene therapy. I think the genetic engineering practices of the Systems Alliance would be met with disdain by the Federation. Since the only ship battles in ME are ones against the Reapers (or Collectors, who use downgraded Reaper tech IIRC), who are so much more powerful than Galactic Standard, that using their weaponry effectiveness is a bit of a problem I don't believe we ever see how the armor really stands up on Dreds and such. To me, it seems like ME falls into the 'rely on the shields barriers, not the armor!' trap.ĮDIT: And that's just one ship.
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#Mass effect systems alliance ships upgrade#
And IIRC, if you don't upgrade the armor, said impacts will do some decent damage. Granted, it has been awhile since I played ME2, so it may have been the collisions weakening the armor somewhat. One of the things is improved armor, and even that armor doesn't stand up well to the Reaper style energy weapons on the Oculus(sp?), though that may just be a mini-Thanix cannon. The only real example (off the top of my head, and I haven't read the books or played ME3) is when you have to upgrade the Normandy for the Collector mission.
![mass effect systems alliance ships mass effect systems alliance ships](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Eg7Jr4DVkAUhn80.png)
There isn't a whole lot to work off on ME ship-scale armor. On the ground, at least, I think the Alliance would give much better than they got against the Federation. The omni-tools are especially interesting: all are miniature computer/scanner/communicator/mini-fabricator combinations, and weaponized versions can launch guided missiles, fire directed electromagnetic pulses, and create combat drones on the fly. Alliance troops will have body armor, a variety of small arms, including support weapons, grenades, tanks, and specialized troops with biotic powers (usually telekinetic abilites that can exert hundreds of Newtons of force in arbitrary directions) and weaponized omni-tools. The Feds have unarmored troops with phasers, communicators, and maybe some tricorders. On the ground, though, it looks like the Alliance would crush the Federation if air and space support were absent or contested. Torpedoes would presumably be less effective, since Alliance ships have point-defense lasers that are reportedly very effective against guided missiles (enough to make missiles nearly absolete in Mass Effect, except for torpedoes fired at point-blank range).įederation shields would presumably stop slugs from mass effect cannons, but Federation shields aren't optimized for defense against metal slugs traveling upwards of 9000 km/s, so I don't know how long the shield generators could take the beating (conservation of momentum and all).Īll in all, the Federation might well have the advantage in space, so I can concede the war. Phasers would presumably be very effective against Alliance starships, since mass effect barriers are pretty useless against energy beams. For shorter trips, mass effect drive doesn't seem to be noticeably inferior to warp drive. It can be done if you can tug a large enough asteroid onto a collision course, but I'm not sure whether the Federation could pull that off when under attack. The Systems Alliance is dependent on Mass Relays for long-range interstellar travel, but the mass relays are very hard to damage. The Federation has access to matter-antimatter reactors, of course, so they can generate more power, but I'm not sure that alone would win a war for them. I know that we generally regard the Federation as technologically superior to the Systems Alliance, but I'm beginning to question the normal conclusion.