Mass Effect Message Board  

Scientifically speaking, it's impossible to move faster than light, isn't it?
Well as Newton said, we're gonna be energy if move with speed of light.
E = mC2
Anyway maybe science will make that possible.
Great game by the way.

the reason FTL works in mass effect is because the mass effect fields artifically reduce the mass of the ships by a very large amount

standard ftl in ME seems to be in 10-100x range, jump points seem make the speed closer to 1,000,000x (standard ftl being what is used in system or to nearby systems, jump points for travel between clusters)

anyways, theoretically if you can reduce your mass without changing anything else then you could go faster than light...

other faster than light concepts that are used in other games/movies/etc

warp (star trek) - changes the distance between 2 points in space (inside the warp necel) and then moves the vessel relative to those two points

hyperspace (star wars) - imagine space as the sides of two or more mountains...now jump off one mountain and fly to the next

hyperspace (babylon 5) - think alternate dimension where you can travel a short distance there but a long distance in our dimension

posigravity drive (Alan Dean fosters novels) - use energy to create a "field" of gravity infront of a ship with a mass equivalent to a star... the ship then "falls" towards this mass causeing the mass to move in the direction the ship is falling...ship keeps falling....potential speed... unlimited (at 1g of gravity the ship would be traveling a 32 feet per second for every second traveled)

wormholes (multiple venues, mainly star trek and alot of space video games) - a hole in spacetime that allows near instaneous travel between two points in space

You seem like a professor or something.
I hope I can experience such trips in my life.
Scientists hurry and make it possible.

I'd give ANYTHING to travel the know universe. Absolutely ANYTHING.

Overall, the closest scifi universe to Mass Effect is CJ Cherryh's Alliance-Union universe, of the Chanur novels.

But the FTL technology is incredibly different.

In the universe, a scientist did the math and found an exemption to Special Relativity and they are able to travel extremely fast between "jump points"--usually things with large gravity wells, like stars--and using gravity waves, a separation is made between realspace and hyperspace. The ship rides the wave to its destination, half-in and half-out of dimensions.

Not gonna happen in our lifetime...if ever

Best keep your mind on the present reality, not pipedreams.

I refuse.

Half of life is wishing the other half was more interesting.

But I will build a death star. Oh, yes. I will.