#crapeaucrapeau

We've finally arrived at the bottom: deck 5, home of the hangar, the Kodiak shuttles, and now, Marine Land!

There are some oddities with this deck, because I was guessing at how fast the hull tapers towards the bottom at the back (I'm working off references that show front and rear elevations, but that only shows you the broadest points). I messed up something with my core chamber measurements and had to make the entire rear end (heh) slightly bigger here before posting, but the deck design errs on the side of narrower.

Hangar

When I wrote A Star To Steer Her By I ignored the silly shipbuilding because I was focused on a relationship (and because it wasn't supposed to be a door-stopper novel. Oops), but as I went on things like "this hangar should be regularly exposed to vacuum, how can you leave gym equipment in here" bothered me more and more. By the time of Sunset and Evening Star I couldn't let that state of affairs stand. So: this hangar is regularly exposed to vacuum. No fancy force fields that keep in the air but let out shuttles. You don't leave anything in here that isn't protected from vacuum and strapped down.

The hangar is the limiting factor in the size of the entire ship; it has to fit between the central elevator and the hangar door, and it must fit two Kodiaks. To reach this size I had to make the Kodiaks boxier; my drawings are taller for their length than the game models. They still seat twelve, and there's room for one to do a 180 on it's axis while the other is in its cradle. The hangar floor slopes down slightly towards the door in the middle, and the Kodiaks are 'shelved' to the sides.

Cortez runs the flight deck from the exact same place he is in game, but now he has bulkheads and windows between himself and the cold death of space. Airlocks on either side give access to the flight deck. There are also giant doors straight into the deck 4 cargo bays, but those won't open unless the hangar is pressurized.

Marine Land

Jack's Sulking Pit is now a gym, with weights, treadmill, stationary bike, heavy bags, and mats for sparing (and occasionally making pillow forts for evacuee toddlers). Mats are usually stored stowed against the wall, and other equipment can be moved as needed.

To port are the marine berths. The usual compliment of marines is a dozen, including their unit leader, but there are twelve bunks as well as the officer's tiny cabin (because there's no point wasting the space, and you never know). Other than their semi-privacy, the marine racks are no different from the enlisted racks on the two decks above.*

*"Except for the smell." — the rest of the crew, probably.

Berthing the marines on deck 5 is all about quick access to their arms, armor, and transport. Directly across from the marine berths is the entrance to the locker room and armory. After armoring up they grab their weapons and can get to the shuttle through an airlock entrance in the armory. On the way back, they reverse the process; stow weapons, strip off armor — often dropping damaged plating into the recycler chute as they go by — strip down, and shower.

The Alliance military is gender neutral, and nowhere is this as obvious as the marine lockers. The marine unit regularly strips down in front of each other; it's just part of getting ready for work. You can't be body-shy and be an Alliance Marine.

(I like to think the separate bathrooms on the crew deck were the Illusive Man's weird traditionalist decision. Sometimes the gendered-bathroom thing starts to grate on Bo Huan, the third-watch pilot, so they come down to deck five to use the locker room showers, leading Joker to quip "Ah, the third gender: marine!")

More engineering, and the answers to a few questions

Ladders from deck 4 lead down to another engineering area on the hangar level. It's not connected to the main areas of the deck by conventional corridors, but it is accessible through the warren of service passages that run throughout the ship. More of those access-ways lead aft of the eezo core chamber to the fusion plant (not shown). Because the core chamber narrows faster than the ship, it's easier to get around it here than it is on the engineering deck, where the core chamber is at it's widest but the hull has started to narrow. These access tunnels are rarely comfortable to get through, though they often open out into areas that are easier to work in, or into surprising pockets of unused space. They may require crawling or climbing, or clambering over obstacles.

All the maintenance accesses are kept pressurized and aired up, but the habitable area shown on these posts is wrapped in an inner hull, and the doors for maintenance access are all pressure doors: if a hit damages the tunnel you use to access the ship's innards, it won't kill all the crew in the room next to it.**

**It will obliterate the illicit still and the not-actually-a-secret-make-out-nest, as well as anyone stupid enough to be distilling and***/or fucking in those locations, which is why we don't lollygag between the hulls in combat, private!

***AND?****

****Some people are remarkably talented.

Normandy redesign posts

Intro

Loft

Command

Crew

Engineering

Thank you so much!!!!!!! I won't do anything the Mako wouldn't do.

(I love your icon!!)

Hello :) I’m doing fine, and you?

I think Oriana is the one to replace Miranda because she is the one who has everything Henry needs. One of the theory is that she is exactly like Miranda (perfect in every way) AND she is not infertile like Miranda is. Why start again when you have the perfect specimen already made? He has what he needs to start his dynasty.

I also remember Ryder asking Jaal if there are other hidden worlds akin to Aya, and him being very evasive about it. Do we know which planets are confirmed as the original five angaran homeworlds post-Scourge, and which are colonies of these worlds ?

In that AU, is the Initiative and the Hyperion… Hyperion ?

I’ve had an influx of followers lately, so I’m just going to make an adequate index listing all my “interesting” posts - therefore not every post I made on Mass Effect is included. This will make navigation easier than going through my “mass effect” tag.

Update : Goddess, I have so many.

Oh ! Today is the 10th anniversary of ME3′s release.

For all its faults, which are significant enough that I can’t not acknowledge them, I love that game so much. I knew nothing about Mass Effect before, but I had friends in an IRC who were very hyped about it, and I was curious. I watched a full playthrough on YouTube, with no context on who those characters were, and only a basic understanding of the plot beforehand. I had zero investment in these characters.

It was a playthrough from Day 1, when people still didn’t know which choices in the previous games would lead to what consequences ; a lot went wrong. I remember that Tali committed suicide as the destroyed quarian ships rained down in flames through the skies of the world they had yearned for so long. I remember that Samara chose to die, by her own hand, rather than kill her last daughter - or renege on her Code. Both events were so harrowing that I know without a doubt that they happened.

I cried when Shepard died.

I couldn’t tell you which ending it was. I couldn’t tell you if that Shepard was a woman or a man. I couldn’t tell you if they leaned more Paragon or Renegade. But I do remember, vividly, that I was in tears. I was sobbing.

It’s kinda funny - people always complain, with good reason, about the endings, but for me the fact that to the end, to the very end, Shepard died to save everyone else, that it was not fair or deserved but that they would do it anyway… It was awful, and it was beautiful.

Shepard’s death made me cry. I have seen playthroughs of many other games since then (I cannot personally play videogames), and I am a person who tends to tear up easily ; but so far, videogames have only made me cried twice, and no other game, and no other piece of entertainment “high” or “low” has so fully, so permanently grabbed my attention like Mass Effect 3 did. It consumed me there and then. Though my interest and my focus in the franchise have waxed and waned over the years, I always keep returning to it.

It’s been ten years now. I have watched playthroughs of all three games of the OT… well, several times for each one. I know a frankly obsessive amount of lore (you might have had an inkling from what my posts are, but I have the type of brain prone to hyperfixation). Back then, I was a teenager in awe ; today, as I’m slowly sloughing off my twenties, I am far more critical of the faults of all three games, and yet… They still surprise me, and enthrall me, ten years down the line.

[To give an example, I was rewatching yesterday, for lore-excavation purposes, Tali’s loyalty mission in ME2, and I just caught now (perhaps I’m a slow learner) how fantastic it is. The structure leading to the plot twist and the final choice are spectacular of course ; but I saw little bits of brilliance I never noticed before. There’s the obvious lore stuff, sure - how you can piece out the very complex political situation of the Migrant Fleet when you talk to the Admirals - but the character stuff is very strong too, it’s stupendous actually ; you learn as much about all the characters in that courtroom from the way each thinks of the others as you do from their stated motives.

[But there’s also the sheer craft involved : on the Alarei, you listen to an unnamed quarian researcher’s last message explaining how they ensured the geth couldn’t harm the Fleet in any single way, until, as the geth cut through the door, she ends her message on a personal note, giving her dying, loving words to her son. It’s poignant in itself ; it underlines the horror of the Alarei, and stresses the unspeakable nature of Rael’Zorah’s actions ; but it serves a thematic and structural purpose as well. What do you know, not five steps from the screen, there is Rael’Zorah, lying dead on the floor ; and having just listened to that doomed woman’s message of desperate love for her son, we’re primed to react in a certain way to another parent’s last words to his only child… It might look like nothing, but it’s so significant to me. (Tali’s characterization in general, and the dialogue, are poignant ; they feel so real ; but let’s keep the gushing down.)]

I didn’t start that post with the intention of doing anything too long or too elaborate ; I just wanted to acknowledge this anniversary, which completely caught me by surprise. I didn’t have anything special in mind. Yet here I am, eleven paragraphs later. Why ?

Because I can’t get over Mass Effect, and I can’t get over Mass Effect 3.

Intellectually, I know that it’s probably the poorest of the three games, though that’s an indictment only in relation to ME1 and 2 ; but it’s the closest to my heart. When Mass Effect 3 works, it doesn’t run, it flies. It’s heart-wrenching, it’s exhilarating, it’s agonizing… it’s incredible.

I can’t say now anything that I haven’t said already, I think the sentiment doesn’t bear repeating ; so I’ll stop.

Except for this : it would be bombastic and fake to claim Mass Effect changed my life, but it’s stayed with me. It’s still with me. Mass Effect 3 made me fall in love with it ; and that’s only because first, I fell in love with Mass Effect 3.

Really, it was the best ride.