Mass Effect

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Release Date: November 20, 2007

Ships and Vehicles (Secondary)

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Codex - Secondary Codex - Ships and Vehicles (Secondary)

FTL Drive


New space travelers ask, "What does it look like outside a ship moving at faster-than-light speed?" Part of the answer can be seen in a simple pane of glass. Light travels slower through glass then it does through open air; light also moves slower in conventional space then it does in a high-speed mass effect field. This causes refraction - any light entering at an angle is bent and separated into a spectrum. Objects outside the ship will appear refracted. The greater the difference between the objective (exterior) and subjective (interior) speeds of light, the greater the refraction.

As the subjective speed of lights is raised within the field, objects outside will appear to red-shift, eventually becoming visible only to radio telescope antennae. High-energy electromagnetic sources normally hidden to the eye become visible on the spectrum. As the speed of light continues to be raised, x-ray, gamma ray, and eventually cosmic ray sources become visible. Stars will be replaced by pulsars, the accretion discs of black holes, quasars, and gamma ray bursts.

To an outside observer, a ship within a mass effect drive envelope appears to blue-shifted. If within a field that allows travel at twice the speed of light, any radiation it emits has twice the energy as normal. If the ship is in a field of about 200 times light speed, it radiates visible light as x-ray and gamma rays, and the infrared heat from the hull is blue-shifted up into the visible spectrum or higher. Ships moving at FTL are visible at great distances, though their signature will only propagate at the speed of light.

Drive Charge

As positive or negative electronic current is passed through an FTL drive core, it acquires a static electrical charge. Drives can be operated an average of 50 hours before they reach charge saturation. This changes proportional to the magnitude of mass reduction; a heavier or faster ship reaches saturation more quickly.

If the charge is allowed to build, the core will discharge into the hull of a ship. All ungrounded crew members are fried to a crisp, all electronic systems are burned out, and metal bulkheads may be melted and fused together. The safest way to discharge a core is to land on a planet and establish a connection to the ground, like a lightning rod. Larger vessels like dreadnoughts cannot land and must discharge into a planetary magnetic field. The ship passes the charge from the drive core to the exterior armored hull, then dives into the magnetic field.

As the hull discharges, sheets of lightning jump away into the field, creating beautiful auroral displays on the planet. The ship must retract is sensors and weapons while dumping charge to protect damage, leaving it blind and helpless. Discharging at a moon with a weak magnetic field can take days. Discharging into the powerful field of a gas giant may require less then an hour. Deep space facilities such as the Citadel often have special discharge facilities for visiting ships.

Space Combat

Combat Endurance

Heat limits the length and intensity of ship-to-ship combat. Starships generate enormous heat when they fire high-energy weapons, perform maneuvering burns, and run on-board combat electronics.

In combat, warships produce heat more quickly than they can disperse it. As heat builds within a vessel, the crewed spaces become increasingly uncomfortable. Before the heat reaches lethal leaves, a ship must win or retreat by entering FTL. After an FTL run, the ships halts, shuts down non-essential systems, and activates the heat radiation gear.

Combat endurance varies by ship design and by the battle's location. Battles in the deep cold of interstellar space can go on for some time. Engagements close to a star are brief. Since habitable worlds are usually close to a star, battles over them are usually more frantic.

General Tactics

Shells lofted by surface navies crash back to earth when their acceleration is overwhelmed by gravity and air resistance. In space, a projectile has unlimited range, it will keep moving until it hits something. Practical gunnery range is determined by the velocity of the attacker's ordinance and the maneuverability of the target. Beyond a certain range, a small ship's ability to dodge trumps a larger attacker's projectile speed. The longest-ranged combat occurs between dreadnoughts, whose projectiles have the highest velocity but are the least maneuverable. The shortest-range combat is between frigates, which have the slowest projectile velocities and highest maneuverability.

Opposing dreadnoughts open with a main gun artillery duel at EXTREME ranges of tens of thousands of kilometers. The fleet close, maintaining evasive lateral motion while keeping their bow guns facing the enemy. Fighters are launched and attempt to close to disrupter torpedo range. Cautious admirals weaken the enemy with ranged fire and fighter strikes before committing to close action. Aggressive commanders advance so cruisers and frigates can engage.

At LONG range, the main guns of cruisers become useful. Friendly interceptors engage enemy fighters until the attackers enter the range of ship-based GARDIAN fire. Dreadnoughts fire from the rear, screened by smaller ships. Commanders must decide whether to commit to a general melee or retreat into FTL.

At MEDIUM range, ships can use broadside guns. Fleets intermingle, and it becomes difficult to retreat in order. Ships with damaged kinetic barriers are vulnerable to wolfpack frigate flotillas that speed through the battle space.

Only fighters and frigates enter CLOSE 'knife fight' ranges of 10 or fewer kilometers. Fighters loose their disrupter torpedoes, bringing down a ship's kinetic barriers and allowing it to be swarmed by frigates. GARDIAN lasers become viable weapons, swatting down fighters and boiling away warship armor.

Neither dreadnoughts nor cruisers can use their main guns at close range; laying the bow on a moving target becomes impossible. Superheated thruster exhaust becomes a hazard.

Planetary Assaults

Planetary assaults are complicated if the planet is a habitable garden world; the attackers cannot approach the defenders straight on.

The Citadel Conventions prohibit the use of large kinetic impactors against habitable worlds. In a straight-on attack, any misses plough into the planet behind the defending fleet. If the defenders position themselves between the attackers and the planet, they can fire at will while the attacker risks hitting the planet.

Successful assaults on garden worlds hinge upon up-to-date intelligence. Attackers need to determine where the enemy's defenses are, so they may approach from an angle that allows them to fire with no danger of collateral damage. Note this is not necessary for the hostile worlds.

Once control of orbit has been lost, defensive garrisons disperse into the wilderness. An enemy with orbital superiority can bombard surface forces with impunity. The best option for defenders is to hide and collect reconnaissance in anticipation of relief forces.

Given the size of a planet, it is impractical to garrison entire conquered worlds. Fortunately, colonization efforts tend to focus on building up a dozen or fewer areas. Ground forces occupy the spaceports, industrial facilities, and major population centers. The wilderness is patrolled by unmanned aerial vehicles and satellite reconnaissance. If a defender is spotted, airmobile rapid deployment units and satellite artillery are used to pin down and destroy them.


Crew Considerations

Cabins give each individual ten cubic meters of space. On larger vessels private rooms are common. As ships get smaller, the number of crew packed into a single wardroom increases. Asari prefer shared spaces even on large vessels while krogan territorial instinct make it impossible for them to cohabitate even on the smallest ships.

On smaller vessels, 'hot bunking' is the norm. Crew members assigned to different watches share the same bunk. When one gets off-duty, he wakes up the person in the bunk. While that crewman is on duty, the first gets his rack time.

Spacecraft compartments can be isolated by air-tight doors in case of decompression. The cinematic version of explosive decompression is fiction; holed compartments either take enough damage that the occupants are killed instantly, or leak slowly enough that they are able to reach protective gear.

Compartments are equipped with Emergency Life Support Apparatus: fireproof plastic bubbles with air bottles. Small when stowed, ELSA comfortably accommodate one individual inflated. Damage control procedure cuts off ventilation to burning compartments. Without oxygen to consume, fires die in seconds. The compartment is re-pressurized afterwards for crew recovery.

Mass effect fields create an artificial gravity (a-grav) plane below the decks, preventing muscle atrophy and bone lose in zero-gee. Large vessels arrange their decks perpendicular to their thrust axis. The 'highest' decks are at the bow, and the 'lowest' decks at the engines. The allows a-grav to work with the inertial effects of thrust. Ships that can land arrange their decks laterally, so the crew can move about while the vessel is on the ground.

Warships normally turn off their a-grav systems during combat, reducing heat generated by systems and increasing combat endurance. To provide a point of reference for navigating in zero-gee, floors are painted a different color from the walls and ceiling.


Cruiser-weight starships are the standard combat unit encountered away from large naval bases, the 'poor bloody infantry' of most fleets. Nimble scouting frigates have neither the punch nor the stamina to stand up to serious combat, and the mighty dreadnoughts are a strategic resource, carefully hoarded and committed to the most critical battles.

Cruisers perform routine independent 'show the flag' patrols in settled systems and lead flotillas of frigates in small engagements such as pirate suppression campaigns. In major fleet engagements, cruiser squadrons support the dreadnought battle line by screening their flanks against enemies attempting to maneuver for a main gun 'bow shot' from their vulnerable broadsides.

Alliance cruisers are named after cities of Earth.


The dreadnought is the ultimate arbiter of space warfare; millions of tons of metal, ceramic, and polymer dedicated to the projection of firepower against an enemy vessel of like ability. No sane commander would face a dreadnought with anything less then another dreadnought.

A dreadnought's power lies in the length of its main gun. Dreadnoughts range from 800 meters to one kilometer long, with a main gun of commensurate length. An 800-meter mass accelerator capable of accelerating one 2 kg slug to a velocity of 283 km/s every two seconds. Each slug has the kinetic energy of 38 kilotons of TNT, three times the energy released by the fission weapon that destroyed Hiroshima.

When used to bombard planets, some of this kinetic energy is lost due to atmospheric re-entry friction. As a rule of thumb, each Earth-atmosphere of air pressure saps approximately 20% of a projectile's impact energy.

The turian fleet presently has 37 dreadnaughts; the asari, 21; and the salarians, 16. Humanity has six, with an additional hull under construction at Arcturus Station. Alliance battleships are named for mountains of Earth.

Everest Class: Everest, Fuji, Elbrus

Kilimanjaro Class: Kilimanjaro, Tai Shan, Shasta, Aconcagua (under construction)


Fighters are single-pilot combat small craft. They are lightweight enough that they can be economically fitted with powerful element zero cores, making them capable of greater acceleration and sharper maneuvers then starships.

Kinetic barriers shield changed starship battles from short, vicious bloodbaths to extended indecisive slugging matches. Only the main gun of a dreadnought could punch a mass accelerator slug through the barriers of an opposing dreadnought. This changed with the development of the fighter- launched mass disruptor torpedo, a short-ranged weapon that can penetrate kinetic barriers to destroy their projector assemblies.

Starship GARDIAN defenses must be overwhelmed through swarm tactics. Fighter groups can take heavy casualties pressing their torpedo attacks home. Once fighter-launched torpedoes have crippled an enemy's barriers, the mass accelerator on frigates and cruisers can make short work of them.

Interceptors are a type of fighter optimized to attack other fighters, with no ability to damage starships. Interceptors are used to screen friendly units from incoming fighter attack.



Frigate drive systems allow them to achieve high FTL cruise speeds. They also have proportionally larger thrusters and lighter design mass, allowing them to maneuver more handily. In combat, speed and maneuverability make a frigate immune to the long-range fire of larger vessels; in the time it takes projectiles to reach them, frigates are no longer where they were predicted to be.

In fleet combat, frigates are organized into 'wolfpack' flotillas of four to six. Wolfpacks speed through enemy formations, hunting enemy vessels whose kinetic barriers have been taken down by fighter-launched disrupter torpedoes. The wolfpack circle-strafes vulnerable targets, using their superior speed and maneuverability to evade return fire.

Alliance frigates are named for great battles in human history.

Heat Management

Dispersal of heat generated by onboard systems is a critical issue for a ship. If it cannot deal with heat, the crew may be cooked within the hull.

Radiation is the only way to shed heat in a vacuum. Civilian vessels utilize large, fragile radiator panels that are impossible to armor. Warships use Diffuse Radiator Arrays (DRA), ceramic strips along the exterior of the armored hull. These make the ship appear striped to thermographic sensors. Since the arrangement of the strips depends on the internal configuration of the ship, the patterns for each vessel are unique and striking. On older ships, the DRA strips could become red- or white-hot. Dubbed 'tiger stripes' or 'war paint' by humans, the glowing DRA had a psychological impact on pirates and irregular forces.

Strip radiators are not as efficient as panels, but if damaged by enemy fire, the ship only loses a small portion of its total radiation capacity. In most cases, a vessel's DRA along allows it to cruise with no difficulties. Operations deep within a solar system can cause problems.

A ship engaged in combat can produce titanic amounts of heat from maneuvering burns and weapons fire. When fighting in a high heat environment, warships employ high-efficiency 'droplet' heat sinks.

In a droplet system, tanks of liquid sodium or lithium absorb heat within the ship. The liquid is vented from spray nozzles near the bow as a thin sheet of millions of micrometer-scale droplets. The droplets are caught at the stern and recycled into the system. A droplet system can sink 10-100 times as much heat as DRA strips.

Droplet sheets resemble a surface ship's wake through water. The wake peels out in sharp turns, spreading a fan of droplets as the ship changes vectors and leaves the coolant behind.


'Light lag' prevents sensing in real time at great distances. A ship firing its thrusters at the Charon Relay can be easily detected from Earth, 5.75 light-hours (six billon kilometers) away, but Earth will only see the event five hours and 45 minutes after it occurs. Due to the light-speed limit, defenders can't see enemies coming until they have already arrived. Because there is FTL travel and communications but no FTL sensors, frigates are crucial for scouting and picket duties.

Passive sensors are used for long-range detection, while active sensors obtain short-range, high quality targeting data.

Passive sensors include visual, thermographic, and radio detectors that watch and listen for objects in space. A powered ship emits a great deal of energy; the heat of the life support systems; the radiation given off by power plants and electrical equipment; the exhaust of the thrusters. Starships stand out plainly against the near-absolute zero background of space. Passive sensors can be used during FTL travel, but incoming data is significantly distorted by the effect of the mass effect envelope and doppler shift.

Active sensors are radars and high resolution ladars (LAser Detection And Ranging) that emit a 'ping' of energy and 'listen' for return signals. Ladars have a narrower field of view than radar, but ladar resolution allows images of detected objects to be assembled. Active sensors are useless when a ship is moving at FTL speeds.


A mass effect drive core decreases the mass of a bubble of space-time around a ship. This gives the ship the potential to move quickly, but does not apply any motive power. Ships use their sublight thrusters for motive power at FTL. There are several varieties of thruster, varying in performance versus economy. All ships are equipped with arrays of hydrogen-oxygen reaction control thrusters for maneuvering.

Ion Drives electrically accelerate charged particles as a reaction mass. They are extremely efficient, but produce negligible thrust. They are mainly used for automated cargo barges. The primary commercial engine is a 'fusion torch,' which vents the plasma of a ship's power plant. Fusion torches offer powerful acceleration at the cost of difficult heat management. Torch fuel is fairly cheap: helium-3 skimmed from gas giants and deuterium extracted from seawater or cometary bodies. Propellant is hydrogen, likewise skimmed from gas giants.

In combat, military vessels require accelerations beyond the capability of fusion torches. Warship thrusters inject antiprotons into a reaction chamber filled with hydrogen. The matter-antimatter annihilation provides unmatched motive power. The drawback is fuel production; antiprotons must be manufactured one particle at a time. Most antimatter production is done at massive solar arrays orbiting energetic stars, making them high-value targets in wartime.

The exhaust of fusion and antiproton drives is measured in millions of degrees Celsius. Any vessel caught behind them will melt like wax in a blowtorch. Any long-duration interstellar flight consists of two phases: acceleration and deceleration. Starships accelerate to the half-way point of their journey, then flip 180 degrees and apply thrust on the opposite vector, decelerating as they finish the trip. The engines are always operating, and peak speed is attained at the middle of the flight.


Combat Drones

Drones are small robots used to support and supplement organic soldiers on the battlefield. They have no artificial intelligence of any kind, but follow fixed, minimally adaptive programs. Most varieties employ mass effect levitation to improve mobility.

All modern armies rely on veritable fleets of drones for routine soldiering (static garrisons, patrols, etc.). The use of drones in non-critical duties keeps manpower needs down and reduces casualties in low intensity conflicts. Less advanced races and cultures with less sensitivity to casualties have correspondingly fewer drones in their inventory. Drones are of little use in conventional open field battles, as they are poorly armed and armored.

In addition to combat drones, support drones are used to assist organic units in the field. Reconnaissance drones are small, stealthy craft that screen combat units in the field and warn commanders when enemies are spotted. Electronic Warfare drones supplement battlefield technicians, serving as mobile jammers and ELINT (ELectronic INTelligence) gathering platforms. Military and civilian police utilize 'dazzler drones' equipped with powerful strobe lights to disorient and subdue intruders using nonlethal force.

Drone formations are officially referred to in wings (i.e., 'Deploy the 4th Assault Drone Wing on the left flank!'). Common soldiers often refer to friendly formations as flocks and enemy formations as swarms.


Ablative Armor

A warship's kinetic barriers reduce the damage from solid objects, but can do nothing to block GARDIAN lasers, particle beams, and other forms of Directed Energy Weapon (DEW). The inner layer of warship protection consists of ablative armor plate designed to 'boil away' when heated. The vaporized armor material scatters a DEW beam, rendering it ineffectual.

A scaffold was built around the interior pressure hull, with sheets of ablative armor hung from the structure. Ships typically have multiple layers of armor separated by empty baffles, spaces often used for cargo storage. Cruisers, which lack the internal space to fit dedicated fighter hangers, store the shipboard fighter complement in the baffles. It is not unknown for enlisted crew to build illicit alcohol distilleries in some obscure corner of the baffles, safe from prying eyes.

Disruptor Torpedoes

Disruptor torpedoes are powered projectiles with warheads that create random and unstable mass effect fields when triggered. These fields warp space-time in a localized area. The rapid asymmetrical mass changes cause the target to rip itself apart.

In flight, torpedoes use a mass-increasing field, making them too massive for enemy kinetic barriers to repulse. The extra mass gives the torpedos very sluggish acceleration, making them easy prey for defensive GARDIAN weapons. So, torpedoes have to be launched at very close range.

Torpedoes are the main anti-ship weapon used by fighters. They are launched from point-blank range in 'ripple-fire' waves reminiscent of the ancient Calliope rocket artillery launchers (thus their popular nickname 'Callies'). By saturating defensive GARDIAN systems with multiple targets, at least a few will get through.


A ships' General ARea Defensive Integration Anti-spacecraft Network (GARDIAN) consists of anti-missile / anti-fighter laser turrets on the exterior hull. Because these are under computer control, the gunnery control officer needs to do little beyond turn the system on and designate targets as hostile.

Since lasers move at light speed, they cannot be dodged by anything moving at non-relativistic speeds. Unless the beam is aimed poorly, it will always hit its target. In the early stages of a battle, the GARDIAN fire is 100% accurate. It is not 100% lethal, but it doesn't have to be. Damaged fighters must break off for repairs.

Lasers are limited by diffraction. The beams 'spread out,' decreasing the energy density (watts per m2) the weapon can place on a target. Any high-powered laser is a short-ranged weapon.

GARDIAN networks have another limitation: heat. Weapons-grade lasers require "cool-down" time, during which heat is transferred to sinks or radiators. As lasers fire, heat builds within them, reducing damage, range, and accuracy.

Fighters attack in swarms. The first few WILL be hit by GARDIAN, but as battle continues, the effects of laser overheat allow the attackers to press ever closer to the ship. Constant use will burn out the laser.

GARDIAN lasers typically operate in infrared frequencies. Shorter frequencies would offer superior stopping power and range, but degradation of focal arrays and mirrors would make them expensive to maintain, and most prefer mechanical reliability over leading-edge performance where lives are concerned. Salarians, however, use near-ultraviolet frequency lasers with six times the range, believing that having additional time to shoot down incoming missiles is more important.

Lasers are not blocked by the kinetic barriers of capital ships. However, the range of lasers limits their use to rare 'knife fight'-range ship-to-ship combat.

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Ships and Vehicles (Secondary) | Secondary Codex part 7

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