Love the story so far, though Shepard is a bit out of character, she constantly says she’s just a soldier and understands little of any tech which makes little sense, going on 600 years old, you’d expect her to have a pretty robust knowledge of at the very least any equipment she interacts with daily, on top of that she’s part AI, not a particularly intelligent one until recently but that would still count for something. It seemed really out of character and she came off somewhat as a background character or really demure at times as a result of her checking out of conversations with the continuos excuse that she’s a soldier and doesn’t understand anything about such and such, which is pretty out there. I’ve never served in a military but I’m pretty sure the average soldier is given all needed knowledge to use and maintain any equipment they use that isn’t so complex it needs a specialist, that goes more so for Shepard as a super soldier, the more know how the better. It’s just very out there that she knows so little about tech when she’s served for what 550 years and has admitted to shuffling around in rank and branches.

Another thing that kind of puts a damper on the story is the collectors, first contact and immediately we get collectors and reapers and what looks like the prelude to the invasion despite it being too early by like 20 years if I’m not mistaken. Admittedly, there is some personal bias here, you read one story with reapers and you’ve read them all, there is little variation between tellings and they just get super dull very fast, they aren’t particularly interesting in comparison to the plot ifs of the first contact or conflicts between races, ya know, normal sci-fi stuff. At the end of the day, it’s always, the cycle, super advanced ai, we are no match for them, quick pull a victory out of a hat, yay we win, end. Literally every story with the reapers summarised. Again, personal bias is affecting here, but it’s not a particularly riveting part of mass effect and for me personally it has a tendancy to kill my interest in stories as again, the whole reaper war is usually always the same in each story and the aftermath is usually the end of the story, so it’s predictable and generally just annoys me at this point with the lack of creativity. Again, personal bias, so sorry if that felt like I was attacking you or your writing in anyway, it’s mainly my opinion and I’d repeat it to most authors who use the reapers with no variations or even who use it as the endgame.

Other than all this, I honestly love the story, I like the whole AU with an advanced humanity in just about every variation, especially the very rare few that actually will include Shepard in a significant role, usually she takes a back seat in such stories (if she even shows up) so this is a nice change. It also amuses me how the humans are all like, ‘our fleet is mostly obsolete tech because we’ e been at peace for centuries’ and the citadel races are like, ‘what powerful tech, oh woe is me’ not knowing they’re fighting an a race using old equipment. I was suprised there wasn’t so much as a mention a a Dyson sphere or even the start of one though, even a ring world around the sun would have worked.

But yeah, I’m better at pointing out issues and giving negative opinions than heaping on praise so sorry if this comes off negatively more than positively. It’s no my intent and I really enjoyed the story despite the issues I’ve mentioned, hope to see more soon.

I sincerely hope that this story has not been abandoned.
This is the best Mass Effect fanfiction I've ever read. I haven't played the Mass Effect games (yet) but I like the story of that universe and I especially love stories that deal with the whole topic of what it means to have "first contact" with aliens. And again, I love everything about "first contact" and the way you've fleshed that out in this story is great. To begin with, you show how complex it is with the language issue and everything related to diseases, that's great, I feel that most of the stories do not bother to address that enough. I also like all the political issues that are raised, the discussions, the different points of view and the things that happen "under the table", as well as the interaction between the different leaders. All of that in a "first contact" context seems pretty cool to me. But above all, above all, I love that you show all the factions as competent. In many fanfictions the Citadel Council is either useless or just very weak and humanity is super powerful. It's not the case in this story, or at least I don't see it that way, it feels like everyone is really trying to do things right. And that's great.
I also like how the relationship between Tevos and Shepard developed.
If there is anything I would like to comment on, it is that I feel that more could have been done with the story of the robot girl who was kidnapped and sold. I don't know, I feel like everything that happened with that didn't lead to anything.
I was expecting something like a side story where the robot girl wandered the galaxy or something. I don't know. Was she at least able to meet up with the miners?
Anyway, the story is great and I really hope you continue it.

Postscript: Sorry for spelling errors, English is not my language. Greetings from Argentina.

This really feels like an attempt of an mp3.14156player story but without the wit or actual sense within the pseudoscience. The dialog is dry and the humor is forced.

I think that was a nice way of saying show me how to fish don't just give me the fish.

500 years into the future and we still have humans? We're already seeing narrow AIs routinely outperforming humans even in topics considered only human for a long time - art, music, medicine. If the most stupid AI we can create can beat us through the sheer amount of data put into it, an actual general AI will be our overlord in minutes after becoming sapient. The timeline is completely unrealistic and fails to take into account any of the advances in the past 50 years. Like someone from the 1960s attempted to write a sci-fi book. I will not address the lackluster dialogue, and questionable style and grammar.

ok clearly you dont know your own story, seeing as humanity here should easily defeat the citadel as long as they are not being total retards. also they are more like a big fish traped in a very small pond.

Love it

You have 2 many stories in the same chapter. Suggest separating them better as independent stories.

bullshit, humanity would not get curbstumped, if enything they would curbstomp the citadell so long as they are not being fucking retarded.

Glad i found this fic again

How does the planetary stealth work? You note it being gravity based and that it shields it from ME RADAR and LIDAR yet the planet is fully visible at roughly 200,000km? It is self-contradicting, unless it works with distance?

Don't Citadel species use translation packages in implants and omnitools to communicate? Why didn't one of the rescuees, like Benezia, inform Shepard of this; sending an alphabet and rough chemistry and mathematical translation solves the issue literally in no time, given the presence of AI.

The em shield note was not handled well. How in the world is a defense against solar flares forgotten and neglected for 200 years? How are the general and co. standing and wasting time(google) when they have AI to act as information taps; ultron?

It's hard to believe that there are so few large human settlements in Sol. With the tech, asteroid belts and oort cloud, being confined to earth and mars is unrealistic. Over 500 years of space occupation, ftl is largely a non-issue in a solar system due to present sub-c travel. It also does not stop colonization of other systems, just slows it down to a slow crawl; sleeper ships, as you note the presence of QEC.

Also, static defenses are one of the first steps to strategic defense failure. No dedicated military vessels beyond the stealth craft? With asteroid resources how would they be harvested, secured, transported and so on? That alone needs military ships.

With the ability to manipulate earth's gravity, i assume that humans in this story can manipulate gravity to an extent. If so, they can move their ships at high sub-c speeds.
If upto 20% c, how is it that other systems have not been colonized? There are 2 solar systems within 10 lightyears of sol. and 13 others classed as star systems. How is it that industries have not been set up on the asteroid belts, planets, star systems and near gas giants all round earth?

The large ring is a scifi theme, nothing more. It serves no purpose that orbiting space stations of the same resources and scale cannot, is hard to build; gravity and rotation considerations, and presents one of the largest infrastructural risks to life on earth; break apart just 1 section and gravity says hello. Space elevators have less risk and those things would wrap around earth if broken just below centerpoint.

Noice

Aesome to See you back at the Story!
Love to see the progression in the plot!

Awesome story. I love your work

Very interesting
Excellent chapter