Very interesting. I've been reading this story for some time, and I've got a few questions. I would post them for a Chapter 16 review, but I think I already did that.

1. Why wouldn't mass accelerators work as viable infantry weapons? I saw one of your author's notes, but I was wondering if you could boil it down to something simple and easy to understand (though I appreciate the long explanation too).

2. How much more power do UNSC fusion reactors put out compared to Council ones? Power is a lot of things for a space-ship, including when it comes to it's protection.

3. Will we be seeing that one UNSC Battle Group rejoin with Infinity?

Also, as a final word, I'd like to give some constructive criticism.

Firstly, concerning plasma and kinetic barriers. In space combat, kinetic barriers would actually not only stop plasma, but keep it from being an effective weapon. This is because, in space, the only method of transferring heat is via radiation, which is extremely inefficient. That means that the barriers would do a good job keeping the plasma from damaging the ship (with whatever energy gets to the hull via radiation being handled by the armor plates).

In atmosphere on the other hand, plasma would likely be a killer. In an atmosphere, you can transfer thermal energy via convection, conduction and radiation. As such, I'd expect armor plates to become scorched (if not start outright melting) along with third degree burns from near misses, while direct impacts, if they get through the barrier, would likely kill in one to two hits, if not instantly fatal.

Next up, there's biotics. I don't know about you, but I feel that biotics would likely be a threat to Spartans, just not as much of a threat as they would be against a normal person. Please feel free to share your thoughts on this topic.

Beyond that, I think your story is excellently written, and I would love to see more chapters come out soon. That said, I hope you also recover from the hard times you're going through. Having lost loved ones myself, I know how hard it is when that happens. Hope you get better soon. :)

:
Keep it up
Dying to see some poor M.E. fleet watch as the infinity pops outa slipspace and slaps everyone around

CORTANA BEST GIRL

Random comment:
Never understood space ship speed limits, yes theres a max effective speed before either deceleration or relativity fucks it up but why does everyone set speed limits for the ships as a hard limit well below any relatively shenanigans.

Thus, we have revealed:
1) Titanium-A and Silaris armor may be similar in their mechanical properties. Personally, I bet that Titanium-A is the leader in this parameter due to its more technologically complex composition than Silaris. If it did not provide superior properties, it could well be abandoned, since the production of such a composite material would be even more expensive than Silaris armor. But without clear properties of real chemically reinforced at the molecular level nanotubular titanium with the inclusion of polymers in the form of carbon nanotubes, I have no clear idea of its mechanical properties. We all know what carbon is capable of with a certain structure and I personally believe that titanium with polymers and intermetallic laminates with a similar nanotubular structure and chemical reinforcement at the molecular level will not be inferior in any mechanical properties to carbon nanotubes.
2) Regarding its thermal properties, everything is already clear. The ablative armor used on the overwhelming majority of Citadel ships will work better against energy weapons than Silaris for the reasons already stated. For the same reasons, Titanium-A, although it will gradually deform, will still protect the ship much better from excess heat and energy weapons than Silaris can. Here it is necessary to understand that pulse lasers do not necessarily hit the same place twice or three times, and penetration of the armor by a pulse laser will not necessarily disable the entire ship. The armor can receive dozens of hits in different places and by the time the UNSC frigate is all scorched and melted craters and has depressurized sections as a result of penetration from pulse laser hits, the Citadel cruiser can already drift uncontrollably, since its entire crew was boiled alive in the cauldron called Silaris.

Recently I came across a small debate about which is better, Titanium-A or Silaris armor.
Well, let's figure out who is made of what and what they are capable of.
Titanium-A. This is not just a titanium-based alloy. This extremely complex composite was a material made of high-grade titanium-50, specially strengthened and chemically reinforced at the molecular level to form a nanotube structure (this has already been created in the real world, nanotubes are not some special state inherent only to carbon), the addition of elastic polymers (the same carbon nanotubes are a polymer material, but there is no clear indication that they are present in the composition of Titanium-A, although this is very likely), as well as intermetallic laminates. In addition, there are special thermal superconducting emitters on the armor plates, which allows the ship to dump heat directly into space. Most likely in the form of light or other electromagnetic radiation. The space between individual armor plates is filled with impact-resistant liquids and encapsulated healing agents to reduce chipping from impacts and automatically seal small holes in the hull. Halopedia update 2022.
So, the bottom line is that we have an extremely powerful material that can dump excess heat from the ship into space. This, by the way, is one of the main problems for any spacecraft. In space, it is much easier to roast alive than to freeze in ice. And this is primarily due to the lack of an atmosphere. If there is no atmosphere, then the accumulated heat simply has nowhere to go. Therefore, those huge backpacks on the backs of astronauts are mostly refrigerators, not air tanks. They maintain an acceptable temperature inside the spacesuit and do not allow astronauts to die from too high a temperature.
But are there any specific values that we can say with certainty about Titanum-A? Yes. We can accurately confirm its melting point and thermal conductivity. Titanium-A has a melting point of 1668 C, which allows Covenant plasma to melt it relatively easily. A Covenant ship's pulse laser is capable of reducing the armor of the Paris frigate in the attack zone from 60 centimeters to 40 centimeters in one shot. The thermal conductivity (the ability to absorb, distribute and give off thermal energy) of pure titanium is 21.9 W / m K. The thermal conductivity of its alloys can be reduced to 8 W / m K. If it is pure titanium, then its thermal conductivity is 4 times lower than iron, 8 times lower than tungsten, and 18 times lower than copper. What does this mean? That it is a poor conductor of heat.
Is this a disadvantage? Probably not. This material is at least (!) on the level of carbon nanotubes in its mechanical characteristics, if not superior in strength, given its own nanotube structure and the likely addition of these same carbon nanotubes.
So why wasn't it made heat-resistant? Like tungsten? The answer is the same.
So the answer is the same as the main problem of spacecraft, which I described above: "how to remove heat?" In fact, there are a lot of materials that can easily absorb plasma energy, such as zirconium carbide-based thermal insulation material, but they all accumulate heat above critical values, in particular, zirconium carbide-based thermal insulator can withstand temperatures of 3532 C. This is all good exactly until the moment when such thermal insulators begin to transfer heat to the main body and armor. This is how thermal conductivity works. It equalizes the temperature between a body with a high temperature and a body with a low temperature, if there is contact between them, but the speed of equalization of this temperature depends on thermal conductivity. The higher the thermal conductivity, the faster the temperature will become equal. For example, the thermal insulators of the Shuttle, such as LI-900, have such low thermal conductivity that you can hold this material in a red-hot state with your hands. Because their thermal conductivity is lower than that of titanium, such heat insulators will not be able to transfer heat quickly, which is why the heat insulator fasteners will not melt, but will transfer heat to the main hull, including into the ship. This will be a slow death for the entire ship's crew from increasing temperatures.
So what is the advantage of Titanium-A if it melts faster? In its ablative properties. When part of the titanium melts, it simply flies off into space, taking with it all the excess heat that the thermal energy emitters I mentioned earlier were unable to dissipate.
If the plates were made of tungsten, then due to its higher thermal conductivity and resistance to high temperatures, the plasma would not be able to melt it, but the transferred heat spread around the attack site and melted the armor mounts, carrying entire sections into outer space.
Now about Silaris:
It is called the best armor and this is true for the Citadel races. They basically missed a pretty big chunk of technological progress, literally jumping from small interplanetary flights or the first space flights straight to interstellar travel thanks to Element Zero.
What do we have at its core?
"Asari-made Silaris armor can resist even the tremendous heat and kinetic energy of starship weapons. The armor is nearly unsurpassed in strength because its central material, carbon nanotube sheets woven with diamond Chemical Vapor Deposition, are crushed by mass effect fields into super-dense layers able to withstand extreme temperatures. That process also compensates for diamond's brittleness."
Now about the real properties of carbon nanotubes.
1) They are about 50-100 times stronger than steel, this figure is variable because their characteristics can be changed.
2) They are more flexible than steel, which makes them resistant to deformation.
3) Their melting point easily exceeds 3500C and in computer simulations fluctuates between 4200C and 4900C.
Well, now the most unpleasant fact.
4) Their thermal conductivity on average at a similar melting temperature will be 10 times higher than the thermal conductivity of copper. Even more, the thermal conductivity of carbon nanotubes, specially created for this purpose, reaches a value of 10,000 W/mK.
This means that
1) While the material will be essentially invulnerable to plasma projectors and lasers, it will also collect a massive amount of heat from each hit and distribute it across its entire surface extremely quickly. This will cause the fasteners to heat up rapidly across the entire surface of the ship.
2) At 2500C - 3000C excess heat, the heat could be enough to melt most of the armor fasteners, leaving the ship with no armor at all. 3) I am making my opinion by considering the Silaris armor as an add-on external armor, similar to the spaced armor of the Whipple design. If the Silaris armor is attached directly to the hull and has direct contact with the main hull across its entire surface, the crew and ship will simply melt inside, and the Silaris plates will fly apart without a single sign of a scratch.
4) Mass Effect ships already lack a system for dumping excess heat directly into space, and for this they have various liquid cooling units that can barely cope with the ship's own heat generation during combat, so the additional heat received in huge quantities from the Silaris will probably finish off even a damn dreadnought after a little bombardment with Covenant pulse lasers.

I'm not a physicist, like most of the regulars of this site, but I know full well that the materials science in Mass Effect is complete crap, just like in physics. So I wouldn't be surprised if they simply didn't bother to consider the full properties of carbon nanotubes and just settled on the well-known mechanical properties of this material and its melting point. For some reason everyone forgets that its record-breaking thermal conductivity is what makes it so interesting as a material for cooling systems. It can easily and quickly transfer huge amounts of heat from the source to the cooling device. And for the same reason, a solid layer of carbon nanotube sheets will be detrimental to a ship during a collision with any energy weapon, because it will best of all take away the heat from the energy weapon, be it a laser or plasma, and transfer it to the main hull of the ship, because in vacuum conditions it has nowhere else to put the energy.

Thus, we have revealed:
1) Titanium-A and Silaris armor may be similar in their mechanical properties. Personally, I bet that Titanium-A is the leader in this parameter due to its more technologically complex composition than Silaris. If it did not provide superior properties, it could well be abandoned, since the production of such a composite material would be even more expensive than Silaris armor. But without clear properties of real chemically reinforced at the molecular level nanotubular titanium with the inclusion of polymers in the form of carbon nanotubes, I have no clear idea of its mechanical properties. We all know what carbon is capable of with a certain structure and I personally believe that titanium with polymers and intermetallic laminates with a similar nanotubular structure and chemical reinforcement at the molecular level will not be inferior in any mechanical properties to carbon nanotubes.
2) Regarding its thermal properties, everything is already clear. The ablative armor used on the overwhelming majority of Citadel ships will work better against energy weapons than Silaris for the reasons already stated. For the same reasons, Titanium-A, although it will gradually deform, will still protect the ship much better from excess heat and energy weapons than Silaris can. Here it is necessary to understand that pulse lasers do not necessarily hit the same place twice or three times, and penetration of the armor by a pulse laser will not necessarily disable the entire ship. The armor can receive dozens of hits in different places and by the time the UNSC frigate is all scorched and melted craters and has depressurized sections as a result of penetration from pulse laser hits, the Citadel cruiser can already drift uncontrollably, since its entire crew was boiled alive in the cauldron called Silaris.

Excellent work on this! I hope you keep it going!

Dude seriously what the fuck why are the authors notes as long as chapters themselves

Love this story so far, great job on it. Keep it up.
Hope to see more updates when you can do so.

Chapter 5
I wonder what would happen if they disabled all the ships then gifted all those disabled chips or most of them to the quarians

I am glad that this is not abandoned, the battle is well fought, I am eager to read what the new toys do

Hey dude, really happy to hear flom you again, awesome chapter!

Great story so far. Neat characterization. Nice note of Lasky's attempts to hide the nuances of his actions.

Good to have you back ! Hopefully your wife feels better now.

Ahhh, I see now re. Infinity's battle group! :) Very nicely done. ;)