10 billlion people in the sector maybe. Don't forget that the United Earth Directorate exists. Our home system didn't go extinct in the starcraft universe. The sector of space the story takes place in is a very remote sector full of space hicks.

Too bad for missing the Zerg. Salarian Mordin is too interesting. Letting him work with Queen of Blades is too attractive.

Hello

This is really enjoyable so far. I really like it, especially the bar fight. I hope you continue.

Ha!
That Omar's was fucking hilarious!

It has been over a year since your last update, are you alright!? Please do not tell me you have lost all interest in writing your fanfiction stories, as this particular story is VERY good!

intersting story so far. one thing thing though: why did you have batarians involved in the attack when it was a Blood Pack attack? the Blood Pack consists solely of Krogan and Vorcha.

Interesting so far hoping for continuation.

Would have been nice if Tali could have joined. Is Shepard going to meet up with Liara first of hit the other two planets?

I like this chapter better than the first one, though the italics and bolding has gotten to the point where it is actually undermining your attempts to characterize people through conversation. Tevos italicizes the word war, but the tag says she says it calmly. You do not need to italicize or bold what you consider the major word in every sentence. Trust in your own ability to write, and in the intelligence of your readers.

Your constant use of overwrought speech tags makes it hard for me to read this, and impossible to take it seriously.

So, the terran battlecruisers have shields? You're pretty dedicated to SC canon, from what I can see, so you should know that there are not shields, and that you should buckle up. According to the SC wiki, battlecruisers use force fields after warp jumps and when entering atmospheres. Otherwise it's just heavy armor. If you weren't taking such an obvious amount of time and effort to prove you did research on ME and SC technology, I would let this slide, maybe even encourage it. Also, those battlecruisers would not survive pounding from a dreadnought. I'm sorry, but the dreadnought armament is ridiculous, firing a slug with two and a half times the force of the bomb that destroyed Hiroshima, and battlecruisers can barely survive the tac-nukes used in-game (Starcraft sadly does not use many hard numbers, but nukes in SC were heavily sanctioned by the terrans after the bombing of Korhal. Even the Confederacy had standards.) I am personally okay with ignoring scale and hard science in favor of a good story, particularly when it comes to the likes of Doctor Who and Starcraft (very soft sci-fi) but you are taking time out to insert clunky dialogue and lampshading about how certain things work, proving that you do care. Consistency needs to be maintained.

Speaking of consistency, I did not find Raynor or the turians to be in-character. Jim, bless his heart, is a good man, but not the greatest strategist. His best asset is gaining the trust and acceptance of the people around him, and encouraging them to do the right thing. He uses people like Matt Horner to come up with the battle plans. He's more of an improvisation and reactive kind of guy, so seeing him take charge and make analyses like he did felt very strange. I don't think it's entirely out of the question, but most of the sentences coming out of Jim's mouth didn't sound like Jim.

Turians do not retreat. Turians do not surrender. There are oddballs like Garrus and madmen like Saren, but they are a martial culture whose imperial anthem is literally called, "Die for the Cause." Surrendering on behalf of his own men is...honorable, I guess? From a human's perspective, certainly. But he is an alien from a very old, very martial culture. It pissed me off to see the turians give in like that, it didn't feel like something they would do.

Matt Horner drinking his sorrows away? Okay. Didn't feel that out of character, and it was good to see the veneer slip away for a bit. I think him crying was a bit much, but alcohol can do strange things.

Spider mines. Cute, I liked it. That was genuinely ingenious.

The language barrier is suddenly a problem. General Oraka, despite being depicted as a buffoonish thug (forget the canon!) somehow managed the enviable feat of translating the terrans (okay, it was probably his officers, but still.) Good work! Might have been a good idea to hand that over to your officers. (In all honesty, thank you for attempting to explain that hole from last chapter, but more than a throwaway line should have been used. It also passed up the interesting and potentially hilarious scenario of Kuril understanding Jim, but not the other way around. He really shouldn't have been able to translate in that time regardless, but here we are.) I'm glad you remembered the biochemical barriers involved with turian cuisine.

I liked Kuril's reactions. Despite his surrender, his interactions with Jim felt very turian.

Does Benning exist just to be proven wrong? Being professional or military isn't a bad thing, and I disliked the implications that drinking while going into combat is considered positive by the terrans.

Final concern: I don't like how the terrans are being portrayed. It's based more on SC2 than SC1, and SC2's writing was godawful. There's too much of an emphasis on militia and being a redneck, making it a little hard to believe that they were able to get banshees and vikings in the air on short order, let alone in a fashion that would let them badly damage an unknown alien force. Perhaps my own incredulity is intentional, and doubtless it will be matched in the inevitable "Raynor meets the Council scene" next chapter, in which the terrans will bedazzle the council members with how extraordinary they are. "No eezo? No established military? But able to beat the turians? Wowzers!"

Conclusion: Don't know what the fuss is about, but must continue regardless. It's still relatively HFY, but I'm hopeful that you will avoid the common pitfalls; the story is titled: "Terran Ingenuity," so some anthrocentrism is to be expected. You're paying the Council its due, aside from that shifty business with the dreadnought, so props for that.

Terran Ingenuity, the mountain standing over StarCraft/Mass Effect crossovers. Over a thousand follows and favorites, lengthy threads on SpaceBattles, and its own TV Tropes page. I decided to begin reading this after someone asked in a review on my own fic about whether I was borrowing an idea from it. I wasn't, but I want to try and keep these questions from turning into accusations. So, let's begin.

This is the first chapter, and I have to say (ugh, this seems sacrilegious) this is really disappointing. Don't get me wrong, the ideas are solid enough, though none of it seems terribly new to me. It's basically a running comparison between how the terrans of SC2 conduct warfare and how the races of ME conduct warfare. Aside from a CMC suit somehow being disabled by an EMP, these comparisons are done well, and both sides are portrayed as having advantages. The part I liked the most was the turians noticing that terrans were already used to fighting enemies with shielding, courtesy of fighting the protoss. That was a nice touch.

The disappointment sets in at the actual writing of the piece. Italics and bolding, italics and bolding everywhere. A little bit of emphasis is fine, here and there, but the frequency with which it shows up here makes me feel that you were uncertain people would know how to read the piece. Seeing as awkward phrasing and dialogue that ranges from barely passable to rather corny, I can understand the concern. In addition, the speech tag "said" is never used. Barked, commented, remarked, snorted, okay. One of those in about ten speech tags is okay. Never using "said" is not. It makes the already occasionally clunky dialogue seem even more awkward. Also, when leaving the end quotes and swapping to one of your flowery tags, use a comma, not a period.

The action is well-paced, and the characters have believable reactions. The turian's incredulity at terran designs was good, though I was disappointed you went with SC2 tech instead of the classic SC1 units. I don't find Vikings that impressive, though again, the reaction the turians had to the design was excellent.

Overall, I can see why this story is lauded. This is the quintessential method in which StarCraft and Mass Effect should interact, with both sides having believable reactions to each other. The tech was clearly well thought out and researched, though there is a glaring hole in that the turians can somehow understand the terrain's language with no translators in place yet. Taking out the scenes of turians listening in to the turians would have been easy, so I'm just going to chalk that one up to a bit of sloppiness.

Do I like this story? No, not really, but this is the first chapter, and I hate both reading and writing action scenes, and this is basically all action. I really applaud the obvious effort and enthusiasm that went into this, it shows a real dedication and appreciation of both series of games, something that is rare in ME crossovers. I'll be going over the rest of the chapters across the next week, or few weeks, and I am eager to see the hybridization between ME and SC tech, because I know it's coming.
So, to quote Raynor, "I'll be seein' ya."

Quite a ride. Brilliantly done. Just a shame it's dead. Hope one day inspiration strikes and you continue this.

Great work! Please, keep it coming! :D

Dude if you knew basic physics you would know that mass effect weapons are very weak. Comparatively a turian assault rifle is the equivalent of a 9mm round if you do the math. That is very weak. It would only have a little higher penetration based on the lower surface area but other than that. The wepons would be hard pressed to beat even modern day body armor.

Awesome story, shame it's been nearly a year since you'd last published though :(

Updates required!

Love this story. I'm Curious about the Zerg, I'm guessing Kerrigan and Co will show up at some point, much like if you chose to help the Rachni in ME3. Ahh, so many things I want to see.

Thanks.