So, from Mass Effect: Revelation we have:
Pg. 1-
An indication of how fast human ships are going immediately after they disengage their Mass Effect field generator and drop to STL velocities.The ghostly illumination of the familiar red-shifted universe spilled in through the cabin's tiny viewport
Pg. 1- All human ships have a few viewports and a main view window. They don't need them as they're completely instrument driven but they're included anyway as "a concession to antiquated romantic ideals of space travel."
Pg. 2-3: In 2148 Humanity found the remains of an alien outpost on Mars, the species has since been dubbed the Protheans and like many ancient races long departed they left their stuff laying about the galaxy. Oh and a lot of the world's religions got seriously shaken up with the discovery and conspiracy theorists are still around claiming it's government hoax or coverup or that they knew long before anyone was told, etc.
Pg. 7
This is in 2157, just 9 years after humanity gained the ability to leave it's solar system though 8 years before the main timeframe the book takes place in.The Alliance fleet- nearly two hundred vessels ranging from 20 man destroyers to dreadnoughts with crews of several hundred
Pg. 8- The Prothean bunker on Mars is dated at 50,000 years old and made of something that doesn't occur on earth and hwich has suffered very little damage in that time. Inside the bunker the protheans left behind 'millions of terabytes' worth of data. The human research team, a multi-national affair, cracked the Prothean's computer language in a few months.
Pg.9- Within a year of cracking the database humanity began spreading rapidly throughout the solar system with colonies on orbiting stations and the start of Lunar terraforming.
Pg. 11- Charon isn't a moon, but rather a Prothean device known as a Mass Relay that has over the course of it's time floating in space, becoming covered in rock and ice. Mass relays are a kind of gate network linking the galaxy together allowing one to cover thousands of lightyears literally instantaneously. Humans are still unable to make their own but they have figured out how to reactivate and use them.
Pg. 15- The London born Lt. Anderson has no noticeable regional accent thanks to a generous dose of e-schooling, info nets, and pan-global entertainment.
Pg. 22- Humanity first came onto the galactic scene with the First Contact War where we stumbled into space owned by the Turian Empire. The whole affair was relatively bloodless since the Turian's deploying their fleets drew the attention of the greater galactic community. Lucky us.
Pg. 22-
An idea of combat ranges.He'd seen action during the war, but this was different. That had been primarily ship-to-ship warfare, killing enemy combatants from tens of thousands of kilometers away.
Pg. 22- The Turians are one of a dozen sentient species that have gotten space travel and become part of the Citadel Council, kind of a space UN as it were.
Pg. 23- The War lasted 2 months before the Citadel Council brokered a peace with the loss of 623 human lives and a slightly higher number of Turians.
Pg. 25-
The second form of FTL shown in the Mass Effect universe. Mass Effect field FTL typically seems to be used to get around between Mass Relays and over inter-system distances. And the human ship in this instance drops the field 10,000 kilometers out from their destination mass relay. Oh and turning it off produces a lot of light.Surrounded by a self-generated Mass Effect field and traveling nearly 50 times faster than the speed of light,
Pg. 26- Mass Relays are targeted like Stargates in that they align themselves with another mass relay instead of being fixed to jumping between one particular relay and another.
Pg. 27- Most ships are too big to go planetside and have to use dropships to ferry troops and supplies. Frigate sized vessels are capable of planetary landings however.
Pg. 28
Personal shields, what must be extremely high velocity firearms, idea of loadout, etc. The shields are stated as being the latest military models but even then they won't protect from a close range hit by heavy weapons. Apparently the offense/defense balance is tilted to the offensive side at the moment.At least they were going in heavy. Every member of the ground team was wearing body armor equipped with fully charged kinetic shield generators as well as three-quarters visored headgear. They each carried half a dozen grenades and the Alliance's standard issue Hahne-Kedar G-912 assault rifle. The ammo clip on each weapon held over four thousand rounds; miniature pellets smaller than grains of sand. When fired at sufficient velocity, the nearly microscopic projectiles were capable of inflicting massive damage.
Pg. 34- An Alliance assault rifle can fold in on itself enough to cut down it's length to half and fit in a hip holster with the push of a button. Speicalists carry omnitools that can pick up electronic signals like say a proximity mine wired to a door.
Pg. 35- Bang and clear manuevers, huzzah!
Pg. 40- Mercenaries can afford decent body armor and kinetic shielding since a surprise attack from Anderson's team supposedly would have ended a firefight on the opening burst if not for those. Also notable are that they managed to make a tracer round for this rifle somehow and the rounds are still called bullets to.
Pg. 41- Smart targeting technology is built into almost all firearms, but it's still almost impossible to hit anything if you don't bother aiming at all.
Pg. 54- A burst of fire from a merc takes an alliance trooper in the leg, depletes the shields and hits the armor whereupon it proceeds to breech the thinner armor on the legs (the rounds bounced off the torso armor for comparison) and reduce the unfortunate troopers right leg to 'pulp and hamburger'.
Pg. 59- At 26 one can expect at LEAST another 50 years of healthy, productive years ahead of them. From the wording I'm guessing this covers the number of years available before old age starts taking its toll.
Pg. 83-84- There exist individuals called biotics, capable of manipulating the dark energy that binds all the empty space in the universe together through natural abilities. These are usually further augmented by thousands of implanted microamplifiers. The force of a burst from one biotic user was enough to toss an adult human male back several meters. Humans also apparently have no biotics of their own at present.
Pg. 89- The center of galactic trade and diplomacy is the Citadel, a Prothean space station consisting of a ring 10 kilometers in diameter with 5 arms each 25 kilometers long and 5 kilometers wide. Currently home to 40 million sentients of various races.
Pg. 90- Even with the most advanced weapons it would take days of sustained bombardment to do any significant damage to Citadel station's hull. It's further protected by the fact it is in the middle of a difficult to navigate nebula and is in the vicinity of several dozen mass relays meaning reinforcements from across the galaxy can be there in minutes in case of attack. It also has its own defense fleet permanately on station.
Pg. 91-
Some limits on mass effect core use. Most ships have to discharge their drive cores every 20 to 30 hours. You can do this by grounding on a planet or by close proximity to the magnetic field of a stellar body such as a sun or gas giant. Citadel station has a series of docking stations that can be used for the same purpose while ships wait to dock with sublight drives.Generating the mas effect fields neccesary to run at FTL speeds caused a powerful charge to build up inside a ship's drive core. Left unchecked the core would oversaturate, resulting in a massive energy burst being released through the ull- a burst powerful enough to cook anyone on board who wasn't properly grounded, burn out all electronic systems and even fuse the metal bulkheads.
Also the Serpent Nebula where the Citadel is located experiences constant, crowded traffic. It's described as one of the few places in the galaxy where you actually have to worry about colliding with another ship.
More to come as I find enough stuff to be worth a post.
