How would the different species fare if they were completely dominant in the cycle like the Protheans?

[u/Creative_Strike8202]

My guess is the following

Asari: Incredibly slow progress, they would have been wiped out by the Rachni or their expansion would have been so slow that they would have not achieved much before the Reapers arrived

Salarians: Without the oversight and politics of the council they would have advanced more rapidly. They would have been exterminated by their extreme wrecklessness and curiosity (they would have had to uplift the Krogan immediately for the Rachni for example) or they would have advanced a lot further than any species from this cycle while leaving a wardrobe of crippled uplifted failures and experiments. They might have created something like the Geth on their own and that could have killed them before the Reapers

Turians: I believe they would have had the most stable regime and fetched most problems rather well but their economy would have been rudimentary and their technological progress would have most likely being mediocre

Volus: They would have been wiped out by the first major threat

Elcor: Something similar to the Asari

Hanar: They would have been wiped out by the first major threat

Batarians: They would have enslaved a bunch of primitive species and have a brutal regime like the Protheans with worse technology

Quarians: They didn't progress much until the Geth rebellion. Probably their fate would have been the same

Humans: Probably a very successful cycle with a lot of progress made. The cycle would have been a lot less bumpy than the salarian cycle and without an external threat there would be a higher chance of a major civil war between human factions

Krogans: I am not sure they could have achieved space travel in this cycle after they nuked their planet

Drell: Self-extinction (humans might be heading here in real life but in Mass effect this is not the case)

[u/FoxyGoddessX]

The asari only slowed down progress when the Turians and Salarians came into the fold. They were the first to achieve mass use of the mass relay system and found the citadel first. Their weapons were also more advanced than anything anyone else had.

They were slow at expansion not technology.

Also to keep in mind, not everyone in the asari government agreed with the passive stance the asari had. So if they had a military dictatorship things could look a lot different.

[u/Creative_Strike8202 → u/FoxyGoddessX]

Well they had prothean technology and only beat the salarians to the citadel by 60 years. Their progress seems to be lethargic compared to others while their cultural and economic output seems enormous

[u/FoxyGoddessX → u/Creative_Strike8202]

Much like European counties they are playing the long game. They avoid war as much as they can.

But as I said it’s more so that territorial growth is slow more than tech. They are ahead of the Geth thanks to the prothean beacons they hold.

[u/Creative_Strike8202 → u/FoxyGoddessX]

Didn't the Asari take 48,000 years with Prothean tech to do what the salarians did in a couple thousand years? The salarians were not even sapien species during the prothean cycle.

[u/sage89 → u/Creative_Strike8202]

The Protheans taught the Asari some basic things like farming and genetically modified them. And then left a VI on Thessia, which how much of a head start that gives you is an interesting though experiement. It would be the equivalent of time traveling to 6000 years ago and giving the Mesopotamians a tablet and solar charger with chat gpt on it. It's not like within a year they would be building nuclear reactors.

[u/FoxyGoddessX → u/Creative_Strike8202]

Somewhat. They sat on some of the tech but a lot of it is super unclear and just generalized so we don’t have a clear picture.

[u/Least_Bet4662]

Salarian cycle would have been wild.

I bet that ends by complete domination after the Yagh and an AI make an alliance, conquering the galaxy in under a decade.

The Reapers don't invade, they get detected and annihilated at range from planet sized artillery.

[u/Creative_Strike8202 → u/Least_Bet4662]

The accelerionist cycle. It would actually be a hilarious story if someone made it with the rate of problems that get solved and the rate of problems that are created to solve the previous problems.

[u/mynameistoocommonman]

their expansion would have been so slow that they would have not achieved much before the Reapers arrived

I'm pretty sure the Reapers don't show up in fixed intervals, but at points in a species' (or group of species') development. I'm guessing they have some way of sensing when the citadel has been discovered, but they also leave scouts behind. So if the Asari were the only interstellar species, the Reapers would just come later. 

[u/Creative_Strike8202 → u/mynameistoocommonman]

We know the protheans were more advanced than the current cycle when the Reapers arrived. There is an element of timing there as well

[u/mynameistoocommonman → u/Creative_Strike8202]

Do we? It seems they were pretty comparable. They were a bit closer to figuring out mass relays, but only managed to build one after the Reaper invasion.

By and large, it seems to be small differences, maybe a few years or decades. But it's not a fixed cycle at all. 

[u/Serbia_X_AlbaniaLOVE → u/Creative_Strike8202]

The protheans had a machine rebellion before the reapers showed up which is exactly the moment or near when they want to harvest 

[u/belac4862]

I think the Krogan cycle would have give the Reapers a solid run for their money. I can easily see the Kroger making mass realy canons to destroy entire planets to whipe out as many reapers in one shot.

I cant say for sure if they would have beaten the reaper. But they sur as hell would have made a huge dent in their numbers.

[u/Creative_Strike8202 → u/belac4862]

Either they would have been a pest like the Cravers in Endless Space 2 and colonize every single liveable planet in the Milky way or their culture would have developed and normalized at some point. Either way when their progress reaches a point we know they nuke each other lol

[u/Alternative-Ad5974]

Rachni?

[u/Creative_Strike8202 → u/Alternative-Ad5974]

Without the Reapers they could be very interesting but from what we know they are good engineers but they don't innovate much. They got FTL from the Salarians