Why has no cycle been able to reverse engineer the Mass Relays?
Ive been replaying the trilogy and noticed something. The galactic extinction cycle depends on species developing to a certain ‘standard’ every 50,000 years or so and the entire galaxy has been described as having only 1% of its worlds explored due to the nature of light distances, and the relay network itself.
So the galaxy is always populated by dense islands if civilisation, whilst the rest is ‘wild space’
I understand that the whole point is that civilisations will develop on the paths set for them by the Reapers, I.E only using Mass Effect drives as a means of travel, thus eliminating the impetus to develop other technology for travel.
But in roughly 10s maybe 100s if millions of years, not even a single species was able to either reverse engineer the technology and understand it themselves, or develop new tech to explore the rest if the galaxy where relays aren’t prevalent.