system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
[Mass Effect] How is it that Humanity's first ships were roughly equal to Turian ships despite the lack of time for advancements?

In the first book we hear about the start of the First Contact War and we're told that the alien ships were roughly equal to ours because the reinforcement wave managed to wipe out the Turians that were there.

Given how many centuries the Turians (and all the ME races together) had to improve on the tech (better shields, better weapons, better engines etc), how were we able to hold our own using reverse engineered stuff from the Protheans, which would have been more basic than the stuff in use by the Turians since we see ship upgrades and advancements happening in the game and books (especially when talking about the Quarian fleet) in a matter of years, nevermind millenia.

The Turians and everyone else presumably got their stuff from similar sources, but they had centuries if not millenia to improve, yet we catch up in a couple of decades? I know we're meant to be a powerful force in the ME universe, but that level of expansion seems excessive.
gpt
The prothean archive on Mars was the perfect treasure trove of information. Literally the PERFECT way to jumpstart Humanity's technology by centuries. It's never directly stated by anyone, but this feels like one of the Reaper's traps. They knew about the Prothean presence on Mars since it wasn't a secret project, and the Reapers had control of the Citadel at the start of the Prothean harvest. The Reapers more than likely sent indoctrinated agents/slaves to Mars to upload specific technical information to the archive just before the end, because they knew that Earth would reach spaceflight within the next one or two cycles. (We very much almost missed this one by a mere few decades. If any of Earth's space programs were delayed, we could have been the dominant power of the next cycle and thus doomed to extinction.)

Also, the very fact that the other races have had centuries to improve on their knowledge is exactly why they lost. Turians fight in one way and one way only: massive brute force. Their warrior culture is dedicated to completely crushing resistance with overwhelming firepower because it's what they've been doing for centuries, if not much longer. Because they've fought in one way for so long, they cannot easily adapt and change. They've become trapped by their own success. 

Humans are adaptable, unpredictable and simultaneously bloodthirsty as Krogan AND as crafty as Salarians. Humans fight dirty, which is something the Turians couldn't conceive of. We sabotage supply lines, hit weak points and strike targets of opportunity instead of massing huge armies and crushing enemies. 

The other races have become complacent because of their many centuries in the galactic community. They know their place and they've become comfortable in it. Humanity is new, ambitious and unrestrained by tradition. Nobody was ready for humanity, not even the Reapers.