Eurasia

Eurasia (ユーラシア) is a gigantic space colony that played a very important role in Mega Man X5 and X6 and is also referenced in Mega Man Zero 4.

History
The repair of the space colonies damaged during the Repliforce War was almost complete, the only space colony remaining being the giant colony Eurasia located in a Lagrangian point. As it was quite old, it was planned to receive extensive renovation. Sigma hired a bounty hunter to take control of it, scatter a virus in the colony and use its artificial gravity systems to set it on a collision course towards Earth. To carry out this plan, the bounty hunter blows a giant hole in the colony which severely damages it and causes it to be pulled towards Earth.

Within 16 hours, Eurasia would crash and cause great destruction, in the worst case extinguishing all life from the planet. The Maverick Hunters plan on using the only available weapon in stock, a large particle cannon, Enigma, to sacrifice Eurasia for the sake of the planet. Unfortunately, as Enigma was too old, the Maverick Hunters plan on using the remaining time before the collision to gather upgrades to enhance its chance of success. Due to the Earth condition after Sigma spread the virus, most of the reploids that possessed the parts to enhance the Enigma had already gone Maverick. In every possible scenario presented by the game, Eurasia is destroyed and the "Colony Virus" merges with the Sigma Virus, creating a new "Zero Virus". However, the way Eurasia is destroyed varies:
 * If Enigma succeeds, the particle beam pierces through and completely destroys the colony.

Otherwise, the strike will merely destroy 62% of it, delaying the impact. The hunters will move on to their next plan: crash a space shuttle into the colony to eliminate it. To make sure that plan would work, they scrambled to gather parts to enhance it as well in the remaining time. However, due to the widespread virus infection, the shuttle's auto-pilot function couldn't be used, and someone had to manually pilot it and eject at the last moment, and Zero decided to do it.


 * If the shuttle succeeds, 82% of Eurasia is destroyed in the impact, and the collision is averted. However, some remains from the colony still landed on Earth, causing massive ecological damage and widespread pollution.
 * If the shuttle fails, the destruction rate will be too low and several parts of the colony will still remain and crash into the Earth, causing massive disasters.



At any time during the game, if the collision time runs out:


 * Eurasia crashes into the planet, almost extinguishing humanity.

In the canon scenario, Eurasia was mostly destroyed by the shuttle, but the remaining pieces still landed on Earth, causing collateral damage to its ecosystems and forcing humans to live underground due to widespread pollution. This triggered all the events that occurred in Mega Man X6; Gate explored the remains of the colony at its crash site and found a fragment of Zero, and one week later became a Maverick as the debris were infected by the virus.

In Mega Man Zero 4, it is revealed that the location where the colony "crashed" had been sealed off for a long time, and nature had finally returned to it. As nature is very dependent upon machines at that time, this area was regarded as a paradise for humans, dubbed "Area Zero".

Trivia

 * The name Eurasia comes from the large landmass that comprises the continents Europe and Asia and is a portmanteau of the two. This is probably a reference to the gigantic proportions of the colony.
 * Even though Ciel stated that Eurasia crashed in Mega Man Zero 4, this probably was a misunderstanding: even Gate, in the opening scene of Mega Man X6, said that he "heard they avoided the collision", what can possibly mean both humans and Reploids were unsure of what exactly happened due to the massive destruction caused by the remaining debris.
 * Ironically, the same location where Eurasia "crashed", Area Zero, suffered similar events in Mega Man Zero 4 when Dr. Weil tried to crash Ragnarok into it to exterminate nature.
 * Eurasia's remains can be seen from a distance in the Opening Stage of Mega Man X6 and in the entrance of Gate's lab.
 * The Stage Select Screen map pointer from Mega Man X5 indicates that Eurasia crashed on the south of Asia. Also, the Area Zero map from Mega Man Zero 4 resembles the same region.