Mass-effect – Permanent readiness from promoting multiplayer characters in ME3

All of this is based on observations, primarily by users here who have shared their first hand experience.

Galactic Readiness Decay seems to have multiple rates, depending on your readiness score, or perhaps on the source of the score.

In general, it appears to decay at a rate of 0.15% per hour or around 1% per 8 hours, or 3% per day to a minimum of 50%.

There have been some reports of up to 6% per day, though I haven't seen this number echoed elsewhere.

If your GR is low, between say 50-60% then it appears to slow the decay rate to around 1% per day.

It takes very little to beef this back up, if it is causing a problem for you. For example you can play multiplayer, by yourself, and complete the Geth mission ... it's fairly easy to achieve a bronze or silver victory.

As @Edwin notes, if you simply start and exit a game, it will not count as an active day. You have to finish the game, which is why I noted Bronze or Silver being fairly achievable on some missions.

My understanding is that war assets and readiness (and hence EMS) are locked in after Priority: Cerberus Headquarters.

This is based on:

• entering this mission with 7060 assets / 50% readiness did not award the Master and Commander achievement. The ending did not include the final 'secret' scene.
• restarting from Priority: Earth with 80% readiness (over 5000 EMS, which should trigger the 'secret' scene) resulting in exactly the same result as the previous attempt.
• restarting from Priority: Cerberus Headquarters with 100% readiness awarded the Master and Commander achievement. It also resulted in the 'secret' scene in the ending.