Mass Effect Andromeda II: Stay Strong and Clear!

[Archpaladin Zousha]

As this thread closes, then another one opens. We were discussing Andromeda's very own Mos Eisely, Kadara, as well as my own query about what advanced guns I should equip the Sentinel Shepard I'm currently playing with, with assault rifles appearing to be the dominant suggestion...

[Psyren]

Uh... could we at least get more than one person vote on this? Yeah the meme was big and hi-lar-ious and all that, but I for one prefer to look forward rather than back. I don't have any suggestions (yet) but others might.

Anyhow, I'm done with Kadara (at least for now) and have moved on to Elaaden, aka Neo-Tuchanka. And man, if you have not taken the time to read the terminals in the Krogan clanbase, go back and do it. NAO. My sides are still split.

[Morty]

Yeah, I don't think this is a meme that deserves enshrining. We should have a vote.

[Archpaladin Zousha]

I apologize for jumping the gun. If someone has a better idea I'll edit the original post to change the thread's name immediately. :smallsad:

[Guancyto]

I vote for "my face is tired."

[Psyren]

Just gonna spit out a bunch of suggestions now that I've had my coffee:

Roll Initiative
How Green Was My Cluster
Son(/Daughter) of SAM
Class Profiling
Starfinder
Jetpack Joyride
Exalt This


Quick question for those that have been to Elaaden. Can... can the Abyssal kill you? Because some of my navpoints are taking me awfully close to it.

[Dienekes]

Vote for "my face is tired"

[Yana]

How'sabout a positive meme?

ME:A II: Stay strong and clear!

[TheTeaMustFlow]

I vote for 'my face is tired'.

[Archpaladin Zousha]

Okay, so far 3 votes for keeping it as-is, 1 vote for "Stay Strong and Clear."

Quick question regarding the first game; would it be possible for me to "bull-rush" my way to 150 assault rifle kills despite lacking a means to zoom with it since I haven't unlocked it as a bonus skill yet by just stubbornly using ARs at places like Pinnacle Station, instead of doing an entirely separate playthrough as a Soldier just to unlock ARs for my canon Sentinel?

[Squark]

Just gonna spit out a bunch of suggestions now that I've had my coffee:

Roll Initiative
How Green Was My Cluster
Son(/Daughter) of SAM
Class Profiling
Starfinder
Jetpack Joyride
Exalt This


Quick question for those that have been to Elaaden. Can... can the Abyssal kill you? Because some of my navpoints are taking me awfully close to it.

Hardly empirical, but it hasn't hurt me yet.

Okay, so far 3 votes for keeping it as-is, 1 vote for "Stay Strong and Clear."

Quick question regarding the first game; would it be possible for me to "bull-rush" my way to 150 assault rifle kills despite lacking a means to zoom with it since I haven't unlocked it as a bonus skill yet by just stubbornly using ARs at places like Pinnacle Station, instead of doing an entirely separate playthrough as a Soldier just to unlock ARs for my canon Sentinel?

Yes, although I find reloading the Pyjak area on one of the planet's easier, especially for sniper rifles. Also, voting for Stay strong and clear.

[tonberrian]

On the Abyssal: It hasn't killed me, but the game does go out of its way to inform you it's dangerous - being near it causes my controller to shake ominously, and Drack repeats in a modicrum of alarm "Worm!". It doesn't go out of its way to attack you, but my guess is if you're unlucky enough to be where it enters/leaves the ground you might get crushed.

[Psyren]

+1 Stay Strong and Clear

On the Abyssal: It hasn't killed me, but the game does go out of its way to inform you it's dangerous - being near it causes my controller to shake ominously, and Drack repeats in a modicrum of alarm "Worm!". It doesn't go out of its way to attack you, but my guess is if you're unlucky enough to be where it enters/leaves the ground you might get crushed.

The one video I found of it making contact, the guy's nomad clipped through it, but the circumstances looked like it might have been a glitch so I'm not sure. I actually chased it for a bit but kept getting distracted by shiny objects.

Also, I did not travel all this way to get sassed at by FemWreav.

[Morty]

I'm going to vote for "Stay strong and clear" as well.

[Inarius]

I haven't experienced it but some players have claimed that it can kill you. So caution is probably advised, that or making extra saves while in the area .

Ill add my vote to "stay strong and clear" as well.

[Archpaladin Zousha]

EDIT: Upon more thorough examination, "Stay strong and clear" has taken the lead at 4 votes, with "My face is tired" at 3 votes.

[Psyren]

EDIT: Upon more thorough examination, "Stay strong and clear" has taken the lead at 4 votes, with "My face is tired" at 3 votes.

I count 5 actually - Yana, Squark, Morty, Inarius, and of course me.


Is there a way to shut SAM up? I appreciate the warnings when my life support is in the red (typically happens during a firefight in hazardous terrain, and I genuinely don't notice and then have to scramble for a safe zone) but not every bleeping time I go from shade to sunlight or walk past a heatlamp.

Also, some of the scourge tendrils around Remnant outcroppings do nothing, while others can fry you in seconds - anyone else notice that?

[Archpaladin Zousha]

That settles it! Updating the title now!

[5ColouredWalker]

Also, some of the scourge tendrils around Remnant outcroppings do nothing, while others can fry you in seconds - anyone else notice that?

I've never been fried once. And I've deliberately jumped in them because I wanted to see if they would.

Also, as I restart the game, I can't help but think about Kadara and Eladin.
Now, Eladin the Nexus doesn't neccesarily know about and is low on resources even if they did know [Sidestepping the fact that comet/meteor harvesting is a thing in ME]. Ok, I can understand them forgetting about it. But Kadara?

Covered in plants that seem edible based on the lack of rationing/the fact they're making drugs from them, and drinkable water. And despite the fact the water is on fire constantly belching SO₂ into the atmoshpere because the writers aren't scientists, it's habitable. Just set up some filters and your set... AND, there are people in contact with the planet, and 1st contact was made their with two seperate alien species, one of which was friendly.

Now, I know they wanted to keep their heads down and I know thingy-ma-jig (I can't be bothered remembering names) was a selfish *******, but given that Kadara was settled for months, why in the hell:

A) Didn't the aforementioned jerk decided to try get some power by telling the Nexus about Kadara, a world they could settle with some difficulty but would provide them with the resources they desperately needed.

B) Did The Kett ignore the arrival/presence of Humans and then treat the Hyperion like another first contact (Ignoring Eladin, which also still has Kett activity, as well as Milky-Way races.), instead of capturing and interrogating people in order to find the Nexus and with it get a bunch of new genes to play with as well as people to convert.

C) Given how the Angara were treated, why the hell did their 'rebels', some of whom worked with the Kett, not find information on the Nexus and then on-sell it.


In all honesty, but the time the Hyperion arrived, the people from the Nexus, if they weren't captured, should have set up underground buildings to live in, same as we do in desert regions. (Seriously, digging down to get cool has been known about since around about Man picked up the first rock.) Given the fact space flight is trivial, the water problem should have been solved by going up to drag comets down, letting them melt and then filtering the water. Food's a little harder, but we, today, recycle our own sh*t to make more plants. I should hope in 2160+, for a 'set up a colony in Andromeda' mission, they brought their own sh*t recycling system so they could use their poop and anything else they could find to grow plants, which can be done underground.

And don't tell me Sink Holes. There's an entire planet. The response to Morda not wanting others settling nearby should have been to go to a different continent, not ignore the planet.

[warty goblin]

Is there a way to shut SAM up? I appreciate the warnings when my life support is in the red (typically happens during a firefight in hazardous terrain, and I genuinely don't notice and then have to scramble for a safe zone) but not every bleeping time I go from shade to sunlight or walk past a heatlamp.

Man I wish there was a way to get him to shut up. It's annoying, and at this point I'm fairly certain SAM is about my least favorite part of the game, simply at a conceptual level*. Ryder is an idiot, who ends up being valuable simply because Daddy Dearest bolted a plot device into their skulls. Because the player does no work in understanding the Remnant, it ends up making all Andromeda species look like morons because they haven't figured out anything about the Remnant and all it takes is pointing a glowy orange slide projector at it. Does nobody else have glowy orange projectors? I'm not even curious about the Remnant, because I'm 95% certain I'll just end up pointing my scanner at a wall or something, then SAM will tell me something about yadda yadda yadda they probably became the Angara or something like that.



*Aside from the bit where the game is colonial as hell, but nobody even seems to notice that you're basically throwing yourself on a one-way ticket to somebody else's backyard 'cause YOLO, then acting like you have a right to set up shop there. Natives don't like you meandering about their territory poking in all the corners? Better machine gun 'em!

In all honesty, but the time the Hyperion arrived, the people from the Nexus, if they weren't captured, should have set up underground buildings to live in, same as we do in desert regions. (Seriously, digging down to get cool has been known about since around about Man picked up the first rock.) Given the fact space flight is trivial, the water problem should have been solved by going up to drag comets down, letting them melt and then filtering the water. Food's a little harder, but we, today, recycle our own sh*t to make more plants. I should hope in 2160+, for a 'set up a colony in Andromeda' mission, they brought their own sh*t recycling system so they could use their poop and anything else they could find to grow plants, which can be done underground.

And don't tell me Sink Holes. There's an entire planet. The response to Morda not wanting others settling nearby should have been to go to a different continent, not ignore the planet.

The entire operation is set up by morons. Just look at their travel plans. If the Nexus doesn't make it, the arcs are in trouble. If the Nexus makes it and the arcs don't, the Nexus is screwed. Because building the damn thing without enough power generation capacity to run the hydroponics makes sense. And good thing they seem to have devoted about 90% of the onboard space to foyers, water features, atriums and other highly useful and critically necessary features of upscale law offices. They apparently have hardly any ability to look for other worlds, just in case the ones they looked at through a telescope from a couple million light years away don't actually pan out. They seem to have no established system for governmental regulation, individual rights, sensible division of authority, criminal investigation, elections, or anything else.

Nearly everybody's an idiot. An awful lot of them think they're smart, and also that their deeply stupid plan is like, profound, man. I can certainly see why nobody in the Milky Way was particularly sorry to get shot of this lot.

[Chen]

The entire operation is set up by morons. Just look at their travel plans. If the Nexus doesn't make it, the arcs are in trouble. If the Nexus makes it and the arcs don't, the Nexus is screwed. Because building the damn thing without enough power generation capacity to run the hydroponics makes sense.

I think this was more because of damage from the scourge rather than not having enough power generation capability.

And good thing they seem to have devoted about 90% of the onboard space to foyers, water features, atriums and other highly useful and critically necessary features of upscale law offices.

This is game/reality division I think. Tried to make the place look nice since you're walking back and forth through it often. Realistically the same goes for the cockpit on the Tempest (or Normandy back in the previous trilogy). No real ship would look like that. Space and weight are at a premium on pretty much on vessel. Forget about your GIANT crew quarters on the Tempest. I can give this one a pass based on that.

They apparently have hardly any ability to look for other worlds, just in case the ones they looked at through a telescope from a couple million light years away don't actually pan out. They seem to have no established system for governmental regulation, individual rights, sensible division of authority, criminal investigation, elections, or anything else.

The telescope bit is right on. I mean you'd think they'd have at least sent out some OTHER scouts at some point. The Tempest was just sitting there (and I have to imagine there are at least a few others). The government stuff seems to be in place just in bad shape since so many people died to the scourge. Like the whole Battlestar Galactica thing with the secretary of education as president.

[Psyren]

Elaaden was fun! The Krogan are always a good time, and I misjudged Morda. Mollifying her so she'd let my colony move in next door and bringing the Krogan back to the Nexus is probably my crowning achievement in this game, second only to earning the Angara's trust after the Kett burned them so badly.

This is one planet though that continues to look like a steaming pile even after you activate its vault. The others at least exhibited a dramatic change in their skybox after you hit the "Fix World" button (Voeld and Havarl are particularly breathtaking) but it seems all I did here was add a couple of wispy clouds. I suppose in a desert that's enough.

And ugh, completing Elaaden put me in sidequest hell. Now I have Eos, Kadara, the Nexus, that Turian system, and like 4 different loyalty missions yelling for my attention. I thought I was most of the way through this game!

Spoiler: @5colouredWalker

Show

I've never been fried once. And I've deliberately jumped in them because I wanted to see if they would.

None of them hurt me until Elaaden. Well, I think one might have given me a light shock in a corner of Eos once. But the ones I ran into on Elaaden are like "Bang, L3 Hazard, GTFO!" - even through the Nomad. Maybe they fixed them in that patch? They're supposed to be lethal after all.

Also, as I restart the game, I can't help but think about Kadara and Eladin.
Now, Eladin the Nexus doesn't neccesarily know about and is low on resources even if they did know [Sidestepping the fact that comet/meteor harvesting is a thing in ME]. Ok, I can understand them forgetting about it. But Kadara?

Covered in plants that seem edible based on the lack of rationing/the fact they're making drugs from them, and drinkable water. And despite the fact the water is on fire constantly belching SO₂ into the atmoshpere because the writers aren't scientists, it's habitable. Just set up some filters and your set... AND, there are people in contact with the planet, and 1st contact was made their with two seperate alien species, one of which was friendly.

Now, I know they wanted to keep their heads down and I know thingy-ma-jig (I can't be bothered remembering names) was a selfish *******, but given that Kadara was settled for months, why in the hell:

A) Didn't the aforementioned jerk decided to try get some power by telling the Nexus about Kadara, a world they could settle with some difficulty but would provide them with the resources they desperately needed.

Kadara isn't "covered" in water (well it is, but without the Vault, it's nowhere near potable) - the few folks growing pot and fungi just found some groundwater with a rock formation that is naturally filtering out the sulfur. There's a group of friendly Exile scientists you can come across who've figured out the right rock formations needed to do that, but they're worried because they know it won't last. They direct you to a datapad where they're monitoring the water quality from this method, and it's dropping in very small amounts each day (fractions of a percent), but it's a steady decline. Basically, as more sulfur gets into the groundwater, it slowly turns into sulfuric acid; without the Vault it's just not viable to stay in the Badlands long-term. Probably not even the port, though of course Sloane has enough filters for quite a long time thanks to saving the Angara there.

In short, without you, any larger settlement than the port is simply impractical.

B) Did The Kett ignore the arrival/presence of Humans and then treat the Hyperion like another first contact (Ignoring Eladin, which also still has Kett activity, as well as Milky-Way races.), instead of capturing and interrogating people in order to find the Nexus and with it get a bunch of new genes to play with as well as people to convert.

I wouldn't say the Kett ignored us. Remember that they're not just conquering or marauding - for them it is religious assimilation (as indicated by their very names.) They're not just going to roll up and start Exalting all of us - they're testing to make sure we're worthy first. They've had decades with the Angara to make that determination, whereas we just got there. We even see them performing tests like this in the lab on Eos.

C) Given how the Angara were treated, why the hell did their 'rebels', some of whom worked with the Kett, not find information on the Nexus and then on-sell it.

You mean the Roekarr? Who would they sell it to? They despise everybody who isn't Roekarr, even other Angara.

In all honesty, but the time the Hyperion arrived, the people from the Nexus, if they weren't captured, should have set up underground buildings to live in, same as we do in desert regions. (Seriously, digging down to get cool has been known about since around about Man picked up the first rock.) Given the fact space flight is trivial, the water problem should have been solved by going up to drag comets down, letting them melt and then filtering the water. Food's a little harder, but we, today, recycle our own sh*t to make more plants. I should hope in 2160+, for a 'set up a colony in Andromeda' mission, they brought their own sh*t recycling system so they could use their poop and anything else they could find to grow plants, which can be done underground.

But flying up to get comets requires water too. It's easy to see why that wouldn't be feasible.

And don't tell me Sink Holes. There's an entire planet. The response to Morda not wanting others settling nearby should have been to go to a different continent, not ignore the planet.

Elaaden isn't a planet actually, it's a moon - and in addition to being small, it's tidally locked, making half of it unusable. And who knows what the Abyssal is doing to the other side of it or the perimeter of the habitable area. So space is a considerably more constrained than you think.

Spoiler: @warty goblin

Show

Man I wish there was a way to get him to shut up. It's annoying, and at this point I'm fairly certain SAM is about my least favorite part of the game, simply at a conceptual level*. -snip-

Yeesh, take it easy. I'm fine with the concept of SAM, I just think he triggers with his warnings too often.

*Aside from the bit where the game is colonial as hell, but nobody even seems to notice that you're basically throwing yourself on a one-way ticket to somebody else's backyard 'cause YOLO, then acting like you have a right to set up shop there. Natives don't like you meandering about their territory poking in all the corners? Better machine gun 'em!

No:

(1) When we looked at it through our telescope, it WASN'T anyone's backyard. The Angara arrived not long before the scourge did, they're almost as new to the cluster as we are. They weren't there when we were scoping things out.

(2) The "natives" that you "machine gun" are the Roekarr, one extremist faction among the Angara who would even rather murder their own people than let them work with aliens willingly. Unless you're defending the Kett, which... lol.

The entire operation is set up by morons. Just look at their travel plans. If the Nexus doesn't make it, the arcs are in trouble. If the Nexus makes it and the arcs don't, the Nexus is screwed. Because building the damn thing without enough power generation capacity to run the hydroponics makes sense. And good thing they seem to have devoted about 90% of the onboard space to foyers, water features, atriums and other highly useful and critically necessary features of upscale law offices. They apparently have hardly any ability to look for other worlds, just in case the ones they looked at through a telescope from a couple million light years away don't actually pan out. They seem to have no established system for governmental regulation, individual rights, sensible division of authority, criminal investigation, elections, or anything else.

Nearly everybody's an idiot. An awful lot of them think they're smart, and also that their deeply stupid plan is like, profound, man. I can certainly see why nobody in the Milky Way was particularly sorry to get shot of this lot.

The Scourge is to blame for a lot of this - which again, did not show up on our telescope because it showed up when we were already in transit. It was just bad luck (or, maybe not.)

[Squark]

Man I wish there was a way to get him to shut up. It's annoying, and at this point I'm fairly certain SAM is about my least favorite part of the game, simply at a conceptual level*. Ryder is an idiot, who ends up being valuable simply because Daddy Dearest bolted a plot device into their skulls. Because the player does no work in understanding the Remnant, it ends up making all Andromeda species look like morons because they haven't figured out anything about the Remnant and all it takes is pointing a glowy orange slide projector at it. Does nobody else have glowy orange projectors? I'm not even curious about the Remnant, because I'm 95% certain I'll just end up pointing my scanner at a wall or something, then SAM will tell me something about yadda yadda yadda they probably became the Angara or something like that.

Spoiler

Show

It's not the omni-tool, but SAM that enables Ryder to interact with Remnant tech. More specically, your SAM, who can modify Ryder's physiology to manipulate the technology (This super important fact should have been brought up in dialogue with SAM and Peebee, instead of codex entries and a terminal at the end of the game. Yes, at first it does feel like Ryder is just the Meat-puppet for SAM to do his magic. I'm pretty sure that's deliberate, though, since the Archon will express just that during his conversations. The dramatic question of the final mission, then, is whether or not Ryder is anything without a direct connection to SAM.

*Aside from the bit where the game is colonial as hell, but nobody even seems to notice that you're basically throwing yourself on a one-way ticket to somebody else's backyard 'cause YOLO, then acting like you have a right to set up shop there. Natives don't like you meandering about their territory poking in all the corners? Better machine gun 'em!

Spoiler

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The issue of Angaran Sovereignty is brought up a number of times during specific quests. On a planetary-scale, the player is only able to visit sovereign Angaran worlds (Havaral, Voeld, and Aya) with their permission, and the Angara only let you actually set up a large scale colony on the least culturally significant of those three worlds. Of the other planets;
1) Eos is too arid for the Angara, and they never bothered with it. Jaal says that as far as most Angara are concerned, the Initiative is welcome to Eos.
2) Eladin is likewise too arid for large scale Angaran colonization, although there is a quest where the issue of the sole Angaran settlement controlling the only water source in the area is discussed.
3) Habitat-7 has negligible oxygen, so nobody is living on it without significant terraforming.
4) H-047C is just an asteroid belt, and one the Angara didn't have the resources to mine or explore. It would probably be good manners to let them have some of the Helium-3 from the Remnant facility there once its activated, of course.
5) Kadara is the only planet the initiative has landed on that the Angara actually had occupied at one point. However, they abandoned it, with most of the remaining who stayed behind being criminals. The exiles taking over is cause for significant resentment among the Roekarr, but politically speaking it was kind of a no-man's land, and at least at first the local Angara welcomed the Exiles since they had just kicked the Kett out of the port.

It's also worth pointing out that like Psyren said, the Angara were pre-spaceflight on Havarl when the initiative left, and the Kett have been in the cluster for less than a century, so the initiative didn't know if there would be any civilization in the cluster or not.

The entire operation is set up by morons. Just look at their travel plans. If the Nexus doesn't make it, the arcs are in trouble. If the Nexus makes it and the arcs don't, the Nexus is screwed. Because building the damn thing without enough power generation capacity to run the hydroponics makes sense. And good thing they seem to have devoted about 90% of the onboard space to foyers, water features, atriums and other highly useful and critically necessary features of upscale law offices. They apparently have hardly any ability to look for other worlds, just in case the ones they looked at through a telescope from a couple million light years away don't actually pan out. They seem to have no established system for governmental regulation, individual rights, sensible division of authority, criminal investigation, elections, or anything else.

Nearly everybody's an idiot. An awful lot of them think they're smart, and also that their deeply stupid plan is like, profound, man. I can certainly see why nobody in the Milky Way was particularly sorry to get shot of this lot.

Spoiler

Show

The central problem is that nobody anticipated a giant negative space wedgie appearing out of nowhere during the six hundred year flight. Because, you know, that's not a thing that typically happens. I imagine they had plans for what to do if the some of the golden worlds had been rendered uninhabitable in the interim (Say, because an extinction-level meteor impact happened), or if the Arks and nexus were damaged, but having 0 viable worlds, 75% of the Arks being damaged or pursued by a hostile civilization, the last ark being 14 months late, and losing all of the senior staff is hard to plan for.

[Psyren]

The negative space wedgie appeared out of nowhere directly in their path no less. And it's not like a space station can dodge - it's even harder to steer than the Arks were.

[LibraryOgre]

So, has there been any more discussion of what omnigel actually is? I went to look at it for another discussion, elsewhere, and see that it has made a comeback in Andromeda, but was there any more clarity?

[Psyren]

So, has there been any more discussion of what omnigel actually is? I went to look at it for another discussion, elsewhere, and see that it has made a comeback in Andromeda, but was there any more clarity?

Quintessence, basically. It's a semi-solid slurry of materials that can be shaped into a variety of bits, bobs and widgets for small-scale crafting and ad-hoc upgrades.

The codex describes its components briefly here:

Since omni-tools are designed to use common battlefield salvage materials such as plastics, ceramics, and light materials (rendered into semi-molten "omni-gel" for quick use), it is quite possible for a trained soldier carrying upgrade kits to customize gear on the battlefield to fit the current tactical situation.

[tonberrian]

So, has there been any more discussion of what omnigel actually is? I went to look at it for another discussion, elsewhere, and see that it has made a comeback in Andromeda, but was there any more clarity?

If I remember correctly when they talk about it, it's some sort of... ferrofluid? Whatever that means. There's a conversation that comes up in your first Vault where they compare omnigel to the stuff running around in the Vaults and they say that it's pretty similar to omnigel.

[Psyren]

Just don't step in the vault goo. That was a nasty surprise the first time

[5ColouredWalker]

Oh yea.

That said, after all the trouble with the water on Eos and the shock of Vault Ferro Fluid, I was quite surprised to find out, after the vault, you just run through the water on Kadara.
Like, literally run. There is absolutely no animation change, it's like they forgot to put in your super not drowning skills.

Kadara isn't "covered" in water (well it is, but without the Vault, it's nowhere near potable) - the few folks growing pot and fungi just found some groundwater with a rock formation that is naturally filtering out the sulfur. There's a group of friendly Exile scientists you can come across who've figured out the right rock formations needed to do that, but they're worried because they know it won't last. They direct you to a datapad where they're monitoring the water quality from this method, and it's dropping in very small amounts each day (fractions of a percent), but it's a steady decline. Basically, as more sulfur gets into the groundwater, it slowly turns into sulfuric acid; without the Vault it's just not viable to stay in the Badlands long-term. Probably not even the port, though of course Sloane has enough filters for quite a long time thanks to saving the Angara there.

In short, without you, any larger settlement than the port is simply impractical.

No, the water isn't viable. But there was a group that literally stole both the designs as well as a bunch of filters. Given that these filters can be produced, that means that the only problem is the planet should have a really hot SO₂ atmosphere, which the game points out with the 'The lakes are literally on fire because they're reacting with the air' and then never again speaks of, let alone animates.

Sure, they're not talking about it, but why doesn't Sloan have such designs? She has friendly-ish Angara on hand and is willing to fight to get her way. She should have those designs, there shouldn't be a water problem.

But, then it would be an atmosphere problem/tempreture problem, and they were saving those for other planets.

I wouldn't say the Kett ignored us. Remember that they're not just conquering or marauding - for them it is religious assimilation (as indicated by their very names.) They're not just going to roll up and start Exalting all of us - they're testing to make sure we're worthy first. They've had decades with the Angara to make that determination, whereas we just got there. We even see them performing tests like this in the lab on Eos.

Ah, but based on whats around those tests only started when the arks arrived a year later, almost a year after everyone was exiled, and probably at least 6 months after the Krogan collectively said '**** this sh*t.'
And, by the time we're up and about (Let's say 16-18 months after the Nexus arived) the Krogan are already being exalted.
I have a feeling the Krogan aren't that worthy, merely that useful. Also, not having exalted the Nexus doesn't mean they shouldn't have already captured it, parked several ships on top of it, and forced everyone not being experimented on into Cryo.

You mean the Roekarr? Who would they sell it to? They despise everybody who isn't Roekarr, even other Angara.

No, there's a guy you see on Kadara who was literally working with the Kett. How recent was he? Why, despite there being an abundence of Kett on Elaaden and there having previously been a significant Kett presence on Kadara, do they know so little.
Only thing that makes any sense is that the Kett are only slightly more numerous than everyone else combined, but they have some aging warships from when they arrived.

But flying up to get comets requires water too. It's easy to see why that wouldn't be feasible.

No it doesn't. They literally have the technology to move with nothing but an Eezo core and a solar panel. [They don't explicitly have the Tarantulus core, but the Tempest is a stealth ship and they had Illusive Man backing, and the SR2 was built with a Tarantulus core. I'm fairly certain that the Tempest (And by extension, both the Arks and the Nexus since the Arks have a larger scale version of the tempest engine, so you might as well bolt some Ark engines onto the Nexus to move it) moves with just Eezo and battery power.]

Elaaden isn't a planet actually, it's a moon - and in addition to being small, it's tidally locked, making half of it unusable. And who knows what the Abyssal is doing to the other side of it or the perimeter of the habitable area. So space is a considerably more constrained than you think.

Sorry for not being clearer, though I was aware. That said, both sides of Elaaden are the bright side, so I don't think only one side is inhabitable. That said, point on the Abyssal, even if it didn't end up being more than a funny little side animation for me... I even deliberately tried chasing the thing, it might as well have been a really cool background .gif. That said, it looks really cool up close.

[Psyren]

No, the water isn't viable. But there was a group that literally stole both the designs as well as a bunch of filters. Given that these filters can be produced, that means that the only problem is the planet should have a really hot SO₂ atmosphere, which the game points out with the 'The lakes are literally on fire because they're reacting with the air' and then never again speaks of, let alone animates.

Sure, they're not talking about it, but why doesn't Sloan have such designs? She has friendly-ish Angara on hand and is willing to fight to get her way. She should have those designs, there shouldn't be a water problem.

But, then it would be an atmosphere problem/tempreture problem, and they were saving those for other planets.

This is overly simplistic; you're talking about filter designs that worked for a handful of people somehow just working for an entire outpost. This is like saying if they have a box of coffee filters, they should have no trouble constructing a city's waste water treatment facility.

The short version is that, even if you sidestep the scaling issues that a colony's water supply needs would present, the more water you need to pass through the filters the more waste gets built up. The waste in this instance isn't just mud either; it forms highly corrosive compounds with toxic gaseous byproducts. All that sulfur doesn't vanish into the ether after you take it out of the water. No, the only way to make a planet with entire lakes of sulfuric acid viable is exactly what we did - terraform the crap out of it.

Ah, but based on whats around those tests only started when the arks arrived a year later, almost a year after everyone was exiled, and probably at least 6 months after the Krogan collectively said '**** this sh*t.' And, by the time we're up and about (Let's say 16-18 months after the Nexus arived) the Krogan are already being exalted.

They might not even have seen a Krogan until the Krogan left the Nexus in the first place. My point stands - there simply hasn't been enough time relative to the Angara being Chosen for them to do more than study and keep an eye on us, and kidnap the occasional straggler.

No, there's a guy you see on Kadara who was literally working with the Kett. How recent was he?

Oh, one guy, well you have me there!

No it doesn't. They literally have the technology to move with nothing but an Eezo core and a solar panel. [They don't explicitly have the Tarantulus core, but the Tempest is a stealth ship and they had Illusive Man backing, and the SR2 was built with a Tarantulus core. I'm fairly certain that the Tempest (And by extension, both the Arks and the Nexus since the Arks have a larger scale version of the tempest engine, so you might as well bolt some Ark engines onto the Nexus to move it) moves with just Eezo and battery power.]

The Tempest and all the Arks have Oddysey (ODSY) drive cores actually. It allows them to recycle the static build-up for going long distance without having to constantly stop at planets to discharge like Milky Way ships did - necessary because you need to keep using FTL to hop around the cluster, with no Mass Relays.

And no, you don't just need "eezo and solar." You need Helium-3 too (starship fuel), which they either farm directly or synthesize from hydrogen, which in turn comes from water.