EA 'Mass Effect Andromeda Advocate' Executive Patrick Söderlund has been promoted.

No reason not to have upgrades.  Now they know Heleus is a dangerous place and that they have enemies out there.  Weapons are a must.

At the time you step on the Tempest for the first time the Kett have attacked you on Habitat 7, and wiped out two Initiative bases on Eos.  Helius was a dangerous place when you started lol.

Space combat--in either gameplay or cut scenes--have never been a big part of Mass Effect. Seems like a moot point to me.

Again we are not exactly sure on the exact capabilities of sensors in the ME universe but things like design principles should be fairly universal. And as Cora said the recoil from any main guns on the Tempest would blow out the windows. The Angarra got at least close enough to see that the Tempest had those windows so they very likely would have known that the Tempestwas not armed.

Heck I forget the exact scene but wasn't it mentioned that they were scanning the Tempest on the way down?

My reasons for deleting my account have little to do with the nobs here who think they can make everything into a personal attack (just as you've done now).  In the quote above, you'll note I am not attacking a person, but a behavior.  They can determine for themselves whether my opinion about the behavior is something they want to consider.  I left last time because I had basically said everything I had to say.  When I figured I had something different to say, I rejoined.  I don't like leaving dormant accounts all over the net, so I delete them when I don't expect to be using them for a length of time.  What does it matter to you anyways?  I've never tried to hide my identity when I've returned.  I'm the only one who "suffers" any loss for it - losing my post count and "reputation" score in the process.

Bioware could have certainly written their story with an armed ship at its core.  They didn't.  Why, did they write it that way?  Ask them.  My guess is gameplay.  I said earlier that it's not a story-breaking element for me because I don't really think that going into every unknown situation armed to the nines is necessarily the best course of action.  There's plenty of examples in nature of animals that use disguises or flight to survive.  My comments here were trying to relay those alternatives in reasoning, but if you'd rather continue to say that Bioware not giving Tempest a big gun ruins the whole story, that's your prerogative.  I disagree.  As for people missing the obvious, they are.  We are literally shown that the Initiative is armed in several ways... just not with a big gun on their big ships.  So, was it something they (i.e. the AI) didn't think about at all (la la hippies)?  I doubt it.  It doesn't add up perfectly either way.  However, I also acknowledged that Bioware has never been great at making things add up.  The Things That Don't Make Sense Thread (in which you yourself are a frequent poster) proves that.

I was kind of hoping I could find an operational version of the crashed ship on Eladen and just go for Kett central.

Why would lasers have null inertial shock?  I'm not a physicist but I assume the equal and opposite reaction thing still happens with lasers. That being said the excuse was just that an excuse.  Even if its valid why would you build big ass windows on a ship, even without guns its weird to have large areas that are structurally weaker. And since its just an excuse if they want to add guns, they just say blah blah venting recoil compensation allows us to use guns.

Point me to evidence where it failed please.

See what I mean?

Batshit insane.

Provided the Initiative creates a proper drydock where they can do major overhauls to larger ships, I doubt it would make much of a difference to the Angara. The Initiative has the ability to stealthily launch raids on any settlement it wished using smaller craft and armed units. The Tempest itself might not be able to bombard anything, but it can sneak in and drop off people who can, and the Ai has fighter craft that seem to be superior to anything the Angara have in space, which seem to be nothing but those shuttles. 

Maybe but showing force would have not been smart imo.