Why the nexus and arks were not armed (theory)

Flying through suns and stuff? Maybe with the little Normandy icon, but not in reality/lore. Flying into a sun at FTL is exactly what it sounds like: flying into a sun while moving very fast. It’s suicide. Same for flying into anything, really. This is why FTL vectors must be plotted with care before jumping. (Think back to Joker telling EDI that he didn’t care where they jumped, as long as they escaped the Collectors. She had to calculate a safe vector.) If we hit something, we are dead and that something could be in really bad shape. Imagine if you hit a populated world traveling at 13LY/day. F=MA, so that force would probably destroy the planet. 

The Scourge dramatically limits safe vectors in Heleus. I get the impression that it can’t always be seen well or consistently by sensors, so every trip is a risk. Then, there’s the fact that it moves and seems to grasp for ships (in the novel). It outright chases Rem Tech, of course. Bad stuff. As Liam says, whoever deployed it are some “Mutha Uckas”. (I wish we got to learn their real motives. Stopping the jardaan might’ve been worthwhile.)

That’s the problem with the Scourge. The crap is everywhere, can barely be seen and can’t be anticipated.

The problem is that they seem to be both damaged and capable of FTLing around, which is how survivors and wreckage get all over the place. It works OK for Natanus, which seems to have suffered control damage but not much engine damage, at least until it finally wrecked in the Remav system while trying to reach H-047c. (Did they even encounter any kett?) It's not really clear how the kett keep following Leusinia around; we know that they orbited Eos, at least. And the Paarchero seems to have been to both Kadara and Elaaden before being captured, although in that case being followed by the kett makes a bit more sense.

I’m not sure why you keep using the Collector Base as an example of this. Other than the trip through the Omega-4 Relay itself, which takes place through a clear, massless corridor, the rest happens at cruising speeds, not FTL. Had it been FTL, it wouldn’t have helped your argument, as the debris does inflict damage on Normandy. Maybe I’m missing something in your intent?

You'll have to show me where “lore lets you literally FTL through black holes”. I can show you two very specific examples to the contrary.

In ME2, the Omega-4 Relay desposits us in a “small safe zone” amidst an expanse of “black holes and exploding suns”. (Those are the game’s words.) These objects are extremely dangerous, and it’s their presence that causes the debris field, rather than the debris field that causes the danger. The drift of several hundred thousand kilometers at FTL, which is average for Relay travel, is deadly when it passes into the mass shadow of a stellar body. Since this part of space is densely packed, the Omega-4 Relay has to be different. It had to be different because mass shadows will destroy your ship at FTL. Otherwise, its builders wouldn’t need such a special way in and out. That rigmarole is not security by design anymore than building a Keep on a height. It’s physics at work.

In MEA, we have a black hole looming in the center of the cluster. We can “scan” it from Pfeiffer System, with the game commenting that this extreme distance is as close as we can safely approach. If you pay attention to the flight vectors in MEA, they make at least a token effort to plot a safe course. They never pass through the black hole or planets, which would allow much faster travel times. Yes, we fly through nebulae and dust. In real life that could be a problem. There are limits to the writers’ knowledge and to reasonable devotion to science in a SciFi game. Maybe the zero-M field of an FTL drive is sufficient to negate the mass of any dust that would collide with Tempest? (Pseudoscience for an imaginary situation.) It’s certainly insufficient to do the same to large, dense objects.

If it’s safe to fly through stellar bodies, ask yourself why we still plot zig-zag courses through Heleus to planets whose destinations we know well? Wouldn’t it be more intelligent to fly straight to the planet, cutting countless LY off the journey? The answer is because those zig-zag paths are the safe paths through space. They are the paths that don’t fly you into stars, planets, moons, asteroids, the Scourge or other massive objects.

As to the game not explaining FTL, I’d disagree. We get a pretty thorough explanation of this stuff. Maybe check out the Wiki and/or MET codices? I can see how you came to your view of FTL, but it doesn’t match the info we have.

True Pasquale, lore and cut scenes, game play or even story points don't always match. Heck per the original lore as i remember it a biotic would throw one or two powers and then be too tired to go on. That never played out in game and even less so in ME2 on with the short cooldowns. But I guess where is the real lore is it the codex, the story, game play, books all have slightly different takes on a variety of topics.

Agreed. I was expecting to arrive here with my next post. Nothing wrong with interpreting space magic differently. It’s fun to discuss, either way.

I’m always finding little things that others experienced or interpreted differently. The opening scene with Hyperion exiting FTL and Ryder awakening is a good example. The “recruitment/orientation vids” laid out the plan, to an extent. The Uprising novel may’ve built on that, depending upon how you interpret it. I had assumed that Hyperion dropped out of inter-galactic FTL first, and then personnel started awakening. We don’t watch the minutiae of every nobody awakening in order, but rather jump ahead from the scene outside of Andromeda to the scene within Heleus/Eriksson in which Ryder is awakening. It never would’ve occurred to me to interpret the sequence of events differently.

Usually, looking closely is a fun exercise. Sometimes, it just exposes silly writing choices seemingly made in the name of expedience. ME is full of both.