Andromeda: Not As Bad As I Remembered

I don't think that game companies operating almost on par with sweat shops is a good argument. Considering they shouldn't be operating like that in the first place. 

Were did it say the Kett's ship was immobilized by the Scourge?

A good thoughtful post, thank you.

I absolutely agree that there are individuals who react with humour (bad or otherwise) to whatever horror life has thrown at them. I myself rememember a grand uncle who survived the Eastern front, got shot through both elbow joints by a soviet sniper for sport, and came back with a really nasty sense of humour.

However, I would submit that just because individuals may definitely react like that, it still doesn't explain if the entire story has a tone of levity about it despite some of the dark aspects it contains. For example, just because my grand uncle came home with that special sense of humour he became notorious for in our family doesn't mean that a movie about the Battle of Stalingrad made with MEA's type and amount of humour would work out.

The Lethal Weapon and Die Hard franchises are great examples of how serious tones were scaled back in favour of comedy moments as the franchises progressed. Both started out as serious suspense and in the case of Lethal Weapon even with a suicidal main character, with occasional moments of humour... and developed towards cool one liners with lots of gun shots and explosions. They became lighter entertainment with each new entry. And I'm not saying that's wrong or bad, just that it happened.

Other than the "#WeComeInPeace" hashtag, was that lack of armament ever mentioned as a plot point in the game?

There is definitely a lack of vehicle mounted weapons in the game, but other than that, almost everyone seems to carry a gun and there isn't much hesitation to open fire on the Kett on Habitat-7. Is any serious attempt at a peaceful resolution ever made? I don't remember any. And most of your research is about weapons and armour anyway. Would you believe someone came in peace if they showed up in an unarmed truck or ship, but everyone in it was armoured and carried an automatic rifle?

Now an unarmed spaceship may still make sense, since according to the Codex, any engagement becomes impossible once a ship reaches FTL speed (which absolutely makes sense) - only to be contradicted by the absurd scene where the Archon's fleet intercepts the Tempest (look, another plot hole!). That explanation however cannot work for an unarmed ground transport like the Nomad, so the AI is really lucky that the Kett never thought of developing armed dropships or vehicles either, eh?

The most likely explanation is that BioWare wasn't able to and/or didn't want to include vehicle combat since it can really change the gameplay focus too much. They wanted to make a squad based cover shooter, not Battlefield Andromeda: Desert Warfare. Which is absolutely understandable, but it did lead to those funny moments where both sides ship in armed infantry with unarmed transports to duke it out on the ground and no one ever thinks "what if I shoot down that drop ship before it dumps a dozen Kett on me?"

As was pointed out above, the kett have been in Heleus for decades. If they hadn't managed to build/repair ships in that amount of time, that would be odd. Just look what they had built on Eos. Why the Nexus colonizers thought setting up sites right next to them was a good idea, I don't know. There had to be other places on the planet that were suitable where the kett were not so entrenched.

I think melbella is referring to the general proximity to the number of kett vapor condensers and large kett base and is assuming (reasonably) that the kett did not build those facilities in under two years.  I agree that it seems illogical for them to build just one mountainous ridge away from such a large facility.  However, it would depend on their options.  It seems likely to me that the sites were selected because other areas of the planet were even more highly irradiated than either the Promise or Resilience sites.  The eventual site of Prodomos is less irradiated that the first two sites, but was not picked... probably because it is even closer to the main kett base than either Promise or Resilience.

I'm not sure why the kett would build up such facilities on that particular planet if there goal in coming there was just to grab colonists and exalt them.

That, and it was also cleaning up the radiation so they could try to study/harness the Vault technology with less difficulty.