People who go to Therum as the first main mission planet....

We go to Therum first because we can bang no one on Feros or Noveria

Agreed

After playing so many times this feels like the best way to do the story:
1. Feros: It is under attack so you need to hurry both to help and/or not lose that lead.
2. Therum: You got the Cipher but can’t understand it so need Liara to help decipher it with her expertise.
3. Virmire: You got a location on Saren so can’t wait since he might move again. Going after the last lead seems pointless since you can stop him now.
4. Noveria: You know where Saren wants to go but neither know where Ilos is, so you get the info from Benezia. Also explains why Saren seems to have just gotten there after we escape Citadel.

Precisely. We are in command of a military operation and need to make the most tactically sound choices.



There are three (initial) options available:

Human colony under attack from Geth, who are known to be agents of our ultimate target.
Find a  researcher who may have knowledge of her mother's location and goals
Find the mother of said researcher and extract mission-critical information.

In all circumstances dealing with the colony under attack is the most logical choice. Not only is it the most time sensitive, but of the three options it has an outcome that can be most accurately modelled - Seek and destroy the Geth, secure the colony, gather intelligence on the Geth's movements and long-term goals.

I ten dt odo Virmire and Noveria around bu tgenerall yyeah tha tseems the bes tway round story wise.

I agree that Feros sounds the most urgent from the initial descriptions. The one thing that I find annoying is that Ethan Jeong is pretty much the dumbest person alive if Shepard can't pass the Paragon or Renegade speech checks, which AFAIK is literally impossible if you go to Feros first because there's no way you'll have enough Charm or Intimidate points.

You've more or less confessed to a conspiracy to subject people to alien mind control, you've openly stated that the company wants the colony "purged," you're in the middle of a crowd of people who have very good reasons to be angry with you, and your response to a heavily armed elite squad telling you to back down is to try to shoot the commanding officer? I mean, really? Conrad Verner looks like Einstein reincarnate compared to this guy.

Noveria makes no sense after virmire. They didn't bother to change any dialogue, and Shepard would already know about Sovereign/indoctrination etc because he literally just spoke to sovereign on Virmire.. but he'll still play dumb with Benezia and she'll do that unnecessary codex dump.

The most cohesive order is

Therum
Feros
Noveria
Virmire

Legion agrees with me. That's the order he lists the planets when talking about the geth's search for Shepards body. Any other order is displeasing to God. Feros might make sense first, but it's flimsy. I prefer to finish my squad as early as possible and get the most boring, uneventful mission outta the way..