Wait how do they get around without mass relays. Haven't heard anything about this

so, the game takes place only in a single star cluster and not in the entire Andromeda galaxy? is that correct?

and what star cluster is that?

Hellius 

I'm not really sure what you're trying to tell me here, I was just marvelling at the size not looking to find reasons to criticize ME:A or the ME Trilogy

THMP. TH-TH-THMP. Reminds me of something... Can't place it.

I wonder what those arms on the Arks are for. Was also very surprised that the Nexus is less than half done at this point. I feel like realistically, it would be hard to construct the rest in Andromeda, without a small fleet of construction vehicles.

Which explains why we're only likely to see 2 intelligent native species. It's good for Bioware in that sense. They can only do a few new species, which takes fewer resources, but can still add more in later games if they want, as we expand. I also like the feeling more of exploring worlds in a dense fashion rather than one here, one 1000 lightyears away, etc.

This makes me wonder if the ODSY drives will in fact only be for the Arks and Nexus, or if the smaller Initiative ships such as the Tempest will have them.

It bugs me heavily that so far there is no sign of an escort fleet for this mission Would be nice to know what the combat capabilities of the Arks are.

It's all relative. Star clusters are huge by any human standard, but small on a universal scale (as everything is if you go out far enough). Globular clusters have hundreds of thousands of stars, each likely having at least one planet. Most of these won't be habitable of course, but there is still a lot to work with, especially where resources are concerned.

As others mentioned, this cluster will indeed feel enormous, but that's only because we'll explore it much more thoroughly than any before. I bet this one cluster will feel like a galaxy of its own, since it will probably have as much or more to explore than the entire galaxy did in any single ME game... possibly even all of them combined if we're lucky.

Transit hub you say? Clearly, it's a Borg installation. Wait no, a Kree warship. Or a Svartálfar vessel. Hmm... the Tet? Sorry, I'm tired and my mind jumped to a bunch of dark geometric scifi designs

If that's our ship heading to it, it must be pretty big, whatever it is. Transit hub is certainly possible, but maybe it's a derelict vessel? I love those Or rather, love how awesomely creepy they are.

It's possible the Kett have developed Mass Effect FTL, or another way to achieve FTL, but not something advanced enough to travel practically and efficiently between star clusters yet. If so, it's likely their entire species/empire resides in the Heleus cluster, and therefore there are no ...extra-clusterial reinforcements to call.

Another possibility is that we're not even facing the full might of the Kett, but rather just a single group of them who are either very xenophobic, won't let anything get between them and Remnant tech, or both - and that the rest of them could be perfectly amicable.

A few things.

1. No, we don't know of a range limit. However, we do know that they can be used at least as far as between the Citadel and wherever the Reapers chill in Darkspace (which presumably has a "Dark Citadel" relay mirror), since that's usually how they invade. It took them about 3 years to reach the edge of the galaxy using their FTL, which is about twice as fast as ours if I recall correctly, so they must have been at least (30 lightyears per day for 3 years) 32400 lightyears away. A relay works at least that far. Though that wouldn't help much getting to and from Andromeda, you could always set up a line of 77 mass relay pairs in between and get there fairly quickly

2. I doubt the Nexus is a relay, even if it's based loosely on the Citadel. For one, no one knew the Citadel was a relay until ME1. For another, them figuring out relay tech (and not telling anyone) for the mission would dwarf any other tech "retcons", such as inventing the ODSY drives. Lastly, it would have no partner to connect to.

3. While it would only make logical sense for the Initiative to have QECs (the only real-time communication method in existence in the ME verse), they apparently don't. From a meta perspective, I get it since they'd have to adress the endings as well as a slew of other issues (political climate after ME3, advances in tech the MWers make during the Arks' 600 year journey that they'd relay to them to help etc.), it's still absolutely bonkers from an in-universe perspective not to have them (though as KirkyX probably wants me to point out, the QECs in the MW may have been destroyed during the Reaper War). Either way, I very much doubt they could crack relay tech during the journey.

The only reason I'm wary of introducing another method of FTL into the setting isn't because I want the franchise to stay "pure" relative to itself, but rather to science. Mass Effect FTL actually makes some amount of sense in physics, compared to most methods in scifi. I love that, so I don't want another version to make less sense. If they come up with something that isn't too soft, it'll be okay.

I had this fear too, mostly fueled by Bioware's own comments about distancing ME:A from the trilogy and Shepard specifically. However, that sentiment turned out to be rather empty, and as of the last gameplay trailer, I think it looks pretty "Mass Effect-y", so that's good.

Heleus, actually, though I'm not immune to getting these new names wrong before confirmation

I'm sorry, I'm not sure what you mean here. The anatomy? Do you mean the aliens may be very alien, or are you referring to something else?

BansheeOwnage , there's always so much fun stuff in your posts. There is no way I can quote that, since the mobile version of the site has a word-count limit before it freaks out. I'll try to reply in an organized way.

I agree that meeting only a small number of sentient species in the Heleus Cluster makes sense. It's both sensible in terms of both in-game logic and real world resources. We won't really know who are the natives and the immigrants until we get the game. I'm curious to see just how "gone" the remnant really are.

The best guess I've seen for the purpose of the Ark's arms is that they are the visible part of the Hydrogen Scoop. I'm sure the Codex wil give us a definitive answer.

The Nexus and Arks were escorted out of the Milky Way by a fighter escort, but they traveled to Andromeda alone, defended only by shields. If they wished to travel through Andromeda, one day, and don't find a more immediate means than the ODSY drive, they'd have to look into a rotating fighter corps, I'd imagine. Six months on duty, then into cryosleep, next team up, and so on, through however many teams they support. It sucks for the fighters who age while everyone sleeps, but someone has to do the job, and that's slightly more realistic scifi than we've ever had in Mass Effect.

Agreed on the "big remnant thing". It could be practically anything. They always called it a vault when showing the pic, which tells us nothing of its original purpose, really. That just means it contains tech and presents a challenge.

As to introducing new forms of tech, I wasn't even necessarily suggesting that many or most be unrelated to the mass effect. The mass effect is the obvious, and possibly only, means of working around the Light Speed barrier. There are many possibilities yet untapped, though. The reapers were incredibly advanced, but they were also incredibly stagnant. They had been doing the same thing for hundreds of millions of years. They harvested inferior species that were never allowed to even remotely challenge them. They had no drive to innovate or develop new tech because their current tech suited their purposes. We could discover entirely new technologies, including entirely new applications of the mass effect, in Andromeda. I'm sort of counting on it, since anything less would be ridiculous. There is no way that the remnant and reapers developed exactly in parallel, for example. There must be divergent ideas. As Legion would've said, "Technology is not a straight line."

We're going to need more SAMs... (Jokes aside, I sure SAM is a fairly unique/limited run.)

Synthetics are actually the perfect answer. Rotating crew aboard the Nexus and Arks, as usual, with synthetic pilots for the escort fighters. If you feel that you can't trust synthetics, you go with inferior VIs. Either way, I'm sure people start popping out of cryosleep if and when an attack comes.

Yeah, I was probably just thinking of that. Do you ever think about that random pilot in that scene? He gets a lot of screentime for a nobody. Totally the secret hero of the Milky Way

That's true, they could be radiators to dump excess heat etc., or hydrogen ram-scoops as Element Zero suggests below. Both good ideas. I hope they're explained, because I like reading about lore/technical stuff, but it's no big deal.

1. That's a good point about mass. If I recall correctly, Reapers needed ridiculously large eezo cores in order to negate their mass, so moving something much larger is actually pretty crazy already.

2. A fair assumption, but it does beg the question: If it already serves its purpose(s), what's the need for constructing the other 60% of it? If it's just more room for people/labs etc., well... that's cool I guess, but I just wonder if those resources would be better spent on establishing colonies.

3. That could also work. Emphasis on the "accelerate" though, since they wouldn't have known about them when the project began. I think it would make sense for at least someone involved to... fear the Reapers  Even if they couldn't convince the others of their threat.

4. Hmm... Well, I suppose it all comes down to whether or not they could crack relay tech in 600 years. In the MW, sure. Cooped up on a starship with naught but calculations and simulations? Maybe, but you'd probably want to test these things extensively if you can. Because it is possible though, it's up to the writers, since fiction is basically built on the improbable, and it's not like breakthroughs don't happen in real life of course. Eureka!

Asari would be a good choice, especially since as you said, they'd probably have someone working on it already in some fashion and therefore experience. While krogan wouldn't, krogan scientists would be an even better choice for this task, like Nakmor Kesh*. It would certainly be nightmare-level for many people, I agree. Perhaps they would stay in cryo most of the time and have VIs do most of the work, while they're in charge of creative things. If so, basically anyone could assist.

So, even if they do, without QECs it would take 1200 years minimum to properly establish a relay pair, so your idea of repurposing it into a slingshot instead could work. It would depend when Andromeda 2 is set, though, since it would be a good idea to have a very established homeworld/territory before doing it all again, but I suppose exploratory craft wouldn't be much of an investment of population.

Ha, I understand. I like speculating and discussing these things too, even if it's academic.

*I feel like I should point out somewhere that Nakmor is her clan name. I forgot this at first, so I figured I might not be the only one, and I haven't seen it mentioned.

Yeah, I thought about something like that, too as well as storing fighters (or perhaps multi-purpose craft that can build/repair and fight). I'm not saying it couldn't be done, but one of the things that I wondered about was the timing. It sounds like we'll be building the Nexus over the course of the game, probably finishing it at or near the end. We have no idea how long the main story will be in-universe, so no idea if it would make sense, I was just wondering about it.

Haha, I've never seen Stargate nor any posts suggesting that, so yeah, it was a coincidence  Apparently you can't think of anything first anymore, even if you do think of it on your own. Not that that example was particularly complicated or anything, but still

Definitely to both derelict ships and crewed ships we can interact with, for reasons we've gone over before. And don't forget the derelict Reaper, of course. That was creepy. If they do have some, I wonder what they'll be, since they've done the mind-bending sort of thing on the Reaper and the "You're trapped while this VI tries to kill you" thing on that research station.

That's a nice thing to say, thanks! I enjoy reading your posts, too I'm also curious about that. Will they be as "gone" as the Protheans? Even then, we got to meet a live one and a couple of informative VIs. I look forward to diving into the mystery. Uh, but I hope PeeBee doesn't get to discover everything about them  I want my Ryder to be able to study/provide insight for once instead of looking dumb and waiting for someone else to figure it all out.

Good idea about being hydrogen scoops

I suppose I always thought the Arks/Nexus would get a small fleet of cruisers or destroyers (probably not dreadnaughts, and the Arks might be able to fill that role anyway) as permanent escort, since even that still isn't a lot and you don't know what you'll find in Andromeda. Obviously they're not likely to run into any threats during the voyage there, so only shields is fine, but I just think it's odd to have such lax defenses when there. It's possible there is indeed a contingent of fighters inside the Arks/Nexus, which is certainly better than nothing, but not much. Although I suppose there are probably at least 4 frigates, one for each Pathfinder. I'm curious as to how we'll fight the Kett in space, since they probably massively outnumber us.

Rotating shifts for fighters could happen, they don't really need them while in FTL since it's practically impossible to be engaged there. But the concept in general is certainly something realistic as discussed with KirkyX above, for things other than pilots.

Ah, gotcha. You're right, the Reapers were very stagnant. That fact, combined with Andromeda having no Reapers to funnel its species "along the paths they desire", as well as technology not being a straight line is definitely a recipe for new and interesting Andromedan tech. Should be cool to see exactly what. And I'm also hoping we see new applications of mass effect from the MW species themselves, at least compared to what we've seen in action directly in the first trilogy.

The examples I like to use are negating mass while using the jump-pack to turn it into a jetpack (technically, you could achieve orbit like this ), or - using the same principle as ME weapons - lowering the mass of your arm/fist to punch faster, but at the apogee of your strike, increasing mass to apply more force. You could do similar stuff for crazy movement/parkour. Though that would be challenging to implement in gameplay, you could do it in cutscenes. Though second example may already be in-use as a standard strength-enhancing technique without being detailed in the lore. I'd imagine on-board VIs and omnitool calibration for each individual would be required, but that kind of stuff is standard.

I just want the writers to think long and hard about the potential applications of this awesome technology, because it can make for some absolutely awesome and unconventional stuff. If you need help, feel free to hire me as a consultant, Bioware Oh, and also because I really want the chance to play Ryder as a very smart fighter, in addition to being skilled.

Synthetics would definitely be the best choice. I'd like to know if the Initiative will (openly) use AIs and not just VIs. They'll probably use them, but I they might be disguised like EDI was. Hope not, though. For most things, VIs would work, like the fighter contingent or running calculations. You wouldn't even need mobile platforms to fly the fighters; they could operate as drones until the need arose. They could similarly wake personnel when needed for experiments or general creative thinking (but an AI could do that, too).

Most accurate description I have ever seen

There is no way the cluster will only have ten star systems. Open Clusters are the most sparse of stars and even they at the minimum consist of hundreds of star systems. 

Well, star clusters tend to max out at around 30 light years across. In the Shepard Trilogy ships are able to do around 25 light years before needing to discharge, so you can nearly cross the largest of star clusters without ever stopping, and within are the hundreds if not thousands and even hundreds of thousands of star systems, the majority of which would have planets you can discharge in. 
Mass Relays were never needed for traveling within a cluster, but rather if you wanted to go from one star cluster to another star cluster. 

uhm...a star cluster is far less than 100 stars if I remember correctly...of course I could be wrong. Do we have a codex entry on that?