The Tempest thread (confirmed 100% weaponry free)

They already said no to this but also said they were thinking about if for future games.

I was going to say no, but after seeing KirkyX 's post (including the mandatory Star Trek video/gif ) I think a dialogue driven space battle would actually be pretty cool. I certainly don't want Mass Effect to become a space flying simulator, and that's why I was reluctant initially, but a more tactical approach like that could work well. What I wouldn't like is something like the battles in Elite: Dangerous, though.

Yep. They even had an early, functional build, if I understand correctly, before deciding "not this time".

Personally, I'm 100% fine with this: I'm sure there are ships in the AI fleet with some decent weaponry, the Tempest is a specialist scout and research vessel, feels legit enough: thanks Mac for answering in a speedy fashion!

Cool. Mind explaining how they do stealth without the Tantalus drive, since Cerberus is supposedly too busy rebuilding Shep and the Normandy during this timeframe?

Thank you for making the query.  Do you mind explaining why you started a whole new thread, though?  I was honestly expecting Mac's answer to be posted on the other thread already discussing this... and I hate that I always seem to wind up having to bounce around multiple threads to continue with discussions on topics introduced on earlier threads.  It just gets pretty confusing.

It wasn't necessarily the Tantalus drive core that gave stealth: from the what I remember, the Normandy stealth was based on internalization of heat emission, coupled (I suppose) with radar/ladar absorbing materials. The Tantalus was what gave the Normandy superior agility and speed in both its incarnation.
So, the AI could have recreated a similar system with a completely different functioning mechanism for the Tempest. I dunno… a drive core tweaked by default to leave as few emissions as possible behind. Heat absorption hulls, energy recycling mechanism that drain on the emission to power lights on board, and so on.
A little like the transition to clips system in ME2&3: the Normandy has more kicks than the Tempest, like a clipped gun, while the Tempest is more like baseline weapons in ME1, with integrated cooling system. It doesn’t have the same punch (ergo, no weapons), but it can shoot disregarding clips and has no need to refuel until it is kept cool.

The Tantalus drive is what allows for no heat-emitting thrusters in the first place. As long as you have heat-emitting thrusters in the back, you can have any amount of IES in your hull, but you're vulnerable to thermal, thus easy to find.

Can't as many people who want to post on a single thread?  All this is going to do is cause a bunch of people to repeat post what they've been saying on the other thread... not to mention the fact that the tweet will also be likely posted on the Twitter thread and a discussion erupt there as well.  I'd actually like to see the mods here stitch this thread onto the other one before too much repeat discussion happens.

This is good to know! Thanks for making a new thread! I had pretty much given up on the other one discussing this content, since it just became back and forth arguing about whether a scout ship needs weapons or not.

Although I'm sure that's what this will become, as well.

I, for one, am not worried about it. With it's small profile and stealth system, as well as the REALITY of space combat in the Mass Effect universe (where a ship going to FTL cannot be tracked or fired upon) speed and mobility are all it needs. Not to mention that adding weapons takes away from that, and so instead of being really good at one thing (stealth scouting) it could be poor at two things (combat and stealth scouting).

Yes. Which means that without Tantalus, they're busted, unless they also use ODSY on the Tempest, and ODSY is a derivative.