You can't change companion weapons or armour

Most of mass effect doesn't take place in a toxic/deadly/spacy environmnent, it is really not the case, most mission takes place in breathable cool planet or space station and in your quote I pointed several of those places on Andromeda but you totally ignore them.

If by dangerous area you mean gun fire, I would remind you that Pee Bee is not just chilling with nothing.
She has a shield, gun, speed, tech and biotic abilies to defend herself that is way more than the common soldier you face in each game.

The same logic does not apply to the frontline soldier who obviously need an armor because he is the main target of gun fire so shield is not enough and the tech/biotic fighter that do not need to put herself in danger.
That is the old melee warrior needs armor because they are going to get hurt and range unit need lighter gear classic principles. Not something invented by videogames but base life logic.


I know that, i was just pointing out that optimizing npc is not very interesting if they have only one way to be upgradable.
In Dragon Age you can do it for multiples reasons.
-> You hang out with 3 npc all the time
-> You get to choose their specialization and their role, so there is more than one bonus that could be apply to them
-> The game is party based, they are as strong as you are, so need to be optimized
-> You can choose their ability and equipment because you get to PLAY them
In Mass Effect
-> Only 2 npc at all time
-> They have a set class, so fixed optimization and by extension meaningless
-> You could win the game easily without squadmate, their equipment does not change many thing
-> You don't get to play them

So in DA game you get to customize your squadmate because they are really important to the overall gameplay so you could invest a lot of ressources on them. But doing the same in Andromeda would require more works for fewer result, I explain.
1° Each of the 6 squadmates have a very different bone structure, every human in DA share the same bone structure. Of course their is dwarf and qunari but the team already had to provide armor for them because of the npc race.
2° We could argue that we could made a biotic armor focus on ability duration, cooldown reduction or biotic damage. But unless you keep the same skin for those armor you would have to design additional armor.
3° Changing gun type. For each gun type npc have a specific behaviour : sniper get behind cover and long distance. Melee fighter go close combat. However and it may seems weird but it is a complete hell in term to AI to have adaptable behaviour, that is not just double the line code for each npc. You could see that in the trilogy, switch one squadmate weapon type and they act crazy. Having one gun type allows more AI possibility, not saying that AI is going to be good but it could be a lot worse.
4° Changing gun type is also a problem when it comes to cutscene, in one of the trailer you see Liam shooting with automated rifle. Change that weapon for a sniper rifle and it will be really weird. In that case the animator would have to stop showing npc using their gun in cutscene or having weird magic standard automated rifle appearing from nowhere. And those familiar with ME know what I am talking about it. Equip a two handed weapon to cassandra or a shield to bull and prepare yourself for a good laugh.

All those things could be done, but it would be a huge investment of game ressources, not just : "add a line of code to allow that to work"
We already discuss the question of immersion in dressing up character or choosing which weapon is the best for them so i won't repeat it because it is a design choice as stated in a tweet.
You may still want something like point 2 in the game but why put that on armor ? an armor that reduce damage or boost your tech ability seems logical enough. However it doesn't make sense that an armor boost my weapon damage or biotic combo damage. Can we not use the passive ability to optimize the character in one direction ? Cora investing point to boost her biotic damage or weapon damage seems a better thing from a rpg perspective than magic damage upgrade from a weapon no ?