Contagion is my favorite side quest but.....

Fine, then my understanding of what a Tantalus core is is incorrect. I thought it would be the key to multiple-times-light speed travel, not "limited FTL" as a DROP SHUTTLE would likely only have.

Also it is dumb she was able to pilot the shuttle so well. Only professionally trained pilots should be able to handle them!!!!

That was a constructed virus though. Biological weapon technically.

Peebee did it. many other characters have. Remember, they have engines design to cross systems with out the need of mass relays.

After the tutorial area in ME2 we travel using a shuttle to Cerberus base, so I assume it's normal.

The final choice in the quest was beyond weird. At the onset of the quest it was stated that the disease once in its active state was a deadly terminal illness with no cure. Why then am I supposed to feel bad about the roekaar shooting her? The whole reason she ended up there is because she panicked and wanted to expire as far away from anyone that could contract the disease as possible (why she went to a habitable planet for this is beyond me but the point stands). She was prepared to die, everything this quest told me stated that she would not survive. Why is it this big moral choice to save her if she's going succumb to the disease in relatively short order anyways?

Agreed. She never should've been in Heleus. She dodged screening and sneaked aboard knowing she was ill. Her death was precisely "the plan" when I left Harry Carlyle's side. There's no way I'll ever save this selfish idiot.

How is there different interpretations? When Miranda, Jacob, and Shepard leave Lazarus Station you very clearly see that the shuttle jumps to FTL and then see the shuttle come out of FTL when they reach the space station where Shepard talks to TIM for the first time. It looks exactly the same as when the Normandy goes to FTL. I'm sorry, but it's been established since ME2, when they were introduced, that Kodiak shuttles have FTL. Also Samara uses a shuttle to get to Lesuss in ME3 (although to be fair a ship could have dropped her off, but I doubt it). Dr. Aridana on the Nexus sent scientists to monitor the Scourge in the Eriksson system, they used a shuttle to get there. If you do the Doesn't Add Up quest it leads you to a shuttle in the Eriksson system that fled Eos when the Kett attacked site 2. And as someone mentioned before, Peebee was stealing shuttles off the Nexus and traveling to Eos to study the Remnant. So why is a shuttle having FTL a problem in just this quest?

Steve was talking about piloting a shuttle that "flies like a brick" in combat, i.e. when he was being chased by Cerberus fighters on Sanctum or combat drops like the one Namakli. Your average pilot most likely wouldn't have been able to pull that off without the shuttle being shot out the sky or destroyed by harvesters, but Steve was able to because he was a extremely skilled, military trained fighter pilot before he decided to be your shuttle pilot (and he only really did that because James wrecked the other shuttle). Traveling from point A to point B the way Ruth Bekker does in this quest? Yeah, not seeing how a person with basic piloting skills couldn't do that.

They usually are, that doesn't mean that don't have FTL and can't travel between several systems.

Piloting a shuttles is easy, getting mastery of them is another thing altogether. Hell in the Cerberus news network during ME2, an article appeared about a kid who hijacked a gunship and flew around till he had to bail out cause he ran out of fuel and died in Antarctica.

Shuttles are anyways FTL capable as this is also established from me2 onwards. Besides i think all equipment in general in ME verse is driven by fly by wire systems ie you tell the computer and it does the actual flying and they are easy to learn to an adept level. Kallo tells suvi that she can be an adept at flying the Tempest in a couple/few weeks.

So shuttles are FTL and flying/driving ME equipment is not as hard as people think it is.

Yep. Even in ME2 you travel FTL from the Lazarus station to the other Cerberus one, and to Freedom's Promise and back before you get the Normandy.

As for the cross-species virus, well the game makes it a point that Angara actually aren't affected by that it, but you don't know that, there's a risk so that's why you run after her.

I do agree making you travel from system to system like that got old fast. The game has too many such side-missions in general.