What type of unit did Cora serve in, again?

Asari commando unit

They were called "Azure chastity"....

LOL I like Cora but she brags a lot about her asari commando training. Peebee teasing her about not being Asari was funny.

Hmmm, I think she was a volus huntress? 

Sure I can. I can also blame her for being annoyingly Asari-phile a fair bit of the time, and for lacking her own self-confidence.

At least her character arc gets over it, but it's still grating to hear for the umpteenth time.

There is no greater teacher than a pure volus biotic god!

Cora gets a lot of backlash for the amount of time she mentions serving with the Asari, and it indeed can be annoying, but most other squadmates do this as well.

I mean, how many times Liam mentioned HUS-T1? Or Vetra her sister and her smuggling carrear? Or PeeBee saying she needs to move and wants to explore? Or Jaal with "Angarians are open with their feelings", and so on.

That's doesn't have to be a problem, but it can get annoying sometimes.

We've seen Sarissa and Cora deploying a >2km long barrier capable of withstanding and even deflecting massive anti-ship missiles back to the ship that fired them. Probably even worse than just being obliterated. 

Or maybe just ask her about the weather, or what kind of music she likes, or how her day went. You'll probably still get all those asari commando details.

What you point out goes beyond a writing problem, its also a conversation mecanisms problem to me. its like they didnt figure out meaningful conversation trees and dumped all info together. Makes it highly repetitive and kills the feeling of a 'bonding arc' with the characters.

How about using the actual system (professional/casual/emotional/thinker) to get to know specific sides of characters? Thhat would have helped. Like if you go casual with Cora, she'd chew you about not being the leader she would have wanted and eventually would put her guard down and enjoy herself in the adventure. If you go proessionnal with her, she's ok with you much quicker but you never get her sending you poems and talking about growing a garden comes way later or only if you switch to emotional with her. Emotional for the poetry and flowers but also having her be a 'big sister' to Ryder (like the side she shows when helping the younger asari on the Asari Ark). If you go with the thinker/scientific approach, then you get to talk shop and discuss her biotics and Huntresses.

I could figure out something for Liam just as well:
professionnel: chew him about being too casual about the job.. he doesnt like you too much at first but after he makes his big mistakes, he comes around and realizes why youre a stickler sometimes.
casual: you 2 get along from the get go and bro it up,  and you get that drink on the citadel on the dirty coach much earlier then professionnal Ryder (before his LM as it is right now)
emotional: mistakes are made for learning, Ryder is understanding of the hotheadness, the team is a family
thinker/scientifc approach: Lets hear about HUSTL and tactical teamwork

I could go on...

But honestly, I fear Bioware is just to afraid to make choices right now and offer strong narrative threads because it would 'force the player' out of being able to access everything at ounce. So they kinda put your soup, meal and dessert all in the same plate and be like 'you get everything right now! thats freedom for you!'. Suprise, it doesnt taste so great.

Why did Alec pick Cora as his second, anyway? She's a certified weeablue by any account and thinks things will be okay only once Asari are there to do the thinking - this can happen after the Turian and Salarian pathfinder teams have been found and when the main plot is going along nicely under kid Ryder. I think a second in line for the human pathfinder ought to have some faith in her own species' capabilities. Doesn't look like Alec managed to make much of an impression as a mentor either.

That's the thing. I'm not talking about the quantity.Im talking about the branching mechanism. The convos are exposed based on loose topic (let's talk about you, let's talk about your training, etc). Why implement a '4voices ' system and not use it to sort out convos? Keep the same amount of things said. But give me an idea of what we're gonna talk about so my Ryder's personality stays consistent, there are less unwanted repetitions, more replayability as to how the relation develops, etc.

The word count is already huge in this game. Like I said, we have ingredients for the soup, meal and dessert. The issue is that none of it makes for a memorable character arc when it's all thrown together like was we see (actually, having less dialogue is what used to limit this problem in other ME games). So characters end up talking about superficial things (huntress, huntress, huntress) because of the unclimactic delivery of the convos trees. For example, they did much stronger work with the squad banters. There are clear subject threads between them and a clear outcome with character growth.

So that's where I find Bioware is afraid to make content more specific, intentionally designed, instead of dumping it there and using ' it's optional' as an excuse for you having to comb through it to figure out whats interesting with little to no structure to help you navigate the options (yes that applies to questing too).

I believe a certain amount of redundancy is required in the conversations. It happened often to me in video games that I simply forgot the details about a given character, particularly if I was playing it at a slower pace. Thus every new detail is presented with what is already known. Not very helpful for players who pace through the game, but helpful players who play it occasionally over the course of months.