LTK_70 said:
First they make futuristic guns with magnetic acceleration and infinite ammo. Then they realized they had to put some limitation on them, and added overheating, even though magnetic acceleration = no combustion = no overheating. Then they wanted to add the ability to reload, but because you have infinite ammo, you swap the heat sinks. Yeah, real smooth, Bioware. I would have preferred the tried-and-true ammo clips, to be honest.
Except that magnetic acceleration still requires power and the power to accelerate hunks of metal fast enough to go through shields produces a LOT of waste heat.
Now, just to be a negative nancy, but there is a REASON why starships are sterile environments without a load of personalized clutter: MASS!
Its hard to schlep even trivial amounts of mass out of a gravity well. Even with mass effect technology, I don't think they'd have enough extra delta-V to bring up your goddamn fishtank! There are more vital things you could carry...like spare parts or other mission vital equipment.
I mean, for entertainment/keeping your crew sane, you need stuff that is small and cheap and flexible. Video games, properly balanced crew members (modern cosmonauts and astronauts undergo a LOT of psych evaluations to make sure they won't get space dementia), digital books and movies, and maybe some miniaturized plants for the greenery. Decorated walls and clever use of holographic imagery could make a ship feel more comfortable for extended missions (which the Normandy was made for, what with it being a long ranged stealth ship).
This might sound like a lot of 'wha wha realism' but one of the things I *loved* about Mass Effect that, save for the actual mass effects themselves, the science in the game was fairly solid. They took ONE 'magical' thing (I.E, Mass Effect Fields) and extrapolated an entire galaxy of semi-hard sci-fi out of it! It was fantastic!
So, I'm going to be unpopular and say down with fishtanks!
EDIT: Oh, but I'm still buying this game. Oh hells yeah, its still fucking Mass Effect 2!