Mass Effect - some questions

[SoapSurgeon]

Hi,

Just bought Mass Effect and am loving it so far. However, I have noticed something that is mildly annoying - but perhaps it is just me.

The 'action' side of things is good, I like the real time fights etc but what I find odd is the lack of RPG knowledge. What I mean is, I find all this ammo etc that does 'extra damage to organics' or armour upgrade that gives me '50 extra shields' but I cant find any info on what that actually means! Now this didnt bother me initially but I have just got into a fight with a few Asari Commandos and I got killed quite a lot, so I figured I would set up my weapons to be more effective but I wasnt sure to go organic or biotic or robotic or whatever else

It also isn't clear to me what sort of damage is being done - it all happens so fast that one minute I can have full health and shields and then in a couple of seconds he will be blubbing cos his shields have run out and then he dies! I thought in RPGs you were meant to get some info like 'Big thing swings and hits *CRITICAL HIT* -45 health' etc etc - this isn't present.

Any help??

Oh - I have also browsed the manual but couldnt find the info I was looking for...

 

[SoapSurgeon]

+10% vs organic means just that, it does 10% more damage to organic life forms so, anything living basically. Synthetic would be robots etc etc.

Biotics are basically the Mass Effect equivalent of magic, ideally you want at least one strong biotic member of your team as they are incredibly effective.

It's hard to explain it all really without more specific questions. GameFAQs has always proved helpful to me over the years, maybe try looking there?

OK, so a question is - is there anyway to find out quickly what type a specific enemy is: because you get attacked so quickly it is hard to identify what they are and adjust weapons to suit. Or do you just stick with one 'general purpose' upgrade?

What are shields? What is shield hardening? Which is better: 12% hardening or 50 shields??

What sort of damage does each enemy do? This is a tricky one as I want to protect against certain damage types but the only way to find out (to my knowledge) is by getting shot at and then going "ahhhhh - it was a rocket!"

Little things like that that would make my character more effective

 

[SoapSurgeon]

Best way is to listen to the enemy. If they shout with human voices- organic. Robot voices= synthetic!

Shields are the bright blue blocks in your health meter. They get used before enemy shots hurt your health. More shields are.... more shields. Hardening means they last longer. Try them and see which works best.

Simple stuff really then?

I enjoy the statistics side of things working out stuff but if it is trial and error then I guess I had better get stuck in!

 

[SoapSurgeon]

I tried getting out the mako on Noveria and shooting them with my sniper rifle but it was all over the shop - any way to steady it? Oh, i started getting cold as well!