I've been replaying Mass Effect lately, and I recently noticed something: Commander Shepard is a naval officer in charge of a (presumably armed) warship.

This is significant because there are a lot of surface missions where the obvious solution to fights where the Mako is outgunned is "radio Joker and have the Normandy bomb/strafe the crap out of the [Geth base/thresher maw/mercenary camp/whatever]." And yet he never does. Here he is, with what everyone keeps calling one of the most advanced ships in the fleet... and he treats it as nothing more than a bus.

Have the game developers ever talked about why there's no option to use the Normandy for air support?

I've been replaying Mass Effect lately, and I recently noticed something: Commander Shepard is a naval officer in charge of a (presumably armed) warship.

This is significant because there are a lot of surface missions where the obvious solution to fights where the Mako is outgunned is "radio Joker and have the Normandy bomb/strafe the crap out of the [Geth base/thresher maw/mercenary camp/whatever]." And yet he never does. Here he is, with what everyone keeps calling one of the most advanced ships in the fleet... and he treats it as nothing more than a bus.