User blog comment:Suparockr/List of Plotholes throughout the series/@comment-1679409-20120717153223/@comment-4953843-20120718034828

"playing the trilogy multiple times" does not hold weight when you can't even answer the easiest questions (Menae. read. )

long answer to poorly thought-out "questions" (warning: TL;DR):
 * palaven:
 * 1) who says reapers aren't hitting some other target in some area where it's not really your concern. also, space is big. the chances of some slug hitting a random turian on palaven from menae? right.
 * 2) already answered. for all we know the DEEPLY UNDERGROUND generators could have been the things the reapers were after in the distance.
 * 3) ingame explanation: convergent sociocultural evolution + cultural intermingling. meta explanation: this is a human game. we would perceive salutes as gestures of honor whatever the species of the one doing it.
 * 4) why NOT. to insist on doing so would be trite stereotyping.
 * 5) vega's played for laughs, liara's of course a brainy type (tech masteries obviously not included in skill trees in later games for purposes of game balancing).
 * 6) two choices: a) continue commanding your forces in a futile attempt at resolving situations conventionally, or b) help shep find/assemble pieces of the macguffin that'll win the war.
 * 7) liara = shadow broker. before that, she's a VERY GOOD information broker. do we need to mention omnitools? information on demand literally at one's fingertips?
 * eden prime
 * 1) by the same logic you get waves of enemies in multiplayer instead of everyone and everything at once.
 * 2) power triaging + reapers erasing any evidence they were there. you obviously were "playing" the trilogy with everything (eyes, ears, brain) closed. (already answered by others)
 * 4 because you even fail simple counting) a lot of possible reasons: they were caught offguard. the bunker is not yet finished. etc.
 * 5) not every bunker in fiction looks like starcraft bunkers.
 * 6) shep caught them offguard. same reasoning why you can view the vids on cronos station.
 * general (and mars)
 * 1) how about delay the reaper ground forces while civilians evac (even if all turians served in the military that doesn't mean all of them chose that path). of course they aren't above hoping they can push off the reapers from the planet.
 * 2) were you blind when watching the cutscene? given the inanity of the other "questions"... ah well.
 * 3) you're taking it literally. spacefaring species typically have billions upon billions of individuals. it doesn't make military sense to put them all in just one body. how else did they get the "numbers that will darken the sky in every world".
 * 4) radio magic. you even experience some missions where EDI (the robot) appears to lose connection with herself (the ship) - when transmissions are being jammed - but then she makes mention of "compensating accordingly".
 * 5) now this tethers on the edge of speculation. i'm not going to give an answer here as it's up to the interpretation of the player what reaper intelligence -exactly- is.

and tl;dr part dos because you still didn't get some things:
 * 1) you deliberately omitted this: powerful mass effect field generators that retain heat and atmosphere over swaths of the surface .  also, see answers above.
 * 3) liara: again, see above, #7. about comm tower: why is this an issue? there aren't any others there except your squad. make do with what you have (if you even see the turians in the base everyone's busy/on guard except you). why not free a tech expert from his duties you might say? he's busy tending to more mission-critical stuff. speculate away whatever that might be.
 * 4)tightbeam: SCIENCE FICTION. jeebus. is it that hard to leave things to the imagination (and see above, general #4)? garrus/tali: see above, palaven #6.
 * 5) see above, eden prime #6.

i normally loathe typing walls and walls of text but i guess enough free time = this.

short answer to everything: *facepalm*