User blog comment:Ygrain/Seriously, Aria?!/@comment-3201701-20121228222857/@comment-5267262-20121231161441

it seems I need to clear up the smoke points.

They might have better vision, however you do not (case point you need mods to see through the smoke)

Hence the grenade and smoke point boils down to, throw a smoke grenade at someone, then a frag grenade and they will have to move into to open to get away, or not notice it.

Smoke your enemy not yourself. If you smoke your enemy position then, if you cannot see through smoke, you have a smaller area in which the enemy could be hiding that you can shoot at, or if you can see through the smoke, you have prefect sight at where they are. As mentioned, shep and co do not have magic eyes so they suddenly have no idea of where any of the cerberus troops are and those troops can not move freely into better flanking positions.

Considering that it is many years since akuze, I find it hard to believe that not even a copy of the data from there has made it back to TIM.

As for STG, the task fits well with their MO, and they have a vested interest in getting at the technology and resources that travel through/were brought to Omega. It is implied the salarans have an army outside of STG, so what would a squad or two of STG operatives change on the salarian side?