Vendetta covered the best strategy - I did it without casualties on my first try with everything upgraded except Legion's sniper.
1st section:
- ducts: Tali
- team: Garrus
2nd section:
- biotic: Jack
- team: Miranda
- escort: Zaeed
Reaper assault: Tali and Garrus (the old team is back and kicking Reaper ass yet again!
)
Aside from the upgrades and team selection, you have to be careful with the dialogue before the final assault - one of the choices (the more renegade one) puts you on a hidden timer before your rearguard starts dying (with the non-loyal ones being the first to go). So instead of telling them to rush it, mission is most important blah blah, tell them to hold their ground and finish it (ie. the paragon, do it systematically safely, option).
The ending survival math is frightfully conservative overall - paragon and good choices==survival, renegade and bad choices==death.
One good thing to come out of a complete Renegade failure (not much of a spoiler, considering all the interviews and foreshadowing, is that you die) is the Commander Joker ending (don't watch it if you haven't already seen the ending):
It would be cool in a way if we could import that save into ME3 and have the crawl be something like:
"...
Commander Sheppard saved the galaxy twice. He died saving it the second time.
The galaxy is threatened by a Reaper invasion and there is nobody to protect it. Other people must step up."
Followed by a ME1-like armoured figure touring the Normandy scene with everyone nodding and saluting "Commander" except not stopping behind the pilots' seat but getting into it with the camera finally rotating around to reveal the main character is Joker.
Of course, it will never happen since the changes in the game (especially with the different voice acting) would be immense.
1st section:
- ducts: Tali
- team: Garrus
2nd section:
- biotic: Jack
- team: Miranda
- escort: Zaeed
Reaper assault: Tali and Garrus (the old team is back and kicking Reaper ass yet again!
)Aside from the upgrades and team selection, you have to be careful with the dialogue before the final assault - one of the choices (the more renegade one) puts you on a hidden timer before your rearguard starts dying (with the non-loyal ones being the first to go). So instead of telling them to rush it, mission is most important blah blah, tell them to hold their ground and finish it (ie. the paragon, do it systematically safely, option).
The ending survival math is frightfully conservative overall - paragon and good choices==survival, renegade and bad choices==death.
One good thing to come out of a complete Renegade failure (not much of a spoiler, considering all the interviews and foreshadowing, is that you die) is the Commander Joker ending (don't watch it if you haven't already seen the ending):
It would be cool in a way if we could import that save into ME3 and have the crawl be something like:
"...
Commander Sheppard saved the galaxy twice. He died saving it the second time.
The galaxy is threatened by a Reaper invasion and there is nobody to protect it. Other people must step up."
Followed by a ME1-like armoured figure touring the Normandy scene with everyone nodding and saluting "Commander" except not stopping behind the pilots' seat but getting into it with the camera finally rotating around to reveal the main character is Joker.
Of course, it will never happen since the changes in the game (especially with the different voice acting) would be immense.
