Are we not using spoiler tags anymore? 

I've always found the opposite to be true. In the Mass Relay loading scences throughout the series, The Normandy approaches a Relay which catches the ship with a blue jolt of enery which then projects it onwards, with the ship envolped in the blue energy. That and the fact that on a galatic scale, it would have taken years for the wreakage of the Normandy to drift towards the planet it crashed on (I'll accept this could potentially be possible as no timescale is evident) lead me to believe that the Normandy is in the middle of a mass relay jump. However, it does establish another plot hole as the relay jumps are meant to be immediate. This is my interpretation of the ending, my brain had to do something to try and make more sense out of the mess that it was.

Damn sorry, I forgot about the tags >_<. 

There's indeed a rather quick blueshift caused when the ships accelerate towards extremely high FTL velocities during relay jumps, but there's no time lag in between jumps since jumps function by creating corridors of mass free energy between the relays. To cause such a sustained FTL flight it could only be done by the natural FTL engines of the ships. Also, during the cutscene, you see the expanding energy ball thing and that can't happen during a relay flight (that energy thing is propagated via relays as a normal ship or anything travelling through the relays).

Just resolved one of ending plot holes. Never heard this bit whilst playing the game, but it does clear things up.

Was watching a youtube clip of the part where Shepard, his/her squad and the rest of Hsmmer are rushing towards the Citadel Beam. After Harbinger slaughters them all (minus Shepard and Anderson), you see Harbinger leave and the Sword Fleet commanders panicking as no-one made it to the beam to activate the Conduit. With the mission seemingly failed, the Commanders order a retreat, telling ships head for the relays. This explains why the Normandy was in the middle of a relay jump when the Crucible went off, although not why Liara, who was with me why i was going for the Citadel beam, appear unscathed after the Normandy crashed.

It's the Hammer commanders that order retreat, Major Coats and an unnamed marine, see this video with subtitles. Sword is still fighting against the Reapers, as you can see in the conversation with the Catalyst.

A problem with the Normandy using FTL flight is how would the energy wave have stranded them on a planet outside the Sol system, as the nearest one is 4 light years away. And if the Normandy was affected, then it is probable all the ships in the Sol system were damaged as well. Maybe even those outside the system that were hit by the energy released by the relays.

There are games in which everything just goes right for you. I won't say much, I believe the final result picture is more than enough: 



And if anyone's wondering, this was done today, so there wasn't the 25% exp boost to help reach that 144K score  

Good lord! Talk about backpacking the team!

What is that last medal that you have? I've never seen that before.

Also why does the guy below you have a red name?

The last one is for Tech Kills, you get Bronze at 10 Kills, Silver at 25 and Gold at 50.

Whenever a player's name appears red on the final screen it's because they failed extraction, either by dying on the final round or by not being on the LZ when the countdown finishes. I've had a lot of partial extractions even with the full team alive at the end, mostly because people lose track of time. 

And you're right about me backpacking the team . It's a shame that the Revive medal ends at 15, because I've must have done at least twice that number. Thankfully, the Phalanx X and Viper X is just a beast of a combo, so I can take out anything at long range and if a Geth Hunter comes close, I ED it do a rapid switch to the Phalanx and just HS it quickly. Oh, and Reload cancelling is your best friend for Sniper Rifles; I can cut the reload time of the Mantis, Viper, Widow, etc, by half thanks to that.

Reload cancelling? That sounds very useful.

Man I finally tried and completed some missions on Gold and it was actually easy. One the guys had a Salarian Engineer and put him out and distracted EVERYTHING. We played Firebase White against the Geth and hid behind the ship at the extraction point. Hardly anyone went down and we did it in 27 minutes.

It is indeed, you can do it in two ways: 

- If you're standing outside cover but near one, after the heat sink goes inside the rifle but before the next motion, press the cover key. You'll get the rifle fully reloaded and skip on the next 2 seconds of animation. If you're not near cover, you can simply roll in the same moment, this is a very good way to avoid incoming gunfire if you're caught in mid-reloading and still be able to fire back with a full gun.

- If you're in cover, simply press the cover key at the aformentioned moment while pressing whichever direction key puts you out of cover. With this, you won't compromisse your position at all, as you can get back to cover pronto.

This is for classes that don't have grenades, because with those, it's much easier to do reload cancelling, even if your grenade stock is 0. Just press the grenade hotkey/button at the same moment as I said before. You'll notice the grenade icon flashing and your gun will be reloaded. This is an amazing way to do continuous fire even with the super slow reloading snipers like the Mantis or Widow or Assault Rifles like the Geth Pulse Rifle, which also has a very slow reloading time.

Firebase White and Firebase Glacier are both pretty easy to do in Gold with a proper team and by standing in the proper locations for crowd control.

On Firebase White usually I stand on the left side cover of the bottom of the only ladder and the rest of the team position themselves on cover at the top of the ladder and near the top entrance to the building. That forces the enemies to spawn on the opposite side of the building and you can control them easily from there, occasionally taking out the random straggler that drops into the landing zone (usually it's nothing worse than a Rocket Trooper with Geth enemies, but with Cerberus even Phantoms drop there).
As for Firebase Glacier, you don't have to move from the starting position at all. Just position two guys in cover at the right entrance of the landing zone, and two other in cover at the left entrance at the top of the stairs.

Actually, I've done almost all maps on gold, the only one I haven't tried is Reactor, mostly because that one is shitty for any kind of crowd control.