Can I take Legion on Tali's loyalty mission, complete all loyalty missions (including his), and still save my whole crew?

In preparation for ME3, I'm doing a replay of Mass Effect 2 and I want to know if I can take Legion on Tali's loyalty mission, complete all other loyalty missions (including his), and still save everyone in the crew.

I know at some point, my ship gets invaded and collectors make off with a lot of my crew. I also know that there's some sort of timing mechanic built into the game where if I take too long after a trigger event (which is probably that same event... the crew being kidnapped... but maybe not, I don't know), some or all of them will be dead by the time I find them on the other side of the Omega IV relay.

I've read this and this but they just seem like pieces of the puzzle. I want the full picture.

• What triggers my crew being kidnapped?
• Is Legion's loyalty mission a special case that doesn't count as a mission on The Crew section of this chart? Are there any other special cases? Is that bit of the chart actually right?

As I said, the main reason I'd like to know all this is that, if possible, I'd like to get Legion in my party, take him on Tali's loyalty mission (because bringing a Geth to the Quarian flotilla sounds potentially hilarious), do his and every other loyalty mission, and still save my entire crew. I can't deduce the steps I'd need to take to accomplish this from the other related questions because I don't have a full understanding of what the trigger events are. Is it possible, and if so, how do I do it?

Solution 1:

You can perform all the loyalty missions, take Legion on Tali's loyalty mission, and save your entire crew if you do the following:

1. Do everything but Tali's loyalty mission.
2. Do the mission to obtain the Reaper IFF.
3. Do Tali's loyalty mission.
4. Do Legion's loyalty mission.
5. At this point, you should actually be out of things to do, and you'll be wondering why the Collectors haven't attacked yet. Go click your galaxy map. This should trigger the Collector invasion.
6. Once it is over, go straight through the Omega IV relay. You don't have anything else left to do anyway!

Solution 2:

I believe that you can make 3 jumps with the Normandy once you obtain the Reaper IFF before the collector attack. So it should be possible to obtain Legion, jump straight to Tali's loyalty mission, and then immediately do Legion's mission.

Once the crew is abducted, its uncertain how many more missions you can do before half the crew dies, but general consensus seems to be 1-3 missions.

This link seems to imply that its possible but just to be sure you should save before obtaining the Reaper IFF.

Solution 3:

Well, here's what I know: The "trigger event" is the Reaper IFF mission, we've got that point covered. After doing this mission (and acquiring Legion, of course), you have time to do exactly two missions before the Collectors attack. After the Collector attack, you have to rush to the Omega4-relay in case you want to save all the crew; doing one single mission is already enough to kill some of them, although I'm not sure how many.

Just to give some inspiration: my next attempt in my ME2-playthrough is to recruit Tali after getting Legion and taking him with me on the recruitment mission. Because I want to save all my crew ('cause I'm a fuckin' hero), that means that I'll be only able to do one of the loyality missions, either Legion's or Tali's. And because I really like Tali and want to have her as my romance, I'll do her's and try to bring Legion through the suicide mission without killing him, which, in theory, shouldn't be that big a problem. (Safest way probably is to send him back with the crew, for we already made the way clear, and he shouldn't have much trouble. He's quite a fighter, after all.)

Only I'm not sure if I'll even get the conversation option to trigger the romance... but hell, try and error, I guess. I'll let you know if it worked.