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@postgarf

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GoopySpaceShark
@GoopySpaceShark
GoopySpaceShark
@GoopySpaceShark

not a huge fan of how mass effect moved to thermal clips, but they could potentially still have a distinct advantage over traditional ammo: reusability!

I imagine they're packaged in crates with a bunch of portable radiator units or something, and once you've expended a thermal clip you can just stick it in the radiator, grab one that's cooled off, rinse and repeat. it allows you to fire at higher power in longer bursts than with an onboard radiative cooling solution.

sure, from the infantry's point of view it really is just going back to magazines in pretty much every way that matters, but it would be fantastic from a macro logistics point of view - you don't have to keep shipping ammo out, aside from the occasional crate of metal bricks.

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magenta-luna
@magenta-luna

They are basically hot-swappable heatsinks right? And in space you don't always have air (despite how often Mass Effect does have air...) and so you can't be guaranteed to have your heatsinks drain of heat to usable levels in airless environment. Also, dealing with pseudo-mags is probably better than dealing with the weapons overheating and you having to wait. Again, potentially in airless environment.

Though, if we go by lore, they probably should be slowly draining while on you (unless you /really/ want to minimize your IR signature... which is another thing of note, hm) and the guns probably should have some emergency mode. I bet there's funky "thermal clips" that are actually just a giant radiator with a standard connector. Because people /will/ mod their guns into some kind of tech horror.

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GoopySpaceShark
@GoopySpaceShark

oh my god, the thermal dongle

but yeah! I imagine another alternative being a hybrid of the old-style integrated radiator setup with reloadable coolant cartridges - you can guarantee the old system will have some sort of fluid loop to better transfer the heat from the shooty parts to the radiators, so why not add an option to purge the coolant directly and insert new stuff?

you get the best of both worlds - if you can wait around for it to cool down radiatively (also conductively/convectively on worlds with sufficient atmospheres), then great! if you need to keep firing now, dump and replace the coolant

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softWord
@softWord

Mass Effect truly squandered the entire thermal weapon concept. there are so many cool things they could have done. shifting to clips just meant normal gameplay but the heat-management could have been so creative. surface area mechanics that affect how guns handle versus how they radiate. coolant mods for your guns. unsafe heat levels causing continuous HP damage. in space, so you can't radiate heat? shoot open conspicuous coolant conduits to make sure you have a spray of nearby fluids to work with but only if you stand in them. or swap a clip into a radiator-bayonet, put it into an enemy and cool it down from way-too-hot to body-temperature. i dunno, whatever, there's a dozen things they could have done that weren't ammo!!

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