Yes to be fair he has a point because without cooling tech guns become less efficient and more expensive to use because with a limited resource being necessary in order to fire your weapons armies need to worry carrying ammo again which adds weight to the gear that they carry on top of cost of production of the clips. Compare that to to a weapons platform that only has the issue of overheating if fired too much, a problem that’s easier to solve for instead overhauling every weapon system while creating new problems
Maybe until you’re surrounded by thorian creepers or husks, which can one shot you on insanity, and you’re having to wait a minute for your weapons to cool down. Fighting the thorian became a nightmare on insanity because of it.
Probably just an old term that’s still used despite being outdated. Kind of like how some people still say “roll the window down” in a car or a picture of floppy disk is still used as the symbol for saving on computers.
I can understand the Collectors switching because they trade in alien technology. However Jacob’s father and his surviving crew should’ve been made to use the old technology. This little detail would’ve saved the lore of his predicament.
@@CesarACastillo I believe there's also a group in the Leviathan DLC which has a group of people who'd been under the control of the Leviathan for a decade. I think they had the therma clips too.
I wish they did keep the option to let your gun cool down if you ran out of clips. The gun cooling was probably one of the cooler parts of ME1. Different than other shooters in that way.
@@Kjf365 yes. also the modibility, was really glad to find it in some way in ME3. Also thats why I use the particle beam in ME3, really love the weapon
Another reference to game mechanics change from first to second game (locks) Shepard: "Remember the old days where you could just slap Omni gel on anything?" Liara: "A lot of people weren't happy with the upgrades"
Conrad is our insert into the franchise. He is literally the “Adoring Fan” and points out the inconsistencies and tropes that we as players joke about.
It's a shame. I really liked the cooldown system in mass effect 1. It made solider feel like a true weapons master as you used your weaponskills and cycled through all of your guns. Given the time the game came out, the thermal clips were probably implemented to make the game feel more like gears of war.
I think it was because players complained about cooldown management, and wanted regular clips. Also reloading is faster than cooldown a lot of the time.
@@hariman7727 That's because they didn't know how to spec properly. I would have assault rifles that I held the trigger down for a full minute and it would never overheat because I put the weapon mod in that decreases weapon heat. Seriously, if you play it right, your gun will never overheat. The only one that you couldn't really do that with was the sniper rifle because it generated too much per shot, but even then, I still was able to fire three rounds between cooldowns
That was in fact how the game utilized the notion of thermal clips. In ME 1 you could wait out for your gun to cooldown, or be judicious with your fire rate so as not to overload your gun’s cooling system. In ME2 onwards you can essentially, “mag dump” all you want as long as you have enough thermal clips on hand.
So it’s pretty clear that the Americans run the galactic military in this future. Not don’t only did they choose the worst possible system with the dumbest possible drawback, but they also just run on the assumption that there’s never gonna be a supply problem, soldiers can afford to just carry yet more heavy gear, and you can just put the whole war on hold to play with your gun! Brought to you by the same people whose reaction to learning combat is close range and rabbit fire was to make a bigger heavier longer gun that was uncontrollable to shot rapidly! Brought to you by the same people who made a tank to fight their prime enemy only for that tank to be too sensitive to moisture in the target climate, too heavy for the roads, bridges and ground for the target climate, a gigantic target that gets that can’t hide anywhere in that target environment and has a engine that’s too thirsty for fuel in that target environment! Brought to you by the same people who ruined an entire generation of uniforms ability to can steal, because they got obsessed with a fad, and wanted to be unique and stylish! As for how to muscle things through, it simple, they are a council race. The Salarians and Asari don’t really have enough military weight to push back against them, and the Turians I have become similarly arrogant yet also panic, so they are willing to go along with anything that sounds like a solution for the latest problem. That’s the headcannon I’m going with!
Would explain the collective incompetence in nearly everything they do for sure. Ironically, I'd suggest the French take charge instead. I know, they got a less than positive reputation, but they are still the best military power in history, based on their success rate. If you want individual stand outs, go for the Finnish tho. If there are any with the prussian mindset left, grab them too. After all "Most states have an army, the prussian army has a state" Which is kind of a banger quote. @@Mortablunt
@@Mortabluntlmao America bad all you want but the US military has the best the logistics in the world. it is one of a few militaries in the world that could carry out military expeditions and realistically invade another country from across the world. they had burger kings in Bagram for crying out loud. no european forces could do that, the chinese have yet to prove their mettle, and the russians are struggling with their war just barely across the border.
I think energy weapons in helldivers did with heatsinks what mass effect should have done. So long as you don’t overload the HS, it will cool down at a moderate rate, but if you do, you ruin the HS and need to pop in a fresh one. In intense firefights where you can’t afford to wait, you can manually swap HS for a fresh one and keep up the pace.
best of both worlds. Even Conrad is alluding to the fact that if you had cooling tech and thermal clips, the most sensible thing to do would be to make a hybrid system that used both tech, rather than dropping cooling tech that gave you virtually infinite ammo. Or better yet, make use case specific weaponry instead of making thermal clips universal. For example, the Black Widow is a case where you sacrifice no firing power, hence you ditch the cooling and use clips for max efficiency. Or the Typhoon, which can be used for suppressive fire cannot afford cooldown periods so that's a solid case for thermal clips too. But most other weapons can afford to sacrifice the loss in firepower to have infinite ammo. It's not like the weapons got significantly more powerful by ditching the cooling system. This is a conspiracy by Big Thermal Clip guaranteed
M7 Lancer is still the best gun in the game by a country mile. You know this, Shepard. So yes, tell every miltary organization in the Galaxy. Not telling them is why you can't beat the Reapers in a fight.
Ah, yes, "passive cooling", a vastly superior method of cooling weapons down that all species in the galaxy used to use and suddenly decided to abandon. Ah, we have dismissed that claim.
And yet there are multiple points in ME 1 where random soldiers go "we're running low on ammo!" In a game where ammunition as a concept is supposed to be obsolete.
its possible if you shooting too many like a maniac. there about few thousands bullets you can shoot, and numbers are variable depending on how gun's computer works. gun is really need to be reloading from time to time, but this need is so rare that game just go with conditionality of infinite ammo.
The block the "bullets" are shaved from amounts to thousands of rounds of ammo, if not tens. Thing is you can go through that FAST with enough firing. So yeah, running out is possible. Not counting grenades or other explosives, which really haven't changed.
even if the ammo block contains thousands of "bullets", you can go through them in a couple of hours of a prolonged fight. Shepard is never involed in any battle bejond an hour or so, so it is not a concern for his team. If you are in a warzone shooting at you enemy for days, this can become a limitation
Doctor Verner here has a point. It is really stupid, and the games should have used a combo system, with having a number of universal clips to instantly recharge whatever gun you needed, that would be lore-compliant. But nope, gotta appeal to generic shooter players. Luckily there is a mod to fix this.
You can tell how annoyed BioWare was at people bringing this up to them by how sarcastic Shepard's final response is. That's not just meta-humor. That's real anger lol.
It's the only mod I really used in Andromeda. Infinite ammo on my LMG with tracking rounds was a blast, about the only real enjoyment I had in that game.
Unfortunately, players never have grasped the whole "the friction caused by ammo management and reloading makes the game better" argument. But when have players ever accepted "we nerfed you for your own good" as an explanation, even when it is explicitly true?
@@Wraithfighter The gunplay is certainly better in 2, but it felt like it was due to better design overall rather than the 'heat sink' change. Ultimately the heat sink was used to throttle powerful weapons... which could have been achieved by just giving those specific weapons ammo. Which makes sense for specialty weapons, but since all the weapons shared the same "thermal clips" it lead to weird situations where optimal play involves skirting around thermal clips on the ground so you can save them for your 'good' guns.
There is a reason my favorite gun in me3 is the particle rifle. Maxed incendiary ammo and a couple of upgrades (one to increase the clip size) and you will be mowing through enemies!
I still haven't forgotten that Shepard's literal first words at the beginning of 2 from waking up after being literally dead were 'this gun doesn't have a thermal clip', but here am I thinking how the hell would Shepard even fathom the concept of thermal clips in guns if they had been dead the entire time that this 'change' supposedly was enacted?!
Maybe the thermal clip guns already existed but were niche/private use rather than widespread military use at the time. Thus Shepard can pick one up and see that it is a gun which requires a thermal clip but doesn’t have one.
There was a gap between the end of ME1 and Shephard being spaced in ME2. In this gap, the Universal Convention on No Cooldowns (Except For Unified Tech/Biotic Power Cooldowns) and Thermal Clip Mandatoriality was enacted by every sentient species, and by some particularly smart plants.
Lets not forget that Shepard is a high-ranking military officer with security clearance to most of the Alliance technology. The technology could have been classified during the time of ME1 and declassified for ME2.
No real military organization would give up to unlimited ammos to favor fire power especially since guns aren't even that much more powerful maybe just a little more accurate but still not by much.
From a logical and logistical standpoint, they only REAL benefits of thermal clips is that sub machine guns became relevant again, normally they overheat too quickly with the normal cooling systems
@@wilburforce8046 when compared to normal LARGER bullets, the sand gain metal shavings did far more damage but had little stopping power as they were fired from a technologically superior launching system, you have to remember that shields (of the tech and biotic variety) are a thing.
One benefit to the Thermal clip ejection is that you would probably be doing less extensive maintenance on your guns due to damage to the heat sink. But honestly they probably just should have retconned Thermal clips into always existing since it causes tons of continuity problems, especially with the Collectors, Geth, and Mechs in Jacobs loyalty mission.
Then you get the lancer and turns out to be the best weapon in the game. Powerful, versatile, light, precise, and with unlimited ammo. Unless you're going for a particular build with snipers or shotguns, the lancer is always your friend. And can be used by caster clases as the one and only weapon. It made my sentinel the true master of everything.
When I found the Lancer in the museum during the Citadel DLC, I cried. Running out of clips was such a pain in 2 and 3. I sooo missed the infinite ammo in 1.
At least they have a sense of humour about it. The games are still amazing. If you hate this then wait till younplay Bethesda games which do stupid things in the hopes the players don't notice. Like stupid guns let alone the ammo it needs
Would have been better if they were reusable. Have them be on a timer, and as you go through the game you find more, letting you wait less. Like an RPG (which Bioware keeps moving away from as a concept). Eventually you find enough that by the time you run through them, firing continuously, the first has cooled off. Boom. Now it's not stupid and you're not leaving empty, useless heat sinks on the floor everywhere. Because as it stands they are not reusable. So yes. It's a stupid step backward.
I honestly found it to be stupid that they switched to thermal clips because I never run out of bullets regardless. Once I got my M-7 Lancer it became my primary gun. Yeah it has to cool down on occasion but I rarely ever have that be an issue since I eyeball how many rounds I can shoot before overheating. Not to mention in Mass Effect 1 I actually managed to upgrade an assault rifle so it never overheated, so yeah I'd like to imagine that in the future we managed to make laser guns that never overheat.
Technically they still have ammunition as solid blocks of material. The gun fires by shaving off a small portion of material from this block and accelerating it as the projectile. At least that is what I remember from the lore.
Still dumb, but I appreciate that they tried to at least offer an in-game explanation as to why we saw the changes that we saw, even if those changes were primarily for gameplay purposes
you could've thrown in the explanation of "They're cheap enough that it's not a big deal to replace them, but you can use external cooling to make them ready for use once again. Reloading in the heat of battle is just better than waiting for the heat to drop back down."
It would have been simpler, and likely cheaper to simply mass produce decent heatsinks for the Alliance soldiers than redesigning the entirely of the galaxy's firearm systems.
It's funny seeing this now while I'm playing Helldivers 2. They have weapons that generate heat, and you can wait for the weapons to cool down, or you can reload to quickly resume firing again.
Basically shields got improvements, a backup heavy pistol is no bad idea, but the termal clips are needed for the cool down of higher powered guns. Im Me1 one can upgrade snipers and rifles to shot ones, put out a lot of damage and overheat the weaponry instantly. Basically i would shot once, switch to the other weapon and repeat this step.
Sure if you add Scram Rail* and such rounds into it but even then it's a one-shot KO for most targets including Geth freaking turrets. You shouldn't be spamming a long-ranged rifle to begin with. You could also mod the overheat to have infinite with no cooldown, like that silly laser rifle in ME2 basically was.
@@ricksaburai there are, same as 12h dial but with 24h dial, they even have hands. I can buy a wall clock for $20 with delivery, probs there are cheaper models but $20 one looks okay. There is also a 24h wristwatch for $80 but it looks meh
Frankly for 3 they should have made it so that every gun takes thermal clips and can shoot while empty; but they take longer to cool down and the number of times they can fire before needing a long cooldown is halved. Then make thermal clips rarer because you trip over the damn things in ME3 they are so common...
They should have said that the cooling tech was now integrated into whereever you carry your reserve clips. That way, you could have had regenerating clips in gameplay.
Very dumb. The infinite ammo guns were not weaker, so no, they didn't get "stronger" by switching. The lancer, which still uses the old system, is one of the best guns in the damn game. Also, self-cooling guns made more logical sense because at time you'd hide and wait for your shield to recharge anyway, so what harm is there in letting your gun cooldown at the same time? It is beyond silly. I know they did it to appeal to Call of Duty kids that can't conceptualize a shooter without ammo but still, it was really dumb, and having an in universe explanation that is flat out wrong in every regard doesn't really help. But alas, ME3 had much better powers than the previous two games, so I just went full power build anyway and almost never used the gun in the first place. And then you could eventually get recharging weapons that didn't need ammo again and be back to normal.
It always bugged me that they went from using these unlimited ammo guns to more conventional space guns. Figured it was changed to make ME more in line with other shooters but no amount of medi-gel will ever heal that wound.
To play devil's advocate here, I used mods that forced weapons to cool down instead of using weapons clips. The result was far to easy battles and one sided firefights where my unlimited ammo weapons removed the challenge of gunplay entirely
@@thecreed1212it's actually a huge difference if you try the two playstyles out. With limited ammo you use certain guns in skirmishes wisely. Saving the big guns for big enemies. With infinite ammo you just use it all. Getting ammo isn't a walk in the park. Enemies drop ammo among more enemies most of the time. Dancing around the field for ammo is part of the fun. Staying behind one cover and using the same busted gun for everything is boring. I found ME1's combat to be very easy. I had nothing to lose by taking any and all shots
@@shogunpug4071 @shogunpug4071 that's literally what I said...OUTSIDE of heavy weapons, it's not a big difference. Like I said everytime I've played me2 and 3 I've never had a problem getting ammo anyway because ammo drops are every damn where, so it was a walk in to park getting it. For balance yes the heavy weapons should have finite ammo tho. All in all I say the best system going forward would be a hybrid system or even better they can do what me3 started and give you both 🤷🏾♂️(Me3 is what showed me there's not really a big difference between them tho)
Well I mean, the cooling system cooled everything down in seconds, since they switched the gun would still cool but it would take hours instead of seconds, that and the thermal clip system is tied to the safety switch.
@@NoTAdrian115 there was also the mention of the thermal clip's use allowing the firing of larger shards of metal in the lore (pre-ME1 it was the size of sand particles) so more stopping power. The reason why they couldnt do bigger shards with the cooling system was cause it would overheat too fast if they were bigger. The lore also states that the galaxy found that simply switching the thermal clip out when compared to the cool down system was 0.5-1second faster (depending on the model and weapon type) and that the thermal clips allow people to get more rounds down the range when compared to the cool-down system. The thermal clip system also allowed the sub-machine gun weapon type to become relevant again, this was because during the cool-down days it was literally just a fast firing pistol that didn’t hit as hard as a normal pistol or have a larger cool-down system that allowed it to fire longer as it’s assault weapon cousin. Now the sub machine type can do both as good or better when compared to the ME1 days
@@Kjf365 advancements in shield and armor tech made by all sides over the last 2-3 years between 1 and 2 to counter the introduction of thermal clips, even the Reapers used the Collectors in ME2 to make improved versions of the Husks that can take more punishment before dying.
actually in ME1 sniper rifles and shotguns have a reload animations after each shot and that was never explained in the game. as for thermal clips, it allows to contain heat in the ejectable part, while in ME1 heat affects the gun itself. which is bad for reliability and causes deterioration of the gun with time. so in that way it make some sense. Also I think its easy to fabricate thermal clips with omni tool if you running out of ammo. Thats just not implemented in the game. Maybe it would be better if they never explained the thing and just leave it like its was there all along.
Thermal clips should have been an iff you shoot too much thing. If you stop before you hit 0 it cools down, if you don't the thermal clip acts like a fuse and breaks so the rest of the gun doesn't
I did the mathematics on weapons energies for Mass Effect, and bringing those two would actually give you some of the most powerful guns around. The problem is, I don’t know who could supply centerfire ammunition.
ME1 weapons were so much better. SO much variety and i didn't have to loot fucking ammo. I love ME2 but the idea of introducing ammo and set weapons was a poor design choice
ME2 is the weakest of the trilogy for this reason. They also heavily nerfed powers in ME2 because of how strong they were in ME1 so every class feels exactly the same. ME3 made powers stronger again with all the combo interactions and the new powers added, and also brought back the Lancer in the Citadel DLC to give us guns that use a heat system instead of ammo. ME3 also had a lot of variety in weapons you could use but ME2 weapons had almost no variety at all. Playing the Legendary Edition really underscores how it's the weakest game of the three because in ME1 you have better RPG mechanics and an excellent story, and ME3's gameplay is much more dynamic and rich. All ME2 has going for it is that you get to kill a *lot* of Batarians in ME2. I change my mind, ME2 is the best of the series.
@@eyzmin 2 just felt like a bunch of character introductions and oh looks like reapers are making a human why? who cares the reapers are swarming to the galaxy the end, the characters were fine but id say just better off as sides and not playable(either make samara or jack playable cant have both)
This is like the lore description of the Imperium Lasgun in warhammer: IT CAN TEAR APPART LIMBS, THE POWERCELLS CAN BE RECHARGED BY THERMAL TRANSFUSION EVEN FROM A CAMPFIRE Vs tabletop gameplay: Roll D6: does 1 damage....... Ork punches you in the face with a wooden stick... does 30 damage
What would make more sense... is a slightly bulky addon for a thermal clip, (something removable, like a UBGL) or having squads use BOTH types of arms, mixing units gets benefit of sustained fire from the cooling guns, and the burst damage oriented firepower of the clips.
Mass Effect 1 has one of the ONLY futuristic ammo design for future backgrounds. Look at Starfield, halo, no man’s sky and whatever sci-fi games we got out there. It’s funny that at out of all these big-shot developer teams, none of them had the guts to go out of the box and think like a designer from future. They can’t brainstorm for shit. I often bragged about ME1’s weapon design with my friends how innovative it was. To bad they didn’t continue it.
If you've played and beaten ME1 a couple of times, we knew that it has probably one of the most over powered automatic rifles on any shooter, period. Just put that one specific gun on any shooter, and you'll demolish anything. ANYTHING 😁
I concur with Conrad Verner. In ME3 (with exception to the M-11 suppressor pistol you get in the citadel DLC) I almost exclusively use the Prothean Particle Rifle, or the old Lancer rifle that predates the thermal clip upgrade (also from the citadel DLC) It’s funny when I do the Armax Arena no thermal clips change, because the guns I use make it a moot point. lol 😆😎
To be honest, the weapon in ME1 is similar to Prothean (ME3 DLC) but a weaker version. It's still unbelievable they choose thermal clips rather than keep researching cooldown method. Of course game-wise, dev wanted to "reload" in a fps game.
For those wondering why the switch happened at the first place, here's some lore: "...matnematicaly reviewing their combat logs, the geth found that in an age of kinetic barriers, most firefights were won by the side who could put the most rounds down-range the fastest. But combatants were forced to deliberately shoot slower to manage waste heat, or pause as their weapons vented. To eliminate this inefficiency, the geth adopted detachable heat sinks known as thermal clips. While organic arms manufacturers were initially doubtful this would produce a net gain, a well-trained soldier can eject and swap thermal clips in under a second. Faced with superior enemy firepower, organic armies soon followed the geth's lead, and today's battlefields are littered with these thermal clips..." (Mass Effect 2 > Codex > Secondary > Weapons, Armor, and Equipment > Small Arms) I am not a weapon expert at all, but it makes sense to me. Just like almost anything, weapons constantly evolve due to the shifts in tactics, environment, and technologies used on the battlefield. There is no "perfect gun" because this just means a "universal gun" for all scenarios (which is a dangerous practice), whereas the diversification of the specialized weapon is the real key to victories in broad-scale wars (the answer to why world military has this crazy amount of different guns which they never stop to add). Surely, people wouldn't just throw a recently outdated technology away if the contrast of the efficiency is small enough at least for some tasks, hence, there are still some "old-infinite" rifles that can be found in the ME2&ME3 universe, used, for instance, to shoot another varen on a distant farmworld... However, they have become undemanded by the serious armed groups due to the recent geth's critical discovery in the military statistics. The galaxy had 2 years to switch to the new weapon innovational technology, whereas the commonly large military production capabilities of the many in-space factions made this process even faster. (Anyway, I still can see why this is a lame decision from the gameplay perspective.)
Everyone who played ME-1 would've been confused af in ME-2 like why did tech go backwards and where tf is my HWMA-X assault rifle and the combat system in general went backwards except the maps maybe it finally tells you where you need to go
Think I would've been perfectly fine with this change if the clips weren't *required*. Adding the clips as an optional and expendable way to instantly reload a weapon system instead of waiting for cooldown while still having the option to wait adds complexity and forms an interesting system. And if they really want to encourage clips just make the conventional cooldowns way longer. Effectively infinite ammo is a logical and interesting mechanic that adheres and contributes to the high sci-fi setting of Mass Effect. Verner's right, it really is a step back both mechanically and in world building.
Because any Military in the Galaxs is know to make good Choices. Yeah... and the old Design is still better, heck... Was the Avenger in the Citadel DLC that run on the "old tech" not powerfull as hell? This Thermoclip junk is just stupid, i like to think that many People still use the old Ways of cool down and all. If i remember right what a hell on cool down mods i build in my Weapons in ME 1 everything from Pistols and above was a Machinegun with unlimitet Ammo...
Verner is 100% correct and I will forever hate that change. I loved Mass Effect 1 but 2 switching to the dumb ammo system pissed me off so much. How do you go from infinite ammo to finite ammo?
Spectre weapons + 2 maxed out cooling coils = infinite ammo with no overheat It was a downgrade to switch to a conventional ammo system and the "lore" was a backend justification.
Yup, that's why Prothean Particle Rifle and N7 Lancer are among the best guns in ME3, cooldown system was good as it were, why go and fix something that ain't broke.
This really was quite stupid. Everyone knows it was done because "reloading weapons is cool" or some nonsense. In reality, in the first Mass Effect, it was VERY easy to build a weapon with infinite firing capacity with high level cooling systems. So, this whole "the Geth did it" makes even LESS sense.
You could always tell that the clips thing was just a way for the developer to retcon ammo back into the Mass Effect universe. This guy is right and the economic/Logistical/Strategic requirements to keep all of your forces supplied and viable when they essentially had infinite ammo in the field. I feel like that major benefit overrides any kind of minor tactical advantage that might've been gained. Especially now that I run out of ammo often when they introduced the clips.
The heating thing always felt like the dumbest part of Mass Effect. They're not laser guns. They're still firing projectiles. The projectiles have to come from somewhere. Even the plasma weapons the Geth and the Andromeda guys use fire some kind of gas. Just call them magazines already and move on.
Extremely late here but like... It makes perfect sense Not practically But think about Who produces and sells the clips Real world fell for whorse scams, Just think that evewryone belives butter to be the og while margarine came First and it's kinda healthyer but some marketing straight out re wrote history, or even Better eggs and bacon as good breakfast, or Cars in america... Expecially Cars in america
Honestly, including an explanation was a mistake. It would have been better to not draw attention to it. Or to introduce new weapons that had limited ammo because they consumed something physical to fire, but had some advantage that justified it. This is sloppy. This is Rowling-level crap.
I disliked the swap from the old system to thermal clips myself. But then again I imagine the Mattock which is my favorite gun in the franchise would have been a nightmare to use with the inbuilt cooling.
You can always improve on a cooling system, you cannot improve much on how hot a brick of steel can get before melting. It's not like they're being dumped in a mylar dump pouch to cool and recycle either, they just get tossed out like a spent casing. IIRC a few guns even shave off hunks of the clip to launch rather than bothering with plasma and photons.
Imo the cooling systems in ME1 are superior. Simply because in a full galaxy war, it is better to have unlimited ammunition but having to watch your gun from overheating than having limited heatsinks just to fire your guns.
There's a mod that works exactly like that. Worse, its just an INI edit, literally just a boolean in a text file saying whether weapons cooldown or not.
Honestly, Thermal Clips feel like a bad idea that was stopped halfway through. "Hey, instead of giving all guns infinite ammo, how about we make all guns use the same pool of limited ammo!"
Helldivers did it best. Thermal weapons are capable of cooling down by themselves, but if you overheat the weapon by firing too much, you eject a thermal clip to bring heat down immediately as I guess once the weapon overheats, it will take a considerable amount of time for it to return to safe firing levels again without the ability to just dump that heat out in a second. This is the route Mass Effect should have gone. I guess a lore reason for it is that there simply isn't enough room to have both clips AND cooling tech inside a gun, it's one or the other. You sacrifice efficiency for the ability to get more fire down range in an engagement. It's definitely not as stupid as some people make out. Cost is also a factor. I would imagine cooling tech is expensive and needs constant maintenance to keep guns in good condition. Thermal clips essentially take out most of the maintenance required, making guns much more efficient out in the field, which lowers cost. So, more fire down range due to not having to wait for weapon cooldown, and lower production cost of weapons and lower maintenance cost, for the small sacrifice of having to carry thermal clips on you, which in lore are actually pretty small and compact. The amount of times I had to wait for weapon cooldowns in ME1 was horrendous. I legit struggled to get through the shields of Geth without waiting on cooldowns. ME1 weapons felt like BB guns. In a real firefight, you'd be dead fighting the Geth with such inferior firepower. In a universe with advanced shields and armor, you really need to get as much fire down range as possible. Waiting for weapon cooldowns is sure to get you killed.
Iirc, a codex entry says that as shield technology improved, battle telemetry showed that guns needed to fire more powerful and more frequent rounds in order to overcome the shields. Thus, thermal clip technology became a necessity in order to avoid long, drawn out fights of attrition.
The termal clip thing was really stupid. could just have added them as a limited boost to your weapons. You want to keep shooting past the thermal overload? Use clips. The clips should be a very limited resource though(Eg. being so bulky that you can only have 2 or three on hand. That way you have to plan, when to use your weapon boost.
If the guns used thermal clips to quickly remove heat from the weapons, they could still retain the cooldown to conserve thermal clips. Tacticool corporate decisions vs real thermodynamics.
Its so stupid too. Like why would go from infinite ammo to ammo? Like ya the guns over heated but only if you fired it to much in few seconds. And it cools down in literally a couple of seconds basically the time to reload.
Yes, let every military organization in the galaxy know that cooldown is better for logistics, and of course the obvious aspect of how the hell did they all switch so quickly?
This is just bad writing, and one of the reasons I'm so critical of 2 and 3 when compared to 1. They knew it was a cop-out, so instead of addressing it they just had a buttmonkey character repeat the arguments used by the fans that were critical of them. The signs were already on the wall back then that Bioware was almost dead. Also, for all the issues it's been having, Helldivers 2 still did this better. Giving you limited replaceable heat sinks but also letting them cool down over time. That's the kind of nice thing you can have when the devs give a damn about the details of their game.
No no, for once Verner has a point.
Yeah, Shepard. You DO go ahead and tell everyone it was a dumb idea! 😡
Yes to be fair he has a point because without cooling tech guns become less efficient and more expensive to use because with a limited resource being necessary in order to fire your weapons armies need to worry carrying ammo again which adds weight to the gear that they carry on top of cost of production of the clips. Compare that to to a weapons platform that only has the issue of overheating if fired too much, a problem that’s easier to solve for instead overhauling every weapon system while creating new problems
Maybe until you’re surrounded by thorian creepers or husks, which can one shot you on insanity, and you’re having to wait a minute for your weapons to cool down. Fighting the thorian became a nightmare on insanity because of it.
@@beeziebubs2756 Verner daycare.
Verner surrounded by spiders, drawing a picture of spiders.
not if you actually shoot guns
"its not ammunition"
Then why does it say "no ammo" when i run out of it Shepard
"Kill another geth and won't say "no ammo". And for killing 50 reapers you get a handshake from Anderson."
Probably just an old term that’s still used despite being outdated. Kind of like how some people still say “roll the window down” in a car or a picture of floppy disk is still used as the symbol for saving on computers.
Space Check Mate.
@@SlideIX cars still have windows?
@@upthebracket26 yeah but most of them are switches now instead of cranks
The real fantasy in this is that the entire galaxy switched to universal clips in a couple of years- including the Collectors.
even people stuck on a planet for 10 years in Jacob loyalty mission switched.
Bit more than 2 years to be precise
I can understand the Collectors switching because they trade in alien technology. However Jacob’s father and his surviving crew should’ve been made to use the old technology. This little detail would’ve saved the lore of his predicament.
@@CesarACastillo I believe there's also a group in the Leviathan DLC which has a group of people who'd been under the control of the Leviathan for a decade. I think they had the therma clips too.
@@AccidentalNinja maybe they might have had weapons transport or something. like they needed some food and parts to survive there too
I mean...points for having an in-lore explaination but it's still dumb
yeah. it most definetly is just ammo
I wish they did keep the option to let your gun cool down if you ran out of clips. The gun cooling was probably one of the cooler parts of ME1. Different than other shooters in that way.
@@Kjf365 yes. also the modibility, was really glad to find it in some way in ME3. Also thats why I use the particle beam in ME3, really love the weapon
I mean, there's a reason that the M-7 Lancer is the best gun in ME3!
@@Kjf365 it was super not one of the cooler parts of me1, it made gameplay super frustrating.
Another reference to game mechanics change from first to second game (locks)
Shepard: "Remember the old days where you could just slap Omni gel on anything?"
Liara: "A lot of people weren't happy with the upgrades"
Conrad is our insert into the franchise. He is literally the “Adoring Fan” and points out the inconsistencies and tropes that we as players joke about.
M'aiq knew a Conrad once. M'aiq thinks he was very much like M'aiq.
Conrad was actually willing to die for you though
Congratulations on your promotion to Captain, Mr. Obvious
Absolutely, down to the detail of our imaginary wives paying us to get away from them for playing Mass Effect too much.
It's a shame. I really liked the cooldown system in mass effect 1. It made solider feel like a true weapons master as you used your weaponskills and cycled through all of your guns. Given the time the game came out, the thermal clips were probably implemented to make the game feel more like gears of war.
there's a mod for ME2 and ME3 which redesign your ammo back to cooling the weapons down for ME1
Aren't there 2 guns in the game that still cooldown or...
I think it was because players complained about cooldown management, and wanted regular clips.
Also reloading is faster than cooldown a lot of the time.
And yet they never implemented the reload mechanic from gow where you get extra damage if you reload at the right time
@@hariman7727 That's because they didn't know how to spec properly. I would have assault rifles that I held the trigger down for a full minute and it would never overheat because I put the weapon mod in that decreases weapon heat. Seriously, if you play it right, your gun will never overheat. The only one that you couldn't really do that with was the sniper rifle because it generated too much per shot, but even then, I still was able to fire three rounds between cooldowns
Honestly, if it still cooled down on its own but just slow enough to warrant the clips, I don't think anyone would have had an issue.
I think as long as clips are required, there will be backlash. "No ammo" die-hards
Apparently they tried to do that originally, but everyone just kept popping the clips anyway.
@@teencommentso why remove it then. If anything that would prove to the players through their own play the in-world logic
That was in fact how the game utilized the notion of thermal clips. In ME 1 you could wait out for your gun to cooldown, or be judicious with your fire rate so as not to overload your gun’s cooling system. In ME2 onwards you can essentially, “mag dump” all you want as long as you have enough thermal clips on hand.
Like Helldivers. I very much prefer that mechanic. Overfired the gun? Gotta pop in fresh heat sinks.
So instead of improving the cooling times they put on clips you have to carry and constantly load and unload into your gun mid fight.
Yes.
So it’s pretty clear that the Americans run the galactic military in this future. Not don’t only did they choose the worst possible system with the dumbest possible drawback, but they also just run on the assumption that there’s never gonna be a supply problem, soldiers can afford to just carry yet more heavy gear, and you can just put the whole war on hold to play with your gun!
Brought to you by the same people whose reaction to learning combat is close range and rabbit fire was to make a bigger heavier longer gun that was uncontrollable to shot rapidly! Brought to you by the same people who made a tank to fight their prime enemy only for that tank to be too sensitive to moisture in the target climate, too heavy for the roads, bridges and ground for the target climate, a gigantic target that gets that can’t hide anywhere in that target environment and has a engine that’s too thirsty for fuel in that target environment! Brought to you by the same people who ruined an entire generation of uniforms ability to can steal, because they got obsessed with a fad, and wanted to be unique and stylish!
As for how to muscle things through, it simple, they are a council race. The Salarians and Asari don’t really have enough military weight to push back against them, and the Turians I have become similarly arrogant yet also panic, so they are willing to go along with anything that sounds like a solution for the latest problem.
That’s the headcannon I’m going with!
Would explain the collective incompetence in nearly everything they do for sure.
Ironically, I'd suggest the French take charge instead.
I know, they got a less than positive reputation, but they are still the best military power in history, based on their success rate.
If you want individual stand outs, go for the Finnish tho. If there are any with the prussian mindset left, grab them too. After all "Most states have an army, the prussian army has a state"
Which is kind of a banger quote. @@Mortablunt
@@Mortabluntlmao America bad all you want but the US military has the best the logistics in the world. it is one of a few militaries in the world that could carry out military expeditions and realistically invade another country from across the world. they had burger kings in Bagram for crying out loud. no european forces could do that, the chinese have yet to prove their mettle, and the russians are struggling with their war just barely across the border.
@@GigiBranconiyou know you don't know what you're talking about if you're applying colonial era reputation with modern military logistics
I think energy weapons in helldivers did with heatsinks what mass effect should have done. So long as you don’t overload the HS, it will cool down at a moderate rate, but if you do, you ruin the HS and need to pop in a fresh one. In intense firefights where you can’t afford to wait, you can manually swap HS for a fresh one and keep up the pace.
I was just going to comment this. I think they should replicate that for me4
best of both worlds. Even Conrad is alluding to the fact that if you had cooling tech and thermal clips, the most sensible thing to do would be to make a hybrid system that used both tech, rather than dropping cooling tech that gave you virtually infinite ammo.
Or better yet, make use case specific weaponry instead of making thermal clips universal. For example, the Black Widow is a case where you sacrifice no firing power, hence you ditch the cooling and use clips for max efficiency. Or the Typhoon, which can be used for suppressive fire cannot afford cooldown periods so that's a solid case for thermal clips too.
But most other weapons can afford to sacrifice the loss in firepower to have infinite ammo. It's not like the weapons got significantly more powerful by ditching the cooling system. This is a conspiracy by Big Thermal Clip guaranteed
Theres a mod that implements this and it works really good
There's an ME2 mod for this: Hybrid Combat. Sorry, console gamers.
@@thecreed1212I think MEA system would be better, you choose what reload you use
M7 Lancer is still the best gun in the game by a country mile. You know this, Shepard.
So yes, tell every miltary organization in the Galaxy. Not telling them is why you can't beat the Reapers in a fight.
Even if he told them it's not like they'd listen 😒
@@Pol-PotYeah. Remeber the last time he tried to tell them anything.
@@crypto66”Ammo is dumb” we have dismissed that claim.
Ah, yes, "passive cooling", a vastly superior method of cooling weapons down that all species in the galaxy used to use and suddenly decided to abandon. Ah, we have dismissed that claim.
And yet there are multiple points in ME 1 where random soldiers go "we're running low on ammo!" In a game where ammunition as a concept is supposed to be obsolete.
its possible if you shooting too many like a maniac. there about few thousands bullets you can shoot, and numbers are variable depending on how gun's computer works. gun is really need to be reloading from time to time, but this need is so rare that game just go with conditionality of infinite ammo.
The block the "bullets" are shaved from amounts to thousands of rounds of ammo, if not tens.
Thing is you can go through that FAST with enough firing. So yeah, running out is possible. Not counting grenades or other explosives, which really haven't changed.
even if the ammo block contains thousands of "bullets", you can go through them in a couple of hours of a prolonged fight. Shepard is never involed in any battle bejond an hour or so, so it is not a concern for his team. If you are in a warzone shooting at you enemy for days, this can become a limitation
I mean we still say “roll your window down” in a world where rolling windows are obsolete and we push a button
Doctor Verner here has a point.
It is really stupid, and the games should have used a combo system, with having a number of universal clips to instantly recharge whatever gun you needed, that would be lore-compliant.
But nope, gotta appeal to generic shooter players.
Luckily there is a mod to fix this.
When BioWare had a sense of humor, even a self-deprecating one.
You can tell how annoyed BioWare was at people bringing this up to them by how sarcastic Shepard's final response is. That's not just meta-humor. That's real anger lol.
It's the only mod I really used in Andromeda. Infinite ammo on my LMG with tracking rounds was a blast, about the only real enjoyment I had in that game.
Unfortunately, players never have grasped the whole "the friction caused by ammo management and reloading makes the game better" argument. But when have players ever accepted "we nerfed you for your own good" as an explanation, even when it is explicitly true?
@@Wraithfighter It didn't make the game better. Players don't accept bs reasons especially since they are never true.
@@Wraithfighter "Gluk-Gluk-Gluk"
@@Wraithfighter The gunplay is certainly better in 2, but it felt like it was due to better design overall rather than the 'heat sink' change. Ultimately the heat sink was used to throttle powerful weapons... which could have been achieved by just giving those specific weapons ammo. Which makes sense for specialty weapons, but since all the weapons shared the same "thermal clips" it lead to weird situations where optimal play involves skirting around thermal clips on the ground so you can save them for your 'good' guns.
There is a reason my favorite gun in me3 is the particle rifle. Maxed incendiary ammo and a couple of upgrades (one to increase the clip size) and you will be mowing through enemies!
🗣️ M7 Lancer
@M.A.R.S. Oh god the sound that beautiful gun makes. Soooo good!
I still haven't forgotten that Shepard's literal first words at the beginning of 2 from waking up after being literally dead were 'this gun doesn't have a thermal clip', but here am I thinking how the hell would Shepard even fathom the concept of thermal clips in guns if they had been dead the entire time that this 'change' supposedly was enacted?!
Maybe the thermal clip guns already existed but were niche/private use rather than widespread military use at the time. Thus Shepard can pick one up and see that it is a gun which requires a thermal clip but doesn’t have one.
I remember that too! That's exactly what I thought!
There was a gap between the end of ME1 and Shephard being spaced in ME2. In this gap, the Universal Convention on No Cooldowns (Except For Unified Tech/Biotic Power Cooldowns) and Thermal Clip Mandatoriality was enacted by every sentient species, and by some particularly smart plants.
Lets not forget that Shepard is a high-ranking military officer with security clearance to most of the Alliance technology. The technology could have been classified during the time of ME1 and declassified for ME2.
@marvin2435 Not only that, but Shepard was a Spectre. There's a good chance Shepard field tested the prototypes between ME1 and ME2.
No real military organization would give up to unlimited ammos to favor fire power especially since guns aren't even that much more powerful maybe just a little more accurate but still not by much.
Good thing this is all fake then
From a logical and logistical standpoint, they only REAL benefits of thermal clips is that sub machine guns became relevant again, normally they overheat too quickly with the normal cooling systems
Nah let’s not beat around the bush, standard guns in mass effect did like zero damage. Shepard had to RPG grind his way to a better TTK.
@@wilburforce8046 when compared to normal LARGER bullets, the sand gain metal shavings did far more damage but had little stopping power as they were fired from a technologically superior launching system, you have to remember that shields (of the tech and biotic variety) are a thing.
One benefit to the Thermal clip ejection is that you would probably be doing less extensive maintenance on your guns due to damage to the heat sink.
But honestly they probably just should have retconned Thermal clips into always existing since it causes tons of continuity problems, especially with the Collectors, Geth, and Mechs in Jacobs loyalty mission.
“I’ll be sure to let every military organization in the galaxy know that.”
“Please do.”
Then you get the lancer and turns out to be the best weapon in the game. Powerful, versatile, light, precise, and with unlimited ammo. Unless you're going for a particular build with snipers or shotguns, the lancer is always your friend. And can be used by caster clases as the one and only weapon. It made my sentinel the true master of everything.
When I found the Lancer in the museum during the Citadel DLC, I cried. Running out of clips was such a pain in 2 and 3. I sooo missed the infinite ammo in 1.
Pointing out something is stupid then doing it anyway is still stupid
I'll be sure to let every Hollywood writer know about that
At least they have a sense of humour about it. The games are still amazing. If you hate this then wait till younplay Bethesda games which do stupid things in the hopes the players don't notice. Like stupid guns let alone the ammo it needs
@@shogunpug4071 I will still never forgive them for all the crap they pulled with Mass Effect 3. (And that's not just the ending)
It's undoubtedly designed by bureaucracy then.
Would have been better if they were reusable. Have them be on a timer, and as you go through the game you find more, letting you wait less. Like an RPG (which Bioware keeps moving away from as a concept). Eventually you find enough that by the time you run through them, firing continuously, the first has cooled off. Boom. Now it's not stupid and you're not leaving empty, useless heat sinks on the floor everywhere. Because as it stands they are not reusable. So yes. It's a stupid step backward.
Bioware is gone.
Only EA remains.
@@hariman7727 Sadly.....
God, that's stupid. Especially the final line. Whoever wrote this exchange had a chip on his shoulder.
a clip on his shoulder if you will
Rare Conrad Verner W, I preferred the guns from the first, the cooldown was fine with me
Mass panic from a crisis situation and the people in charge can only think of making YOUR life harder instead of finding a solution to the problem.
Sounds like real life. 😂
I honestly found it to be stupid that they switched to thermal clips because I never run out of bullets regardless. Once I got my M-7 Lancer it became my primary gun. Yeah it has to cool down on occasion but I rarely ever have that be an issue since I eyeball how many rounds I can shoot before overheating. Not to mention in Mass Effect 1 I actually managed to upgrade an assault rifle so it never overheated, so yeah I'd like to imagine that in the future we managed to make laser guns that never overheat.
Exactly. Theres ammo drops everywhere.
Technically they still have ammunition as solid blocks of material. The gun fires by shaving off a small portion of material from this block and accelerating it as the projectile. At least that is what I remember from the lore.
Still dumb, but I appreciate that they tried to at least offer an in-game explanation as to why we saw the changes that we saw, even if those changes were primarily for gameplay purposes
you could've thrown in the explanation of "They're cheap enough that it's not a big deal to replace them, but you can use external cooling to make them ready for use once again. Reloading in the heat of battle is just better than waiting for the heat to drop back down."
It would have been simpler, and likely cheaper to simply mass produce decent heatsinks for the Alliance soldiers than redesigning the entirely of the galaxy's firearm systems.
The problem is it all happened in span just few years. And then this change was strangely universal.
You’re right, Conrad, it’s a fucking terrible idea. Thanks, ME2 writer
It's funny seeing this now while I'm playing Helldivers 2. They have weapons that generate heat, and you can wait for the weapons to cool down, or you can reload to quickly resume firing again.
Basically shields got improvements, a backup heavy pistol is no bad idea, but the termal clips are needed for the cool down of higher powered guns.
Im Me1 one can upgrade snipers and rifles to shot ones, put out a lot of damage and overheat the weaponry instantly.
Basically i would shot once, switch to the other weapon and repeat this step.
Sure if you add Scram Rail* and such rounds into it but even then it's a one-shot KO for most targets including Geth freaking turrets. You shouldn't be spamming a long-ranged rifle to begin with. You could also mod the overheat to have infinite with no cooldown, like that silly laser rifle in ME2 basically was.
Thermal clips so should have just been a consumable you could pop that would instantly remove all heat build up for a limited time.
Elkoss Combine was very close to convincing the Reapers to switch to thermal clips before the Crucible was triggered. That's how savvy they are.
even a broken clock is right twice a day.
Tell that to the military 24-hour standard.
@@IgnoreMeImWrong there are no 24h clocks that still keep time when broken
@@ricksaburai there are, same as 12h dial but with 24h dial, they even have hands. I can buy a wall clock for $20 with delivery, probs there are cheaper models but $20 one looks okay. There is also a 24h wristwatch for $80 but it looks meh
Frankly for 3 they should have made it so that every gun takes thermal clips and can shoot while empty; but they take longer to cool down and the number of times they can fire before needing a long cooldown is halved. Then make thermal clips rarer because you trip over the damn things in ME3 they are so common...
They should have said that the cooling tech was now integrated into whereever you carry your reserve clips.
That way, you could have had regenerating clips in gameplay.
"Shepard makes excuses for a terrible design decision that no one liked."
Very dumb.
The infinite ammo guns were not weaker, so no, they didn't get "stronger" by switching. The lancer, which still uses the old system, is one of the best guns in the damn game.
Also, self-cooling guns made more logical sense because at time you'd hide and wait for your shield to recharge anyway, so what harm is there in letting your gun cooldown at the same time?
It is beyond silly. I know they did it to appeal to Call of Duty kids that can't conceptualize a shooter without ammo but still, it was really dumb, and having an in universe explanation that is flat out wrong in every regard doesn't really help.
But alas, ME3 had much better powers than the previous two games, so I just went full power build anyway and almost never used the gun in the first place. And then you could eventually get recharging weapons that didn't need ammo again and be back to normal.
It always bugged me that they went from using these unlimited ammo guns to more conventional space guns. Figured it was changed to make ME more in line with other shooters but no amount of medi-gel will ever heal that wound.
To play devil's advocate here, I used mods that forced weapons to cool down instead of using weapons clips. The result was far to easy battles and one sided firefights where my unlimited ammo weapons removed the challenge of gunplay entirely
Outside of the heavy weapons it shouldn't be a big difference since in me2 and 3 there's ammo drops every step you take
@@thecreed1212it's actually a huge difference if you try the two playstyles out. With limited ammo you use certain guns in skirmishes wisely. Saving the big guns for big enemies. With infinite ammo you just use it all. Getting ammo isn't a walk in the park. Enemies drop ammo among more enemies most of the time. Dancing around the field for ammo is part of the fun. Staying behind one cover and using the same busted gun for everything is boring. I found ME1's combat to be very easy. I had nothing to lose by taking any and all shots
@@shogunpug4071 @shogunpug4071 that's literally what I said...OUTSIDE of heavy weapons, it's not a big difference. Like I said everytime I've played me2 and 3 I've never had a problem getting ammo anyway because ammo drops are every damn where, so it was a walk in to park getting it. For balance yes the heavy weapons should have finite ammo tho. All in all I say the best system going forward would be a hybrid system or even better they can do what me3 started and give you both 🤷🏾♂️(Me3 is what showed me there's not really a big difference between them tho)
How they "sacrificed" the cooling? The firing device is somehow isolated from external temperatures somehow?
Well I mean, the cooling system cooled everything down in seconds, since they switched the gun would still cool but it would take hours instead of seconds, that and the thermal clip system is tied to the safety switch.
@@kanewilson8624 Sounds like that the weapon manufacters wanted to sell consumables for the weapons. Like if the weapons were made by HP.
@@NoTAdrian115 there was also the mention of the thermal clip's use allowing the firing of larger shards of metal in the lore (pre-ME1 it was the size of sand particles) so more stopping power. The reason why they couldnt do bigger shards with the cooling system was cause it would overheat too fast if they were bigger. The lore also states that the galaxy found that simply switching the thermal clip out when compared to the cool down system was 0.5-1second faster (depending on the model and weapon type) and that the thermal clips allow people to get more rounds down the range when compared to the cool-down system. The thermal clip system also allowed the sub-machine gun weapon type to become relevant again, this was because during the cool-down days it was literally just a fast firing pistol that didn’t hit as hard as a normal pistol or have a larger cool-down system that allowed it to fire longer as it’s assault weapon cousin. Now the sub machine type can do both as good or better when compared to the ME1 days
@kanewilson8624 And yet it feels like guns do way less damage in ME 2 and 3 as opposed to 1. Hard to figure that one out.
@@Kjf365 advancements in shield and armor tech made by all sides over the last 2-3 years between 1 and 2 to counter the introduction of thermal clips, even the Reapers used the Collectors in ME2 to make improved versions of the Husks that can take more punishment before dying.
If guns overheat that fast you got a problem with the gun, not the "clip"
It's hard to believe BioWare has been gaslighting their customers for nearly fifteen years now.
ME1 i felt like a true spectre special forces ... Choosing what guns snd what attachments work best for you
actually in ME1 sniper rifles and shotguns have a reload animations after each shot and that was never explained in the game. as for thermal clips, it allows to contain heat in the ejectable part, while in ME1 heat affects the gun itself. which is bad for reliability and causes deterioration of the gun with time. so in that way it make some sense. Also I think its easy to fabricate thermal clips with omni tool if you running out of ammo. Thats just not implemented in the game. Maybe it would be better if they never explained the thing and just leave it like its was there all along.
Thermal clips should have been an iff you shoot too much thing. If you stop before you hit 0 it cools down, if you don't the thermal clip acts like a fuse and breaks so the rest of the gun doesn't
On this one point, I agree with Verner.
Conrad makes me laugh everytime 😂 but who knew he was a secret smart guy
Should have swapped to the reliables
The 1911
And the AK-47
I did the mathematics on weapons energies for Mass Effect, and bringing those two would actually give you some of the most powerful guns around. The problem is, I don’t know who could supply centerfire ammunition.
@@Mortablunt im 90% sure Kalashnikov Concern would still be around
I wish they would have just retconned the practically unlimited ammo thing instead of feeding us this BS
y it clear the military complex try to make money
Wouldn't be the first time a military adopted inferior tech.
ME1 weapons were so much better. SO much variety and i didn't have to loot fucking ammo. I love ME2 but the idea of introducing ammo and set weapons was a poor design choice
ME2 is the weakest of the trilogy for this reason. They also heavily nerfed powers in ME2 because of how strong they were in ME1 so every class feels exactly the same. ME3 made powers stronger again with all the combo interactions and the new powers added, and also brought back the Lancer in the Citadel DLC to give us guns that use a heat system instead of ammo.
ME3 also had a lot of variety in weapons you could use but ME2 weapons had almost no variety at all. Playing the Legendary Edition really underscores how it's the weakest game of the three because in ME1 you have better RPG mechanics and an excellent story, and ME3's gameplay is much more dynamic and rich. All ME2 has going for it is that you get to kill a *lot* of Batarians in ME2.
I change my mind, ME2 is the best of the series.
@@wesjanson6979 2 was truly the worst one, only backed up by bought reviews, added nothing to the story line, but damn that atmosphere in 2 is amazing
@@eyzmin 2 just felt like a bunch of character introductions and oh looks like reapers are making a human why? who cares the reapers are swarming to the galaxy the end, the characters were fine but id say just better off as sides and not playable(either make samara or jack playable cant have both)
@@username.exenotfound2943 the combat was so bad too, like the worst in pretty much any shooter ive ever played
@@wesjanson6979mE2 is the weakest in the trilogy for multiple reasons
This is like the lore description of the Imperium Lasgun in warhammer: IT CAN TEAR APPART LIMBS, THE POWERCELLS CAN BE RECHARGED BY THERMAL TRANSFUSION EVEN FROM A CAMPFIRE
Vs tabletop gameplay:
Roll D6: does 1 damage....... Ork punches you in the face with a wooden stick... does 30 damage
The M-7 Lancer and Particle Rifle would disagree with you Shepard.
Conrad: "No, the fans are right, it's backwards."
Shepard: "The writers said so, so fuck you."
They could've explained it that there weapon cool down tech was getting hacked alot causing major overheat during fire fights
I would have loved they kept both. Powerfull but limited "ammunitions" vs cooldown but less damage.
What would make more sense... is a slightly bulky addon for a thermal clip, (something removable, like a UBGL) or having squads use BOTH types of arms, mixing units gets benefit of sustained fire from the cooling guns, and the burst damage oriented firepower of the clips.
Mass Effect 1 has one of the ONLY futuristic ammo design for future backgrounds. Look at Starfield, halo, no man’s sky and whatever sci-fi games we got out there. It’s funny that at out of all these big-shot developer teams, none of them had the guts to go out of the box and think like a designer from future. They can’t brainstorm for shit. I often bragged about ME1’s weapon design with my friends how innovative it was. To bad they didn’t continue it.
If you've played and beaten ME1 a couple of times, we knew that it has probably one of the most over powered automatic rifles on any shooter, period. Just put that one specific gun on any shooter, and you'll demolish anything. ANYTHING 😁
Shepard sounds like he's trying to defend somebody else's stupid decision to a Congressional subcommittee.
I concur with Conrad Verner.
In ME3 (with exception to the M-11 suppressor pistol you get in the citadel DLC) I almost exclusively use the Prothean Particle Rifle, or the old Lancer rifle that predates the thermal clip upgrade (also from the citadel DLC)
It’s funny when I do the Armax Arena no thermal clips change, because the guns I use make it a moot point. lol 😆😎
To be honest, the weapon in ME1 is similar to Prothean (ME3 DLC) but a weaker version. It's still unbelievable they choose thermal clips rather than keep researching cooldown method. Of course game-wise, dev wanted to "reload" in a fps game.
For those wondering why the switch happened at the first place, here's some lore:
"...matnematicaly reviewing their combat logs, the geth found that in an age of kinetic barriers, most firefights were won by the side who could put the most rounds down-range the fastest. But combatants were forced to deliberately shoot slower to manage waste heat, or pause as their weapons vented. To eliminate this inefficiency, the geth adopted detachable heat sinks known as thermal clips. While organic arms manufacturers were initially doubtful this would produce a net gain, a well-trained soldier can eject and swap thermal clips in under a second. Faced with superior enemy firepower, organic armies soon followed the geth's lead, and today's battlefields are littered with these thermal clips..."
(Mass Effect 2 > Codex > Secondary > Weapons, Armor, and Equipment > Small Arms)
I am not a weapon expert at all, but it makes sense to me. Just like almost anything, weapons constantly evolve due to the shifts in tactics, environment, and technologies used on the battlefield. There is no "perfect gun" because this just means a "universal gun" for all scenarios (which is a dangerous practice), whereas the diversification of the specialized weapon is the real key to victories in broad-scale wars (the answer to why world military has this crazy amount of different guns which they never stop to add).
Surely, people wouldn't just throw a recently outdated technology away if the contrast of the efficiency is small enough at least for some tasks, hence, there are still some "old-infinite" rifles that can be found in the ME2&ME3 universe, used, for instance, to shoot another varen on a distant farmworld... However, they have become undemanded by the serious armed groups due to the recent geth's critical discovery in the military statistics. The galaxy had 2 years to switch to the new weapon innovational technology, whereas the commonly large military production capabilities of the many in-space factions made this process even faster.
(Anyway, I still can see why this is a lame decision from the gameplay perspective.)
Everyone who played ME-1 would've been confused af in ME-2 like why did tech go backwards and where tf is my HWMA-X assault rifle and the combat system in general went backwards except the maps maybe it finally tells you where you need to go
Shepard unintentionally brings up a good point though - why NOT have both?
Think I would've been perfectly fine with this change if the clips weren't *required*. Adding the clips as an optional and expendable way to instantly reload a weapon system instead of waiting for cooldown while still having the option to wait adds complexity and forms an interesting system. And if they really want to encourage clips just make the conventional cooldowns way longer.
Effectively infinite ammo is a logical and interesting mechanic that adheres and contributes to the high sci-fi setting of Mass Effect.
Verner's right, it really is a step back both mechanically and in world building.
Because any Military in the Galaxs is know to make good Choices. Yeah... and the old Design is still better, heck... Was the Avenger in the Citadel DLC that run on the "old tech" not powerfull as hell? This Thermoclip junk is just stupid, i like to think that many People still use the old Ways of cool down and all. If i remember right what a hell on cool down mods i build in my Weapons in ME 1 everything from Pistols and above was a Machinegun with unlimitet Ammo...
"It's not ammunition!" I'm sorry, it's single use replaceable components in a gun which are expended when fired.
It's ammunition.
Verner is 100% correct and I will forever hate that change. I loved Mass Effect 1 but 2 switching to the dumb ammo system pissed me off so much. How do you go from infinite ammo to finite ammo?
Spectre weapons + 2 maxed out cooling coils = infinite ammo with no overheat
It was a downgrade to switch to a conventional ammo system and the "lore" was a backend justification.
Yup, that's why Prothean Particle Rifle and N7 Lancer are among the best guns in ME3, cooldown system was good as it were, why go and fix something that ain't broke.
This really was quite stupid. Everyone knows it was done because "reloading weapons is cool" or some nonsense.
In reality, in the first Mass Effect, it was VERY easy to build a weapon with infinite firing capacity with high level cooling systems. So, this whole "the Geth did it" makes even LESS sense.
You could always tell that the clips thing was just a way for the developer to retcon ammo back into the Mass Effect universe. This guy is right and the economic/Logistical/Strategic requirements to keep all of your forces supplied and viable when they essentially had infinite ammo in the field. I feel like that major benefit overrides any kind of minor tactical advantage that might've been gained. Especially now that I run out of ammo often when they introduced the clips.
The heating thing always felt like the dumbest part of Mass Effect. They're not laser guns. They're still firing projectiles. The projectiles have to come from somewhere. Even the plasma weapons the Geth and the Andromeda guys use fire some kind of gas. Just call them magazines already and move on.
Extremely late here but like...
It makes perfect sense
Not practically
But think about Who produces and sells the clips
Real world fell for whorse scams, Just think that evewryone belives butter to be the og while margarine came First and it's kinda healthyer but some marketing straight out re wrote history, or even Better eggs and bacon as good breakfast, or Cars in america... Expecially Cars in america
Honestly, including an explanation was a mistake. It would have been better to not draw attention to it. Or to introduce new weapons that had limited ammo because they consumed something physical to fire, but had some advantage that justified it. This is sloppy. This is Rowling-level crap.
I disliked the swap from the old system to thermal clips myself.
But then again I imagine the Mattock which is my favorite gun in the franchise would have been a nightmare to use with the inbuilt cooling.
Ironic since Helldivers 2 has a gun called the Sickle which has thermal clips AND cools down.
When I hear him explaining what a thermal clip is I think of ICEnJAM lolllllll
You can always improve on a cooling system, you cannot improve much on how hot a brick of steel can get before melting. It's not like they're being dumped in a mylar dump pouch to cool and recycle either, they just get tossed out like a spent casing. IIRC a few guns even shave off hunks of the clip to launch rather than bothering with plasma and photons.
Imo the cooling systems in ME1 are superior. Simply because in a full galaxy war, it is better to have unlimited ammunition but having to watch your gun from overheating than having limited heatsinks just to fire your guns.
There's a mod that works exactly like that. Worse, its just an INI edit, literally just a boolean in a text file saying whether weapons cooldown or not.
Honestly, Thermal Clips feel like a bad idea that was stopped halfway through.
"Hey, instead of giving all guns infinite ammo, how about we make all guns use the same pool of limited ammo!"
Helldivers did it best. Thermal weapons are capable of cooling down by themselves, but if you overheat the weapon by firing too much, you eject a thermal clip to bring heat down immediately as I guess once the weapon overheats, it will take a considerable amount of time for it to return to safe firing levels again without the ability to just dump that heat out in a second. This is the route Mass Effect should have gone. I guess a lore reason for it is that there simply isn't enough room to have both clips AND cooling tech inside a gun, it's one or the other. You sacrifice efficiency for the ability to get more fire down range in an engagement.
It's definitely not as stupid as some people make out. Cost is also a factor. I would imagine cooling tech is expensive and needs constant maintenance to keep guns in good condition. Thermal clips essentially take out most of the maintenance required, making guns much more efficient out in the field, which lowers cost. So, more fire down range due to not having to wait for weapon cooldown, and lower production cost of weapons and lower maintenance cost, for the small sacrifice of having to carry thermal clips on you, which in lore are actually pretty small and compact.
The amount of times I had to wait for weapon cooldowns in ME1 was horrendous. I legit struggled to get through the shields of Geth without waiting on cooldowns. ME1 weapons felt like BB guns. In a real firefight, you'd be dead fighting the Geth with such inferior firepower. In a universe with advanced shields and armor, you really need to get as much fire down range as possible. Waiting for weapon cooldowns is sure to get you killed.
Iirc, a codex entry says that as shield technology improved, battle telemetry showed that guns needed to fire more powerful and more frequent rounds in order to overcome the shields. Thus, thermal clip technology became a necessity in order to avoid long, drawn out fights of attrition.
The termal clip thing was really stupid. could just have added them as a limited boost to your weapons. You want to keep shooting past the thermal overload? Use clips. The clips should be a very limited resource though(Eg. being so bulky that you can only have 2 or three on hand. That way you have to plan, when to use your weapon boost.
"Fine, sure. You can still wait for your gun to cool down on it's own, though, right?"
"No."
If the guns used thermal clips to quickly remove heat from the weapons, they could still retain the cooldown to conserve thermal clips. Tacticool corporate decisions vs real thermodynamics.
It was them trying to cover up switching to an ammo system because EA demanded this game appeal to brain rot CoD players
For some reason I greatly preferred ME1. It was janky at times, but combat in the later games felt way more generic. That's how I remember it anyway.
I hated the thermal clips, No wonder ME-2 felt way more dated than ME-1
You can still also let the gun cool down on its own right?
Right BioWare? Right??
Why BioWare why?!
Its so stupid too. Like why would go from infinite ammo to ammo? Like ya the guns over heated but only if you fired it to much in few seconds. And it cools down in literally a couple of seconds basically the time to reload.
Yes, let every military organization in the galaxy know that cooldown is better for logistics, and of course the obvious aspect of how the hell did they all switch so quickly?
Verner: ... does someone in the council own shares on the company that got the contract for those clips?
Shepard: ... I bet is the salarian.
This is just bad writing, and one of the reasons I'm so critical of 2 and 3 when compared to 1. They knew it was a cop-out, so instead of addressing it they just had a buttmonkey character repeat the arguments used by the fans that were critical of them. The signs were already on the wall back then that Bioware was almost dead. Also, for all the issues it's been having, Helldivers 2 still did this better. Giving you limited replaceable heat sinks but also letting them cool down over time. That's the kind of nice thing you can have when the devs give a damn about the details of their game.