Thermal Clips

With 'Wow screwing up the lore even further' It didn't seem that you were just stating your opinion on the matter,  but criticizing the choice of going for the ammo. 

Given the rough google translation and Gamble's reference to strategies against different opponents, I'm wondering how much of this answer is about thermal clips. It sounds like he's also talking about ammo powers, so I'm not even convinced yet that this is saying they're replacing thermal clips with normal ammo.

Snark aside, the less time they spend having to go back and double-check the lore to make sure they're not contradicting themselves, the faster they can release the game. You're allowed to ship a game full of plot holes, but not with missing textures or glitchy gameplay. It's obvious where BioWare is putting their budget.

I saw it right after. I wasn't going to delete my post.

If we dive into the "science" behind it, we'll discover there's no much science really in this regard. The projectiles will surely just disintegrate as soon as they hit something if they didn't already when they left the barrel... The friction with the air itself will cook that tiny piece of metal.

The way I see it, it was just a cool hypothetical mechanic for a gun (cooldown system). It's probably an advantage to have a gun that can fire a lot with a single metal block as ammunition over a gun that needs magazines or something on those lines. It's also probably much lighter and virtually no cumbersome for the wielder.

Nice! I was watching a crappy stream/copy until very late last night, so I missed most of the text.

Power Cells are "ammo" for heavy weapons in ME2, so maybe those make a return.

I was certain that in ME2 they where called "heavy weapons ammo" Pretty generic I know. Anyways, it makes sense I suppose.

dude....its the same idea, one weapon can fire virtually forever the other cannot once you deplete the thermal clips...see my point?

The actual lore behind it makes some sense because the weapons in Mass Effect 1 can't fire forever. They can become very efficient, but you also have to keep in mind that it would be exceedingly expensive to equip every soldier with 2x Frictionless Materials which is assuming that is a lore thing and not purely a game mechanic(as ME1 has its share of things that break lore but exist purely to be a game mechanic).

On top of that guns in all 3 Mass Effect games do technically run out of ammo, it's just not a game mechanic. Guns in Mass Effect shave small bits of metal off a block which is typically replaced in between missions. You just don't ever see this happening in Mass Effect, but it is mentioned in the codex and you would eventually run out if you didn't replace those blocks of metal.

With thermal clips you could instantly cool a gun off allowing for much more shots to be fired in a short time span. The problem with the gameplay mechanic implementation of it was that the guns don't naturally cool down if you don't reload which functionally makes them identical to conventional ammo(however again, that might just be a purely gameplay mechanic and not part of the lore).

That could be fixed by allowing guns to cool down when you aren't firing them. It could be balanced to be a low rate of regaining shots, explained away in the lore by saying that the need for the thermal clips to be disposable has made it so that they don't dissipate heat nearly as well as they used to.[/quote]
dude I know the lore. If you read it one block of metal used for ammo supply can last a really REALLY long time. Even without frictionless materials those guns CAN fire for that long without running out of ammo as long as the soldier makes sure not to overheat the gun and even then after cool down the gun can fire again. Once you run our of thermal clips tho YOU ARE DONE. That is it. Out on the freaking frontier, with scarce resource with NO IN LORE ADVANTAGE to use thermal clips besides being able to push more bullets down the line without having to time yourself which weapon do you think ANYONE would pick to take with them? Why would ANYONE want to use a series of weapons that require additional logistics and supply lines and production lines to be effective?