Vintage Heat Sink

I too think this is a good compromise. Really I'm fine with either type.

My only concern is lore -- that we'll see ammo crates in unexplored virgin worlds of another galaxy because, you know, gameplay reasons.

While I don't know that I'll ever personally use this option, I will state that more player choice is always - always - better than less player choice, so I'm thrilled with this compromise.

Did you play ME 1?

I suspect we might use the almighty power of the omni-tool to build thermal clips and medigel from appropriate sources of substance. If you check its codex entry, it's been a "minifacturing device" for a while, able to make small items from materials hanging around.

The omni-tool is way more powerful than most people realise, having a tiny 3D printer embedded in your arm is crazy. And then you can stab someone with it.

Can I hug you, Tiberius? Hell, can I hug half the team?

In ME1, initial sniper rifles generated some 60-70 percent of thermal capacity per shot. Maybe even more.

If you fired a second time, the rifle would overheat and you'd face a lengthy cooldown, while timing your shots apart a bit would result in a rather steady rate of fire.

Late-game sniper rifles could fire even two shots, with the right upgrades, with the third being an overheat.

One thing that always bothered me in ME3MP: The guns wouldn't cool while not held. To reload a vintage sink in ME3, you would have to go through the 5s long period of being unarmed, whereas in ME1, you could quickly drop the rifle and reach for your sidearm. When you came back to that rifle on your sling (because I considered the "return to back" thing stupid, and slings are cool) it was already cold, and I don't mean that in the traditional hot/cold weapon terminology.

So whenever I poorly managed my heatsink with the M7 Lancer, my favorite weapon, and went for the Phalanx on my hip, I ended up having to cool the rifle afterwards, mostly stuck to the Phalanx for the rest of the wave. That thing was NOWHERE near as effective.

Can also be used as a romance/LI strategy.

Such a tease.

...I can never unthink this new meaning for artillery pounding...

Oh my gods. Zaeed would be so happy. I'm so happy.

I always was sceptical about the technology switch from ME1 to ME2.
It was clearly a move to gather more audience by having more familiar mechanic in the game, but for me it never worked from a logical point of view. In 2 year period (that, I guess, was the gap between ME1 and ME2) 'thermal clips' (or, in other words, regular ammo) spread through ALL the galaxy and the overheat weapons were nowhere to be found. It wouldn't work this way. ME3 introduced Lancer at the very end of it's lifecycle which was enough for it to become my favorite weapon.

Overheat mechanic had brilliant lore behind it in ME1 codex, and to me is one of the crucial things in ME. Having thermal clips meant (to me) the same kind of streamlining and backtracking from established lore towards cliches as the final ME3 star-wars like space battle with dogfighting instead of fleets never making visual contact and bombarding itself from long distances/retreating to FTL when needed.

I'll mod every weapon to ME1 mode and pretend the regular ammo period never happened. I'm glad it will be an option in MEA.

just out of curiosity...how much are we gonna be punished for daring to choose the original mechanic over the way Bioware envisioned their "reload mechanic".

Is it going to be like Silverite in DAI which allowed us to bypass classes but screwed us out of the highest DPS?

Also will this cool down system be practical and increasingly effective depending on the level of the created weapon or will it just feel like always playing with level 1 pistol that overheats every 2 shots?