Subject: Re: New Year thread 2014-2015
Author:
Posted on: 2015-01-01 19:32:00 UTC

Colibri: All right then. Where to start?

Colibri: It concerns the weapons in Mass Effect, which is a superb game and something you should play at least once in your life.

Colibri: All firearms in this universe are built around a very powerful mass accelerator. If you remember your formulas from high school physics, kinetic energy is determined by the formula F = 1/2 * m * v2.

Colibri: Modern-day weapons use a bullet weighing several grams and shoot them at speeds around or higher than the speed of sound.

Colibri: In Mass Effect, the accelerators can shoot a bullet the size of a grain of sands at supersonic speeds and cause even more damage that a modern-day firearm.

Colibri: That way, you can simply shave off tiny pieces of metal from a metal block stored inside the weapon and almost never run out of ammo!

Colibri: The only problem is the heat buildup: the accelerator gets really, really hot with prolonged use. If the weapon overheats, it locks up and has to vent heat for a few seconds before it can be used again.

Colibri: Simple enough, right? That's how it was in the first game: no reloading shenanigans, you just have to keep an eye on the heat gauge.

Colibri: In the second game, they got rid of the internal cooling mechanism and introduced "heat sinks" that absorb the accelerator's heat instead, effectively making weapons have limited ammo again.

Colibri: The in-universe justification is that a) one faction discovered that they could unload a greater volume of lead in a shorter amount of time (thus out-shooting the enemy) if they had the thermal clips and b) the mass accelerators got more and more powerful (and thus produced more heat).

Colibri: It just bothers me that the game devs decided to be more like other shooters and reintroduce an ammo system.


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