Forum:Thermal Clips

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Just need to get this off my chest somewhere besides my podcast this weekend.

Thermal clips are such a step backwards. I understand why they did it, but seriously, I'd rather fire a tad slow and never run out of ammo ever. In ME1, I stormed through the whole game with a pistol. My skill was high enough that it never overheated, ever. And now I have to swap from a heavy pistol to a POS machine pistol midway through every single firefight. It just brings frustration every single time I have to reload, because again, my pistol never overheated.

I was hoping that the clips were optional - that you could fire a la ME1 until it overheated, then you'd pop the clip and shove a fresh one in. Clips would be rare, so you'd have to use this sparingly. If you ran out of spare clips, you'd have to wait for it to cool down - for balance, cooldown would be longer, perhaps ten seconds.

I hope I can find a pistol that's two years old in-game so I don't have to deal with this crap >.< Boter 18:03, January 29, 2010 (UTC)

I'm more annoyed by the crappy capacity most weapons have. I'm stuck using my inaccurate weaksauce smg constantly because my sniper rifle and pistol can't hold 50 shots between them, when I jsut left an area with a million clips I couldn't carry. When I first heard of the system, i assumed the same, that you'd be able to fire as normal, or drop a rare clip for an instant cooldown. That would have been a good system, this one not so much.--DragonJTS^{Leave me a message} 18:22, January 29, 2010 (UTC)

Indeed. Using it as a reason to have a "normal" ammo system is just lame. If they had extended the ME1 system with the clips, allowing you to remove heat FASTER, that would have been fine. Or, have it so once you overheat you need to "reload" a new heatsink, but while you are using one, any you aren't using can be cooling down by themselves. Heatsinks that become useless after a certain number of shots is just illogical.

In ME1, even if the weapon heated quickly, you could still keep firing as much as you want, as long as you didn't hold it down long enough to overheat.

ME2 is just generic-shooter-ammo-system going by another name. Yeryry 18:26, January 29, 2010 (UTC)

The other annoying thing is the so-called intercompatibility of things. "Um, hi, these clips work across all weapons... what do you mean, my sniper rifle ran out and I have to use the SMG? I'm going to take the SMG clips and use them in my sniper rifle. Take that." /has a Widow and loves it Boter 18:03, February 4, 2010 (UTC)

I don't actually mind Thermal Clips too much, perhaps I'm the only one who doesn't mind them... I've only run out of ammo completely a few times on some weapons, though I'm seeing it more often with a sniper now than I did before, it's still fairly manageable to me it seems, on my SMG on my engineer I had over 700 ammo, that's just an insane amount, compared to my pistol it was crazy, however I still used my pistol frequently because it was more accurate, did better damage, and even though it only had like 40 ammo or whatever, I still barely ran out of ammo for it completely. The Thermal Clip system was added it seems to me, just to put more balance between the weapons, more reason to use the other types of weapons that you have available, as well as fully making use of your powers. Early on on my Engineer (if anyone has less ammo than an Engineer I'd be surprised, SMG/Pistols only.) it was tough, since my powers weren't as well developed, and I didn't have ammo researches, but my squad and powers managed to pull me out of tough spots, by the later half of the game, when I had full incinerate, it was crazy how much I was *not* firing my guns, relying more upon them either to finish out an enemy, or using pistols against scions to take down their armor, though even then, still was mixing incinerate/pistol fire. To me it seems that the weapon that has the biggest issue in keeping ammo, is a sniper rifle, and that's offset by the fact that sniper rifles kill so easily in my opinion, from what I hear, the Widow can 1shot anything even on insanity difficulty, that's pretty crazy, when you figure using 1 shot on a sniper to take them down, to my Engineer who has to mix powers with heavy weapons to take down some of the meanest things out there, that a sniper just goes *pew pew* and moves on, in fact I don't see really how the Widow has an ammo problem if you can 1shot everything, you've gotta be picking up more thermal clips than you're spending in ammo to kill stuff, unless you're using weak squad members who haven't trained any skills. Jaline 18:59, February 4, 2010 (UTC)

To clarify what I was meaning by making you use different weapons it was: If you're using a single weapon against *everything* no matter their defenses, and it takes you too many shots to bring that enemy down, that you're nearly running out of ammo, the idea of the thermal clips is so that you should use another weapon when an enemies defenses call for it, that's why some are better against armor, some are better against shields, some are better at close range, etc. Back before I really trained Incinerate on my engineer, krogans and vorcha were *TOUGH* kills, however after training incinerate to a decent level, they fell pitifully quickly because they couldn't regenerate, groups of husks would take three to five clips of SMG ammo to take down, but I could kill up to 5 husks in one incinerate blast once I got it, so they were no longer an ammo drain. Point is with the thermal clips, to give you more of a challenge than "point and shoot till it's dead" which is welcome in my book. Jaline 19:04, February 4, 2010 (UTC)

I totally agree. Back in ME1 with my Vanguard, I hardly ever used my biotics, except for Barrier and the occasional warp, but in ME2, I completely fell in love with the pull/charge combo. I hardly ever ran out of ammo - use the pistol for long-distance headshots, the SMG for general firing, using BURST firing (just like in a normal shooter), and the shotgun (especially after I specialized with the Krogan shotgun) for the Geth Hunters and Krogans who just had to charge me down. A pistol headshot with the cryo ammo would usually either kill something or freeze it, allowing my unlimited ammo blessed teammates to finish it off. The Collector Beam was saved for Scions and other big shielded/armoured things. So in my opinion, the inclusion of a finite amount of ammo really forced me to make some tactical decisions, which I really appreciated and enjoyed. Vund223 19:18, February 4, 2010 (UTC)

Well, as a gameplay consideration it's an annoyance... but what annoys me those with it is, again, the massive step backwards in-universe. "We have these awesome weapons that never run out of ammo. Let's limit them incredibly!" Boter 20:18, February 4, 2010 (UTC)

Agreed; I don't like the new system that much, but I think it would have been a little easier to swallow if they hadn't handed the players such a bullshit excuse as the one given in-universe. The weapons in ME1 could lay down incredibly heavy fire for an unlimited amount of time, so I fail to see how giving your troops less firepower in a decidedly finite package makes any sense. And before anyone gets on about the geth's analysis of firefights and the statistics involved, that's NOT how gunbattles work; even with short-term engagements, combat logistics sustainability is a huge issue for small unit combat, especially considering the expeditionary nature of the forces depicted in game - some shit just doesn't change, and they did a sloppy job of making up an excuse for the new system. -- Echo Four Delta 20:28, February 4, 2010 (UTC)

The way I see the new Thermal Clip system from an ingame standpoint, is that the thermal clips were always there, simply that when a weapon got overheated in ME, we didn't have the actual interaction of having to swap out clips or such, the backing that I have in my mind of this is when Shepard "wakes up" after 2yrs of being dead they say "There's no thermal clip in this pistol!" now, to me, that sounds as if they were ALWAYS present in-universe, because how could Shepard have known about a technology change in the time they were dead? Now in ME, we were a spectre, and we had the resources of the council, which likely would have included "As many thermal clips as you could ever possibly need" now in ME2, we no longer have the resources of the specres/council, and Thermal Clips were the way that weapons took heat back in ME, except we just never actually dealt with them directly, because we had more than we needed, however we did have to "let the weapon cool down" which actually I find reloading my gun in ME2 faster than "letting it cool down" in ME. So no, I don't think that technology took a step backwards, it's simply that our resources in ME2 are NOT that of the council's resources anymore, and we have more limitations in what is available to us. This is even identifiable in the fact that we don't nearly have as many guns/armors as we did in ME, we also need to do our own weapon upgrading, our own armor/shield upgrading, instead of buying a better version from the company, why? Because again, we don't have the council's resources! Jaline 20:40, February 4, 2010 (UTC)

I like that point of view. Vund223 20:49, February 4, 2010 (UTC)

I hate the Thermal Clip system but I knew it had to be done for the heavy weapons. Think about it, Bioware adds weapons that do more damage, AoE damage, and then some side effects compared to the other ones that has to be balanced. Now for the regular weapons it is horrible Yes it made me use my powers more but I also used them more simply because they are better. I would have used the powers more anyway because ME2's have been improved so much more compared to how the powers in ME1 worked. Overall the Thermal Clip system makes sense but very annoying.Doctalen 03:02, February 7, 2010 (UTC)

I liked using just Adrenaline with either the multirounds-per-reload sniper rifle, (really started to rack up the headshot kills that way) or that 5-round-burst assault rifle. don't know the names of those yet. And then the assault rifle, vindicator, I think. you can choose it on that particular ship you board, choose one of three weapons, and only one of them, no gobacks. Mass fire on a group, in adrenaline mode. Woah. The pistols are too slow firing in that mode :P I gotta tell ya, that rifle you can pick up when recruiting archangel, plus adrenaline: best way to defend archangel when the merc groups attack. best because you get to really make most shots count, rather than point and hope for the best only to go 'oh shit' because you just ran out of ammo and only took most of their health down, not killed. AlexMcpherson 02:54, February 9, 2010 (UTC)

I was annoyed at first, having to actually reload my guns, but I stopped minding not too long after I started playing. I imported my soldier from ME1, and as a result I had access to plenty of guns. Having 5 different guns to choose from really helped. I also equiped the armor parts to let me hold more ammo, then I got the Revenant light machine gun. At that point most of my ammo problems went away. Before that, my usual tactic was to start with a sniper rifle and burn all it's ammo to take out as many guys as possible to thin them out, then I would switch to the assault rifle. From there it would be the pistol, and the shotgun only if they got too close to me. I usually saved the heavy weapons for the big stuff, but sometimes I would just get irritated and use it to tear down regular enemies. It all went out the window with the Revenant. I used to use the collector beam on Scions, but the Revenant with Inferno ammo would tear it down as fast, if not faster than the Collector beam. And it carries so much ammo that I could actually afford to just spray it into Husks. In the end I actually like the ammo system, since it added a nice element of strategy to fights, especially since I was a soldier and didn't have any biotic abilities, accept for barrier when i was able to use advanced training. And I just realized that I don't know how to set up my seignature, woops, noob here btw :) Edit: ok I think I figured it out now. Ulysys

Do you think that thermal clips should have a collective resource pool for ammo? The thermal clips are universal; get 1 clip and it refills ammo for all guns. This makes them highly effective for the Soldier, but less so for Adepts. What confuses me is that the thermal clips can be used for any gun... but I can't take thermal clips from other guns I have to the guns I WANT to use.

Example: I have full SMG ammo, but no pistol ammo. My target has a lot of armor. Now, the thermal clips I picked up work for both smg and pistol, but for some reason I am not allowed to take all the thermal clips being used for my smg and use them for my pistol. What is the canon reasoning for this? Game-wise, I know it's to keep you from running around with just one gun (even though guns already have strengths and weaknesses), but when you're playing on Insanity difficulty, every enemy has shields or armor (or both), and most of the enemies don't drop ammo, relying on biotics alone is impossible. ~Kleptomaniac

(Please sign things so we know where one post stops and another begins.) Yeah, that's the other thing. "Oh, my sniper rifle is out of clips. Well, I'll just switch to my SMG... and... **** it, I'm going to take the clips from the SMG and use them in the sniper rifle!" Boter 08:01, February 10, 2010 (UTC)

Yeah, ME3 should have a universal system of 'You have x heatsinks', and the number of shots you can get from the loaded heatsink. Once you install a heatsink, it can't be removed until 'expended', BUT, When you pickup heatsinks, it is added to your overall number. And when you reload, it takes from the overall. That way you can just go one weapon or multiple and know you can switch tactics to the situation i.e. no more firing from a distance with close-range weapons because of the ammo issue. If you're at a distance, you pick em off with a sniper, and if they don't come close, then well, you'll empty your reserves with just the sniper rifle.

If you use all your heatsinks with all weapons, the first, say, 5, will automatically be used to replenish all weapons, then build the reserves. Just to strike that balance for insanity players because it will be long-then-close range battles.

This means Sniper players are not so limited with just 9 shots on the base sniper rifle.

And close-quarter players can be in the thick of thigns and just continually reload. I've found myself running out of ammo doing this with just the base rifle and using melee to stun enemies while i moe about picking up another heatsink. With a universal reserve, total heatsinks for all weapons would be for all weapons, not 'of the 10 or 20 or so heatsinks, only 5 are for this, 5 for that, etc'.AlexMcpherson 08:13, February 10, 2010 (UTC)

You've missed the point - or rather, you're against the entire point. They've put resource management into the game - can't just hose rooms down anymore, which is important now that targets actually have hit locations. Heat management was a completely trivial non-issue in ME1. Now your shots actually matter. -DarkJeff 20:58, February 11, 2010 (UTC)

(Jeff, I moved your edit to the bottom so that the forum reads sequentially.) No, I understand what it means in-game, but you missed my point - what it means in-universe, not for the game itself. Boter 15:38, February 12, 2010 (UTC)

In general though, sustained fire does seem to be better with thermal clips. The ME2 Avenger fires 40 rounds, with 400 bullets in reserve, with a 1.5s reload time between the 11 clips. At 850 RPM, it takes 2.8s to empty a clip. So, including reloading time, it takes 45.8s to send 440 rounds downrange. The ME1 Avenger X fires 51 rounds before overheating. It takes 4s to cool down from overheating, and if their fire rate is the same, then it would take 63 seconds to fire 440 rounds at 850 RPM. Mods of course change that, but given that overheating is an in-universe thing, I'm pretty sure not every gun is loaded with a Kinetic Coil, Frictionless Materials, and Snowblind rounds so that it never overheats or loses accuracy.

Looking further at the Avenger X, weapons heat goes 0.0 to 1.0, and it takes 51 shots to go from 0 to 1. Heat disperses at 0.33 per second. At 14 rounds per second, the net heat build-up is high enough so that it overheats in 3.6 seconds. So it generates 0.278 net heat per second, or 0.61 heat/second gross. So 0.0434 heat per round fired. 440 rounds means 19.1 units of heat that has to be dispersed. So let's avoid overheating (and the 4s overheat penalty). We need to slow the rate of fire down so that we hit 1 when we've fired 440 rounds. Mucking up a spreadsheet, we need to fire at 481.38 RPM (8.023 per second), which results in a net heat build-up of 0.018198 per second and gives us 54.95 seconds of sustained fire before it overheat, resulting in 440.86 rounds downrange.

With heatsinks, the Avenger fires 440 rounds in 45.8 seconds.

Without heatsinks, at max RPM, the Avenger X fires 440 rounds in 63 seconds.

Without heatsinks, never overheating, the Avenger X fires 440 rounds in 54.95 seconds.

There you have it. In-Universe, heat sinks DO give a better rate of fire.--DarkJeff 16:34, February 12, 2010 (UTC)

I personally think the problem would come if you had "X amount of Heatsinks that work universal for all weapons no matter what" is that frequently (I dunno about everyone else) I reload WITHOUT being down to 0 ammo, I'll reload a pistol for example at like 2/3 ammo out of the 6 left, or an SMG with 10 out of 50 shots still available, etc, if you had to reload using "X amount of heatsinks = how many times you can reload" then it would be WORSE by far, because you'd actually be losing ammo on guns that aren't just 1/2 shots before you need to reload. As it is now, we can at least look at the way we use them, and go "Okay, so if I take out my thermal clip at 2 ammo left in my handgun, when I run out of all the full thermal clips, I still have 2 shots left on that last clip if I haven't picked up anymore since." So it doesn't really need to do any sort of suspending belief for it to work. However if we physically had a counter for our heatsinks each time we reloaded, we'd be throwing away some ammo, and that would force us to sometimes just fire until we *are* out of shots on that heatsink, instead of reloading and being prepared for the next wave or enemy that pops his head up. Thermal Clips are a great system, and I'll love them in ME3. If biotics get pissy that they have a lesser advantage due to having less weapon choices, that's what your squad mates are for, adepts aren't great at shields, so use tali's energy drain or bring someone with overload. Engineer is my favorite class, (I've tried others and none of them have thrill that engineer does) and that means I have smg/pistol, low choice of weapons, but if I have that much of an issue with Barriers, which are actually more present end-game than shields, I'll bring a squadmate to deal with it. Jaline 18:13, February 12, 2010 (UTC)

Personally, I'd like to be able to choose between old-generation and new-generation weapons. Add even more strategy to a fight. Do you take a gun that will overheat quickly and do little damage per shot, but never run out of ammo... or take the gun that allows higher dps, a shorter pause if you empty your clip (as opposed to waiting for the overheat to cool down), and quickly bursts through an enemy's health/armor/shields, but with the risk of running out of ammo and making it useless for the rest of that fight?

I actually enjoyed the fights that took awhile when I didn't have to worry about ammo. Felt more like a movie, with people trading shots at each other, lasers flying all over, pew pew pew! And now, I just want to rush through a battle. "I don't have time for this. I don't want to waste ammo. Let me just run up and shove my gun into your face. So I waste as little time/bullets as possible so I can save it for something more dangerous."

I think a major thing that grinds my gears is the fact that the limited ammo only applies to YOU! All those enemies spraying bullets at you, or firing rockets, never have to worry about wasting any ammo or switching to another gun. I understand that we're the "skilled human," but it gets tiresome when those two distant enemies are firing rocket after rocket at you... and after 50 or so rockets, they are STILL firing at you without pause, and you're still dealing with closer enemies that are using shotguns and rifles and don't have to worry about being frugal with their shots.

On a related note, does the Geth Pulse Rifle have infinite ammo? I noticed that it onyl did about 3-4 dmg per shot (according to a spreadsheet someone posted in a different thread), and fired fairly quickly. ~Kleptomaniac

No, but it might as well. With around 500 shots, and the fact that it only takes like 2 or 3 pick-ups to completely refill the gun, I've never run out of ammo in a fight, even when I was deliberately trying to do so. (Via combat of course, not pointlessly firing at a wall.) --DarkJeff 18:27, February 18, 2010 (UTC)

And part of the fact that thermal clips only apply to YOU is that they do NOT apply to your squadmates, again, using powers during battle, and letting your squad actually do a lot of fighting, you don't run out of ammo too easily, I really don't see it, the only way you run outta ammo super-fast is with sniper rifles really, and even then, the snipers that run out really fast, you're killing your enemies in one hit anyway! And when you kill them in 1 hit, you're certainly not giving your squad time to work with you. Either way, between squad unlimited thermal clips (they do reload, so they are using clips), and having quick recharge powers, it's much better than the old "Forever cooldown powers" and "Unlimited gunfire" Jaline 22:22, February 12, 2010 (UTC)

I can totally concur that if you use powers and let your squad do a lot of the fighting then your ammo clips last a lot longer. That, of course, is perfectly logical. However, it's also not nearly as much fun ;) .. Every time I snipe someone I expect to hear the Unreal Tournament "HEADSHOT!" battle cry, haha. Raphaeldisanto 22:00, February 27, 2010 (UTC)

That was half the reason the ME1 system was so good. Instead of like most games where all the enemies have infinite ammo but you don't, ME1, EVERYONE had infinite ammo, and not only that, they gave a reasonable explanation for why that was the case. ME2, the enemies have infinte ammo, your squadmates have infinte ammo.. In fact everyone has infinte ammo except you, and you're meant to be the saviour of the universe or whatever! Lame.

80.2.74.180 18:08, March 2, 2010 (UTC)

What I find completely rediculous is that now my guns seem to be thermoses. They're able to maintain the same heat level without it ever dropping. You'd think our wonderful thermal clip heat sinks would eventually cool off. I'll fire a sniper at the beginning of a fight then swap to another weapon for the rest of the fight. Then at the end off the battle I'll still eject a glowing red hot heat sink from my sniper. That's something that has bugged me. In my mind themal clips should have some degree of reuseability as they cool off. 76.74.207.200 06:59, March 17, 2010 (UTC)

I actually think the original system was TEN TIMES better. The thermal clip issue is just their way of making up a reason to put in an ammunition system for the game, so instead of running out of ammo you 'build up heat'---which is silly, I think. If they were so insistent on coming up with a way to regulate gun usage, they could have simply used the same system (the "overheating" system of ME1) and then made it so that an overheated weapon would be permanently overheated for the rest of the mission, and inserting a thermal clip would be required to cool it down. That way, we'd still get unlimited ammunition, but still be mindful of the heat buildup in our weapons lest they overheat in the middle of a firefight, at which point we'd put in a thermal clip to reuse the weapon. ---or something similar. Rath101 07:06, March 17, 2010 (UTC)

I'm just glad the sentiment here seems to lean towards the old system. It had it's faults, but some tweaking would've fixed that. It was also unique and interesting, not just another shooter. The Bioware Community seems to be favoring the new system though... sad as it is. I'm hopeing they will at least hybridize the system for ME3. And it's just stupid that they gimped the Hand Cannon with only 3 extra clips... WTF? Also, just how many of those mentos clips does Shep have dangling off him? He must be like a coat rack with 30 or so of them for the different weapons. They should use a tweaked ME1 system (that makes it difficult to fire nonstop forever without overheating) and let you carry up to 6-8 truly universal heat sinks. I want my weapon mods back too... but that's another topic.Karstedt 08:57, March 18, 2010 (UTC)

The day BioWare announced the weapons had a reload system I was very happy, but I imagined it not in the way they implemented the system. ME1 overheating vas a very good idea. A better idea was, IMHO, to extremely slow down cooldown and add a reload system. This way players still had infinite ammo, but they were forced to a few precise shots to be effective in killing.87.2.75.5 13:04, March 27, 2010 (UTC)

While I still find this system extremely counter to the established technology from the first game (...well almost everything in ME2 is), I kind of like and respect it after going through the game a couple of times including Insanity. It forces you to think about which weapon who use for a given situation and also think strategically with the ammo you have. If they went back to the ME system, then the whole battle system will have to be changed back, too. The way the game is now, having infinite ammo with no reloading would completely overpower every enemy in the game. I still believe a hybrid system would work best, in which you can fire without a thermal clip, but the heat buildup would be a lot faster than it was in the first game. Rath101's idea also sounds reasonable. My biggest problem with the game now is the universal cooldown on powers. It pisses me off that Harbinger and others can use their powers constantly, but I can't simply use another power while waiting for my other powers to recharge. That and the fact that you can be killed from behind cover, can't do anything while on fire, and can't crouch. —ArmeniusLOD 11:53, March 28, 2010 (UTC)

I have mixed feeling about those bloody clips. On one side, it makes no sense, like people before have said, it makes soldiers weaker than they were in Mass Effect 1. BUT, I do enjoy the fact that they made me think more. In MS1, I played soldier and vanguard and being able to chose assault rifles as an additional talent for the vanguard, that was my main weapon. All the time. That and the sniper rifle. What I do miss is all the different improvements you could add to the weapons, that higher class weapons had 2 slots for improvement plus one for ammo. Thermal clips made me feel like i have to use powers, even as a soldier, now that my sniper rifle doesn't hold much ammo, Adrenaline Rush is vital in lining up headshots. It made the game more enjoyable to play, forcing me to think and plan, but it bugs me that it's illogical. Setimir92 00:47, June 7, 2010 (UTC)

The problem I have with thermal clips is more to do with logic and the story. OK so in 2 years everyone in the whole  galaxy manages to change there fancy mass accelerator weapons (which I think have been around for thousands of years in the game) 200 years back by giving them heated AMMO that is like all of us giving up our assault rifles and such picking up muskets and spears. Oh and how come everyone (or at least all the people I have found) have thermal ammo and guns and not care. I mean it would be cool to have a/some side quest/s where you either find people with MA weapons tell them about all this thermal stuff and do something else (as you can see I am no writer) or a quest early on where someone explains why there is all this thermal ammo and how to use it and such. Sorry about my bad wording I hope you get my point.-Mikey103(won't find me)

I'd also like to vent off a bit about this new system. Problem is that, if you would eject a thermal clip for weapon to continue firing, you would not count them by remaining shots. Machinegun in that case would not be 80/400 , it would be 80/5, and ejecting thermal clip would reduce exactly one thermal clip from your pool, not 1/2 of the clip if you used 40 bullets. Also, (perhaps sidetracking the topic a little bit) I'd like to object to the weapon firing effects. Using standard rounds without any ammunition powers (I preferred ME1 ammunition modifications over that too, but moving along that -) you can see the standard muzzle flash of your weapon, which is to be expected in weapons which fire rounds via explosive-based propellant (which are today's firearms), not something that ejects piece of metal on two tracks conducting high currents. I really loved screen-occupying blue/red/other-color flashes that made the lens flare in ME1, it was very cool to view it. Also, in ME1 the "tracers" of the bullets were there instanty, looking a little like smoke trails. In ME2, you can see the actual bullet, but only as aesthetics since all weapons (except Heavy) are instant-hit type of weapons and hole in the wall is there before a seen bullet actually gets there. So weapon aesthetics are quite ruined. Not only that, but sound too. ME1 had fantastic sounds to follow up bright SF gun battles (that echo which rang seconds after the weapon fired), not all you hear is a sound similar to spilling plastic pellets on the floor (Revenant and M-8, at least). To this day, I am looking for somebody to do a modification for the game which will make weapons much more like ME1, and possibly crosshair reverted back too. Standard 4-piece targeting reticule is getting old. Addendum: Oh one more thing. I explicitly remember seeing a modification done on ME2 which made ammunition system "Hybrid" the way you guys are saying you hoped for it to be. It's a very simple coding, ammunition in your weapon (the number of available rounds, equivalent in today's arms - bullets in magazine) are having a number of shots constantly added to them, every 2 seconds or so a percentage of total clip capacity is added. Not ideal, totally rules out all those upgrades which made cooldowns shorter, weapons heat up slower and everything. But it works. Eudaimonium 20:21, January 3, 2011 (UTC)

The question for me is this: how exactly does Shepard know what a thermal clip is? He didn't use weapons that used thermal clips in ME1, then he died in the intro to ME2. 2 years later, weapons using a block of metal to generate bullets propelled by magnetic forces that generate heat are gone and have been replaced by weapons that use present day ammo systems. Shepard was dead during those 2 years, so how does he know how those weapons work? Did Cerberus program the basics of those new weapons into his brain Matrix-style or something?DBZFan12 (talk) 01:44, November 11, 2015 (UTC)

I assume they stared implementing thermal clips by the time of Shepard's death, so he would have cursory knowledge. Incursor 23:41, November 28, 2018 (UTC)