Due to its varied usage and complex mechanics, Overheating in Mass Effect is sufficiently in-depth to warrant its own page.
- The franchise as a whole zig-zags this trope. Its One Big Lie is the eponymous mass effect, a form of dark-energy manipulation that essentially gives control over gravity. Firearms built using this technology can propel tiny shreds of metal at lethal velocities; they only need to reload their ammunition every 10,000 shots or so. But with Justified Bottomless Magazines, how do you create challenge in terms of gameplay?
- Mass Effect takes the route of overheating. Guns can only be fired so often before they overheat and must go through a cooldown animation. Certain upgrades and ammunition will increase the rate at which the guns overheat, others will lower it.
- With adequate equipment, you can easily make it so the guns will never overheat. Alternately, make it take a very long time to overheat and add some firepower. The Infiltrator class has the ability to lower the heat output on firing weapons which when combined with damage upgrades makes the class output the most damage over time in the game.
- It is, however, thoroughly impossible to do so with any weapon using High Explosive Rounds, as they generate +500% heat.
- Alternatively, go the other way and cram on extra-heat, extra-damage mods onto your Sniper Rifle and accept the fact it'll overheat after every shot, essentially making the equivalent of a cannon. Which makes one wonder, why aren't any parts being damaged by being subjected to +550% over standard heat on a regular basis?
- Mass Effect 2 walks back on the flavor-driven firearm design. It works like a typical shooter, with limited shots before reloading. They attempt to reduce the degree of retcon by explaining it as ejecting a "heat sink" from your gun and inserting a new one, allowing the shooter to fire more bullets in a shorter time without waiting for the gun to cool down. This should prevent you from reloading single shots into a gun that fires multiple shots per heatsink... but it doesn't. The heat sinks are filled with a lithium compound that chemically changes when absorbing heat, so they have to be discarded after use. Of course, all this only applies to you. Computer-controlled characters still have Bottomless Magazines. Gameplay and Story Segregation is in full effect here.
- Mass Effect 3 mixes and matches: while the majority of guns use the heat-sink reloading idea, several DLC weapons bring back the overheating mechanic. Mass Effect: Andromeda takes it one step further by making the "Vintage Heat Sink" (IE overheat system) available as one of the Gun Accessories in the game, allowing any weapon to use the overheat system via Item Crafting. It also includes a few overheating weapons "out of the box".
- Somewhat lampshaded in ME3 with a case of in-universe Damn You, Muscle Memory!, where Shepard instinctively goes to swap the heat sink on an overheating weapon, and instead jerks their hand away as the heat vents off to the side.
- It's also explained that the built-in cooling mechanisms in the guns from the first game had to be removed to make room for the removable heat-sink system, with another character (echoing many fan complaints) complaining that it was a step backwards and that they might as well have returned to using limited ammunition.
- In the background, it's also a major concern for the player's ship, the stealth frigate Normandy. Not so much from weapons (they do generate a lot of heat, but it's easily dealt with), but from its thermal cloaking, which prevents enemy ships from getting a reading on its heat signature by, essentially, trapping all of the ship's heat in massive heat sinks. As the Normandy continues to remain cloaked, the heat builds up to noticeable levels, and eventually it has to decloak before the crew begins to suffer from the higher temperatures.
- All ships in Mass Effect suffer this problem, but during normal operations it's nothing routine systems can't handle. Ships in combat build up heat so quickly from their increased power output that they go so far as to have liquid sodium sprays and similar systems to let them pump out heat. Even then, the ship can heat to the point that the crew has no choice but to give the ship time to cool or risk baking alive. Truth in Television; Space Is Cold, but it's also not really possible to lose heat by conduction or convection in the void.note Radiation alone is a lousy way to cool something down.
- They also suffer another form of "overheating" in that they build up massive static-electricity charges during Faster-Than-Light Travel that must be safely discharged. Most ships touch down on a planet in order to ground themselves.
- It's mentioned in the Codex that civilian ships use extensible radiator panels to vent heat (similar to what we currently have
on the International Space Station). These are fragile and impossible to armor. Military ships instead use Diffuse Radiator Arrays (DRA), ceramic panels mounted on the hull itself. They are less efficient, but the loss of one won't cripple the vessel's heat radiating ability.
- Mass Effect takes the route of overheating. Guns can only be fired so often before they overheat and must go through a cooldown animation. Certain upgrades and ammunition will increase the rate at which the guns overheat, others will lower it.
- Originally, Mass Effect 2 was going to use similar heat mechanics to the first game alongside the thermal clip system. How it would have worked was that guns would build up heat more or less as in the first game, but thermal clips would be a resource that one could use to purge the heat right now in an emergency. Playtesters were reportedly unsatisfied with this mechanic, and Bioware cut it. It can still be reenabled by fiddling with game settings, but its in an unfinished state and buggy.
