Marius wrote:Well the entire mass effect relay system breaks the laws of physics so I dunno why you're complaining about this little thing.
Except it wasn't that way in ME1, where as ME1 has mass effect relays.
also its totally different dealing in theoretical physics than heatsinks.
Maybe thermal clips degrade? Like silencers? HMG barrels are pretty robust, but when you have a smaller, more fragile thing (like a silencer, which is a closer analogy imo), it can just break if subject to enough heat and stress.
But they don't, otherwise that would be the reason used in-game as to why you replace them.
and in any case heatsinks don't degrade like that, they don't have contact with moving parts and don't contain moving parts.
Or you can look at it like a temporary absorbtion. Many things can only absorb so much gas before being useless - like a gas mask can't be left to 'cool down'. Once it's done, it's done. So you could argue that the weapons give off gas which clogs up the thermo clips. Gas venting cools the weapon down, but the clip can only absorb so much. Once enough gas has vented, it can no longer exchange it.
no.
just no.
There is zero reason to be collecting "gas" of any kind.
if it were collecting gas you'd just take the damn thing off and let the 'gas' vent to the atmosphere. [or lack thereof].
there is simply no reason to be collecting any 'gas' or for 'gas' to be passing through a heat sink.
and no one would be using 'gas' to cool anything, vapours of any kind are less efficient at exchanging heat then a liquid or solid.
Diamond has the highest heat exchange efficiency [off the top of my head] so you'd be better off using solid diamond [manufactured] heatsinks and just swapping them around as they cool off or using a liquid heat exchanger to a backpack mounted radiator unit.
or using a backpack fed liquid nitrogen system where the nitrogen is vented to atmosphere as it sinks heat away from the weapon.
there is no logical [real or imagined] system that has disposable parts.
In that explanation, the clips are more effective than traditional venting, because they prevent the weapon from being completely useless and prevent dangerous overheats (think of plasma weapon overheating venting from War 40K). But without the thermal clips in place to absorb the venting, the weapon is simply too dangerous to use.
illogical.
Particularly given that a couple of weapons [like geth weapons] are the exact same weapon in ME1 without disposable clips.
Lots of ways to explain it if you don't think of it like a big chunk of metal that's robust enough to be reusable.
I'm yet to see any of these ways to explain it that fits the ME1-2 story and have any kind of engineering logic.
add to that that nonsense that is the fact that in ME2 there is suddenly 0 non-clip weapons available, did they burn all the weapons from ME1 so no one had any?
Its totally illogical with-in the mass effect universe.
edit: btw, in the game there is a weapon that freezes stuff, why not just have a back mounted version of that with a liquid heat exchanger cooling the weapon continuously?
makes way more sense.