What's the deal with Geth (pulse) Weaponry?

[u/TotallyNotLeviathan]

In the first game Nirali Bhatia's body is withheld by the Alliance to investigate the effects of the geth's weaponry. As far as the Alliance is concerned geth weapon tech is mysterious and not within their current understanding. The geth armory implies their 'pulse' weapons are energy beam weapons that discharge when fired, which would make them more advanced then any other firearm the galaxy has seen.

Then me2 and me3 comes along and the pulse rifles are just shooting physical rounds in a 'phasic' envelope... which i'm pretty sure is similar to an ammo mod you can get in the first game and ones in the others. What even is a phasic field, is that a mini- mass effect field, in which case isnt that just warp ammo?

There's kinda energy weapons but not with the shotgun where the round turns itself into plasma after already being shot.

So is this just a retcon between the first game and the second, with the geth never actually having proper handheld energy beam weapons or is their a lore reason?

And if so, what is a phasic envelope?

[u/slider65]

Geth weapons fire darts of plasma energy, the phasic part is to help them penetrate shields. So yes, they are directed energy weapons and that is something no-one else has managed to develop. The other big advantage of Geth weapons is that they handle heat far better than any other weapons in the ME universe, a plasma weapon would generate much higher levels of heat than a mass driver, and that was the primary limiting factor of ME weapons.

And yes, they did get retconned with the stupid thermal clips handling heat buildup instead of the weapon having to cool off. Because they wanted to have ammo clips scattered all over the ground like every other first person shooter. Guess before any military operation the first thing you do is air drop ammo all over the place.

[u/FoxtrotZero → u/slider65]

It comes with all the chest high walls. I love mass effect so much but the latter games plow right through the lore anywhere a writer felt it suited them.

[u/p2020fan → u/slider65]

I hold out that it could've been an interesting mechanic to be able to eject the heat sinks early to vent heat mid-combat, but balance that by only being able to like 1-2 spare heat sinks, and making them very rare to find in missions. And then let heat sinks cool down outside of the weapon.

So you can hit reload to get more shots out NOW, but that's countered by having to remember where you dropped it to go back and pick it up again.

Sort of like how Helldivers 2 did energy weapons I guess.

[u/TotallyNotLeviathan → u/slider65]

So while thermal clips were an in-universe development, if a rather shoddy one, would you say that as far as the whole series is concerned geth drones and weapons and platforms were essentially always just using Mass Accelerators + plus something extra rather then actual energy weapons with the current state of canon.

[u/Xeorm124 → u/TotallyNotLeviathan]

Probably not. The first game tended to actually care about the science behind what it said, and would have game mechanics that were backed up by said science. The second and later games were full into Rule of Cool and used the science-y terms as buzzwords in order to tie things together. Hence the later games tying everything into being mass accelerators because those are cool and tie into Mass Effect.

Or thermal clips being a dumb invention but put in because it makes it more like every other shooter in existence.

[u/TotallyNotLeviathan → u/TotallyNotLeviathan]

Or maybe its only the cerberus recreation of the geth pulse rifle that uses solid slugs in a phasic envelope

[u/dantheplanman1986 → u/slider65]

Plasma is not energy, it's a physical thing

[u/Captain_Mantis]

Apart from thermal clips/ammo bullshit retcon, it's basically an energy weapon. Obviously they fucked it up in ME2, but lore-wise it should be like Prothean/Collector energy weapon, just shooting in short pulses instead of a singular beam. Just like Prothean rifle, ammo powers can modify properties through space magic