DON'T MESS THIS UP!!!

So, you would have a heat mechanic like the Phase-Shift, but a limited number of heat batteries? I guess if you had only 2 or 3 everything would be fine, but otherwise, Engineers would still be less common.

How would everything be the same? For example, the Polaris has an effective firing time of 75 rounds with a 652 RoF model. Same reload speed.
And the same goes for every other VS weapon. They will grant every VS soldier A LIMITED NUMBER OF BATTERIES, and when you overheat that battery, YOU REPLACE IT, and you go to an ammo box. You stand on it for 1.5 seconds, and THERE, you get another battery. Such a complicated electromagnetic procedure, right?

YES. THAT IS WHAT I MEAN!!!! And Engineers would not be less common, because giving out ammo is not the only thing they do. They repair, they use MANA turrets, and they still can deliver some munitions.

I believe in uniqueness as much as you do, but faction v faction must take precedent, unilaterally changing one faction isn't really doing anything except dumping one faction on unfamiliar and most likely rough ground and saying "deal with it".

I don't understand what you mean. If what you say happens, VS will get same mag size and reload, as well as being able to fire while "reloading". It seems like a straight buff to me, alright.

Oh my God...
Okay...
When the Phaseshift overheats, you have to replace the battery, RIGHT?
THAT IS WHAT IS GOING TO HAPPEN. You will NOT be able to fire while "reloading", because YOU ACTUALLY ARE.

? Then what is different at all except Vanu now has essentially replaced mags with batteries.

Needs moar likes.
Haters get to ride in my Sundy.

When the Phaseshift overheats you pop the battery out for a few seconds, then put it back in. It's the same battery.

Why would you need a utility that supplies fresh batteries for your weapons if your weapons come with their own battery that recharges itself? THAT is the primary complication of the proposal.

Your proposed solution, the core mechanic, will only award experience if the person shooting the weapon intentionally or unintentionally bottoms out the charge. The current player meta is to reload after every engagement and dis-engagement and that would not necessitate core swaps or resupplies. It knocks a primary source of support experience for the Engineer class and also lowers their squad utility - but only for the VS - if a single magazine's worth of "shots" are always restored automatically.

Then what's the point of this mechanics change if we'd still be constrained by the same mechanics?

Exactly. These batteries have unlimited ammunition until your overheat them. NOTHING stat-wise changes, except for the firing time and theoretical ammunition count.

The reload speed is the exact same. Nothing changes. For example: My Solstice overheated, I better replace the battery. I now only have one battery left. OH, AN ENGINEER.
"Do you have any spare batteries?"
"I've got ammo for you here."

Boom. This makes us VS choose our fights more carefully. With unlimited ammunition, we could be far more effective at range. OR, I just got this idea... WHAT IF the VS Engineer had a box that INCREASED the firing time of each weapon?

My idea is to get a NEW battery.

If you need a new battery every overheat, then what is the point in having the heat mechanic in the first place?

Heat mechanics would work like the AI turret...
There would be no ammo pool, and if you hold down the trigger too long it will overheat and you have to wait for it to cool down.

You keep missing the point I am attempting to articulate. Under the current implementation, ammo resupplies because a player's ammo pool goes down, not because they don't have a full magazine. Reloading even a partially expended magazine causes the ammo pool to go down. By the very definition of "functionally infinite" ammo, the ammo pool ("core") would never be required to go down ("overheat") as long as the magazine ("battery") has one shot left in it when the player stops firing. And then it fills back up on its own.
And players are not required to overheat their cores. In fact, the timing system rewards them for reloading before using up all their current magazine (shoert reload).

I had considered that as a counter-suggestion. After some thought, I considered the hell that it would cause during re-balancing around these new mechanics. Before you say "we wouldn't have to ...," yes, we would. Even VS weapons were previously compared along the same stats between the different factions for balancing and we've just made ambiguous changes to a number of them.

Remember ZOE? it was a meta-utility that changed how the MAX and its weapons performed, a whirlwind of benefits with a single downside that was also somewhat thwarted by one of its benefits; and, it left a nasty taste in everyone elses's mouths. Perhaps that is neither here no there in this case; at least, you don't think so. As a result of its attempts at becoming balanced, however, SOE screwed with the damage models of a few VS MAX weapons. Even now, when ZOE is less broken-exploitable, those VS MAX weapons that were screwed-up were not restored. I don't want that to happen again, so I am very cautious about my proposals and their potential ramifications.

DAMN the whiners. We can't FUN things in the game. They can whine in hell. Vanu get this, other empires get their fluff. TO HELL WITH FORUMSIDE WHINERS.

Something called BALANCE. Plus, what's the point of having a simple cooldown mechanic when you can have something cool?

SO, what do you suggest to make this new ammunition mechanic work? Maybe something that decreases cooldown time?

YES, YES, PREACH MY BROTHER! One day, Planetside will enjoy an era of prosperity when everything gets buffed instead of nerfed. Those will be the days

You're assuming it would be unbalanced without an arbitrary and redundant magazine count.

I am all for VS weapons having heat mechanics.

Not for balance reasons, not because I think this would help my glorious, enlightened brothers in any way. Simply because giving our weapons something different, something unique, would make us feel more like the alien, hi-tech faction. It would be unique, it would be different, and it would be something to make our faction just a little more than a middle ground between the others.