We already know about adding bullets back into empty ballistic magazines, but what about energy weapons? Can any more detail be given, such as whether there will be a significant cost to recharging magazines, possibly off a ship's power grid, and whether there will be a distinction between laser energy and plasma energy?

Yeah, I can start this off at least and just say that there's definitely upside and downside of each of the ballistic weapons that we want to touch on. So ballistic weapons, you've obviously got limited ammo. Generally, in a lot of cases, ballistic magazines are more limited in capacity compared to the batteries. Zach has been reviewing some of that as part of the weapon audit as well. Basically, in short, with ballistic weapons, you get a bit less ammo, but you can go out in the field and you can scavenge. We've obviously got a system coming in at some point, I think we've detailed before, which is mag stripping. So you'll be able to take ammunition from other magazines, put it in your magazine, and you'll be able to use that ammunition going forward. Eventually, when we get some of the suit systems, the powered suit systems, the idea is that you'd be able to potentially trickle charge your energy batteries. So they're a bit more versatile in that it might take a while to recharge, but over time, if you're on a long expedition or whatever, and you occasionally get into combat, then they should be trickle charging off your suit and taking power away from your suit to be able to keep up on that. So they're a bit better for a longer engagement situation. But then there are some additional downsides to energy weapons, because that sounds like a big bonus, right? I've got energy that keeps coming back to my batteries. Which comes into wear and overheat, which is something that Deck's actually been looking at.

Yeah, so if we touch on wear for a second: when a weapon shoots, it'll generate wear, and that's for all weapons, but energy weapons can overheat if you shoot too much. So, for example, plasma weapons might heat up really quickly, and then they'd cool down really quickly. Laser weapons might take a little longer to heat up and then cool down slower. We're always going to have the environment that the player is in impact the cooling down. If you're on a freezing planet, you would expect it to cool down quicker. Same with pressure; the atmospheric pressure would impact it a little bit. With some weapons, like the Atzkav, it takes a while to shoot the next shot, so it could cool down, not immediately, but in the duration between the two shots, so even though it would generate heat, it might never overheat. But the thing is, overheating, because it's generated by player actions, you will be able to control it. You're not forced to overheat. If it's getting hot, just stop shooting and it'll cool down before you do any wear to the weapon itself.