David Colson · Gameplay Programmer

So we could do this. However, it creates a really difficult to deal with interaction where you can effectively nullify a lot of the heat mechanics by doing that. And so we either have to balance it such that you still have some heating effects even when your coolers are overclocking, or we need to make that horribly damage your cooler. We now have the misfire mechanic that is going to be out with 3.6, and that provides a good opportunity to provide some of those compromises that you have to make if you want to overclock a cooler. But before we had the misfires and wear and damage and stuff, it was the more reliable solution to say it's much easier for us to balance and deal with the heat systems if you can't overclock the coolers, because it's effectively like tuning two different setups, one that's overclocked and one that's not, and it actually more than doubles the amount of work.

Jared Huckaby · Host, Community

You want to set the base level before you set the customization. It's like when we talked about the law system: you want to set the way laws are supposed to work before you introduce all the ways you can circumvent it. So you want to make sure that you've got the heating and overheating system working the way that you want it before you introduce the way to circumvent it.

John Crewe · Vehicle Pipeline Director

It's also another weird thing with overclocking. A core concept of overclocking is you're essentially letting the item have more power or request more power. And the more power it has, the more heat it generates, which on the cooler makes no sense. So the coolers have a power requirement to function, because without power they won't function. So the coolers themselves actually generate heat that they then get rid of themselves whilst dealing with everything else. But the more power they have, the more heat they make, which can make them actually worse because you've overclocked them. You go around in a weird circle.

David Colson · Gameplay Programmer

Short answer is it makes life very difficult. So still working on it.