mardinofchatzuk:

“See, explain to me why this weapon needs a cozy on the suppressor, but the sophisticated electronics on that optics package can just be exposed to the elements without issue.”

“OK, well, I can explain that now, but you might not like it.”

“Why not? Try me.”

“Well… Because you’re sort of right.”

“About what?”

“About putting a cozy on a suppressor.”

“…What do you mean?”

“That it’s a patently ridiculous thing to do.”

“Yeah, but here we are looking at these things, and—”

“No, no. A suppressor cozy would indeed be ridiculous, and that should’ve been our first clue that these wraps are not in fact cozies at all.”

“…What?”

“Listen. I was scratching my head about it the other night, and it hit me we hadn’t actually, uh… checked what the wraps are made of.”

“Are you kidding me?”

“Turns out the material isn’t thermal insulation at all… I mean, it retains a little heat, yeah, but not significant for the operational parameters of weapons like these.”

“…OK. So, what’s the deal?”

“They’re for acoustic dampening.”

“…”

“Uh… they’re not suppressor cozies, they’re… mufflers.”

“I’m… not getting something here.”

“Well, once I figured out what the wraps are actually made of, I asked why these guns would need extra muffling—obviously not for silencing the shot itself—and I realized the problem wasn’t heat, but vibration. Different materials’ acoustic conduction changes with varying temperature, and the engineers must’ve had concerns about stability or integrity at very low temperatures, so…”

“So they added goddamn muffler cozy whatevers? They couldn’t build something into the suppressor itself?”

“Maybe they were going to. Our best guess is these were all prototypes. They might’ve been using some stock components for testing. It might’ve been more expedient to use these external mufflers to narrow down what they wanted for the extra suppressor insulation before starting to fabricate new specialized components.”

“So the guns were never supposed to have cozies in the end?”

“I guess maybe not.”

(Niflheim Frost w/ Veist Poison Shimmer)

Not sure if they’ll ever realize those suppressor wraps were just for reducing the mirage effect and making them safe to touch after firing. Even in the Golden Age, cans getting superhot will still be a problem…