Why are my sniper rifles overheating in Mass Effect?

I just started my second playthrough of the original Mass Effect on PC, and every time I fire a sniper rifle it overheats. This happens regardless of which sniper rifle I have equipped (one is listed at 1.2 shots before overheat, the other 1.3. I'm not very far in yet).

Perhaps I'm simply misremembering, but I believe in my previous playthrough I could fire, wait for heat to dissipate, then fire again without overheating. Now it just overheats after every shot.

Is this a bug? Is there some debuff on me that's causing this? Or something else?

Solution 1:

No, you're misremembering - unless the weapons don't cool down after they've fired one shot. @GodEmperorDune is right, the sniper rifles would generally overheat after one shot despite having 1.2+ shots before cooldown until later in the game where weapons and upgrades got better. Weapons not cooling down is either from an Engineer using Sabotage or the "eternal overheat" bug.