—Begin Update—
Looks like Valve has finished their work and are looking to roll out the Heavy update soon.
You can look at their Heavy Update page as they will be announcing the changes to come. The actual update will probably be in a couple of weeks. will hit on August 19th (so saith the Shacknews).
—End Update—
Valve Software, makers of Team Fortress 2, have begun adding class achievements and unlockable weapons for completing those achievements.
The next class to undergo a makeover will be the Heavy Weapons guy. Here are my ideas for the primary and melee unlockables. I haven’t come up with one for the secondary weapon yet.
Primary: The Gear Gun
The main idea behind the Gear Gun is to give the Heavy an advantage when it comes to the spin-up and spin-down times that encumber him with the regular Minigun. The Gear Gun has a long, thin gear that runs out the bottom and top of the weapon. When the gun is spun up the gear rotates perpendicular to the barrel. With this he can use an add-on contraption I call the Spring Chicken.
The Spring Chicken is a small, round cylinder that has a gear-slot running through its center. When placed on the Gear Gun and the gun spins, the Spring Chicken’s inner coil tightens up, storing the energy. It may then be rapidly discharged to halt the gun quickly. Alternatively, the gun may be allowed to spin down normally and the Spring Chicken can be flipped over. This allows it to be discharged to rapidly spin-up the gun. The gun must be halted before it can be flipped back, so as to allow for recharging it.
The idea behind these functions are to give the Heavy a one-off shot at either spinning up quickly or spinning down quickly. It can’t be reused rapidly, and both can’t be done on a single use of the weapon. It would probably require some remodeling and new sounds.
The other benefit of the Gear Gun is that it can be used with the Engineer’s entry-teleporter. The Heavy can spin up the teleporter manually using the Gear Gun. This would allow a Heavy to sit back near spawn and assist others in moving up to the front lines faster.
Melee: Brass Knuckles
This just seems like a no-brainer for a class that has the default melee of his bare (okay, gloved) fists. Add some brass around those suckers and sucker-punch some lippy snipers.