I made another thread about realistic mechs for this reason. There are other limiters they could use if they unbound engines. But it would come in various things. They would have to look at the story for type of tech and then at real world comparison(which there will be as mechanical devices are as old as time.) For instance the engine could have internal parts that can only do so much. so you can overburnden but only so much. This could be the reason for xl engines. Then you could have the joints and servoes account for weight. If you overburden an arm it can't move as fast. Basically take what should already logically be there and what is actually there, but underutilized, and let the natural consequences of the build play out.
Upper weight all goes into the legs. Maybe the legs, as in real hydraulics etc, can only lift so much and potentialy have a different downward push to project forward etc. So weight in the legs can stop uplift and affect stride or whatever abut upper weight can affect the upper lift and how fast you push foward. maybe even make it clumsier(falling down for instance) uneven weight in the wrong way can make you move in circles or walk slower. Depends on the vehicles exact method of walking(if it has one strength for the uplift of the leg and another for the up-push of the run the weights could affect the running in interesting ways). Have you noticed how the legs all walk differently. Those all have upsides and downsides to the mechs functioning and could be represented. Even fairly easily. This could change how light mechs vs heavy mechs have to loadout for speed but the options would still be more there to choose.
The weight above the waist turning servo can affect the turn rate and also ultimately affect the walk speed. The arms the same thing. It depends on the mech and what it contains. But allowing the engine to take on more weight is the natural answer. You would just have to look into how much it can take and why. If you assume each mech has a different engine and std 190, for instance, is generic and differnt mechs have different variants, lots can be done. If they are all the same there could still be realities possibly to the mechs other aspects and maybe mouting realities or other thigs that affect if or how it gets energy or utilized heat dispation etc. they would just have to dive deeper into how the mechs should work and let natural limitation take affect. I would hope and imagine the history of these games would have specifics too work off of. But there are lots of things taht would make them muc more unique and let them play out in interesting ways.
Say the heat vision. why have it generic when you could look at how they vent and let them have hot spots and cold spots. Or hot sides and cold sides. Then there is more gameplay. And the more unique the more interesting.
Plus all weights should be constantly draining speed and versatility already shouldn't they. We already have arm movements but no consideration of weight.(they are all static numbers and not changed by configuration) and unrealistic engines that get lighter as they get bigger. It would be very simple and easy to use what is already in the game and some real formulas to let weight bog down the parts of the mech realistically instead of static numbers. This could be done with the numbers already present and not even need any of the more interesting things they could consider about mech designs in general. It is a bare bones as it can be right now. There is a lot they could do without even adding new things to the game. They can easily just do it within the confines of what values are already present and drastically improve the game.
I wouldn't be surprised if you couldn't just find the correct book or statistics somewhere and find how strong the individual servos or parts of the mech should be and add it to a calculation. I would be pretty shocked if those values have never been gone over before. Or if any values are unrealistic in any books what they should be from a descriptive sense to figure out how they should work from a real world sense.
Edited by Arugela, 31 August 2016 - 06:50 PM.
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