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[Xipe Totec]

Okay, I'm going to start with the math bits, then justify it.

Every mech can be considered to have two point of "Stability," though in practice this need not be so.

Any heavy impact weapons (PPC, ACs, Gauss) fired within .25 seconds of each other generate a cascading reload and heat effect such that it it generates additional heat and (more importantly) reload time, with heat expanding by 10% per and reload by 25%.

This means that a mech which fires massive alpha strikes will face serious reload times, making them a "one and done" type mechanic as it's a shared reload.

For ease of understanding take a 3 second reload.

Fires Reload
1 3
2 3
3 3.75
4 4.68
5 5.86
6 7.32

So big 6PPC Stalkers make huge sustained damage sacrifices for their alphaing capacity, without losing the "last ditch" feel of an alpha.

The Command Console adds two to the count before penalties, giving it something to do of worth. If you really want to float a PPC boat, you need the additional computing capacity of the CC to keep the systems in check.

The fluff: While there is no sense of recoil to a pilot, Issac Newton is a bad man and dislikes it when machines try to break his laws. Normally he hangs people, but he's been dead for some time so he settles on requiring any firing device which expels high speed objects to have to have significant controls to keep from toppling backwards like drunk metal chicken. Normally these are in built and the system handles it without complaint, but in the case of especially heavy firing the controls are beyond the ability of the mech's internal computer to seemlessly handle, and as such it takes longer for the weapon to be re-armed and set by the internal mechanisms.

Now I'm going to go ruin some ECM mech's day.

[Cordel Ordo]

Seems like a good theory to me. One of the better ones that I have seen myself. I was going to shot this down because it would hamper anyone who takes multiple of a weapon but on re-reading i saw the heavy weapons qualifier. I think this will at least help the situation.