Remove all quirks from mechs. All of them.
Remove all Experience gained skills from mechs.
Create a generalist series of 8-10 pilot skill trees. Each with their own quirks, negatives and gains.
10 skills total gained from tiers in sequential order per tree.
4 at the bottom, 3 in the next tier, 2 and then 1 at the top tier.
I.e. Skirmisher Tree
Tier 1
- Fast Fire/ Pulse Laser... reduce Pulse Laser weapon cooldown by 1%/3%/5%/7%/10%
- Heat Reduction/ Pulse laser....Reduce Heat generated from Pulse Lasers by .1%/.5%/1%/3%/5%
- AC/5 Cooldown... Reduce Cooldown on AC/5's by 1/3/5/7/10%
With the tiers adding to the ones below it as you go to reach the 'Master Tree' for that designed one at the top tier.
The Trees could be something like Skirmisher, Support Information, Support Missile, Assault, Front Line, Ballistic Weapon Specialist and so forth.
Each Mech is assigned 3 of these. You can only raise ONE. This will help the snowflakes have their individualism.
The quirks will be assigned by how the player wishes to play their Mech via skill trees. Some of the Master Tier quirks could be really helpful stuff like, Losing 1 side torso in IS XL does not destroy the Mech. Or, Maintain target lock for 10 seconds after losing sight on target enemy. Ammo able to load increases per ton.
Now comes the crappy part. NERF ALL WEAPONS, yes I'm serious, and yes I feel bad for even saying it. (Clan Medium Laser, same damage, 8-10 heat) However, the quirks that you receive from the specialist trees will undo these nerfs and then provide a substantial bonus on top of that removal (Clan Medium Laser 5 Heat at max level). This will allow specialist Mechs to excel and disallow every Mech from boating whatever the hell they want.
The systems for this is already programmed into the game, it will only change how that is applied.
The Matchmaker would have to be changed to account for Player Tier AND Pilot tree level though.
Well, my 15 minutes of brainstorming is over.... Back to work.
Interested in seeing how this idea does. Not even really sure about it myself, but hey, can't be worse than what we have now, right?