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You overheat your mech too much, actuators and targeting systems take damage, slowing down all forms of agility (ground speed, torso twist speed, yaw range, etc) lowering targeting range and times and basically making your endgame terrible if you didnt manage your heat well throughout the match.
I remember a little game that didnt succeed called Mechwarrior Tactics (i think?) and they had this mechanic where once you generated a certain amount of heat, certain negative side effects would occur. Putting a similar system in MWO would be a very effective way of curtailing massive heat, massive damage alpha strikes that clan mechs like to use a lot, and some IS mechs. I think this is a great way to balance IS and Clan mechs, instead of making all clan weapons like IS weapons.
The basic principle is once your heat bar hits a certain threshold, you get a chance of damaging some equipment. Not equipment like guns or engine, but stuff like upper actuators, targeting systems, lower actuators, etc. Stuff that isnt really modeled.
Lets say actuators have a 10 point health pool, as an example. Once you have hit 50% heat, you have a 1% chance of your actuators taking damage every second. Every tick of heat above 50% increases your damage chance by 1%. So at 80% heat, you have a 30% chance of taking damage to your actuators.
Now thats explained, what does damaged actuators mean. Basically, every point of damage lowers your actuator speed. At 5 points of damage (out of 10) your arm movement, torso twist speed, torso pitch, etc is reduced by 50%. At 0 points of damage (out of 10) you have no torso or arm actuator movement. Your actuators have melted, you have no arm movement or torso movement. Everything is locked front and center. You can still fight, but you have to maneuver your mech into a position to fire, and it would be much harder to do that. (i say torso/arm actuators because legs will be different) Dont overheat your mech too much eh?
Leg actuators would be the same, but you will still be able to walk around. All you would lose is your sprint speed. (im not familiar with Table Top rules, but i know there is a cruise/walk speed and sprint speed. No idea what those values are, but ill take a shot at some numbers). Lets take the Timberwolf. Its base sprint (max) speed is 81kph (disregarding speed tweak, numbers will shift appropriately if speed tweak is active) If your leg actuators take full 10 points of damage, you are now locked to a max speed of 64kph, with losing legs taking 40% speed off of the new max speed. In a game where speed is pretty damn important, its not great to lose all that speed. Dont overheat your mech too much eh?
Targeting Systems will also function similarly. Your range, targeting speed, info gathering speed, lock speed, etc will diminish in potency with every tick of damage you take, with full damage being all those attributes are doubled in length. Lets say it takes 5 seconds to get the enemy's paper doll? now it takes 10 seconds. You have a max detection/lock range of 700m? Now its 350m. Dont overheat your mech too much, eh?
Basically, the more you overheat in a match, the more damage you take to the mentioned systems. This has a number of positive effects. It slows down TTK, now mechs, for the most part, wont be deleted instantly, incoming fire would be more staggered, it really helps balancing clan to IS mechs, as clan weapons hit harder and further, but are significantly hotter, so clans will have to be far smarter in their engagements whereas IS mechs are much cooler, have better cooldowns and better pinpoint with ACs, but have worse damage and range. At the end of a fight, you could have 4 enemies that have taken full subsytem damage and 1 friendly that hasnt, suddenly that fight is alot more fair. Whatever team manages their heat better would have a much better end game.
Edited by McMurl, 24 September 2018 - 09:27 AM.
