Zyllos, on 08 November 2012 - 07:48 AM, said:
I think your looking into it too much.
In the TT, having high heat can cause ammo explosions. In MWO, high heat (only over 100% for whatever reason), your internals randomly start taking damage. I am saying they should start to have chances to cause critical hits (unless it is already like this, but I have never seen heat over 100% cause any destruction of weapons). Of course, I think if you go over 100% and you let it shutdown, you do not take damage, which is incorrect.
In TT, a mech can generate as much heat in one turn (10 seconds) as it has HS (or twice the number of DHS) without suffering ill effects. Go over that, and you start to lose top speed, have trouble hitting accurately (presumably due to pilot discomfort and the myomer bundles in the actuators becoming less responsive at high temperatures), and risk both ammunition explosion and automatic shutdown. Having a high heat level removes a fixed amount from the top speed (not a percentage), so lighter/faster mechs are relatively less affected. This last may not make much sense, but it is how the rules work.
A nice way to include these effects into the game would have been to have a "free" range at the bottom of the heat scale: one could move the heat into this area without suffering any ill effects. In absolute (not percentage) terms, the free range would be four plus either the number of HS or twice the number of DHS, so that we would have the same ability to alpha strike as in TT. On top of this would be a range of 26 heat points, over which one would lose more top speed and gain an increasing chance of suffering an ammo explosion or automatic shutdown. Shutdown would always occur at the top of the scale.
It would be easy to check continuously (say 10-20 times per second) for ammo explosion and automatic shutdown in such a way that the total probabilities over 10 seconds match the TT values. Since (to my knowledge) the turn and torso twist rates in MWO scale with the top speed, heat effects on ease of target tracking would be included automatically when the top speed is recomputed.
For physiological effects, the pilot's vision could become increasingly blurred and/or wobbly, with very high levels inflicting permanent injury along with a chance to temporarily lose consciousness.
Also, movement should introduce some random wobble into the crosshairs (especially so for jumping), so that being stationary confers more of an offsetting advantage.
I'm not saying any or all of this should or must be incorporated (i.e., that most of the player base would like it), but I would love to see these features, and I expect that many others would too. Just as many are probably not so much into the BT canon and would just be irritated by the necessary alterations to their play style. Maybe if MWO becomes popular enough, these things can be included in a "hardcore" game mode.