When a player's mech overheats, damage should be caused.

I think not, as heat damage builds are generally speaking stronger than electric damage at the moment - closing down and losing an attack is a huge disadvantage as it is already.
Not saying heat is over powered, I am saying it would be over powered if it caused additional damage too.
Unless convinced otherwise, fraid its gonna be a 'no' from me.

In current conditions, I'd vote "no", but along with a change, it can be yes.
I'm voting tweak and here is my idea:
When a mech overheats, it will not shutdown automatically, but if that mech's heat is over the heat capacity at the end of his turn, it should damage the mech, depending of the difference between heat capacity and the current heat. This should also apply to the mechs overheat in the middle of its own turn...

This will make the battles even more strategical I think...

Very well put! Also, the game's logic is not centered around being as realistic as possible, but as strategically open as possible. As BigDaddy22 put it, this would give a huge advantage to heat-based builds.



Perhaps, but it could also cause there to be a disproportionate amount of heat-based builds. For me, I rarely make purely heat-based builds, however, if this was implemented, I think I rarely would not make heat-based builds.

:edit Apologies for the double post. I do not know what to do if I need to quote from new post after posting myself.

Merged your posts... And here is the way to do it:
1. Quote the new post
2. Copy what's in the textbox
3. Exit and go back to the topic to edit your own post.
4. Paste the copied content there.
5. Do the editing as you like and finish.
I'm just too lazy to create a new post about it
TheSingular

But that means all the important stuff I have copied will be gone forever! lol.

My idea is a double edged sword though...
If you end up overheating yourself in your own turn, you get damaged just because of it



Just paste that important stuff to somewhere you can keep it, like a new text file

Yeah, but if someone stocks up on weapons that give more heat than they receive (much like the flipmix), all one would need is to shutdown manually like every 5th turn and the opponent is a goner.

I still think that you didn't get my idea quite well...
I'll try to elaborate it more...
Let's say you and I both have a lucifer with no modules that improves heat stats. And we're in the middle of a fight.
At some point,
You have 60 heat cumulated, I have 56. The distance betewen our mechs is 2. And it's my turn.
I use Blaster, which generates 15 heat for me, and damages you physically. My heat is now 71.
I now use Blue Lookout, which uses energy to deal energy damage and electric damage, so no change in heat stats.
My Flipmix drone fires, delivers you 10 heat damage. You now have 70 heat.
Now there is where the different scenarios happen:
First, the old way:
Your turn starts, overheating forces you to cooldown once. You use your second turn.
Second, the other way, according to my idea:
Before your turn starts, I get damaged because of overheating.
Than it becomes your turn.
You have no automatic shutdown and two choices:
1. You can shutdown in one of your turns and avoid overheat damage at the end of your turn.
2. You can ignore the overheating and get damaged when your turn ends and your drone fires.(if activated)
The only OP situation is when you overheat your opponent's mech enough to normally force it to shutdown twice, but still overheated when he does so, resulting with unavoidable overheat damage. Even in this situation, the opponent may choose to attack and get higher overheat damage.

Oh, I understood your idea. One way I would fight would be to own a couple heat modules, and excess heat weapons, like the flipmix, a hot shot, a couple blaster reds, and a red watch guard, force someone in a corner at like 3 range, and go to town. With a lucifer and 2 heat modules, I figure, I could have like 6 ap before overheating myself, so every 5 ap, I would manually shutdown to avoid overheating.
Now, a lot of these weapons are less powerful than any of the weapons I fight with at that level, and even though I have been shutdown for multiple turns, I often win against heat builds because they are so weak, and even though they can shut me down for two full turns in a row, I still have a strong enough defense and attack to beat them (or at least make it close). Now if I lost hp for simply being shutdown automatically, and lets say I lost 4 ap in a row from being shutdown automatically, then I would never be able to win. Currently I still can win, however if the amount of hp lost is even a quarter the amount of hp lost from a normal rare side weapon, I will be royally screwed.

If every weapon could cause heat when fired... What would the point of a heat shield be then?

Anyways, I am not a big fan of the idea so it gets a no from me.

Hate to end my thought there, but I have to go... A little busy today....