Phantom Brigade - Frozen Synapse with mechs

[Alienman]

Does he live on the second floor?

 

[lightbane]

I hope a mod that brings back APs and a Turn-based system and eschews the whole "try to move your pieces at the exact position for bullets to miss" nonsense.

BTW, IIRC there were mentions of enemies ejecting from their mech and coming back as recurring nemeses. Is that still part of the game?

 

[mediocrepoet]

The closest Italian name to that is Luca, anyway.
Lucca is a city.

Lucca Dona whatever is also PG for the mavericks and is some kind of slovic (i am joking, this dude is obviously Italian name)

Yeah the point I was making is that someone evidently tried to recall "their roots" when picking a name, but Lucca in place of Luca is the kind of mistake that doesn't happen here.

Hey, cut Lasagna Donatello a break. They are doing the best with what God gave them.

 

[Infinitron]

https://www.eurogamer.net/phantom-b...-mech-combat-excels-in-the-face-of-a-dodgy-ui

Phantom Brigade review - tactical mech combat excels in the face of a dodgy UI​

Riposte in the machine.


Mixing Into the Breach with Frozen Synapse makes for an inevitably strong core of mech combat, but the rest of Phantom Brigade is underwhelming.

When I first played the demo for Phantom Brigade, I realised it did something I'd been wanting from games for years. It's a turn-based game that uses the magic of our computer boxes to produce fantastic action scenes. Not only that, they're action scenes featuring giant robots, which astute readers may have noticed I have a fondness for. (Taking screenshots, I should add, has been an absolute joy, as I've scrubbed back and forth through each turn's timeline, rotating and zooming the camera to find the perfect angle of huge mecha smashing into each other and exploding.)

here's nothing particularly original in how Phantom Brigade achieves this. It's essentially Frozen Synapse blended with Into the Breach, with a dash of Battletech for good measure. You have a squad of mechs with which to engage in turn-based battles with enemy mechs and tanks. Rather than moving and shooting with each unit in sequence, you plan out the actions of your squad over each five-second turn, then hit the execute button and watch your tactical brilliance play out in real time. Where Into the Breach comes in, other than the big robots, is your ability to see the predicted actions of your opponent. Forewarned is forearmed, as they say, and you can use your Cassandra-like powers of prophecy to move out of enemy fire arcs and line up perfect kill shots of your own.

his core combat, when it works, is absolutely bloody brilliant. Your mechs weave balletically through streams of bullets, gliding past each other with precision and unleashing laser, bullet and missile-flavoured death. Once you get the hang of the slightly abstruse melee attacks, your sword-swinging units can swoop past opposing mechs and slice off limbs, or smash into lighter foes to knock them down before swiftly dispatching them. Get it wrong, usually by missing the fact that you're going to run two of your units into each other, or accidentally wandering into a stream of bullets, and chaos ensues.

Each turn is a little puzzle to solve (although neither as precise nor as punishing as Into the Breach) and your reward is a joyful carnival of carnage you can savour in slow motion from any angle you wish. Or study to figure out exactly where it was you goofed, you big goof.


The mechs themselves aren't unique models, but generic frames kitted out with different combinations of armour and weapons. You can make zippy 'bots with tissue paper armour, aggressive brawlers, or lumbering artillery pieces on legs. The system is simple enough, with two weapon and four armour locations, plus the option of slotting in different gubbins like reactors and heatsinks. It's fun and flexible, but let down by an infuriatingly awkward interface that never quite displays the information you want when you want it, and always seems to take a few more clicks to do anything than it should.

Sadly, the sloppy UI extends to the rest of the game. Assigning orders during battles is bafflingly inconsistent. To schedule an attack action, you place it on the little planning timeline for the unit and then pick a target. Easy! To move, you just click where you want to move to, but you can't choose when you want to move. Instead, you have to assign wait periods which, like moving, aren't placed directly on the timeline, but require you to stretch out a line on the map itself. It's weird and unintuitive.


The UI for the campaign isn't any better, and probably feels worse because it's the weakest part of the game by far. There is a barebones plot about your homeland being invaded and your elite mech unit with experimental prediction technology being the ones to liberate it. This translates to slowly driving around in a big truck, engaging (or avoiding) enemy patrols and hitting locations to drive the occupying forces away.

The map itself is divided up into a number of provinces. Once you've softened up the invaders in a given province, you can call in the resistance to take it back, triggering a timed contest in which you have to win a certain number of objectives before the resistance forces suffer too many defeats. Once you've liberated a province, you can move onto the next one. Rinse and repeat. There are random events that usually boil down to sitting in one place for a few hours of game time and/or giving up some supplies in the hope of gaining a reward, or avoiding a penalty. In either case, they just don't seem worth bothering with. The potential losses or gains are never significant and there's not enough personality in your pilots or any of the faceless, nameless NPCs to make you care.


The big problem is that it becomes repetitive really, really quickly. After a couple of provinces (there are over twenty) the chances are that you'll have locked in some good builds and you'll be ready for anything that the enemy has to throw at you. While it's fun to tinker with your mechs, after a while there's no real reason to, especially because the artificial intelligence, well, isn't.

Enemies don't seem capable of doing anything other than charging towards you and shooting, let alone responding to your tactics. I've had battles where the entire opposing force starts out by deciding to shoot at one of my units that is safely behind a large hill, and then continues to do so while the rest of my team picks them off one by one. Completely avoiding any and all damage is pretty easy, but I found myself getting sloppier and sloppier as time went on because mech damage is quickly repaired after battles, and only having parts fully destroyed is enough to have any real impact.


Worst of all, the system is very easy to exploit. A heavy mech with a blade can easily stunlock any light or medium opponents and the heavy rotary cannon kicks out so much damage that a mech equipped with one will easily outlast any opponent, regardless of return fire or the tiny amount of damage caused by overheating.

All in all, the sense is that while Phantom Brigade has a fantastic core, everything else falls short, like a perfectly cooked burger surrounded by limp lettuce and a stale bun. I can't remember the last time I felt so let down by a finished game after such a great time with its demo. On the plus side, the problems all seem eminently fixable because the foundation is so solid. Just some UI tweaks and some polish to the campaign would make the box of rocks AI a lot more forgivable. As it stands, it's absolutely a game that turn-based strategy and mecha fans should try, but not necessarily one that they should buy. Wait and see, if you can figure out how.

 

[holla_cabezas_de_mierda]

I hope a mod that brings back APs and a Turn-based system and eschews the whole "try to move your pieces at the exact position for bullets to miss" nonsense.

BTW, IIRC there were metnions of enemies ejecting from their mech and coming back as recurring nemeses. Is that still part of the game?

old version I saw did have AP's and turn based, and the only real demo I watched was somebody playing this way. I figured it was a toggle and an optional play style...are you saying AP and turn based is not officially supported in the official release?

 

[Taka-Haradin puolipeikko]

I hope a mod that brings back APs and a Turn-based system and eschews the whole "try to move your pieces at the exact position for bullets to miss" nonsense.

BTW, IIRC there were metnions of enemies ejecting from their mech and coming back as recurring nemeses. Is that still part of the game?

old version I saw did have AP's and turn based, and the only real demo I watched was somebody playing this way. I figured it was a toggle and an optional play style...are you saying AP and turn based is not officially supported in the official release?

AP and turn based are not in.
Besides trying to build 2 combat systems into one game seldom works.

 

[Saduj]

I don't understand informing the player of the opponent's actions before they are performed. Is this the natural evolution of save-scumming as a feature? How is this supposed to make the game more fun? It's no longer a strategy or action game, but a visually elaborate puzzle.

I haven't played the game but from what I understand, avoiding civilian casualties is somewhat of a persistent mission goal. That is hard to do when you tell your mech "move this way and shoot at that guy" and you don't know where exactly that guy is going to be when you start shooting. So they may have had to choose between just dropping any pretense of limiting collateral damage as a theme or letting the player know where the enemy is going to be at all times so that the player knows when it is safe to shoot. Or it could just be that they think this puzzle like gameplay is really cool.

The combat system the developers chose is the reason I haven't bought the game already so I'm not trying to defend it. Just trying to guess at how they arrived at this.

 

[Tyranicon]

I don't understand informing the player of the opponent's actions before they are performed. Is this the natural evolution of save-scumming as a feature? How is this supposed to make the game more fun? It's no longer a strategy or action game, but a visually elaborate puzzle.

I haven't played the game but from what I understand, avoiding civilian casualties is somewhat of a persistent mission goal. That is hard to do when you tell your mech "move this way and shoot at that guy" and you don't know where exactly that guy is going to be when you start shooting. So they may have had to choose between just dropping any pretense of limiting collateral damage as a theme or letting the player know where the enemy is going to be at all times so that the player knows when it is safe to shoot. Or it could just be that they think this puzzle like gameplay is really cool.

The combat system the developers chose is the reason I haven't bought the game already so I'm not trying to defend it. Just trying to guess at how they arrived at this.

Nothing wrong with experimenting. That's how we get new, cool shit.

Unfortunately, I'm not sure if the combat here is fun or more finicky micromanagement that breaks up the flow of combat.

I might just get it to try it out.

 

[Skorpion]

https://www.eurogamer.net/phantom-b...-mech-combat-excels-in-the-face-of-a-dodgy-ui

Phantom Brigade review - tactical mech combat excels in the face of a dodgy UI​

Riposte in the machine.


Mixing Into the Breach with Frozen Synapse makes for an inevitably strong core of mech combat, but the rest of Phantom Brigade is underwhelming.

When I first played the demo for Phantom Brigade, I realised it did something I'd been wanting from games for years. It's a turn-based game that uses the magic of our computer boxes to produce fantastic action scenes. Not only that, they're action scenes featuring giant robots, which astute readers may have noticed I have a fondness for. (Taking screenshots, I should add, has been an absolute joy, as I've scrubbed back and forth through each turn's timeline, rotating and zooming the camera to find the perfect angle of huge mecha smashing into each other and exploding.)

here's nothing particularly original in how Phantom Brigade achieves this. It's essentially Frozen Synapse blended with Into the Breach, with a dash of Battletech for good measure. You have a squad of mechs with which to engage in turn-based battles with enemy mechs and tanks. Rather than moving and shooting with each unit in sequence, you plan out the actions of your squad over each five-second turn, then hit the execute button and watch your tactical brilliance play out in real time. Where Into the Breach comes in, other than the big robots, is your ability to see the predicted actions of your opponent. Forewarned is forearmed, as they say, and you can use your Cassandra-like powers of prophecy to move out of enemy fire arcs and line up perfect kill shots of your own.

his core combat, when it works, is absolutely bloody brilliant. Your mechs weave balletically through streams of bullets, gliding past each other with precision and unleashing laser, bullet and missile-flavoured death. Once you get the hang of the slightly abstruse melee attacks, your sword-swinging units can swoop past opposing mechs and slice off limbs, or smash into lighter foes to knock them down before swiftly dispatching them. Get it wrong, usually by missing the fact that you're going to run two of your units into each other, or accidentally wandering into a stream of bullets, and chaos ensues.

Each turn is a little puzzle to solve (although neither as precise nor as punishing as Into the Breach) and your reward is a joyful carnival of carnage you can savour in slow motion from any angle you wish. Or study to figure out exactly where it was you goofed, you big goof.


The mechs themselves aren't unique models, but generic frames kitted out with different combinations of armour and weapons. You can make zippy 'bots with tissue paper armour, aggressive brawlers, or lumbering artillery pieces on legs. The system is simple enough, with two weapon and four armour locations, plus the option of slotting in different gubbins like reactors and heatsinks. It's fun and flexible, but let down by an infuriatingly awkward interface that never quite displays the information you want when you want it, and always seems to take a few more clicks to do anything than it should.

Sadly, the sloppy UI extends to the rest of the game. Assigning orders during battles is bafflingly inconsistent. To schedule an attack action, you place it on the little planning timeline for the unit and then pick a target. Easy! To move, you just click where you want to move to, but you can't choose when you want to move. Instead, you have to assign wait periods which, like moving, aren't placed directly on the timeline, but require you to stretch out a line on the map itself. It's weird and unintuitive.


The UI for the campaign isn't any better, and probably feels worse because it's the weakest part of the game by far. There is a barebones plot about your homeland being invaded and your elite mech unit with experimental prediction technology being the ones to liberate it. This translates to slowly driving around in a big truck, engaging (or avoiding) enemy patrols and hitting locations to drive the occupying forces away.

The map itself is divided up into a number of provinces. Once you've softened up the invaders in a given province, you can call in the resistance to take it back, triggering a timed contest in which you have to win a certain number of objectives before the resistance forces suffer too many defeats. Once you've liberated a province, you can move onto the next one. Rinse and repeat. There are random events that usually boil down to sitting in one place for a few hours of game time and/or giving up some supplies in the hope of gaining a reward, or avoiding a penalty. In either case, they just don't seem worth bothering with. The potential losses or gains are never significant and there's not enough personality in your pilots or any of the faceless, nameless NPCs to make you care.


The big problem is that it becomes repetitive really, really quickly. After a couple of provinces (there are over twenty) the chances are that you'll have locked in some good builds and you'll be ready for anything that the enemy has to throw at you. While it's fun to tinker with your mechs, after a while there's no real reason to, especially because the artificial intelligence, well, isn't.

Enemies don't seem capable of doing anything other than charging towards you and shooting, let alone responding to your tactics. I've had battles where the entire opposing force starts out by deciding to shoot at one of my units that is safely behind a large hill, and then continues to do so while the rest of my team picks them off one by one. Completely avoiding any and all damage is pretty easy, but I found myself getting sloppier and sloppier as time went on because mech damage is quickly repaired after battles, and only having parts fully destroyed is enough to have any real impact.


Worst of all, the system is very easy to exploit. A heavy mech with a blade can easily stunlock any light or medium opponents and the heavy rotary cannon kicks out so much damage that a mech equipped with one will easily outlast any opponent, regardless of return fire or the tiny amount of damage caused by overheating.

All in all, the sense is that while Phantom Brigade has a fantastic core, everything else falls short, like a perfectly cooked burger surrounded by limp lettuce and a stale bun. I can't remember the last time I felt so let down by a finished game after such a great time with its demo. On the plus side, the problems all seem eminently fixable because the foundation is so solid. Just some UI tweaks and some polish to the campaign would make the box of rocks AI a lot more forgivable. As it stands, it's absolutely a game that turn-based strategy and mecha fans should try, but not necessarily one that they should buy. Wait and see, if you can figure out how.

This review sums up exactly how I feel about the game, the conclusion is exactly what I came to myself. I will boot it up again in a patch or two (3-6months) and see if any of the issues are continued to be worked on but I agree, hold off on this one for now.

 

[Tyranicon]

So why not, I got it.

I actually really like it, and I suggest tactical combatfags to get this because the battle system is such a new and fresh (if not necessarily good) idea.

As in, you'll hate it at first, but then you adapt and get used to it.

I'll have to give this one some time. There's interesting stuff here.

I do have to mention there might be some poor optimization and it takes me like 10 minutes to launch the game, and apparently it's a known issue.

 

[Skorpion]

Be sure to limit frames, this game can seriously diminish any gpu's life expectancy.
edit: It was mentioned moving this to tactical, I agree, this is not in even the slightest way an rpg. Not an insult to the game at all, it just is about as much an rpg as disco elastic is

 

[Old Hans]

I was so sad when I saw the recommended specs for this game. it doesnt even look that amazing

 

[Tyranicon]

Eh? Why was this moved back to General RPG?

Anyways I spent like three hours or so with the game. It does a lot that's good, and a lot that's bad.

Pros:

• Slick style, it's like you are poring over one of those holographic battle tables that you see in movies
• Combat is fun and destruction physics make the battles a visual feast
• Lots of little details that say the devs were invested and had a lot of passion for the project: stupid stuff like if you pause while moving on the strategic layer, you can see your mobile base moving while in the hanger.
• Once you get the hang of it, using the battle timeline is a very unique (?) and novel combat mechanic
• There is some tactical depth as well, I caught myself hunched over my PC doing my best Gendo Ikari impersonation.

Cons

• Game is way more spec-intense than it probably should be
• Everyone's complaining about poor optimization, so it's probably not just me. I locked it to 60 FPS and it runs fine
• Horrible UI
• Too much info thrown at you and you don't know what half of it means
• JRPG numbers
• Huge hitboxes for friendly fire. Think you can shoot a beam over one of your mechs? Think again.
• I'm hesitant to say it's too easy, but I can already see that the game is probably going to be a cakewalk
• Possibly balance issues. Most of the guns (and there's a good amount) seem to be useless when you can just abuse long range/heavy weapons. Will have to get deeper into game.
• All your pilots look like they're more at home writing for Buzzfeed than being soldiers. Thankfully you can edit all of them and appearance options are decentish! So this is actually more of a pro.
• Strategic layer can be boring
• Story, writing, etc are competent but not compelling

If you like shooting mechs, tinkering with mechs, and generally just jack off to the idea of a Battle Brothers-like with mechs, get this. It's good for what it is. I don't regret spending like 24 USD.

The devs clearly know what they're doing here, and I'll probably continue playing the game (even though I have a suspicion it'll let you snowball through the "campaign").

 

[Galdred]

So why not, I got it.

I actually really like it, and I suggest tactical combatfags to get this because the battle system is such a new and fresh (if not necessarily good) idea.

As in, you'll hate it at first, but then you adapt and get used to it.

I'll have to give this one some time. There's interesting stuff here.

I do have to mention there might be some poor optimization and it takes me like 10 minutes to launch the game, and apparently it's a known issue.

That has always been the weakness of simultaneous turn-based (phase based) games for me. I found I needed to micromanage my turn 10 times more in Combat mission than Steel Panthers. Frozen Synapse and Laser Squad Nemesis kind of pulled it out because they were pretty minimalist. I tried to make a Zodiac Legion prototype work with melee combat, but it was too fiddly, as meleeing without knowing where you and the enemy will really land is pretty difficult. Some games still went through (the old Knights of Legend, Ravenmark, and probably a few others I missed).
However, it worked well in dogfighting games (Ace Patrol, and the TT X-Wing, Wings of Glory), and it creates a nice "mind game" on top of the tactical one.

I saw people compare it to Battlestar Galactica.
Have you played it? How does it fare against it?

 

[Tyranicon]

So why not, I got it.

I actually really like it, and I suggest tactical combatfags to get this because the battle system is such a new and fresh (if not necessarily good) idea.

As in, you'll hate it at first, but then you adapt and get used to it.

I'll have to give this one some time. There's interesting stuff here.

I do have to mention there might be some poor optimization and it takes me like 10 minutes to launch the game, and apparently it's a known issue.

That has always been the weakness of simultaneous turn-based (phase based) games for me. I found I needed to micromanage my turn 10 times more in Combat mission than Steel Panthers. Frozen Synapse and Laser Squad Nemesis kind of pulled it out because they were pretty minimalist. I tried to make a Zodiac Legion prototype work with melee combat, but it was too fiddly, as meleeing without knowing where you and the enemy will really land is pretty difficult. Some games still went through (the old Knights of Legend, Ravenmark, and probably a few others I missed).
However, it worked well in dogfighting games (Ace Patrol, and the TT X-Wing, Wings of Glory), and it creates a nice "mind game" on top of the tactical one.

I saw people compare it to Battlestar Galactica.
Have you played it? How does it fare against it?

Haven't played it, so can't compare. But one benefit of Phantom Brigade is that you see exactly where enemy units will be at any point in time. The exception is if they're dead or crashed by the time they get there.

Your pilots will also do exactly what you order at that point in time without any awareness. If for example, one of your mechs crashed, got up and is now in front of someone you ordered to shoot, they'll shoot right into the back of your mech. The enemy AI hilariously does the same thing.

Would be nice to have "common sense" be a thing in the upgrade tree that you can buy. There is an upgrade tree, btw.

I'm still enjoying the game, but it suffers from what a lot of tactical games suffer from: bad AI plus range is king. It's super easy to out maneuver the enemy AI (which basically just rushes right at you and shoots), so most fights are just me sitting in the back shooting things until they die.

Close combat weapons + melee are basically useless unless late game fucks me over and there's a ton of specialized units (which... given that most patrols say "Standard Army", there might be).

So I'll withhold judgement for now. Hopefully the game will throw some curveballs.

 

[Tyranicon]

I am somewhat impressed by the designing of conquering regions. Basic overview is that once you're ready to do the conquer minigame, you call in the main forces of your army and begin to fight across the region for supremacy. This is mostly by attacking marked locations and reinforcing your army in pitched battles.

While on the surface it may seem simple, it's actually quite an experience evading enemy patrols (you can try to outrun, stealth, and a bunch of other options) since you want to avoid attrition to your units. I often found myself running from engagement to engagement with enemy forces nipping at my heels, and threatening to sandwich my mechs (if you start a battle near two or more enemy groups, there's a timer before they drop into the battle. You don't want to fight 16 mechs with your paltry 4).

You can also call in reinforcements of your own, which airdrop onto the battlefield.

Honestly one of the best attempts (I've seen) at simulating war via a Battle Brothers-esque overworld interface.

Buuuut I feel like every bit of praise for this game should be tempered by some criticisms. Got two crashes to desktop, both right after I won a really grindy fight, and of course it didn't save. My computer is always hot after running it, and I find the lack of basic information/bad design frustrating. For example, you can't edit your fourth mech when loading into a battle because it's covered by a menu -facepalm-. And no deployment selection? Come on.

Also I cracked the combat and rendered it basically meaningless. Load up on missiles -> alpha strike the shit out of everything on the first turn -> you're a combat god. Nothing touches you except overheat damage.

.... I guess it's realistic. Why do giant mechas need a handgun when you can missile massacre the entire map?

Some patches are definitely on their way.

 

[Luka-boy]

Also I cracked the combat and rendered it basically meaningless. Load up on missiles -> alpha strike the shit out of everything on the first turn -> you're a combat god. Nothing touches you except overheat damage.

.... I guess it's realistic. Why do giant mechas need a handgun when you can missile massacre the entire map?

One of the most common complaints I see online is that you cannot see the prediction for enemy missiles and it's easy to get your own mechs destroyed when facing missile-heavy enemy forces, so I suppose it balances itself out in a way if you are really unlucky with enemy composition

 

[Infinitron]

Review roundup:

Eurogamer
PC Gamer 68/100
PC Invasion 6.5/10
Polygon
Rock Paper Shotgun
Vice

 

[Grampy_Bone]

It honestly feels like every part of this game was made in isolation of the rest. Like, someone thought the whole part-mod-part-mod subsystem and accompanying UI worked fine, and no one else was allowed to tell them otherwise. I picture these different teams each sending each other their commits and each one inwardly grumbling and trying to work around the damage.

This is another classic example* of a game where you play it "wrong" and it breaks all the difficulty. e.g., build a mixed team of long range, short range, melee, and defense and you have these challenging tactical encounters. Or mass-spam one OP weapon on everyone and faceroll the content. Choice and consequences!

*(Other examples: Darkest Dungeon, Horizon's Gate, some Etrian games, etc.)

 

[Kem0sabe]

Tried the "demo", found it to be extremely clunky. The concept sounded cool on paper but it doesn't really work as strategy mech combat game, you either go full real time like mech commander or you go turn base like front mission. This half assed system is just ridiculous.

 

[oasis789]

is it better than HBS battletech

 

[ropetight]

Tried the "demo", found it to be extremely clunky. The concept sounded cool on paper but it doesn't really work as strategy mech combat game, you either go full real time like mech commander or you go turn base like front mission. This half assed system is just ridiculous.

Directing moves of your squad and enemies next 5 seconds is not that fun.
Some X-COM and JA sequels tried the same approach and I hated it there also.
In phantom Brigade you are anticipating the future (some bullshit quantum computing as explanation why enemies behave exactly that way).
Those movement graphs are more like dance choreography than tactics; without element of eventual surprise it is actually boring.

 

[Cael]

is it better than HBS battletech

There is no such game. HBS made a big stompy robot game, but it had nothing to do with Battletech.

 

[Tyranicon]

Those movement graphs are more like dance choreography than tactics; without element of eventual surprise it is actually boring.

Yes, being able to see the future and exact movement/attack patterns leads to stale combat.

It also makes the game incredibly easy, even against enemy missiles (which I had no problem against because the AI won't abuse the overheat mechanic like a player will).

The only real threat in combat is losing pilots. But that is mitigated by pilots being completely interchangeable. Besides their history of kills, there are no skills, feats, abilities that differentiate one pilot from another.

Which is a huge dropped ball in my opinion.

 

[Tyranicon]

I'm about to finish the "campaign" which apparently is just retaking the capital city instead of the entire map.

I really want to like this game, but it's too easy even after maxing out difficulty options and hobbling myself by allowing only one missile launcher unit.

The balancing issues are various. Perhaps the most important is the overheat mechanic, which allows you to shoot several times at the expense of dealing slight amounts of damage to your mech.

With the right build and gear, you can minimize the damage from overheating. Even if you don't, you can still stack 9+ attacks per turn at the expense of maybe blowing up your weapon arm or disabling that mech. Which is worth the cost on turn 1, not that you'll need to go that far since you can spread it around on 4 mechs.

The AI will never abuse this.

This game should've used an AP system instead of a heating system. It's a novel, interesting idea, but not one that works.