Nekki Basara, on 22 October 2013 - 04:16 PM, said:
Don't forget about all the energy losses that take place during all the transfers between cables and conduits. Every time you send energy through a junction, you lose some of it as heat... also, I bet these Mechs aren't plumbed through-and-through with superconducting wires, so there's the loss due to thermal resistance that takes place along the straights, too.
People also mistakenly assume that Flamers should cool your Mech, but in [fictional] actuality, they pump plasma out of the nice shielded core and through conduits that leak heat into the unshielded innards of your Mech. The act of pumping plasma from a shielded region through an unshielded region will cause your Chassis to absorb that heat and, thus, get hotter and have to dump that heat out through the heatsinks.