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[Commander James Raynor]

I have tried the new system in the PTS server, and drawn some conclusions.
First of all, I'll say I don't like the new system, but if that's the direction things are going, we could at least make it the best it can be. As for the other factors to consider, we need to identify the goal we are after with this energy draw thing: to limit the power of the alphas and favor mixed builds, moving away from high burst damage builds, which is a nice goal. Then, a system that only considers damage as the limiting factor doesn't acknowledge that not all weapons deliver its damage in the same way. These factors would be:

Range: it's not the same to have a 30 damage alpha at 900 meters that having it a 220. Lasers have a perfect accuracy, so being able to do 30 damage consistently at long ranges will shift the game away from brawling, something I don't think would be a good idea. Not to mention that it punishes IS more than clan, since lasers of the two groups have consistently different range.

Precission: Lasers and (for the most part) PPC and gauss have perfect accuracy, the damage is delivered instantly and you can follow your target to concentrate the damage. If you compare that with, for example SRM's and LBn-X's, which have travel time and spread all over the mech (if you even hit it), you realize that having a 30 damage alpha of lasers is't the same as having it with other weapons. I know this has been adressed with the 75% energy draw per damage of the spread weapons, but 1) I think the 0.75 ratio is not low enough and 2) It doesn't consider the difference between lasers and autocanons, especially the clan ones, which have travel time and multiple slugs, making them pretty unreliable at mid distances unless your target is perfectly still. I know i can't hit with all 3 slugs of the C-UAC 10 at a moving target at 500 meters.

Travel time: as adressed in the previous point, travel time of the autocannons sets them apart from lasers, making them less reliable to deliver damage the farther away you are. If you can hit with the 4 slugs of a C-UAC20 at 500 meters two times in a row, I will applaud you, but if you hit with the whole large laser at the same distance, it's what you are expected to be able to do. This is not limited to the clan autocannons, since the IS have a slow travel time too.

DPS: weapons like autocannons have the largest DPS of the game, which comes at the cost of weight (a lot of weight). This high DPS means putting a lot of them would make you really hot; hotter than lasers wich weight a lot less than the AC's, equalizing the burst capability of a mech with 6 tons of weapons and one with 34 tons of autocannons (plus 8 tons of ammo). This doesn't make much sense to me.

Mech tonnage: setting the energy value of all mechs to 30 is just not right. it means the alpha of an arctic cheetah would be the same as the one of an Atlas, Dire Wolf, Stalker or Cyclops. I'm sure there is an easy way of assigning different values according to tonnage.

A system that doesn't take all the qualities of a weapon into account will shift the balance in an unhealthy way. In this case, it favors the weapons that deliver their damage more effectively, i.e.: lasers, PPC and gauss. As a result, instead of favoring mixed builds, it'll do the opposite. A KDK-3 with 2 gauss and 2 PPC will still wreck you at long distances (especially with the new instant gauss), but if you get close with your short range weapons, you won't be able to do the burst damage to punish him for having only long range weapons as before.

All these factors are taken into account in the present system: weapons that have longer range use a lot of heat and weight a lot more; heat efficient autocannons also weight the same as 2 to 15 lasers and use extra tons for ammo, but with Energy Draw, you can heat yourself even more that with lasers; SRM's have the shortest range of almost all weapons, have travel time and spread the damage all over the place, but have the best weight to damage ratio (although only a percentage of that damage goes to the enemy mech, let alone it's CT). Not taking any of this into consideration will have undesired effects on gameplay.

If you insist on implementing the Energy Draw (which I really hope you won't), every weapons needs to have an individual Energy Draw value to compensate for its effectiveness delivering the nominal damage. This would make the system more complex, but I see it as the only way of not punishing every weapon wich is not laser, PPC and gauss. Better yet: keep the ghost heat system, but instead of considering only weapons in the same group, give every weapon a "power value" and setting a limit of power for an alpha. For example, a Large Laser would have a power value of 20 and an ER Large Laser a power value of 25 (to account for the range), while Medium Lasers with a range of 270 and damage of 5 would have a power value of 10 and Medium Pulse Lasers, 11 or 12; autocannons could have a power value of twice their damage (10 for AC 5, 40 for AC 20, etc.); clan lasers would have slightly higher "power value" to account for the range; the max alpha could be set at 75 or 80. These numbers came from the top of my head, I haven't given them a lot of though, but putting all weapons in the same pool would limit the alphas and force you to shoot all your medium lasers, then your SRM's, then your autocannons, or your entire left side, then your entire right side, or the such.

TL;DR: As a conclusion, I don't like the new system and hope you don't implement it, but if you will, every weapon needs to have an individual value to account for range, precission, etc. That way, you won't favor pin point instant damage weapons over the rest. If not, the meta will shift from laser vomit to one-two laser vomit, shooting two separated vomits 1 second appart. Not really an improvement. Also, different max energy for different tonnage mechs.