2DaT, on 24 March 2019 - 07:06 PM, said:
Thus it's not an excuse to add an arbitary mechanic that nobody likes.
This mechanic isn't as arbitrary as you seem to imply. Maybe how it was interpreted and added into this game might seem "arbitrary", but there are penalties for damage done to an engine. Those penalties involves either death (IS XL side torso destruction) or some aspect of your heat being "mucked around with" (cXL or LFE).
(Then again, it would affect Std engines as well, but not upon side torso destruction, but for that we would need to have engines with health pools like our weapons do...)
The consideration here is how this heat penalty can be interpreted within the realm of this video game compared to it's TT origin. Should it produce a heat spike? Just disable heat sink function (cooling)? Should it just reduce threshold from the bottom of the heat pool (rather than the top)? Or should we have it actually produce heat per engine critical destroyed (5 heat per second for one crit and 10 heat per second for two crits*), which could heat cripple a mech to "never able to cool down"**?
I would also like to mention, reducing the tonnage of Std engines would honestly defeat the purpose of even having them in the game at that point. We need some kind of penalty system for when an advanced engine loses it's side torso, to offset the weight savings of the engine. Otherwise, everyone would always take the lightest engine that has the lowest risks. The debate is: Are the current penalties for advanced engines too much? Could another mechanic be better for the task at hand? Does the current system need adjustment for better game play, while still retaining engine choice and identity?
* We are only dealing with two crit damage, as no engine currently in game only has a single crit in a side torso.
** This last option would be most true to TT, but would result in the most frustrating implementation possible for game play. This is not an actual recommendation, but just a pointing to what it "should" be.