Bryan Ekman, on 22 November 2012 - 03:46 PM, said:
Courtsey of Mr. Bradley.

1) Double heat sinks internal to the engine are set to increase the heat scale by 2 points and provide -0.2 heat/sec cooling. Double heat sinks that you add to your Mech increase the heat scale by 1.4 points and provide -0.14 heat/sec cooling. (For reference, single heat sinks increase the scale by 1 and cool -0.1 heat/sec. The heat scale starts at 30 and is then is increased based on the heat sinks in your Mech.)

2) Each time the internal structure of a Mech takes damage, there is a chance that the hit will cause at least 1 critical hit. There is a 25% chance of causing 1 critical hit, a 14% chance of causing 2 critical hits, and a 3% chance of causing 3 critical hits (for a total of a 42% chance of any sort of critical hit). Each critical hit will randomly hit a weapon or piece of equipment in that location; the chance of a particular piece of equipment being hit is proportional to how many critical slots it occupies. Each critical hit damages the weapon/equipment an amount equal to the damage that caused the critical hit.

For example, an Atlas AS7-D is hit with an AC/5, for 5 damage to its left torso’s internal structure. The attacker gets lucky and this results in 3 critical hits. Two of the crits hit the LRM 20 and 1 hits the heat sink. The heat sink will take 5 damage and the LRM 20 will take 10 (5 x 2 = 10).

Currently, all engines have 15 points of health while all other items have 10. One of the changes going through QA right now, and that will be applied to an upcoming patch, is lowering the health of the Gauss rifle to 3 points. And, sometime soon, we plan on doing a full pass on the health of all the items.

Critical damage to the side torso hit boxes of XL engines deals damage to the engine as a whole. However, it should be noted that, currently, critical damage to your engine will not disable it, but simply add to your repair bill. This is likely to change when we do the pass on the health values.

3) This has not been implemented.

4) First, Gauss ammo does not explode, but the Gauss rifle does (for 20 points of damage). However, it was discovered that the Gauss rifle explosion was not working properly. The fix has been completed and will be implemented in an upcoming patch.

When ammo (or a Gauss rifle) explodes, it can cause large amounts of damage. If the explosion destroys the internal structure of a location, any remaining damage is transferred inward, to the internal structure of the next location. Arms and legs transfer to the appropriate side torso, side torsos transfer to the center torso. CASE prevents the explosion from transferring past the location in which it is installed.

For example, if you have CASE installed in your left torso, any explosion that starts in, or transfers into, your left torso will never transfer any damage into your center torso.

Some of you may notice that this doesn’t do anything for Mechs with XL engines, and yet many of the canon default loadouts include XL engines and CASE in the side torsos. We are currently considering some additional tweaks that would ensure that this is not a completely useless combination.