[botmeister]

I played a game called "mechwarriors" a looooong time ago, and it had viewable wounding where players could see each others missing parts that were blown away. You could see severity when smoke came out of the "mech" (mechs are like a tank but with legs), also the mech slowed down and lost weapons systems depending on where it was hit and how much damage it took. You could repair your mech only after the round ended by carefully spending money on replacement parts.

I liked the game play even though as you got damaged you slowned down and lost capabilities, you could still fight back, and a lot of skill came into play dealing with damaged systems. There was lots of fun watching other players get blown up, with parts flying off and smoke comming out. You could decide which target was your best bet to shoot at, and you could aim for certain parts to maximize the damage, eg shoot at the legs, and the target would slow down or become crippled, but it could still shoot back at you, shoot the weapons systems out and the thing could still run away from you and escape.

I agree that we'd have to balance realism against fun. One concept is to allow an adjustable realism level at the server side (I'd make this limited to only a few things to keep it simple), that way people can decide for themselves what they want. If we try and create too much of a compromise, we'll end up with a mediocre game.