How about having weapons (and possibly engines) on ships to generate "heat", which could cause a ship to overheat if it just goes gun heavy. This could have negative effects from disabling the weapons for peroid of time, destroying a weapon until it is repaired, blowing out the ships movement until repaired, or in extreme cases; blowing the ship up.



This could then be countered by tech that decreases the heat generated by weapons, utility upgrades, such as heat sinks, which enable the ship to withstand more heat before overheating, and armor types which absorb heat, allowing the ship to cool off quicker.



You could also have action cards during battle, that enable a ship to "vent" some heat, which rapidly decreases the heat built up, but decreases the damage output for that turn. (For ships that still want to go all guns.)



Might be hard to implement, but should help to make for a more balanced (and realistic) ship design.

It is a neat idea. You could probably add engineering cards to cool down weapons and engines during one of the turns.