Thanks so much for the review! I didn't really set out to make a heist game, but that's definitely where it ended up by the end of the month.
I want to keep working on the flaws. I think the concept feels good and enticing to pick them, but also gives some mechanical weight that intrinsically tied to the narrative, which is my favorite thing about how the equipment works in the Havoc Engine. I think with some more playtime, I'll find some things that feel interesting and impactful after I see where people take the characters in game.
I'm glad you liked the heat mechanic so much, it went through a few different version before I found one that felt impactful and thematic. After reading the Trash to Treasure submission, I have almost been wondering if the GM should roll one big dice pool at the beginning of the round based on everyone's heat combined, then allow players to whittle way at it until the end of the round, and then spend it accordingly, maybe with the cavaet that anyone whose heat gets reduced to zero during that round can't be hit, but then I'd have to rework the capture mechanic because it is dependent on what a character decides to spend successes on in their turn.
I've got two ideas on my list for how to incorporate ship based combat. Both are effectively an end game chase scene. The most obvious way is that once the players have Maggoteye's head, they need to get their ship out of the harbor and have to escape other ships chasing them. The other, which feels more piratey is that when they find the governor, he tells them Maggoteye's head is on a ship headed somewhere and then they have to get back to theirs, hunt the ship down down, board it, and find the head. I would just need to slim down major/minor objectives along the way so it doesn't feel too long.
I'm going to take it back and rework some stuff for sure and reupload in a week or two I think. Firstly because I ran out of time, I basically just had to format and submit my google docs version and I didn't have the time to edit it and lay it out in Affinity. Now that there's less pressure, I'd like to improve the presentation.