Okay, keep looking into things and if you eventually figure out that a NG+ category (the "new game plus" tag at least on SDA covers any cases where you're starting from a glitched state instead of a "clean" one) would make sense and whether it could be policed effectively, or rather if its counterpart, the "NG" category could be, let us know what you found out and we'll probably agree with your reasoning.
To be clear, things that change automatically after the first retry in this case must be exploited in any segmented runs, NG as well, because of what a hassle it would be (?) to reset the situation every time you want to retry. Or maybe it's not difficult at all? In that case, one idea would be to from now on make non-NG+ segmented runs always start from the clean state the mission first loads in. That would at least make it clear for everyone whether the replay effects are being exploited (NG+) or not (NG). For single-segment runs of course you just do whatever is fastest, restarts or no restarts, since everything is timed anyway, or well the gameplay is.
If the weapons have a typical damage die roll system (isn't the whole thing based on a tabletop RPG?), then definitely the first guess as to why destroying the factory is inconsistent is simply because you need very good rolls. Like say the factory has 100 hp and each ER Small deals 6–9 damage, I dunno the exact maths but seems you'd have to get a lot of 9 rolls to make it work out. Those kinds of things are annoying to figure out by testing but not impossible. You'd basically just want to test just one laser hitting some target while using Cheat Engine to see which memory values are decreasing to find where its HP is stored (though I sometimes can't find such values for some reason). Then hit it enough times to see what the range and probability distribution is with other variables eliminated. That's often how simple it is. I think I heard that MechWarrior 2 has damage values in the manual but they tinkered with them and they're not the same in the game so if you guys didn't test this stuff yet, you may have to do it yourselves.
Speedrunning rules, and I can speak especially for SDA of course, are a combination of what seems the most logical way to "portion out" what different ways a game could be played and also somewhat about convenience. On SDA, over the course of time, certain standard category divisions started to emerge that tend to repeat and that are still largely echoed outside of SDA as well. Usually if you have any control over the state the game starts in, there's a good chance you can do enough with that so it's interesting to separate into its own thing. This is clearly such a case so long as there can be any semblance of enforcing the division as well.
To be clear, things that change automatically after the first retry in this case must be exploited in any segmented runs, NG as well, because of what a hassle it would be (?) to reset the situation every time you want to retry. Or maybe it's not difficult at all? In that case, one idea would be to from now on make non-NG+ segmented runs always start from the clean state the mission first loads in. That would at least make it clear for everyone whether the replay effects are being exploited (NG+) or not (NG). For single-segment runs of course you just do whatever is fastest, restarts or no restarts, since everything is timed anyway, or well the gameplay is.
If the weapons have a typical damage die roll system (isn't the whole thing based on a tabletop RPG?), then definitely the first guess as to why destroying the factory is inconsistent is simply because you need very good rolls. Like say the factory has 100 hp and each ER Small deals 6–9 damage, I dunno the exact maths but seems you'd have to get a lot of 9 rolls to make it work out. Those kinds of things are annoying to figure out by testing but not impossible. You'd basically just want to test just one laser hitting some target while using Cheat Engine to see which memory values are decreasing to find where its HP is stored (though I sometimes can't find such values for some reason). Then hit it enough times to see what the range and probability distribution is with other variables eliminated. That's often how simple it is. I think I heard that MechWarrior 2 has damage values in the manual but they tinkered with them and they're not the same in the game so if you guys didn't test this stuff yet, you may have to do it yourselves.
Speedrunning rules, and I can speak especially for SDA of course, are a combination of what seems the most logical way to "portion out" what different ways a game could be played and also somewhat about convenience. On SDA, over the course of time, certain standard category divisions started to emerge that tend to repeat and that are still largely echoed outside of SDA as well. Usually if you have any control over the state the game starts in, there's a good chance you can do enough with that so it's interesting to separate into its own thing. This is clearly such a case so long as there can be any semblance of enforcing the division as well.