Obviously if they make a rotary it will be modular, there's no point in doing a single rotor, that would be like making only 1 cylinder engines. But not sure if they will ever make it due to how different it is from the combustion engine we have now. Someone could try to make it a mod by making a new LUA that simulates the rotary behavior realistically but that seems like a ton of research to do.
That's gonna be a looooooooooooooooooooong engine.. considering how long Tavarish's racing rotary is.. But why stop at 12? Why not 24 or 99 lol
To make a proper rotary vehicle in Beam, the only thing you really need to do is just adjust the engine file to act more like a rotary engine would. Low rotational inertia, low friction, low torque, and some good RPM's. That's really all you need to make it behave like a proper rotary. Then of course you need a model of the engine, so when you swap to the rotary it doesn't look so goofy. And finally you would need the sound as rotary's are VERY distinct and you just can't get away with modifying normal engine sounds. But yeah... that's really all there is to it. Everything that is needed to make a rotary engine exists.
Well, to really properly do it, you might as well adjust the damage system to reflect the different way this engine works (there are these gaskets along the edge instead of piston rings, and similar changes), and record some sweet rotary sounds. But other than that, just changing around some part names and properties in the engine JBEAM files, along with appropriate models, should, as you said, do the trick!
This would make a good rotary but not a "proper" one, the way the devs would do it would be by making entirely new LUA to account for the different way rotary engines get damaged and overheat, etc. Rotary engines are probably way harder to damage overall due to having less individual moving parts that can break and due to moving around less and being lighter which overall means they are more secure in the engine bay. There would have to be lower ratio of torque reaction or something. Also pistonless rotaries are completely different too, they would require a separate internal damage model, and would have to react to temperature differently.
