Curious what consequences this has for all those involved?
Kicking from the party
What's to stop a party leader from kicking everyone else just before stepping on the elevator home?
Well, if you don't want to risk it, either go solo sooner so you become the leader and nobody can kick you, or only join friends?
Also as far as the game is concerned, going solo is the same as being kicked, except you can't rejoin a party that kicked you.
Heat loss is the only negative to speak of. The instance is copied, so everything else remains the same. The leader can very well kick everyone just before the elevator and everyone would be there with everything they'd achieved, the minerals they were carrying and their coin, and would be right next to the elevator anyways. Heat would only matter if you were actually levelling something up.
Also, the leader would lose the shared minerals as well, since (like coin) they get copied for each member. And probably get /ignored by the three he just trolled.
or in a boss stratum, the party becomes restricted.
Also, if you leave a party that had drops showing (heat, materials, etc) that hadn't been picked up before you left, those drops don't turn up in the new instance.
It's to stop the cloning abuse; used to be you could go solo after seeing a certain item of equipment, and thus multiple people would be able get copies of it.
The person kicked loses any heat picked up that floor prior to the kick.
Nothing else is really affected. Minerals go to everyone but the person kicked, who gets whatever he picked up.