RE: Engagement away from home

And if so, do you think this type of 'outreach' engagement, should be scored higher than engaging on your own posts?

I think engagement is meant to be both ways. Your post and other people's post. This will help in discovering people with good content too.

New users have to comment on other posts to get seen unlike the big boys who know themselves already. You might then notice that there are constant people on most of the posts done by the orcas ...
Well this criterion will make things tougher on the engagement league.