Brenden, on 31 December 2016 - 09:02 PM, said:
Battletech in general, in lore and in game.
Why can't they mount that HELL laser?
In the game and for story telling, the ranges of weapons were created for dramatic effect. It was seen as more dramatic to have giant walking vehicles fight closer to each other, and even occasionally going into hand to hand combat. It was added for dramatic flare as well as a but of game play balance (more powerful weapons need to get closer).
In lore and more advanced rules (most people probably played the TT game with just the basic rule sets), you could actually shoot your weapons at up to x3 of their base range, but the farther out it was the harder it was to hit. Some of this was seen as the targeting computer limitations, weapon calibrations as well as just the limits of the weapons themselves. So, in actual fact, there are many weapons that can punch well past 1000m, just good luck actually hitting with it. (These rules were originally implemented into the game for many weapons, but between instant convergence of all weapons and player driven accuracy over a targeting computer accuracy (delayed convergence of your weapons), people were causing serious damage at some crazy ranges. Not to mention, it was rendering some weapons completely useless. Why take an AC10, when you can take an AC20 that can deal 10 damage at the same ranges as an AC10, and 20 damage as it gets closer?)
Also, consider that the entirety of Battletech (as far as Lore and it's base concepts) where driven and written out back in the 70s-80s. Many of the concepts where limited to thoughts and ideas of things at that time. Considering how much more advanced technology has become since those days... Some of the base core concepts are showing their age, but you can't exactly change them without throwing everything else out of alignment.
Suffice to say, some of it is for dramatic effect, some of it is for game balance, some of it actually did exist in more advanced rule sets, and some of it is because of the age that the core of the system was created around.
Rogue Jedi, on 01 January 2017 - 08:33 AM, said:
...and the letter in brackets e.g. (F), (C),(P) sometimes had an alternate meening in lore, for example the AS7-D(C) in lore was a clan tech refit of the AS7-D, ...
I have never heard of this. As far as I understand and know, the (C) and other (designations) are all PGI as they just represent different "premium" mechs/variants. If an Atlas had clan tech, it typically was a one off field refit, or was a completely new chassis variant (such as the Atlas D-DC compared ti the RS, and the DC actually stood for "Dual Cockpit").
As for Clan mech designations, I believe the letter designation tended to match a role the mech would play. I tend to notice that C variants are more close range mechs, and S variants are normally speced out for in city fighting (typically designed after the Clans fought the IS forces and adapted to their tactics), B seems to be more missile/support oriented, A appeared to be more long range oriented, etc. In this though, I could be very wrong...