Why not revisit that mechanic? Rather than the huge radius of before, have a small one, say 3-5m for the PPC. It's still entirely possible to deal all the damage into a single hit box, but there's a chance for it to be divided across up to 2 hitboxes.
You could similarly apply this across the ACs as well, say the AC-2 getting the smallest radius of .5 or 1m, with the AC20 the largest at 5m.
This change wouldn't remove the front loaded damage nature of these weapons (so they'd still be very attractive), while adding a small chance that damage can spread some across the target chassis, increasing over all time-to-kill. Well aimed or lucky shots could still do full damage to a location.
*EDITED to fix title typo
Edited by Cabusha, 09 April 2014 - 06:52 PM.