Quote:
Originally Posted by Targan
The ranges on Battletech weapons seem way low to me. Especially given the height advantage of the firing platform.
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I remember reading a quote from Jordan Weisman where he said they tried to "accurately simulate" what they thought real-world weapons systems would be like in the future and they ran in to two problems: ballistic weapons required ridiculous amounts of map-space, and energy weapons meant nobody used ballistic weapons period. Why bother with an Autocannon (which originally only did 5 points of damage, there was no ac/2 or ac/10 or ac/20) when a medium laser weighed 1/8th the tonnage, had an effective range of "LOS" and generated the same heat for no ammo?
So they gimped the ranges so you could play on the two mapboards they sold with the original Battletech set.
(Although it should be noted that was not the
first giant robot combat game they did - Battle
droids was, and Lucas sent them a C&D so they reworked the game after a visit to Japan where they saw the Macross stuff...)