Athos: in Techwarrior rules I adopted this system:
firing UNDER minimum range or firing OVER weapon normal range up to its double gives you a +3 penalty, just like indirect fire. The board is smaller, but unless you use formations (or Danni Haag!) firing will always be risky...

Topgun505,

you made my point exactly. It is my personal opinion (see my thread "the underlying causality of the game") that it is the first strike principle that makes the game what it is.

Movement and weapons range is just a symptom. Even if we could fire farther than we could run, we would just see more artillery and vtols in the game. Striking first is THE KEY to winning, unlike CBT where damage was essentially simulatenous.

Changing the run / fire ranges just change which units become the first strikers.

That is key. First strike degrades your opponent's firepower so they are less effective on the return shot. They are less likely to hit and even if they do hit, then they do less damage.

All those points spent on high defense or evade suddenly become worthless thanks to one lucky roll.

Everything about the game suggests you not move into range of your opponent unless you are using charge, move-shoot or a tank drop so you get first strike. Artillery, too, means you get first shot, only this does not even get a return fire!

Well would you rather get SHOT from most of the way across the board or CHARGED from across the board? Personally I'd rather be shot. At least then armor, evade, decoy, and maybe even EC may all come in to play as opposed to charge which ignores everything thus making all those SECs that your mech paid for utterly worthless. Not to mention at least if people are shooting across the board that will place a lot of emphasis on terrain ... whereas now you can do a zig-zag around any terrain on the board and still land your charge with no difficulty or penalty. If charge were restricted to a straight-line run and maybe also require LOS at the start then terrain would play a much bigger factor and it wouldn't be anywhere near as obnoxious as it is now. In the end though ... all that tonnage on your mech that was devoted to WEAPONS should come in to play at some time I would think. Currently they rarely do, which IMHO flys in the face of the universe this game is set in.

Agreed lt_murgen. The problem is .. there is little way of fixing that given the current way the game is constructed. You either have to:

a) Make the attack rating a constant stat (like range) on the face of the dial so it doesn't drop. or
b) Make the attack rating drop very VERY slowly. This stat should drop at most maybe 2 points worth over the entire course of the dial with the first drop in the stat not happening until at least maybe 3-5 clicks down in the dial.

The problem with A) is that it would make all mechs in the previous sets rather obsolete which WK can simply not afford to do at this point. They've already agitated the player-base so badly that something of this magnitude would most certainly result in a large exodus of players. B) would work without remaking the entire game but it would take the better part of a year before we would have a good amount of mechs that can actually take they punishment they should be able to soak up.

First strike is certainly one of the flaws at the foundation of the game since damage is not simultaneous. One of the other problems is the relative depths of the dials of each figure type. Infantry have far too many clicks compared to vehicles in general and especially compared to mechs. Mechs have far too few compared to pretty much everything. One of my friends made a suggestion that is kinda off the wall but it'd be interesting to bounce it off the forums here to see what people thought:

In order to damage a mech take its point cost and divide by 100 (rounding up to the next whole number). That is how much damage you have to deal to the mech to give it 1 click of damage. If the mech has heavy or hardened then that is cumulative ... thus a mech with point cost 101-200 with heavy armor would have to be hit for 3, a mech in that point cost with hardened would have to be hit for 4. Mind you this is PER CLICK. So to click down a mech with hardened armor of the above point range for 2 clicks you would have to do 8 damage total. Armor piercing would ignore armor so a hardened armor mech in the 101-200 point range would just have to be hit for 2 damage per click. Any damage left over is lost (i.e. 5 damage to a target that required 2 damage per click will only take 2 clicks total).

Ok ok ... I know, the first thing everyone is gonna say is that's too complicated ... prolly the next thing will be that it makes mechs too powerful. To them I say ... bah! :) There are infantry in the game that can do 3-4 damage per attack, in some cases AP damage to boot. This system would essentially give mechs double or more their current lifespan. Infantry would be more useful at that point for fire formations with your mechs and vehicles (which would also thus encourage faction purity) and for harassment. Arty would be acceptable in its current form as mech would be able to absorb the damage much better. Tank drop would be acceptable as the damage would essentially cut in half. I'm not sure if the same system should be applied to vehicles as well ... it probably should be to everything except maybe VTOLs (which are supposed to be fragile).

Like I said, it was a wild idea. At first a kinda laughed at it but after thinking about it for a bit I think it might be actually interesting to play-test it and see just how much of a swing in power occurs in favor of mechs as a result.

Yes, I'd also prefer to be shot rather than charged. At least I'd know why my dear Republic Mechs have payed a good amount of points for Hardened Armor. There is a way to protect against being shot. Here is where terrain comes into mind. Hell, even ECM would suddenly have a meaning as it gives a unit behind blocking terrain complete immunity against being shot across the board.

But first strike would still be dominant. That's why tank drop and artillery are so cruely overpowered. They hit you first, you can't do anything against soaking up the damage, and watch your stats drop to a value where you can't hope to strike back.