So I've been looking over the infantry again recently, and while I'm not sure if I've asked this before, its worth asking again. Are the various standard weapons that do around 1 point of damage (or more) just too good for the system? I mean, if you want to choose between a AC2 and an AC20, you trade off damage for range, heat, size, crit slots, etc.
Under Conventional Infantry rules, often you get the damage, and the range. The downside is BV, c-bill cost, weight, fluff and factionalism.
BV matters, but in the case of BT and its BV, you pay for what you get. You pay for the high damage, long range unit, but you also get the high damage and long range. Maybe if you have less than 100 BV and you're looking to squeeze something in it would be an issue, but most of the time its going to be accepted because of its effectiveness.
C-bill cost could be a possible limiter. Obviously there's a difference between a 10,000 c-bill Mauser 1200 and a 30 c-bill auto-rifle. And in campaign play or something, I could see that being a problem, but the other half of the time, someone's talking about how costs in BT are messed up and doesn't apply to the era they're in or what not.
Weight..well, they're not factored in as part of the calculation for unit weight under TW. It might matter if you're going to work in the RPG or something, but under the basic rules it doesn't really come into play. (As an aside, I notice the latest Infantry Table I'm looking at (v3.0) is using the pre-errata weight of the M61-A). So its kind of a wash.
Fluff and Factionalism work for some people, but they're not really a coded limiter on gameplay/construction. There's a thread about how a rarity table would be bad because people would use it to prevent you from playing with what you want, so yeah. Factionalism as a break isn't really effective. Fluff would place an artificial limit when making a unit, but again, its arbitrary, and not a hard break.
So we really only have BV as a limit, and in BT's "You pay for what you get," its not a very good one. So what do y'all think? Are the "good" weapons just too good?