In Gundam Mobile Suits use their limbs to assist in turning, Basically moving the limbs to change orientation, technically they don't really need them but they are often also locations for thrusters and weapons, and a handy secondary locomotion for use in colony and on the surface.
Amusingly their typical heights of 18m tall (10x of a man) could indicate that they get a +1 to hit on them due to their size (like with Super heavy mechs that are also in that size range). :D
This was what I was going to tackle next. Limbs are much more than just fancy turrets. One of the things I figured should have been handled for LAMs, which, sadly wasn't, was the ability to avoid damaging collisions much like any sportsman might on the field. It's so much easier to use your arm, leg, or whatever to kick off or redirect your momentum from a potential impact. And, you get far more angles to choose from with that extra joint putting your thrusters out beyond your body.
Combine this with the gyroscope, which with the tonnages involved, is much more than a fancy, highly durable inner ear. They have the pilot for that. It generates a stabilizing force much like a bicycle, and in an environment where gravity can't help you move around very well, redirecting forces of momentum can do a much better job.
Gyroscopic Stabilization - It works for planets, it works bikes, it works for Mechs.Nebfer and others have pointed out the energies involved in BTech weapons, especially if you take the current space ranges in mind. (Let alone the old AT1 space ranges where a PPC could reach out to an appreciable fraction of an AU, and still expect to hit something effectively.) In the RoboTech RPG, they like to point out how the particle cannons of the Zentradi hit like a wrecking ball and force a piloting check on the target hit if it's a Mecha. The same should probably hold true for any of the weapons in that game. If a cannon round striking a target doesn't get enough resistance to force a breach (via mass - like with another target tank), then it will almost certainly displace the target because of the impact forces involved.
In BattleTech, a single weapon attack, with only a couple exceptions, does not force such a check on a Mech. Why? When it fires its guns, with only one exception in mind, the Mech doesn't have to check for falling over, and yet I see vids of tanks rocking while firing their own main gun. Artillery has to be in place with braces, and the earth shakes when a howitzer fires. A Mech can fire something like that while on the move and not get knocked on its but. How? That multi-ton gyro. Which is not built in on other Mecha in other settings.
This potentially can be a justification of applying the rule that a fighter can only engage 'ground units' by attacking them in their hex on the larger scale map. It applies at low altitude. I don't see why it can't at high alt and in vacuum. The potential defensive measure is there to make them difficult targets.
BattleMechs are already halfway to being much more effective space platforms right there, and all they need is the thrust to move kilometers in a minute and a reapplication of lostech cockpit modules to expand their program capacities back to height of Star League levels.
A Difference In Programming?So, why don't Mechs have the same range capacities as fighters? Well, in reality, it would make for a boring strategic level game where things die quickly, and alone. I've actually played with mechs using low alt ranges (in map sheets) for the numbers in their weapon's range bars, and once you were on a typical 1x2 map set-up, something that was high damage like the AC/20 became pretty damn impressive. Only having really obstructive terrain made a difference in forcing maneuver. Using indirect fire with LRMs actually became viable, and as long as you could use a mobile spotter that could generate a decent modifier, it could be done. Once medium or long range were no longer an issue, hits happened more often.
Such a game would have to be played out on a map at low-altitude scale for range to be a significant part again. The turn length would have to be at least 30 seconds to a minute to get any meaningful movement. Moving one or two hexes at a time, making piloting rolls to see if you caught sight of an opponent for a shot of opportunity, has a lot of interesting implications, but something that might not be very exciting just initially thinking about it. (However, I've played some interesting strategic level games and they weren't boring, so I know it could be done for Mecha combat in general, and maybe for Star League era BattleTech, too.)
So, let's get back to justifying 'knife fight' ranges on the ground while keeping the more realistic BVR duels between space fighters and dropships, shall we?
I was initially a proponent of the 'they don't have the program capacity idea', but it was with a caveate: the destruction of the Succession Wars pushed them to it. Think about where the design for the Mackie came from. It's a combat capable Industrial Mech with a bunch of money dumped into making it superior to everything of its day. It probably could do spectrum analysis on target materials and determine at what range it could engage a target effectively. After all, it would be going into combat against inferior machines put together with techniques less than state-of-the-art. If that could give it an advantage, like by outranging your opponent, why not have that capacity?
And, with as many colony worlds as there were, and are, each with their own potential home-brew armor and air designs, on-the-spot analysis would be essential. This was obviously something Industrials could do.
Fast forward a century, and they're having to replace old chip-modules that could handle all that fancy electronic footwork with bulkier chip-sets that can't handle the same memory or data transfer capacity. Something has to go. By this time, almost everything was using the same armor and defensive maneuver technologies, so fancy things like spectral and magnetic analysis isn't as necessary when everyone's using pretty much the same stuff the same way.
At the time I thought this up, I was under the impression that there was extra space required for keeping the machine upright and controlling all those limbs, compared to a simplified solid aerial frame for an aerospace fighter with thruster ports and flaps. Not as much programming required to keep a fighter airborne as a Mech upright and mobile, so more room for switching range bands. (Is this why LAM performance in older rule-sets has slowly led to the abysmal performance in the latest incarnation?) But, I think I may be mistaken in that regard. You have programing dedicated to movement, and it's equally complicated whether its in the air and in space versus keeping upright on the ground.
The other thing to consider is that emphasis was put into keeping BattleMechs in great shape at the detriment of almost all else. I can't help wonder if maybe fighter craft would have been lumped into that, or if they're on the same pedestal as Mechs.
In the end, there really is no justification for keeping Mechs limited to combat in their map hex when on the larger scale maps. And, when you delve into eras of high-tech, whether it's the Star League or any time well after the Renaissance, that justification fails even more.
Rule of CoolLet's face it, if we really want a space game that will keep people's interest, it has to have Mechs. That's the big draw for BattleTech, after all. In-universe, the people in charge had and have a big love for BattleMechs, and over centuries of use. I find it hard to believe someone hasn't taken the next step to really put them into yet another combat environment. The biggest offender was the Star League, who had the resources to dedicate to the more specialized conventional forces than anyone else, and yet, they went for the Mech.
