I think the issue here is that any counter to the LPL is just a generic thing to try and 'out cheese' the LPL. Its not a healthy solution, as most solutions are just generally good things versus all weapons, meaning the LPL, king of regular weapons, is still the best counter for them. Looking at the list here:
There are plenty of cheap counters to CLPLs
Vehicles
Light Gauss Rifles
Artillery
Rocket Launchers
Shields
Smoke
LI missiles
Battle armor
Vehicles presumably means LOTS of vehicles. Failing that, it means things like the 700 armor gulltoppr. Any normal vehicle has the same pitfall as normal mechs--the LPL wins trades at all ranges. So a hard to hit hovercraft or something encourages you to bring MORE LPLs, as the weapon that can hit the buggers. The 700 armor gulltoppr does encourage other weapons though, as a slow -4 immobilized tank wants raw damage as they are so easy to hit, but the LPL is still a good weapon early to get those flanking immobilized results at long range. Its only after the LPL immobilizes the gulltoppr that the LRMs and such can clean it up.
Light Gauss Rifles presumably means having 21+ hex range guns. This just isnt the solution. The ERPPC likewise outranges the CLPL. If the light gauss rifle was a clan LPL killer, everyone would know it already. On reasonable tables you cant kite an LPL forever, and you arnt hitting light gauss shots any easier then you are regular ERPPC shots, which is to say not enough to kill LPLs before they get in range 1 turn later.
Rocket Launchers are horrible weapons in BV. The formula for RLs treats them as 1.5 energy weapons instead of 1.2 multipler one shot missile launchers, so they will always lose trades versus the supremely efficient LPL. The fact that you want to be 3 hexes away from the enemy means RLs only work if you are spamming 100 cheap custom vtols, at which point you have an even worse cheese.
Shields are anti-everything. So adding a shield to absorb LPLs just makes EVERY weapon worse by the same degree. It doesnt stop LPLs from being the best weapon at hitting the shield unit for maximum long range damage.
Smoke is likewise anti-everything. Making your to-hits higher just makes the value of the LPL go up. Smoke is terribly balanced for the game, and pushes players to take MORE LPLs to actually hit the smoke'd units, not less LPLs.
Laser inhibiting missiles and reflective armor both reduce the damage that LPLs deal. However, arrow-launched smoke LI also has the issues that smoke has, and artillery is even more broken in BV. Reducing an LPL by 2 damage, more if you hide in more smoke and penalize yourself, doesnt help really at all... an 8 damage LPL will still win trades thanks to the hit bonus. You are better off shooting regular arrow missiles instead of LI arrow missiles.
Battle armor once again is not an LPL counter unless you are talking about spamming tons of them... at which point its a spam list. The LPL is still super efficient at picking up stealthy battle armor no one else can hit. Like most hard to hit things, battle armor encourages more pulse lasers, not less.
There were other suggestions, but again they all come down to anti-anything solutions like 'take artillery in massive numbers' or 'float heavy bomb trucks at the player till they no longer wish to allow artillery or air power'.
Reflective armor was the best suggestion I saw, with its drawbacks and high price though I can see the group preferring to limit LPLs.
In MRC, most games have a pulse limit. When the pulse limit for a list was 40, the quad LPL mechs were too good, with 1st and 2nd place packing a 4 LPL mech. Its only 4 total LPLs in the whole list, but 4 was still too much. We tried 30-34, but then the most popular mech by far was the Direwolf A with 3 LPL and a gauss. So most recently we are at 28 pulse limit, for 4 clan mediums or 2 clan larges max. It has worked to open up more variety in mechs, as unlike when the pulse limit was 30 or 40 and we saw lots of the same LPL mech, at 28 pulse limit other designs became more popular.
