A couple reasons.
First, you've gotta stop viewing this as a wargamer-first. You can't assume that an RPG group is willing to jump over to a miniatures wargame to resolve Mech-Scale situations. AS is an entirely different experience from an RPG, and not everyone wants to play all the things. The Mech-Scale Combat rules allow RPG groups to play out Mech-Scale situations fully within the MW:D rules. AS could not just be copied and pasted in to an RPG rules set.
While I totally agree with you here, you also have to remember that the Battletech game community at it's core are wargamers. And while it would be nice to bring in new blood to the universe, The majority of players these new players are going to meet are going to be wargamers and crunch RPG players. While I have nothing against narrative/lite rules players (just playing with the rules myself), I don't see them changing their playstyle to crossover into the greater Battletech community. So in the end further dividing CGL's resources to support another subset of the community. And while I say bring them in, I just don't want to see Any of these subset within the community get the shaft because of lack of resources to go around.
Second, telling an RPG group that encounters a Mech-Scale situation to "go play a game of AS now" is also telling them "go acquire all the AS rules, terrain, a game table, miniatures, oh and fully learn the AS system too." WAY too much of an investment to ask, both financial and intellectual. MW:D is supposed to be rules-lite. Bolting on an entire, complete set of miniature wargame rules would utterly destroy that.
Some of the same issues above, if you are not expecting the players of this game to support the larger Battletech product line then it has to be asked why divert resources to it with the expatiation that you will get a few new players for this product only?
Third, the Mech-Scale Combat rules are one chapter within the overall MW:D rules. That's starting to get lost here. The MSC rules are not some separate system that was inserted into the MW:D book. They are part of the MW:D system. They have to be, because they need to integrate with the Personal Combat-level rules, to cover what happens when someone's Mech fires on an unarmored NPC on foot. (There are rules to cover that, and it ain't pretty.)
Not going to argue here, as I totally agree that most of the RPGs needed some system to stop bogging down the RPG sessions.
FWIW, very early in development Phil did look at whether the Alpha Strike system could be ported into MW:D in some fashion and it just couldn't. It's not like we didn't think of it, it just didn't fit.
Not to surprising. Tactical board games take a lot of attention to detail to pull off.
All of the above.
Great to here.
Yes to both.
On this one I have to ask
(no initiative)
1. Will there be an optional rule to add it?
(all gear is covered through XP instead of cash)
1. Is this just in character creation or throughout the game?
2. Will gear have C-Bill cost if you want to ignore this?
3. Will armor have stat or is it just going to be a spend 3XP or what ever, get +1 armor system.