That's kinda what I mean.
We have three weapons that are "supposedly" the same weapon but very different stats.
Did we need a specific BA Tech base? Yes..
And no.
There are two ways this could have be done....
1....use the support weaponry. BA has a weapons interlink meaning the appropriate support weapon slots into place. BA becomes little more then an enhanced gyroscopic harness
Simple....but it makes support weaponry very effective. Too effective for the setting. If infantry had these weapons, then the given numbers don't work. BT works the way it does partly because infantry is largely ineffective
You give every platoon a single weapon like this and that changes.
2....scale up the support weaponry. You add an armoured housing, power feeds and cabling, links to cooling systems, whatever. Same weapon, but much more effective. You make too heavy or large to move easily and you have a partial solution to the infantry issue.
3...use Mech scale weaponry. You take the Mech system, but strip off the armoured housing, power and control feeds, cooling system, targeting and turret mechanisms, anti recoil/heat systems and the like. You have a weapon that is much lighter...make it 20-50% of the original mass...has the same performance as Mech scale weaponry (because it is a Mech Scale weapon,) but then you still have the need for either dedicated weapon tables or a simplistic approach such as "BA weapons mass 20% of their Mech scale counterparts"
For simplicity and fun's sake, I'd normally go with option 3. The idea that a support laser is effectively a small laser lines up with the notion of a single BA trooper being a one-man squad. But, then the only weapons I'd allow to damage a Mech, at that point, would be the support weapons. The idea that all the anti-infantry guns from the armored game are the same ones used by Infantry as well is appealing. It's simple to port over and play with.
But, if you go that route, you do need some restrictions or drawbacks. My suggestions:
1) The weapon, to be portable, has exactly what you stated, next to nothing in the way of protection.
2) The squad would have to spend a turn having spent no MP to move, though not necessarily immobile.
3) Unless we come up with some explanation about how each trooper's personal ECM package helps mask the support weapon in a squad from a directed attack, then any attack directed at the squad should be directed at one of the squad's two damage capacities - Anti-Armor or Anti-Personnel.
3A)Any Mech scale weaponry will obliterate a support weapon, no questions asked, but it will only take out a squad's support weapon. Let's assume standard to-hit procedures are necessary, to account for Infantry having some sort of ECM and mobility training. If there were any ancillary damage to the number of men in the squad, it would be the guy manning the support weapon, and him alone. If you want more, I'd put it up to a random crit-chance table roll, in my opinion, if you're wanting to track such things.
3P)Hurting a squad's or platoon's anti-personnel capacity would be a separate effect, which is where the body counting comes in. Each man in a platoon/squad is a gun, at the very minimum, when in regards to infantry firefights against other infantry. I'd personally suggest that the TW conversion values be by squad (7 men) as a damage total modifier when rolling cluster to see how much damage the squad/platoon actually did against another infantry unit. So, take your TW Rifle infantry, find out how much damage 7 men do, and add the remaining bodies to get your AP damage value. The reason I suggest this is because of the way the burst mechanic is helping boost damage for rapid-fire weapons.
3Pa) Optionally, instead of relying on a static to-hit roll, you could just put infantry versus infantry fire-fights on the cluster chart directly, skipping the gunnery modification and to-hit roll entirely. Terrain and range could be applied to the final cluster result in the same way as AMS is applied to Missile cluster rolls, as a negative modifier. Any result below 2 would do 0 damage.
4)Personally, I'd love to have Platoon stats arrayed on a sheet in the same way as you would a BA squad.
Something like:
Squad 1 - OOOOOO(S)[T] S = the trooper manning the Support weapon.
Squad 2 - OOOOOO(S)[T] T = the transport identifier number if the unit is mechanized.
Squad 3 - OOOOOO(S)[T]
Squad 4 - OOOOOO(S)[T]
You could then have the remaining troopers each have the modified value for their class of stock weapon (B Rifle, E Rifle, SRM, etc ), and as the squad takes AP damage, the damage bonus goes down as well, if you want to get that detailed.
Damn, now I'm wanting to make something that actually looks good. I may have to break out Paint some time today, and grab my TW and BMR.
This would put weapons such as the Machine Gun, Small Laser, and Flamer on Mechs and Tanks purely in the infantry support role. They would have to wade into range, but it would be in support of other infantry to wipe out a squad or platoon.
I'm a big fan of squad operations in general, because a 30-man platoon in a 30 meter hex has some interesting visuals once you start stacking in enemy and friendly platoons of similar volume. I put together some shots of infantry minis spread out over an appropriately scaled hex template to show just how crowded a BT hex can get. I'll dig that up here in the next post.