Eh...
Not thrilled to be honest.
It'd really hurt the IS pulse lasers with that range based damage reduction and with their short range... So applying that to higher tech level versions is not very realistic and makes the Small Laser a very questionable weapon to mount.
ACs... I do somewhat agree that there probably should be an ammunition re-adjustment to help them out but even I am not keen on going as far as you suggest for the AC-2 and AC-5. As far as the double tap there are already rules for doing that with ACs in TacOps and while I'll admit that I'm not entirely convinced the benefit is worth the risk under those rules I'm also not convinced AC-2s should get a free pass for double firing.
ATMs, LRMs and SRMs are self guided and thus I really can't see justifying a cluster hit penalty for farther out and to be honest missile weapons don't need anymore drawbacks. MRMs I'm not against a range based cluster table modifier due to the fact that they are explicitly stated to be unguided. My house rule for MRMs are +1 cluster for Short Range -1 Medium Range, and -3 Long Range.
Thank you for your reply.
As a FYI, I have finally read deeper into the rules and have some better understanding of the numbers now.
I actually felt Pulse Lasers were better now at longer ranges due to +2 bonus to hit, along with 50% less range penalties. At Medium Range, the range penalty is -2, but for Energy weapons, it is -1. But with the Pulse Laser, this becomes +1. Also, I updated the granularity of the damage to be 25% for Medium Range and 50% for Long Range for Energy weapons.
The Small Laser's damage would basically be 3/2/2, which considering now the range penalties would be 0/-1/-2, making the weapon more accurate with little damage reduction.
The Small Pulse Laser also deals 3/2/2, but the range penalties would be +2/+1/0, which seems pretty good to me.
PPCs feel more balanced when compared with AC/5s and AC/10s by dealing a bit less damage, 10/8/5. I also would say PPCs still follow the same rules of Ballistics for hitting (basically normal rules) but have the downsides of less damage over range for Energy weapons.
As your statements on Ballistics, I wholly agree that the ammo efficiency needs to be looked at.
The main reason why I think the AC/2 should basically "double tap" for free is to explain it's more small caliber but higher rate of fire style of weapon to make up for it's weight. The balance between the AC/2 basically dealing 4 damage with separate To-Hit rolls for 6t while the AC/5 dealing 5 damage with a single To-Hit roll for 8t seems right to me.
Moving on to Missiles, I can understand that the Missile is guided, so it should not have any lowered cluster at range. But with Missiles having no penalties for reaching their target, they generally almost always get some Missiles to the target. So there has to be some drawback for range. This is where I think less missiles would reach the target. It's just less of them actually deal damage at further ranges.
Also, I think the number of LRMs and SRMs per ton would need a slight increase, just like Ballistic weapons.