I posted this in another forum on another forum but figured I'd also be interested in a discussion on here. So I'm going to post it basically word-for-word on here.
The AC/2 and AC/5 are really unimpressive, but there's one more weapon that I thought of that really doesn't have much of anything going for it. And it's an energy weapon, even.
Small Lasers.
What's the vanilla small laser even for? I guess it was originally an energy-version of the machine gun, but with the burst-fire rule stuff on infantry that kind of got tossed aside and made it rather awful at that too until the Small Pulse laser. A light-weight anti-vehicle energy weapon? Find a half-ton anywhere and you can play with a medium laser instead, the most ruthlessly efficient weapon in 3025, if not the universe. 2 Smalls just don't have much going for them over 1 medium, even when the target is 2 hexes away...
I've been thinking what you could "tweak" about them without changing the overall "feel" of them too much to make the small laser something I would find worth considering. I've come up with two potential solutions:
1. Change the range of the small laser to 2/4/6
Still very short ranged, but now it's double what it was, so it has some options outside of "run into his backside and activate can opener mode". An Atlas can't just back away 3 feet one turn (ok, 90 meters technically) and all of the sudden be completely safe. 1 Medium would probably still be preferred over 2 smalls in most situations, but the difference between the two would be less massive.
Similarly, change other small laser variants (heavy small, re-engineered small, chemical, etc) to 2/4/6, switch the ER small to 3/6/9 (or less), and nerf down the IS pulse version to something that looks like, say, 2/3/4 or 1/3/5, something marginally worse than the new small laser. The Clan ER small might need a nerf down to 4 damage to compensate for the range buff.
2. Add a 1D6 burst-fire damage effect against infantry.
It's kind of weird how some of the original 3025 mechs like the Vindicator VND-1R, Enforcer ENF-4R, Awesome AWS-8Q, Banshee BNC-3E, the Urbie, and some tanks like the Rommel and Patton tank, just have 1 or 2 small lasers tacked on for some reason. It's like... why? What does an extra small laser or two doing for your PPC boat that a MG + ammo setup, a medium laser, or just more armor wouldn't do?
This change pays lip service to the small laser's original role as an anti-infantry weapon before the infantry's damage taking was changed. It gives the laser another role as a sort of "energy LMG" before the LMG was a thing, and with a viable anti-infantry role tacking on a token small laser to large mechs isn't such a head-scratcher anymore. But, it doesn't make the small laser so good at this role that it outshines ammo-sipping machine guns or the small pulse laser, so it's a trade off.
Any thoughts on this? Change 1, Change 2? Even both? Or is it just fine as it is, as a niche weapon on Small 'Mechs and vehicles to back-stab? Or is it actually not a niche weapon to begin with and I just can't comprehend the full glory that is the Small Laser?