I'm starting to think you may be right. Further, this conversion has some WEIRD results. Things like the Grand Titan N11M being very strong at Medium range, and the Juliano being outgunned by it.
The Juliano is outgunned by
very few 'Mechs in Alpha Strike, on account of being able to spike up to 9 damage at Medium range thanks to overheating. :D In a one-on-one combat it's entirely possible for the Juliano to finish off the Grand Titan on the second turn of combat.
The Lion's Share of combat in Alpha Strike takes place at Medium range. There's no two ways about it. Managing and manipulating the range bands in your favor is a major part of why I think the finer points of maneuver are actually significantly more important in Alpha Strike than in Total Warfare. If you approach a fight against an opponent well, you can isolate single units at Medium range while the rest of the enemy force is at Long. That's only reliably possible in the beginning of the fight, though. After that, finding ways to remove damaged units from most enemy units' lines of sight to force damage to spread around, and ensuring your own damage is grouped up enough to finish off (or cripple with crits) units are imperative. Long range can still be entirely serviceable with skill improvements, use of C3, and saturation of fire, but it's definitely fighting an uphill battle in offensive efficiency, largely because a unit that has long range damage worth talking about
also has medium range damage that's also pretty good, and you're paying for that damage in the unit's PV whether it gets used or not.
If you'd asked these questions before the PV revision I'd have told you units with TMM +3 or higher ruled the battlefield and everyone else was playing for second place, but now fielding forces entirely on the slow end of things is entirely possible from a purely skirmish standpoint. Fielding a mix of units is probably the way to go, but there's not really an issue in specializing anymore.
Where Alpha Strike
shines is in combined arms play. Integrating aerospace units, artillery, conventional units, and more is easier than it's ever been. In that respect, the Free Worlds League (especially in the Dark Age) has an embarrassment of riches. While the thresholding capability of the HPPC isn't quite as pronounced in the Picaroon hits all the right breakpoints with damage that can threshold interceptors at good range, can be used to strafe in a pinch (ENE damage isn't halved on strafes), and is fast enough that it can carry a bomb without slowing down on the radar map or can choose to forego the bomb to make itself a better dogfighter. It's also pretty ridiculously durable for a light fighter. The Aquila and Shikra are both serviceable platforms that don't shine or seem underpowered versus other regional unit, too.
Alpha Strike definitely only starts to shine once you get to company (500 PV is our local standard) sized games, below that the streamlining results in contests that can be decided by a single bad dice roll at a bad time whether you're taking steps to mitigate that or not. Battalion sized games (typically 1250 PV, locally) are still doable in a single afternoon, and can completely change the dynamics of how you approach the table.
I love it.
