You have to add the other weapons to fire. That means extra tonnage for them. Combat Fusion Engines give a cheat by coming with 10 heat sinks free. So as long as stay balanced and keep to the same weight you can bracket all you want. The thing is not every unit uses those engines and combat vehicles still have to add extra heat sinks to remain heat neutral.
Please note that during my entire post i never even referred the free heat sinks that come with an engine. I only compared weapons on a one-to-one basis under the assumption that you install enough heat sinks to keep the unit in question heat neutral and have enough ammo, so that you can can stay functional for the duration of a single battle. By doing that i already was generous towards the ACs because i took away the option to seriously overheat which strongly favours energy weapons. So I am actually loading the initial setup in favour of ACs and they still come up short!
Nevertheless i agree that the AC10 has a real weight advantage over the PPC in a tank and but even then there are exceptions. But in the end battletech is more about mechs than tanks.
Low tech mechs are also a problem. You start with 18 tons for PPC, power amplifier, and heat sinks, on a low tech mech, and you remove 2 heat sinks to add 2 medium lasers to bracket fire. You're going to be overheating right from the start. You're going to have to bracket fire eventually or you risk shut down and/or a fuel explosion. That doesn't sound like a good idea to me.
First you might want to recheck the rules: Mechs don't need power amplifiers which is true for any other unit that uses a fusion engine. Second: You really need to stop comparing apples to oranges. A PPC + 10 SHS is heat neutral as is an AC10 with 3 SHS. If I subtract 2 heat sinks from either one and add two medium lasers i get
exactly the same amount of over heating. The difference is: With the PPC i can fire those two ML alone and don't build up heat whereas if i had paired the MLs with the AC i would gain a +5 net heat. So as long as we are talking about mechs or ASFs your entire argument about heat is moot.
Perhaps I should have said, alternative rules balance things out even more?
What i meant was: How can it be that ACs are not inferior to energy weapons when by adding rules that seriously increase their firepower and versatility they just get balanced? Either they were balanced before and got overpowered by the optional rules or they are balanced with the optional ones in which case they were inferior beforehand.
Furthermore lets not forget that is ACs + optional rules against energy weapons under standard rules. Again apples to oranges.
Who said you had to buy 2 tons of ammo? I also said that the cost was lower initially but would go away over time. You also added in the cost of heat sinks with the AC/10. I'm presuming this is going on a mech? If it's for a vehicle the cost for the AC is lower since you don't have to buy heat sinks. You do have to buy a power amplifier for anything low tech though. That's another 20,000 for the PPC.
If you think that 10 shots of ammo for an AC10 are enough be my guest. In nearly any combat scenario you will either run out of ammo early on which leaves you with 12 tons of useless equipment and a serious loss of firepower or you have to seriously husband your ammo never taking shots unless the TNs are really good whereas the PPC can fire all day and can easily afford to try even a tricky shot.
And a single ton of ammo costs as much as three SHS. So when you say 'over time' you should really say 'over the time of no more than two engagements'. This is not a case where the operating costs make themselves felt only in the long term. Sure i wasn't counting the power amplifier because i was mostly referring to Mechs and ASFs but even then 20,000c is a little more than 3 tons of ammo. Hope you never do any life fire excercises.
Coolant does have cost but I'd have to hunt for it. Coolant can also break down, if those rules are used.
Under standard rules coolant does
not have a cost. If have checked tactical operations and i did not find any repair costs given for coolant failure either. Given that a standard SHS including coolant costs a measly 2,000c it will in any case by irrelevant compared to the ammo costs of your AC.
One is less devastating than the other though.
I agree. Ammo explosions are not a good thing. However, Heat can be just as bad and can still cost you your mech and possibly your life. There's two differences between the two. One's quick compared to slow. The second is one doesn't leave your enemy as much as the other. And if your in a low tech mech the risk of heat induced explosion is still there.
As i showed earlier overheating is irrelevant. It's a strawman argument here. But even then it is a bad one as the likely results of both are completely out of proportion.
I did calculate the costs. You missed some. And if funds are not an issue, CASE will be installed. I also didn't ignore the risk of an ammo explosion. It is a concern. You however did ignore what heat can do to a pilot. You also ignored what heat can do to a fuel tank. You also presume that not only can you restart your mech right away but that your enemies will be too far away to take advantage of your immobility. You also presume that there will be a critical hit to a full ammo bin when every shot reduces that chance.
Care to elaborate on the costs i missed? I still don't see them except for the power amplifier which is not needed for anything with a fusion engine. As for CASE that's something that i did consider as i said that an ammo explosion "will either
cripple or destroy" your mech. The former is for a mech with CASE in case you haven't noticed.
BTW could you point me to where i get the rules for heat induced fuel explosions? Because to my knowledge, there are none.