Agreed. I'd support a reboot of the game setting if it meant keeping the best of FASA and ditching the worst or wildly implausible. Like any fan I wouldn't like all the changes, but as long as the major players and characters remained in some form it would still be recognizably Battletech.
In some ways it seems like a good idea. Not sure how it could be implemented without losing half the fanbase, though. The name could remain close enough to be recognizable, or use another common term within the game setting (note that BattleTech and MechWarrior are both known throughout the gaming industry), so it doesn't need to be a complete loss of the name recognition aspect.
Streamlining the weapon selection, or making logically scaled versions of a somewhat reduced set of weapons, should make it easier for new players to pick up on it, rather than trying to learn each of the quirky and nonsensical weapons types in the present game (IS ML is 1 ton and 5 damage, Clan ERML is 1 ton and 7 damage, but an IS LL jumps all the way up to 5 tons yet only 8 damage?). Range and damage of ACs should BOTH scale up with size, not up in one and down in the other, although there might be a separate "demolition gun" that fires heavy explosive rounds at a lower velocity. Heatsinks could still include single and double versions, but the doubles would need to have other restrictions (like not mountable in the engine itself, so they chew up a lot of critical slots). Reducing targeting range (as was done by HBS), on the other hand, or using gimmicky special abilities with a "cooldown" time, strikes me as moving in the wrong direction: advanced targeting systems and ECM to defeat those systems should play a bigger role, but if it's in clear line of sight, it should be targetable at ANY range, at least by energy weapons (whether you can hit it, or actually DAMAGE it at that range, would be the limiting factors).
A 2D6 system is too restrictive at the extremes; going to 3D6 or 2D10 would make a single modifier "pip" a little less powerful, and extend the usable range between "impossible to hit" and "can't miss". When a match between light recon 'Mechs requires 12+ to hit, if you can hit at all, it's not fun. When you've got brawling units firing a 3+ to hit (skilled gunners, pulse weapons, targeting computers, etc.), there's no tactical element to it, and it's not much fun after the first game or so. The middle dice ranges are where it's interesting, but it's too easy to get out of that middle band on either end.
The game universe could be something entirely new, or else an "alternate timeline" branching off from the current BT universe at some point during the Succession Wars, leaving a lot of freedom for "retcons" without being labeled as retcons in the new game.
Not sure I'd buy it without knowing more about the details, but I'd certainly have to give it serious consideration.
The current game has gotten too bloated (are Heavy Snub-nosed ER Pulse weapons next?), and restricted by its own past (no, you can't field those warships, because the setting doesn't allow that many of them to be in existence, much less in one fleet) to be competitive in today's market, yet the finer level of detail is what brings me back to it, rather than to fast-play rules such as Alpha Strike. Catalyst is not in the business of selling miniatures, so why are there somewhere around 1000 different figures, rather than 1000 variants of about 50 basic chassis types at the most? Ideally, the RPG, tactical level game, aerospace rules, and strategic level game should all integrate, so you can run battles or campaigns at any scale, or bring in elements from one to the other without drastically changing the feel and flavor of those units.
