I wasn't kidding. I'd really like to see someone approach this thing with the intention of making an actual battlefield impact with it, not just "it sucks, leave it at home or use it as a bumper car". Give people a legitimate reason to voluntarily include it in a battle force.
There's a perverse sort of logic to it. Remember you're dealing with the SLDF when you talk about the original. These are the same people who bought whole regiments of
Chargers without the justification of being on the tail end of a two century technological decline.
It's a garrison unit, a big, scary, really intimdiating cop car. It's meant to be cruising the mean streets of Taurus or Canopus IV reinforcing that the SLDF is bigger than you, they're scarier than you, and they have so much money they can afford to throw around 70 ton war machines where normal government agencies would invest in a Crown Victoria or maybe a Hummer. Popgun armament? Sure, makes sense. A medium laser or a machine gun is a lot less likely to accidentally do major damage in low intensity urban warfare than an AC/20 is.
If someone decides to move past low intensity urban warfare, that's why the SLDF never got around to retiring the
Hunchback and the
Victor after the Reunification War, and the Magi is no longer their primary tool. Instead, in serious combat, a Magi has two uses: Running around as a heavy recon screen for slower units (like all those silly Burkes and Pumas the SLDF keeps buying) and being the first unlucky SOB around the corner to find out whether there's an ambush. That's why they're tracked - tracked units are harder disable or fence in than a wheeled vehicle is unless you're prepared to drop a building on them. The armor gives them a better chance of surviving being under the building, too, and casual abuse by weapons that will torch your average patrol vehicle without trouble is just going to bounce off a Magi's flanks.
