using spaceships for battletech-style tactical mecha combat

[muduri]

As a break from Dungeon-ish Fantasy, our group has played a couple games of tactical TL10^ Spaceships demolition derby. I did some tweaking (costs, damage, Acc, DR, HP, thrust and burn) to increase playability and fun for this scenario in particular, at the expense of wider applicability.

So now we'd like to do something similar, ground-based at say SM+4 and TL10 (not that different from the old Battletech) - use Spaceships to build mecha and maybe some tanks, pair them up with infantry squads, and go at it. Have some preliminary thoughts; also curious if others have tried combat at intermediate scales and with ground-based Spaceships, and what your experience / suggestions are.

1) For scale I'm thinking something much smaller than Spaceships or tactical Mass Combat but still a little bigger than traditional combat - maybe 2 seconds and 5m hexes? My thought is it would let tracked or wheeled vehicles use Enhanced Move without racing across the board, but also have infantry make some progress.

2) If I remember correctly, ultra-tech weapons (realistically) have a huge range, probably several mapboards even with 5m hexes. At the expense of realism, would it increase playability to divide ranges of most weapons by say 10? Battletech-style, your first dash from cover to close the gap wouldn't be your last and there's a chance of getting into melee range.

3) Multiply characters' and vehicles' HP by 10 or even 100? The hammer-and-eggshell binarism of ultra-tech is of course pretty realistic but a little less fun. Given TL10 damage, DR and armor divisor values, say, I'd just like to use a number where a mecha could get hit by a particle beam, or an moderately-armored infantryman could take a UV laser hit, and be injured enough to change tactics but was still likely to survive.

4) Justifying mecha - the age-old problem. Was thinking of making the terrain hilly so a lot of terrain that's problematic for tracks or ATVs, and maybe a munitions factory where (what a coincidence) SM+4 craft with arms can swap out their major batteries for the cooler ones they find lying around. Anything else that could help justify sacrificing four system spots to arms and legs?

5) We were thinking of keeping it quick for characters, so probably stripping things down a lot from real tactical combat, but anything for squad tactics that's essential, should be dropped, or optional but would add fun, playability or even (dare I say it) realism, much appreciated. Thanks!