I don't think most of the people who say that 'heavies who don't take anti-infantry weapons get what they deserve' against BA's for not having anti infantry weapons understand the real issue:
Example 4 player vs 4 player situation.
Each team takes:
light tank with decked out BA pilot
Heavy Mech (no anti infantry) with PPC pilot
Med mech with PPC pilot
Light mech with PPC pilot
When they fight and one vehicle is destroyed the BA can hop out and assist. So if Team one kills the tank, med and light Mech and loses their med mech and all pilots eject it is now:
Heavy mech, light tank, light mech PPC BA
vs
Heavy Mech, two PPC BAs and a decked out BA
All team one did by killing the enemy armor was alter the flow of the fight, but they haven't gained any actual ground because the other team is still four players but 3 of which don't need to worry about the heavy mech. If one team had focused on anti mech weaponry, then killed the oppositions mechs they would be at a sudden disadvantage because the other pilots are all able to ignore their heavy firepower by being agile. But they weren't punished for making the right choice against the enemies choices when they left their base, they are punished for killing the enemy mechs like they wanted to.
The easiest solution is to have the BA lose everything except their laser when they get in a vehicle. Just strip them down. That way they have an anti infantry defense, they can easily hop their way back to main and the enemy will actually accomplish something worthwhile when they kill something.
As for the killing BA's vs lag and staying with a group: If you die and respawn at main and the battle is away from your base, you have to walk alone as an Assault mech to get to the group. This is where the Ba' are most annoying, and yeah it is probably a base defense issue. But what is does essentially is allow the enemy to use their 20k or less BA that they ejected with to continue fighting when their mech is destroyed. When you eject you should not continue to be an anti tank unit, you should have to go back to base and reequip either through dying or making your way. Having to go back into the spawn area and selecting an option to reset your C-Bills and add them to the ones you gained in battle would be my suggestion.
But in either case, destroying an enemy vehicle, then having to fight their pilot who is also a threat through Tagging, harassing or otherwise hindering your mech is just stupid. Stripping those options when they get in the mech solves the issue without any new models or builds.
One of the most annoying things for me is encountering a long range mech in the back field who simply shuts down and has the pilot hop out to harrass my close range mech. This means that I have to fight him instead of killing his mech with my anti vehicle mech because he is more effective with his C8 than with his LRMs. If I ignore him and kill the mech he may kill me because I sure can't kill a BA in my crosshairs with anything other than an LBX20 due to the lag issues. Even without the lag issues, being able to switch at will between an anti vehicle BA and a LRM farm is just ridiculous because it ruins the decision to be anti vehicle.
