@Vendetta said:
How about Infantry Gun then? That was a pretty common term and it creates less confusion with the unit’s purpose.
After hashing this out with Claude, I've decided on light gun. I wanted a name which would set expectations nice and low. "Anti-tank gun" fails in that, as you pointed out, because it implies that it does something special against tanks. Putting a word like "infantry" in the name might imply it's a type of infantry.
"Light mortar" would have been a good name too. But when I bounced the idea off of Claude, it gave me back the following.
I’d still pick light gun.
A light mortar is an infantry weapon. Light mortars like the 50 mm and 60 mm were carried and fired by ordinary infantry squads. That suggests the unit should cost MP, which undercuts the reason it exists: it’s the cheap unit that doesn’t need MP. A gun is equipment, which explains the PU-only cost much better.
Mortars exist to support infantry. Players would expect a light mortar to give infantry a bonus, the way the field gun does, and this unit gives none. A light gun has the same issue, but less of it, because guns already come in a ladder where the smallest can reasonably be the weakest.
“Light gun” fits the units you already have: light gun, field gun, heavy gun, getting stronger in that order. “Light mortar” would stand on its own, with no heavier mortar to compare it to.
Light mortar does have one thing going for it: it’s a very modest weapon, so nobody will expect much from it. But “light gun” already does that, and it avoids the two expectations above.
