i think some of the battletech lore clashes with the high tech clean angular aesthetic of the technology in battletech

Welcome to the mess that is BT's version of grimdark, it so desperately wants to be grimdark like it's more successful brother in 40k, but it falls over and explodes half way through the race because the guys at FASA came up with a setting with the intent on being very grounded first, and had to spend a lot of time trying to justify how the universe ended up the way it did by way of indirectly giving the roman empire a reach around. Which yeah, so much of the universe's premise is pretty much revolves around the fall of the space roman empire (The Star League) causing the universe to go to shit.

like the mechs are ancient and passed down through generations in some cases with the original plans and factories lost forever

A lot of people who write overall setting lore for the Battletech universe don't exactly know how mass production or logistics work, so much that one of the very first retcons was introducing "limited" battlemech production still happening throughout the succession wars. Another fun one that was quickly redacted, was the quoted number of jumpships (the FTL transportation for the universe) being at around 5,000-6,000, except that fell apart as the Invader-class jumpship (most common jumpship) with all it's docking ports filled with Mule-class dropships (most common cargo hauler dropship) had the effective cargo capacity of one normal 21st century blue water container ship. There is no way that only 5-6k jumpships was ferrying all that cargo for all the populated planets that is pushing 7 or 6 digits in total, a lot of those worlds being just as or close enough populated as Terra is.

(i'm looking at you, mechwarrior series with your 900m max range '''long-range missiles''')

Okay so a lot of the ranges come from Battletech, and the weapon ranges there in BT are mostly just for 'balance' reasons. Though it gets better, the in-universe reason why the weapon ranges are the way they are is because the battlemechs (and tanks, and everything else) have so much EW equipment as standard that it makes combat from out farther than the normal ranges a crapshoot, and pretty much the only people who can shoot out farther than normal ranges are typically named characters who are 0/0 gods amongst men (the typical mech/aero pilot is 4/5, 3/4 if they're a clanner, the lower the numbers, the better.). Though a lot of the novels stretch out what is standard range for the sake of better writing.

Not what I'm talking about, like there's a whole bunch of localized versions of this and the box is pretty much the same with the name changed

US government skulking in the corner furiously scribbling notes

What are you talking about? This is already overwhelmingly the reality in manufacturing (I really should go into detail how turbo fucked working manufacturing in the US is one of these days), service, and there's probably a couple other industries where this is the case.

The only times I've ever seen someone work 5 days or less out here in the rural area I live in, is either they're still living with their parents or have roommates, or they're like one of the most reliable workers at their workplace and thus their boss wants to keep them around and let's them have that.

Of course not, especially if you know the main reason why the japanese internment happened in the first place.

So, how were each of your Corvettes best Corvette?

SF5 happened about 10 years in-universe before 6, and 3 happened in between 5 and 6.

Also Bison has "died" like at least a handful of times now.

I would say it's one of two or both of the following. Firstly being that movies (and to a degree TV shows) have a hefty bit of prestige heaped on them by society, the same way that old paintings and sculptures have prestige. And that video games are still treated like children's toys by society's 'arbiters' of what is and isn't high art. A way to put it would be to compare something like the oscars (or even the emmys) to the whatever the equivalent for games have, just watching and comparing is night and day. One puts up and really cares about the aesthetic of legitimately caring about it's art form, while the other is still largely an advertisement vehicle.

The second reason is unions, essentially because if a studio decides to remaster an old movie, they may as well go out of their way to get the guy who directed it and ect. on board because they likely have to pay them anyways when it hits store shelves (for example like $1 per dvd sold, and movie ticket sold so on and so on. Though not that exact amount but you get the picture).

Mechwarrior 5: Mercenaries has a kind of weirdly restrained straight-faced satire going on

This is kinda a new thing for Battletech in general, especially for a game taking place around the time spanning the 3rd and 4th Succession War. Which is a bit strange as BT lore is normally not written like that. Like in the actual handbooks (that were written in the 80s and 90s) straight up portrayed Davion and Steiner as right and just in starting the 4th Succession War.

Let's not even get into the whole premise of the universe is literally just 'Oops, the Roman Empire fell because Space Hitler got power, and now everybody started fighting for control of that chair and thusly lost a lot of tech along the way'.

Japanese cars can usually be expected to go 200k+ without major repairs

That's mostly true of Honda/Acura, Toyota/Lexus/Scion, and to a degree Mazda. But the other two major ones have problems. Subaru as the joke goes, you replace the head gasket every 40k miles. And with Nissan... the transmission grenades itself at about 40k miles.

There are exceptions to this, the Toyota 86 (Scion FR-S, and Subaru BRZ) has a Subaru developed engine. And the new Toyota Supra... is a BMW underneath.

I> How the fuck do you even use optics to disguise this!?

"Palestine isn't a recognized nation, thus the Geneva Conventions don't apply to them."

That's my guess, as funny enough there is a semi similar event in battletech lore where Liao used similar reasoning ("they didn't sign the Ares Connections, so thus it doesn't apply to them") when they went and nuked the Taurians at some point.

Now, how much would anyone buy that shit is left up in the air.

Tell me you don't live in a rural area without telling me you don't live in a rural area.

I'm not trying to be an ass or anything, but I live in a rural "city" and I feel this kind of solution would just barely work, if at all. You're still looking at nearly everyone out here needing their own personal vehicle. Like yeah cars ruin big cities, but for the most part the only thing cars really did for rural areas was just replace the horse and cart. Especially since I'm pretty sure a lot of railroads were closing down and or merging together for a variety of reasons long before the advent of cars and carbrain.