Yes, and GR slugs don't explode when hit. I don't know where you're coming from with ammunition explosions being so improbable, it's something that even happens in modern armored combat. Primer is already designed to detonate because of some percussive force, and the powder/fuel isn't supposed to be much more difficult to ignite. 
You forget to educate the man on the fact that even Gauss Rifles can suffer splosions, the weapon itself in this case.
And the sourcebooks for Table Top explain why bigger damage rating = less range. An AC/20 can be of lower caliber than an AC/5 for instance, the rate of fire determining the damage per 10 seconds(which is 1 round of combat)
And while i'm here, i'll give an update on them three battles i talked about.
1st's battle went ok-ish. IronBeer lost his Thunderbolt, so i placed him in the Stalker i bought at the beginning of the month. No salvage worthy of mentioning, just a tank or two to strip some armor and weapons off of.
2nd's battle went much better, though Hobbie's Kintaro exploded, it didn't die(CASE baby, CASE) and he proceeded to rape the ****er who cooked off his ammo. The only one from our Lance to get kills too, he downed a Puma and a Vindicator. Victory was declared when our friendly FRR Hunchback shot his third enemy in the face, then exploding in a great ball of fire from the return fire in the same round. Again, no salvage that didn't involve stripping a husk down of valuables.
3rd's battle was MUCH more interesting, as they drew the short straw and had to go up against an Assault Star. The RNG decided to mitigate it's *****yness by doing the Unit weights within this Star as 1 Med, 2 Heavies and 2 Assaults. The only survivor was the Medium, stupid Vipers way too fast for us to catch up xD. But hey, everyone scored a kill. We salvaged a Hellbringer and a Cataphract(the only IS unit they had, the Assaults were a Man O War and an Executioner) but they turned up as strippable only, sadly enough.
The week after these battles, 5th Lance had a battle with a Single Heavy Star, the RNG did not favor the Clanners, rolling three IS mechs and 2 Clan Omnimechs. These Omni's were a Summoner C and a Timber Wolf Prime. 6th Lance was available for reinforcements, though they were hardly needed and could hardly do a thing in the first place, as the battlefield was split up in a particularly wide river, over which our Griffin and StarSlayer's Wolverine could jump, Trashman and the no-name Wolverine+ had to wade through water, which went without trouble.
Trashman gets credit for a Timber Wolf kill and an enemy Archer and our Griffin took out the enemy Griffin. Both are salvaged and are repairable, though it will take some time before the Timber Wolf is operational again, needing extensive repairs including a reinstallation and repair to the engine after Trashman first TAC'd the CT with an engine hit and promptly destroying the Right Torso, killing it by engine "destruction", lucky for us. The Griffin also needs extensive repairs, but as it is an IS unit it's not much of an issue, only the PPC was an issue, but it turned out we had a spare one left over from the Cataphract that was recovered from 3rd's battle the previous week.
More of note is that Deathfun has netted his third Mech kill(and Scourge and the crew by extension) in the form of the Summoner C, which we weren't able to salvage due to contract clauses.
In this same week we had another Aero Pilot, this time a Regular skill coming with it's own Light Aero Fighter. As a houserule i'm treating the recruitment of Aerospace pilots similarly to the recruitment of MechWarriors in the sense that they get to roll for bringing their own fighter in as well. Difference being that they can't bring a Heavy into the mix, as ASFs only have 3 classes(though they still get up to 100 tonnes) it wouldn't be fair. This means that in the table for it(and Scotty ought to have had experience with this) the chances of a Medium is shifted to an 11 and a 12 on a 2d6 and the chance of a Light is increased with filling in the 10th result on the table.
As i don't have a Faction Assignment file for ASFs, i've chosen to adopt a standard fighter for the weightclasses, the Sabre being the one for Light and the Stingray for the Medium class. Both aren't available in another variant as they're either SL tech or have botched images(which i fear will make the game crash when used). In any case, i hope this isn't giving us too much power. Also, for a new houserule on the use of ASFs save for putting them in a strafe run is have them delay a lance/star for 12Rounds-WalkMP of the slowest unit in it.
And right now we get to do another SL Cache mission, this time a Royal Assault, in the form of a HGN-732b. If it's intact, we get it
