The system before this PR was absurd. The system after this PR is less absurd. The PR states that there is an alternative - allowing but giving it severe penalties / gating behind high skills. to the people unhappy with the change. Incremental development works like this, we remove the absurd thing, so that we are left with something not yet perfect, but at least not ridiculous, someone else comes along with a different system thats less absurd than the original one, everbodys happy then. I say this because I intend to develop similar penalties for horseback archery/ranged combat, not disallow it entirely, and would then copy anything that someone has already implemented for bicycle ranged combat in the interim, so it is relatively consistent.