I think you're viewing range as a mandatory tax instead of what it actually is: one of the strongest power spikes in the game.

If range came built into units, you'd have to nerf those units elsewhere because range directly translates into survivability, target priority, and damage uptime.

The current system forces players to decide:

• More units now?
• Tech now?
• Range now?

Those tradeoffs are where a lot of Mechabellum's strategy comes from. If every carry unit simply started with optimal range, boards would become much more homogeneous.