A ranged unit with 1 range is stupid and here's why. One unit per tile and attacking a city with those ranged units, means you have to surround the city leaving no room for the melee units to get in. Plus it goes against the point 2K & Firaxis made about ranged units and the 1 unit per tile rule. That is the ranged units are meant to be behind the melee units. With a range of 1, they can't be behind anything and still shoot.
Also consider the fact that Rocket Artillery only has a ranged strength of 46 and the stealth bomber has 80. So a 60 strength would put the machine gun between these two, even though it come well before either of them. Therefore it's rather naive to think they didn't drastically alter the combat and ranged strength of all the units to go with the increase from 10 HP to 100 HP.
As I point out in another thread, that 60 strength when compared to the infantry, which comes around the same time, would represent a 66.7% increase in strength. Therefore it's as on par with infantry as archers are with warriors or crossbows are with longswords.
It would also be pointless to make it require being set-up before firing as it would then be a siege unit, which would be rather stupid since there's already an industrial era siege unit, artillery.
1-hex ranged units shouldn't be regarded as true ranged units, more like undefendable melee units. They make more sense that way.
If limited to one hex range and setting before firing that would mean (barring roads and railroads shenanigans and some UAs) that you can only attack another unit if starting next to it, which is a
huge handicap. Sure, RAs only have 46 strength, but their available targets are much much more flexible than that, and the chances of retaliation are lower (it can even attack from outside a city's range!). Not saying that they won't revise the whole way combat works (they probably will, at the very least for naval units), but I don't think the changes will be massive.
And note that 60 ranged strength is as good as a no-retaliation 40 strength melee attack but with a higher variance in the result (see Vexing's in depth article in the war academy for that). Infantry has 36 strength. Seems reasonable to me, especially when taking into account how difficult it would be for MGs to attack. They are basically moving walls (60 strength on defense remains quite impressive indeed).
PS: and "setting before firing" isn't synonymous with being a siege unit. RA is a siege unit, so are bombers, yet they don't have that promotion. Why not do it the other way around too? Have units with "setting before firing" not be siege units, but rather defensive units with a penalty to limit their usefulness in attack (just like Ironclads and their inability to get into deep waters, for example).
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About tanks: they can simply ignore MGs if they want with their superior mobility, given the clunkiness on attack of MGs.
Although the fact that MGs have 1 range and setting before moving is wild speculation AFAIK though. If any of these isn't true (either more than 1 range or no need to set), infantry looks really tame compared to MGs, unless they are indeed boosted in strength.