So, I've been running a game with A Time of War rules for a few weeks now, and the players (who are running a mercenary mech unit) just got into their first mech-scale 'fight', participating in a simulator battle at a local academy. It was a good way to test out my plan to use tabletop rules to play out vehicular combat, and it was an eye-opener for a few problems.
The main one was that it took too long to be feasible for my group, and that was with a decent bit of slimming to the rules. My group has limited time when we meet, usually only 4-6 hours per session, and the vast majority of that time is taken up by roleplay. That means we don't have enough time for fullblown tabletop engagements, which means I need to find something that will run a mech battle faster than regular tabletop to keep everyone interested. I want to use the hex maps I have to illustrate each unit's position, or at least the minis I have on hand and a tabletop.
The game is set in 3020, so I ruled out alpha strike since it didn't mesh too well with my plans to keep them scrounging for repairs and parts, etc. I have considered running mechs somewhat like characters and simply giving them two HP pools; armor & structure. Critical hits would only occur when all of the armor points are gone, and players wanting to hit a specific location like an arm to try and blow it off would just make a called shot. This would eliminate crit rolls for most of the game, as well as hit location rolls, and I might have weapons rolled in groups (i.e. 4 MLs fire all on one roll) to cut down time spent further. However, I wanted to know if anyone had a different, possibly better idea to share before taking such a step, since I do wonder if the idea above would really help any.