I'm finally back, seriously I am, problems aside I did manage to read over the PDF while moments of consciousness came to me.
1- Two Detection Phases: We have the Detection Phase and then at the end of the Movement Phase we have a second round.
Question- Is there a value to the second Detection phase?
Truth be told my group likes to streamline some things, so the "Roll a 7" quick and dirty rule you made will be our standard.
Maybe if we played a flavorful scenario, we'd use the other rules.
2- Tactics Check: When determining damage, we have an opposed roll to determine who gets to decide which Unit in a formation is damaged.
Question- What do you think of this? Is it nice to have some control over what gets damaged, or is this just too cumbersome to use.
Personally I'd go with another quick and dirty idea: If the roll
meets the target number, defender chooses.
If it
exceeds the target number, attacker chooses.
How I look at it is the attacker was just smart enough to get me, but I had enough foresight to put a specific group in to "take the blow for the team".
Yes this means I effectively killed the tactics roll off to determine who gets to decide.
3- Alpha Strike or BattleForce?: While the game is called Strategic BattleForce, we based much of the rules on Alpha Strike. We did this because AS is both newer and more simplified.
Question- Does this create confusion? Would you not play SBF because you don't own AS but do own SO?
I like it because it gives Alpha Strike fans more meat on the game.
They can enjoy higher level games like the TW styled fans, with Battleforce being a common ground of cooperation.
Also it might be easier to translate some tactics level special abilities up to this scale, if you use Alpha Strike as the starting grounds.
4- References to other rule books: We'll be honest and up front. Pages costs money. When printing a product, the pages cost $ and as the book grows, the $$ slides up faster than the page count as a large book is harder to print. At the same time, we recognize that players having to flip between books is time consuming and not optimal.
Question- Would it be better to have more rules in IO directly, recognizing that a larger book may cost a little more to purchase?
It's either I have two books to play or one bigger book to play this out.
I could see how folks would grumble, but putting IO related stuff in IO and making it bigger would help.
For those that want to play IO but not get AS, maybe they don't like that scale. Either they get this or they won't due to their initial resistance to AS. The thing is at least it was one purchase, one grumble, instead of two because "oh
now I gotta get a book I won't use outside of IO!"
For those that have AS and want to play IO, the former idea is better for them but it serves that scenario more than alternatives.
For the Mega Super Battletech fan that buys anything, pfft this is a wash. They've already thrown money at the screen as I type.
For folks like me (Mega fan, but watches wallet) I know this builds upon a LOT of things. Like a pyramid, there's plenty under it to support it, but I do appreciate the encapsulation you're doing.
If it hits the wallet a bit more, I understand.