Question: Artillery and Aerospace limitations

[MechWarriorFox]

So, my Battletech group has been playing with Alpha Strike for a few months now (and I introduced everyone else to the 'fun' that is aerospace fighters on ground targets) and cheese has started to creep up on us for our eventual Jihad campaign.

Now, the situation we've started to have is that some players have been spamming on field artillery and aerospace assets in their unit lists. One list had something on the order of 14 cheap fighters and another had an actual artillery battery on the field. Due to the annoyance of the former and the devastation of the latter, it turns the games unfun, especially if the local meta becomes 'tank, artillery, and aerospace spam'.

So, our leader -who is an attorney- has started placing limitations on what we can field on-board.

• You can bring your entire squadron of aerospace assets into a game if you can pay for it, but you can't have more than four on-board at a time.
• On-field artillery can't use pre-sighted artillery zones.
• You can only bring two (or four, dealing with a cold at the time of this posting) artillery pieces onto the board, at all.
• Artillery and aerospace assets can't get a target roll better than 6. Ever.

Have any of you been having this problem and how did you solve it?

[FenderSaxbey]

Limits seem to be the only real solution other than banning the units outright. Honestly, I'd set more aggressive limits (only 2 AS for every 4 or 5 mechs, etc). Fast hovers and arty are just a pain unless people agree to be good sports. Otherwise your game of stompy robots becomes a game of 9PV vehicles and Arrow IV rain.

[MechWarriorFox]

Limits seem to be the only real solution other than banning the units outright. Honestly, I'd set more aggressive limits (only 2 AS for every 4 or 5 mechs, etc). Fast hovers and arty are just a pain unless people agree to be good sports. Otherwise your game of stompy robots becomes a game of 9PV vehicles and Arrow IV rain.

Yeah, that's what we're thinking, although I wanted to see what the community has done to combat this problem first, you know to make sure we're doing things on the right track.

[Valkerie]

Limits are the answer.  My goal with the group is to make sure everyone has fun playing.  No one I've played with has pushed things into cheese territory, but I've had to make changes following a few scenarios after seeing the potential for something creeping in.

[MechWarriorFox]

Limits are the answer.  My goal with the group is to make sure everyone has fun playing.  No one I've played with has pushed things into cheese territory, but I've had to make changes following a few scenarios after seeing the potential for something creeping in.

Good to know.

[Elmoth]

Same here. My group hasn't had this problem, buy we are more casual I guess.

If you want to have. Game of stompy robots, making mechs the benchmark (X unit of That type per mech in your force") seems the way to go.

Other potential limits could be that only mechs (and maybe infantry) count for capturing objectives.

Regarding the ASF... You ar using the threshold system, right? That reduces add fast.

Plan B to all that is to use the commanders edition virtual asf & arty rules. We have used them and they work pretty well.

[Cannonshop]

So, my Battletech group has been playing with Alpha Strike for a few months now (and I introduced everyone else to the 'fun' that is aerospace fighters on ground targets) and cheese has started to creep up on us for our eventual Jihad campaign.

Now, the situation we've started to have is that some players have been spamming on field artillery and aerospace assets in their unit lists. One list had something on the order of 14 cheap fighters and another had an actual artillery battery on the field. Due to the annoyance of the former and the devastation of the latter, it turns the games unfun, especially if the local meta becomes 'tank, artillery, and aerospace spam'.

So, our leader -who is an attorney- has started placing limitations on what we can field on-board.

• You can bring your entire squadron of aerospace assets into a game if you can pay for it, but you can't have more than four on-board at a time.
• On-field artillery can't use pre-sighted artillery zones.
• You can only bring two (or four, dealing with a cold at the time of this posting) artillery pieces onto the board, at all.
• Artillery and aerospace assets can't get a target roll better than 6. Ever.

Have any of you been having this problem and how did you solve it?

Looks to me like maybe you should just ban the types outright.

2 and 4 on your list mess directly with the game mechanics arbitrarily, so you're straight up playing with house rules instead of scenario limits.

For scenario limitations, have you considered playing something other than straight up duelling?  Arty and air strikes end up being "Less than optimal" when you need to capture something fragile intact, such as an HPG station or the contents of a factory, or in scenarios where collateral damage can cause problems later in the campaign.  ("Congratulations, jackass, you greased a grade school with your artillery scatter")

or try fighting a few scenarios where artillery and air-strikes aren't useful, such as inside a domed city, or a large cavern system, or underwater.

The more variable your terrain and scenarios are, the less likely someone is to hyperfocus on the 'Won true build'.

[Kibutsu]

What type of campaign are you going to be running? Sounds like you need a dedicated GM to set rules and/or limitations based on the scenarios being played. If you're just doing points balanced scenarios where players can field anything they want it seems more like a series of pickup games rather than a campaign.

If your campaign battles are played as if they were part of some action happening in a larger context, for instance, maybe come up with a system for determining whether or not battlefield support like arty and air is even available. I think the new Tukayyid book actually has rules for this.

[MechWarriorFox]

What type of campaign are you going to be running? Sounds like you need a dedicated GM to set rules and/or limitations based on the scenarios being played. If you're just doing points balanced scenarios where players can field anything they want it seems more like a series of pickup games rather than a campaign.

If your campaign battles are played as if they were part of some action happening in a larger context, for instance, maybe come up with a system for determining whether or not battlefield support like arty and air is even available. I think the new Tukayyid book actually has rules for this.

Well, here's the current version (1.6) but I'm not playing it anymore. Which reminds me, I've got to go to the CGL forums for alpha strike for a possible rule exploit.