Wasn't sure about posting it here, in the rules section, or in the Ask the writers one. Maybe this one is the best choice.
While working on third scenario of my Betelgeuse small campaign, I was going to introduce laser turrets as a support for defending forces.
In the CBT version, I'd easily put that as CF 60 buildings with a large laser 360° turret on top.
Coming to AS, I don't know what to do. Obviously it comes as a 1/1/0 in attack, but what about armor/CF?
The ability of withstanding 60 points of damage would translate in 2 armor pips for a 'Mech. This occurs even if the damage conversion in attack is clearly set as 10 to 1, because 'Mechs have a number of locations over which damage spreads. Wisely, in AS this has been abstracted by using a 30 to 1 conversion for armor - that's a brilliant idea!
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For a turret, even sticking to the 10 to 1 conversion would result in a unit with 6 armor. That is, 6 damage points before it is destroyed.
However, if I consider the turret an Armed building (as suggested in the AS Companion), the CBT 60 CF would roughly translate into a 18-20 CF building (40CF medium buildings becoming 12CF in AS, and 90CF heavy ones going to 25CF). Now, that's about 3 times damage capacity!
The factor 3 comes out in general for all buildings. A typical medium building in CBT, with 40 CF, collapses after receiving 4 PPC shots. In AS, a medium building has 12 CF which need 12 PPC shots to be taken down. This makes building far sturdier, and the reason is not clear to me. Scenarios with heavy buildings definitely revolve about the protection they offer, since they are so much harder to take down.
Even more so if you consider that in AS they should offer maximum protection until they crumble, which we ruled out by assuming that the Damage absorption is the current CF/10, rounded up (as in CBT). And also the damage absorption is more effective, because even if a unit has a single large weapon like a Gauss rifle or an AC/20 (which would do significant damage in CBT), in AS they can't go through the absorpion given by a medium building. Even worse if infantry is involved: firing an AC/20 at infantry in a light building is useless unless you can make the building fall on top of their heads - which still requires 3 shots to be done.
Yet, have a 40 tons 'Mech step on it, and the building collapses easily.
I was wondering what rationale might be for making AS building that tough, compared to CBT. I'm seriously considering changing the listed CF ranges to make them more similar to CBT. That is:
Light 1-2CF
Medium 3-5CF
Heavy 6-10CF
Hardened 11-15CF
That would make buildings less "problematic" from this point of view.
I'd like to hear some thoughts about that.
