Continuing as-is is definitely out. The current version is too unfriendly to new and casual players. It was not my intent to create a tournament-level game, but that's what I did. It's mainly the fault of me trying to shoehorn in all the various eras and tech. I think the basic structure works, but advanced/experimental tech (even stuff that's "standard" in 3150) increases the complexity of force design (the "rock/paper/scissors" effect) beyond the ability of a new or casual player. Additionally, with no unit cap players who have earned a lot of SP aren't encumbered in the slightest by different missions, but a newer player would find them very difficult (e.g., scouting -- someone who can buy a stack of Angel-equipped units has a huge advantage over someone who cannot, and the game is over before it's begun).
The whole thing is complicated by the small player-base -- this isn't 40K or WarmaHordes, and I really can't afford to alienate people. The end product needs to be easy enough for anyone to join (e.g., GM-provided forces should be viable), the options need to be reduced (lots of Advanced/Experimental stuff removed), and there needs to be a drawback to specialization.
My current pondering runs something like this:
- Total reset. If nothing else, that kicks any imbalance issues down the road a ways.
- Unit cap of "one Union", which is nominally 12 mechs + 2 fighter bays. Mechanically, call it 12 bays that hold anything, 2 vehicle bays, sub-20-ton units take half a bay, and up to four non-mechanized infantry platoons for free. This keeps "stable" sizes under control, and makes specialized units less useful.
- Set the timeframe as "immediately post-Jihad." That gives the widest unit availability without getting into advanced/experimental complexities and imbalances. If you want to do a Dark Age/RotS unit that's fine, but advanced/experimental tech doesn't work. (Maybe come up with a short list of "harmless" advanced/experimental tech.)
- (Maybe) Lose the ECCM advanced rule. If I wanted to play "EW Officer" I'd play Harpoon. I realize that kind of shafts C3 forces, but I'm OK with that.
- Separate pilot improvement from support points by going (back) to some sort of XP system. Maybe allow the hiring of up to 3/4 to offset this.
- Allow clan and hybrid tech, but make purchase and modifications much more expensive as well as increasing repair time. Putting Clan weapons on all your IS units shouldn't be an automatic choice.
- Decrease the cost of replacing a destroyed unit. Easy with stock units; harder to compute/justify with heavily-customized ones.
- Re-work infantry healing. You should be able to replace a small percentage without any down-time, but a totally-destroyed unit should take longer, or have to be replaced.