Perilously close to House Rules here, so I'll divert away and look at something else.
What is the general characterization of Warships in the printed canon?
They crash, they burn, they die. They're terrifying atrocitymakers, or they're expensive casualties to punch up that 'things have got see-ree-usss'.
That's the characterization based on how warships appear in the fiction, when they bother appearing.
Basicallly they're there, like Mr. Worf, to lose fights in order to show how tough or badass the opponent is.
Okay, so now, what is the general character of ASF in the setting?
anyone?
if you go by fictional depiction, fighters are almost a non-factor, they're irrelevant, or they're manned missiles to shoot down warships by ramming them in the bridge so the 'mechwarriors can look cool rescuing the Khan.
is a picture forming here?
What they are NOT doing, for the most part, is successfully influencing events. The warships are a sideshow at best, most often just a display of how thoroughly important a given event is by dying violently in it, while the fighters are ineffectual, they never stop a landing or have any significant impact on what's going on.
taken together, what, then, is the self-insert appeal of playing these??
When you sit down at the table with your players, do they want to be redshirts (or expensive redshirts) or do they want to be the heroes? For the most part, Aerospace doesn't present fictional heroes, or examples where players are likely to see themselves as being the heroes. This, unfortunately, scales up from fighters through Dropships to Warships.
There is no point you can find (Fiction or sourcebook), where a reader says, "thank god the warship survived" or "those aerospace fighters saved the day."
We have that with Infantry, and we have it with Tankers, and yes, even 'mechwarriors. but in terms of the chief marketing for the game as a whole, Aerospace is a tacked on thing that is largely, if not completely, irrelevant.
Thus, not much attraction for the core market, who stuck with Battletech because of the FICTION and the detailed sourcebooks and the scenarios in those books...and the setting.
The undercurrent is made more apparent when you consider that Compendium had Aerospace rules, then dropped them, and Compendium ROW sold more copies after the drop. That BMR went through a revision and was still a good seller, and that with Aero reintroduced in Total Warfare (integrating AT2 to a severely limited degree), very few players are willing to wade through it to figure out how to play Aerospace.
and why would they? There's shit for heroes to model on. The biggest space/aerospace/naval conflict to date (outside historicals) was a one-sided wash that showcased Aerospace and Naval forces as blunderingly, obviously, completely inept.
NOT a lot to attract new fans with that. I'd almost say before looking at revamp of the combat rules, one should begin with looking at some way to make Aerospace relevant enough to get casual readers interested.
Without the fanbase, a revamped set of rules is going to do exactly what AT1, Battlespace, and AT2 did-which is filling the overstock/unsold bin at your FLGS.
wanna know why Star Wars sells? because of Rogue Squadron. the game mechanics only has a passing impact on popularity. There's no Rogue Squadron type product for Battletech's Aerospace.
