hmmmm....
VTOL hit location table, rotor destruction rules from BMR were actually pretty solid, and emphasized the fragility of the unit-type while still leaving it effective, (along with the movement modifiers. Plus five after calculation at 10/15 with a single facing change). Also miss the days when a five point hit-as in any hit of five or more, would drop a VTOL, the adopting of Munchtek's 'one point rule' to rotors was a mistake, it just flipped their relative position with pre-nerfing Hovertanks. and honestly, it's a set of changes obviously meant to make the Yellowjacket and similar designs viable-when there is no real need to do so.
The main reason I miss it though, was that it underlined how VTOL use was different from 'mech use, and how the VTOLs as a class had diminishing returns as you went up in tonnage-that being, heavier VTOLs tended to be not only slower, but also less effective (culminating in the Yellowjacket, which was, and largely remains, one of th more expensive ways to give your opponent a Gauss Rifle as salvage.)
The Vehicle Ground hit table. (tracked, hover, wheeled). This made running vee forces substantially different in style from running 'mechs, esp. at the higher end, since parking was a suicide pact under BMR, and slower vees were basically high-value targets. Inferno rules espl. hold a place in my heart, because it underscored that your Alacorn was in danger from that COM-2D commando that came through the woods to catch it...
on 'paradigm'; the TW ground vehicle rules encourage 'bunkering' (Find a place to park, and wait a few hours for fire to penetrate your armor). The old system's crit table was simple, easy to memorize, easy to teach, and could fit on the same paper with the damage diagram, thus making it less like a 'mech (which is a good thing, given the setting's emphasis on who is, after all, king of the battlefield). Under total warfare, you could NOT afford to park your vehicles the way you park your Clanner Assault munchmek, and roll dice at medium range against someone else who is parking his clanner assault munchmek for an hour or two before it's time to go watch sportsball on ESPN. The reason was, there was a weapon in play that would make you DIE if you stayed in one place after it missed you. this makes for a much more fluid battlefield. (make your survival roll, and move your ASS before it kills you is a more fluid battlefield.)
with VTOLs, there was a way to use them, and again, it wasn't 'park and shoot'-you needed high cruise, with long range weapons if you wanted to keep that VTOL useful.
I do like how they added sideslip/skidding to Hovers, but they didn't need to change Infernoes vs. Vehicles or the hit tables on vees-those worked, you could run 3025 era mixed regiments in a single afternoon, and company level clashes in a couple hours using vees, things got decisive quickly.
