AS/BF Aerospace Structure too high for combined arms play

[Zematus737]

1) Aerospace PV is off balance, as its PV is multiplied by 1.5 (against 2.0 of mechs) in defensive factors while it utilizes mech sized weaponry.  They are carrying, at average, 5 reloads in expendable ammo whereas a Mech carries on average of 10 shots.  But because ammo is not accounted for in AS, aerospace maintain the favor again in this respect.
2)Aerospace structure is too high.  Why is half of the SI being added to aerospace units as structure?  This is insane.  SI is determined, during unit construction, by tonnage x 0.10 or the Safe Thrust, whichever is higher.  Now, imagine a Locust or a Flea on the battlefield with this kind of structure being added!  It skewers the lighter and usually faster aerospace units over medium sized units.  Let's not even talk about the heavy and assault weight fighters.
3)Their armor is converted at the same rate as mechs, divided by 30.

Whose idea was it to add structure in this way?  In many respects the old original Battleforce 2 conversions for aerospace were more balanced.  Armor was divided by 4 and you took a tenth of that in BF2 for mech and for aero.  Therefore Aero had LESS armor.  A light strike fighter SHOULD be able to only take a single hit.  They are hard enough to hit by their speed that aerospace was given its own TMM ratings based on angles of approach.  I suspect that SI was done for the same purposes, as adding a buffer of reduced damage to structure by half was intended ... to what, keep aerospace in the air longer?  Whoever did the recent conversions adaptations took the halves idea and ran with it to create this crazy problem.  Historically, anti-air always made minced meat of flyers.  If there were mech's today it would be the same, but aero is so buffed or heavy with structure that you'll rely on crits to bring one down.  The only thing really missing from the old Battleforce 2 conversions is the multiple movement rates having both walking and jumping values and the separation of some damage for multi-target use from special weapon abilities.  I don't know what's going to happen for Alpha Strike in the future, but I don't know how anyone can play combined arms and not sea Aero wipe the map clean every time.    Vehicles are a different matter, as they have zero armor in BF2 and their entire defensive values are represented in structure.  They have their own critical hit table that includes motive system hits that make sense of this and require rolls for every attack received just as in core and current BF rules for motive systems in particular. 

Maybe this post belongs in Stategic, as most of these concerns are seen in Battleforce play.  It is too stark to ignore how hard mechs get owned.  The only respite is that Aero have reduced bomb loads in BF/AS, as a single bomb run from a light Flight (2 fighters) can wipe an entire light Lance off the map.

I tried doing a search in the forum for structure or SI, but the results are subpar.  Is there a better thread anyone can point to that might be discussing these things?

My personal decision may be to use the old Battleforce 2 values for aero and use the CAT35AS001 and 002 printouts for Dropships and higher.  There's little overlap with aero anyway if they aren't using Antiship missiles.  The lists included are long for mechs, but you're losing the ability to split damage or hit different targets and will have to bring in the specials yourself and reduce the primary damages accordingly.  I'd be happy to hear anyone else's thoughts and possible solutions they have found.

[Zematus737]

After spending some time reviewing the evolutions of many of the conversions I believe I have found a simple solution that won't throw the baby out with the bath water.  You can do these without the original armor factors or TRO's.

Fix:
1)Adjust structure of all Aerospace units by doubling the structure value, multiplying it by 0.10 and rounding normally.
Capital ship values are not doubled.
2)Adjust the Threshold value also.  Take the AS armor value x 0.10 x unit size.  Round normally to a minimum of 1.
3)Adjust PV values by the exact difference in structure that was reduced.
4)Add the difference in TH to PV.

For sub caps half the size of the unit is multiplying the values in the original conversion.  This would only affect size 3 to 4 sub caps.  Don't break your balls and keep it simple.

[Zematus737]

To further justify these changes I would like to remark on the conversions a bit.  To better put this into perspective, a mechs structure is about 90% of its tonnage during construction.  A fighter's structure, or SI, is either a tenth of the tonnage OR the max safe thrust rating, whichever is higher.  Aero also does not add any weight for structure in the construction rules!  You can see immediately that aero gets nothing but a frame and the amount of structure points it receives is (or would have been were it not for the half damage reductions of SI in Core) at the mercy of about one LRM load at best and practically paper against heavy weapons at the worse.  That is Core.  When a single bubble represents about 30 damage in older conversions, when you convert structure for aero with taking SI by HALF of the original value, you are creating an immense amount of structure that should never have been there.  Not only are ASF's (not CF's) getting a free 2 points of thrust during construction, making their engines ratings lower and speeds higher.  They are glass cannons in Core and when you add so much unaccounted structural integrity-- when most other armor values are a tenth, this is a half--they are frigates in the sky.  It may even out at the higher and heavier class ASF's when their tonnage overtakes the thrust values, but its not always the case.

As tonnage is not always represented in most Alpha Strike content, the next best thing is to use the armor factors that are always present.  You gotta get by somehow and to be fair it's not far from using the tonnage in most cases, but neither should it ever be for fighters.  Like mechs that get about 10% of their structure converted into AS structure, aero should be on par with how they are represented by comparison to mechs.  I maintain that this was a massive blunder for aero in Battleforce and Alphastrike units.  Hopefully it is acknowledged as an issue and gets some attention.

[ActionButler]

**Mod Notice**

Since OP included some homebrewed rules, we’ve moved this thread to Fan Rules. As usual, nobody is in trouble.

[Zematus737]

To further expound or highlight the issue, with gladness that the proposed conversions also carry well over into larger units, to take a look at the Naga and its specials: AT12D2, CK142, CRW2, KF, ST2D2.  It's armor 37, structure 68 with a TH of 3.
With the new adjustments the following TH would be 7, with a structure of 7.

Now look at the 2708 Union with PV of 45
And what about the 2581 Leopard CV with PV of 53

Who in their right mind would pass a single naga for the equivalent number of Unions or Leopards?  The reason for comparison of these units should be obvious to the reader.

One reason, again, why BV divided by 100 may just be a better rating system for Alphastrike and Battleforce as originally intended.  See the values below.
Union BV 3,259, Leopard CV BV 1,745, Naga BV 19,914.  BV takes into account the actual C-bill cost of all components and their mass.  PV does not.

Anyway.  I'm happy to share these adjustments.  Please don't take this as confrontational.  I'm in the process of finding a working system that incorporates all the scales and this has become a giant hurdle for me.  I feel these conversions better represent Threshold values that are too high in the current conversions for fighters and far too small for capital sized units.  Furthermore, units that sacrifice space and mass for KF drives, bays, and weaponry should not have the benefit of free structure that will compensate for intentionally skimped armor.  The same could be said for both small and large units.

P.S. thank you for the move

[DevianID]

vehicles had the same treatment.  They have WAY more structure in alpha strike then they do normally.  Like, a vedette has 96 armor and 25 structure, but they gave it 3 armor 3 structure.  So in comparison, structure is 3-4x higher in alpha strike, kinda like how aerospace SI is way higher.

I agree it doesnt make much sense.  If a vedette had 1 structure, thats not a big deal... its not like crits on vees in alpha strike work very well that you want to give them lots of structure to see more crits.

Now, if they got rid of threshold, and rolled half the armor into structure, I would be cool with that for aerospace.  The stingray, for example, has 6 armor, 3 structure, and TH2.  So it can take only 3 hits from a 3 damage attack like itself before it is dead, which is 2 threshold rolls.  So 2 armor, 7 structure, would do the same thing, and you just dont have to worry about all the rules space around threshold now.  You still get 2 crit rolls, with the 3rd roll killing you, in stingray fights.

[Zematus737]

vehicles had the same treatment.  They have WAY more structure in alpha strike then they do normally.  Like, a vedette has 96 armor and 25 structure, but they gave it 3 armor 3 structure.  So in comparison, structure is 3-4x higher in alpha strike, kinda like how aerospace SI is way higher.

I agree it doesnt make much sense.  If a vedette had 1 structure, thats not a big deal... its not like crits on vees in alpha strike work very well that you want to give them lots of structure to see more crits.

Now, if they got rid of threshold, and rolled half the armor into structure, I would be cool with that for aerospace. 

In the old calculations of Battleforce 2 CV's had their armor and structure combined and divided by 30.  All of it became structure and the motive system hits were included in the mandatory crit rolls after every hit.  Would have been 4 bubbles in the original conversion.  But in AS the structure for CV's should be a tenth of their structure.  The vedette's 2.5 got rounded up to the 3.  Armor is divided by 30 also, rounded normally.  Not over represented too much, but much more different than the original conversions.  Mechs also had less armor as their armor factor was divided by 4 and then multiplied by .10.  Everything in the new conversions have been buffed and damage has mostly stayed the same.

The TH is there for integrity breaches that affect those units more, just as a structure hit on a mech wouldn't be that big of a deal on land unless that part was also under water. 

[Zematus737]

This was the old Critical Hit table for CV's in Battleforce 2 if you were curious.  Ammo hits are not represented. You can see that it is 2d6 rather than the initial 1d6 (pg. 42 IO:BF) chance of motive system hit on a 4-6, with an additional chance of not getting anything again on a 2-7 on the 2d6 followup roll.  The first roll becomes gratuitous in the update.  These in BF affect mostly the speed of the unit.  Chances with 2d6 are dependent on high frequency rolls.  So, in the old system, a turret hit is more likely than a motive hit.  An ammo hit does the same as a crew hit anyway, unless the unit has CASE or energy weapons.  The expanded current Battleforce critical hits table is on pg.85.

2-7 No crit
8 Turret hit
9  Wheel/track hit (motive)
10 Weapon destroyed
11  Engine hit
12  Crew killed