I tried to make a friend invest in AS after few games. His first question was: Which race has which Mech and I was unable to answer as in BT every "race" (house) has almost any mech avaible. He ask me why is their houses has there is no specificity. It was hard to explain it's related to the universe and not the game itself. So a list of great "powers in place" (RS, Houses, and clan actually) with a list of specific mechs for each one instead of Army lists (peoples want to "create forces" like in other games, selecting units one by one from a catalogue). This is not related to the AS mechanism but BT in general.
So, what could make AS better?
- The relation between old BT units and AS ones was a mistake IMHO (it could be used to convert old canon BT units to AS ones but it's overly complex to create a AS unit this way as you need to deal with high complexe rules (Tech Manual) to create simple unit...). I wish a new "AS thinked" BV system computed from AS stats and not "old ones" (current point scheme doesn't reveal the real BV). Actually. It would be very intersting to have a "light" (as much as possible) AS techn manual to build you own AS units. Each unit construction shouldn't be too long. I would like to: Choose a mech you like, take it height class, put weapons/special abilities on it and hop get the BV. :) This could make newcomer came in the game in a more natural way (the only constraint is often the BV).
- A rule to resolve a shoot in one dices roll. Using colored dices with simple rules. This make it even faster for young players.
- Anything that can destroy the "ok so you do a blabla roll... <roll_silently>... ok I shoot you... So you need to do a blabla roll... <roll_silently>... etc...". As much you remove this little times that slow down the game (batching them is a good idea I think), as much AS will be fast.
- Improve the "all or nothing" damage scheme without add dice rolls (this is compatible with the "one dices roll for the whole shot" system).
- Another rule: "Commander priority". Before the movement phase, players get N dices (where N is the number of unit they have) and roll all of them. So the players actually know "what they could achieve" before the movement phase and move acordingly. After the movement phase (shooting phase), players will "use" one of the result for one dice to solve one action. This little trick make things more tactical and try to avoid the waste of time you have to roll dices all the time at different phases as you actually have roll all of them and just "pickup" result when you want. As you notice, the idea is to "batch" roll dice and avoid the roll-read-the-rule-play-roll-read-th-etc...
- Tweaked initiative rule (the one that lost initiative has +1 to the next initiative roll).