I've been debating this one in my head. The loiter time of the Bodyguard is quite nice, but it comes with the significant disadvantages of fragility, low speed, and losing initiative vs. ASF. Judging the combat value against a
custom 3025 ASF, 15-1 might be a reasonable ratio without fully taking into account losing initiative. That's significantly worse on a per-ton basis and only marginally better on a per cost basis. Hence, it's only justifiable if there isn't an alternative way to fulfill the same missions.
It's tempting to try to substitute VTOL for Bodyguard, but that doesn't work in general since VTOLs use ground unit ranges while aerospace units use aerospace ranges (measured in map sheets) for weapons. Airships are not an alternative either---they are even more fragile and they can't visit the high altitude map.
Thus the question is: can we avoid long-loiter designs in the missions?
LZ Halo: ASF could take off from altitude 0 and fairly easily reach the high altitude map in 1 minute or less. For example, a slow 3/5 aerodyne could:
Round 1: Takeoff -> Altitude 1, velocity 5
Round 2: Ascend 2, +1 velocity -> Altitude 3, velocity 3
Round 3: Ascend 2, +1 velocity -> Altitude 5, velocity 2
Round 4: Ascend 2, +1 velocity -> Altitude 7, velocity 2
Round 5: Ascend 2, +1 velocity -> Altitude 9, velocity 2
Round 6: Ascend 2, +1 velocity -> Altitude 11, velocity 2
Appear on the high altitude map.
Since there are 6 ground turns per high altitude turn, that's just a 1 turn delay in getting there.
The Raid Defense mission has a similar effective response, which leaves just the Bomber Escort mission to worry about. Since Fixed-Wing bombers can use the high altitude map at velocity 1, they can move about 1000km/hour. A 3 ton fuel tank puts the limit of a fueled escort at 4 hours implying a 2000 kilometer bombing range would be allowed (or more, with fuel tanks). That's probably enough for bomber escort missions.
If we use a fueled alternative foe bombing escort, the lethality of the mission is important. Atmospheric control rolls fail ~28% of the time. On the high altitude map, this does not really matter: worst case you enter the low altitude map and given that there are 6 ground rounds you can easily recover in time to avoid missing a high altitude round. On the low altitude map, you lose 1d6 altitudes though meaning an expected ~1 altitude per round that damage is taken. If the bomber escorts operate from altitude 10 or so by default that leaves them with quite a bit of opportunity to recover---they would have to fail a control roll 3 rounds in a row on average which is ~2% chance. If each control roll comes with 5 points of damage, that implies an expected ~250 damage before a fighter attempting to stay at altitude 10 is forced to impact the ground.
Given the above, it seems an ASF escort is plausibly a better choice than a conventional fighter, and it could even be a relatively heavy one.
