So the light VTOL must have a movement of at least 20/30? (25 for the +6 TMM plus 5 more for facing and elevation changes.)
"2 points for each intro-tech weapon whose "long" range falls in your design's average "Medium" or short range."
Not sure what this means. Examples?
actually you can do it a lot slower than 24. Sharpnel's 'spotter' design does it with a cruise as 16.
as for the weapons average, an example would be the comparison of, say, the AC/2's 'long' range bracket to that of the LRM(quantity). With an AC/2 you can be at "Medium" while an LRM rack is at "long".
now, you're not going to find a design that light that can pack all that many ranged weapons, but likewise an ERML will be at "medium" while a ML is at "long".
the basic idea is bracket-overlap, fitting your design in such a way that it can engage wiht decent numbers (even if it's not world-crushing damage) where return fire still has to deal with Long Range modifiers in addition to your TMM.
(the pre-TRO 3039 version of the H-7 was ideal with this-it could cruise for plus 5, and with it's main gun, it could engage at 'medium' where most of the 'cluster' weapons and things that could strip the rotors were at "Long". on a good map, you could basically force the other guy to deal with target numbers of 11 or 12 just to TRY and hit, while only needing 7's or 8's for returning fire. This is no longer possible with the H-7 now, since it's lost a point of speed to line it up as inferior to the Donar.)
With VTOLs, thanks to things like 'sideslip' and terrain not being perfectly flat, flanking is NOT good, it inflicts a heavy targeting penalty, inflicts a PSR with every facing or elevation change, and a sudden encounter with the side of a building pretty much you're out of action and/or dead thanks to terrain not being flat and the tendency of a sideslip to go quite a bit further than it does on a hovercraft...
ideas to keep in mind:
Armor on VTOLs isn't armor-it's crash protection so you can (in campaign play) keep the pilot's gains intact, rather than needing to replace them because t hey died in a fall. while they DID modify VTOL rules from BMR's more aggressive (read fatal) rules to TM's generous, kind, 'save the slow VTOLs from ridicule' rules, your best protection with VTOL craft is still having a very high cruise speed, and being able to bracket your 'main weapons' to enable hitting-without-being-hit.
This challenge is really all about that; it specifically excludes 'slow and heavy' designs.