Likes / Dislikes of Battletech Space Combat

[Akalabeth]

Just curious but when it comes to Aerotech 2 or even Battlespace what are some of the things that people enjoy and what are things that you think could be better in terms of game mechanics or fiction or whatnot.  Having played a lot of other space combat games, combat in Battletech is a quite a bit different from most other space combat games.

[Weirdo]

Which Battletech space combat system? There's a lot of them, even ignoring the ones no longer supported in print.

There's Standard/Advanced Space Combat, which covers the main rules in Total War, plus the Advanced options in StratOps. This is the most common one people seem to use, and is probably what you mean by space combat. I'd put it at about the same level of detail as Federation Commander, though throwing enough options in can easily ramp it up to Starfleet Battles-levels of complexity and detail.

There's the High-Speed Engagements system, which can be very brutal, though some folks may not like it for the way the entire fight is over in a single turn.

There's Battleforce space combat, or as I call it, BattleFace. I really like this system, as it's a lot like Standard/Advanced combat, but trims things down to allow faster and larger games while still keeping the same overall feel as the more detailed system. It's probably the only system I'd want to use for any game involving more than 5-6 distinct units per side.

Finally, there's the Abstract Space Support rules. About halfway between the High-Speed rules and BattleFace in detail, there's not as much movement strategy, but it does look like a very good system for running a fight that could span across a planet's entire orbital space.

Each system has its own pros and cons, so it really depends on what you are looking for.

[I am Belch II]

I like the modifiers for the attack. It's very simple to figure that out.

Dislikes is the small boxes to mark off, but I just subtract damage form the total armor.

The rules are very broken for Space Combat in Battletech and that is something that is sad, and really needs a rework. Many people I have played A space game found it easy, but a pain. Most Battletech players are just afraid to play a space game. They have been playing the ground games for so long it's hard to get in the air.

[Weirdo]

Broken, or just not to your liking?

Which part of which system do you not like? Are we talking about rules, or in-universe stuff?

[I am Belch II]

I would say its kinda both, not liking the rule, and not knowing stuff about it. I try and keep up with the rules but because there isn't a lot of aero fights in general, it's hard to know the rules sometimes.

[Weirdo]

Well, let's hear it. What's buggin ye? :)

[Khymerion]

I like the space combat rules, through all their incarnations.... from a meh fighter combat game through it's 'totally not renegade legion' days to it's modern incarnation.

My enjoyment of space combat aside, some nit picks at it.

- I kinda dislike the fact that deep space combat is next to impossible.   Sure, there is the high speed engagement rules but that usually ends with one or both parties either on a ballistic trajectory towards the outer solar system or racing to become one with a planet or the central star of the system.  Meeting engagements just do not happen... not when one side is transiting from the jump points to the planet and are either accelerating at speeds that boggle the mind or are burning off that incredible speed to not add their mass to the planet they are wanting to invade/assault.   I mean really, why even bother to run an encounter?

I think it comes down to the fact that there is almost a bit of disassociation going on.   Ground, we play fast and loose by the rules of cool but the moment we get off the ground, we leave behind the pulp fiction tripe of 100 ton 30 foot tall robots sword fighting and punching each other while jumping on each other with guns that might as well be sling shot powered for their ranges and enter into the realm of HARD SCIENCE FICTION.   Now we have dropships and warships and fighters all moving at lumbering speeds with cumbersome rules that barely convey any form of advantage to one party or the next.   

It honestly takes some of the fun out of being a fighter jock when suddenly there is a dropship with 10x the firepower flying on your wing.   Why did you even bother becoming a fighter pilot again?   Worse if it is a warship...  and take a look at a Kirghiz and remember, a Kimagure is keeping pace.   Impavido and Kirishima are also fast enough to match speed.

There is really too much meh in space.   The fact that the only place to really fight without depending on plot device/contrivance is over a world/next to a moon and any time a scenario gets set up where it is blank space, that is point to just walk away from the table since it isn't going to be an interesting fight.   That much is simple since it will just be a closing engagement between battle lines and a slugging match.

That all being said...  I guess...  I wish there was a leveling of the board in terms of how things work... either less rule of cool on the ground or more rule of cool in the air and in space...  because this dual track garbage requires blinders to be able to accept...  that the air/space game is not really battletech since it is almost completely divorced from the ground game in almost any way possible rule wise...  unless someone from on high decides to start terraforming the ground from orbit.

[Akalabeth]

Which Battletech space combat system? There's a lot of them, even ignoring the ones no longer supported in print.

There's Standard/Advanced Space Combat, which covers the main rules in Total War, plus the Advanced options in StratOps. This is the most common one people seem to use, and is probably what you mean by space combat. I'd put it at about the same level of detail as Federation Commander, though throwing enough options in can easily ramp it up to Starfleet Battles-levels of complexity and detail.

There's the High-Speed Engagements system, which can be very brutal, though some folks may not like it for the way the entire fight is over in a single turn.

There's Battleforce space combat, or as I call it, BattleFace. I really like this system, as it's a lot like Standard/Advanced combat, but trims things down to allow faster and larger games while still keeping the same overall feel as the more detailed system. It's probably the only system I'd want to use for any game involving more than 5-6 distinct units per side.

Finally, there's the Abstract Space Support rules. About halfway between the High-Speed rules and BattleFace in detail, there's not as much movement strategy, but it does look like a very good system for running a fight that could span across a planet's entire orbital space.

Each system has its own pros and cons, so it really depends on what you are looking for.

Well truth be told I'm investigating the idea of developing my own starship combat game, around squadron level (ships plus fighters or whatnot), though with Battletech there's sort of that mid-range where dropships come into play to. Anyway I'm curious what people enjoy about the system and what they don't enjoy. 

I think maybe part of problem with Battletech, or at least as I've experienced it in the past (specifically through battlespace) is that there was a disparity between the different units. Initially in Aerotech 1, the dropships were sort of the big players on the field (although not necessarily power houses). They were the important units who had the most guns and had to deliver the troops to the planet, etcetera.

But in Battlespace a warship's guns could snuff out a dropship in a volley. In aerotech2 and whatever the system is referred to now that may have changed a bit, but in our campaign we haven't really used a lot of warships for that reason.  Either way one failing might be that, as I understand it, the rules are sort of the byproduct of essentially different games. Both Aerotech 1, Battlespace and Battletech. So that might be a good thing or a bad thing.

One benefit at the fighter level might be the heat system, which helps to prevent a fighter just firing everything every turn. Other combat systems for example have weapons which only fire once every two or three turns, or they have power allocation or so forth that can be cumbersome, or the ships just fire all their weapons every turn regardless of class. But battletech's heat scale helps to make the turn to turn options a bit more interesting.

[Kidd]

The way game mechanics, in-universe fluff and warship design is at odds with each other and common sense.

[Liam's Ghost]

I'm cool with the mechanics of combat for the most part. The design rules create logical disconnects for me. I attribute this to the valiant effort to not invalidate any previous designs, even when they predated any ruleset. For example, numerous speculations as to why the Star League put so much cargo space on their warship rather than guns. We can say that the star league used the cargo to support the army, or that various fire control tricks meant they didn't need the heavy guns, but the real truth is that when the design rules were first written, they had to be written to accommodate both the Sovetskii Soyuz and such ridiculously heavily armed gunships as the Aegis and Black Lion, since their stats had been decided before the rules were written.

Also armor is paint thin, the different structural equations between warships and dropships make no sense and are responsible for the entire monitor thing, KF drives feel tacked on and are also responsible for the entire monitor thing, fuel efficiency is insane, and they misspelled Sovietsky.

Despite that, I still have fun playing the game, and Battleface makes me smile. So yeah.

[Trace Coburn]

  ... ditto all of what Liam’s Ghost said.  O0

[Wrangler]

I like Battlespace combat.

Pros: Its Fast in its basic form, you compare it to other versions of Battletech (Alpha Strike not included).  You get wiplash.
Pros: Fighters come from modestly armed to better armed than your average BattleMech.  Bring the heat, baby.

Cons: Its one least used of the game plays.  Too many bad game events clouded genre.
Cons: WarShips dying breed. I've run into many people won't consider playing since when they find out how rare and how  their dying off they are.

[Col Toda]

The purpose of warships are to take space based assets like a recharge station or factory .  Most fighter action is to escort drop ships to an LZ  and afterwords to provide a high cap over the LZ and landed units to take  aerospace assets out of the equation as  a factor in the ground based objectives .  Ideally you get into a position that to attempt to stop you cost them more in resources than you so they do not bother unless you are going to try to do a combat drop on top of them and Deny them defense in depth at which point the best move is to ram the incoming drop ship with every aerospace fighter or conventional fighter you have or even small craft . This also applies to War Ships that leave the jump point and goes to do orbital bombardment to a populated planet in which a planet ought to through every commercial and military drop ship to ram the War Ship before it kill many civilians . The WOB made War Ships a Weapon of Mass Destruction and a war crime about to happen .

[Weirdo]

Col Toda. People have been over this before: The Jihad is over(or hasn't begun, depending on your chosen era). Heck, even during that war suicidal DropShip pilots were never a dime a dozen even among the WoB. Please stop forcing every orbital skirmish to take place in the darkest days of that particular very small portion of the Battletechh timeline.

[CloaknDagger]

Cons: WarShips dying breed. I've run into many people won't consider playing since when they find out how rare and how  their dying off they are.

Back to the logical inconsistencies:

The Warships are dying off. Except when they aren't, and a major power builds the largest, most effective, and even a nuke proof warship.

But despite this, warships are still dying off. Nobody decides to build any to counter this massive threat. In fact, nobody bothers much to build these things that can dominate entire solar systems just by being there, or destroy a planetary civilization easily.

[Jellico]

Nobody decides to build any to counter this massive threat

Funny. I thought people were still building aerospace fighters.

WarShips are concentrated power. Plenty of other, easier ways of producing that power.

[CloaknDagger]

Funny. I thought people were still building aerospace fighters.

WarShips are concentrated power. Plenty of other, easier ways of producing that power.

Exactly, they are concentrated power. You can't really defend against that unless you are talking about your capital world.

The rest of them need to be defended by your own warships.

[pensiveswetness]

i just wish the Movement rules for Aerospace units, in TW, were explained a bit more through. I'm always feel like im not fully doing it correctly when im trying to make turns in space, for intercepts or chases (when it comes to determining your Speed/Velosity each turn, especially. i had a very hard time explaining things each turn to my Wife, who otherwise picks up the game very quickly)

[Jellico]

Exactly, they are concentrated power. You can't really defend against that unless you are talking about your capital world.

The rest of them need to be defended by your own warships.

No, you don't need to defend the rest of the worlds with your own WarShips. You just need an equivalent force of whatever is available.

For example I can put a "WarShip's" worth of ASF in orbit around a world for considerably less, money, infrastructure, and resources than it takes to build a "WarShip's" worth of WarShip.

The type of scenario you are describing above is like using a RCT to take worlds defended by a battalion. Of course you can't defend against it. But that is because you can't maximise your force everywhere. And it does not magically make RCTs the most deadly element in the game.

WarShips offer some strategic and tactical advantages at a cost. They are like getting power windows for your car. They offer some nice advantages, but cost extra and a basic car without works just as well.

[Lord Cameron]

Broken, or just not to your liking?

Which part of which system do you not like? Are we talking about rules, or in-universe stuff?

The one thing that bugs me is the lack of turrets in Aerotech.  :-\ I mean, the Slayer art has a turret, so why not have some optional rules for them? (Like they did in TacOps for mech turrets)

- I kinda dislike the fact that deep space combat is next to impossible.   Sure, there is the high speed engagement rules but that usually ends with one or both parties either on a ballistic trajectory towards the outer solar system or racing to become one with a planet or the central star of the system.  Meeting engagements just do not happen... not when one side is transiting from the jump points to the planet and are either accelerating at speeds that boggle the mind or are burning off that incredible speed to not add their mass to the planet they are wanting to invade/assault.

Do you mean that space combat is physically impossible, or impossible under the current rules?
Because you are wrong on both counts.  ;)

It's completely possible, there are canon references to combat during transit.
As to running such a combat, it's possible, and we have run just such a scenario:  http://bg.battletech.com/forums/index.php/topic,11904.msg283285.html#msg283285

I mean really, why even bother to run an encounter?

Lots of reasons.
Perhaps you want to prevent an invader (or defender) from bringing reinforcements or supplies to the planet, and you don't have enough ASF's to contest control of the jump point or planet.
Perhaps you want to destroy pirates before they can escape back to their JS.
Perhaps you want to prevent travel from one planet to another.

It honestly takes some of the fun out of being a fighter jock when suddenly there is a dropship with 10x the firepower flying on your wing.   Why did you even bother becoming a fighter pilot again? 

Dropships do not have 10x effective firepower.
A Union has 1 x LL and 2 x ML in the Aft section, and the same in both stern quarters.
Excalibur has less than that.
Mule has less than Excalibur.

A pair of Stukas or a pair of Rievers could wipe out a Union in one turn.
Try using a squadron of ASFs, the DS is in big trouble

[Khymerion]

Do you mean that space combat is physically impossible, or impossible under the current rules?
Because you are wrong on both counts.  ;)

It's completely possible, there are canon references to combat during transit.
As to running such a combat, it's possible, and we have run just such a scenario:  http://bg.battletech.com/forums/index.php/topic,11904.msg283285.html#msg283285

Oh no, I know the rules are perfectly workable but it really does require both parties to really want to engage in it.   The potential for one or both parties being turned into a rain of shrapnel kinda was a bit of a downer.   That and when one player, a veteran Traveler player, looked at the High Speed pass rules (what I was meaning by a deep space engagement) and the two of us were going...  yeah, the likely chance that the two of us are going to actually get all the math to line up to get us to cross paths is so utterly slim and would require one of us to be precognitiant to be able to predict the point that we would actually be able to pull this off, assuming either of us actually have a working sensor array and decide to actually continue on our course of action and not speed up, slow down, or spend time banking thrust points to change course to avoid the onrushing bullet of the other player.

So it was a fun little trick that we might be able to pull once...  but that was really all that we saw to the point of putting in that substantial amount of rules to be able to do.

Now as to your reasons as to why run the encounter...

I'll give you trying to intercept reinforcements...  but you are still working on needing to be psychic to know where they are well enough to make the burn up to catch the enemy flotilla.   If you don't have the resources to contest the jump point or the planet, I guess your ships are sitting with a tender in system and depending on scattered hidden sensors to help coordinate.   I mean, if you can predict movements well enough to make the intercept using the detection rules, cool.

If you are trying to intercept the pirates before they can get back to their JS...  I can see that...  at least you both are going in the same direction and ultimately it will come down to there as who has the most thrust.

As for interdiction of interplanetary travel, that sounds a bit iffy and more like a standard planet bound fight or a blockade battle that devolves into a pursuit and who has more thrust, not the head on jousting match that makes it sound less than palatable.

Thank you for sharing the battle report, that was a really detailed read and I enjoyed it.   But I think we are both aiming at different things...  the battle there seemed to be a standard speed engagement while I was more talking about the interplanetary high speed transit intercepts.

Now onto the fighter/dropship comments.   I should clarify more.   I do not expect the troop transports to be slugging it out with fighters.   I do not expect a basic Union or Overlord to stand up to anything more than a single fighter that broke through the defense lines.   I expect even less from the vehicle and infantry movers.   I have lost more than my fair share of transport dropships to a few ASFs getting through.

I was more meaning the assault dropships and the PWS designs that are out there.   Those have phenomenal thrust ratings and intimidatingly heavy weapon suites.   Watching a Noruff outrun some medium fighter squadrons  and then obliterating said fighter squadrons is something that is heavily demoralizing.   The classic Achilles is another monster of the dropships...  and both of those were pre-PWS era ships.  Meanwhile you have beasts like the Overlord A3 which are borderline pocket warships and are keeping pace with most heavy fighters in terms of thrust.   Interdictor is a fun example of a modern dropship that really goes to proving the point.  7/11 and enough weapons to melt most things out there.   The gods help you if it is an Aesir or Isegrim on the sensor screen.

I know squadrons of fighters can be mean.   Trust me on that.  I do...  but then again, watching these monsters come sallying forth...  it really kinda makes you look at the fighters and wonder 'Was this really the right choice?'

[Jellico]

Fighters are always the right choice.

Given time the a smaller tonnage of fighters will always beat a larger tonnage of DropShips.

What DropShips do is get fast kills against other DropShips. It can take 10 to 20 turns to resolve the fighter battle. The DropShips can have killed each other in 6. Fighters just have massive amounts of armour to defeat.

So the challenge becomes, how can the fighters kill the offensive DropShips fast enough to save their own DropShips, without exposing themselves to defeat by the opposing ASF?

Check out the attached after action report. AMS would have made the Taihou more competitive, but it still would have died, probably around 14 hexes with the Oozes being targeted early.

[Khymerion]

Okay, I'll admit that perhaps personal experience might have tainted my views and at the next chance I get, I'll give it another shot.   Thank you for this report and again thank you Lord Cameron for your report.   Perhaps armed with a different perspective going into a game will make the experience a bit better.

[guardiandashi]

to be honest, I have, aerotech 1, battlespace, and aerotech2 but not a2r and the core books, tw, tech, to, so, atow

my preferred edition in a lot of ways is at1 (aerotech 1) because its effectively battletech in space
the things I like:
direct port of weapons tables, from the ground game so yes there IS a reason to mount an IS ppc vs a large pulse laser .....
I also like the old more locations for fighters and crit tables from that game.

with that said I don't actually dislike battlespace as long as you look at it being the space equivalent of battleforce.

where I really dislike the at2, and a2r is I feel that they essentially "threw the baby out with the bath water"  if it had gone back to at1, and tweeked it from there I would have personally been a lot happier I think.

the fact that in bs, at2, and at2r, also core set  the standard unit for fighters is the squadron not the individual fighter and the reduced and "generalized" locations also encourages "brick" building I feel detracts from the idea of the fighter, it also makes them in many ways TOO powerful IMO don't get me wrong when I am running the fighter swarm against the dropships and warships, Its kind of nice to be able to swarm them under, but as  general rule I think its too easy.

if I was to design my own version I think I would take a page from "wing commander 2" and basically make warships and dropships conditionally undestroyable by fighters.  they can be crippled, and made unable to do their jobs, but their "core systems" can't be eliminated readily by fighters, and I think one way to do it would be to implement a 3rd scale (possibly) and or tweek the rules for capital damage.

my idea would be to sort of use the idea of hardened armor RE capital scale.
I am ok with the capital SI providing capital scale armor that functions as "true capital scale" but I would make standard dropship armor back to standard scale.

how this would work in my idea is a fighter is standard scale, and flys up and shoots at a dropship, it can damage or disable systems blow up armor etc until it hits the "capital scale armor" once it gets to the "capital cores" all it can do is attempt to cause crits, and without all those tons of armor protecting the vitals this actually becomes possible, but the weapons can no longer cause "capital damage" directly, they can only do it as a result of effects on the critical hit table, and you only get checks when you can do in excess of 10 damage in a hit. 

I would also make stations jumpships and warships have parts that are effectively immune to fighter damage, barring special case rules, random crit effects, and the like (so ramming could cause criticals or similar)
now to make fighters relevant they can go in and strafe, and attack /destroy standard scale weapons all day long, its the capital stuff that they have to get lucky to disable.

[Wrangler]

I wish space stations and JumpShips had more SI.  I know the typical succession wars era JumpShips are suppose to be fragical.  I just wish it was more than 1.   You have Capital Defense Stations with Capital Grade WarShip Armor with 1 structural intergity, its bonkers to me.

[Weirdo]

With such units, overpenetration is your friend.

[CloaknDagger]

I wish space stations and JumpShips had more SI.  I know the typical succession wars era JumpShips are suppose to be fragical.  I just wish it was more than 1.   You have Capital Defense Stations with Capital Grade WarShip Armor with 1 structural intergity, its bonkers to me.

Don't you know? BT engines come with shield generators.

[Akalabeth]

Yeah I prefer Aerotech 1 as well.
I'm not sure why they decided to create some new scale just for the fighters. We have our fighters fly around the map when we play under some house rules and just use the battletech weapons.

Though in Aerotech 1 having fighters strafe three hexes across the whole map was a bit too powerful :D Was cool how that got translated into Cresent Hawks Revenge as well.

[Auren]

Yeah, the old school 'everyone in this line is now miserable' strafing run was pretty ridiculous.

[Kefferch]

I'm new and I am finding space battles a lil frustrating, in the fiction the dropships were soemthing to be feared but in my first match 6 Stuka's basically raped my union, I will be the first to say my inexperience had to contribute but dang...instead of buying mech mini's I am getting some fighters next.

[Khymerion]

I'm new and I am finding space battles a lil frustrating, in the fiction the dropships were soemthing to be feared but in my first match 6 Stuka's basically raped my union, I will be the first to say my inexperience had to contribute but dang...instead of buying mech mini's I am getting some fighters next.

The right dropships are to be feared.   Remember, the Union is primarily a troop ship... an LST...  not a direct combat vessel.   6 Stukas...  nasty fighters that have few rivals short of dedicated assault dropships or other heavy fighters...  can tear apart a good deal.   Especially troop ships.   Probably safe looking into other fighters.

[Weirdo]

I'm new and I am finding space battles a lil frustrating, in the fiction the dropships were soemthing to be feared but in my first match 6 Stuka's basically raped my union, I will be the first to say my inexperience had to contribute but dang...instead of buying mech mini's I am getting some fighters next.

Yeah...basically, your fight was pitting an old minivan against 6 flying psychotic chainsaws. Like Phymerion said, the right DropShips are to be feared. By and large, those scary ones are not the ones that transport ground troops.

[guardiandashi]

Yeah...basically, your fight was pitting an old minivan against 6 flying psychotic chainsaws. Like Phymerion said, the right DropShips are to be feared. By and large, those scary ones are not the ones that transport ground troops.

agree but I would actually argue that squadron rules makes fighters stronger (IMO) than they should be... I think a union should be able to smash 1-2 stukas with ease, 3-4 be a challenge, and 5-6 be a tossup which side will win

[Weirdo]

...you've been looking at a very different Union than I ever have...

Also, I wasn't judging that on squadron rules. 6 Stukas flown individually will tear the guts out of almost any transport and fail to notice.

[FedComGirl]

Just curious but when it comes to Aerotech 2 or even Battlespace what are some of the things that people enjoy and what are things that you think could be better in terms of game mechanics or fiction or whatnot.  Having played a lot of other space combat games, combat in Battletech is a quite a bit different from most other space combat games.

I didn't like the reduction in hit locations from Aerotech to Aerotech 2. It made it harder to kill fighters, even with lawn darting. I also didn't like the change of weapon stats. I can see getting added range for height when attacking ground units but the same weapons should have the same ranges. Only right now they don't. The newer strafing rules are a tad better though.

I don't like that VTOLs can now never attack aeros from above even if they're higher in elevation than aeros are in altitude. It shouldn't matter that VTOLs are "ground" units. If they're above aeros they should be treated so. I also think there should be some kind of conversion between thrust points and elevations. Other than for LAMs in airmech mode I don't think their are any. But admittedly it's been while since I looked. Maybe that's been changed?

Are there rules for up and down in space? From what I can tell there aren't any unless you're in orbit attacking the surface.

Turrets would be nice. They're in the art and fluff and were used historically.

[Crimson Dynamo]

Check out the attached after action report. AMS would have made the Taihou more competitive, but it still would have died, probably around 14 hexes with the Oozes being targeted early.

That AAR has me drooling! What program is that you're using?

[Akalabeth]

I'm new and I am finding space battles a lil frustrating, in the fiction the dropships were soemthing to be feared but in my first match 6 Stuka's basically raped my union, I will be the first to say my inexperience had to contribute but dang...instead of buying mech mini's I am getting some fighters next.

You have to bear in mind that the Union is essentially a transport. Not a warship.
If you had an Achilles go up against those fighters the story might play out a little differently.

[Jellico]

That AAR has me drooling! What program is that you're using?

Megamek

You have to bear in mind that the Union is essentially a transport. Not a warship.
If you had an Achilles go up against those fighters the story might play out a little differently.

But not much. In simple count the guns, 6 average ASF will have most DropShips outgunned and out armoured.

[Euphonium]

I've only played space combat with fighters, and the occasional dropship. I've played under original AeroTech, AT2, and most recently under what might have been TW, but wasn't obviously different from AT2.

I've only ever played with vector movement, and I liked how it worked.
We played with S/M/L/E range brackets once, and the rest of the time with individual weapon ranges. Both worked OK as rules systems, but the fixed brackets lead us to want a totally different construction system.

I'd like to play more aerospace stuff, but I think we'll probably redesign every single DS and WS from the ground up first. They just don't make sense to us is so many ways.

[Wrangler]

I've only played space combat with fighters, and the occasional dropship. I've played under original AeroTech, AT2, and most recently under what might have been TW, but wasn't obviously different from AT2.

I've only ever played with vector movement, and I liked how it worked.
We played with S/M/L/E range brackets once, and the rest of the time with individual weapon ranges. Both worked OK as rules systems, but the fixed brackets lead us to want a totally different construction system.

I'd like to play more aerospace stuff, but I think we'll probably redesign every single DS and WS from the ground up first. They just don't make sense to us is so many ways.

Why the redesign?  I'm curious.  Have you and your group used Strategic Operation book which has other Aerospace options? 

There was also version of AT2 called Aerotech 2 Revised that came just before rules were split up between TW and StratOps.

[Euphonium]

Why the redesign?  I'm curious. 

I like killing Catgirls.

More seriously, for the most part we feel DS and WS stats don't match the fluff well enough, and being old-timers, we like the WS fluff from TRO2750.

Then you get things like you can supposedly carry out an effective objective raid with a single Union, but if you look at the stats it can barely support itself away from base, let alone steal a meaningful cargo.

Have you and your group used Strategic Operation book which has other Aerospace options? 

There was also version of AT2 called Aerotech 2 Revised that came just before rules were split up between TW and StratOps.

We have not used StratOps. I've got the PDF, but our usual GM doesn't yet. I haven't had time to give it a proper read yet.

I think we were using AT2r, but couldn't be certain - it's been a while since we played.

[Bedwyr]

Mod request. Please drop the 'rape' line of chatter. That stuff's real to some people.


Thanks.

[Hairbear541]

Well I see I'm not the only one faced with the dilemma of to many competing sets of space combat rules. It presents quandary to chose which to use, and which really work well. But since I got this computer I have found a really good space combat engine that really works when used with the BattleTech/BattleSpace universe ships. Attack Vector is its name. Since most space combat even in the BT universe is reminds one of naval engagements from the age of sail, though with roll, pitch &yaw thrown in for good measure. Instead of wind for motive force, advanced fusion rockets and reaction control thrusters to achieve said roll, pitch or yaw maneuvers. IT works just great.

[Kovax]

I never cared for the Aerotech system, because there was no real "movement" modifier for fast, maneuverable fighters compared to slow and less-agile gun platforms.  To me, it removes half of the point in maneuvering.  In most cases, the biggest guns win, unless the more agile ships can win initiative repeatedly and stay out of the bigger ships' firing arcs entirely.

On the other hand, the light fighters have so much Structural Integrity that it takes more time to destroy the internals than the thin armor.  On the bigger ships, the armor holds out close to forever, but once penetrated, the Structural Integrity is gone in a couple of hits.  It makes very little sense in more than a few respects, and I don't like it.  Maybe it's changed since I last played it, but it never really kept me interested.

I'm somewhat more fond of the "Full Thrust" rules, at least for capital ship actions.  That game's handling of fighter combat is kind of simplistic, but the capitals seem to work well.