At this point the only defense would be friendly light fighters.
in the abstract system, fighters are very fragile.
Yep. Strafing is not very accurate.
not from what I read. the modifier is cumulative (harder to get an accurate shot in woods, etc.)
Originally there was no structure for Aerospace in the first Battleforce 2 conversions, and no threshold values. Just armor and no structure. Just as combat vehicles had no armor. CV's had their armor and structure added together and divided by 30. I presume each hit to a CV could trigger a roll for a critical on motive systems. Aero armor (no structure) was calculated by ArmorFactor divided by 4 (nose,sides,aft) and multiplied by .10, round normally.
The current structure values make Aero very weak, especially when used against Large or Capital units. I am personally leaning towards adopting the old conversions as they are seen in Battleforce 2. They are simpler and BV becomes less of a distraction, to say nothing of calculating PV, which is a massive time sink in itself.
As for tailing in BF, if you use the abstract system in SBF you only tail other units when one side fails their Engagement Control roll. It's a fine mechanic and I actually like it. The only change I would add would be using Tactical Values rather than unit size during Overruns in Aerospace situations. The Overruns are better suited, using unit size, for ground units.
You will have to turn to the older version of S.O. (with combined BF and Adv Aero) for conversions for Warships and borrow here and there to your taste from the BF2, old S.O. and considering AS:Companion conversions here and there for inspiration/balance/updates, such as the Engine size chart. The old chart only reaches 100 ton in the S.O. version, but has up to 200 if you plan on structure conversions for Mech/CV's. Aero would be chaff to any heavy weapons bay and the bay itself would interfere by its grouping... I just don't see it playing well across the scales. You can add Threshold values by dividing the armor by 10%, as seen in S.O., but you're better off dividing the armor by 4 and rounding normally. I'm still playing with the conversions myself and comparing them all. Good luck.
I prefer, myself, to use SBF all the way down to the Atmospheric Radar Map. Ditch the high alt map entirely and bring in a low Alt map. With the Planetary Map, I would divide MV for Combat Teams by 4 and use a 1d6 to monitor movement of units over the map. 1:Arrived, 2-5:Movement Cost, 6: Stand By. 6 standing for a Unit that has completed its movement but has delayed moving to a new hex. Each movement point being the 12 hours. After two turns, allow a single point of movement for the 7th, which would equal the 84 hours of an ACS turn and then complete the same process for the units in space hexes. Use normal movement under the Planetary Combat Maps, if you use them. I would, myself, prefer the BF scale with SBF movement in the space maps.
I think this is better representative of the scope of units in space, transiting from Nadir or Zenith points vs those on the ground. It'll have to do until a better system comes with better updates.
If you are not playing ACS scaled, the Star, Capital, and Atmospheric Radar maps will be better for BF and SBF scale. Though use of the Planetary Map makes orbital bombardment and satellite use more difficult for alignments. Which is fair, imo, considering how devastating they can be with a lot of luck. You CAN incorporate Atmospheric Radar maps as engagement maps for every hex in the Planetary Assault space map hexes.
