Aerotech 3.0 upgrades, rules fixes and new tech.

[Red Pins]

Yeah, good luck with that.   :(  Of course, I didn't play it either for all this time, so I can't complain.

I think to see a resurgence, there needs to be some kind of interest outside the normal 'mech only' players.  Maybe a change in setting. 

[Maingunnery]

Yeah, good luck with that.   :(  Of course, I didn't play it either for all this time, so I can't complain.

I think to see a resurgence, there needs to be some kind of interest outside the normal 'mech only' players.  Maybe a change in setting.

At this point it would require someone make an Aerotech PC game first.

[Red Pins]

Hmm.  Good idea.

[I am Belch II]

I just would love to see a update to the Aerotech line.....but not enough people want it. It scares the Battletech players.

[Retry]

I'd be more interested in the Aerotech line if the Aerotech line (ASFs, ConvFighters, and Small Craft in particular) were more interesting to both design and play, which would basically require redesigning the entire thing.  Which, I suppose would basically be "Aerotech 3" then.

They all fly virtually the same regardless of their shape or size, just select the speed, armor, and guns (which are further simplified on the aero scale).  'Mechs (and vees, to an extent) feel like there's a lot more ways to differentiate them and make them unique and fun, comparatively speaking.  It'd take quite a bit for me to get excited about an Aerotech update.

[massey]

Aerotech failed because it was boring.  Nobody wants to calculate tons of fuel per burn day, or deal with calculating every little part of a hundred thousand ton warship.  Everybody who wanted to do that has posted in this thread.  That's not enough people to support a game.

I look here for something like playable rules and I just see the same old stuff.  None of this approaches being a fun game.  Worry about getting fighter vs fighter combat right, make it entertaining to actually play, and then worry about dropships and warships.

Edit:  Sorry, re-read my post and saw I was coming across like a jerk.  Didn't mean to.  But I do think that Aerotech has to focus on playability first and foremost.  That was always its biggest flaw.

[Daryk]

Not everybody has posted yet...  ^-^

[I am Belch II]

Yeah the Aerotech rules are really broken.

[Red Pins]

Math scares people.  Make it more like X-wing, and who knows?

[massey]

Math scares people.  Make it more like X-wing, and who knows?

I don't think that's a bad idea.  I haven't played X-Wing, but I know it's supposed to be pretty popular.

The original Aerotech rules tried to take Battletech equipment stats and port them over to another game.  Ranges were the same, damage was the same, engine weights were the same, etc.  Since then, different versions of the rules have changed that a lot.  Since we aren't married to the same equipment stats and rules anymore, I think you should just focus on making the game fun and playable.

I don't really have a great idea on how to do that -- I'm not a game designer.  But you could redo it completely from the ground up.  Personally I think that using tonnage to calculate things like dropships and warships is a mistake.  Everybody wants to make the most efficient combat machine they can, bristling with weapons and loaded with armor.  But the most effective designs in the real world would be ones with as much cargo capacity as you can spare.

[Charistoph]

Math scares people.  Make it more like X-wing, and who knows?

Yeah, BattleClick is definitely the more popular version of Battletech, so we should set up Aerotech to do the same.

In all seriousness, there are three aspects of Aerotech: "Atomospheric" (i.e. close enough to strafe, bomb, etc), Orbital (only Capital weapons will be hitting the ground), and "Deep Space" (what ground?).  The rest of Battletech mainly concerns itself with terrain and what the atmosphere may be like (temperature, too much, too little, etc).  This latter makes it easier to set up, and we can see such terrain features and how they affect travel on a daily basis.  Meanwhile, space and air travel/engineering is almost esoteric, such as the phrase, "it's not rocket surgery".

To add on to the fact that Aerotech is also not trying to be Star Wars where inertial dampeners and repulsors can give a craft a flying profile as if they were in atmosphere, but have to rely on thrust vectors, and we can't seriously be looking at an X-Wing-style game except in Atmospheric conditions and possibly Orbital.  Deep Space has to either be completely ignored or use a similar set up to what we have now.

Now, if we're talking construction, one could easily point out that the same would apply to BattleMechs, and X-Wing's construction system is rather... limited, though being more robust than Warmachine's.  You don't control the weapons (largely), but select options to add on to that.  If you don't want to build ASF through Warships like one does with Tanks and Battlemechs, this is perfectly fine, but otherwise, we're more or less stuck with what we have.

[Red Pins]

I don't think that's a bad idea.  I haven't played X-Wing, but I know it's supposed to be pretty popular.

The original Aerotech rules tried to take Battletech equipment stats and port them over to another game.  Ranges were the same, damage was the same, engine weights were the same, etc.  Since then, different versions of the rules have changed that a lot.  Since we aren't married to the same equipment stats and rules anymore, I think you should just focus on making the game fun and playable.

I don't really have a great idea on how to do that -- I'm not a game designer.  But you could redo it completely from the ground up.  Personally I think that using tonnage to calculate things like dropships and warships is a mistake.  Everybody wants to make the most efficient combat machine they can, bristling with weapons and loaded with armor.  But the most effective designs in the real world would be ones with as much cargo capacity as you can spare.

No, I don't either.

Mind you, there are enough games that deal with different speeds, sizes, arcs, and environment conditions that some combination might be appropriate.  It becomes a matter of  selection, reasoning,  practical use in the setting, and in-game dynamics.  We could specify parameters, but there are reasons successful games are rare - getting to that sweet spot where complexity, duration, and playability come together is hard.

[idea weenie]

To me the goal should be putting the complexity on the design side, rather than on the game side.

So the tabletop gamer might know that their ship has XXX points of armor on a certain facing, with a YY Threshold, while the designer had to make tradeoffs between extra heat dissipation, advanced sensor arrays, hull surface area, tonnage allocated to armor, and structural strength to prevent that armor from being crumpled like a sheet of paper.

The tabletop gamer would know they have XXXX fuel points, the designer knows that the ship masses 875 ktons and based on the engine type it uses YY tons of fuel per ton of mass.

The tabletop gamer knows the ship has 48 ASF bays but only 12 doors to launch them with.  The designer wanted to be able to launch 24 at a time, but there was a trade-off between extra doors vs excess surface area reducing the armor protection wanted.

It should be like making sausage - output is tasty, but don't look at how it is made unless you are really certain.

It wouldn't be GURPS level, but the goal would be to avoid the 50 kton brackets for ships (caused by the 1 Docking collar per 50 ktons of FTL capable ship).  You should be able to plug in the engine type (civilian, various military grade engines), and get out a pair of multipliers.  Those multipliers are then multiplied by the ship mass to determine tons per thrust point and tons per burn-day.  These two final values are written on the warship sheet.  The designer then has to determine how many tons of fuel to carry.

As much as possible should be equation-based and when plotted would yield a curve, rather than staircase.

[massey]

Suppose we are starting from scratch.  Forget about any previous rules or designs.  Keep only the basic concepts — jumpships carry dropships, dropships carry other stuff, aerospace fighters are maneuverable short ranged attackers, warships are big nasty badasses.

How do you make that fun?

Here’s a suggestion.  Don’t try to do everything at once.  It’s a game, treat it like one and use abstraction to reduce any complexity that makes it boring or unfun.

Jumpships are fragile terrain pieces that don’t move.  Yes, they can technically move, but within the context of the game they are always stationary.  They are too slow to get even a single point of movement.  They also can’t move fast enough to target weapons.  All jumpships count as unarmed, even if they technically have weapons.  They are just too slow to shoot at anything else (weapons are for picking off small asteroids and such).

Dropships move slowly, turn slowly, and require planning their movement ahead of time (I.e., they lose initiative to fighters).  They can carry a lot of weapons and armor, but because they are slow to respond and hard to maneuver they are vulnerable to fighters.  They tend to move slowly across the map in stately paths (usually their thrusters are being used to either speed up or slow down, so they aren’t dancing around like a fighter).

Warships are even bigger and even less maneuverable.  Their movement must be plotted a full turn ahead of time.  They take up multiple hexes and move like dropships.  They have enough firepower to pop a dropship in one volley.  Very powerful but tricky to use, they carry dropships and fighters to cover their weaknesses.

Don’t worry about realistic movement.  Fighters can move however you want them to move, with the excuse that they’ve got maneuvering thrusters all over.

[Red Pins]

...Look, if you want to work on this seriously - really seriously, we should approach the BMers,  and not have it open on the forum.

Otherwise, I'm open to helping figure it out.  A first step might be to mine the current core rulebook for Aerotech-related stuff to go over and use as a starting point.  A second might be to identify where it doesn't work - normally I ask a playtester to tell me this, but since I never really played it, I can help.

And we'd need the standard org chart, etc.  The old saw about, "Most jobs are done by committees of one" applies here too.  May as well not reinvent the wheel.

[I am Belch II]

I would like to help come up with some ideas for a redo...I guess it would be hard to keep the core of the stuff before the redo still the same. But with the way of the rules, I guess would be really hard.

[Red Pins]

Yeah.  I was looking when I did my entry for Cannonshop's warship design contest, and its...  Well, a humble of books and rules.  Without a determined leader most fan groups can't do big projects, so I suspect this one will languish.  If Cannonshop's and others write successful fan fiction there might be impetus but even here those of us interested in AS are a small fraction.

[Col Toda]

Back in the FASA days saw rules for PPC Spinal mounts as heat : mass : damage :   for light med and heavy is known.  Even saw a few never adopted designs. 

[Empyrus]

As someone who is mildly interested in Aerotech (primarily the air to ground aspect), it has a lot of issues, as a game and as a system. Some thoughts, that unfortunately sounded better in my brain but i somehow couldn't present them quite as i thought them.

It needs a starter product and miniatures for visibility and ease of use. Essentially something like a BattleTech Beginner Box as a proof of concept.
As a system, it also should be less cumbersome, and more interesting (to my untrained eye, all units look awfully similar overall despite different weapons). And less fridge logic, like apparently same lasers having different ranges in AeroTech and BattleTech... (This one i'd solve by making AeroTech use its own tech, its own missiles, etc.)
I haven't actually played AT, trying to learn it via TW rules didn't work out. Felt too cumbersome, is it really? But regardless of that, not being a stand-alone product is a major issue with the game.

As a game, it would compete with X-wing miniatures game (and the like, err if there's any popular ones). Difficult position. Needs something special to act as a hook. (If X-wing's system could be licensed, being "not-Star Wars" might actually work as a selling point, especially coupled with good miniatures. No comment on how WarShips would work in this case.)
This part is what makes aerospace battles really hard to sell to me. I might as well X-wing instead. And see below for the setting issue.

Setting is an issue as well. As part of BT, AeroTech lives in 'Mechs' shadow. Essentially all wars in BTU are decided on the ground, space battles are just a side show. Makes it hard to sell, if players like to imagine their games being meaningful battles.
If AT could be retooled into air to ground support aspect, it could be interesting addition to BattleTech but with realistic-style rules it is too cumbersome, not to mention aircraft flashing over the map isn't particularly cool.

Were AT in its own setting, if successful, rules could be transplanted to BT, i think. But setting up a new setting for AeroTech comes with different problems...

[Talen5000]

Suppose we are starting from scratch.  Forget about any previous rules or designs.  Keep only the basic concepts — jumpships carry dropships, dropships carry other stuff, aerospace fighters are maneuverable short ranged attackers, warships are big nasty badasses.

How do you make that fun?

As with anything else, it depends.

There are three factors at play here.

First...there is the story. The background. The tech.
How do you want the universe to work? How realistic do you want it?

And, if you want to go back to first principles, how much of the existing canon do you want to save?


Fuel usage is one aspect. Armour is another. Weapon choice and effectiveness. Do you want AI, automation, drones? What role do fighters play? And so on.

Another aspect is the role of space combat. Space combat is rare because the focus is on Mechs. That meant WarShips were removed from the game setting, and they were made extraordibarily vulnerable.

Second...is design. The construction element of BT is a fun little side game. It provides a great deal of enjoyment. But it also has its own foibles. Fuel and armour is too light. Engines too heavy. Crew needs are too vague.  And so on.

Third...is combat. The actual game. And again, it can be fun but at the same time there are various shortcomings. There is no real terrain in space. Combat is the meat of the game.


So...what to change?
 
The setting.
WarShips should be more common and combat more involved. But planetary SDS systems should be the norm. The Terran SDS system should be more advanced, using lasers and particle beams, satellite platforms and drones but planetary SDS based around specialised nukes should deter WarShips getting too close to the planet. It might take hundreds to swarm a WarShips defences but this set up might, if handled properly, allow for WarShips to take a greater role.
 
The weapons and tech, construction
Pretty much unchanged. It'd be nice to see coreless vessels as viable, and jumpsails ten to fifty times larger and ships with internal bays rather than collars, lighter engines and jumpcores but more mass devoted to armour and fuel. Won't stop it breaking physics but might be less obvious. Merging the construction of DropShips and WarShips would also be an idea. Other measures might include civilian or merchant vessels....e.g., each ton of cargo space allows for 0.4 tons of cargo but a merchant structure or open plan vessel adds vulnerability but could allow for each ton allocated  to cargo to hold 0.9 tons. Would people want to see the maximum mass increased to 25 million tons or more? Might not change anything but you could allocate more mass to armour and fuel.


The game
It might be worthwhile to tinker with scales....500km hexes and 5 minute turns.
It might be an idea to move away from ablative armour in favour of a straightforward Armour Rating. No damage unless the AR is breached but a simplified critical hit system if it is. Armour degradation would be measured by reducing the AR.
It might be worthwhile to change how fighters fight. Forbid them from damaging capital vessels but give them anti ship torpedoes.
Weapons? How to differentiate between weapons? Lasers and particle beams, missiles and ballistic weapons. ACs should short ranged, and lasers supremely accurate unless some limitations are clarified. Missiles would be the ultimate weapon...long ranged, powerful and accurate...but would be bulky and expensive.


In short, there is a lot that could be done but it depends on your end goals and whether or not you are willing to change anything


Marketing and selling such a game would depend on the type of game you want.

But a successful game would require that WarShips be a viable tool in the current story. That means allowing more battles and engagements.

[idea weenie]

Another aspect is the role of space combat. Space combat is rare because the focus is on Mechs. That meant WarShips were removed from the game setting, and they were made extraordibarily vulnerable.

Second...is design. The construction element of BT is a fun little side game. It provides a great deal of enjoyment. But it also has its own foibles. Fuel and armour is too light. Engines too heavy. Crew needs are too vague.  And so on.

Third...is combat. The actual game. And again, it can be fun but at the same time there are various shortcomings. There is no real terrain in space. Combat is the meat of the game.

For me, Aerotech 3 would be:

• Warships would be like Mobile Structures: very powerful, very dangerous, but their FTL core means they are not as dangerous ton for ton as a Dropship
• Dropships be like Mechs, civilian Dropships like Vehs, and ASF/SC squadrons like infantry
• ASF would be better as part of a squadron.  This prevents having to keep track of multiple single ASF flying around the board.  You can still do so, but there should be some sort of bonus for being in a squadron when fighting Dropships or Warships.
• Fuel would be an equation based on mass, rather than a chart with fixed steps
• All vessels could mount Quarters and regular seats for additional personnel, with the note that regular seats do not provide the long-term life-support needs that a Quarters would.  So if you have a small craft that just needs to make a ~14 day run from the planet to the Jump point, where it gets resupplied, you can do so without needing to put a 5 ton Quarters for each person.
• Quarters would be more efficient at ~60 days rather than the current ~100 days.  An easy way to do it would be to increase the number of man-days per ton of supplies for Quarters.
• Max SI is no longer limited to 30 * max OverThrust.  You can mount as much SI as you want, but there would be thrust SI and armor SI.  Thrust SI is designed so the ship can keep using its engines at full even after a few shots hit structural members.  Armor SI provides most of the Threshold values.
• Armor can be mounted in levels above what SI can handle.  Armor doesn't provide a lot of Threshold however (a thick piece of metal needs something supporting it to avoid being knocked over by enemy shots)
• Space stations ca be built BIG.  Let's see what a 25 MTon space station can be like.  Then let's see what the price is for that monstrosity
• Weapon linkages to increase range.  You want 2* the range for your Naval Lasers?  State at the start of the turn that you are linking and firing 4 of them together.  Calculate the new range and damage as based on the shortest range and lowest damage of the linked weapons.
• All ships can mount all weapons, so the true Capital weapons need a reason why they should not be mounted on Dropships as spinal mounts
• Make a reason for bays.  Reduced fire control needs might be one reason why
• Bay max sizes are proportional to ship size, rather than 70 pts no matter the size of the ship.  A destroyer mounting a pair of 40-pt bays is going to be praying hard when the McKenna with 180-pt bays looks at it
• Massive Targeting computers and ECM systems can be mounted on Warships and larger Dropships.  An ASF trying to shoot at a Warship is going to have a difficult time when the 3 kiloton jammer on the Warship is futzing up the ASF's scanners.  Hopefully the ASF is part of a strike package with a SC or Dropship providing targeting bonuses.
• Civilian Dropships are cheaper, easier to maintain, but are fuel hungrier and weaker to enemy fire.
• All options are available to all classes.  For example, a Civilian Dropship might have a military engine to allow for better endurance, while the rest of the vessel uses civilian-grade equipment for lower costs
• Energy Storage batteries are variable masses, but can only recharge a vessel up to 10* their mass (these are not Lithium-Fusion Batteries).  So instead of a 100 kton system that can recharge anything, you have a setup where you can charge however many ships that fit in the capacity
• Variable size Solar sails, for recharge stations.  If the recharge station is expected to handle 1 MTon of cargo vessels per week, then you purchase a Solar sail sized for 1 MTon, then adjusted based on the recharge time of the local star (take the star's recharge time in hours, divide that by 168 hours, and multiply that by the solar sail mass of a 1 MTon vessel)
• Onboard maintenance/repair shops that provide bonuses to repair rolls.  Off-hand they would start at 100 tons for a '+1' to the repair roll for a single system, 1000 tons for a +2 to the roll for a single system, aso.  They can also provide a boost to endurance, since the mounting ship can use the repair/maintenance shop to make custom equipment from less specialized equipment (i.e. instead of storing multiple pipes with different bends, you stock several lengths of straight pipe and have a pipe bending machine
• Coreless vessels can be built, but are noted as being useless strategically as they cannot maneuver strategically
• Station-keeping is only 1/100 of a G, not 1/10.  Recalculate fuel consumption based on this

The weapons and tech, construction
Pretty much unchanged. It'd be nice to see coreless vessels as viable, and jumpsails ten to fifty times larger and ships with internal bays rather than collars, lighter engines and jumpcores but more mass devoted to armour and fuel. Won't stop it breaking physics but might be less obvious. Merging the construction of DropShips and WarShips would also be an idea. Other measures might include civilian or merchant vessels....e.g., each ton of cargo space allows for 0.4 tons of cargo but a merchant structure or open plan vessel adds vulnerability but could allow for each ton allocated  to cargo to hold 0.9 tons. Would people want to see the maximum mass increased to 25 million tons or more? Might not change anything but you could allocate more mass to armour and fuel.

Larger jumpsails, so vessels can recharge faster (but still limited to core cooling rates).  So a ship built with a sail 125% larger than normal would be noted as having a 80% sail.  This would mean that the ship can recharge its core in 80% of the normal recharge time.  For a system with a 200 hour recharge time, this means the ship could be recharged in as little as 160 hours, but would be subject to the penalties for recharging in less than 175 hours.  For a system with 300 hour recharge time, the ship could be recharged in 240 hours.

Designing Space vessels would be answering the following questions (and others I haven't thought of yet):

• Internal FTL capable: Y/N (i.e. Warships and Jumpships)
• External FTL capable: Y/N (i.e. Dropships and jumpable space stations)
• Acceleration capacity: (some number) used for Monitors and combat space stations that want to maneuver at a speed higher than station-keeping (and for systems that have lost KF capability and want to move their space station to another in-system planet)
• Atmosphere capable: Y/N (i.e. vessels that can land vs those that cannot; landing ability is a massive cost increase plus the higher engine mass per Thrust point - 6.5% vs 6%)
• Internal specialized environment: Y/N (structures that can handle separate environments internally vs those that cannot; i.e. a 300 ton satellite with cargo would cost less than a 300 ton space station with cargo, while a 300 ton satellite with Quarters would cost more than a 300 ton space station with Quarters).  Various techs would be remarked as needing separate environments.

A satellite would be the ultimate cheap platform, as it has no FTL ability (unless you carry it as cargo), no acceleration ability, cannot enter atmosphere safely, and has no internal specialized environment.

A KF core vessel that can land would be obscenely expensive.  Internal KF capability, acceleration capacity, atmosphere capable, and needing a specialized internal environment for its KF core means that this would be the sort of toy only a trillionaire would buy.

I would like to be able to take a basic metal shell (i.e. a 1 ton satellite with only cargo capacity and station-keeping thrusters/computers) and steadily increase its mass, capabilities, and options to turn it into a fast armored space station, all through a single construction model.  Based on the options, I would use different multipliers for different options and items.  I.e. a satellite might have a lower cost multiplier than a space station, but if there are Quarters on that satellite then the Quarters would cost 4-5* what they would cost on a space station (and maybe a tonnage increase too?)

The game
It might be worthwhile to tinker with scales....500km hexes and 5 minute turns.
It might be an idea to move away from ablative armour in favour of a straightforward Armour Rating. No damage unless the AR is breached but a simplified critical hit system if it is. Armour degradation would be measured by reducing the AR.
It might be worthwhile to change how fighters fight. Forbid them from damaging capital vessels but give them anti ship torpedoes.
Weapons? How to differentiate between weapons? Lasers and particle beams, missiles and ballistic weapons. ACs should short ranged, and lasers supremely accurate unless some limitations are clarified. Missiles would be the ultimate weapon...long ranged, powerful and accurate...but would be bulky and expensive.

I'd like to use a combination of ablative and resistive armor.  Ships mounting resistive armor take far less damage from smaller weapons, and heavier weapons are needed to crack their hulls.  Ablative will be cheaper, but will provide the protection after the Resistive armor has reduced incoming damage by a bit.

This would also require modifying ASF/Small Craft/Weapon bays to include the number of weapons being fired, rather than just listing total damage.  For example, a Warship might have Resistive Armor 4 on a facing.  A swarm of ASF with lots of medium lasers get into range and open fire, but 4 pts of damage are subtracted from each of the lasers, meaning each Medium Laser only does 1 pt of damage.  Another group of ASF with PPCs gets into range, and they are doing 6 pts of damage per PPC that hits.

The players don't know the specifics.  All that the first group knows is that their weapon looks like:
Lasers (10) - 30 - 50 - 0 - 0 (10 laser weapons, doing a total of 30 heat, 50 damage at short range, and zero damage at the other ranges)
PPCs (3) - 30 - 30 - 30 - 0 (3 PPC weapons, doing 30 heat, and 30 pts of damage at each range)

When the first group fires its lasers, it does 50 pts of damage.  However the defender has resistive armor 4, meaning they multiply the resistive armor value by the number of weapons, and get 40.  So 50-40 is 10, and the medium-laser armed ASF only do 10 pts of damage to that location.

When the second group fires its PPCs, it does 30 pts of damage.  However the defender has resistive armor 4, meaning they multiply the resistive armor value by the number of weapons, and get 12.  So 30-12 is 18, and the PPC-armed ASF do 18 pts of damage to that location.

However, if the Armor is breached on a location, that means the Resistive value is no longer considered.  So a Warship with an exposed flank will need an anti-fighter screen to keep that hole protected, while the ASF are clustering around that open wound, trying to destroy as many internals as possible.

Lasers would have reduced Threshold capability, Particle Beams slightly more, Autocannon and Gauss would be much shorter ranges but have a decent chance of Thresholding.

[Talen5000]

For me, Aerotech 3 would be:

• Warships would be like Mobile Structures: very powerful, very dangerous, but their FTL core means they are not as dangerous ton for ton as a Dropship

Again, that depends on how you want things to play out.

Do you want DropShips or their equivalent to pose a threat to WarShips.
More accurately, do you want Mech scale weaponry to pose a threat?

It would be easy to limit WarShips to capital scale only and in so doing, give the weapon separation some have advocated.This would render ASFs useless so you'd then need a new weapon class...the torpedo. A fighter launched heavy missile designed to attack WarShips.

To provide greater differentiation, DropShips or coreless vessels which use capital scale weaponry would be reined in by the need to incorporate a spine or keel to absorb the stresses of firing such massive weapons.

The goal here is to provide differentiation between the different types of craft and greater opportunities for game balance by separating point defence from anti fighter from anti DropShip and antiWarShip, and between military and civilian.

In other words...you need a WarShip to fight a WarShip

All vessels could mount Quarters and regular seats for additional personnel, with the note that regular seats do not provide the long-term life-support needs that a Quarters would.  So if you have a small craft that just needs to make a ~14 day run from the planet to the Jump point, where it gets resupplied, you can do so without needing to put a 5 ton Quarters for each person.

Two ways to handle this.
Each piece of equipment comes with a minimum crew requirement, which provides for operation and use, and crew is assigned separately

Or

The mass of each piece of equipment includes the mass of any quarters required by the crew needed to maintain and operate it.

I prefer the former...it makes construction more detailed and complex, but also allows for quirks such as not enough crew or too many. A fixed mass of life support consumables per person to represent air, food and water.

What is needed is a "cockpit" or "bridge". Short range shuttles or bombers don't require cabins.

Max SI is no longer limited to 30 * max OverThrust.  You can mount as much SI as you want, but there would be thrust SI and armor SI.  Thrust SI is designed so the ship can keep using its engines at full even after a few shots hit structural members.  Armor SI provides most of the Threshold values.

• Armor can be mounted in levels above what SI can handle.  Armor doesn't provide a lot of Threshold however (a thick piece of metal needs something supporting it to avoid being knocked over by enemy shots)

Armour should be heavy. SI likewise.

Space stations ca be built BIG.  Let's see what a 25 MTon space station can be like.

I don't think that would work without major changes elsewhere.

I could see arguments that WarShips should have their maximum mass increased by 10 or 20 times, but that would require armour and fuel to increase drastically. Probably SI as well.

Space Stations should have no maximum mass, but should be restricted in terms of what they could offer. There would also be gameplay issues if they get big enough

All ships can mount all weapons, so the true Capital weapons need a reason why they should not be mounted on Dropships as spinal mounts

Easy...a spine/keel is needed to absorb the stress or energy of firing. No spine means no ballistic or energy capital weapons.

Bay max sizes are proportional to ship size, rather than 70 pts no matter the size of the ship.  A destroyer mounting a pair of 40-pt bays is going to be praying hard when the McKenna with 180-pt bays looks at it

Probably easier to make bays less efficient as size increases....2 40 point bays mass less than 1 70 point bay.

Massive Targeting computers and ECM systems can be mounted on Warships and larger Dropships.  An ASF trying to shoot at a Warship is going to have a difficult time when the 3 kiloton jammer on the Warship is futzing up the ASF's scanners. 

Just assume part of the standard battleground. Specialist ECM systems and drones, decoys, etc could be covered with more advanced rules otherwise just say the existing TN assumes they are present

Energy Storage batteries are variable masses, but can only recharge a vessel up to 10* their mass (these are not Lithium-Fusion Batteries).

Better to give them a purpose or get rid of them.

Creless vessels can be built, but are noted as being useless strategically as they cannot maneuver strategically

Not needed for system defence

Larger jumpsails, so vessels can recharge faster

Was thinking more about restricting their charge time so that they do take a week to recharge.

[/list]

[Red Pins]

All of this is interesting, but broken up like this it's hard to do, especially the quote/respond/quote/respond.  Why don't you FaceTime or Discord?

*that presumes you're all serious about this stuff, of course.  And if you are I really think you need to approach Ray behind the scenes first.

[Charistoph]

Was thinking more about restricting their charge time so that they do take a week to recharge.

Charging faster has always been available, it just carried dangers when you went to Jump.

[Talen5000]

Charging faster has always been available, it just carried dangers when you went to Jump.

No....I meant actually arranging things do it does take a week.

With the info as presented, a Jumpcore can be fully charged in less than two days.

Either the charge required needs to increase, or jumpsail effectiveness need to decrease because as things stands, a simple diesel generator can produce enough power to spark the drive in real time.

No storage needed...just a small and compact diesel generator.
OK...not that small and compact, but you could get a drive going with 50 tons devoted to the generator and fuel.

By the same token, energy batteries are a waste. You require the same week to recharge with or without them and whatever time you gain through not unfurling the sail is lost by maneuvering to catch the power transfer. Not to mention, using a 100,000 ton battery to replace a 2 ton generator is a huge waste.

[Charistoph]

No....I meant actually arranging things do it does take a week.

Yes, I understand this.  I'm saying I disagree because I think it is a bad idea.

The possibility existed but Bad Things happened if you pushed the recharging faster.  This was a constraint on the core.  This provides the opportunity for story-based events where someone will risk it to gain X hours/days to get to their objective, right after holding a gun to the Jump Ship captain's head who doesn't want Bad Things to happen to them or their ship.

Functionally speaking, Jump Ships still will recharge in a week because it is prohibitive to do so for many reasons.  Warships, too, because if a Jump Ship is rare and expensive, a Warship will be exponentially more.

[Talen5000]

.The possibility existed but Bad Things happened if you pushed the recharging faster.

No, you still misunderstand. This is fixing the lore.

The lore in this area is contradictory. It SHOULD take a,week to recharge the core going by the lore.

Going by the tech specs we have? The entire sail assrmbly can be replaced by a 70 T diesel generator. Not just the core...the entirepower storge network - core, sail, etc. Theres no need for a jump core to store power when a small generator can generate the power as needed.

The sail size should be increased.
The sail efficiency should decrease
The amount of power needed for the jump should increase.


This has nothing to do with quick charging at all.

[idea weenie]

(Apologies, I got ideas and they kept coming)

Do you want DropShips or their equivalent to pose a threat to WarShips.
More accurately, do you want Mech scale weaponry to pose a threat?

It would be easy to limit WarShips to capital scale only and in so doing, give the weapon separation some have advocated.This would render ASFs useless so you'd then need a new weapon class...the torpedo. A fighter launched heavy missile designed to attack WarShips.

To provide greater differentiation, DropShips or coreless vessels which use capital scale weaponry would be reined in by the need to incorporate a spine or keel to absorb the stresses of firing such massive weapons.

The goal here is to provide differentiation between the different types of craft and greater opportunities for game balance by separating point defence from anti fighter from anti DropShip and antiWarShip, and between military and civilian.

Dropships would definitely pose a threat to Warships twice their own mass.  A short-range Dropship designed only for space fighting might be able to threaten more, since it would only have bay masses per crew member rather than Quarters masses, and would be using Warship masses for engines rather than Dropship masses.  However, if that Dropship tried to enter atmosphere, it would have a bad time (figure every turn it takes damage to its engines and has to make a piloting roll since it was never designed for atmospheric operations), and then perform a lithobraking maneuver.

BT scale weapons would pose a threat to Warships, it would just require using the larger weapons (PPCs, Gauss Rifles, AC/10, AC/20) to do anything more than tickle.  Smaller weapons could take a targeting penalty and get to roll on a critical hits table.  This reflects that smaller weapons are being aimed at sensor pods, turret mechanisms, maneuvering jets, airlocks, etc.  The targeting penalty means that anyone trying this has to get close or have a really good sensor system, so performing this against a full-strength Warship would require the Warships to either be caught by surprise, or severely distracted.

Capital weapons are already weak on a damage/ton basis compared to standard weapons, with their range being the main advantage they have.  I don't want to reduce that further.  Standard weapons should have the highest damage per ton, but the smallest overall damage and range.  Capital weapons would be the lowest damage per ton and highest range, with high damage per weapon.  Sub-Cap would be in-between the two.  So you could have a Dropship mounting Capital weapons, but it would do more damage to normal armor if it mounted Sub-Cap or regular weapons.

Two ways to handle this.
Each piece of equipment comes with a minimum crew requirement, which provides for operation and use, and crew is assigned separately
Or
The mass of each piece of equipment includes the mass of any quarters required by the crew needed to maintain and operate it.

I prefer the former...it makes construction more detailed and complex, but also allows for quirks such as not enough crew or too many. A fixed mass of life support consumables per person to represent air, food and water.

What is needed is a "cockpit" or "bridge". Short range shuttles or bombers don't require cabins.

How about the mass of each item includes 'seats' for the people using it, with life support capacity/usage similar to Bays.  This covers the minimum crew requirement, and add a note that additional personnel can be carried in Bay Quarters to allow for full utilization (i.e. the Bridge/Control allows for a single 8 hour shift of coverage, but additional Bays allow having additional people to allow for 24/7 coverage).  Overall Bay Quarters would allow carrying extra people, at a horrendous usage of life support.  Quarters are used if you want longer-range capacity.  ASF cockpits would incorporate a little bit of life support as part of their tonnage, and extra cargo capacity could be devoted to additional life support.

So if you just need a 1 day life support capacity for a ground to space shuttle, you can do that.  If you just need 2 weeks for a planet to Jump point shuttle, you can do that too.  More tonnage per Bay person allows longer before they start taking penalties (i.e. imagine riding cattle car class for 1 hour up to orbit.  Now imagine riding cattle car class from the planet to the local Jump point ~10 days away.

A 'Quarters' would provide one person-day of recycling systems.  Different levels of Quarters provide fancier systems, more variety in food service, or simply higher luxury.  Quarters would be used to keep someone alive on a long-duration mission, or to convert waste from Bay life support into Life Support material (at some loss percentage).

Armour should be heavy. SI likewise.

I could see arguments that WarShips should have their maximum mass increased by 10 or 20 times, but that would require armour and fuel to increase drastically. Probably SI as well.

Space Stations should have no maximum mass, but should be restricted in terms of what they could offer. There would also be gameplay issues if they get big enough

Larger vessels would get fewer free heat sinks, but their armor would be twice as thick as a smaller ship 1/8 the mass, assuming both ships use the same mass fraction and all else is identical.  (a ship 8* the mass is 2* as long, wide, and tall meaning it has 4* the surface area).

How about structural SI mass fraction going up at a faster rate than the station mass?  I.e. structural SI would be:
1 + [(Space Station Mass)/10000] / 100 as a percent of the station's mass

So a 100 kton station would require 1.1% of the station's Mass for structure
A 1 MTon station would require 2% of the station's Mass for structure
A 10 MTon station would require 11% of the station's Mass for structure
(The above is for concept only, actual numbers can be adjusted.  More advanced materials allow a lower mass fraction, but even they will eventually yield to higher mass needs.  I.e. Endo-steel structure would be .55%, 1%, and 5.5% for the above stations)

Easy...a spine/keel is needed to absorb the stress or energy of firing. No spine means no ballistic or energy capital weapons.

Probably easier to make bays less efficient as size increases....2 40 point bays mass less than 1 70 point bay.

Capital weapons are still lower in damage/ton than regular weapons, and I'd like to avoid making them worse.

Just assume part of the standard battleground. Specialist ECM systems and drones, decoys, etc could be covered with more advanced rules otherwise just say the existing TN assumes they are present

Better to give them a purpose or get rid of them.

Energy Storage Batteries already have a purpose - to allow ships to recharge at a faster rate over stars with long recharge times.  My goal is to link Energy Storage batteries to the size of the ship they can handle.  The current model has a 100 kton Battery able to provide power to anything from a Scout to a Leviathan, with no change.

For example, imagine a recharge station that expects 1 MTon of KF-ships arriving per week.  So the designer selects a Jumpsail for a 1 MTon vessel, then adjusts the mass of the Jumpsail based on the recharge time of the local star.  The onboard Energy Storage Batteries are sized to provide recharging to up to 1 MTon of Jumpships per week.

(1 MTon of KF-ship can mean 1 million tons worth of Jumpships arriving that week, to 500 ktons of Warships all with Li-Fusion batteries arriving per week)

Another station expects 250 kton of KF-ships per week.  It would have a sail sized for a 250 kton vessel and adjusted due to the local star, and enough Energy Storage Batteries for 250 kton of vessels.

A third station expects 1 MTon of KF-ships per month, but they all come by at once each month.  1 MTon per month is roughly 250 kton per week, so the designer selects a Jump sail for a 250 kton vessel (adjusted for the local star).  However, the designer also installs Energy Storage Batteries for 1 MTon of Jumpships, since it has to provide all of that energy at once.

A fourth station is a paranoid military/recharge station.  It expects the same 1 MTon of KF-ships per week, but doesn't want them anywhere nearby.  So it buys the Jumpsail for a 1 MTon vessel (adjusted for the star), and instead of Energy Batteries will be installing microwave emitters so it broadcasts the power to the receiving Jumpship.

Not needed for system defence

Was thinking more about restricting their charge time so that they do take a week to recharge.

System defense would allow covering a variety of eras/tech levels.  Coreless ships allow for excellent defense in one location, but cannot be safely moved while at war. (You'd have to disassemble the ship, transport the pieces as cargo to the destination, and re-assemble it at the destination.  During this entire process the coreless ship is vulnerable.)

Other options for them:
1) Old slowboat ships that were sent out from Terra before KF drives were developed
2) Clever probes that could maintain a separate interior environment for sample processing
3) Battle stations that want more than station-keeping thrust without the Dropship cost multiplier (since they will never land)

As for recharge time, we already have that with the recharge table where if you take less time to recharge, you roll to see if the drive takes damage.  That part would be left alone.  The goal is to allow for faster recharging over stars with a 300 hour recharge time, not to cut the safe recharge time.  Energy Storage Batteries already allow faster safe recharge if they are directly hooked up to the KF core.  ESB also allow faster recharging if you are over a 300-hour star, and would prefer to recharge in 175 hours.

For the recharge time of 2 days, what was the likelihood of failure for doing so?

Jumpsail size and mass can be adjusted to provide enough power, though the problem is at 10 AU the amount of power from a star is very low (for Sol, that would be ~15 Watts/m^2).  Personally, I'd want the sail to be not just power gathering, but also serving as a heat dissipation system.  Improvements in Jumpsail efficiency were in the areas of sturdiness and ease of deployment and retraction.  We have to live with the image of Jumpsails soaking up power, so might as well go with something that works.

KF Cores are not the power systems.  They are a precisely balanced antenna that when carefully charged allows breaking the laws of physics, plus the insulation and super-cooling systems that keep the antenna from shattering while doing so.  The slow charging rates could be due to not wanting your FTL drive to crack and leave you stranded, rather than power demands.  (Similar to cooking food via heat, instead of explosives)

Most (99%+) KF-ships use a week to recharge because there is nothing nearby to recharge from, and because it is safer on the drive.  Faster charging is taking risks, and BT Mad Max era did not reward taking excess risks with your only source of FTL transportation.

(Oof, longer than i expected.  Good thoughts though)

[Talen5000]

(Apologies, I got ideas and they kept coming)

They do.

Dropships would definitely pose a threat to Warships twice their own mass.

Again....it depends on what you want.

Should DropShips be able to cause damage to WarShips?
That is a legitimate question.

And the answer is "yes" or "no" or "yes, if...."

A more straightforward way is " should Mech scale weaponry be capable of damaging WarShips?".

There are pros and cons to both but the answers lie in both personal preference and in the viability of WarShips.

One of the reasons AT hasn't taken off is because the game system deliberately goes out of the way to make WarShips weak. That in turn makes the visuals of massive space battles non existent.

Frankly, as things stand, the idea of a WarShip in the BTU is laughable. They are too vulnerable for their cost. By the same token, any world with a 20th century level of tech should be able to create a devaststing SDS system based on nuclear ICBMs.

For any true AT successor to appear, foibles such as this should be dealt with. WarShips and space combat need to be viable in a game devoted to WarShips and space combat and right now, a squadron of nuclear armed ASFs with 2 or 3 squadrons of escorts all configured for a deep space intercept...even a high speed pass...would take care of most invaders.

DropShips and ASFs could and should remain a threat, but the question here is whether standard weaponry would be viable, or if there should be greater variation between weaponry and armour.

Should an ASF be able to attack a WarShip if it is armed with just Mech scale weaponry? Should it be able to just inflict critical damage to external systems? Should it require specialist weapons such as antiShip torpedoes?

Another question is should ASFs be treated as individuals or as groups? RL had an interpretation where fighters were treated as individuals with the rest of the squadron being treated as off board and engaged in their oen fights.

Capital weapons are already weak on a damage/ton basis compared to standard weapons, with their range being the main advantage they have.  I don't want to reduce that further.

Personally, one easy change I would suggest is to reduce the range of standard weapons.   
Short = 1 hex
Medium = 2 hex
Long = 3 hex
Extreme = 4 hex for IS, 4-5 hexes for Clan

How about the mass of each item includes 'seats' for the people using it, with life support capacity/usage similar to Bays.

Again, it depends on how much detail and complexity you want and where you want to put it.  Quarters could be assigned as part of the system, but it would be clearer, simpler and more customisable to simply give give each piece a crew requirement and give the designer of tailoring the crew size to his vision.

So a 100 kton station would require 1.1% of the station's Mass for structure

Well, I was thinking something more akin to 30% for structure.

Capital weapons are still lower in damage/ton than regular weapons, and I'd like to avoid making them worse.

Energy Storage Batteries already have a purpose - to allow ships to recharge at a faster rate over stars with long recharge times. 

Which means for 99.99% of the time they are worthless. Build a shuttle with a 100T diesel generator for the rest.

There is, as far as I can see, no point to the ESB because the quick charge they allow saves only a couple of hours over standard. Whats more, NO ship should take more than the minimum time to recharge because, even if the core can't handle a direct connection, you simply shine a spot light on the sail.

ESBs are worthless, but that is because the whole recharge and sail system is poorly thought out. But even following the rules instead of roleplaying shortcuts, an ESB system is a 100k ton system that saves a couple of hours.

ESBs had a point early on when they could recharge a JumpShip neatly instantaneously but this was changed early on.

ESBs, today, requires the JumpShip to deploy its sail and recharge over 150 hours. A saving of zero hours. A direct connection saves time thanks to the +2 bonus which makes it safer but also require the JumpShip to maneuver.

The saving here is supposedly fuel rather than time, but the disconnect in this instance is that Jump travel is supposed to take a huge amount of power but the actual requirement is low. This is a side effect of the desire to use JumpSails which provides a reasonably unique feel and look (copied from Traveller IIRC) but also limits the power requirements.

Making ESBs work means upping the power needed to jump to make that investment work. That in turn means JumpSails need to increase in size means increasing its mass simply to ensure portable generators aren't a feasible replacement.

System defense would allow covering a variety of eras/tech levels.  Coreless ships allow for excellent defense in one location, but cannot be safely moved while at war. (You'd have to disassemble the ship, transport the pieces as cargo to the destination, and re-assemble it at the destination.  During this entire process the coreless ship is vulnerable.)

DropShips share the same issues.

By coreless vessel, I'm suggesting something akin to a Behemoth.

Take a Behemoth...militarise it. Add a spine massing 30% of the ship mass and then add some capital scale weaponry. Its going to carry mote weapons and armour than a similarly sized WarShip but you're effectively replacing 45% jump core with a 30% spine.

You're limiting yourself by trying to retain the artificial JumpShip and DropShip distinction and assuming an SDV must be too large to transport.

As for recharge time, we already have that with the recharge table where if you take less time to recharge, you roll to see if the drive takes damage.  That part would be left alone. 

Again, under the current system, there is no reason for a charge to take over 175 hours.

The slow charging rates could be due to not wanting your FTL drive to crack and leave you stranded, rather than power demands.  (Similar to cooking food via heat, instead of explosives)

Part of the problem here is that the power requirements are so low that there is no need to actually store power. 70 tons devoted to 1950s-era diesel engines provide enough power to jump on an on-demand basis.

[Charistoph]

No, you still misunderstand. This is fixing the lore.

The lore in this area is contradictory. It SHOULD take a,week to recharge the core going by the lore.

Going by the tech specs we have? The entire sail assrmbly can be replaced by a 70 T diesel generator. Not just the core...the entirepower storge network - core, sail, etc. Theres no need for a jump core to store power when a small generator can generate the power as needed.

The sail size should be increased.
The sail efficiency should decrease
The amount of power needed for the jump should increase.


This has nothing to do with quick charging at all.

Yes, this has EVERYTHING to do with quick charging, because you are proposing eliminating it completely, as the statement, "it should take a week to recharge the core", indicates.  So, I understand where you are coming from.

And yes, you can replace the sail with a small generator.  The problem is carrying the fuel for running said generator for a full week as opposed to just gathering free solar energy.  In game and lore, this means running your engines hotter than the needed Thrust to provide the energy and consuming considerable amounts of fuel to do so.  While providing for the capacity, it takes a cost that may be significant to the player.

If all you want to address is the efficiency of the solar sail and make them bigger, than just leave it at that, but you keep referencing the "it should take a week to recharge", so this comes across as the real goal of your proposal.