This sounds like my sort of catnip. Im totally down.
:D
Some questions:
1.) Where are you looking at on a scale of Fluff-----Munchkin in designs? Real world designers try to build the best thing they can within their constraints. Battletech designs are often intentionally suboptimal. Something like the '4 corners' layout would, once put into practice, revolutionize in-universe warship building the way AON armor and all-big-gun armament did real world warships.
70/30? I want to use BT construction rules, but I don't intend to adjudicate battles with BT combat rules. A "4 corners" layout would be legal, but I'd be much more likely to have a battle wind up with someone getting into your blind spot, or to have half your anti-fighter weapons blown apart by one PPC barrage, if you try to munchkin like that. This is part of the appeal of using battle reports as the means to communicate back to you guys what works and what doesn't - I can avoid the official AMS rules(and thus make sure we don't obsolete a whole weapon class) without needing to specify exactly what I'm using in its place. Real military designers don't get to design around a given set of dice roll statistics.
2.) What optional rules, if any, are you considering? I know theres been discussion of 'how to fix the warship rules' relating to warship armor vs. standard scale weaponry and how anti-missile systems work. This is particularly salient in light of question #1, given the phenomenal firepower of standard scale weaponry per ton when compared to capital weaponry. Replacing big guns with small ones costs you some range, but you can easily get enough firepower to simply erase ANYTHING that does come within your range - and you also immunize yourself against fighters. It is too good.
I don't have a formal rule set you could use to play tabletop written up, but I'll be going with common sense. AMS knocks down missiles, and more is better, but you don't get immunity. Fighters can threaten warships, but not using Mech-scale small lasers - I'll probably fluff it that armour resists small weapons, but that capital missiles are fitted to bomb hardpoints on fighters as an anti-shipping weapon. Using Mech-scale weapons to attack WarShips will work once you've already breached their armour and you just want to trash the guts of the ship, or if you want to attack systems on the surface of the ship(blinding sensors, attacking light AA mounts, etc.), but it'll do very little to intact armour plates.
3.) We need to know what resources are. How many slipways? How big? Whats the procurement budget in general terms? Do we care about listed costs as a hard reality thing, or is it more fluff? Whats our air arm look like? Can we afford to grow it if we want to go CV heavy? Do we need to restrict fighter usage because the Government says air assets are for ground support? Whats our existing force like, or are we designing from an initial clean sheet? ((Compact Cores are Discovered! The Hegemony is building a Navy, and now YOU SHOULD TOO!)) We build very differently if we have infinite budget and limited slipways than we do with infinite slipways and limited budget. We build very differently depending on how maintenance costs compare to construction costs, and how attrition units cost in production vs. maintenance. We build very differently if a ship is expected to last 5 years or 250 years.
It'll probably vary by faction and over time. As of 2350, probably one or two yards that can each build a single-digit number of ships, a few supporting factories to make the specialty equipment(naval guns, etc.), and a budget in the range of perhaps a hundred billion a year. That will increase over time, and then decrease rapidly when the nukes start flying post-Amaris. I'm not sure if I'll add an economic simulation aspect to this or not - I like the idea, but it could be complicated, and the tradeoffs(i.e., a lower budget for ground forces) would need to be included for it to be fair.
Re ship durability, in canon they routinely lasted centuries. (Helps that there's no water to corrode them and tech progress is rather slow, of course). I assume a typical design can be operated for a couple centuries as long as it gets proper maintenance throughout.
4.) What is our threat environment? What are our opponents like? Who do we expect them to be? Do we expect nukes to figure in every engagement, or do we believe (truly or falsely) that We Just Dont Do That? Designs for a "Davion and Davion-Deceased" universe are going to look very different from a "Ares Accords Control" universe?
Your opponents are each other, so I leave that to your twisted imaginations >:D
I will say that I'll definitely read the fluff and follow through on your stated doctrine whenever plausible. If you say you're operating your empire on a no-first-nuke rule and trying to use your L-F batteries solely to disengage from fights going badly, then I'll have your admirals work to follow through on that doctrine in practice. A force designed around high strategic mobility and nodal defence will play differently than one designed around offensive pirate point invasions, or one designed around massed fighter strikes in set-piece battles.
5.) Whats our strategic posture/anticipated mission? A 'defensive' force intended to stop enemy planetary landings looks different than an offensive force intended to support an invasion looks different from a commerce raiding force from a commerce protection force from a blah blah blah.
I'm not saying you have to set out all of this! But more information is good, and I look forward to seeing the different solutions various players propose to various problems.
As above, you're different empires that have a tendancy to fight each other. It's still the standard BT universe, so ground forces are primary, and naval vessels are used in a supporting role more often than not. You still want to conquer planets, gain factories, and the like. This won't be a railroaded RPG campaign - I'm pretty much willing to roll with any ideas you might have. Just be aware that (much like IRL) some ideas are very bad.
