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Aerotech and Aerotech 2
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Vagabond
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PostPosted: 23-Oct-2014 17:11    Post subject: Aerotech and Aerotech 2 Reply to topic Reply with quote

I love Aerotech 2. It helped mold battletech's airforce into its ground elements. It works. Not always well, but it works.

But after looking back through the aerotech rulebook after I looked up an obscure reference about aerofighter weapons and their ranges, i asked myself a question.... why did they get ride of cockpits as a hit location?

Well, after reviewing the rules, I feel that AT2 lost some of the elegance of AT1 without needing too.

1. cockpits: AT1 had 6 hit locations: nose, wings, engine, fuselage, and cockpit. All of these could be hit depending upon direction of fire. If the nose, wing, or engine were destroyed (0 armor) then the craft would loose 2 SI and the damage would transfer to the fuselage at x2 damage. Only once the fuselage was gone did you deal damage to the SI.

In AT2, all of this has been reduced to 4 locations with no transfer and half damage to the SI. This means that each location is 5% more armored (the cockpit was a set 10 pts) but is balanced by thresholds.

Keeping the cockpit as a hit location does very little to interfere with the other hit location changes made in AT2. Make 12 a cockpit hit with 2 being a floating crit at +2 crit chance.

2. They removed an entire list of special maneuvers that make atmospheric combat interesting. AT2 atmospheric combat is uninteresting as he who has more aircraft and can win init is likely to win. These maneuvers could have spiced things up with little to no harm.

3. What few special maneuvers that they kept/created are restricted to the beginning of the unit's movement phase before the unit is moved but after it has increased or decreased its velocity (except for the side slip maneuver). In AT1, you could execute any of the maneuvers at any point during your movement. Always questioned why I couldn't maneuver mid movement.

4. I think AT2 should have kept damage transfer with wings taking damage until destroyed (0 armor) causing 2 SI with any remaining transferring to the nose or aft based upon the direction of fire or which hit location rolled for side shots. The transferred damage should be x2 to the new location, but only affect PSC based upon its base dmg. (Ie. an AC/20 hits a missing wing from the front causing 40 pts to the nose, but only effecting piloting checks at 20 dmg or +1 and not 40 or +2).

Welp, it was just something i thought about.
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Jade_Dragon
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PostPosted: 29-Oct-2014 02:18    Post subject: Aerotech and Aerotech 2 Reply to topic Reply with quote

I have always thought AT1 was a superior system when it came to pure fighter combat. AT2 does seem to bring it all together a bit better.
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Vagabond
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PostPosted: 29-Oct-2014 13:32    Post subject: Re: Aerotech and Aerotech 2 Reply to topic Reply with quote

Jade_Dragon wrote:
I have always thought AT1 was a superior system when it came to pure fighter combat. AT2 does seem to bring it all together a bit better.


exactly. AT1 looks way better as a fighter combat game while AT2 is way better at integrating that all into the ground elements.
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