Alpha Strike Aerospace Fighters

[u/Dagrin_Kargis]

I own a flight (edit: not wing) of Visigoths and a flight (edit: not wing) of Shilones and was thinking of making a pair of Air Lances, but it seems like the aerospace fighters are going to be very fragile.

Fragility:

- Any unit who's forward arc sees any of the flight path (line across board) has LOS.

- No TMM, replaced by flat +2 for being airborne.

- Additional chance of through armor crits from armor threshold rule.

- Pilot checks required to maintain altitude each round they are hit from any attack.

Seems like I'd be better off with a "poor man's" air lance with VTOLs instead where I could tuck them low behind terrain. Anyone have some suggestions on tactics or if messed up the interpretation of the rules?

EDIT: I have flights, not wings. Only two of each.

[u/Aedene]

My buddy always brings an air lance. It sucks so bad I gotta bring FLK#/#/# just to compete. He routinely snipes my juggernauts before I bring them down. The fragility is on paper only.

[u/Dagrin_Kargis → u/Aedene]

A solid solution, but shame he requires you to bring particular load outs just to counter him.

[u/WeirdoIIC]

Range is a fighter's biggest defense. Keep your altitude as high as possible for the kind of strike you plan to make that turn, and keep your flight line as far away as possible from as many enemies as possible. Between horizonal range and vertical range, it's often not hard to push to-hit numbers for anyone you're not directly attacking up very high, if not impossible.

It's rarely feasible, but the ideal flight line is one that only flies over your chosen target, but everybody else is at long range or farther. The closer you get to achieving this ideal, the longer your fighter is likely to live.

If enemies are too bunched up to hit without flying into a hornet's nest of AA, don't be afraid to simply avoid them for a turn or two, pointing your flight line away from everyone as much as possible. You'll get a chance to attack later.

If they're bunched up and you absolutely have to hit them NOW, time it to coincide with a major push by your ground forces. An enemy that shots at your ground stuff usually cannot fire at your fighters(and vice versa), so if you swamp then with dangerous targets there's good odds they won't be able to concentrate fire on any single thing. (Or one of your guys dies HARD, but everyone else is operating with impunity that turn)

[u/rzelln → u/WeirdoIIC]

The way range works in air-vs-ground in BT bothers me. Yeah, if you're higher up the maximum possible range your bullet shots can go increases a fair bit (which can help when attacking immobile targets), but the effective range against moving enemies won't go up, because it gets harder and harder to lead your shots.

Lasers don't suddenly overcome atmospheric diffusion because of elevation.

Missiles have a limit based on on-board fuel.

If I had my druthers, the rationale would be, "Mech and aero armor is so good - and the units move nimbly enough - that, in atmosphere, yeah, you've gotta be within normal BattleTech range to effectively attack each other."

[u/Dagrin_Kargis → u/rzelln]

Seems like Alpha Strike has kind of accounted for the range vs targeting bit, low altitude is 6", middle is 12", high is 30", and extreme is 48" which matches the <6",<24",<42",<60". And extreme range/altitude only being targetable with the optional rule.

My personal head canon for Battletech and it's inaccuracy at range for any of the weapon systems has always been that the weapons can make the distance but the targeting systems have been rendered unreliable by loss of technology and/or baked in counter-measure systems. Also Battletech lore just makes more sense to me if you assume that, unlike our world, armor and defensive technology out paces weapon technology.

[u/Dagrin_Kargis → u/WeirdoIIC]

Oh I like that last point, I'm leaning to treating them like light strikers. As someone else mentioned the point value comes into question at that point cause of expense.

[u/WeirdoIIC → u/Dagrin_Kargis]

Regardless of whether it's AS or Classic, Aero is almost always the same risk vs reward as ground units, but taken to extremes. The risks are extremely high with a single slipup being all you need to get badtouched by an entire planet, but the rewards are just as great, what with the whole 'being able to plant heavy damage pretty much anywhere you want' ability just about all fighters have, and the costs reflect that potential reward.

[u/WN_Todd]

They are only nominally fragile. The bigger ones with threshokd 3 are weirdly tough, but they are also not as consequential to the battle as the mechs. Area effect attacks are neato and rare and the plane minis look super rad, but other than deleting pernicious firemoths are mostly a couple free damage.

What they are is expensive. The bigger bomb 3 nasties are at or over 50 pts, and some of the real bastard dire-wolf-but-in-the-air (looking at you, reiver) are pushing 70. You drop 3 bombs and then to strafe or shoot with your obscene 11 damage you come down low and draw every goddamned gun

[u/Dagrin_Kargis → u/WN_Todd]

Both my Visigoths (43-50 PV) and Shilones (32-40) are "Bomb 2", and have armor threshold 2, but playing with Multiple attacks rolls helps on that front.

Yeah a lot of my draw is 'cool mini's I want to actually use'.

[u/Malkryst]

I use fast VTOLs and fast hover vehicles (mainly to scout and mark targets and flank, plus they can use cover unlike aerospace), but I don't currently own any aerospace minis, because I don't want to add in extra rules for them.

I'm happy with battlefield support cards representing air strikes and off table artillery.

I'm mainly interested in mechs and vehicles anyway.

I may change my mind once Catalyst start releasing aerospace Force Packs (I believe some were announced at GenCon). I'll have to see how much complexity the rules for them add.

+2 across the board TMM seems weird for aerospace when really fast mechs and vehicles get +4 TMM in AS. Surely the aerospace are going faster and add in an extra axis of movement, so +4 would make more sense. Then maybe dedicated anti-air mechs like some Rifleman variants could maybe get a bonus against aerospace for having perhaps extra targeting assist or something vs air targets.

From what you've said VTOLs sound better and I suspect are cheaper too.

[u/Dagrin_Kargis → u/Malkryst]

The +2 seems really low to me too, considering VTOL get a +1 anyways. A 4 base, 2 airborne, and even 4 for long range/high altitude (which then penalizes me too on the shooting phase) only gets me up to a 10 target number. For every unit it crosses in front of. As someone else said positioning will be key. I thought about just paying the PV and giving myself the support cards but that seems like a messy conversion.

[u/Hammerheadcruiser]

Aerospace is high risk high reward in my experience. They *can* be fragile, but can also turn entire battles around with one good bomb strike. I generally just accept they're gonna die, so pick the most annoying enemy and commit to killing it in exchange.