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Lord Cameron, from the Classic BattleTech forums, and I met today to give AeroTech a try. All ASFs used belong to Lord Cameron. I borrowed his Lyran Guard ASFs.

Back Story:
It is the year 3025 and four Lyran Guard ASFs, played by me, are on a routine space patrol near a border planet close to the Draconis Combine when they are set upon by four Drac raiders, played by Lord Cameron, on a recon mission to test Lyran ASF defences.

Here are the Lyran Guard ASFs:



These include:

Thunderbird (100 tons)
R15 Lucifer (65 tons)
HCT-213 Hellcat (60 tons)
SL-25 Samurai (50 tons)

Total - 275 tons

The Lyrans are flying at a velocity of 4 in close formation when they encounter the Draconis raiders:



The Dracs include:
F-100 Riever (100 tons)
Slayer (80 tons)
Shilone (65 tons)
Sholager (35 tons)

Total - 280 tons

The Drac pilots are eager to earn glory for their Coordinator.

Here's the Slayer:



Here's the Shilone:



The distance closes. The Dracs spread out but the Lyrans remain in tight formation.



I win initiative as we begin to turn and burn. The Top Gun theme begins playing in my head. I am a fan of concentrated firepower so I plan to take out the thing I fear the most on the board, the Slayer. My Hellcat, Lucifer, and Thunderbird line up for a coordinated attacked on the Slayer:



Things really get mixed up in the dogfight but I continue to pour as much firepower into the Slayer as possible:



The Dracs hit my Lucifer hard too, completely stripping it of armour on its right wing and knocking out two of its small lasers. The Lyran Lucifer, however, strikes back and blows the Slayer to smithereens! First kill!



My Lucifer is badly damaged so I let him drift further from the dogfight but still engaging with his LRM 20 and large lasers. Now I concentrate on the weakest link, the Sholager. The Dracs want to finish the Lucifer but their velocity is taking them away from him:



The Dracs are now outnumbered and lose initiative again. The poor 35 ton Sholager finds itself in the middle of the deadly scrum and is pounded from all directions. The Thunderbird finishes it off:



All four Lyran pilots now turn their merciless attention to the Shilone. The four Lyrans don't bother shooting at the F-100 because the Riever has all short range weapons except for one pathetic LRM 10 so they just stay away from its short range and completely ignore it. The Shilone begins getting shot up and at this point the two surviving Dracs begin burning for home.



The Lyran fighters pour on the parting shots in the hope of finishing the severely battered Shilone but despite losing internal structure, most of its armour, its engine being damaged, and its pilot being wounded, both Drac raiders make it out of the kill zone.

The Lyrans are still in great shape. The Lucifer has no right wing, there is little left of the Samurai's right wing, and the T-Bird has lost 30 of its 80 nose armour, but all four Lyran ASFs are still kicking.

I would say the MVP of the battle was the Lucy:



It took the brunt of the enemy fire for a couple turns and then drifted happily away still sniping away safe from the shorter range weapons of its opponents.

The LVP (Least Valuable Player) was definately the 100 ton F-100 Riever. Throughout the entire battle it only ever really fired its tiny LRM 10 and was ignored because it couldn't catch any prey.

Lord Cameron's Dracs do have a cool paint job. He has more in the squadron with the blazing fire paint job:



I would say this battle taught the importance of concentrated firepower and the necessity of having weapons with some range to them. The Lucy kept contributing to the battle as she safely drifted from her tormentors while the Riever contributed almost nothing despite being right in the middle of the battle!

Anyhoo. Fun battle.

Never really played an aerospace battle. Closest thing were some attack runs during a mech fight.

How are the rules, are they fun to play? Similar to other space battle rulesets?

Nice battle and write up.

And those were some nicely painted up draco fighters. too bad they didnt win. hahahah!

Although I am pretty much 100% enamored with Silent Death for spaceship battles, I have always wanted to try out Aerotech. I even got the old rulebook and all, but never really gave it a shot. So definitely interesting to see the report! I don't know if you're already a member, but I'm sure the die hard CBTers at the old Lords of the Battlefield forum would love to see some of these games.

Also I'd recommend a handful of rocks for asteroids for any future games, since nothing says "cinematic space battle" like dodging giant floating debris.

BAWTRM wrote:Never really played an aerospace battle. Closest thing were some attack runs during a mech fight.

How are the rules, are they fun to play? Similar to other space battle rulesets?

It's a lot of fun to play but a bit complicated. In space, the direction you are pointing may not be the direction you are headed. They did this all the time actually in the new Battlestar Galactica series. For example, I burn my engines to go a velocity of 4 in one direction and then use my maneuvering thrusters to turn my fighter in a different diection so I'm still moving one way but pointing another. All the dice you see at the bases of the fighters are to keep track of the velocity and direction of each fighter. It's complicated because the game designers try to account for every stitch of realistic space movement they can.

But that also allows for some pretty innovative strategies. For example, after the big furball when our fighters met at close range, my Lucy got pretty banged up so I used the maneuvering thrusters to turn her around and then let her to continue to drift backwards while blazing away at pursuers. Very few sci-fi movies, shows, or games account or allow for such possibilities. In most other space games you would have to expose your aft quarters to retreat.

Complicated but fun. I still prefer the BattleTech land battles but AeroTech space battles do intrigue me because innovation and creative thinking are allowed and rewarded.