They have FTL capability, it just can't be used within the course of the game. The eventual plan for these was to use them in a campaign, and we didn't want the ability to zip out of combat like that.

We'll have to give those a try. Although, wouldn't it just be easier to count each hex in a cloud as 2 hexes for the purpose of determining range?

So a shot that pass through 3 open hexes and 2 cloud hexes would resolve as range 7? No need to halve that way.

Hey Andy,

I should probably chime in here right? 

The ships in question are the ones I posted here:
http://mj12games.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=30&t=1729

When I built them I tried to stick closely to the FT stats Z4 gave me. Of course I added my own twists to it but overall the theme of the fleet was one that relied on huge spinal weapons and missiles for their "big guns". I intended them to kill quickly at range. That being said they do that and do it very well.

All and all these ships saw about 20 or so games by the time I played Andy, so not only did I know my fleet pretty well but the designs were pretty pretty lean with not much wasted space. Power gamed, ya probably, but it wasn't intentional. Those 20 are what my regular opponent (Matt) and I refer to as our "Arms Race". I added Marines and teleporters and captured half his fleet... the next time we played he had Marines. He swarmed me with fighters... the next time we played I added anti-fighter weapons to my destroyers.

Having said all that though, Matt and I have definitely implemented a few house rules from our games with the TDC. Capping out multipliers at 3x being one of them. Piercing and Increased Impact can utterly destroy ships with little shields and it got to the point where sometime I'd be rolling 15 DMG dice. We both thought that was a little too good. So now at most the Diplomat's Spinal Laser can roll at most 9 DMG dice in our games.

Another thing that seems to make a big difference in ships designs is weapon arcs. Most of my arcs are forward facing. Matt's are broadsides however. To be as effective as possible Matt needs to have targets on both sides of his ships. In a way, my weapons are more optimized because of their Arcs as the fire isn't spread out over a bigger area. Has this been taken into account in ORAT?

Keep up posted if those are going to get cast, I like the look of them.

How about a piece of Special Equipment called Damage Control Teams (or System?) that works with Option E1.

You can just use the Directed Damage mechanic and allow the player to re-roll the Damage Control roll if they choose.

The Fighter Defense roll always struck me as going against the game's trends. Rolling lower for this is better, where with other rolls rolling higher is better. Assigning a Defense Divisor to various saves (like with the Attack Divisor) would be an easy fix:

Save :: Defense Divisor
- :: 6
6+ :: 5
5+ :: 4
4+ :: 3
3+ :: 2
2+ :: 1

Also, any reason for no Attack 2+ Fighters? Too powerful?

Most of things I'd like to see have been related to the questions I've asked:

Armored Gun Batteries
Redundant Shielding
Interceptor
Bomber
Ranges 21 and 27

The first two I think would work fine using the Armor Plating mechanic from AE. The fighter options you said would be in the new compilation because they were in dreadnoughts. As to the Ranges, I'd only like them for completeness.

As to what else I'd like to see? Maybe rules for planetary assault and defense, more terrain options, and customizable marines with variable attack and defense values.

Oh, and boarding pods that aren't destroyed when they fail to penetrate the shields.

Thanks guys. I look forward to the compilation, AE is a great game.

Ah, thanks. Personally, I would just rename shields to ablative armor before I implemented something like this.  That being said, if you like it do it up.