Yeah, I realized early on that too much complexity was going to be out of my league. BL proved it to me, but also revealed that it could be MUCH simpler if the player were willing to make certain assumptions or have certain understandings. Basically, I would have to write things to explain WHY things were so simple, because actually making the rules that complicated wasted time and gained you no sense of accomplishment. It was pointless to be too realistic, and once I realized that, the game became MUCH simpler. Probably close to HG-level of simplicity, maybe more so, yet still allowed the player to make decisions that affect the battle.
As an example, you launch a salvo of missiles. You have a choice of when to detonate them. (They are the NDX variety.) At a hex away from your target, you have a very good chance of being able to set them all off, but the damage you do will probably not add up to much. If you detonate them in the same hex, there is a greater chance of them getting shot down, but each is likely to do more damage. And if you want to do an impact, well, one multi-megaton nuke is sufficient to cripple any ship if detonates on it or in it, but there is a very low likelihood of one of them getting through. Lasers and fighters are very good at shooting them down, but they have short range themselves, and the closer they are, the better they are at doing it, giving the defensive player the choice to risk waiting for them to come in closer or not.
But the owner of the flight of missiles has the option to detonate sooner and get SOMETHING, or to detonate one of them and use it as an area jammer (White Out space, if you've played BL or BR) or to disrupt enemy fighter groups. Of course, the missiles' options all result in their use, so you have to balance the odds of success against the number of missiles and enemy units there are. You wouldn't send a swarm of missiles against a swarm of well armed ships, but then again, if you can get just one in there, you can cause a lot of havoc, so do you risk that you may waste all those missiles? And, of course, there is a limit to the number you can put in the air. Bigger ships carry more missiles, but they all carry only 2 reloads. (No point in getting another allotment of them to have 6 salvoes, because launching facilities aren't that big, and if you've got the missiles, you should be allowed to launch them all in a firestorm. Modern ships don't usually carry more than 1 reload, no matter how many missiles they carry.)
Choreographing when each player gets to do these things is proving to be the major hassle. Should the defensive player always get the option to fire first or hold, or should the offensive player be capable of sneaking something in, especially if he's willing to put a ship in there at point-blank range, to get a hard-to-defend-against launch from the same hex (and risk getting hit by one from the defender). I've made it a hard decision whether to design your ships as multipurpose (carries a little of everything) or specialist (does one thing well, sucks at everything else), and if you go the specialist route, to get the ships where they're needed when they're needed.
No one weapon or tactic should be the king of the battlefield. There should always be something that beats whatever you can come up with, and you should have more choice than paper, rock, scissors.
