Yep, having them is better than not.
I gave you two books it was in and a page number for the second one. Why the disbelief? Only if it was designed that way.  Because they look cool, give you a place to mount more ordinance (external and internal), and might save on fuel.  Have you never seen jumpjets. Also their mentioned in two rulebooks. Their not as good as dedicated VTOL equipment for conventional fighters but they can still get the job done. Game mechanics wise, the dice role for doing a VTOL landing in an aerospace fighter has a harder dice role than a conventional fighter with dedicated VTOL equipment. Can you explain your example here. Are you talking about aerobraking?

Maybe they are referring to LAM'S (Land Air Mechs).  They had the ability to convert from aerospace fighter to a hybrid to a mech.

no my thing was normal thrusters for aired world since the plasma engines don't work with ionized particles (atmospheres)...sooo since there is a difference b/n Aerospace and conventional I suppose this is possible.

He's referring to the current limitations of our ion/electrical/fusionish engines, at least currently they do not work in an ionized atmosphere and their enormous lack in thrust makes them only usable in space*.

(I wouldn't claim to be much of an expert, I'm mostly just relaying what I've read and thrown in my own speculations.)

It could be possible (and this seems to be the case) that they fixed the issue of thrust (this being fictional and a ways into the future).  So that would eliminate the thrust problem.

The other issue with ion/electrical/fusionish engines is the presence of ionized particles.  Some of the atmosphere of a planet is ionized by solar radiation (Ionosphere of earth for example) this would also be in like in thunderstorms where there are charged particles.  But that doesn't seem so much of an issue if they eliminated the thrust problem, even on reentry it probably would be no more than a minor inconvenience.  the intakes on several of the craft seem to denote the use of ram jets maybe.


So either the air intake would be for transitional engines(or just for use in ionized atmospheric areas), but maybe they work as ram jets.  The intake configuration of the sabre might denote the use of a ram jet (upper intakes don't really appear to add to normal jet function due to their position, being too far back to seemingly go into a main jet engine, however not too far back to not possibly be a ram jet intake).  If they aren't using any jet turbines or ram jets there wouldn't really be a need for air intake like those.

Ram Jets might not be really uber high tech, but they don't have moving parts and if those things zip around pretty fast, then they would probably be very beneficial from a practical standpoint, it would certainly add thrust by further compression of the gases, and/or making the engine more efficient at high speeds.  more or less acting like a turbo-charger on a car.  Or it would allow them to have boosters (in atmosphere) for quick get-away boosts or long travel.  It may also just add speed or maybe if they haven't really fixed the thrust problem to the extent where an electric thrust engine would be practical in atmosphere, but isn't useless, just not able to provide enough thrust.

some interesting reading on our current ion thrusters http://www.nasa.gov/vision/universe/features/nep_prometheus.html

*quote from the article linked above.
"Although Herakles' thrust is as gentle as the force of 10 U.S. quarters in your hand, the speed of the spacecraft will constantly increase as it travels. That means Prometheus 1 could eventually reach speeds greater than 200,000 mph -- 10 times faster than the speed of Space Shuttles." (this is in space)

**To be totally honest, other than an interesting read into the (currently developing) technology, the whole big argument is mostly just pointless.  Sure some of these things aren't really physically possible, but that's part of the reason we love sci-fi.**

Why are you guys discussing this?

Lmao. Actually...Though it may not be CALLED an ion drive, what you describe could very well be considered a form of Ion drive. But I digress.

I'm also curious, why on earth did the planes thread get hijacked to what kind of drives the aerospace use in battletech?

well Im re-hijacking it!  about how much does it take to take an aerospace fighter down?  say a Sulla and a Shiva

CLEAR!  Live damn you LIVE!!!     time to wake this up for a question or two more...Will you be able to shoot off a wing, then watch as the victim spirals down to earth or is it BF-2 style?  Or even cooler could you ignite the engine and watch him try to glide emergency land?  Lastly will there be G effects?