The day I bought my boxed set was so much fun! In fact, I can't remember owning KH.. 

...I was happy enough with the rules that I didn't mind. I did think it a little strange that the game assumed that the characters would never own their own ship, but knowing Knight Hawks was out there it was a non-issue for me. 

I'm taking a break from the Star Frontiersman to read Knight Hawks right now. So far so good, except I'm currently wading through the ship design stuff which mostly seems to be about costs of parts, time it takes to install them, the availability of a good repair station, etc. In other words, this is stuff I will be streamlining for the most part. Resource expenditure is fine and good when calculating what you can afford--I like that--however simulationist bean-counting doesn't have much of a place in my games. Loved the board game rules, and I'm looking forward to the next chapter when we get to Spaceship Skills!

But Alpha Dawn seems to do a fine job standing on its own, imo. Especially with all the counters, maps, 2 very customizable rulesets, and an adventure!

Besides, we made our own ship rules right away, basing them loosely off the parameters of the vehicle rules. By the time we had everything hammered out and running smoothly, the KH set came out.

From there it was a simple matter of re-speccing our existing ships to KH rules, with one major drawback --- we rendered our ships in the cinematic effect: decks parallel to main axis versus the KH rendering of decks perpendicular to create gravity under acceleration. It was a natural selection to go with decks-parallel prior to the KH box, what with the popularity of Star Wars & Star Trek coupled with the canon ships (Serena Dawn from SF:0, Omicron from the Ref Screen, and the crashed Hepplewhite Inc ship from the rulebook sample scenario).

So our solution? One of us had picked up the Traveller "Traders & Gunboats" supplement along the way (prior to KH) to base our deck plans from, and they kept mentioning "gravitics" and "inertial compensators" so we simply incorporated that aspect into our re-specced/pre-KH rules ships.

Now the real disappointment?

Having started rendering decks-perpendicular ships, which I finally warmed up to after the SF/KH:1 Dramune Run module...what do we get? The Sathar scout ship in the Beyond the Frontier series rendered in DECKS PARALLEL FORMAT!!!

Really, I wanted to strangle someone...

Then I felt smart when I discovered this community and found out I wasn't in the minority. Hooray!

Personally, I will admit porting SOME of it over as campaign material. But on the whole it was a disappointment on many levels, from game mecahnics alterations to terrible interior artwork to conflicting information and finally its incomplete nature (two more volumes were promised but never made).

In short, I can't think of a more perfect way to kill off a game than the decision to launch (followed by nixxing) something like the Zeb guide. Seriously, had the other two books made it to production, it could have at least had a chance as Star Frontiers 2.0 --- which would open the floor to debate much like the various renditions of D&D/AD&D, but at least it would have made something of a run if it were completed.

However, that Book:2 was extremely BASIC when it came to ships in the Traveller game. It was well laid out for basic ship specifications and designs, but as far as scope of the game, it was very limited...100-1000ton designs were as far as you could go with it. If you do the math according to their 14cubic meters-per-ton parameters, 1000T comes out to the minimum size requirements of a HS:5 ship in Star Frontiers (which is about 1300 tons, minus the 25% variation permitted in the SF rules is 975 tons). 

And those rules were for civilian ships only. The beginning Traveller player never got to see actual warships at all, the 800T mercenary cruiser was about as wicked as one could get. If you were going to have any fleet maneuvers with the basic boxed set, you were be limited to cutters, scout/couriers, small tramp freighters, and mercenary cruisers...IIRC system defense boats may have been included but I can't confirm that without tearing the house apart to find the book.

Finally, rather than having a fold out map you used a ruler and pencil (assuming you had huge sheets of paper to roll out) or string to map out ship movement on the floor.

This part is something that really shouldn't become an issue, at least not once you start running a few boardgame sessions. 

Launch times --- taking off from a planet is 1d10 minutes per hull size. If your players have starships, this isn't going to be much of an issue unless it's an assault scout or smaller...rules say starships up to HS:3 can make planetfall. Not too many players will opt for system ships as their primary means of travel (which, again limited to planetfall, goes up to HS:5...it opens up a debate why the ship's drives and computer software determines how big a ship can land, but that's another debate for another time), so unless your group has a bigger starship that invokes shuttles this won't pop up very often.

(optional) Gravity Rule is just that --- optional. Don't like it? Don't use it.

Chemical Drive take off speeds again...another moot issue. I haven't come across the need for this one ever, in those few cases where the players have a chem-drive system ship I just haven't seen the need to determine their speed or distance at any given moment. Since there are no rules governing AD weapons versus ships, it's assumed that if anything should be firing at the ship it isn't going to do much (if any) damage. Seriously, look at the damage you have to do with AD weaponry to open a man-sized hole in the hull as listed on p.38 of the KH book...those are STRUCTURE POINTS via planted explosives, not STA points from fired guns. The closest thing resembling a rule in this regard is detailed under the Laser PowerTorch --- it takes four turns to cut a 1x1 meter square section out of a hull panel and if used as a weapon, it inflicts 20d10. If a hand weapon can inflict 20d10 worth of damage in four consecutive hits on the same location, we can assume it leaves a similar sized hole...which does nothing to hull integrity aside from pressurization issues. That's a rather far fetched affair for a AD hand weapon.

After a half hour of acceleration, the ship reaches a speed of 60,000m per turn (AD turns, as in six seconds per turn, not the KH ten minute turn) and escapes the atmosphere. At this point KH time takes over and the ship is moving one hex per turn with an ADF of 1. About the only threat here is pursuing chem drive ships that may follow, but again if they have KH weapons their ranges are measured in 10,000km hexes so if the ship is still within range of the gun --- meaning if it hasn't broken atmosphere and travelled beyond the 90,000km range of a laser battery etc --- then it's still in range. Really, it's a moot rule that I haven't found a need for yet.

The rule is little more than a solution for a rare to unique problem.

Think about it, any ship that still has power will attempt to accelerate away from, maneuver away from, and/or fire at anyone chasing it. If a pursuing ship can manage to linger for five turns in the same hex, that's point blank firing for the battery weapons on BOTH ships. No range modifier for any of them, they can fire with maximum chance to hit. What captain in their right mind would subject a ship to that, assuming at least one gun is still operational? Even if the guns were down, the pursuing ship would still fare better by making those called shots. And if they can actually manage to stay in that same-hex range for five turns, then they have certainly earned the opportunity to grapple. Alas, any energy gun on the pursuing ship can fire those called shots twice per turn: once during the movement phase and once during the defensive phase. Ten point blank shots per gun at -30 to hit (plus operator bonus), they're gonna land a hit or two. That ship should be disabled long before you can fire the grapples. 

Thanks for the detailed writeup, by the way, ShadowShack.

One other item of noteworthy mention on grapples --- it's a MHS:5 weapon. Not many players will opt for that when they can have a  battery or cannon in its place. The MHS limitations for civilian ships simply doesn't allow the luxury of a lot of guns, and most (if not all) people will prefer a weapon system with a range greater than point blank.