Alpha Strike After Thoughts

So on Friday 10th January I played Alpha Strike for the first time.  Tonight I expect to play it for the second time.

What worked?

I bought it on the premise of it being a simplified and distilled rule set that enabled me to play Battletech on a Friday night.  It lived up to that premise and then some.
4 players working in teams of 2.
100 points a side which worked out as 10 mechs on one side and 9 mechs on another.
Total play time was around 1 hour and 40 minutes.
It felt like Battletech.  This is of particular importance.  Ok so it's a different game, a simpler game but it's still Battletech.
Let me put it another way.
We were able to play a game that using even the Introductory Box Set rules would have taken probably 6-8 hours to play through and that's optimistic.  The result and "style" of play was largely the same though.

What didn't work?

Well that's harder to quantify given it's been a LONG TIME since I played Battletech properly.
In and of itself there were only a few things that I wasn't sure about.
We were only using the most basic of rules so it wasn't a true test of the game system. There were a few things that just didn't feel right though.
Charge rules - not clearly defined in the book as far as I could tell.  Need to re-read to see if we were mis-interpreting it as the way we were playing a Charge essentially became a free hit (with risk associated).
Heat rules - Again didn't feel clearly defined so it almost became irrelevant.  Again needs a re-read.

So what's next?

A few more games with the basic rules, adding in complexity over time.  Also likely to try more varied points values.

Overall though?  It's Battletech Lite but Battletech nonetheless and that's good enough for me.