Do you use the hostile terrain rule in your games ? If yes how ? I'm thinking of using my battle system set to make an "inside ship" table, with either a reactor room (hostile due to radiation) or reactor in some rooms (destroying them turn the room hostile). But I never tried the hostile terrain rule and don't know how playable it is
I'm currently working on a board which is going to use it, and I have used it before. the issue I find with it rather than anything else is that it's another thing to remember. Examples: my current human edge board uses a Tiberium field which is white noise, mountainous and usually 19+ damaging. My new board is a lavafield and will have a variety of dangerous areas from cooling lava to collapsing hollow tunnels. damaged spaceship corridors have worked previously. I like (Read as I'm going to steal) your idea about having scenery objects to destroy to actvate hostile terrain.
I have enough cars that I can put 4+ lanes of traffic on a table. Yes, the roads are dangerous terrain.
In the interests of simplicity, we didn't allow for shooting cars to stop the traffic. Stand on the lines, you're safe. cross the lane and if you rolled something dangerous (exact roll varied with assumed traffic speed), you are now a speed bump.
I've played with it. In a bunker-complex game, making some of the rooms Hazardous Terrain is really fun (and give the reactor areas White Noise, etc.) It's tons of fun, and not too complicated at all.
I've been playing through the Paradiso Crossroads missions and the hostile terrain (and terrain zones in general) have really improved our game experience for the missions that use them. We are suddenly looking at taking profiles we usually don't, and reconsidering what profiles to take because your rambo piece might slip on a banana peel and die mid-rampage or you might lose that 5 man link bonus as you move up. It's always good to include it, though it sometimes makes it annoying to have to roll every time for every model everywhere they move in cases of total-board coverage or even just dangerous deployment zones.