I have never really understood the value of battlearmor. It is slower than mechs and vehicles with less armor and weaponry. It is better than infantry but other than riding in on a mech or vehicle it doesn't seem like a great option. Boarding spacecraft, check, makes sense. In a city or confined space, potentially useful. But general use escapes me.
Any simple explanations would be nice.
Dan
I was thinking on this thread. Since there were just a couple responses before we got into rules oddities. A couple things to try with BA to help.
1) Remember that BA comes in different stripes. There's two to focus on
1a) Heavy/Assault BA is generally slow (like 1 movement), heavily armed and armored, and a pain to destroy without AOE weapons. These are your semi-mobile minefields. Their use case really is dumping them out of an APC where they are going to stay, then calling it good.
1b) Light/Medium BA is generally going to be okay armor, okay mobility, okay firepower. These are your IS Standards, Elementals, Longinus, callisto, etc. These are still going to be slower than mechs, so still mostly reliant on APCs or riding a mech into battle. The main difference in gameplay between light and medium is that the light BA is normally not worth the effort to shoot, so it keeps chipping away, while medium BA is going to draw more aggro and can take more hits. These are still going to be a semi-mobile minefield, but the option to go for leg attacks and swarm is now on the table and it badly screws with players' heads.
2) Pay attention to the weapons.
2a) BA with just small lasers, flamers, machine guns, micro-pulse, etc. (the 1/2/3 range guns) are going to want to deploy behind hills and stay there as a threat to force the opposing player to maneuver wide around that hill or risk leg attacks. Use that to force suboptimal movement.
2b) BA with one-shot missiles are generally the same. You're saving those for a good shot and using the threat of it to force other players to do odd things to avoid. But the extra range means you can use them in a little more open terrain. Still dump them in woods if possible.
2c) BA that can sustain fire, like 3+ turns of it, are going to be ones you want with your mechs and tanks. Drop them once you expect fighting to start, or where you expect it to end up. Left alone, these are actually worth the effort of hosing down, so you want mechs nearby to force decisions from other players.
3) Pay attention to armor
3a) Mimetic armor is the ultimate minefield armor. +1 for being BA, and +3 for standing still. Dump them in woods and suddenly you have something nobody wants to waste shots on. Also look for the weaker Camo System. It's only +2 for sdtanding still, but nice.
3b) Stealth armor is obnoxious as heck. Especially improved stealth. Basic stealth is the same +0/+1/+2 of mech stealth, and standard is +1/+1/+2 but improved is +1/+2/+3. Take the angerona, with improved stealth, and run them into medium range of your enemy's weapons. +2 for their medium, +2 for your improved stealth, +1 for BA, +1 for running 3 hexes. So even if the mech stood still, they need gunnery+6, so often a 10 or better to hit you. If you combine that with a decent ranged weapon, even the angerona's LRR, you can actually run the suits out in the open with reasonable chance of survival.
3c) Reflective and Reactive exist, mostly just remember that when eating damage.
4) Look at mobility. Objectively, jumping is better. Running has several very limited niches where it is better in city via climbing buildings and running through tall buildings. Gray Death Standard's 3 run is almost always inferior to IS Standards 3 jump until you enter a city with height 4 buildings. Then, suddenly GD Standard has a niche where it can shine. That said, the difference is not huge, so don't avoid armor because it only runs.
4a) Quad BA is amusing, and can go stupidly fast. Remember that BA doesn't pay the first MP penalty for woods or have facings, so a 5 hex run goes farther than 5 run would on a mech. And the Buraq's 7 run is worth a try sometime.
I wish I had "simple" answers, but the use case is so hardware dependent.
