Force design is a part of your battle armor's durability.
Couldn't agree more, unsupported Battle Armour of any kind is too easy to either pick off at range or simply bypass. Its a similar consideration to the answer to DevianID's question, what is the suit designed to do? Well fill any role an Elemental or Inner Sphere Standard might be called upon to fill, general purpose Battle Armour in support of mech forces. I'm not really thinking of independent operators, spotters or scouts. Part of my assumption is that any enemy response is constrained by the need to simultaneously engage the supporting forces. (i.e. their can't
just pull back out of range or remain stationary to improve to-hit roles)
2)When optimizing a reasonable rule of thumb is to spend half on offense and half on defense from available resources.
For direct combat, there is medium armor for antimech attacks and heavy/assault BA for guns. Clans can afford to do both just barely with the elemental III, but the IS must pick and choose.
So a medium stealth BA would want as much armor as possible, maybe with only manipulators for infantry weapons, because their job is to enter melee range using stealth to get there and tank the kicks/point blank attacks. On the other end is the tortoise with almost no movement but very heavy guns, using stealth and lots of armor to trade blows directly. Both the guns and the antimech teams want as much armor as possible, and sacrifice speed or guns to do it.
So yeah, only on the spotter/nighthawk type would you ever want less then max armor, because they arnt meant to engage the enemy. All the other BA want enough to tank medium pulse/clan pulse at the least, and 10 for large pulse is preferred, as pulse weapons and things like it are what will hit you the most. AE weapons likewise benefit from 10+ armor to help versus scattered arrows.
The more I read your posts on this, the more I find myself reassessing my own assumptions. (Which is kinda the point of asking other people's opinions)
Whilst both valid approaches, I'd question if either are the only approach.
50% of a medium Battle Armour's payload adds up to around 7pts of armour? Is that extra 2pts worth the 120kgs compared to 5pts, when the extra armour offer no extra protection against AOE attacks and really only offers extra protection against medium pulse weaponry? Anything larger will blow through the armour anyway. Could that extra 120kgs be better spent on offensive capability?
Likewise, insisting on 10pts, definitely produces a nasty ambush fighter, but you are restricting IS Medium Suits to that role and that role alone. There are canon medium IS suits that pack respectable firepower (Trinity, Amazon, Infiltrator II), but none could possibly mount 10pts of armour alongside their weaponry and it could be argued they do not need to. The range of their weaponry means they don't need to close to point blank range, which for a stealth suits particularly, starts to significantly degrade the effectiveness of enemy fire.
I also question if 10pts for the ambusher is strictly necessary. It won't protect you from a kick from any Battlemech 55tons or heavier, any two medium pulse hits will still kill you and whilst bouncing a Large Pulse Laser or a near miss from an Arrow/Sniper is pretty cool, if you are at range 0, how many Large Pulse Lasers does your opponent have spare to engage your Battle Armour and are they seriously dropping artillery amongst their own mech forces?
(Maxim 20 not withstanding)
Would 7pts not serve as well and free up 180kgs to give you some reach beyond the same hex?
Similarly, insisting on 10pts for Heavy Suits does (as you say) limit them to being slow gun platforms. But, a jump 3 heavy IS suit (2JJ + jump booster), actually has more spare mass than a similar medium suit with 3 Jump Jets. You can make a fairly effective 'overweight' IS 'Medium' Suit that combines firepower, manoeuvrability and armour, but again not if you want 10pts of stealth armour for protection.
You are sacrificing alot of other capabilities for that 10pts. I don't disagree it is an ideal, its been held as an ideal since the Elemental debuted. But, I do question if additional protection (which will still not protect against a direct hit form a Sniper/Arrow IV or a Long Tom in the next hex) is worth the sacrifices being made to other capabilities? Would a lesser amount of armour be 'adequate' under most circumstances.
If you're facing a lot of AOE weapons, 5 points should be the minimum. I'd go with 6 personally.
Would you mind if I asked, why 6? I'm not quite convinced it offers a stealth armoured suit much improved protection over 5pts.
1)Mech Mortars could matter at some intermediate scales as they also put out AE, although I think MM/1 and MM/8 are the two size to care about.
Must admit, I had totally forgotten that Mech Mortars had a AOE option.
I'll have to go look that up.
Challenger