How much armour does a Stealth Battle Armour need?

[Minemech]

I think that 7 points it ultimately the low safe as PBIs and other counters are used by many players. Seven is a bad number, but a workable one that can be made into a good suit. Assault suits are not for everyone, though the Xiphos is genuinely fun, and I know the role that the Grenadier, Hauberk and Kanazuchi played in shaping how many players think about BA.

[DevianID]

The 7 armor FWL/WOB stealth suit is fantastic cause its cheap with a TAG per trooper.  But the TAG is pretty specialized, and if you have TAG it means you should expect enemy tag.  So the direct counter is to TAG the ground with the stealth BA and hit it with 2 arrows, dealing 5 AOE and ignoring the stealth defenses cause you are tagging the immobile ground.  10 armor means you can tank 2 copperhead/tag AE hex attacks.

If the enemy doesnt have appropriate counters, which is what the OP/challenger mentioned with their group, then yes you can pretty easily design a mobile stealth gun BA, that uses a medium laser/light tag to attack from 9 hexes (cause the BA ignores the jump penalty), hitting on 7s with vet troops base, while enemy range 7 guns are in medium ranges, forcing a gunnery + 3 (TMM) + 4 (range/stealth) +2 (woods).  This means, at least in my experience, your regular guns on regular opponents at medium range need 13s to hit your stealth BA, meaning its impossible to hit them and thus doesnt matter their armor.

However, players who are interested in playing versus said stealth armor will likely only get bamboozled by your 13s to hit a few times.  They will either ban the use of them (which is fair if they dont want to use advanced weapons) or they will bust out tac ops and use advanced weapons to counter them.  If they do bust out tac ops or fighters with bombs, well now the low armor stealth BA dont hold up so well.

So we are at a difficult spot.  Yes, a low armor big gun battle armor can work, but only by exploiting opponents into needing 13s to hit them.  Like challenger mentioned, you COULD yolo the stealth into point blank range cause you dont feel like taking your time, but honestly since its so easy to get 13s to hit your stealth BA by being cautious , moving into point blank range just the wrong use for low armor big gun BA.  If you do use low armor big gun BA, they are not fun for the opponent to deal with, until they bust out bombs and tac ops, because of how exploitive they can be made.  At which point you are back to needing as much armor as possible.

I like high armor stealth leg attackers, because if you want to AOE me well im already trying to get into your hex, and Im not paying for big guns so they are cheap, disposable, tough BA.  So the AOE to clear the fleas will cause danger close damage.  I like high armor slow stealth BA cause I can sit them lazily at long range and plink with them, and they can tank all but the largest AOE attacks.  And I like almost zero armor stealth BA to act as spotters for LRMs and double blind, by being like 22 hexes away from the enemy, making the AOE have a flight delay and really hard to connect as I bounce around, safe from conventional weapons while providing zero TMM spotting for LRMs.

[Challenger]

I'd (jokingly ) object to my tactics being described as YOLO, but I do tend towards an aggressive attack with my mechs. I prefer to think of it as 'how the DCMS is supposed to fight', vs a mad rush at the first target that appears.

I'm fairly happy to accept 9-10+ to hit on my Battle Armour in the close range battle, as long as their supporting mechs are close in as well, attracting their share of the incoming firepower. Given a choice between plinking off Battle Armour on say 9 or 10+ to hit or hitting a Battlemech on 7 or 8+, I suspect most people will go for the mech, particularly if it moving into melee range. To my mind its about maximising my concentration of firepower at the point of decision and forcing an advantage as quickly as possible.

It is very much personal taste, I've seen too many long range duels end inconclusively and prefer to avoid playing that game, which isn't to say that your tactics are 'wrong' in any way shape or form, just not my preference.


I'm not sure I agree with the idea of banning a Tournament Legal tech unless Advanced Tech is allowed though. If we are talking about custom Battle Armour, I'd go along with that if asked, but there is a canon BA of this type in the form of the Infiltrator II and the Elemental III can be played a similar way. These suits are (for better or worse) part of the universe, not something I feel should be banned because they are difficult to deal with.

Fighters with bomb are definitely a tournament legal counter, abet a limited resource though in any game. They are one of the reasons I advocate for using APC's to move around the battlefield, dismounting only to fight.

Incidentally, what size games do you normally play? We are usually around the 10-15k mark, I think we would struggle to fit too many AOE weapons into our forces without seriously compromising our mech strength.

Challenger

[Daryk]

An LTAC can reach 22 hexes with FAE... ;)

[DevianID]

FAE is the most busted of busted, 4x so on artillery cannons as it massively increases the damage and radius for almost no cost.  The base LTAC is already more efficient then a clan LPL versus most mechs, and infinitely more efficient versus multiple infantry.  Ive used FAE artillery when I was allowed, and it was reviled and rightfully so.  FAE bombs are even more disgusting, a FAE bomber is the boogeyman used to scare children from wanting to join the house military by worried parents.  A line of infantry die, 5+ hexes wide 20 hexes long if you get average scatters.  If fires are turned on, good luck tracking that!  I got over my FAE phase pretty quick Daryk as you can tell haha.

We play 6-10k normally.  Most events have numerous comp rules, one of the more popular is 'only things found in the BMM'.  BMM + elementals from BTCC (before rec guide nonsense) or BMM + vehicles, infantry, battlearmor.

One of the common 'cheese' limits is on hard to hit things, like jump 7+, and on TAG artillery.  Many events allow zero TMM ignoring attacks like bombs, artillery, airburst mortars, and put a limit on how many pulse lasers you can bring.  This is because the organizers want to see small fast things not instantly crippled by pulse/AOE, to encourage diversity instead of maximum armor or woods jumping.

The point of banning certain things is because in any meta, accuracy (and conversely defense) on the 2d6 curve always wins.  The Blackhawk/Nova S, with its heat neutral 6 medium pulse lasers, the rifleman IIC with its 4 large pulse lasers, The goshawk 2 with the 7 jump and 20+ pulse damage, the Uziel with 8 jump and 24 pulse damage.  These things were too prevalent.  As I understand, even in alphastrike they started banning artillery as the arrow demolisher was just too effective on the table ignoring TMM and disapearing anything with 4 health, or 2 things with 2 health, each turn.  By banning certian things, or reducing them to 1 in a list, you force people to have to take other stuff.

Elemental IIIs are pretty dang good, so it makes sense to put some kind of a cap on how much hard to kill stuff like that you can bring.  Usually its 1 or 2 units max, and from what I heard when the cap was 3, the winning list was 3 units of stealth elemental IIIs.  No one brought the obscure counters, and people shy away from artillery, so the stealth BA had a field day holding objectives at range.  There wasnt enough turns or real life time to kill them, and they hit back pretty good to boot, while being really cheap.  I doubt if the elemental III had less then 10 armor, the person playing them would have taken them over normal elementals.

[Challenger]

That makes a lot of sense, its not how we've typically approached the problem, but we've certainly had decisions about (over)use of particularly effective weapon and I know a certain level of self policing happens within the group.

The game is supposed to be fun after all.

Challenger