Stealth Armor - How to beat it?

[willydstyle]

PHX-5L and 6L, but neither of them really have the heatsinks to have stealth armor engaged, jump, and fire in the same turn.

[Southern Coyote]

Enough of them are jumpers. 

Played against today using Clantech.  Faired little better.  My Nova Cat F made a big difference, but the terrain was urban and any advantage to manuverability, range, or what have you is lost in city fighting...

[willydstyle]

Enough of them are jumpers. 

Played against today using Clantech.  Faired little better.  My Nova Cat F made a big difference, but the terrain was urban and any advantage to manuverability, range, or what have you is lost in city fighting...

Who is setting up the terrain?  Honestly, without more clarification it sounds like you're complaining about close games being too tough.  Close games should be the norm if you're going for balanced scenarios.

[Southern Coyote]

The maps were selected randomly.  We turned them all over, blank side out and selected 1 each.  The maps happened to be some urban terrain, one of which was one with a lot of weaker structures, so even jumping was limited.  This time, I got very unlucky with some dice rolls, although towards the end, I managed to cripple several of his mechs but didn't kill any.  He got lucky and managed several crit hits and got engine hits on my two heaviest chassis, and ripped apart my Pariah. 

Admittedly, I'm not great on urban terrain and was working with configs I wasn't used too.  For me to last as long as I did was sheer luck and good manuevering. 

I still don't like Stealth Armor but today taught me that it isn't invicible. Just a pain...

[Durandal]

Heh, whoops, somehow stealth armour carrying Guardian ECM completely slipped my mind when posting my initial thoughts.  So yes, disregard anything that ECM would screw with (AIV FCS, C3, etc.), horrible idea. :D

Snub nosed PPCs are a great idea though as they have some awesome short range reach that lets you sit back and still smack the enemy around.

Teach me to write stream of consciousness posts at work without access to any books and no coffee. :P

[Jim1701]

My preferred method to dealing with Stealth is applying as much heat as possible and get up close and personal.

[Cybra]

c3/c2i networks could still be useful, if you remember to pack on an ECM and remember to set it to ECCM (ECCM negates ECM field in a 1:1 setting, thereby allowing you to still get your c3 network links). I like to put in an Angel ECM suite for double the ECCM ability.

[willydstyle]

c3/c2i networks could still be useful, if you remember to pack on an ECM and remember to set it to ECCM (ECCM negates ECM field in a 1:1 setting, thereby allowing you to still get your c3 network links). I like to put in an Angel ECM suite for double the ECCM ability.

That only works with tac-ops level rules, right?

[Peter Smith]

That only works with tac-ops level rules, right?

Ayup. That's why the best way to beat Stealth Armor is to get into short range and pound the snot out of the unit.

[Ian Sharpe]

Penetrators and other pulse boats do a great job.

[garhkal]

Enough of them are jumpers. 

Most of the ones i remember are at MOST 5/8/5..  the rest are 3/5/3 or 4/6/4

[MoneyLovinOgre4Hire]

The Eylukia is a 5/8/7, while there's a Duan Gung variant that's a 7/11/6, though it's a terribly infighter due to its nearly nonexistent armor.

[willydstyle]

But the Eyleuka doesn't have nearly the heat capacity or weapons choices to fully make use of stealth, firepower, and maneuverability all at the same time. With it's stealth armor active, it can fire its ERLL and still gain heat even when stationary.

[Youngblood]

But the Eyleuka doesn't have nearly the heat capacity or weapons choices to fully make use of stealth, firepower, and maneuverability all at the same time. With it's stealth armor active, it can fire its ERLL and still gain heat even when stationary.

I like the -45B variant better if you're crazy enough for a stand-up fight.  But anyways, the scary part about the 'Mech is more due to its stealth-jumpiness combined with TAG, followed by Semi-Guided LRMs or Arrow IV Homing.  It's a team player.

But don't mind me.  I'll just hang out here in my corner, cuz Haseks don't know 'bout my Thunder 2L.  Try getting close to THAT.

[MoneyLovinOgre4Hire]

I'd rather not.

[Pandacron]

I don't know if this has been said yet,  but Stealth armor only gets better (Or worse, if you're the opponent) If the stealth mech has missile launchers. The option for light smoke to be thrown in between you (the opponent) and them (The invisible thing) makes dealing with that stealth armor all the more aggravation.  That and option for Thunder Ammo makes it harder or painful to try to close the distance or flank him.

I've never used the canon designs that had stealth armor, but I have built a mech with that capability and came equipped with an LRM launcher among other weapons. I'm unsure if it was a really good design, but it did give me some suggestions that might help you.

Your best bet would be area denial and end up cornering him. Manuever a big metal block of an assault mech. Most of them would do, but usually something with each an AC/20 or ER-PPC/SNPPCs and a lot of armor that your opponent would just have one look and go "...Uh-uh."

With his manuevering limited, just bring in the rear with some good knife-fighty light mechs that can jump or is manueverable enough to cut the distance while still take a few hits to the leg. (Mines) Once you have that, your sneaky opponent will either have to take the dozens of cuts from your lights, or take the wallops from your brick.

He's still going to have a bad day.  8)

[Crunch]

A few light fast units with SRMs loaded with infernos can really put a cramp in a Stealth units style for minimal points. You can get a platoon of Packrats for the cost of a medium mech.

[MadCapellan]

Infernos are probably the #1 thing to ruin any Capellan's day.  They cook vehicle crews in their tanks, roast infantry like marshmallows, and push most stealth & TSM designs to shut-down.  Just about every Capellan toy suffers from infernos except one - my friend Arrow IV, so my opponent's use of infernos is likely contingent on my use of Arrow IV.

[AnubisZombie]

I've been playing around with the stock designs in MM and the Griffin works good but the MML launcher is kinda weak and the plasma gun is nothin to write home about. The Marauder has to many energy weapons. The Archer is to slow to make effective use of it cause anything can close.

Add a Null Signature and Chameleon System to a Spector and that's a heat nightmare. You can move or jump.

If you could pack a gauss rifle with more than 2 tons of ammo into  something like an Exterminator, and keep the jump jets, then this stealth technology starts to shine.

As it stands packing all the crits and ballistic weapons and dealing with the heat makes this stuff a deal breaker for me. It's great for a Mechwarrior campaign where you wanna play super secret sneaky man, or maybe for getting past sensor grids in a BF scale game. As far as actually using it in combat that's a whole nother story.

[Ian Sharpe]

Infernos are probably the #1 thing to ruin any Capellan's day.  They cook vehicle crews in their tanks, roast infantry like marshmallows, and push most stealth & TSM designs to shut-down.  Just about every Capellan toy suffers from infernos except one - my friend Arrow IV, so my opponent's use of infernos is likely contingent on my use of Arrow IV.

Inferno-IV for extra fun!

[MadCapellan]

I've been playing around with the stock designs in MM and the Griffin works good but the MML launcher is kinda weak and the plasma gun is nothin to write home about. The Marauder has to many energy weapons. The Archer is to slow to make effective use of it cause anything can close.

Good job!  You selected some of the most lack-luster stealth designs out there!  Come back and talk to me once you've run the PLG-4Z or -5Z Pillager, EMP-6L & 7L Emperor, CTF-4L Cataphract, CRD-7L Crusader, VND-4L Vindicator, HUR-WO-R4N Huron Warrior, D9-G10 Duan Gung, & EYL-45B Eyleuka. 

[willydstyle]

The stealth reseens are *very* poor examples of stealth mechs.

[Devens]

Good job!  You selected some of the most lack-luster stealth designs out there!  Come back and talk to me once you've run the PLG-4Z or -5Z Pillager, EMP-6L & 7L Emperor, CTF-4L Cataphract, CRD-7L Crusader, VND-4L Vindicator, HUR-WO-R4N Huron Warrior, D9-G10 Duan Gung, & EYL-45B Eyleuka.

I second Madcap's statement.  The best stealth designs are mostly sniper designes.  Close combat designs like most of the Phoenix Mechs are a poor choice for stealth armor IMHO.   

[Iron Mongoose]

Of course the best stealth mechs are snipers.  Stealth armor works the very best at long range, and is detremental at short range, so mechs like the Pilliger and Archer and Emperor tend to be the best. 

Naturaly, the best way to beat them is for some or all of your force to get close, and quickly.  I like to send a portion of my force in close and engage thouse stealth mechs that are designed to drop their stealth in order to free heat for their secondaries, which is most but not all of them.  If they chouse to do this, then the rest of my force at range can also engage these mechs and bring them down, while if they don't the rest of my force still has to march in to close, but they can't effectively fight off the faster mechs that are on them already.

Another tactic I like, espcealy as the FWL or the Clans, is to take weapons with hyper long ranges, which makes getting into medium range rather easy.  The LGR hits medium at 17, ATM HEs at 18, HAGs at 16, etc.  Now, you're down from +6 to +3, which is a big difrence, with your opponent still at +4 to hit you.  This often works well when only some enemy mechs are stealth, and others are not.

[Negatorxx]

Play a BV based game. stealth is fairly overpriced.

TAG spotters and arti.  fast mediums/heavies.  both do the job