I am skeptical about the use of battle armor in open field combat. They are one direct fire arrow IV round away from death at all times. Since the artillery fires at a hex, no amount of futzing with the ECMs, camo, mimetic, stealth, etc.... changes this.
Yep, and Mine Clearance Missiles, Artillery Cannon, air-dropped bombs, the list goes on, but despite that, I and other Battle Armor players successfully dance with the big stompy robots. The art is giving the enemy a bigger target, avoiding where he's shooting, even getting in his pockets, plus (my personal favorite) at times you want them to concentrate on killing the BA, since it frees other units for the killing blow. Off-board artillery tends to be one of the less useful methods of inflicting an Area Attack on BA due to the delay and possible scatter, but it's still a good one when you have it.
I recall you mentioned in another thread that time and lack of availability of a local group meant you don't get a chance to play much, but if you do I really recommend fielding just infantry forces while other players use the heavier units. As well as being a good learning aid, its lots of fun, even if victory for you is helping other players on your side win the scenario or the simple joy of bringing down a key enemy unit before all your own troops are killed, rendered useless or left behind.
The hidden units rules are a problem, but not an insurmountable one---you just need to avoid LOS. This can be done by having the BA hide underwater, behind a building or sufficient numbers of woods or smoke. All of these imply ranges, once LOS is established, which are reasonable for MicroPL.
And breaking LOS is one of the methods used, however you're going to struggle to open LOS and be in range when using MiPLs compared to longer ranged weapons such as APGRs, SRMs, MLs, etc. With a MiPL you're only going to have an advantage at range 1, at range 2 you're equal to APGRs, etc, at range 3 you're worse, and range 4+ is obvious. Opponents do not typically conveniently wander into close range, instead moving routes that do not open LOS directly next to potential ambush sites.
Of course, against evil opponents that know a hidden scenario is coming, you'll see hordes of cheap infantry scouts, damn them, which screws over every hidden unit. I hate it when that happens, but I'm just reaping the whirlwind for my past
ambushes sins.
BTW, hiding Battle Armor underwater just killed them unless you have UMUs, which the above units don't have. UMUs are for very specialized units, but they can be awesome fun - I recommend the extreme depth advanced rules for some scary scenarios for the 'Mech jockeys.
The other thing to consider is that not all scenarios are such that an invader has the luxury of proceeding 30 meters/round, slowly revealing each hidden unit at maximum range. Most scout mechs, for example, can easily outrun the range of their sensor.
You need to check the advanced rules. With those, Probes reveal Hidden units in their path as they move, not just those in range at the end of movement. Hidden conventional infantry are still immune to detection, of course, which is just one of the reasons I'm also a big fan and user of PBIs in addition to the Battle Armor. Ironically, some infantry can make greater BA hunters.
I generally agree, but you're out of space for more weapons. ECM is a reasonable alternative.
Not just a reasonable alternative but a far superior alternative for an Assault or Heavy, and as a non-weapon system ECM is only limited by available mass and slots, and is not effected by the weapon limits. Not everybody has access to Area Effect weapons, which means that they're going to have to kill the Battle Armor the old fashioned way, and given the inability of the (Fire) variant to generate TMMs it needs all the help it can get, with Ghost Targets an awesome aid to keeping Battle Armor alive. If I'd been doing a clean sheet design, I'd have opted for 15 armor and ECM, but since this is meant to be an upgrade of the canon Ironhold, I preferred not to reduce armor levels.
The erratad FB-M42B does 1.11 damage, which significantly reduces the value of hands over APWMs.
Yup, hence why it's the primary armament of my top-end IS PBIs (which I need to repost now that we've lost the forum archive), but it's also an IS weapon and the above designs are Clan, plus it's only base range 1, which isn't good for a slow Assault if you have other options. The Clan equivalent, the Mauser IIC, one of the options I noted in the first post, is base range 3 for nearly the same damage, and is generally far more useful for slow suits, giving a Point another 9 hex range attack inflicting up to 5 damage, just a point short of the M42B's 3 hex range attack. With the Support weapons that can be carried in gloves, but not mounted on APWMs, the Heavy Auto GL matches the M42Bs range with insignificantly greater damage, while the Portable MG & Standard Two-Shot SRM have less base damage, but are greater ranged, and both have useful side effects. The MG provides a +1d6 burst damage bonus against conventional infantry, so even if a single suit survives in a Point it could kill 4 or 5 infantry on average, while the SRM can be used for Infernos, with all the possibilities that offers. Looking at IS Support weapon options, the superb MP Plasma Rifle I mentioned exceeds both the range and damage of the M42B.
