I've been thinking about a good general purpose battle armor design to complement ASFs. Does the following work? And is there a way to do it better?
We want something which works in space or on planet. It should work well under any chosen set of rules (marine points, TW play, AToW play). This necessarily involves some tradeoffs, but we can limit the tradeoffs somewhat by relying on ASF (or mechs) for open space (or open field) combat, allowing the battle armor to specialize in the things that only infantry can do (i.e. enter and take over buildings/large craft without destroying them.)
Marines I (anti-Infantry)
Type: Assault Marines I (anti-Infantry)
Manufacturer: Unknown
Primary Factory: Unknown
Tech Base: Inner Sphere (Standard)
Chassis Type: Biped
Weight Class: Assault
Maximum Weight: 2,000 kg
Battle Value: 289
Swarm/Leg Attack/Mechanized/AP: No/No/No/Yes
Equipment Slots Mass
Chassis: 550 kg
Motive System:
Ground MP: 2 160 kg
Jump MP: 0 0 kg
Manipulators:
Left Arm: Heavy Magnetic Battle Claw 40 kg
Right Arm: Heavy Magnetic Battle Claw 40 kg
Armor: Advanced 5 640 kg
Armor Value: 17 (Trooper)
Slots
Weapons and Equipment Location (Capacity) Mass
Machine Gun(Heavy) Body 1 150 kg
Cutting Torch Right Arm 1 5 kg
Space Operations Adaptation Body 1 100 kg
Anti Personnel Weapon Mount Right Arm 1 5 kg
Needler Body 1 50 kg
Machine Gun(Heavyy) Left Arm 1 150 kg
Modular Weapon Mount Right Arm 1 10 kg
Needler Right Arm 1 50 kg
Marine points: 21.25/suit (space) or 20.25/suit (not space) (1 trooper, 4 (assault BA), 8 armor, 2 Burstfire weapon, 1 Flame weapon, 1 Space ops (space only), 3 paired magnetic claws, .5 heavy claw, .5 cutting torch, +.25 AP weapon mount) using
the latest errata.
Space insertion: Landing on a hull control roll -1 = +2 (no jump jets) -1 (space ops) -1 (magnets) -1 (heavy battle claw)
Ground insertion: Taxiing ASF or battle armor drop chute.
Anti-infantry: 10d6 burst fire damage +antipersonnel weapon --- enough to take out an entire conventional platoon if everything hits or kill most of one inside a building.
Anti-battle armor: ~10 damage in anti-battle armor configuration (below) is solid (or ~9 damage in this config).
AToW BAR: 10 melee/10 Ballistic/9 Energy/9 Explosive --- solid armor, enough to significantly reduce most sources.
Move 2: Superior to foot infantry and slower forms of battle armor. The only faster units in buildings are significantly lighter.
In addition, there are several good alternate loads using the modular mount. The anti-battle armor loadout uses an MG instead of the Needler.
Marines B (anti-battlearmor)
Battle Value: 299
Machine Gun Right Arm 1 100 kg
The ECM variant provides ECM protection for the squad.
Marines E (ECM)
Battle Value: 288
Single-Hex ECM Right Arm 1 100 kg
The remote sensor variant can plant remote sensors.
Marines R (Remote Sensor)
Battle Value: 282
Remote Sensors/Dispenser Right Arm 1 40 kg
The sensor variant has extra sensitive sensors for scouting missions.
Marines S (Sensors)
Battle Value: 288
Improved Sensors Right Arm 1 65 kg
And the TAG variant can call in heavy fire support from friendly arrow IV.
Marines T (TAG)
Battle Value: 282
TAG Right Arm 1 35 kg
Configurations E, R, S, and T function well in a mixed squad with a mixed mission while variants I and B are for fire mission specialization.
Tradeoffs: assault vs. heavy. Heavy battle armor is the same as far as basic marine points (+magclamps, assault->heavy) and is more transportable (1.5 tons each vs. 2 tons). The extra weight allowance provides somewhat more armor and room for an extra heavy machine gun. Overall, it's pretty close. I'm giving an edge to assault armor just because of the extra armor and weapons.
Assault vs. Light. It's quite possible to make a Light marine suit which only requires a half ton of transport. On a marine points per transported ton basis, this is superior. However, light suits are much weaker under AToW or TW games where armor and quantity of weapons matters.
Detachable weapon pack or not: It's easy to make a similar assault armor with move 1 that uses DWPs and has an extra 2 points of armor. I went with no DWPs because the ability to move 1 is common at the AToW level while a move of 2 is super human. Being able to control the distance seems very powerful here.
Vibroclaws vs. Magnetic claws: The magnets are needed for space boarding ops and a cutting torch provides means to cut through walls anyways.
Heavy claws vs. normal claws: The heavy claws provide a modest benefit in marine points and space insertion.
Modular Weapon Mount and AP weapon: The adaptability provided by each of these seems quite handy.
Weapons vs armor: It's possible to increase battle armor damage at the expense of armor, trading 4 points of armor for 3 points of damage. This actually decreases burstfire damage though, so it doesn't quite seem worthwhile. You could also downgrade the HMGs to MGs to upgrade armor to 18 points, but this also doesn't seem quite worthwhile.
Edits: Shifted to a move 2 design, because that seems to matter significantly in aToW and infantry play in buildings, updated for errata, shifted to have more armor and use needlers given discussion with Coldstone.
