It is awesome. New ideas and new technologies makes this the most interesting era for BA yet.
The RAF. They lost a good thing in Irian, though. The Quirinus, Simian and Taranis are all pretty swank. But, let's not forget they have Purifiers and Angeronas to fall back on. Somewhere there is also the Purifier (Terra) factory making a few suits for the RAF Special Forces. I haven't had a chance to use the Centaur yet, and the value of BA artillery doesn't jump out at me. But, it can mechanize and provide close in direct fire artillery on the cheap. The emphasis seems to be on flexibility from what I can tell. As a fan of that perspective I dig the RAF suits.
Close second would be the DCMS. The selection of armor is amazing. The use of reflective armor is really powerful when the clans and clan laser using AFFS are your primary enemies. They have mostly abandoned the assault BA concept and stuck with lighter suits. Even the Zou, which is a pocket assault is meant to mechanize. Seeing the DCMS's traditional emphasis on speed expressed in their armor philosophy is very satisfying. They still have the Void, which is one of the most powerful BA ever built by the Inner Sphere, and the Raiden AI and Raiden II are good upgrades.
The AFFS. They peaked with the Grenadier. The Sea Fox and Fusilier are interesting, which is always an appreciated quality. But, overall, yeah, I see them losing their edge. The Infiltrator MkII hasn't aged very well, for that matter.
Kisho or Quirnus. They both fall squarely into the interesting category while still being powerful.
The Cuchulain. It isn't terrible, but the perception is that it is the greatest thing ever.
I'll tell you what is the most underrated these days: the Sloth. It just keeps getting better and better.
I guess so. But, to me, it is just an improvement over what came before. It doesn't even do anything unique. The old Trinity suits could at least claim to be MRR touting 3 ground MP city fighters. The Amazon is a slight improvement over the IS Standard with LRR. The biggest bonus, however, is having an arm mounted weapon in the offhand chance you want to swarm something. It's good, but I don't know... not all that impressive.
Yeah, that's not a bad suit. It and the Phalanx got a big hand up with their weapon changes.
It reminds me of a Fenrir 1.5 for some reason.
Only the FWLM and AFFS fall into meh territory for me. All other players have a really impressive stable of battle armors. If we want to talk about the clans, who is using the Elemental II? They pretty much wins hands down thanks to the power of the BA myomer booster. After that, the Falcons, because the Ironhold is patently ridiculous.
I agree with most of your points. RAF is the clear winner as it gets access to the most munchy stuff also in the BA department...
Out of all the canon suits, the Taranis is probably the most optimized.
I cannot agree on your judgement of the Chuchu and the DCMS BAs.
If it weren't for the Laser Reflective armor, I would actually consider them utterly useless. The armament is completely anemic and far from being optimized.
The Chuhu is absolutely great. It only has one flaw and that is the lack of Magnetic Clamps and a Firedrake instead of that more or less useless 11th point of armor. But 11 points of Improved Stealth armor and DWP to make the best of the armament (a freaking ER Medium Pulse times 4/5 for crying out loud!). If it had higher mobility and more versatility as suggested above, it would be probably the best canon Battle armor ever conceived when it comes to fighting Mechs (but also not bad at fighting other BA due to the range, dmg and better to hit numbers). It is also a very good bodyguard unit, although as I said. With the suggested changes, it could be the perfect bodyguard unit.
Speaking of Lyran BAs... the Fenrir II is pretty good and a logical evolution of the rather subpar predecessor. But when you think of it, it is also not making the most of it potential. If it had used 15 armor instead of 17, one could have done even more with the turret. Also I'm really missing a variant with 1 or even 2 King David GR.
Speaking of which (again), I fully agree on your verdict of the Sloth. The Huntsman variant is similar to what I always imagined it could be. 2 King Davids with Improved Stealth Armor and Mechanical Jump Booster? Surely nothing to sneeze at, albeit at the price of not having much in common with the original. Probably the best counter to those nasty Ironholds the Lyrans are facing, I presume.
The new Gray Death BAs are pretty much useless in my mind, due to trying to fill too many roles without proper modular armament. Speciality beats flexibility 8/10 times, I'd say. The Gray Death Heavy in turn is using tech that is simply too outdated to be competitive.
Overall, I'd put the Lyrans at second or third (behind the Capellans).
FWL BAs seem okay, but leave me somewhat unimpressed and uninspired.
Clear last are the FedSuns. They still got the fancy Grenadier and Hauberk suits, but the new stuff? What the heck? Even the new assault is not exactly a good idea, I think. An assault BA is an assault BA is an assault BA is an assault BA and not a medium... That's all there is to say. The Sniper is pretty good for a PAL suit. The Sea Fox is a highly specialized suit. Not much more to say.
So they still rely on the Grenadiers and Hauberks, which lost a lot of their magic come 3145.