BattleTech Guide: Armour - When, where and how much. 

The thing to remember in BT is this: It's not what happens in the best case that kills you, it's what happens in the worst case. Build to deal with the situation where your surrounded and everything has gone wrong.

Rear armor can be skipped unless your mech is planning melee. By skip I mean the lip service of 10~15 for low lights and 30 for heavier stuff. While 95% of alphas from the back will pierce this armor they won't cause crits, thus keeping you mostly safe from a 1 time deal. Specially important Vs MGs. Other than that good planing is your best defense. Bullwark + Cover + Sentinel is an easy 60% dmg reduction and that makes your tanky mechs super tanky, specially Vs LRMs.

Your guess is right! :D

It's not just being sensorlocked that good armour protects from, there are certain missions where enemies can teleport in behind you. If you are using fragile launch boats, it's going to be a bad time as that rear and side armour gets punched in from up close. It's never a mistake to tone the firepower down for armour, imo.

@@TheEdmon In main campaign there's mission where you have to stand in specified zone for number of rounds, while enemies surround you, but that's exception. It's not that hard to hide your glass LRM boat, but small chance of getting shot at exists. There are more cons than pros when making glass cannon, expensive weapons can be destroyed, pilot can die. Also your lance will have less armor overall and split damage across 3 mechs instead of 4, allowing enemy to focus down them faster.

Yeah, pretty much agree on all points here.

@@memeoverlord-pz5ns well i first used a 4 LRM20 stalker. it had very limited armor (non at the rear) and heat problems too, at least in hot maps. it took too much damage too often, whenever i got flanked or ambushed... i changed it a bit to 2 LRM20 and 2 LRM 15, each type with both stab dmg bonus and damage bonus variants, for maximum variety in weapon targeting options. this enabled me to use more armor, and heat sinks. still, i often put my LRM boat in cover so it can almost double its effective armor, which makes it much more durable for its armor value. that i think is an ideal balance of firepower and armor. still, in most mechs i put minimal or no rear armor, and focus all on front armor. i usually dont have much tonnage for rear armor anyway, and i usually cant max front armor either... with leg armor i can usually cut a bit there, but i try to keep it a good amount above arm armor, as it can get hit very often from side attacks. for rear armor on close combat mechs, if u got the tonnage for it, i try to put at least 25 on each location, and sometimes 50+ for longer range mechs...its usually 0 to 25.

Glad it helped you out :).

This is not quite true in the early game, where an extra ton or two of weapons makes a huge difference (both in standard and RogueTech). However, it is generally correct I think, once you start getting to medium-heavy 'mechs.

I don't disagree at all, early on an extra ML can make a difference but with how damn squishy lights are, you want to get out of them as fast as possible from an economic point of view in Roguetech. Once you start hitting even mediums the lights rapidly become a liability because you must move them out of position some of the time simply to keep the suicidal little buggers alive and if they've been hit (which will happen some of the time no matter how much evasion you have) they are effectively an empty drop slot unless you want to risk the very real chance the next shot cores them.

@@TheEdmon The problem in the early game is that you mechwarriors miss a lot of easy 75%+ shot and that becomes costly and the reason you need to load up on armor. I prefer shoot less, but leave longer and not having my crew stand most of its time in the hospital and win vs 2:1 or 3:1 odds in every mission. But when I say this on the forum, I get called that told I don't know how to play.

Exactly! Getting hit by enemy recruits on 6-7 chevron every single shot is becoming redundant when your crew can't hit anything at 7+ gun skill and 75% hit rate every round. All of your crew has that drawback except the crew you are given on certain missions (trainee for example) where warriors with 1 in gunning are able to hit constantly 6-7 chevron enemy 'mechs with 25% hit chance. The game is fixed and it shows.

This is a very different game from MWO though.

@@TheEdmon true, i Just started, that my two cents but i Will try your way for sure

The A.I. is not very bright. If my recent "Stupid Assault" episode shows anything, it's that it's possible to win with 1:5 tonnage odds without taking any damage if you exploit how bad the A.I. is hard enough.

It makes it much easier to win with your eyes closed XD.

Hey, the idea is that it is always better to have more armour than anything else, because it is very weight efficient. You can't really go wrong with maxing out your armour and then adding weapons after.

@@TheEdmon Okay thanks mate ^^

actually you can go wrong doing max armor then weapons... but then i am going with decades of mechwarrior/battletech experience.... everything from tabletop rpg to most versions of varying PC games... it honestly depends on what mech your outfitting, what your outfitting it with, and ultimately the role in the lance/star that it fills... pilot skills also tend to add more to how the mech needs fitting... lets face it.. if your running a light mech than armor is never your first concern... weapons and other gear will be... because at some point that light mech will get one shot no matter how much its armored as it can only have X amount of armor... where as a heavy or assault mech can easily max armor no problem and still have tons of space for weapons.. enough in some cases to still one shot most lights....

@@mikewhitaker2880 Yeah... nope. Sorry, the math supports going armour then adding weapons. You will always beat someone who isn't doing this, all circumstances being equal.

Yeah, that confuses everyone at first, for sure.

You are looking for a guide on when it's a good idea to Melee? Instead of attacking with your standard weapons or running away?

Yea, Is just Damage/Stab/Heat. What do you consider when you switch to melee/standard weapons?

This is the second request for this, I will see about putting something together.

Melee is concentrated dmg, giving or receiving, just like precision shot. I avoid melee at all cost, have no support weapons, even though I run a grasshopper. Only melee if your heat is high, so as to cool down for 1-2 turns, then back to shooting again. If you're one of those that likes to melee, with a bunch of flamers, mg, sl, then melee to your heart's content.

Melee does have some key advantages, it has very high base chance to hit and ignores evasion. It does full damage even if you've lost all your weapons / arms / side torsos, etc. In RogueTech, evasion is very, very powerful and thus it's almost manditory in the early game to get anything done.

I agree, I'm not even sure what it does tbh. I don't notice any difference.

That's not true, the A.I. will target rear armour if it can get it. Sometimes you can show it deliberately to draw fire away from other mechs. It also allows you to run around behind the enemy with confidence your back will hold if someone is behind you.

Is … is … is that … Le Boeff?!?! :)

@@TheEdmon Aye :). Just yesterday I had jumped in to get an advantageous position on the bad guys. My back was to some steep hills … guess where the reinforcements dropped? :eek:. If it was not for rear armour my Atlas would likely be dead!

None, this is an old basegame video. Though the lesson of the day "always add armour first" is still as true now as it was then.

How do you have a Mackie?

@@BNRmatt In Battletech Revised, you can get the Mackie.

There are a number of maps where the enemy can spawn in right next to you and/or behind you. There are also maps which are very small and/or open. Reduced armour for long range firesupport is a tactic that works well 90% of the time, but it's that 10% of the time that the unit gets caught and focused that's the issue. Since you have little control over mission RNG, it makes sense to run heavy armour and share it out around your lance. You can get away with it, but it's not a risk I generally take.

@@TheEdmon I'm watching your videos but it will take a while to see all your lance layouts. Do you generally run with 4 brawlers or do you build mechs to have both long and short range weapons? I don't like stock builds much because I like to specialize a mech to be either a long range or a short range fighter. As for the armour, I have definitely learned that making glass cannons is super risky, as you say. But I don't think an Atlas with 50% of its max armour, with long range weapons, could be called a glass cannon. It can still take quite a number of hits, especially as it will be at range.

@@sweetsour6783 It depends on what equipment I have available. On the ultra hard campaigns, I typically have to make do with whatever is laying around. If I wanted to minmax and make my game as easy as possible, I would spam LRM boats and/or SRM+ML brawlers. They offer the best damage / ton over the other weapons.

@@TheEdmon I did win the campaign using sensor lock and LRM boats, but my god it was tough at times. I found in the late game when fighting assaults I would often run out of missiles, it just took too many barrages to take down the enemies, and that was with using breaching shot!

@@sweetsour6783 Take more ammo, less launchers and pack JJ and use them to jump away from approaching enemies. Ace Pilot also helps a lot in the strategy. For reference, a good build for a stalker is 4xLRM15, 6-8 cans of ammo and 3 Jump Jets, with full or near full armour.

This video is actually very old. Much has improved since this was posted, in the areas you describe.

Not sure I understand your comment. But to answer your question, with precision strikes one shots are easily possible against most weight classes. This is more true now with Heavy Metal, as some of the UAC's and quirks are very overpowered.

No, of course not. I just do a joking impression of him XD. Glad you think it's that good though lol.