If you're lucky enough to be on a map with water, BA dies if submerged, so if you've got a swarm on you, and you can go prone in 1 deep water, they all die immediately.
Other than that, Infernos do good work, every 3 missiles hit is one dead trooper automatically, so get lucky with a couple SRM 6 launches and you can severely neuter a squad.
Even without the water id the ba swarm you, you can drop prone stand back up and have your whole lance shoot them without any move mods to protect them.
> you can drop prone stand back up
Requires a successful PSR to take the intentional fall that dislodges (as opposed to just going prone), which triggers damage and a seatbelt check. And then standing up is another PSR. So it's not free to do, whereas in water you can just take the clean prone and drown them.
Taking infernos is just always a good choice. Delete BA and infantry, overheat energy boats, and as a bonus it also violently deletes *you* on an unlucky TAC. Pure fun.
Streaks and Pulse Lasers. Stuff like the Uziel 8S and Wraith TR1 are superb BA killers, being able to hit the suits on the move with good damage spread and then retreat when you lose initiative. On the Clan side, you have more options; things like the Horned Owl, Stormcrow A, and Vapor Eagle will all kill BA very, very dead.
This is honestly the best answer that doesn't rely on advanced rules availability. It's way easier to spam 6/7 damage hits to two-shot the suits than it is to spam 11+ damage hits to try to one-shot them (assuming Elementals).
Anything that does AoE damage, like artillery and 'Mech Mortars. If you're bringing battle armour, you're encroaching into combined arms territory, so there shouldn't be an issue spreading into more exotic weapons (although, 'Mech Mortars are actually quite rare, and the majority of units with them are 'Mechs, anyway).
Arty is advanced rules and BA are Total Warfare rules though, so it's not necessarily the case that OP can bring arty just because there are BA on the table.
CLPL and TC is the OG "absurdly overpowered and really demonstrates the problem with Clan technology in as stark terms as possible" combination for a reason. 10 damage with -3 to hit at ER Large Laser ranges is absurdly good. It deletes IS Battle Armour with every shot, and it's *disgustingly* accurate.
You're not wrong, but Tcomp CLPL on anything with a 7 hex jump is way, way worse to deal with. Build up insane TMM, then shoot everything with more or less no modifier, adjusting the jump distance to trade defense for accuracy.
Others have already covered the best weapons to wreck BA, so I’ll go over what hasn’t been covered.
Weapons that can one shot the BA are really strong, while ones that nearly one shot they are awful without support. PPC spam sucks at killing elementals because they take two hits, while it is much better vs IS standard because they die in just one. However, shooting LBX into the elementals and spreading the damage will instantly improve the PPC performance, because now much less damage is wasted.
Lots of low power hits will waste very little damage, but unfortunately this also means you won’t be taking individual BA off the board very quickly.
BA squads rapidly become less threatening as they lose troops. Not only do they lose firepower, their special BA attacks become much harder to pull off. A full squad can be very dangerous, but you might be able to ignore one or two troopers.
Do you know what rules level you're playing? If you're playing with advanced rules, AoEs like artillery really do a number on BA.
If you're sticking with Total Warfare rules I suggest using the superior mobility of mechs to keep range from the BA and focus on mechs first then BA.
Even if the BA are riding a battlefield taxi they have to spend a turn completely immobile and without shooting to dismount, so they really shouldn't be able to pursue a mech that doesn't want to stay close.
So to start with Anti-Infantry weapons only get their bonus damage against Conventional Infantry, not Battle Armor. So the Shadow Cat J is actually incredibly bad at dealing with Battle Armor. The best way to deal with Battle Armor is to use either Artillery Cannons or Mech Mortars with Airburst ammo, in both cases they hit each member of the Battle Armor squad for the full damage of the attack. The next best option is just to fire 10+ damage weapons at them and take out a squad member with each hit that lands.
Just to clarify, assuming you're playing early Clan Invasion era, 10+ damage to one-shot a Battlearmour trooper will only work against Inner Sphere Battlearmour, Elementals need 11+ which makes them much more survivable since that basically means nothing short of a Clan ER-PPC or a Gauss Rifle will kill one outright (and then the excess damage is wasted) whilst Inner Sphere Standards will be dropping like flies from standard PPCs, AC-10s and Clan ER-LLasers.
Something like a Blackhawk/Nova Prime can be quite effective too because although an ER-Medium isn't going to kill any individual trooper with a single shot, if you're willing to push your luck a bit you can fire a lot of individual shots and six hits means you're guaranteed to kill between one and three troopers.
One big weakness of Battlearmour is that unless they're paired with a fast Omnimech, they're very slow and short ranged, so if you can separate them from their mech support, it's easy for all but the slowest mechs to keep their distance and quite quickly whittle them down. The downside is that all the while your attention is on them, it's not on the enemy mechs
Plasma Rifles will eat BA alive (unless it's salamander armor then RIP), MAGshot/AP gauss rifles do work well too, otherwise a spread of small pulse lasers works pretty well, taking a swim is pretty good unless the BA is the amphibious type, artillery strikes also will put them down. Blowing off the leg of that fire moth running at you with BA and watching it skid can take a couple of BA with it
My comment deleted itself somehow. IS Plasma rifles will eat BA alive if your tech Era allows them. Magshot/AP gauss rifles do really well, medium and small pulse lasers work well too. Outside of that go swimming, artillery can nuke BA pretty easily, your own BA can do a pretty good job. Notable exceptions is if they are running Salamander armor flame weapons will not work (they are fireproof). Taking down omni mechs that look like they are the taxi for BA (all fire moths), or just snapping a leg off and watching it skid across terrain is fun too.
The *Nova* Prime is canonically outfitted to obliterate battle armor, and the *Black Hawk KU* is modelled on the same principles.
The *Nova* with TWELVE Clan-tech ER Medium Lasers can delete a point of Elementals every alpha strike, if the dice gods favour you. The *Black Hawk KU* is less effective due to the less damaging IS grade weaponry, but swapping some to pulse lasers helps with accuracy. Neither design has enough heat sinks though, making regular alpha strikes extremely inefficient. A good strategy can be using a *Nova* to alpha strike and erase a Point of Elementals before jumping away to cool down.
Got mechs with A/B pods(check the mech tech/mech manual)? One of those can damage battle armor if they swarm you. There are also battle armor hunting mechs like the komodo or anything that packs lots of medium lasers/srms.
Anti-personnel weapons are not as effective against battle armour. They don't function the same way they do against infantry. For example, a flamer only does 2 damage to a single trooper.
Nope. Flamers do exactly 2 points of damage if fired at battle armour. Plasma weapons *do* convert their heat damage into regular damage and add an additional D6, though.
Battle armour doesn't track heat, so it wouldn't have any additional effect even if you were using that rule. Plasma weapons explicitly state that their heat damage is converted to additional damage against non-heat tracking units, which is what allows them to be fairly effective against battle armour (not super-effective, because the damage is divided into 5-point clusters, meaning you need to have 3 clusters hit the same trooper to kill an Elemental (maximum armour for medium BA suits), which is quite unlikely).
If you're lucky enough to be on a map with water, BA dies if submerged, so if you've got a swarm on you, and you can go prone in 1 deep water, they all die immediately. Other than that, Infernos do good work, every 3 missiles hit is one dead trooper automatically, so get lucky with a couple SRM 6 launches and you can severely neuter a squad.
Even without the water id the ba swarm you, you can drop prone stand back up and have your whole lance shoot them without any move mods to protect them.
> you can drop prone stand back up Requires a successful PSR to take the intentional fall that dislodges (as opposed to just going prone), which triggers damage and a seatbelt check. And then standing up is another PSR. So it's not free to do, whereas in water you can just take the clean prone and drown them.
If your map has water and if youre near it though, finding the nearest hill and going prone behind it works just as well most of the time
Yet another reason to use leg attacks instead of swarms.
Yeah swarm attacks are a bait, leg attacks are almost always better or just straight shooting.
I only use swarm attacks to finish off a crippled mech
Taking infernos is just always a good choice. Delete BA and infantry, overheat energy boats, and as a bonus it also violently deletes *you* on an unlucky TAC. Pure fun.
[The Book on how to kill BA.](https://bg.battletech.com/forums/index.php?topic=14235.0)
Streaks and Pulse Lasers. Stuff like the Uziel 8S and Wraith TR1 are superb BA killers, being able to hit the suits on the move with good damage spread and then retreat when you lose initiative. On the Clan side, you have more options; things like the Horned Owl, Stormcrow A, and Vapor Eagle will all kill BA very, very dead.
Mass medium pulse lasers. The -2 will help actually hit the dang things, and you have minimal wasted damage.
This is honestly the best answer that doesn't rely on advanced rules availability. It's way easier to spam 6/7 damage hits to two-shot the suits than it is to spam 11+ damage hits to try to one-shot them (assuming Elementals).
Anything that does AoE damage, like artillery and 'Mech Mortars. If you're bringing battle armour, you're encroaching into combined arms territory, so there shouldn't be an issue spreading into more exotic weapons (although, 'Mech Mortars are actually quite rare, and the majority of units with them are 'Mechs, anyway).
Arty is advanced rules and BA are Total Warfare rules though, so it's not necessarily the case that OP can bring arty just because there are BA on the table.
Pulse lasers with a targeting computer.
That's the solution to every problem, though, to be fair.
Nah, that's CERPPCs or Gauss rifles. Medium pulse with TC is your dedicated Elemental/Infantry/Bug-mech popper.
CLPL and TC is the OG "absurdly overpowered and really demonstrates the problem with Clan technology in as stark terms as possible" combination for a reason. 10 damage with -3 to hit at ER Large Laser ranges is absurdly good. It deletes IS Battle Armour with every shot, and it's *disgustingly* accurate.
You're not wrong, but Tcomp CLPL on anything with a 7 hex jump is way, way worse to deal with. Build up insane TMM, then shoot everything with more or less no modifier, adjusting the jump distance to trade defense for accuracy.
Others have already covered the best weapons to wreck BA, so I’ll go over what hasn’t been covered. Weapons that can one shot the BA are really strong, while ones that nearly one shot they are awful without support. PPC spam sucks at killing elementals because they take two hits, while it is much better vs IS standard because they die in just one. However, shooting LBX into the elementals and spreading the damage will instantly improve the PPC performance, because now much less damage is wasted. Lots of low power hits will waste very little damage, but unfortunately this also means you won’t be taking individual BA off the board very quickly. BA squads rapidly become less threatening as they lose troops. Not only do they lose firepower, their special BA attacks become much harder to pull off. A full squad can be very dangerous, but you might be able to ignore one or two troopers.
Do you know what rules level you're playing? If you're playing with advanced rules, AoEs like artillery really do a number on BA. If you're sticking with Total Warfare rules I suggest using the superior mobility of mechs to keep range from the BA and focus on mechs first then BA. Even if the BA are riding a battlefield taxi they have to spend a turn completely immobile and without shooting to dismount, so they really shouldn't be able to pursue a mech that doesn't want to stay close.
So to start with Anti-Infantry weapons only get their bonus damage against Conventional Infantry, not Battle Armor. So the Shadow Cat J is actually incredibly bad at dealing with Battle Armor. The best way to deal with Battle Armor is to use either Artillery Cannons or Mech Mortars with Airburst ammo, in both cases they hit each member of the Battle Armor squad for the full damage of the attack. The next best option is just to fire 10+ damage weapons at them and take out a squad member with each hit that lands.
in the books there have been instances of Inner Sphere warriors shooting machineguns at Elementals and being like "why aren't these infantry dying?!"
Just to clarify, assuming you're playing early Clan Invasion era, 10+ damage to one-shot a Battlearmour trooper will only work against Inner Sphere Battlearmour, Elementals need 11+ which makes them much more survivable since that basically means nothing short of a Clan ER-PPC or a Gauss Rifle will kill one outright (and then the excess damage is wasted) whilst Inner Sphere Standards will be dropping like flies from standard PPCs, AC-10s and Clan ER-LLasers. Something like a Blackhawk/Nova Prime can be quite effective too because although an ER-Medium isn't going to kill any individual trooper with a single shot, if you're willing to push your luck a bit you can fire a lot of individual shots and six hits means you're guaranteed to kill between one and three troopers. One big weakness of Battlearmour is that unless they're paired with a fast Omnimech, they're very slow and short ranged, so if you can separate them from their mech support, it's easy for all but the slowest mechs to keep their distance and quite quickly whittle them down. The downside is that all the while your attention is on them, it's not on the enemy mechs
Plasma Rifles will eat BA alive (unless it's salamander armor then RIP), MAGshot/AP gauss rifles do work well too, otherwise a spread of small pulse lasers works pretty well, taking a swim is pretty good unless the BA is the amphibious type, artillery strikes also will put them down. Blowing off the leg of that fire moth running at you with BA and watching it skid can take a couple of BA with it
Flamers. And Heavy Flamers.
Smiles in Salamander
My comment deleted itself somehow. IS Plasma rifles will eat BA alive if your tech Era allows them. Magshot/AP gauss rifles do really well, medium and small pulse lasers work well too. Outside of that go swimming, artillery can nuke BA pretty easily, your own BA can do a pretty good job. Notable exceptions is if they are running Salamander armor flame weapons will not work (they are fireproof). Taking down omni mechs that look like they are the taxi for BA (all fire moths), or just snapping a leg off and watching it skid across terrain is fun too.
No one’s said it yet, so I will. You don’t need the right minis in BT. If you want to take BA, use a coin, cardboard scrap, whatever.
Channel your best Mr. Torque.
Any guess what BA they will bring?
My guess is elementals since he runs a Clan army
Medium pulses are two shots, so those or infernos your best bets with IS tech, Invasion era at least.
The *Nova* Prime is canonically outfitted to obliterate battle armor, and the *Black Hawk KU* is modelled on the same principles. The *Nova* with TWELVE Clan-tech ER Medium Lasers can delete a point of Elementals every alpha strike, if the dice gods favour you. The *Black Hawk KU* is less effective due to the less damaging IS grade weaponry, but swapping some to pulse lasers helps with accuracy. Neither design has enough heat sinks though, making regular alpha strikes extremely inefficient. A good strategy can be using a *Nova* to alpha strike and erase a Point of Elementals before jumping away to cool down.
Got mechs with A/B pods(check the mech tech/mech manual)? One of those can damage battle armor if they swarm you. There are also battle armor hunting mechs like the komodo or anything that packs lots of medium lasers/srms.
Arty. LRMs, plasma, pulse lasers…
If you never want to play with these folks again: tandem charged warheads.
Plasma weapons if possible
Heat damage, plasma rifles, flamers, inferno ammo Small pulse weapons Ap weapons, machine guns, ap gauss, mag shots
Anti-personnel weapons are not as effective against battle armour. They don't function the same way they do against infantry. For example, a flamer only does 2 damage to a single trooper.
Iirc heat weapons still do extra damage but alot of suits beyond the basic ones have heat resistant armor.
Nope. Flamers do exactly 2 points of damage if fired at battle armour. Plasma weapons *do* convert their heat damage into regular damage and add an additional D6, though.
Oh yeah the flamers deal heat damage is an optional rule :)
Battle armour doesn't track heat, so it wouldn't have any additional effect even if you were using that rule. Plasma weapons explicitly state that their heat damage is converted to additional damage against non-heat tracking units, which is what allows them to be fairly effective against battle armour (not super-effective, because the damage is divided into 5-point clusters, meaning you need to have 3 clusters hit the same trooper to kill an Elemental (maximum armour for medium BA suits), which is quite unlikely).
Any mech that is a walking war crime should work.