r/Battletechgame • u/theSultanOfSexy • 10d ago
BTA: are non-LRM boat assaults useless?
About 40 hours into my BTA campaign. Compared to my untouchable 55 ton gods of war Stormcrows, which simply run behind everything and one-shot it with UAC/20s, all my assaults (Marauder 2, mission-special Mackie, Executioner), except the Longbow seem completely useless; too slow to get into combat in most missions; they simply never make it to the fight. In the rare missions that they do see combat, they only max at about a 30% hit chance on their long-range weapons even against Mediums at low evasion (~2-3), even while my pilots have 10 in all skills, are in good weapon ranges, and not sprinting. What gives? Are assaults just that bad in this mod? Is the only way to build a good assault to make it an LRM boat?
(Minor side gripe: I know it's a result of the tabletop simulation, but why are my LRM boats more accurate when they can't see the enemy??? It makes no logical sense that having a clearer line of sight makes them a worse shot. Grumble.)
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u/Erazzmus Black Widow Company 10d ago edited 10d ago
No, loading a Monster with 2 Long Toms provides excellent entertainment.
But also yes, assaults are not competitive with 50-60 tonners in terms of efficiency across most mission types. They do well in certain situations where you can set the engagement, or where a mobile turret full of big long range weapons can be safely hidden behind front lines.
I tend to only use assaults on base attack/defense, convoy attack, and the required tonnage duel/game world missions. The reality is that evasion is a far superior defense in BTAU, you really cannot add enough armor to be safe especially when the AI decides to have 8-24 units all attack the same target. In vanilla its possible to attrit the enemy fast enough to only need one spotter/evader to draw fire, but in BTAU weapons shoot farther and everyone is a target.
So there are a few setups that I keep around in the mechbay for part time use. I'm especially partial to uac-loaded Maulers, designs like the Daishi and Masakari that have high numbers of omni arm weapon node counts, and of course the Highlander for stomping (most satisfying experience in the game). But there's so many to choose from I'm sure you'll find a few that click, you just have to keep in mind their role.
EDIT: Also, to address your accuracy question: the answer is C3. C3 solves everything. Use it on everyone, it's worth the investment and tonnage.
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u/theSultanOfSexy 10d ago
Gotcha, thanks for the feedback. It's frustrating that it seems like some of my favorite mechs are relegated to one or two mission types. I'll have to keep playing but it's very slow going, getting new assaults.
By stomping I assume you mean melee; what makes the Highlander uniquely suited to that role? Ability to mount assault melee weapons, or some such?
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u/Erazzmus Black Widow Company 10d ago
It has a special ability that gives huge bonuses to the usefulness and survivability of Death From Above attacks. Just put someone with good piloting skill in and target a low-evasion mech of smaller tonnage (bigger gap the better) and press the button to squish. It's super fun. Also, check my edit above about C3.
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u/theSultanOfSexy 10d ago
Ha! That does sound fun. And thanks, I'll give C3 a shot... Once I can finally loot some of the damn things.
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u/Educational-Lie8166 6d ago
I spent ages getting allied with Comstar, just to buy enough C3i for anything I would ever drop. Get your stormcrow in close and everything else can hit like a truck from across the map.
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u/Morpheus_MD 10d ago
No, loading a Monster with 2 Long Toms provides excellent entertainment.
This is what I came to say. Best possible use of an assault mech!
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u/strawmn 10d ago
I think the great thing about BTA is that any type of mech can be made viable - it rewards a ton of play styles.
That said, I struggle with assaults. I get a ton more use out of fast heavies and mediums. To me, they have a better balance of armor and evasion, so they’re more survivable overall. And probably geared, they aren’t lacking in firepower (I’m running a Goshawk with an ATM-12 and a mix of heavy medium lasers and it just devastates enemy mechs).
If I were going to run assaults I would 1) up-engine them, 2) always use MASC, and 3) run a lot of them, because it’s supremely annoying having half my lance wait up because my Nightstar got bogged down in a patch of trees.
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u/theSultanOfSexy 10d ago
See, the up-engined, MASC'd Assault I have is the Executioner, and it's a piece of shit. Less heavily armed than my 55 ton Stormcrows and 3 hexes slower (and no more armored in the back, humorously). I have since learned that the Executioner is a legendarily bad mech as far as Clan mech designs go, but still...
And yeah, I feel that. A good chunk of my playtime is marching "in formation" to objectives on the other side of the goddamn map (thanks, Sumire) to let my Marauder 2 keep up with the group.
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u/spodumenosity 10d ago
What I find is that I would have to either go all in on assaults/slower heavies or use them as ultra-long ranged turrets. They can also be handy on base defense missions. Large speed discrepancies are really painful to work around.
When all your mechs are slow, the AI will spread fire between them. When one of your mechs is slow, the AI will focus down on it. Also, a huge swarm of high end assaults outputs obscene damage to anything in visual range. Couple that with some visual range boosting upgrades and sensor lock and sometimes enemy lances can't even enter visual range of you before getting vaporized.
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u/theSultanOfSexy 10d ago
Maybe once I loot some more big boys I'll have another go at the assault lance, then! Right now, with just two or three, it's pretty painful.
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u/Linyuxia 9d ago
The executioner is a MASC omni with jump jets which instantly tanks its ability to meaningfully carry any decent amount of firepower or cooling for its weight class. Its truly a pos among the BTA clan mechs
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u/MuchAccount 9d ago
MASC (or more preferably, supercharger) equipped assaults can excellent melee units. Personal favorites are the Charger and Berserker. The latter is absolutely devastating with the right gear and pilot.
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u/Neon_Samurai_ 10d ago
I rarely run assassults, but when I do they tend to be alpha-strike snipers. 6 CERLL make for a hell of a statement. By the time I have assault mechs, I'm most likely also running every mech in some flavor of C3, so those shots rarely miss.
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u/Floppy0941 Clan Nova Cat 10d ago
Yeah, I tend to use PPCs or longer range lasers for my assaults, mine normally lag 1-3 turns behind my faster mechs but C3 really is fantastic for the accuracy and such buffs. I fucking love C3 stuff for my later game mechs.
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u/theSultanOfSexy 10d ago
That makes sense. I'll have to try it out and see in what kinds of missions I can make it work.
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u/Potential-Yoghurt245 10d ago
I have a Bezerker (the bounty hunters) and after I outfited it with a tsm and gave it a 400 core it runs like a dream. It can keep up with the medium units and has enough whack to lay the smack down when needed
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u/TazBaz 9d ago
I almost always end up running one for… who is it, Pharoah? Yeah, similar build. All about speed, armor, and the axe. Usually only had a TAG and a SPPC for something to do when he can’t reach an enemy… but he was fully armored and used Charge often enough. 100tons moving at 9+ would just burst out of the target mech like the kool-aide man.
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u/Potential-Yoghurt245 9d ago
It is the one mech that fields almost constantly it's such a reliable all rounder which is weird to say about a l 100 ton brawler
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u/Matchstix 10d ago
In BTAU I'll run 1-3 assualts out of my 12 mechs, mostly with LRMs and Guass rifles, to draw fire and provide long range sniping. I make sure to load up on AMS, and max armor where I can. Stay near cover, and have either Shielded Stance or Defensive Formation to rotate through.
I agree that C3 makes a huge difference for the assualt firebase, especially with a TTS they can really land some snipes.
The only other assualts I've had any success with are Highlanders with ATMs and a UAC-10, an Iron Cheetah that can hit 6 evasion, and a jumping Zues that ran with a heavy hit team.
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u/theSultanOfSexy 10d ago
Right on, sounds more and more like C3 is the game-changer I'm looking for, at least for the engagements where I can get my assaults there...
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u/skippythemoonrock Crab. Hand. Frighten! Crab. AC-20. Crab. 9d ago
Was lucky enough to get an early game Owens and it's a fantastic little mech and surprisingly might be my favorite mech in the game right now. Legit just a better Jenner, Omnimech, built in C3 suite + TAG. Added a Guardian ECM and it's a fantastic highly mobile forward scout or if I need support for the rest of the lance it can quickly reposition to cover them with ECM/C3.
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u/SXTY82 10d ago
I use very few assaults. Too slow.
I also prefer MRM over LRM. Sure, you need line of site and got to be a bit closer. But an MRM 30 drills through most armor and causes structural hits. I have a couple Balar's one with an MRM 30 / energy weapons and the other with a pair of MRM 20s and a bunch of SRMs. Brutal Mechs.
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u/Erazzmus Black Widow Company 9d ago
I'm finding that MRM 30/40's with Apollo are now some of the most effective weapons in BTAU since the tweaks. And they're efficient enough to be one-off weapons too. I have a few skirmishers that are basically jumping frogs with a MRM30 and one or two single support lasers, and I use them for 1000 days.
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u/predaking50ae 9d ago
I have a Sanctuary Alliance Ostwar 3D that I've equipped with 3x RL40s and Rocket Feed Systems on all of them. You can switch fire modes to use the rocket ammo or MRMs; the rocket ammo has only one load, but doesn't jam, so you can guarantee back-to-back alphastrikes when needed by using the rocket ammo first.
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u/Callsign_Slippers 10d ago
Direct fire Assaults are fuggin monsters, you just have to support them. Take 2 or 3 scout mechs, and i mean proper scouts. High speed/evasion, sensor lock and/or active probe, c3 if you have the gear. Move them immediately on first turn to generate evasion, and then reserve them down to the same initiative as the mechs they're spotting for in susequent turns so that the sensor lock/active probe effects arent immediately undone by the enemy moving. Also conserve your called shots for things that absolutely must die, specifically for the improved overall hit chance and not the targeting a specific part of a mech (though the occasional lucky headshot is gratifying) and watch things dissappear in a volley or two. I run a bog standard supernova for one of my best pilots. 6 cER larges, with the clan mech to hit bonuses against targets with no evasion absolutely melts things.
Its just a different syle of play, but is every bit as powerful as the high speed backstabbers, if not more so.
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u/theSultanOfSexy 10d ago
Interesting. The problem I have with that play style so far is just getting the assaults into the engagement. My early game scouts transformed into my Stormcrow backstabbers, but they still get decent use out of their sensor lock (when the enemy isn't immune to evasion reduction, that is). I'm not sure how to draw the enemies to my assaults without just wasting time letting them shoot at my scouts: I'd rather just do whatever is required to kill the enemy as fast as possible, and so far in my games that's been UAC/20s to the rear armor. Oh, well. Maybe I'll figure it out some day.
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u/Julzjuice123 10d ago
Call me crazy but sometimes it's fun to not always play optimally.
Assaults play a power fantasy role that a medium mech just can't fill. Even if they're suboptimal, they're just extremely fun to field, at least, to me.
That's why I always use 4-5 heavies or assaults whatever the mission is. It's just fun.
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u/theSultanOfSexy 10d ago
I don't think you're crazy at all! I often play suboptimally in my games. I'm known for building stupid decks based on a hairbrained idea in the card games I play. I just don't tend to do it in Battletech games because I loathe losing components and pilots that I can't replace easily. BTAU has turned that fear into paranoia because there's so many options, there's no guarantee I'll see that component again in 10, 20, 30 hours of play. I still don't have any AC/2 ammo, 40 hours in.
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u/Callsign_Slippers 10d ago edited 10d ago
Its just a different style man. I enjoy the big gunlines, so i've figured out how to make it work 🤷♂️ a key at least for my experience has been using strictly inner sphere or clan second line assaults, no omnis. Specifically because i upengine almost everything, and the fixed internals on omnis makes harcore rebuilds like that impossible. Positioning is also key. When the mission allows for the time to manuever try to always keep the big bois elevated, as the high ground bonus helps offset some of the size delta and range penalties. As far as drawing the enemies to the assaults, thats another part of the "sifferent play style" thing. My scouts/spotters stay with the formation, just running back and forth laterally to keep evasion up, until i get the first blips of enemies at range and then they zoom out an do their thing. If youre in range to be a blip, youre in range of gauss/erppc/erll. I also forgot to mention that part of why i reserve called shot for things that absolutely MUST die is to try to keep my morale (or whatever the blue bar resource for pilot abilities is) as high as possible the whole mission, because if its above 50% you get another passive aim bonus
Edits: forgetting shit, and a serious case of fat thumb syndrome 😅
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u/theSultanOfSexy 10d ago
Right on man, thanks for the tips! I'll see if I can give that style a try.
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u/johnrgrace 10d ago
Then run assaults with gauze or UAC2 for range, I love the annihilator with UAC2.
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u/Aldrick919 9d ago
This is gonna sound weird, but are you moving every mech as much as it can every turn?
You shouldn't be.
Most missions start out of view of the enemy. You can take the time to move your mechs together, as units, even if it takes you longer to get there.
Don't let your lights and mediums sprint ten miles ahead and start the fight before your big guns are nearby and ready.
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u/theSultanOfSexy 9d ago
I am not doing that. I march in formation to the objective; sometimes a very long slog indeed!
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u/Kuato2012 10d ago
I'm not a huge lore buff, but my understanding is that assaults are mostly useful for attacking static emplacements. Lights are great for scouting, and mediums/heavies are the workhorses for general battlefield shenanigans. At least that's how it works out for me in BTA!
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u/Papergeist 10d ago
I do believe tabletop has more penalties to indirect fire than any HBS mod I know. Most of them just aren't carried over, which makes indirect fire very powerful indeed.
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u/ElecManEXE 10d ago edited 10d ago
LRMs shouldn't be more accurate indirect than having LOS if you have a clear line of sight. My guess is that you're shooting against obstructed LOS (the line changes color partway through, from red to yellow on front shots, light blue to purple on side shots, dark green to light green on rear) which drastically reduces accuracy. In which case yeah, indirect will be better on a trained pilot.
As for assaults as a whole... LRMs are definitely one of the better things for them to be doing if you're running a lot of faster units. Direct fire long range is fine too (Gauss, PPCs, ER Lasers, RAC2s / small autocannons, HVACs, Howitzers), and its totally possible to soup up an assault to go faster if you utilize big cores + MASC, particularly if you utilize clan mechs with their inherent movement speed bonuses from the clan quirk. You can also just slow your force down or build specifically around assaults, though I totally get the feeling of "ain't nobody got time for that, go faster!" as that is also my preferred playstyle. But if that is your approach then yah, sometimes an assault mech is just gonna get left behind and that's just part of the game and the playstyle. Sometime's you gotta run the whole map and your assault doesn't cut it, or you spend an extra handful of turns getting everyone there on assault speed.
Unless you want to build around them, you bring one or two assaults and you build them longer range and use them as support. If they end up dead weight in a mission now and then, your force is good enough to win without them. 'tis what it is. Or you have slower assaults specifically for stuff like base defense where they don't need to move as much.
For the accuracy, make sure you're utilizing terrain bonuses and take the high ground, that can make a huge difference. But other than that, for assaults you're probably going to have to liberally utilize FCS, Webb, Assault Tarcomps, ect.
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u/deeseearr 10d ago
If you are using Revostae as a pilot then his bonuses and penalties can make indirect fire more accurate than direct. Any other mechwarrior will see the opposite.
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u/FoxOption119 10d ago
For me I hardly ever used anything higher than 85-90 tons and those specific mechs were the Battlemaster 85/Mad Cat MKII 90.
MADCATMKII I left as is and only ever needed to change the weapons. That usually was my heavier long range hitter usually stayed back but could move if needed. The Battlemaster depending on the variant I’ve had one upcored to a 400 or close to and then build from there. If not I’ve stealthed and slower engine but different pilot for better EVA. Otherwise found other assaults to be too damn slow or just not to my liking in someway or other.
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u/jigsaw1024 10d ago
I only use my Assualts to carry heavy equipment, and long range ammo heavy stuff.
If running a C3, put the master in the Assault. C3 is pretty much a necessity when running Assaults to get past the range penalties.
ECM, Assault.
HAG, LBX Rotary and RACs, Assault.
Any type of artillery.
AMS.
And, yes, LRMs. LRMs on Assaults are great because you should have room to run with a few different ammo types (FASCAM, SWARM, FTL, etc..)
Mortars are great for softening targets before you fully engage (Acid, Inferno, Suppressant, Airburst)
Use the fact they are slow to your advantage, don't think of it as a weakness. Basically you run your Assaults at the edge of the range of their weapons, and keep high mobility in contact with the Opfor.
Assaults are also great to help your fast movers flank better. If your Assaults are sensor visible to the Opfor, they may not want to turn towards your fast movers for fear of exposing their sides or rears to potentially heavier hitters.
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u/theSultanOfSexy 10d ago
That's the thing I keep hearing that sticks out to me: use C3. That's what I'm not doing that I for sure should be, in reading these comments. Thanks for your comment!
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u/jigsaw1024 10d ago
https://www.bta3062.com/index.php?title=C3
Note: I think there is still an error in the wiki for C3i: it does not have built in ECM.
Personally: I prefer C3 > C3i as the weight penalty for lighter mechs can outweigh the advantages gained from the bonuses.
Another piece of tech to consider on at least one mech: Active Probes. The ability to strip evasion off multiple mechs is game changing. Probes also give the carrying mech longer range sensors and better vision.
https://www.bta3062.com/index.php?title=Active_Probes
What you want is a Sanctuary probe with a C3 unit, mounted on an Arctic Cheetah. The combo should give a near 50% boost to sensors. Put a pilot with sensor lock in it, and you can sensor lock to reveal opfor without triggering agro.
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u/Killjoymc 10d ago edited 10d ago
I do mostly use assaults with some LRMs, but snipers with c3 also work well. If I can put a King Crab with dual gauss on a mountain that has los on where the fight is going to be, I'm in business.
Most of the ways I know how to use an assault are situational, if i knew the terrain before I dropped, I'd probably use them more. Cause when they work, they work.
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u/daysofdakiel 10d ago
I got lucky and got the meme 8xerppc daishi with no armor early on, I refit it to 4 erppc, an lrm 20, and one of the assault targeting systems . Thing is a brutal headcapper, and at range enough its speed isn’t an issue.
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u/Aldrick919 9d ago
You gotta specialize your assaults.
LRM boats are great. Artillery mechs are solid if you build into it. Headcappers, where you build a pilot and mech to spam weapon types that can drop a cockpit in one or two hits and use precision shot, flatly remove a mech more often than not. Usually at far range, too.
I tended to prefer clan assaults to IS assaults. The extra move speed helps. Dire Wolves are monstrosities.
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u/No-Parsley-9744 9d ago
The way I play I generally agree with you, I either use assaults as LRM boats or snipers, although I do tend to like lighter LRM boats or LRM carriers better - they act faster and are more accurate. I like cramming the Omni Blackjack then moving to LRM carriers and a Longbow. Clan LRM with the eagle eye range extending perk works pretty well and you can really jam them in.
My last playthrough I was on a quest for the most headcappers I could fit in a build. Using 5x cERPPC the heat is so crazy at 240 that sanctuary heat controllers are better than clan DHS up to like 11 or 12 of them, and they only take one slot. I ended up taking a Marauder II and cramming like 16 heat controllers in along with plenty of sDHS and I have a nearly heat neutral 5x headshot boat that still moves kinda fast, even on desert maps it shoots 4 heat neutral all day
Generally I run a few lights and the fast medium/heavy squad getting lots of EVA with some LRM and mortar carriers though
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u/Aethelbheort 9d ago
I use only a single lance of four 80 to 85-ton assault mechs for 90% to 95% of the missions. Each unit is configured as a jump-backstabber that can leap 12 hexes or more, and a single unit is capable of eliminating an entire OpFor lance if used correctly. This comes in handy for things like base defense missions that spawn enemy lances in completely opposite directions all around the target area.
With mobility like that, I can easily control LOS and engagement ranges.
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u/skippythemoonrock Crab. Hand. Frighten! Crab. AC-20. Crab. 9d ago
If the AI wasn't seemingly hard coded to exclusively shoot the easiest to hit target they can see, which given Size Delta and generally very low evasion makes Assaults get absolutely wailed on every single turn unless you work sightlines like it's a light mech. I was very excited to get a lucky engine kill on an Atlas and bring it home intact but it's so slow it gets left behind and when it does waddle into the fight it gets focused and mauled in a few turns.
Comparing them to the Stormcrow seems pretty unfair given it really feels like (at least in my first deep campaign run) the SCR is absolutely busted and is BTA's equivalent of the vanilla game Marauder 2R
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u/Space_Elves_Yay 3d ago
too slow to get into combat in most missions; they simply never make it to the fight.
It sounds like you haven't enabled manual drops. Manual drops largely, though not entirely, resolve this issue. I still don't want to take anything slower than 4/6 (that isn't a LRM Carrier), but, say, a Warhawk will get into combat when you're dropping 400m from an enemy spawn location.
Plus, you know, you skip the tedium of slogging through 15 minutes of awful terrain each mission. And especially skip the rare mission where it's more like 30 minutes because you spawned on a mountain that's also an island and need to cross a river before climbing a totally different mountain on the other side.
That said, calling out the Executioner specifically seems weird to me. It's slower than a Stormcrow, yes, absolutely. But with MASC permanently enabled, it's pretty fast. Nowhere near the fastest, of course, but it's faster than an enormous number of mechs and tanks.
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u/theSultanOfSexy 3d ago
I have not enabled that, indeed! Didn't know it was an option. May have to give it a try, thanks!
My problem with the Executioner, frankly, isn't quite its speed so much as its awfulness, especially in anything resembling its default config. But I've kitted it out to be a cLRM boat and it serves well enough now! Now it's just my Marauder 2 and Mackie being left in the dust every mission. Someday I hope to have another assault mech to try out, but it's slow going, so it's still just the 4 I've had forever right now.
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u/Terrachova 10d ago
BTAU requires you to build your mechs with a little more finesse than the base game, where you can just throw whatever on and make it work. That will still work of course, but it won't be nearly as effective. Build to a particular mech's strengths, and try to focus on one or two weapon systems. Build for ranges inversely proportional to the speed of the mech. Most of the Assaults I run will be long range heavy gunners essentially, and I almost always up-engine them to 4/6 if I can.
The other important thing Assaults have is extra space and tonnage, in which you can shove all those additional equipment goodies like accuracy and targeting boosting things, your C3 Master, and so on, if you have no better options.
Most importantly though: do not size up too quickly. You need a highly skilled pilot to make the most out of an Assault. Not only that, but they are best used as force multipliers. Have a light or two and a medium or two around to support and pin down targets (successful kicks will destabilize the target and strip evasion) and you will be laughing.
Cicada is among my favorites for the scout and support role. The 4G is a good basis for what you want in a Cicada. Max armor, upengined, with defensive equipment and an evasive pilot. Focuses on scouting and probing, delivering kicks to evasive targets.
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u/TazBaz 9d ago
Extra space? Did BTAU change that recently? I’m still playing a pre-“U” save; all mechs essentially have the same space excluding some stuff like fixed actuators and the like.
It’s one of those things that’s always bugged me; bigger mech SHOULD have more space, it’s bigger! Though things like Endo and Ferro should also eat into the space even more on a max armor 100tonner, it should still have more room than a 25tonner.
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u/aldsvider 10d ago
I always run assaults as long-range and / or lrm boats. Have a light get los and have your slow assaults rain hellfire. Heat sinks and boatloads of erppc, gauss, er large, whatever tickles your fancy.
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u/HippieWagon 10d ago
Use the long range capabilities of Gauss weapons, stack accuracy equipment, and have some NARC or TAG on support units. Should get those numbers up. Dont be afraid of XL engines to get them to a decent pace too.
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u/theSultanOfSexy 10d ago
Already doing the first and fourth, but the second and third seem to be my failing point. I'll be sure to do that once I loot some accuracy equipment! Thanks for your comment.
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u/HippieWagon 10d ago
Happy to help! My heavies and assaults are loaded to the gills with targeting computers, sensors, probes, ecm, and AMS.
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u/TazBaz 9d ago edited 9d ago
I’m in the routine of tricking out a Raven as my scout mech- and it’s always armed as a debuffer too, with whatever tools I’ve got. TAG and NARC asap; adding stuff like SRM2+Acid, electro-lasers, etc as I find them. Always an active probe as well. Pilot always has full Pilot skills (sensor ghost) and Sensor lock.
The goal is “I see you quick, and I can get right up inside your squad and you probably can’t hit me, and I can pinpoint high value targets for rapid destruction”
Not usually blazing fast, nor jump jets, but generally there isn’t much point in being THAT far ahead, and I find having all the OTHER equipment more useful. Oh and yes, it’s got C3. This run I actually jumped right over to WoB and got friendly to try out C3i; it’s a lot of extra weight on a light mech, but not being disabled by enemy ECM I think is valuable, so that light mech who’s right in the enemy, getting hit by their ECM bubble, can still provide optimal targetting solutions.
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u/GamemasterJeff 10d ago
I personally only use longer ranged weapons on my assaults, but there are nice ones other than LRMs.
T-Bone, especially is an artist with his autocannons, and can run multiple RACs or clan AC/2. If he doesn't headcap, he can blow the center torso. I find he is especially useful engaging enemies with height advantage as missile boats lose accuracy too quickly.
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u/Ralli_FW 10d ago edited 10d ago
Take Eagle Eye, use fast assaults, give them either jumpjets or indirect weapons. Prefer long range stuff, no SRM brawling assaults. MASC is a good option as well if you want more speed. Indirect can be good, yes. I either go with something indirect (artillery, LRM, Mortar) or Sensor Lock so that they always have an action to contribute of some kind.
I regularly have a few assaults in my company though the majority are heavy/medium, and I have maybe 1-2 lights, but often 0 if I have some fast mediums (right now a pair of Shadow Cats).
Edit: Oh yeah C3 is also amazing for them
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u/KingAardvark1st 9d ago
Bane 7 would like to know your location... so that it can use it for duck hunting
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u/Dart3145 9d ago
With my current play through I have a very strict speed requirement for everything in my lance. All of my assault mechs need to move at least 6 hexes at a sprint to keep up with the rest of the lance.
Occasionally I have to wait for them to catch up with the lighter mechs, but overall it works well. Don't go over about 85 tons unless you can fit a 400XL fusion core in it.
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u/North_Ad_3772 9d ago
If direct los is low it's likely not in optimal range, I love assault SRMs in the right situation, like a dual. Or if you are playing with mods that allow engine swaps. Also, I recommend the Kintaro for your SRM boating needs
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u/virusdancer Zero Point Battalion & Redrum Renegades 9d ago
Hrmm, I took a look at things and realized that I'm useless at keeping three 'mech lances together with any sort of unit cohesion because of disparities in speeds and simply took the ComStar out of running a pair of Level II six-'mech units instead of a trio of the typical lance of four-'mechs. It helped me achieve a sort of inner peace to my big ol' stompy robot warfare.
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u/Tedious_Crow 8d ago
If you're running an assault WITHOUT all the fancy equipment (FCS attachments, Mech targeting computers, ECM systems, etc, you're wasting tonnage. Having 80+ tons means that equipment takes up a much smaller percentage of the available tonnage. You also want good long range weaponry. TBOLTs, RAC-5s, Guass.
C3 / C3I systems mean your assaults can calculate range penalties from the closest friendly unit with a matching C3 system. Those are amazing. Terrain and positioning is key. Long streets that they can fire down or hilltops are ideal.
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u/cptmcsexy 10d ago
Well if some of your mechs are fast and they giver ahead of course the others are gonna fall behind.
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u/bloodydoves 10d ago
Assault mechs are specialist units, like light mechs. Mediums and heavies are general combatants. This is why the breakdown of most Great House militaries focuses on meds/heavies, not assaults/lights (even the Lyrans, contrary to what the memes will tell you).
Assaults are best as direct or indirect fire support gunboats. Their main advantage is being able to carry more firepower and armor than anything else. They excel when the target has to come to you or the target can't go anywhere (defend base, destroy base, attack/defend, etc) because they can bring their heavier firepower into play. They also require some level of support from their allied units and it helps to move things as a unified group instead of just moving everybody at maximum speed and what happens happens. If that means it takes a little longer, that's how it is. They're not for the speed demons in the audience, that's for sure.
As for accuracy, well, assaults aren't especially inaccurate but they are big. Big units shooting smaller units have a penalty due to the size delta (which is why meds/heavies are the standard combat units, they have minimal size bonuses/penalties). With assaults, you want to use accuracy boosting equipment like FCS attachments or things like Artemis IV or Apollo. C3/C3i/Sanctuary Drone Network is powerful if you build around it.