I'm looking into using a stealth armor mech. I have been using the Pirates bane and while it's very quick its doesn't have much knock out power. What would other people suggest and what builds would you give it?
My general rule of thumb is to fit stealth armor only on fast, agile mechs wich actually have to brawl to be effective. With that said, my most successfull stealth build is the following and I strongly recommend to use it ONLY once you fully skilled it.... To be honest, I can't think of another strong stealth build. JVN-11B "Ninja" (4xSRM4, ECM, SA, XL225) + Alt Gameplay is old ("activating stealth completely negates heat dissipation" era), but it is still relevant.
https://mechspecs.com/threads/tns-5s-stealthy-mcstealthface-2xgauss-ecm-std280.13347/ Kind of fun to play, but way on the other side of speed from a locust.
I always thought stealth armor was best using while not getting involved and staying behind the enemy line and shooting from behind without having to be in machine gun distance. Maybe an er ppc or something with great range and damage and you just do something like fire in direction they are firing and every now and then blast someone in the back and they think it's freindly fire. It could be i have no idea what I'm talking about and just dreaming.
I'll give you my 2 cents about why stealth isn't very useful at range. First thing first, @Excalibaard made some time ago a very quick rundown on equipments. You can find it here: Compact Equipment and Utility Weapons guide As for now: So, according to the numbers I can recall, ECM: without skills will prevent any targeting above 540 (unless an opponent has targeting range bonuses, the targeting distance will be greater) with full skills ("enhanced ECM" in sensor skill tree) targeting range will become 270 meters, which is the "maximum" range for multiple brawl weapons, like SRMs (the only exception are clan Streaks, in which case stealth is particularly usefull) If you are sniping and you fully skilled into ECM, it is very unlikely someone will be able to lock on you, because: an opponent must get closer than 270 meters. an opponent has to disable your ECM via TAG / NARC (if I remember correctly stealth won't protect you against NARC, but it will against TAG) an opponent has to deal damage to you with any PPC (PPC disables ECM temporarily, I'm not sure stealth will protect you from this) an opponent has to get close and pop a UAV next to you (stealth will protect you from UAVs) About "soft targeting" (actually seeing you and keep track of your movement / position with the naked eye) the only true benefit of stealth at range is thermal view protection, because stealth won't make you invisible or blend you with the surroundings, unless you paint your mech to achieve that level of camouflage. Also, thermal view has been nerfed so much it is almost impossible to see a sniper anyway from that distance. TBF, I struggle with night nivision at medium long ranges, thermal has a shorter range, and that's why is mostly usefull at medium-short range. Unless you really need the thermal view protection and the ECM-disabled-by-PPC protection, the huge thermal dissipation malus (1.5 heat/s) plus the slots and weight occupied compared to ferro fibrous doesn't make it really worth it on most ranged builds. Lock-on prevention (especially vs clan streaks), UAV protection and preventing being spotted due to lack of targeting are actually game changers for little fast brawlers. Neither of these bonuses apply at ranged combat. There are some big troll stealth mechs which are very fun to play (dual gauss thanatos is one of them, but I gave up on that build once I found out I had to fit a huge and slow STD engine), but IMHO they are not very reliable and will work only in quickplay solo drops because there is a higher chance to fight against unskilled / unorganized foes.
