Claude on Question 15, Sep 19

Depends on the faction, but here are the general principles plus a couple of concrete builds.

Core idea

Patrols come in tight clumps, so a single well-placed area strike usually kills the whole group. Efficiency is about short cooldowns + wide area rather than raw damage. Eagle stratagems are the best value here because you get multiple uses per rearm, and rearming is fast if you dump all charges before calling it in.

Vs. Terminids

Bugs come in huge numbers with light armor, so fire and fragmentation shred them.

• •Primary: Breaker Incendiary or Cookout — burn DoT kills entire clusters of Hunters/Warriors for very little ammo
• •Grenade: Impact Incendiary (throw into a breach or clump and walk away)
• •Stratagems:
• •Eagle Cluster Bomb — the single best "delete a patrol" button vs. unarmored swarms
• •Napalm Airstrike or Orbital Gas Strike — area denial, closes off a flank
• •Gatling Sentry — enormous kill count against chaff, short cooldown
• •Something for Chargers/Titans: Recoilless, Quasar, or just Thermite grenades on your belt

Vs. Automatons

Bots are armored and shoot back, so you want precision and stagger rather than volume.

• •Primary: Dominator or Adjudicator — stagger locks Devastators; Sickle if you prefer ammo economy
• •Grenade: Thermite (Hulks, tanks, fabricators) or Stun (to set up headshots)
• •Stratagems:
• •Eagle Airstrike — kills a patrol and closes a fabricator, the best generalist in the game
• •Orbital Laser — handles anything you didn't plan for, 3 uses per mission
• •Autocannon or Laser Cannon — one-shots Devastator heads, breaks Hulk eyes, drops Gunships
• •Rocket Sentry or Anti-Tank Emplacement for heavy pushes

Practical notes

• •Armor: Engineering Kitplate (+2 grenades, less recoil) pairs well with impact grenades. Light armor on bots is viable if you're confident in cover; medium is safer.
• •Throw ahead of the patrol, not at it — strikes have a delay and patrols move.
• •Ironically, the most efficient answer to a patrol is often not engaging it. Killing a patrol doesn't lower the aggro meter, and the noise pulls more in.

Worth noting the balance patches move constantly, so specific weapon rankings may have shifted since my information was current — but the "Eagle Airstrike + one support weapon + one sentry + one flex slot" skeleton has stayed strong through every patch.