Claude on Question 15, Sep 20

Depends on which faction you're mowing down, but here are the highest-value picks:

Universal principle

For wiping out a patrol efficiently, you want one stratagem that kills the whole group before it scatters, not four things that kill one enemy each. Cooldown-per-kill is the real metric — that's why Eagle slots (multiple uses per rearm, short cooldown) beat Orbital Laser (3 uses per mission) for routine patrol deletion.

Also: throw it at the back of the patrol so survivors run into the blast rather than away from it.

vs. Terminids

• •Primary: Breaker Incendiary or Cookout — burn DoT chews through swarms and staggers
• •Grenade: Impact Incendiary (arguably the single best chaff-clearing item in the game)
• •Stratagems: Eagle Napalm Airstrike or Cluster Bomb + Orbital Gas Strike (cheap cooldown, huge value on patrols) + Flamethrower or Grenade Launcher + one anti-heavy option (Recoilless / Orbital Railcannon for Chargers & Bile Titans)
• •Armor: anything with Engineering Kit for extra grenades, or light armor to outrun what you didn't kill

vs. Automatons

• •Primary: Sickle, Adjudicator, or Dominator (Dominator one-shots Devastator heads)
• •Grenade: Thermite (melts Hulks/tanks) or Stun for control
• •Stratagems: Eagle Airstrike (kills groups and fabricators — best efficiency in the game) + Autocannon or Laser Cannon + Orbital Laser or Rocket Sentry + Shield Generator Pack
• •Armor: Fortified — bot rockets and cannon turrets are what actually kill you

vs. Illuminate

• •Primary: high-RPM anything (Sickle, Liberator) for Voteless hordes
• •Stratagems: Gatling Barrage or Cluster Bomb for the zombie waves, plus Quasar/Recoilless for Harvesters. Gas and fire both perform well against dense Voteless packs.

Secondary worth always taking

Grenade Pistol — lets you close bug holes and fabricators without spending a stratagem, which frees your other slots for pure killing power.

One caveat: Arrowhead patches balance pretty regularly, so specifics may have shifted since my last update — worth double-checking current weapon stats. And honestly, on higher difficulties, the most "efficient" answer to a patrol is often to not fight it at all and keep moving toward the objective.