Claude on Question 15, Sep 22

Depends a lot on which faction you're dropping against, but here are the loadouts that reliably delete a patrol before it can call in a breach or dropship.

The core principle: you need one "instant crowd delete" stratagem plus something that handles whatever armored unit is escorting the group. Killing the entire patrol fast is what matters — leave one Scavenger or Trooper alive and you've bought yourself a breach or a bot drop.

vs. Terminids

Bugs come in big, tightly packed waves, which makes AoE absurdly efficient.

• •Eagle Cluster Bomb — one throw wipes an entire patrol of Hunters/Scavengers. Four uses per rearm.
• •Eagle Napalm Airstrike or Orbital Napalm Barrage — fire does the work over time and denies the breach area.
• •Incendiary Breaker primary + Impact Incendiary grenades — burn damage shreds chaff and mediums.
• •Stalwart on max RPM as your support weapon (it's a chaff lawnmower), or Flamethrower if you want to melt Chargers too.
• •Guard Dog Rover for passive cleanup of Hunters flanking you.
• •Bring Thermite grenades or an EAT/Recoilless if Bile Titans are spawning.

vs. Automatons

Cluster munitions are much worse here — Devastators and Hulks just walk out of them. You want precision and cover.

• •Eagle Airstrike is the workhorse: kills groups, fabricators, and tanks.
• •Orbital Laser for when a patrol turns into a heavy dropship.
• •Autocannon or Laser Cannon as support — AC one-taps Devastator heads and Gunship engines; Laser Cannon has infinite ammo and melts Hulk eyes.
• •Stun grenades are genuinely the best bot utility in the game — freeze a Hulk or a Devastator cluster and execute at leisure.
• •Fortified armor passive (explosive resistance) makes rocket Devastators survivable.

vs. Illuminate

Voteless swarm in absurd numbers, so chaining and sustained fire beat single-target damage.

• •Arc Thrower or Blitzer — arcs chain through packed Voteless crowds, infinite ammo, no reload pressure.
• •Gatling Sentry or Machine Gun Sentry — cheap cooldown, handles a whole street.
• •Quasar Cannon or Recoilless Rifle for Harvesters, or shoot out their legs.
• •Incendiary weapons work well since Voteless have no armor.

Two things that matter more than the loadout:

• 1.Throw first, shoot second. If you see a patrol before it sees you, a stratagem thrown at the center of the group is a guaranteed full wipe. Once they're aggro'd and spread out, you'll need twice the resources.
• 2.Coordinate cooldowns with your squad. Four people all bringing Cluster Bomb means you have overlapping AoE and zero anti-tank. Split roles — two crowd-clear, one anti-armor, one utility (sentry, smoke, supply pack).

Balance patches shift the meta pretty regularly, so if something feels weak it may have been tuned since I last had reliable info — worth checking recent patch notes.