I feel like a lot of people sleep on Orbital Gas Strike, but I really love that thing. For starters, it's great for smothering a bug breach, drop it on the breach when you first see the ground crack and it'll kill all the small stuff. Same with bots, drop one where a bot drop is about to land if you don't have a way to take down the dropship and it'll smoke anything smaller than a devastator, including the pilots on the scout walkers.

The gas lingers long enough that if you're being chased by a swarm of something, drop one just behind you as you run away and they'll march into it, and only the strongest will come out again, leaving you free to focus on the big things.

Plus, it'll blow a bug hole on a close hit, a bot factory on a direct hit, and has a very short cooldown and easy sequence.

Orbital Gas Strike, smells like Victory.

I've been experimenting with full support load outs. 1 quasar, 1shield, 1 autocannon, 1 supply or jump pack.

I've found in Lvl 8/9 missions it's possible to get killed and have to wait almost 10 minutes to get your gear back, the party moves on, the spot where you dropped the gear is inaccessible etc. With 4 support packs I can just switch, autocannon and quasar will drop large enemies same as an orbital or eagle. Jump back can move me fast or to a safe location to fire from.

Plus, I can call down packs for squad mates who lose theirs.

Orbital gas strike has become an auto-include for me lately. Before that, it was the Orbital Airburst (God's Shotgun).

Both of these recharge quickly. Both of these clear out spawn sites and secondary objectives (though the gas can fully destroy bot spawns)..

HMG emplacement is extremely strong, better against the bugs since they don’t shoot back, but very good against both

Gatling barrage is absolutely slept on, so is orbital smoke imo. For bots anways. It enables you to be a lot sneakier, can help you disengage, when a fellow diver is in a tight spit it can help cover their retreat, and the beacon is red so you can scare the shit out of people by calling it on top of them!

Honestly precsion strike is pretty useful as well, I feel like everyone moves on from it quickly but it's pretty versatile.

What do you mean about EATs messing up missions?

I saw some dude making pretty clutch work out of orbital smokes while in quickplay last night. Allowed us to quickly disengage from huge fights and made extraction tolerable against bots. Made me decide to equip smoke grenades for a few missions with him and now I'm kinda seeing the value of smoke in bot missions.

110mm rockets are super handy for taking out bot fabricators quickly

Orbital laser lasts for 25sec and melts pretty much anything

Stalwart i was like, eh, its just a bigger version of the assault rifles, itll never beat a flamer. NOPE, massive swarms of hunters, see ya! Shreds basically everything in its path, its litterally a chainsaw with a length of a kilometer, i love it

SPEAR

People sleep on this thing exclusively because of how finicky the lock on is, but it's way too good against the bots. I can take out turrets and fabricators from a mile away. once I closed an entire heavy outpost with just a spear from atop a hill. only thing that comes close is the auto cannon, but that requires everything to line up, whereas the spear? aim, fiddle with lock on, fire, move on. once you understand how to get around the finicky lock on, you can basically fire and forget.

personally, it's worth taking just to get rid of the turrets. those things are such a pain in the ass getting close enough to orbital strike it or to shoot it's vent, and usually results in someone dying a few times to it. worse when there's two of them, so if taking a full support weapon and backpack slot saves a few reinforcements, then I'll take it any day.

shield emplacement is an ok crutch in bot missions with randoms, great for when the team is stuck in a respawn loop and needs that breathing room to regroup

The arc thrower. No one told me you're supposed to spam that thing. Works great.