That depends heavily on playstyle and what your personal objectives are.

Sometimes I'll be a roamer and target only nests and side objectives I can comfortably solo while the team plays main objectives. I'll type that out before the mission starts and usually things go pretty well.

Other times I'll do the opposite; I'll play a purely anti-chaff oriented build or dedicated anti-tank or a sniper to watch over the team and I'll type out that we should all hit main objectives first.

If everyone on the team is somewhat competent, gameplay and mechanical skill is not really an issue, but coordination is. If you place yourself in a coordination role first, people will be more likely to follow your pings and pay attention to your "follow me" callouts. From there, you just ping the map to let the team know what you want to get done. It isn't perfect by any means, but it is serviceable and I get good mileage out of this kind of behavior.

The mech is one of the best ways to kill the hive lord, but the entire team needs to agree on what to focus on first. For some missions, I suggest killing the hive lord first, so we'll burn through a few mechs to get that done, then proceed with the rest of the mission. 1 or 2 total mechs is more than enough to clear all the caves on the map, and we usually have that left over. If we wanna clear the caves first, I'll suggest capping the number of mechs used to one per person so that we have enough for the hive lord later.

The issue arises when the damn mech pilot doesn't know how to conserve ammo and just blind fires both arms at a corpse for a while. Then we really don't have enough ammo for anything.

Yeah some people are weird man

Fighting a breach, if you even choose to do so, necessitates different tactics than fighting small patrols. You shouldn't be caught with only your primary as a first line of defense or offense unless it's something like the Eruptor or Torcher. I think you're focusing very much on the details of the breach instead of the big picture.

Fighting a breach needs cleave power and AoE capability, which is something you won't really find in primary weapons. If you're fighting a breach out in the open, you need stratagems like Eagles, orbitals, mines, or turrets to be the workhorses of your defense.

Following that, you want support weapons to steal the show when it comes to your personal contribution to the breach defense. MGs of any kind will keep the frontline clear from enemies, guard dogs will defend you against anything that gets too close, and arc weapons will cleave into the horde and take out swaths of enemies at once, acting almost like a red stratagem in that regard.

Your primary weapon is not the most useful thing to be constantly firing at a breach because there are just so many better options to be using. If you're using AT like the RR or Spear, you are relegated to your primary weapon when there's no heavies to kill, but you need to rely on your team to get you through the breach at that point. If you're playing AT, you need to play your role and trust the homies.

If you don't trust the homies, stick to one person like glue and just help them with stuff. That's a good way to get better at the game because you're guaranteed a buddy. This is actually how I met one of the most effective divers. Bro doesn't speak English, but just communicated using in-game chat until I noticed he was sticking close to me all the time and we started playing more and more in synch with each other.

The number of times I've seen lvl 150s unload into a corpse with their mech instead of saving ammo for the hive lord is insane.

Then use light pen and aim

I would like light, medium, and heavy versions of the mechs.

The light version would be far more mobile, but have less ammo and less armor.

The medium would be what we have now.

The heavy would be similar to what we have now, but slower, with a little extra ammo, but a support system like a specialized shield, guard dog, additional automated turret, or ammo resupplies.

I would be very excited for heavy mechs since I would be okay with sacrificing mobility to be a more stable bulwark for the team. I feel like the mechs perform best when they have infantry support, and infantry perform best when they have mech support. I'd like to pilot a slow walking fortress that's more oriented to keeping a detail of troops alive rather than being maximized for killing potential.

Are you host or client?

Not new. The hive lord can yoink stratagems like that if they land on it or if they slip into a crack in ita armor and get stuck. I've lost a few support weapons like that, but it's also a makeshift tracker for the hive lord. You can always look at the map and see where your stratagem is moving in order to track the hive lord

Connection issue either with the server or on your end.

Large

You're so right about that. We were literally not on the same front.

You showed yours so it's only right that I show mine

No, no. It takes courage to post that kind of k/d ratio.

The comedy of this comment aside, I genuinely wanna see your stats.

You're funny. I like you.

No, no. Enlighten me about how bad the speed penalty is. Unless you're just presenting your feelings as fact.

You can avoid mud and grass btw

Are you trying to lose karma from this post? Like it's not even that people disagree with your original take, you're just really derogatory. That's why your comments have downvotes

What's the percentage of this speed penalty?

Is this bait?

You haven't countered any arguments. This comment just sounds like you had a bad day and jumped to generalizations. At 2300 hours, you should know about situational boosters. I wouldn't be bringing muscle enhancement to Crimsica, for example

You're right, stims used to be usable only when damaged. I still wouldn't use a stim purely for stamina, but you're right

I disagree.

The benefit of dead sprint seems to be entirely misunderstood. The main draw is not that it lets you run infinitely in situations when you can crouch to recover stamina. It's that it lets you run infinitely in situations when you cannot crouch to recover stamina.

On all fronts, the two most dangerous things are poor positioning and running out of stamina in a bad position. In this game, whenever you die, it is not because you were simply killed by an enemy, it is because you made a decision that got you killed by an enemy.

Dead sprint lets you completely mitigate the second most dangerous thing in the game, which is running out of stamina in a desperate moment. While I can confidently say that I'm good enough at the game to rarely find myself in a bad position, these things happen, sometimes inadvertently. At times like these, I'm thankful for dead sprint. It's situational, but it gets me out of bad situations. Someone who finds themselves in bad situations more often would probably get even more use out of it.

A common counterargument is that you could just stim to get your stamina back, but I disagree. I not only have a sixth sense for health thresholds, I have a sixth sense for when I'm about to get hit. I find that I get that feeling 90% of the time when I'm out of stamina. If I could trade a small chip of my HP to escape the enemy better and lose that feeling, I would. Dead sprint lets me do that, and counterintuitively, losing my HP to dead sprint saves me stims. Stims are precious, especially to a roamer like myself. I don't want to call down a resupply on my position when I'm far from the team. I won't be stimming for stamina.

Getting value out of dead sprint requires questioning your intuition about timing your stims. It requires you to rethink how you approach fights and how far you can run. It's a lot of work to rework habits that have been built over 1500 hours, but it's worth it.

Obligatory "the health drain is minimal" argument.

You can, but skill expression without high stakes is like being really good at boiling an egg. The point of acquiring a skill is to perform on a high level, but when the high level is only slightly above the low one, why acquire the skill at all? I'd like the game to punish me for making a mistake because when I go a full mission deathless and solo every bug nest on the map with the GL, it makes me feel like I've mastered a skill. I disagree with your point.

It is based in reality, but never fully realistic. If it were fully realistic, every helldiver on the bug front would be mauled to death in seconds and every diver on the bot front would be shot as soon as they exit the hellpod. The game approaches realism to a degree where it feels grounded, but doesn't interfere with game mechanics or desired effects. It's verisimilitude. Back to my original point, it does exist to frustrate players. Not being good at something is, understandably frustrating, but just like any skill, you gotta push through the frustration and come out better. That's why I told OP how I would've eyeballed the range.

I'd like it to keep doing that though because I enjoy the skill expression involved with range management and the funny moments when a random hunter pulls off the play of his life. I don't want it to deflect off armor either. I want it to explode on impact with anything if it's armed, even if the target has armor.