Some thoughts on Vanguard guys
Trooper - great standard soldier guy, overwatch, good health, good range and great scaling with cheap mods. One of the better t1 units.
PUG - great support, although not so much for the vanguard troops themselves, but more for commanders. Resupply charge allows all sorts of OP shenanigans with the various commander equipment, and obscure is a huge boost to survivability on a strong unit. The heal is useful, if inflexible, and the gun is pretty trash but at least you can get the occasional finisher off.
Engineer - not a fan of these guys in general - using the shotgun is a good way to get killed, and the AI will be more than happy to do that for you in auto-combat. The turret seems decent in theory, but in practice the short range and fixed location often rendered it pretty ineffective for me. Sure he can heal your tank, but as far as I can tell, there's no circumstance where you would not want another tank instead.
Gunship - fast armored flyer with missiles and repeating cannon. Fantastic unit all around, never underestimate the power of being able to run rings around your opponent movement speed wise.
Laser Tank - Mmm laser tanks are a glorious thing. No AOE but a nice mix of toughness, evasion, solid range dps and a whomping huge artillery strike. Also not 24 speed, fucking 24 speed units.
Walker - The walker mechs are ok, but in general use are just flatly inferior to laser tanks. There's a few places where a rocket attack could be handy, but you have to suffer slow movement and crappy armor to bring it - it's weird these guys are so high up the tech tree when Vanguard doesn't get explosives tech. Plus, if you want explosions that badly, equip your tanks with missile arrays ;p
Drone Carrier - I found to be a disappointment. The healing drones are obviously great, but the skirmish and laser drones are just pointless chaff - maybe if it could launch all of them at the same time or something, but as it is, the carrier either walks up and pretends to be a shitty tank, or spends 4 turns doing nothing in the backrow while it summons random garbage that mostly serves to chain arc attacks onto your useful units.
I think that, weirdly enough, the Vanguard strengths are in heavy armor, specifically laser tanks and gunships. Troopers are a great starter unit, and scale really well with mods, but the cosmite cost of keeping them relevant becomes unnattractive compared to production 5 tanks etc.
Trooper - great standard soldier guy, overwatch, good health, good range and great scaling with cheap mods. One of the better t1 units.
PUG - great support, although not so much for the vanguard troops themselves, but more for commanders. Resupply charge allows all sorts of OP shenanigans with the various commander equipment, and obscure is a huge boost to survivability on a strong unit. The heal is useful, if inflexible, and the gun is pretty trash but at least you can get the occasional finisher off.
Engineer - not a fan of these guys in general - using the shotgun is a good way to get killed, and the AI will be more than happy to do that for you in auto-combat. The turret seems decent in theory, but in practice the short range and fixed location often rendered it pretty ineffective for me. Sure he can heal your tank, but as far as I can tell, there's no circumstance where you would not want another tank instead.
Gunship - fast armored flyer with missiles and repeating cannon. Fantastic unit all around, never underestimate the power of being able to run rings around your opponent movement speed wise.
Laser Tank - Mmm laser tanks are a glorious thing. No AOE but a nice mix of toughness, evasion, solid range dps and a whomping huge artillery strike. Also not 24 speed, fucking 24 speed units.
Walker - The walker mechs are ok, but in general use are just flatly inferior to laser tanks. There's a few places where a rocket attack could be handy, but you have to suffer slow movement and crappy armor to bring it - it's weird these guys are so high up the tech tree when Vanguard doesn't get explosives tech. Plus, if you want explosions that badly, equip your tanks with missile arrays ;p
Drone Carrier - I found to be a disappointment. The healing drones are obviously great, but the skirmish and laser drones are just pointless chaff - maybe if it could launch all of them at the same time or something, but as it is, the carrier either walks up and pretends to be a shitty tank, or spends 4 turns doing nothing in the backrow while it summons random garbage that mostly serves to chain arc attacks onto your useful units.
I think that, weirdly enough, the Vanguard strengths are in heavy armor, specifically laser tanks and gunships. Troopers are a great starter unit, and scale really well with mods, but the cosmite cost of keeping them relevant becomes unnattractive compared to production 5 tanks etc.
