Like I said, Mantra and Static Buildup come early, the Mantra is especially crucial. Syndicate can handle the first 5 turns or so no problem and is more than competitive later on. Cerebral Override makes the Indentured unkillable and having access to snipers is a big advantage.
The Assembly get's a starting sniper, despite being a rush army.
The Syndicate does not, despite being a standoff army.
Of course if you pick Strong Starting armies because the army is that weak, that kind off prooves my point
You don't rush your Scavangers into battle. They go into guard mode while your sniper baits the AI. Once the AI moves up to engage the sniper, your melee is in range and will murder just about anything with zero loses, and almost no health loss, short of a pure fish or lava rocks army. Assembly starter army is great imo.
Now based on what you have posted it sounds like you are trying to use Scavengers like Frenzied this is wrong. Don't rush in with them move from cover to cover until you can get close enough to strike
You seem to missinterpret "rush army" with "take no cover and use no defense mode".
I of course move them from cover to cover, until they are in range for at least one attack.
And sniper baiting does not work, if the enemy has stronger ranged. Or he just moves along all the vectors where the sniper is not overwatching. And there are plenlty of sightblockers on the maps.
that was my point, Liquid Flames can be annoying but frankly... what's stopping you from waiting a bit when you see a Liquid Flame stack?
Why can I not use wait? Because they outgun me.
7 Damage on a repeating ranged attack just beats the shootgun scavengers got.
I just sat my sniper on overwatch, put my leader a bit forward in cover and my scavengers in cover somewhere between. Let them come to you get some shots in, including the shotguns then run in and finish off the wounded by hand. Admittedly I didn't encounter any ethereal or rock stacks but if I had I'd just ignore them for a bit till I had something to compliment my scavengers.
If those are on a important terrain feature or the NPC faction quest you need for influence, you do not have that option.
Progress in the early game should not be luck based.
With the ability to heal whilst damaging the enemy the scavengers feel pretty strong to me and allow you to finish fights with good health remaining.
The issue with that strenght is, that it is part of the gameplan for that unit. He needs that healing because just moving towards the enemy will encounter plenty of hits.
And it stops working against the 2 factions that also happen to outgun you.
Of course the scout unit has a heal to help keep your troops alive in tougher fights but you seem unwilling to use it suggesting you are complaining about the faction not playing the way you want it to
As their name clearly says: Scouts are for
scouting.
Using them in the main army because the starting army is that weak, that means 1/2 of your scouting is not getting done.
I do not keep my scouts in my Vanguard, Kirko, Dvar and Amazons armies either. If I have to do it here for similar performance, that simply means those armies are weak.
