AG purchase guide?

Never use noricoms in any capacity.

Ag items have limited capacities later on, BUT:

Ag bots:
-Golem: get a couple of these once you have 1-2 Orkans/Tarans. It shares the top speed of the boa and vityaz, and has more firepower than each, at the cost of a little health. You can use pretty much every weapon you're upgrading.

-Boa: probably the only Ag Medium bot that can reliably hold it's own up to low gold, the boa is a boat of HP that can reliably win games if piloted well

-Griffin: hands down the best Ag bot, it has the same firepower as the Rhino, and can perform the Rhino's roles. Using it's jump properly is key to the Griffin's utility.

Weapons:

-Sura-F Pinata: when at a loss for light weapons, the Pinata has the highest burst DpS.

-CRV Pin: 500M burst damage, short reload, nuff said.

-Tulumbas: 2 CRVs in a single burst at the cost of a 50% longer reload. While it shines at 500M, poor folk can use them as an Orkan placeholder (more cover play is necessary)

-ECC Thunder: A huge shotgun that does huge damage at 100M and under, reloads while firing...nuff said.

-KwK448MM: Currently the highest DPS 1100M weapon, strap a couple onto a carnage, or 3 on a fury, and sink every mid-range bot you can spot, your teammates will thank you.

I'm not the best at giving advice but I'll speak of what I've found to be effective. Plus what you find effective depends on your play style. As I see from your post, you seem to like weapons that allow you to knife fight. You're not too much into area control or mid range fighting, and the weapons you find useless reflects this. The weapons you mention aren't ones which you use to attack an enemy by yourself. But are better for tactical situations

I started piloting a quad CRV pin Patton and found myself to be quite more effective than when using a quad pinata Patton. The range and splash is great, and short cool down. An enemy hiding to close to the corner if the building receivesa lot of damage, making it great against corner shooters. It does involve fire and hide tactics though. This lets you whittle down a hiding enemy's health as a knife fighter comrade approaches and takes the kill (you may get it yourself though with a well timed shot). This ensures that your comrades have the advantage in knife fights due to health discrepancies when they engage.

I actually also found spirals useful when used in quad at mid range. The Aphid actually gives up nearly half the range of the spiral. With a quad spiral Patton, I've been able to help my teammates more with territory control since I cover a lot of area (600m radius). So I can stay in 1 spot and snipe hidden enemies. If you understand how the rockets take flight, it's easy to make them go around cover and hit a hiding enemy. I use a target lock (it's disabled by default, you have to turn it in the settings). Not sure if you know what that is, but with that, I can make the Spiral rockets do near 90 degree turns to hit opponents behind cover. For example getting a quad Spiral Patton in the center beacon of Yamantau map is a go9d example of area control. You may not be able to get a lot of kills, but you're hitting enemies for a around half the damage of aphids at twice the range. In multiple cases this has proven to be the difference in comrades winning knife fights since you can help from farther away. I actually had games where I was the biggest damage dealer but had zero kills.

As mentioned prior, the KwM is the best sniper weapon for now. But it's not as effective when used in isolation. Best paired as part of a battery/artillery while others knife fight for you. I have had good effectivity using a Tulum-Pin-KwM Golem in specific situations, but it's not an all rounder unit. It's at best a secondary support. Soften up enemies before your front line troops arrive so they have an easier battle. It helps get the win, but you don't get as high rewards as other builds.

It's a personal thing, but I don't measure weapon or build effectivity as having the best score in the game. I could have had the lowest score but still be effective. Seeing a teammate fighting an enemy, your couple of KwM+Pins shot may have spelled the difference between your teammate's winning that knife fight, hence two of you living. You having shorter range may mean your teammate dead and you receiving damage from the enemy , which puts you at a disadvantage.

Of course my experience is from Bronze. I think I'm somewhere between mid Bronze to low silver since I've been seeing quite a number of Gareths and Stalkers every few games.

Interesting. Yes, so far I found knife fighting most interesting, but I also haven't found the right weapon combination for area control. Tried it a few times, but as I have few other sniper weapons my bot wasn't that efficient. Didn't realize the potential of the KWK, maybe I'll find the time to upgrade one or two to reasonable levels...

imo the griffin is always slow regardless of level, and it will always be glassy, but the jump will always make it an excellent bot .

Keep upgrading that Griffin. They are beasts at max speed.

The truest thing that's been said about the golem and boa is such:

If you die without accomplishing anything in a Golem, Swap it's weapons to a Boa. However, if you live forever in your Boa, capitalize on the third hardpoint of the Golem instead.

OMFGWTFBBQ FOUR SLOTS? HERESY!!! lol

Strayed was originally IoS, he only came to android a few months ago lol

Interesting. I'll try that out. Running two Boas is pretty boring. Lol. I'll replace my Orkan Boa with that thing.

Griffin should be A++, it is the only ag bot that is viable in the higher tiers. Even then, it is able to compete with premium bots such as the lancelot and the rhino.