What is the most unconventional but effective loadout?

You wait til that Blue thunder carnage is close enough and tear down the ancile just as he gets there.

I've found this really effective too. That Zeus just keeps dishing out the damage, the pPins have good splash and old Leo sucks up a lot of damage so by the time he goes down he's dished out a lot.  With a Molots  or Gekkos you can stay further out of range but I feel it makes better use of his HP to dish out higher damage with the Pins.

Thought I was the only one :-)

It's sort of a waste (only in so much that you could invest 5k gold in another ancilot / etc) , not quite tho. Lancelot Zeus / tulu.

I ran that until I got a bulgasari

1 Zeus is a solid trade for 2 pins. Give you advantage over rdb griffs, and let's you hit while airborne. Also the extra hp and shield allows you to survive melee rushes against you

The Rog isn't meant to be a melee 'bot with any load-out, though an Orkan Rog is quiet capable of taking out a distracted Ancilot - up close and personal.

Great idea, will try when my Lvl9 Punisher meets my Lvl11. I'm a bit biased to keeping my low HP bots out of sight as much as possible but I guess each loadout requires a different mindset to successfully operate.

It took me 3 bots to push one off the center Yamatu beacon. strong build but less effective on large maps.

the frustration is that you cannot go near them either and, more importantly, you cannot harm them.   

what if they are sitting at the beacon you want/need to cap, or charging to the beacon you want/need to defend?  you can of course run and survive but that will not help teammates much.  

these days a good cooperation of two full-pledged RDB Griffs is needed to take down an Ancilot.  not sure a Tulu Rog can scratch the Ancile enough.  even if you work together with an ally RDB, it will be less effective than two RDBs.  

and what will you do to a Zeus Carn?  

these Ancile bots will DICTATE where you can be in the map, and in return there is not much you can do except for running away.  that's the reason you will get frustrated.  

of course you can, and should, collaborate with teammates, but there are many setups much more effective in doing so, than a Tulu Rog, 
 

I'm gonna try this "Javelin" and "Shot-put"(Hydra and Aphids) combo out.  Its a bit like SHBlake 's Hydra Orkan Doc too, lure them in an thump them.  Just gotta watch that cover.  Hyphid Giff, I dig it.

Mixing ranges is never a good idea, especially if you mix 350m and 600m. You either lose 33% of your firepower or you have to get within 350m, where everybody will target a Hydra bot.

Hydra builds have to stay at 600m and behind cover.

Well, it is pretty obvious that mixing ranges and/or damage types rarely results in a super effective setup. Even more so, in Hydra's case where it has an almost identical light counterpart. But since the entire thread is centered on unconventional setups, a Hydra/Aphid build seems reasonable.

The bulk of damage comes from Hydras in any bot that uses them and it is not rare to have an enemy close in on you while your attention is elsewhere. It also makes the build a little bit more effective in small maps.

If we just look at 33% less firepower then we're just thinking brute force, what about other stuff like
+mobility than all other standard Hydra Bots
+adaptability & flexibility in attack, for instance if you are assaulting a Leo you can offload your Orkans, switch offload Hydras from cover while Orcans recharge, then switch back to finish, Yes you can use a Lancelot but the other benefits are lost e.g.. When snipers like Furys are damaging your comrades. Head on getting in range and engaging isn't often practical but quickly getting close then firing Hydras from out of line of sight and furthermore they'll not be additionally scared as they see you getting closer assuming that they'll just get to shoot you there's not much worse you can do than your Hydras but bring Orcans to bare and you're more dangerous than almost any sniper and you've added a dynamic straight forward mainstream builds will never achieve.
Play style has a lot to do with it. I don't think that we should make difinitive statements about builds that we have not fully explored in respect to others' unique experiences. Many players like FPS shooters and don't like RTS games. I like Both but RTS more. I'm sure that there are many setups that a number of critics of Hydra builds are awesome at and I respect that but at the same time they can't assume about a custom build to know the results a skilled user who developed it out of time testing can achieve. Since often we can't assume that the only positives from something new are what we can imagine. There are always much more that cannot be gauged with mere foresight e.g. I've recently used my Lvl 9 Orkans (pretty pathetic) on my Hydra Orcan Doc in Expert 2 and using it for most of the game reached just under 800,000. Because my play style was tactfully aggressive so I engaged with my Orkans regularly. Taking advantage of the same thinking that looks down on these builds. Which come to think about it now is great to hear since the more people that believe that a Hydra Bot can't really be all that dangerous, the more people will fall Pray to Hybrid builds.

A Doc is actually one of the few remaining items on my shopping list, and I will experiment with Hydra/Orkan and Tulu/Orkan as well as 4x Tulu and 4x Orkan.

But Hydra/Aphid Griff and Hydra/Orkan Doc are really apples to, dunno, cucumber or something.

And I'd love to get recordings of Blue remarks when he pulls that thing out to play with.*


* Author's note: In proofreading that statement, I've found that that reads pretty dirty.  It was unintentional, but since I have the maturity of a 14 yr old, I'm leaving it there.