FWIW, the shield backpack and either AMR or Quasar/EAT have served me well against bots, but I typically run light armor. I bring the grenade pistol to handle factories.

If you aren’t already using it, there’s never been a better time to get into the AMR now that they buffed the damage and finally zeroed in the scope.

If everyone you’re with is taking every engagement you don’t have to be with them. Just do the mission. Kills don’t count

Personal opinion: adjudicator just doesn’t have a enough ammo per mag to deal with bots quickly. If you have access to it, the Dominator will deal with bots much quicker due to its explosive damage. You can shoot the front miniguns off a factory strider with it, and it takes less than 2 mags to kill one if you run up and shoot it in the belly. Only caveat with the Dominator is that is has a lot of sway and the rounds are rocket propelled, meaning they’re moving slowest when they exit the barrel, and accelerate at the target. I have found that I have to aim in 1st person to actually hit mid and long shots.

If the Dominator isn’t available to you, the Scorcher it super fast at getting on target and putting rounds on target. The explosive damage punches through a lot of armor for quick kills (3 shots on a chicken walker’s crotch.

I love the auto cannon, but there are some situations when you want either an EAT or the Orbital Rail to deal with tanks and turrets quickly. If you have access to it, the stun grenade pairs really well with Auto cannon, especially for stopping hulks.

I used to exclusively run the Quasar, but with the recent nerf, I find it way too slow to be effective.

I would also recommend trying different things, the Diligence CS is now an absolute beast at one shotting bots with headshots, and the Slugger can too, but both require accurate headshots from first person.

One thing to note, all my opinions are based on usually playing difficulty 9, sometimes 7 and 8.

I try to branch out but almost always drift back to something like:

Regular Breaker

Autocannon

Walking barrage

Eagle airstrike

EMF turret

Bots are easy until you get into level 8 games with the Solo Sprint Brothers that aggro the whole map.

Armor is medium with crouch bonus.

If you’re willing to spend SC on armor, try to get the FS-38 Eradicator armor from the rotating shop. To my knowledge it’s the only light armor with the Fortified mod (“Further reduces recoil when crouching or prone by 30%. Provides 50% resistance to explosive damage.”). I think that’s the armor mod you’re already running, just in light armor. I don’t find 50 armor makes much difference, but the extra mobility really does. The recoil bonus is whatever, with that armor mod vs. bots the explosive resist is the real juice.

For clarity, the Fortified bonus to explosive resist doesn’t require you to crouch or go prone to get its effect, you only need to crouch to get the recoil bonus. With Fortified you can sprint around and get hit by a rocket, or run over a bot mine, and not die if you’ve got full health. There’s a separate bonus vs. explosive damage from crouching or going prone, but that’s universal and not tied to any armor mod.

everyone is getting there faster and killing things faster because they got there earlier

Could be because they were wearing light armor. Armor seems to provide a really poor rate of return in this game, but light armor’s bonuses to speed and stamina regen pay sizable dividends.

Adjudicator

My go-to primary vs. bots used to be the pre-nerf Slugger (RIP sweet prince), now it’s the JAR-5 Dominator. In both cases it was because the weapon could handle Devastators. If I run out of AC ammo while facing down Heavy and/or Rocket Devastators, being able to switch to a primary that can stagger and kill one can save me. JAR-5 does take some getting used to though. It’s 3rd-person handling is poor, but it’s tolerable in 1st-person so that’s generally what I use with that gun. The JAR-5 also has relatively slow bullet travel time that you have to account for. Now that I’m used to it though, I don’t find any other primary as effective vs. bots.

mortar sentry

I’ve never found the mortar sentry all that effective vs. bots, they don’t seem to clump up as much as bugs do. EMS Mortar can be a pretty good option for crowd control though. Personally I run laser (for major objectives or Eye of Sauron towers), Eagle Strike (for small bases and patrols) and Eagle 500 (mostly for tanks, walking factories; AC can take out tanks but oftem it’s just quicker to 500 it).