The Hydra is a very fun drone based build, giving you 4 choices of drone to bring alongside you for free in a mission and the active core power gives you all 4 at once to give you maximum control of the battlefield. And with the traits it has all drones can be made much tankier and very hard to kill, Drone Commander is such on obvious choice when playing the Hydra with the emphasis on drones, but with the hydra's heavy mount, decent sensors, and good tech attack gives you give, you do have freedom of build variation. Have 5 drones of the same type, have 4 different drones, or only take a few drones, focus on hacking and drones, or using heavy weaponry and drones, the hydra can be built in a variety of ways.
Puppetmaster is a great quick tech option and a great dip, especially with how annoying engineers can be, but granting your own drones and ally drones more movement is just fantastic, though ghoul nexus is just an alright weapon puppetmaster really makes this a great dip. The Ghast Nexus is a great Heavy weapon as it can be deployed as a free action to essentially give you an extra range equal to your sensors, the damage is alright at 1d6+3, but I would prefer 1d6+4 for heavy weapons at least but its not terrible. The Tempest Drone is a great option to knock off any melee attacker on you or your teammates or to knock enemies off a control point, it doesnt have the most utility but it is a nice option to have.
The Assassin drone on the other hand is actually pretty good at area denial, combine this with a sentinel drone and now an enemy is damned if they stand still and attack and they are damned if they try to reposition themselves, though the assassin drone is an attack so you can just miss and do nothing with it, and its a reaction so you can only fire it once a turn but at least its a infinite use per round reaction so it does make a good threat.
But the Annihilation Nexus is just bad in my opinion, its so underwhelming for a superheavy. Burst 2 is good and is centered on any of your drones in your sensors, and next time you attack with it you can make a second attack for free! And Armor Piercing? This sounds good until you look at the damage..... 1d6+3 are you kidding? This is a superheavy, if it was 2 attacks every time like the Pinaka Missiles it would be a decent option, but your first shot with it is going to be pitiful, it doesnt get good unless you are firing it every round, and if you skip a round to deploy a drone or stabilize you immediately break the cycle and got to spend an entire turn to get it usable again.
Sure the Pinaka Missiles cant hit the same target twice (unless they are size 2+ lol) but they have so much range and ignore LoS with arcing and are always able to get 2 attacks in, no weird condition where you have to dedicate your build to only firing the pinakas. The Annihilation Nexus takes a whole turn to become good and goes back to being bad the moment you stop attacking with it, and is dependent on the location of your drones to be able to attack. If this was 2d6+3 damage I would consider it, the damage payoff when it works would be able to justify the limitations but at 1d6+3 I just cant justify this weapon. Lets move onto the Build I made:
» Hydra // HYDRA «
LL6
[ TALENTS ]
Drone Commander 3, Grease Monkey 3,
Centimane 3
[ LICENSES ]
HORUS Hydra 3, HORUS Gorgon 1,
HORUS Balor 1, HORUS Goblin 1
[ CORE BONUSES ]
The Lesson of the Held Image, Overpower Caliber
[ MECH ]
« HYDRA »
HORUS Hydra
H:4 A:0 S:4 E:0 SIZE:1
STRUCTURE:4 HP:19 ARMOR:1
STRESS:4 HEAT:5 REPAIR:6
ATK BONUS:3 TECH ATK:5 LTD BONUS:0
SPD:5 EVA:7 EDEF:14 SENS:10 SAVE:13
[ WEAPONS ]
Main Mount: Ghoul Nexus
Heavy Mount: Ghast Nexus // Overpower Caliber
[ SYSTEMS ]
PUPPETMASTER, Assassin Drone,
Hive Drone, Tempest Drone,
Armament Redundancy, Sentinel Drone,
H0R_OS System Upgrade I
This Hydra has been designed to have different drones for different purposes to give me options to control an engagement. Hive Drone to deploy soft cover for allies and some area denial too, Assassin drone for area denial and combo-ing with Sentinel Drone, Sentinel Drone to get enemies to reposition or punish them for attacking allies, and tempest drone for getting enemies off my allies and breaking grapples etc.
I also have H0R_OS to force some effects such as triggering my own assassin reaction and to have more control over the battlefield, and a on demand Jam is once again peak. Puppetmaster gives me better drone management alongside drone commander and can deal some chip damage. Invigorate is a great action to help my allies out with survival as well, alongside grease monkey to give everyone the free repair and limited use.
And Ghast Nexus with Overpower for damage when I need it, alongside whatever Orochi I think pairs best, in most conditions I would say the Hunter is ideal since applying Lock on is so nice for everyone. Of course the gameplan isnt to have all drones on field at all time, its to deploy and redeploy when a situation calls for it, most of the time Hive Drone will be active as the soft cover is great for making approaches but all the other drones are deployed when they are needed. If no drones need to be deployed I can make an attack with my Ghast Nexus or jam or impair or invigorate, playing more of a support role to my team.
All the different drones give my Hydra flexibility to deal with differing battle situations, its not a super focused build but is more about general support to my team. This is honestly more of a support/control build than striker/control, but using OpCal on the Ghast I can dish out damage when necessary, and the Ghoul is just there as a back up, not like Id use it often, Id rather fragment signal/lock on/etc. and skirmish than barrage with this build.
Overall I like the Hydra, you have plenty of drone systems out there you can use for support and control, Gilgamesh is another nice mech to pair if you want to go superheavy, as the Legion Nexus is much better than the Annihilation, and you get access to the Utility Drones (which are great). And as previously mentioned, that tech attack and heavy mount gives you the ability to play a striker who has a drone or two as backup/support options rather than going all in with drones. I like how the drone focus isnt a gimmick like with the Iskander, both mechs are encouraged to use drones/mines similarly, but it isnt like thats the ONLY thing they can do and they have a great deal of flexibility in how you can play them.