Outfit your leafblower
21st July 2022: Updated Sections
Slight clarification about number of coffees you should buy in Consumables section
Added mention about Sound Detection in Crew Skills section and bolded the skill names for easier reading
12th December 2022: Updated Sections
Reorganized the Crew Skills section for clarity and also updated my opinion about Sound Detection, as well as removed Sixth Sense since it now comes with the commander by default
My recommendations for equipment, ammo, consumables, and directives. Descriptions and explanations below.
Equipment
As soon as you have enough bonds to get improved equipment, you'll obviously want to outfit your leFH with three improved slots.
I use:
Innovative Loading System
Wear-Resistant Gun Laying Drive
Experimental Optics
If you cannot afford those yet, in the meantime you can get:
Gun Rammer
Enhanced Gun Laying Drive
Binocular Telescope
This setup focuses on the leFH's great view range. With a good crew, you can get around 500 meters stationary AND moving view range out of it with the improved equipment. More if you use the Binocs and don't mind being stationary.
If you buy any of the improved equipment, check the Store first for a bundle! There's great bundles which include the equipment piece AND a bunch of directives!
Consumables
This is kinda self-explanatory. I never had a situation where I was set on fire and had any chance to survive even with extinguishers, and Coffee is always the superior choice. It IS costly, but you should still be able to make a profit if you do well, or get it on sale. (About 300 to 400 bought on sale will last you to the next one, hopefully.) Choose the following setup:
Large Repair Kit
Large First-Aid Kit
Strong Coffee
Ammo
I've found that a ratio of 35 HE to 15 HEAT shells works really well. You won't be spending more than 60k credits per match if you use all HEAT shells, and you'll have enough HE to work on targets that HEAT is useless on.
Never take AP
Just don't
It's a waste of your time
Directives
I tried a bunch of the different directives, and eventually settled with the Steady Hand one. You can get a 100 of it at once in the Store through bundles, and they are not too expensive, credits-wise. Obviously, you'll want to use it with a crew that has Snap Shot trained already.
The Focus On Target didn't really give me any observable advantage.
If you have lots of bonds lying around, head over to the Store and grab a bundle for either Aim Tuning, Orderly Ammo Rack, or Optical Calibration. The problem with Orderly Ammo Rack is that you'll reload super fast, but run out of shells just as fast. So be careful with that one.
Crew Skills
I have just about every possible crew skill on my leFH by now, but if you're just starting out, try to get Brothers In Arms as quickly as possible (duh).
For the commander, view range extending skills are a good choice as well as Sound Detection. (I have it on my commander now and have to re-assess my previous statement about it not being useful. It's been a giant life-saver.)
For the gunner Snap Shot is very good.
Get your loader Intuition, it's super handy when you're loading both HE and HEAT.
Controlled Impact on the driver will enhance your great ramming ability.
Get all the radio range improving skills too, you'll need them. Camo, Repairs, and Firefighting are optional in my opinion.
While you're training up, you can use Camo and then switch it out for the other skills until you run out of other useful ones.