Well, I finally got 2.1 to work, and I've noticed a lot has changed.
1) in Campaign..... Flamers pretty much suck... In multiplayer and skirmish they are useful for taking down bunkers and cyborgs.
I prefer bunker busters (more on bunker busters in #8 below) to flamers, as they are also useful against hardpoints, and have a long range (for their tech level), I use them almost like seige engines.... move a few up, fire, retreat and reload, they expose themselves to fire only briefly... flamers must charge in against bunkers.
They just suck in campaign... but it is cool to watch the scavenger infantry run around on fire.
2) Cyborgs - they are cheap throw away units
They are a good value for the cost - they have more base armor than a viper, I'm not sure about HP, and but weapons are in general less powerful than vehicle mounted weapons.
They also suffer from damage modifiers when up against flamers, machine guns, lasers. (other units suffer from modifiers against certain weapon types, but the modifiers aren't as much as the cyborg ones)
In campaign, where you can build up a large amount of highly experienced units (especially by using commanders), they are less useful.
My hero rank units are most certainly not going to be put in a cyborg suit, but rather a Heavy tank.
Useful in Skirmish/ Multiplayer, not so much in campaign. Treat them like Zerglings in starcraft.
3) In the original version of the game, the lancer upgrades didn't work (you could research them, but derived no benefit) - so they were 160 damage, 10 rof. This put them comparable to the Heavy cannon at something like 133 damage and 13 rof. At the time it was a range bonus for slightly decreased firepower, and significantly decreased hitpoints/health.
Now that the upgrades work..... wow..... Lancers r0x0r5! first only the damage upgrade worked in skirmish/mp, and they did 256 fully UG'd. Now I get to campaign, and see 300+ damage, and by campaign 2 increased ROF!.
Cannon units for their higher Hitpoints to take enemy fire, with a bunch of longer ranged lancers behind them.
Cannons are far more upgradable though.... fully upgraded a heavy cannon will do something like 248 damage with a ROF of 40. And the Hypervelocity cannon you get later has a range equal to the lancer - 195 damage, 44 ROF, I think the lancer tops out at 304 and 16 - although it is superseded by the Tank Killer rocket
^ all this is campaign info, I'm still adjusting to the 2.1 changes in skirmish from 2.0.X <- actually since I cant find anyone to play with online, I play a modded version of 2.1, with 2.0.X stats, plus some changes I made (mainly to Mini-rocket artillery, and VTOL weapons - also multi turret heavy bodies)
btw, lancers have a base firepower more like 160x2 and 5 rof - they fire salvos of 2 rockets, each doing 160 base, not 160 combined, so they fire 10 rockets a minute, but only 5 salvos a minute.
4) Advantage..... bigger blast radius for splash damage I believe - so its better against groups of cyborgs (skirmish consideration)
Also, more effective against heavy tanks.
At your point in the game, I think bombard does 152 x 6 = 912 damage per minute, and mortars do 95 x 10 = 950 damage /min, but consider a heavy body with 30 armor (or a bunker or hardpoint for that matter- although its hard to say what the exact armor of the enemy has after upgrades)
the Bombard then does (152-30) x 6 = 732 dmg/min, while the mortar does (95-30) x 10 = 650 dmg/min
So against heavily armored units, the heavy hitting weapon with a slow ROF is better than the weak but fast firing weapon.
The bigger splash damage makes them better against groups of units.
So in general, they are better, but not by as much as say... the medium cannon vs the light cannon (or heavy mg vs normal mg, etc)
5) you reached the unit limit, this has varied with versions, I think it was originally 80, then 100, then 300, I don't know what the current version is, and if it is the same for skirmish vs campaign.
6) Yea, it sucks, but if told to retreat at medium damage, they will retreat for repairs - get around this by managing your artillery group, break them from the sensor, move them to a protected location, and re assign them, if you advance too much without doing this, they invariably end up out in the open, away from your tank group, as easy targets.
So either manually move them to keep your tank group between your artillery and the enemy, or build lines of defenses in front of your artillery periodically with trucks (so even if they are caught in the open, they don't have to retreat far to safety
For heavy howitzers when you fire get them with only get 2-3 shots per minute it may be a good thing, for pepperpots and Hellstorms- which can fire once every 2 seconds or less- I wish they would fight back - targeting units within their visual range first, and then units within the range of the assigned sensor.
However, once you start getting artillery with ranges of 5,000, 7,000, 10,000 (all the way to 25,000), this is less of an issue - as they don't need to move much because of their extreme range - and they can just be put in a defended location, and stay there and fire at anything you spot
7) Yup, they have more armor so they take less damage per hit, and they can take more damage total - for very heavy weapons they can also move faster - but for light weapons like lancers and mini-pod, they will be slower (as the bodies are naturally slow due to their own weight : power ratio before adding a weapon - a heavy weapon skews this ratio less on a heavy body than a medium or light body - so in some cases a heavy body is faster than a light body)
manually move your mortars to your tank group, and then re assign them to the sensor/commander, or build defenses around them -
-or, if the hardpoints are the only reason you have them,
ditch them completely, and use a group of bunker busters set to fire at long range to destroy the hardpoints.
While the game says nothing about damage modifiers ( I wish it did for calculating weapon effectiveness against various enemies), bunkers busters get something like a 500% damage modifier against bunkers and hardpoints - now that the lancer rocket upgrades work (and apply to bunker buster rockets as well) - 1 bunker buster rocket will take out a hard-point (at that point in the game) - before upgrades it takes 2
Note other weapons have unspecified modifiers, weapons may be classes as anti personnel (bonus vs cyborgs, penalty vs tracked units - machine guns are AP i believe), or anti Tank (penalty vs cyborgs, and depending on version, bonus vs tracked), etc.
Bunker busters devastate static defenses, but in addition to their mediocre base firepower, they suffer a heavy modifier against other units, making them nearly useless against enemy units at the expense of being structure killers.
. Here they go 
??
. Please tell me how to get rid of this( please no cheats, rts is no fun with them). I think the game lets you create only a specific number of vehicles. If its true, what's the limit?
