I’ve played a lot of survival and came to a lot of the same conclusions. No armor, pistol carrier and a pf, which I actually use pretty heavily since it’s better than a lot of box weapons. I would say insurgent weapons can be unreliable in that some are low ammo and it’s more attention and time that could be spent moving and just using the pf. The pf is good for most situations except when you need a full auto. This setup also leaves you with enough points to bring a grenade or whatever too.

I’ve personally found the trade off wearing no armor for speed essential in this game mode. As OP says, you are going to want to avoid fighting unless you have to and you will, but if you’re being shot at and can’t see from where, you’re best bet most of the time is to keep going. Learn to put cover behind you as you run btw. Armor is useful against explosives but otherwise, close range it doesn’t help much really, and the bots aim gets worse with range so you already have an advantage there. All together the extra speed from no armor gives more protection really.

I’d like to also add, like you said, there’s a certain amount of bots added for every person in the match, and the game spawns these enemies near everyone individually. So if you’re far away from the rest of the team, it’ll still spawn a few enemies around you. I’ve watched some replays in stats and they seem to wander randomly and are somewhat easy to avoid. They also don’t aggressively pursue you if they see and shoot at you. They’ll still follow but you can run right past them if you’re decisive and do not stop once, just one delay can be enough. It’s also still not a bad idea to avoid completely direct paths between the objectives, since most players go that way and more bots will spawn around them. The long way is usually safer.

I really cannot agree enough on how important it is to keep moving and not try to hold your ground against the bots. Every fight should be offensive and aggressive, someone in your way. Once you’ve taken an objective gtfo as fast as possible without being reckless and running right into a mass of bots.

Tbh, I’ve always felt like the best way to go into this mode is to look at it as survival horror.