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I'm just getting back into 40k, was an avid player for years. I'm looking for feedback on my army, particularly about the best load outs for crisis suits, as well as advice with drones: what to take and when to take them. I am modeling my army as a kind of darker, predatory Tau under the command of R'alai. The pathfinders infiltrate, covered by the Y'hara, paint the targets with marker lights, suits can come in easy with the recon drone, then they bring the rain with the FIrebase Cadre and Stormsurge. I'm relatively new to Tau, and love the forge world models which my local clubs allow. Any advice on drones, marker lights, and/or crisis suit load outs would be greatly appreciated.

Detachment 1: Combined Arms Detachment (Farsight Enclaves)
HQ:

Commander: Commander R'alai

Troops:
XV8 Crisis Team: 3 suits, x3 Cyclic Ion Blaster, x3 Flamer, Shas'vre with Neuroweb Jammer, x1 Vectored Retro Thrusters, Bonding Knife Ritual, x1 Shield Drone
XV8 Crisis Team: 3 suits, x3 Missile Pod, x 3 Plasma Rifle, x1 Vectored Retro Thrusters, x1 Shield Drone

Fast Attack:
Pathfinder Team: x5 Pathfinders, MB3 Recon Drone, Bonding Knife Ritual
Pathfinder Team: x6 Pathfinders, Bonding Knife Ritual
XV109 Y'vahra Battlesuit: x1 suit, Early Warning Override, and Stimulant Injector

Lord of War:
KV128 Stormsurge: x1 suit, Pulse Driver Cannon, twin-linked Flamer, Early Warning Override, Shield Generator, Advanced Targeting System

Detachment 2: Formation: Firebase Support Cadre

Riptide Shas'vre: EWO, Ion Accelerator, Stimulant Injector, TL Smart Missile System
Broadsides: x2 suits, x2 TL High-Yield Missile Pod, TL SMS, EWO, Velocity Tracker, x 1 Shield Drone
Broadsides: x1 suit, x1 TL Heavy Rail Rifle, TL SMS, ATS

total: 1847

comes out to about 1847. In retrospect after typing this all out, the missile pods on the second team should be replaced with something else, but I don't know what. The crisis suits job will be to jump on objectives and/or protect the pathfinders/stormsurge

This is kind of an odd hybrid list because on the one hand, you have some very competitively-minded choices, and on the other hand, you've got some eclectic choices meant for beer and pretzels style play.

If you err on the side of cheese/competitive gaming, make the following adjustments. Otherwise just stand pat.

Save R'alai for friendly games and take a conventional commander to pal around with some marker drones.

Take the Crisis as solo suits. The MSU aspect will help protect them because your opponent can only target so many things. In addition, you won't have to worry about leadership. On the downside, you will have more kill points but most 40k missions are objective based in some way, so that's not too bad. And it strains your marker support due to the diffusion of firepower, but you can mitigate that by taking advantage of the Hunter Contingent.

Instead of pathfinders, consider the Drone Net or Tetras. I'd err on the side of the latter since you mentioned an affinity for Forgeworld. The Drone Net is probably a little better, but it's close and the Net is more expensive than say, 4-5 Tetras.

Pulse Blaster Cannon > Pulse Driver Cannon. The former gives you a source of D throughout the game after you've blown all your D missiles. It's counter-intuitive for Tau, but you want to be in close with the Surge to get your Stomp attacks, and the Pulse Blaster is meant to be in close too. The Driver Cannon gives you a strong incentive to anchor and fire twice, which is pretty dangerous as GW ruled that if an anchored Surge is tank shocked, it automatically dies. There's a lot of free rhinos out there that would love the chance.

The Firebase formation, once vaunted, infamous even, is now staid in comparison to the Riptide Wing. The Firebase ushered in the era of formations, but if you want to be competitive, I'd allow it to rot on the ash heap of 40k history. You probably don't have the points in this iteration for a Riptide Wing, but if you want to keep this general template, your list would benefit more from a second Y'Vahra, stims for the y'vahras, and more marker support for the Surge.

I hope this has been helpful.

Thank you for your thoughts. What about the crisis suit load outs?