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I'm about to buy/assemble some XV8's for a Farsight army, but I'm not sure what to run with.

Basic skeleton..

Retaliation Cadre / Drone Net / Optimised Stealth Cadre

Buff commander
3 XV8
3 XV8
3 XV8
Drone spam with Markerlights and Carbines
Riptide with not sure.
XV88 with lots of missiles.
Farsight with 2x Fusion/Fusion Bodyguards
2 Ghostkeels
2x 3 Stealh Suits with Fusion

The question is basically what do you arm your XV8 teams with, in this style of army?

They get Blacksun and Multitracker for free. Target locks if I want to split fire.

One unit will be Plasma/Plasma for anti marines.
I think I'll give one unit Fusion/Fusion.
Missilepod/Missilepod for the last?

What about Burst/Plasma or Plasma/Missilepod? Plasma/Cyclic Ion?

When is it worth taking three weapons? I kinda feel like as cheap as possible is the way to go.

Would you bother taking Shield Drones or any other defensive tech?

Basically, I haven't played the game since 2010 and I don't know what people play anymore.

I've been trying to make a similar build work since the Tau update, with homers on the Stealth suits and the Crisis as double Fusion suicide Monats. Riptide with an IA and missiles. Farsight with plasma Bodyguards, and the Ret Cadre Commander sporting the Fusion Blade. It's fast, gives a great beta strike. Kind of has to kill as much as possible on the turn it arrives in order to have a chance of winning, though.

SJ

Just wanted to post real quick I'll check back later tonight

-Leave the small arms to your firewarriors / secondary systems
-Try to avoid mixing weapons on Crisis Suits.
-It's generally inadvisable to take more than 2 weapons on crisis suits - you can spend the points elsewhere.
-I personally love 2x missile pod suits because of their range and ROF.
-There are some very aggressive list out there now so plasma is never a bad idea.
-2x Fusion suits are good but I would leave them as single man suits if you can find a way to. Makes your opponent have to choose if he's going to use a units shooting at a single man. Though I understand this is for the formation.
-Shield drones aren't really all that worth it. You run the risk of morale checks when you lose them. If anything FNP is nice on some of the more valuable suits when you have points left over.

Burst cannons normally have no place on a crisis suit. It is one of the more expensive sources of s5 fire. Unless you are playing down, then they can be fun.

Competitively, a riptide with EWO will take care of 2+ armor more efficiently usually than crisis suits, and ghost keels in the OSC take care of armor better

CIB's are good, though hard to find the bits if WYSIWYG is important, and puts you at 18" or less for 3 s7 ap4 shots, with option for large blast s8 ap4 gets hot

Missile pods area great middle ground, 36" 2 st7ap4.. but there are better s7ap4 delivery, in broadsides

I still use them, i like them, but with the codex of today, crisis suits just don't do anything better than other suits, short of naked/near naked (flamer) suits, for obsec. or suicide melta units.

Ok, so I'll go like 3-2-2 and use 2 for Bodyguards.

Plas/Plas x3
Fusion/Fusion x2
Missiles/Missiles x2

Farsight's bodyguards with Fusion/Fusion.

If Cyclic Ion Blasters don't come in the packs, I probably won't bother with them.

I guess I don't really need to give them upgrades. I mean, free Multitracker and Blacksun seems great. Maybe Target Locks on Farsight's bodyguard because they don't scatter and I can maybe hit multiple things.. but you probably have to declare all your targets at once.
...

As for competitively, I'm just getting back into the game and I'm trying to build a midrange army. I can already see how much people hate playing against stuff like Riptide Wings.

...

What kind of Commander really suits this style of build? Everyone seems to take Puretide's Neurochip making them unable to shoot as they're buffing a squad.

Yeh the Ion blasters are good, but annoyingly still 1 per commander box... I worked out that's like over $700 to equip some units with them here.

Still there's these; mine haven't arrived yet though so I can't tell you how good the casts are or not.
http://www.reddogminis.com/catalog/item/9021373/10272853.htm

I'm planning on running a similar list myself, but I'm not sure on buffmander I kind of like my leaders doing things like shooting so it's more like a playstyle choice.

Yeah, that's it. I'd prefer my HQ to actually be able to do things. =p

I hardly ever give my Crisis suits anything other than dual CIB or fusion is they're supposed to go kill things or dual flamers if they're primarily objective grabbers. Plasma is kind of a niche weapon that is typically outperformed by the CIB, but WYSIWYG for the CIB is definitely a problem. Missile pods are a reasonable option, but as mobile as the suits are, I feel like you can safely jump in and out of 18" range without much risk of being too close. Dual AFPs is a bit silly and potentially awesome, but that's a whole lot of points for crowd control you should already have tons of. Ditto that for burst cannons.

Drone-wise, I wouldn't take anything but Marker Drones in the Drone Net. The bonuses for them - particularly interceptor and jink - are just way too good to have anything else taking up that space. If you want gun drones, underrated units, in my opinion, attach them to your Crisis suits for some extra wounds. You might have to spring for target locks on the suits so you don't suffer from mismatched weaponry, but that's not a huge deal.

Speaking of WYSIWYG, would anyone have an issue with using the old metal CIBs and/or AFPs as "double-shot" versions, i.e. using one of them as the equivalent of having two of the finecast versions?

They seem, superficially, sufficiently visually distinct and beefier to make it reasonable, but its always nice to have other opinions.