Is the weapon/gear bench worth it? Haven't made one yet, seeing that I can scavenge decent dear well enough.
Maybe not immediately, but later, yes.
Warmed up my account, ArmorGames has kept my account active and at its previous level. 17 with REALLY tight defense, several LMGs and M-24's.
It's all coming back to me too... What you want? Go for LMG ASAP. My standard team is 3-4 assault soldiers with LMG if possible (gear for ammo or accuracy if possible), 0-2 recon with long rifles (pure sniper power, single-hit damage type), and 0-1 scavengers (purely for looting). More the assault in, leapfrogging over each other, with the sniper moving with them. You want to be able to be stationary and lay down enormous fire for maximum security. I usually locate the position that has the most spawn points, and set my soldiers in the middle, standing there stationary covering as many firing angles for as many spawns as possible. Usually this means the scavenger is rather far away from the soldiers, but still within their fire range, so while your scavenger might be directly adjacent to a spawn point, the sheer volume of fire should keep them safe.
For defense, I've taken the opposite of what I said previously. My resource storage structures are all surrounded by barriers, with a gate on one side. Two guard towers are inside, both on the same corner positioned as close to the interior of the map as possible - the long range of the long rifles keeps most of the map covered anyways. The gate that leads into the storage ring has guards on the outside (with another layer of barricades for them) so that zombies will go towards them and not break down the edge barricades. Positioned in the front of the defensive line is a tower with LMG, which does a fantastic job mowing down everything. Any zombies that try to attack the LMG tower get picked apart by the SMG/LMG soldiers on foot nearby.