Tips for being a robust squaddie

[Challenger]

Teamwork is a lot more than just following your SL around and choosing to stop the bullet spam when someone walks in front of your line of fire. Follow these tips to be a useful squad marine who keeps others in the round and battles hard-fought. Remember to follow the RULES and to ROLEPLAY.

WHAT DO YOU MEAN I CAN USE MY OPPOSABLE THUMBS FOR GOOD

- Shake up lighly wounded marines. A guy in front of you just got neurotoxined or ravaged or is constantly falling down in paincrit? Press z to unwield your weapon, press x to switch hands, press 1 to select help intent, and spam click that downed marine until he's up, and then you can press x and z to get back to fighting. You should ALWAYS be helping up wounded or stunned marines at first priority, two guns are better than one, a guy who can walk to medevac is better than a guy who has to be dragged by an able bodied guy there, etcetera, plus you're a marine you don't just leave your fallen behind.
- Drag away seriously wounded marines. Following the above, if the guy can't get up in time, you need to drag them to safety. Hold ctrl and click them, or press 3 to switch to grab intent and click them with an empty hand, then drag them behind you. If you can spare putting you gun away, you can use the non-grab hand to shake them up with help intent active. Be a bit more careful about dragging guys who are wounded, but remember that a dead, revivable guy in FOB is better than a dying, soon-to-be-irrecoverable guy behind enemy lines.
- Use a roller bed. Sometimes the forward FOB doesn't have any medics in it and sometimes a guy is downed all the way at the front lines and you'd be too slow to drag them away safely. That's when you deploy the roller bed you stole from the medbay/dead medics and bring that guy to the medic (clickdrag their sprite onto the roller bed, then click on the bed to unbuckle them, then clickdrag bed onto you to pick up). Also serves as a mobile barricade in a pinch if you leave the dude blocking a doorway.
- CPR marines in crit. Sometimes people just bleed out and sometimes they have busted lungs or heart. If you yourself are wounded waiting for a medic you might wanna speed up the process by giving mouth to mouth to the guys the medic's treating. Need to be on help intent for this.
- Body bags. These have three benefits over just regularly dragging a guy back to FOB. 1 is that if they're on the same tile as their gun you can scoop that gun up with the body bag so they don't start running back as soon as they're out of crit to grab their red dot burstfire M4A3 or whatever. 2 is that if they have untreated wounds they won't worsen if they're in a body bag, unlike regular dragging where you'll drag their brains and guts all over the field. 3 is that if for whatever reason you need to bug out and drop the patient, they're in a body bag that hides them from the xenos and blends into weeds, so they can be rescued later or make a run for it themselves if they can get out of paincrit. Body and stasis bags can be clickdragged onto you to pick them up once they're closed by the way.
- Stasis bags. DO NOT USE STASIS BAGS. Unlike the rest of what I've said so far do NOT use these. The reason for this is because they give you GENETICS DAMAGE which can only be fixed in the CRYO PODS all the way at the Almayer, AKA you're FORCING the guy to medevac, get plopped into a pod, then a doctor comes by five minutes later and actually turns on the freezers, then he comes by again in five minutes and realizes there's no mix so he plops in a cryomix, then ten minutes later he remembers that the guy was in cryo (you can actually right click -> eject a cryo pod as its patient but it takes two minutes) and pulls them out, then five minutes later the guy finally thaws and gets up. In general unless the guy's missing a limb and at 60% blood, or infected with larva, don't use these.
- Strip the revivable dead of their armor and uniform. If you dragged a guy into the FOB and he dies right in front of you, your first reaction is to get a medic's attention, your second reaction is to strip them of their armor and uniform. Do this by clickdragging their sprite onto yours. Take off exosuit (armor) then uniform. You need to do this because defibs only work on bare skin and this saves the medic valuable time.
- Put their shit back on after they're revived. Following the above, pick up their uniform, clickdrag their sprite onto yours, click the uniform slot. Repeat for all their other belongings. Often the patient is gonna be moved to medevac or deeper in the FOB and it sucks for them to be missing their clothes and gun, can't do anything unless they find a dead guy's shit to take.

HELP BALDIE AP FF'D ME

- Read the chatlog. When you get shot or slashed or charged or crushed or shot or whatever, first priority is to get yourself into position not to get damaged again, second is to SCROLL BACK UP AND READ THE CHATLOG. You need to find out WHERE you got shot and WHAT'S broken. It's especially important to know if the bones in your chest or head or groin are broken because then if you keep moving the bones are gonna move with you and they'll shred your organs to paper and you'll start coughing out piss and pissing out lung fluids.
- Stay still if your thoracic bones are broken. Continuing the above, if you scrolled up to the wonderful news that your chest and groin are broken, you need to scream bloody murder for a medic or PFC with splints to get to your location and SPLINT. Moving with broken thoracic bones is like a chinese finger trap, the more you do it, the deeper shit you're in because your lungs and heart are gonna get torn apart.
- Tell all this shit to the medic treating you. If you feel a sharp pain in your chest TELL THEM. If you can't see TELL THEM. If your pelvis is swinging on its own like Elvis TELL THEM. Their scanner isn't omniscient and there's no guarantee they're experienced enough to make the logical leaps necessary for finding out what's broken or why you have 20 oxyloss despite being at full blood levels.
- Click on yourself with help intent emptyhanded to determine injuries. This lets you know if your body parts are burned, bruted, or splinted. Take note, SPLINTED, because often if you take damage or burns or whatever then the splint can FALL OFF and if it's in your chest/head/groin even the medic won't be aware until you suddenly drop dead from cutting open a few new ventricles with your ribs.

SHIT I AP FF'D THAT GUY

- Use your medical knowledge. Yes, your medical knowledge is shit, but it's still there: as anything other than a medic/doc/CO/XO, you DO know HF2 health analyzers, gauze/trauma kits, ointment/burn kits, splints, and tricord autoinjector. PATCH YOURSELF UP. If you're hit, use your pocket HF2 analyzer/empty hands/chatlog to find out where you got hit, then slap it with a gauze/ointment, stop wasting the medic's time with your bullshit. If you have the time you could also splint yourself but it's more efficient to yell at other people and throw splints at them and point at the splints and watch them pick up the splints and run away off to god knows where get them to splint you. PATCH OTHER PEOPLE UP. What works on you will work on other people. Especially if a guy's bleeding and needs to be dragged.
- Use first aid kits. No, seeing the medic feed you tramadol for pain relief once doesn't mean you instantly recognize what it is in a pill bottle fifty minutes later. Drug names are an ooc thing, icly you're too inexperienced in medicine to keep track of drugs longer than five seconds. But that being said it is ENTIRELY reasonable IC for you to scan yourself with an HF2 scanner, notice that you have oxygen damage, which is colored blue, then walk over to the blue "oxygen first aid kit", and eat a blue pill or two from it, use the blue autoinjector, and syringe out some of the stuff from the syringe case inside it to stick into yourself. If you're hurt from something and you see a first aid kit relating to that damage type, USE IT.
- Use fire extinguishers. ESPECIALLY if you take a flamethrower. Don't forget to turn off the safety.
- Eat. If you have low blood, eat a lot of food to restore it. Eat until it won't let you eat, and then eat some more.


BEING ROBUST WITH A TOOLBOX

- Use a wrench. Unwrench tables and racks you see around, place them in places where they don't block marine movement too much but do allow great firing lines, and flip them (if tables). You can store table and rack parts in your bag for barricades-on-the-go. You can also rotate a sentry and move/set up a turret with this (PFCs DO know how to put up turrets and sentries).
- Use a welder. More than two welds will give you eye blurriness and pain that's only fixable with peri, so weld wisely. Appropriate targets are dropship doors that aren't being used when it's being assaulted, vents (if you know aliens use them), firelocks, and the final step of a sentry set up.
- Use a crowbar. Pries open doors when power's out.
- Use a screwdriver. Moves a turret or sentry.
- Use a multitool. Disarm a mine (you can do this as PFC) and move it somewhere better.
- Use cable coils. Set up a turret with it.
- Use an entrenching tool. Actually this is the most important thing you can do, I don't know why I put this at the end, but filling sandbags takes time and is really important. Basically hit z to extend the tool, then click on a dirt tile, then click on a sandbag, and repeat. Eventually you get piles of sandbags which you, as a PFC, know how to set up. Can also deconstruct sandbags with a shovel to turn them back into sand and move them around.

QUICK, C4 THE RESIN WALL

- Shoot walls and girders away. Yes, you can destroy walls and girders with your bullets over time. Buckshot is SUPER effective at this, stand next to the wall and blast it and it'll be destroyed in around four or five hits. M4s can do this with a mag or so of ammo, and with any other gun don't bother. Reinforced walls and girders take a bunch more time, and Almayer walls can't be destroyed. Use this knowledge to open a new flank or make an escape route.
- Shoot resin walls and doors away. Yeah you can melee those but shooting three bullets/one buckburst is way faster and you're much more liable to get flanked or assaulted if you're right next to the xeno fortificaitons. There should be NO EXCUSE for leaving resin fortifications up, those YOUR block line of sight and are much more convenient for the aliens than for you. If you see a resin anything in your screen, shoot it until it dissapears.
- Destroy weeds, resin nests, sticky resin. Slightly lower priority than the above but these slow you down and let you get battle nested. Use your bayonet on your rifle or combat knife for this.
- Destroy wooden barricades. These things block line of fire and your moement, but don't block runners, get rid of them.
- Destroy tunnels by using your underbarrel grenade launcher twice. Face it, you weren't gonna secure any sick grenade kills anyway.

MISCELLANEOUS TIPS I CAN'T FIND A GOOD TITLE FOR

- Hit the fire alarms on the Almayer to close the fire alarm shutters. This has two benefits. First one is that it traps aliens the shutters with you and it can only get out by standing still and prying open a shutter for several seconds, the second benefit is that other people around are aware that there's fighting in the area. Reset the fire alarm once the threat's disposed of.
- Loot dead guys. Clickdrag their sprite onto yours and take off their gun, backpack, ammo belt, etcetera, then check those for extra ammo and goodies. But please roleplay this and be respectful, don't just be like HAHAA GOT A BARREL CHARGER AND QUICKFIRE OFF THIS BALDIE, that's still a dead marine in front of you. I prefer to use the IC term "salvage" or "strip" rather than "loot/steal/scavenge" for obvious reasons.
- Use your underbarrel grenade launcher on the vents if you hear an alien in them, you'll blow up the pipes and it'll get trapped.
- Fold flare boxes and mine boxes after you're done with them. Press z before pressing q, it's a tiny amount more effort but means people don't constantly check the boxes for spare mines or flares in them. Do this to other boxes you see lying around too.
- Throw empty bags and belts and expended shit like that into the corner to not waste the time of anyone looking for stuff in them.
- Do NOT EVER buckle paincritted/dying guys to chairs, it makes it so that everyone who doesn't have a medHUD instinctively ignores them instead of taking them to medbay. There's almost never a situation where being buckled into a chair while you're unable to move or do anything will help you.
- Drag SSD guys out of medbay unless they're dying, in which case just patch their wounds to keep them stable and continue dragging them out. Doctors tend to often not shift click guys they're working on and it sucks working on someone for minutes at a time, often even giving them surgery, only to realize they were SSD all along.
- And finally the greatest tip for last, DON'T BE ON HELP INTENT at the front lines. People enter what I like to call the "help intent shuffle", where two guys are stuck together because they're both trying to go to the same place with help intent on and just pulling each other backwards, at the wrong times: when one of them's firing, and gets pulled back, and his burst catches the guy who pushed in front of him. Or when there's a gas cloud and both guys shuffle and get stuck in it. Or when they're trying to avoid a crusher/ravager and can't move out of the way because of the shuffle. Etc. Generally remember to stay off help intent!

I made this in general discussion instead of the guides forum because I'm hoping you guys can contribute more. So do please post more tips if you can!

[Cl3arSky]

Great read.

- And finally the greatest tip for last, DON'T BE ON HELP INTENT at the front lines. People enter what I like to call the "help intent shuffle", where two guys are stuck together because they're both trying to go to the same place with help intent on and just pulling each other backwards, at the wrong times: when one of them's firing, and gets pulled back, and his burst catches the guy who pushed in front of him. Or when there's a gas cloud and both guys shuffle and get stuck in it. Or when they're trying to avoid a crusher/ravager and can't move out of the way because of the shuffle. Etc. Generally remember to stay off help intent!

10-15 minutes ago just had this happen to me, walked against this guy and he fired right then bursting me as well lol, luckily I lived.

[TheDonkified]

Office / rolling chairs are pretty good substitutes for rolling beds. They're also found around the map in places like TComms and Nexus to name some common places people pass by.

[Blade2000Br]

I played Marine for a week or 2 now and only now I know that as a grunt, I know basic knowledge about medical help...

I might have helped more marines instead of dragging then and yelling "medic" mindless for 50 minutes :v

Great guide! It will sure help baldies like me :L

[Karmac]

help intent kills

please avoid this

[Jroinc1]

Copy-paste this to guides

Actually, you prob should ask someone to do that.

[Karmac]

I can try and move it if you want

[Challenger]

Yeah go ahead and move it. For some reason I just thought a "general advice thread" didn't fit into the guides subsection but seeing as the entire thing is guide-sized go ahead.

[Karmac]

I can't figure out how to move the friggin thing, this is stupid, I'll PM somebody else to do it, or you can PM them

[K0NFL1QT]

My biggest tip right now; put a rail flashlight on a weapon and store it on your suit slot.

Not only do you then have an easily accessable secondary, the flashlight greatly enhances your light radius even when its not on your currently held weapon. You can put all your good attatchments on your main weapon without sacrificing illumination radius.

[Heckenshutze]

Good tips, I like them

[Swagile]

Pro tip, pick marines up when they are being neurotox spammed. They almost immediately get up and can be used as a shield to waste a sentinel / spitters plasma on since neuro does no damage and it keeps you from going down then getting both you and your fellow marines neuro spammed and slashed.

Used it when I was a PMC and saved our small PMC squad (due to baldies running off) and five other marines to save our bacon from an Elite Spitter twice.

[Challenger]

That's a great tip, I'll make sure it's the very first one listed in this guide.... oh wait...

[Swagile]

That's a great tip, I'll make sure it's the very first one listed in this guide.... oh wait...

You never said using help intent as a shield against constant neurotox spam; only just helping someone up if they are neuro'd.

[TheDonkified]

This was a good thread, and I think it should be updated to reflect some of the changes we've had over the last few months since it was last updated.

EDIT: Then again, we have the Vanguard thread and the Utility PFC guides. However, this is a great thread for discussing ideas that are not explicitly stated in either of the guides.

[HKO20006]

Few updates
Stasis bags don't suck now and they are essential for IB marines
Just the armor needed to be removed for defib, keep uniform
Resin walls are more resistant to bullets now, though sure shooting is way safer than melee it (when in the frontline)
You don't need to pressing q after folding an empty flare box now, it will be droppped as soon as you fold it

[SovietKitty]

Shaking up a pounced/stunned marine is the most beneficial thing anyone can do.

[Jonesome]

All that text, and not a single mention of not aiming for the goddamn head.

[Nickvr628]

All standard marines should carry a flare pouch and two spare boxes to refill it. Light is your best friend and you can never have enough flares.

I generally have a first aid pouch and a flare pouch respectively.

[HKO20006]

flare pouch aid pouch, 7 flare boxes.

[Jonesome]

All standard marines should carry a flare pouch and two spare boxes to refill it. Light is your best friend and you can never have enough flares.

I generally have a first aid pouch and a flare pouch respectively.

I’ve thought about that myself, but I usually end up taking two medpouches instead. I’m a bit of a hypochondriac, and it’s rare I can find a medic who isn’t swamped in casualties. The painkiller and tramadol injectors are more valuable than flares. I also never have enough room in my satchel to fit a spare box of flares, all the space is taken up with ammunition due to the insanely small storage capacity of the ammo belt.

[Nickvr628]

You can rip those injectors out of the wall vendors in the ship and the drop ships, I tend to put them in my armor slot.

[HKO20006]

^Just empty a first aid pouch instead.

[Cry of Wolves]

Don't be afraid to die. Hesitation and pulling back after a minor wound would create a domino effect of cowardice. Marines are like lambs that follow the herd, be the Shepard and lead the charge (and pray to god they follow.)

[Kesserline]

My loadout as a PFC :

QF EB or RDS FG M41 rifle (primary weapon)
Railflashlight M41 rifle (secondary weapon)
Satchel : additional shits (M41 mags or flares or additional injectors)
2 IFAK, one regularly filled (2 Gauze + 2 injectors), one customized filled (toss the gauze, get 2 more injectors)
Ammo rig (more mags)
Armor slot : splints and empty slot to fill with either an additional mag, either some good shit, like a binocs if you can find, nade, or things you want to carry.

Webbing is optional, if you can lay your hands one one ? More mags.

___________________________

In my opinion : Do not use mag harness, unless you're an engie or a medic.

If you manage to lose your primary AND your secondary weapon, that means you mostly got captured or killed, and the xenos are returning to capturing AND guarding their hosts (which is a good thing in general, but not for you as a prisonner, meaning your chance of breaking free are close to 0).

Do not bother having a MH to save your customized unga weapon. Engineer and Medics need those because they have no secondary weapons, they cannot have it.

A PFC or a SL can have 2 weapons.

The railflashlight bonus is incredibly important on the frontline. You have 1 more tile of visibility, making your pointman or hunting abilities greatly enhances.

____________________________

Seing a unga with a MH, BC, Stock, FG on his rifle makes me grin and cry at the same time.

People think it that way :
"This is my rifle. There are many like it but this one is mine. My rifle is my best friend. It is my life. I must master it as I must master my life. Without me, my rifle is useless. Without my rifle I am useless. I must fire my rifle true. I must shoot straighter than my enemy, who is trying to kill me. I must shoot him before he shoots me. I will. Before God I swear this creed: my rifle and myself are defenders of my country, we are the masters of my enemy, we are the saviors of my life. So be it, until there is no enemy, but peace. Amen."

Just, I'll repeat a part of this magical Full Metal Jacket quote :
Without me, my rifle is useless. Without my rifle I am useless.

There are both things. Your rifle is good, only because you're able to use it. Even a vanilla rifle is good, as long as you use it well. Trying to over keep your unga-rifle with a MH isn't really good. And damn : take a railflashlight !