Advance Research!

[Jembo]

Tired of xeno major victories? Bald marines got you balding? Well using the power of science! We can get you're hair back, and those hard working marines win the good fight. I'll be sharing advice, as well as draw backs on the key parts of research I find most useful for helping the marines out. Then after I'm done with information I've tested in game, I'll have a smaller section of theory crafting. Feel free to PM with information and I'll credit you and be sure to add it to the guide.

Grenade Production

This what what'll help marines the most, as well as have the biggest impact on the battlefield. You don't need high levels of research to really start cranking out powerful grenades. The to-do list to get set up is as followed.

-Get a screwdriver, and wires to make an autolathe.
-Drive up combat research, data theory, and engineering to make you're own autolathe, and large grenade shells.
-Make you're autolathe.

That's really all there is to it, you'll wanna use large beakers or buckets for you're grenades. More regents means a more powerful explosion, bigger smoke cloud, and so on. After you have the that, it's up to you to decide what grenades you want to make. Because there are many options in grenade making, not just outside of what reaction you'll grenade will generate. But what style of grenade you'll be making. I'll list the various combinations I found effective, and ineffective and I'll go into detail over what works and what doesn't.

Timer / Igniter Grenades.
Really this is the most common grenade, and you can't go wrong making them. I personally always do a three second timer, as any longer gives the targets a chance to get out of range, and any fewer results in half a squad blowing up. Always label grenades with what timer is to make it as fool proof as possible. Be noted, that xeno players are very smart and will get used to the timing on these grenades as well as can read them after they're thrown. Don't be afraid to set a grenade or two with a delayed timer, but remember byond time ticks slowly. I wouldn't set a timer higher than fifteen seconds, as it's long enough to trick a xeno into thinking the grenade is a dud while not giving them enough time to melt it. Make sure the marines know which grenades are delayed and which aren't!

Proximity Sensor / Igniter Grenades.
You should avoid making these grenades, as more often than not you'll just end up blowing yourself up. The other risk involves other marines seeing a free science grenade on the ground only to blow themselves to bits trying to pick it up. Lastly while these can be disabled with a quick click of a screw driver, you never know who's gonna end up coming from what direction and you might just end up blowing up you're own squad. That being said most xenos are fast enough to outrun the proximity timer, and a single grenade even a 240 unit explosion won't kill a full health young xeno.

Remote Signalers / Igniter Greandes.
My personal favorite, as you can chain together any number of grenades to the same signal. Then watch as you trip them all at the same time, to cause an insane amount of damage to anything caught in you're trap. Another tactic is to pre-set grenades though a hallway, after you've tagged one or two xenos with a single explosion. Others will come to drag them back to the safety of weeds. Catch those cheeky bastards out by switching to a different signal and blowing them up the second they think they've reached safety! Or completely cut off their escape with well placed metal foam grenades. Leaving them between a wall of marines bullets, and a temporary wall to keep them from running.

That being said these grenades are not without risk. If you plan a trap poorly you can erase you're own grenades. As a 240 water/potassium large shelled science grenade can delete items on the ground. You also run the risk of a fellow marine picking up one grenade using it. Which doesn't sound like a problem but if it's linked to let's say four other grenades in you're pack. You and everyone around you is going to have a bad day. A way of avoiding this is placing you're grenade into a box, medikit, or pack on the ground out of sight out of mind. This also has the added benefit of catching xenos off guard. A xeno who sees a grenade on the ground labeled Signal Grenade Do not touch. Will avoid it, or destroy it. Get creative, and make sure not to abuse this, you don't know xenos have the possibility of landing on the Sulaco. These traps work extremely well in the nexus, and you shouldn't be hording grenades for a possibility of alien boarding. When those very same grenades could help the marines defend the LZ, Rasp, or FOB.

IR Laser / Remote Signaler - Grenade / Remote Signaler
This one is like the proximity sensor but runs with less risk. Attach a IR laser to a signaler that's set on it's own unique signal, then attach an Igniter / Signaler grenade to the same signal. You have an instant trip mine, with all the risks that come from friendly fire. I say this is less risky, because the IR laser only extends to whatever crosses the lasers vision where as with the proximity sensor it's a large space in a circle around the sensor. You can easily rig this up to defend you're back line, and keep hunters and runners from picking off the injured who are retreating from the front line. The added benefit is that marines will see this on the ground, and can avoid it. The negative is that xenos can also see this, but them having to find another route to attack could save countless marine lives.


Now that I've gone over the style of grenade, I'll be going over the various things you can dump into them to help the marines. I won't be giving away any preset mixes, this is a research department take a few rounds and find out what works best for you.

Healing Smoke.
You can use a smoke reaction to spread a healing smoke throughout the front lines. Smoke is excellent as transferring chemicals such as tricord, bicard, hyperzine, oxycodone and synaptazine. Find a good balance between the chemicals, and the smoke mix. As too much smoke mix means you're marines could be blind giving those pesky xenos plenty of opportunity to attack. But if done right, you can really give injured marines, or soon to be injured marines a short boost to make them immune to pain, and healing the damage they'll be receiving. Be careful not to overdose the whole squad.

Combat Smoke.
You're not limited to just healing chemicals, you can pump smoke full of toxins, impedrezene, Plant-B-Gone, unstable mutagen, lexorin, space lube, and poly acid. While many of these chemical won't effect xenomorphs, they can do plenty of damage to humans. Remember every tick of smoke is one tick from every damage type in the smoke. The more harmful chemicals in the smoke, the faster you're target will die. A pinch of this, and that can result in a smoke so deadly you'll make a boiler jealous.

Napalm.
Sadly this doesn't work, so don't waste your time trying to make it. But one day... A researcher can dream of hellfires can't he?

Metal Foam.
These grenades are situational but very useful and cover a large area when mixed into a large shelled grenade. Use these to hold back a horde of xenos, or seal a breach, or cut off an enemies escape with clever grenade placement.

AzoSurfactant.
To those who don't know these is what makes a cleaner grenade foam. The foam created from this grenade can be filled with a wide range of chemicals, from Plant-B-Gone to clear a large area of weeds. To Poly acid, to clear a large area of life.

Synthmeat Smoke.
Show the xenomorphs you aren't scared by setting off this grenade. You'll quickly fill whatever room you're in with blood! Unleash you're inner Aztec!

Silicate Smoke.
Sadly the chemical reaction for Silicate doesn't work, real shame though as silicate reinforced windows are very durable.

Research Equipment. What's that? More than just grenades?! Of course research isn't just anchored to grenade production. I'll go over some of the really cool things you can do using the protolathe, as well as how useful some of the goods you can make actually are.

Plasma Cutter, Works as a welder when used on walls and as a very decent melee weapon. You'll need some gold bars, which can be very hard to come by. That and a marine who's willing to drag it along.

Mining Drill, I'm honestly surprised marines don't ask for this. If you're pushing xenos into the caves this tool can help you flank them, or even cut out an area so large they lose their combat advantage.

Medical Hud, Expect every medic to want one, these are so useful when on the front line. It gives a medic visual indicator to who needs immediate treatment, and who can just fuck off for just having a paper cut.

1,000 Power Cells, I've never been asked for one but their rather easy to make. Always nice to have a few of these to keep a turret going longer. But they run the risk of being defective and not holding a full charge.

Chem Sprayer, For the wet tee-shirt contest after the marines win. Fill with a wide variety of chemicals, but it sprays them out rather quickly. Haven't found a good use for this personality.

Basic Laser Scalpel, You'll never get the materials to make the more advance version of this. But this a nice item to give medical as it helps speed up surgery, potentially saving lives.

Chemical Implants, I'll have a guide at the end over how useful this item is. Can be filled with 50 units? of various chemicals, and has a chance to break on physical damage. Getting the implanter to put these into people is a pain.
Xenobiology Really the main reason anyone selects the research job in the first place. I'll go over the benefits of each item created by xenobio, and the negatives.

Chitin Plating, a really cool item that'll make a standard marines armour better. Costs one whole dead xeno to create! Sadly these item has a few draw backs, the first being the speed penalty. Moving slow can be a death sentience and many marines will pass this up because of it. The second downside of this item is it doesn't protect limbs, or the marines head. Most xenos don't target the bodies of marines, often going for heads, or hands. Meaning that these extra armour won't be doing you a lot of good.

Resin Paste, the most practical of the xenobio items. Repairs a helmet, and is small enough for a marine to carry in their pack. Sadly it doesn't restore a B18 helmet to it's glory but still a good item. There aren't any real downsides to this item, but sadly it's easily replaceable by a RO doing a supply drop of helmets.

Anti-Acid Spray, a very niche item that's only real use is for supply beacons and grenades. It makes it so xenos can't melt items, which is very useful but sadly if you're in a position where xenos have you captive and are melting your weapons. You're most likely already dead, and tackle spam means that nice acid proof shotgun isn't going to get picked up by who ever it belongs to.

As far as tools for marines go xenobio is in a weak place, but as far as roleplaying goes. This is the department to be in, it's a shame it's so disconnect so you don't often have a chance to roleplay doing the process with anyone.
Botany You read correctly botany. It's not difficult to get the CL to hand you their planter, and with that you have everything you need to make some very useful items for the marines. This requires quite a bit of help from command. You'll need marines to raid the hydroponics area on the planet to get the supplies you need to do the really fun stuff. You can use you're chem dispenser to make anything else you'll need. Here's a short to-do list you can give marines who are going planet side.
-Corn Seeds, Reishi spores, plant analyzers, a seed extractor, plant bag, and a hydroponics tray.

Here's a list of things you can get on station to help you with you're green thumb.
-Wirecutters, Ambrosia Vulgaris, Hydroponics tray, and a cultivator.

After you've gotten everything you need, set up you're growing operation. Each plant listed has a use that'll benefit the marines, corn = explosives. Reishi = light source, and Ambrosia = Premixed combat drugs. With that in mind, you'll need to make some chemicals before you get started. Ammonia is a good fertilizer but it can be mixed with -redacted- to make -redacted- an even more powerful fertilizer. You'll want to make unstable mutagen if you're growing reishi, or vulgaris to mutate them into something more useful. Reishi - Glowshrooms, and Vulgaris - Deus. Lastly you'll need -redacted- This chemical can keep dying plants alive.This is important if if you can't get a seed extractor as every time you use wirecutters to get a sample you'll push you're plants to near death. The results of all you're hard work will be listed as followed.

Corn - Nitroglycerin grenades.
The biggest baddest grenades you can make, if Colonial Marines has a bomb cap you'll find it using these.

Glowshrooms - Self spreading lighting.
These mushrooms after harvested can be planted and radiate a weak light source. They'll also spread for four generations so even more free light.

Ambrosia Deus - Useful Chemicals.
This plant is filled with very useful healing and combat stims. Upon harvesting, you can grind them up to get the Nutrament, Bicardine, Hyperzine, Space Drugs, and Synaptazine. You can filter out the Space drugs, and you have an already made combat mix for marines on the front line.

That's not everything you can do with botany, but remember not to abuse features that don't make sense in CM. Does it make sense to grow Killer tomatoes? Of course not, and don't be surprised if an admin asks what the hell you're doing if you are.
Remote Healing That's right, research has the power to at the push of a button heal a marine halfway across the map. But it's not easy, and it's rather clunky. Using RnD you can create a computer called a prisoner management console. This computer is directly linked to chemical implants, which you can mass produce in RnD. A chemical implant can hold 50 units of whatever chemical you inject into them using a syringe. You'll need an implanter, the research for the prisoner management system, and a crew monitoring console. You'll also have to go planetside with the marines to set this up. As the prisoner management computer doesn't work across Z-levels. You'll also need an MP or someone with security access to unlock said prisoner computer. After you've done all that any marine who you implant will show up on the computer. It'll give you their name, as well as how many chemicals are left in their implant.

At this point you can inject one unit of the implant, or five units with no cool down if you want to mash the button. Keep an ear on the radio and if you notice one of you're implanted buds needs a boost, just shoot them with 5 - 10 units of implant chems. You can also look for their name on the crew monitoring computer to help them but that can be difficult depending on how many people are on that computer. While this isn't a perfect system, it's definitely a nice change of pace from the drone on and make a bunch of grenades. That being said there is a massive risk, as chemical implants have a chance to break on damage. This could work well if you're chem mix is good. Or it could backfire and cause an overdose to the very marine you're trying to help.

[Crab_Spider]

10/10

[spicemoron]

There's one last thing researchers can play with; those funny valves in the toximate 3000. If you can get help from engineering (or an officer is nice enough to grant you access), you can make some serious boom.

Now I just started testing this today (as a certain maintenance tech), and using a formula from another server I was able to make bombs that have a a breach radius of 5-6 tiles and a "put you into critical health" radius of around one and a half screens minimum, but won't be ready until around 13:00. Someone who actually knows old baycode can do much, much better.


The MT guide ( viewtopic.php?f=94&t=9008 ) covers some aspects of bomb making, but is missing a few key points like the minimum temperature your TTV''s contents need to be at upon mixing to explode (100 Celsius), ways to heat up pure phoron (use a gas heater) and the best place to test your bomb (wherever the CO is).

[Crab_Spider]

There's one last thing researchers can play with; those funny valves in the toximate 3000. If you can get help from engineering (or an officer is nice enough to grant you access), you can make some serious boom.

Now I just started testing this today (as a certain maintenance tech), and using a formula from another server I was able to make bombs that have a a breach radius of 5-6 tiles and a "put you into critical health" radius of around one and a half screens minimum, but won't be ready until around 13:00. Someone who actually knows old baycode can do much, much better.


The MT guide ( viewtopic.php?f=94&t=9008 ) covers some aspects of bomb making, but is missing a few key points like the minimum temperature your TTV''s contents need to be at upon mixing to explode (100 Celsius), ways to heat up pure phoron (use a gas heater) and the best place to test your bomb (wherever the CO is).

Do NOT do this!

[spicemoron]

CUBAN PETE DID NOTHING WRONG.

[Casgair]

The MT guide ( viewtopic.php?f=94&t=9008 ) covers some aspects of bomb making, but is missing a few key points like the minimum temperature your TTV''s contents need to be at upon mixing to explode (100 Celsius), ways to heat up pure phoron (use a gas heater) and the best place to test your bomb (wherever the CO is).

Awhile back the easy way to get a nice boom was using a gas heater to get a phoron canister to 400k, filling any empty tank with phoron and then another with oxy (cooled if you so desire). As a note with the tanks, they all function the same so you don't even need a phoron tank to accomplish this, even a previously empty emergency oxygen tank filled with hot phoron will yield a blast comparable to a phoron/oxygen tank thanks to bombcaps.

That said, I'm relatively sure actually using TTVs here is going to get you in hot water.

[Swagile]

You forgot to add super cap batteries, improved autolathe (nano manip and super matter bins), and asking the CL for his Diamond + Gold in his safe to make some extra goodies.

There is also gold, silver, and diamond on LV in a pod near mining that you can get marines to (hopefully) pillage and bring back to you for some nice goodies.

That upgraded autolathe in the hands of a good CT is godlike in getting mass amounts of metal to the planet.

[Jroinc1]

There's one last thing researchers can play with; those funny valves in the toximate 3000. If you can get help from engineering (or an officer is nice enough to grant you access), you can make some serious boom.

Now I just started testing this today (as a certain maintenance tech), and using a formula from another server I was able to make bombs that have a a breach radius of 5-6 tiles and a "put you into critical health" radius of around one and a half screens minimum, but won't be ready until around 13:00. Someone who actually knows old baycode can do much, much better.


The MT guide ( viewtopic.php?f=94&t=9008 ) covers some aspects of bomb making, but is missing a few key points like the minimum temperature your TTV''s contents need to be at upon mixing to explode (100 Celsius), ways to heat up pure phoron (use a gas heater) and the best place to test your bomb (wherever the CO is).

"The MT guide" deliberately has that information missing. I chose to avoid adding it to prevent inexperienced people from making maxcap mixes without knowledge.

Also, everything I've heard is that you can use TTV's, but you can't kill Marines with them (duh...), and you can't breach with them (so no sulaco-side use).

[Rocco Ward]

Chem Sprayer, Fill with a wide variety of chemicals, but it sprays them out rather quickly. Haven't found a good use for this personality.

Actually this is pretty robust vs xenos when you load it with polyacid. One time on ice colony, I held back a crusher, hunter, and a spitter by spraying them repeatedly in the face. They ran away pretty damaged. If I remember correctly, I put an ancient runner in crit by spraying it 4 times. Two of the major advantages using this is the wide spray length (3 tiles wide), and the rapid fire (seriously, this gun has no cooldown). Both of these are offset with the negative drawbacks being: Acid melts everything on the ground, (weaps, medical supplies, ammo) rendering them into ashes. The other issue is with reloading, as every shot fired from the chem sprayer uses 30u. If you fill one gun to max volume (600 units) then you have precisely 20 shots before you run dry. While that may seem like a lot, it's really not considering that's almost half a clip of m41a. Last drawback is the capacity for friendly fire being severely lethal. Not only will this melt marines faces off (and potential break their bones), it has a chance to melt their weapons, armor, and equipment. (if their ID gets melted, then they are going to have a WORSE day if they go near a turret)

Still pretty robust weapon if you know WHEN and HOW to use it correctly. (I also have a hunch this ignores xenos armor)


Some other things you missed!

Hyposprays! You can steal all the ones in the vendors across the station (there is 16 of them), fill them with hyperzine, and load them on the rasp with an overdose warning labelled onto it.

Spray bottles filled with Thermite! You can fill these with 250u of thermite (one spray uses 5u) to break through walls easily! (much better than c4) I'd recommend giving these to SLs and engineers, and saving one for yourself if the Sulaco gets boarded.

[TheMusician321]

One thing, I heard that mining as a marine is considered powergaming, so might want to remove that from the useful section.

[Rocco Ward]

Also I'm pretty sure bomb making is removed for this server. A CE last night mixed superheated phoron and oxygen and nothing happened.

On a few occasions I've tried doing the same thing, and gotten zero booms.

[Jroinc1]

Also I'm pretty sure bomb making is removed for this server. A CE last night mixed superheated phoron and oxygen and nothing happened.

On a few occasions I've tried doing the same thing, and gotten zero booms.

Not unless it JUST got removed. But some mixes won't explode, even ones you think will.

[Casgair]

Not unless it JUST got removed. But some mixes won't explode, even ones you think will.

Alternatively, too much oxygen burned in the mix, leaving almost nothing but hot CO2.