Squad engineer:
- Unwrench a medical vendor from Sulaco/medical dome and drag it to the FoB or Rasputin, depending on which one is in main use, allowing medics to restock on the spot.
- Open and hack every single machine you see. That allows for helmets to be fixed, medicine and magazines to be refilled, and gives more options. Hacked marine vendors gain SMG, .44 and M4A3 AP ammo. Hacked squad engineer vendor - a single super capacity cell. Hacked youtools - budget gloves and 80-capacity welders. Wall medical vendors gain spacealin. Etc etc.
- Give the researcher insulated gloves and cable coil. If he knows his stuff, you just allowed him to start cranking out research things much faster.
- SCATTER YOUR DEFENSES. A single line of superdense barricade-reinforced table-girder-grille-whatever the fuck you can put in it defenses is shit, and yet it's the most common one seen. Here's why it's shit: No fallback points and limits the safe space in which marines can move. A single crusher charge, a single boiler bombard, a single missed grenade will create a major break and probably wipe half of the defenders out.
You want your defenses to have as many levels as possible, with space to move freely between them.
Four rows of mediocre defenses are vastly superior to one row of superdefenses.
- Use girders. They cost the same as a reinforced table, but require acid to take down. Being able to shoot over tables is a great thing, but cutting off areas completely is even better. Use girders in the middle of defenses, too, where charges and bombards are most likely to be launched at. Place them while keeping in mind that that section of defenses might be lost - so think ahead and make sure that they don't give the enemy cover. Make it so that they have to step from behind the girders if they want to attack the next section. Use them to reinforce windows, too. Just place them outside so the easily-broken window falls after girders are acided, so you can pick when you want that hole open.
- DO NOT MAKE A SINGLE CIRCLE OF DEFENSES AROUND THE FOB JESUS CHRIST. If that ring is breached, you're all dead. Build walls of girders with reinforced table "watchtowers" between domes, with additional "outposts" on major routes and approach points to the FoB. You only need two marines to hold such a section for as long as it takes for support to arrive. In case of FOB-concentrated defenses, sure, you get all the defenders in there, but they severely limit their effectiveness by being so densely packed.
- Dislodge the fences with a screwdriver and fill the gaps in the jungle areas with them. Sure, they will last only a few hits, but you will hear when they're being broken.
- Usual defenses vs. what they should be like. Orange is tables and barricades, red is girders. Keep in mind that this sketch is done on an old version of the map with very little thought put into it. This is not optimal in any sense. It's just to illustrate the massive difference. Why have 30 marines crowded behind one row of tables when you can have teams of two holding their own sections much more effectively?
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- Open vendors refill trauma kits, burn kits, chem bottles, autoinjectors, splints...
- Early on, focus on the critically wounded first, going with the standard triage procedure. Later on, however, during the "now or never" assaults and defences, the priority is shifted completely. Attend to the critically wounded only enough to make sure they don't die immediately. Your actual top priority now is medium wounds that decrease combat effectiveness. Why is that? You can inject quick-clot, give kelotane and splint limbs in no time, and the marine gets into the fight right away. Sending them back into the fight means you prevent more casualties by keeping the amount of guns firing at once the same. Standing over someone just barely alive while you can splint people and push them back into the frontline is a no-no when the fate of the mission is being decided.
But letting people die is bad even in these circumstances, and that's why you have an inaprovaline + dex plus (just inaprovaline if medical is shitty) you inject these that fall into crit with without thinking. Attend to them after everyone who can be put back into fighting shape quickly, is.
