Commander's tent: Topics, tactics & tea!

[Sargeantmuffinman]

The Commander's tent

This is a place where all officers of any kind can discuss many things related to the battlefields or other things.

All ranks are welcome to put in their own opinion but do remember we're gentlemen here so keep it calm.

Suggest a topic to talk about and we'll discuss.

Topic:UPP assault.

This time, you're the UPP squad leader.
Let's hear how you take down the marines and reach the CIC?

How you enter is through the ERT shuttle at the northern most port of the ship.

It's 13:25 so the battle on the ground is well underway. Most of the corridors are silent but there may be a few MPs, cargo techs and the odd synth running around.

Your squad is a section of 3 Standards, 1 medic, 1 heavy UPP trooper and yourself!

Good Luck!

Last discussions.

► Show Spoiler

LV-624, hive assault:

liltiptop:

This is all under the assumption that all 4 squads are properly filled, and there's a field doctor, if this isn't true, good luck.

Alpha- Flanking squad
Bravo- Flanking squad
Charlie- Central river forces
Delta- Support squad

To start, have engineers set up defenses along the river, and get charlie to man the defenses, delta filling in when needed, get a field hospital set up in hydro or the med-dome.
Alpha will flank around to the west side, moving up and to the east, and Bravo will flank to the east, and then move west, both squads meeting where the xenos are. Have a SL toss an OB in, and then after the OB hits, move in and force them to the center. Charlie will then move up and clean up any other hostiles in the area, and have delta fill in there defenses to watch for any xenos attempting a counter-maneuver.

Move any infected/wounded to the field hospital.

Flanks can be great ways to kill lots of xenos, the problem is that when one squad flanks, the others don't push up to assist.

Karmac:

Alright so here's a bit of information from an Engineer player, by the time you're asking for a full-on assault on the river, chances are roughly 70% of all your engineer's materials have been spent securing the LZ and/or FOB, as well as anywhere else you've told them to hold before the River Assault, so your best bet is to assume they don't have any and tell them to move sentries up to the start of the offensive line, and you best be making sure they're constantly moving those sentry guns up as the marines push forward, nothing says "Fuck You" like a gunline of burst-fire sentry guns, just be sure that your men are focusing fire on the right enemies, don't want any Crushers knocking those guns over.

Big Red, FOB defense.

Karmac:

Alright, you're gonna want to get your men supplied with those new marksman rifles and ensure they know their job is to target those boiler crusher combos, make sure these guys get AP mags for extra hurt, then have the rest of your lads counter push, nothing works better than removing or subduing the enemy's best advantage and then jumping over the barricades to run them down. And be prepared to move quickly because Boilers will leggit the minute they realise they're in your range. And try to abuse MG's whenever you can, they're easy to move around and deal out a lot of hurt in those small corridors big red favors. Just remember not to get stuck in the defensive because those boilers will ruin your MG's day. You're also at an advantage with those Specs, have the snipers stick with the marksmen and ensure those SADAR's are deterring crusher charges and dropping HE rounds into small groups.

Retreating from battles:

Marcus Jackson

As an SL, retreat has almost always been called way too late, and usually ends up with my squad being gutted and several SL's being torn to shreds.

A better idea for retreat is to do what I call "Leapfrog", where one squad hunkers down and gets ready to fire, while another one gets ready to move. The best place to do it is inside buildings, or when there is a clear line of battle between the Xenos and Marines like the river, as the squads should only be leaping about 10 to 15 squares at a given time.

The only problem is that FF is a super high possibility, and that once a squad starts to retreat they may well just keep running all the way to the LZ.

Really CO's should start checking with Overwatch and SL's as soon as casualties and crit-wounds start to ramp up.

If the SL's all say: "We're doing fine on supplies, but are getting absolutely slaughtered." the CO should NOT send down more supply crates, and actually LISTEN to the SL's who are fighting.

Karmac:

Know when to, and when not to do so.

Thoroughly investigate the situation on the ground before calling a retreat and make sure it's organised properly, and for the love of god do not let the PO decide when the Rasputin shutters are closed, lest you lose 5 marines because the PO is a whiny bitch.

And to extend that ideal, make sure you've got your shuttles in the right place at the right time, to ensure a retreat is entirely possible, instead of prolonging the fight by 3-5 minutes because the shuttle wasn't there.

[Halinder]

How to raise awareness among standards of their own bad habits.

[Swagile]

Ice Colony strategies.

Theoretical Strategy (ive never gotten marines to follow my orders well enough to pull this off) to win Ice Colony:

1. Split up two squads that have a higher ratio of combat engis and at least one combat medic to FOB duty. Have one squad cover LZ1 (standard strategy) and the other to FOB at Tcomms (make sure to secure the route back to LZ1 via North LZ1 for Tcomm as they can retreat through there). Make sure Tcomms squad has a PACMAN generator and hook that up to the Tcomms APC, and send down 10 high cap batteries in a supply run to make sure that Tcomms never goes down even when the generator runs out of solid Phoron.

2. The other two squads are to merge together and patrol together till they get to Engineering and set it up. HOWEVER, it is NOT to be FOB'd at; it is merely to put up power. If xenos slash it / destroy it? No big deal, as long as you have tcomms, all is fine as in the long term the Colony's topside power is not that useful.

3. Once topside engineering is up, go underground and setup Underground Engineering. This is to be a lightly defended FOB. The key to Ice is Speed and the longer time you waste on stretching your resources / men + guarding locations, the more time xenos have to evolve and upgrade.

4. Keep a skeleton crew down at Underground Engineering and the rest are to scout the Underground together. You now have a FOB to fall back to in the Underground for healing + supplies as well as defence if they manage to push you all the way back to the Underground FOB. Power is important in the Underground as you will be able to figure out where Xenos have been if they were lazy and just slashed a few APC's, and if they slashed no APC's in the Underground, you now have lights everywhere with a medical bay quite close to Underground Engineering you can use for supplies.

After that, its all up to the ground troops and you can't really do much as a Commander except make sure a Doctor is sent planetside and a place cleared in Underground Engineering for said doctor + supplies keep coming down (beacon on topside Engi then dragged to underground Engi + supplies to LZ1 and Tcomms).

[liltiptop]

Squad leaders should have their spec lead a few marines to do tasks, like the squad sets up power and their task force sets up a perimeter of defense. This gives the squad more flexibility as a whole, and allows the BO to assign more orders

[KingKire]

Okay, heres a good tip on "Briefing the troops" imo.

What most commanders do:
- Declare briefing at 12:2X
- Marines panic rush the RO to get "Their" gear.
- commander shuts down RO at 12:2X, Marines who dont have gear whine louder than the sun shines.
- Commander sees that half the troops are not present for briefing.
- Commander trys to brief troops. Marines proceed to insult the commanders choice of hair/name/intelligence.

- 12:3X :[15%] marines are now SSD, [25%] marines are complaining that the speech sucks, [10%] marines have pissed off the MP's.
- Commander realizes marines don't care about orders, opens the gates and tells them good luck.


What commanders should do:
- Call squad leaders to receive a briefing on the bridge at 12:2X
- Marines are free to goof about the ship, grab gear, roleplay while waiting for launch.

- 12:2X, Briefing for the squad leaders begins
- Squad leaders have genuine meeting with the BO's who they will be working with (vice versa)
- Commander personally goes and gives each squad leader their orders without being interrupted.
- SL's Final questions asked and answered promptly.
- SL's are given a final salute, told to relay info to their squad.

- 12:3X, Commander announces the launch for the ship, Fully geared marines are herded to the hanger, fully prepped.
- (optional) Final good luck announcement to departing troops via intercom.

Whats the difference?
- Marine grunts do NOT and should not be given more information then to get ready. On the whole, most marines do not care and will actively insult any form of plans you give them.
- Squad Leaders DO need to know what the plan is for an operation. Any valuable time spent planning should be done with the people you will be relying on the most.
- Chain of command is properly introduced and respected.
- Any information a squad does need for an operation can now be picked up from the person THEY will be working with most and should respect the most, the SL.
- You are not Patton. Your troops do not think you are Patton. You look like a damned fool standing with a megaphone yelling at people, so please stop wasting valuable time with people who dont deserve your good thinking.

[Karmac]

Retreating:

Know when to, and when not to do so.

Thoroughly investigate the situation on the ground before calling a retreat and make sure it's organised properly, and for the love of god do not let the PO decide when the Rasputin shutters are closed, lest you lose 5 marines because the PO is a whiny bitch.

And to extend that ideal, make sure you've got your shuttles in the right place at the right time, to ensure a retreat is entirely possible, instead of prolonging the fight by 3-5 minutes because the shuttle wasn't there.

[liltiptop]

Retreating:

Know when to, and when not to do so.

Thoroughly investigate the situation on the ground before calling a retreat and make sure it's organised properly, and for the love of god do not let the PO decide when the Rasputin shutters are closed, lest you lose 5 marines because the PO is a whiny bitch.

And to extend that ideal, make sure you've got your shuttles in the right place at the right time, to ensure a retreat is entirely possible, instead of prolonging the fight by 3-5 minutes because the shuttle wasn't there.

Fucking this.

I cannot stress how bad of a position hydro can be to hold. I was a combat medic, and we were being flanked by xenos. The south side seems like a good area to escape, but our SL and BO didn't give us permission to leave, so with a bunch of crit marines in hydro, we all got attacked until I said "fuck it" and grabbed a spec in crit and ran for the nexus.

If your position is being flanked to the point of having xenos run around it, then fall back and don't risk being killed.

[Sargeantmuffinman]

Updated topic:

Debate and discuss away.

[liltiptop]

The Commander's tent

This is a place where all officers of any kind can discuss many things related to the battlefields or other things.

All ranks are welcome to put in their own opinion but do remember we're gentlemen here so keep it calm.

Suggest a topic to talk about and we'll discuss.

Topic: LV-624, hive assaults

Phase 1: Across the river.

Let's talk tactics for this one:

Aliens have setup camp on the other end of the river.

Tell us how to defeat them and do divert from the usual push of going across the bridge.

Warning: You have to make your own tea!

Phase 1:
This is all under the assumption that all 4 squads are properly filled, and there's a field doctor, if this isn't true, good luck.

Alpha- Flanking squad
Bravo- Flanking squad
Charlie- Central river forces
Delta- Support squad

To start, have engineers set up defenses along the river, and get charlie to man the defenses, delta filling in when needed, get a field hospital set up in hydro or the med-dome.
Alpha will flank around to the west side, moving up and to the east, and Bravo will flank to the east, and then move west, both squads meeting where the xenos are. Have a SL toss an OB in, and then after the OB hits, move in and force them to the center. Charlie will then move up and clean up any other hostiles in the area, and have delta fill in there defenses to watch for any xenos attempting a counter-maneuver.

Move any infected/wounded to the field hospital.

Flanks can be great ways to kill lots of xenos, the problem is that when one squad flanks, the others don't push up to assist.

[Karmac]

Alright so here's a bit of information from an Engineer player, by the time you're asking for a full-on assault on the river, chances are roughly 70% of all your engineer's materials have been spent securing the LZ and/or FOB, as well as anywhere else you've told them to hold before the River Assault, so your best bet is to assume they don't have any and tell them to move sentries up to the start of the offensive line, and you best be making sure they're constantly moving those sentry guns up as the marines push forward, nothing says "Fuck You" like a gunline of burst-fire sentry guns, just be sure that your men are focusing fire on the right enemies, don't want any Crushers knocking those guns over.

[Renomaki]

While this isn't on the topic of this day (I'll get to it), I just wanna say: Why 12:20?

Back then, it was understandable, since you often only had one line at cargo and it took forever for everyone to get their shit. But nowadays, we got double lines, which in some rare cases could turn into triple lines if the cargo staff felt it was needed. Marines can get their shit so much faster now, which makes me wonder why we require so much extra time for the marines to kit up? When I go commander, I make use of every minute of time to prepare my speeches for the briefing and decide what I'll do for the operation. Most other COs I witnessed (including XOs), however, just kinda... Sit around and do nothing. You have all this extra time that you could be using to prepare yourself for briefing, but instead you just spend that time with your hand down your pants.

Naturally, this leads to briefing that often take way longer than they should, resulting in marines going planetside late. And when marines are late, xenos get bored, and when they get bored, they rush the marines in mass. While it is important to ensure that everyone has time to prepare and that most marines are ready to deploy before briefing takes place, you also have to remember that, ICly, time is money and you want to get the op into gear as soon as you can, and OOCly, you have to ensure that you get a secure foothold on the planet as soon as possible, because without a good FoB, you will not last for very long planetside. Since xenos have more leeway when it comes to rushes, taking too long to deploy will end in tears more often than not.

As for the topic at hand, I always felt that moving the marines as one big blob across the river is a bad tactic that marines can't help. It isn't easy to get them organised, however, since once a marine gets stuck it, it is hard to convince them to come back out. But, if I happened to have a lot of marines that were very loyal and cared to listen to my orders, I'd probably attempt to have one squad perform a flank from either the west or east side of the river, two squads pushing up the middle (but spread out enough to cover their flanks better), and of course I'd keep a squad at the FoB on standby, only calling them in when the situation calls for it. Nothing catches xenos off guard like a sudden influx of marines arriving at the front lines.

Crossing the bridge is nice and all, but sometimes you gotta cross the old fashioned way and get your feet wet, due to the fact that it is very easy for the xenos to turn the bridge into a deathly bottleneck that is more trouble than it is worth.

[Swagile]

Phase 1:
This is all under the assumption that all 4 squads are properly filled, and there's a field doctor, if this isn't true, good luck.

Alpha- Flanking squad
Bravo- Flanking squad
Charlie- Central river forces
Delta- Support squad

To start, have engineers set up defenses along the river, and get charlie to man the defenses, delta filling in when needed, get a field hospital set up in hydro or the med-dome.
Alpha will flank around to the west side, moving up and to the east, and Bravo will flank to the east, and then move west, both squads meeting where the xenos are. Have a SL toss an OB in, and then after the OB hits, move in and force them to the center. Charlie will then move up and clean up any other hostiles in the area, and have delta fill in there defenses to watch for any xenos attempting a counter-maneuver.

Move any infected/wounded to the field hospital.

Flanks can be great ways to kill lots of xenos, the problem is that when one squad flanks, the others don't push up to assist.

I did a spin on this with two squads doing FOB under one SL and two squads doing engineering then setting up FOB at Robotics so they can flank.

Worked really well actually until SL's died, but thats to be expected. One of the flanks the Robo SL did allowed them to take down Hydro and cage in a lot of xenos, which lead to quite a few xeno deaths leading to our later victory.

Great PO + Req + Medical that round certainly helped.

I was XO by the way.

[Sargeantmuffinman]

Updated for one of the recent battles we went through recently.

[Karmac]

Alright, you're gonna want to get your men supplied with those new marksman rifles and ensure they know their job is to target those boiler crusher combos, make sure these guys get AP mags for extra hurt, then have the rest of your lads counter push, nothing works better than removing or subduing the enemy's best advantage and then jumping over the barricades to run them down. And be prepared to move quickly because Boilers will leggit the minute they realise they're in your range. And try to abuse MG's whenever you can, they're easy to move around and deal out a lot of hurt in those small corridors big red favors. Just remember not to get stuck in the defensive because those boilers will ruin your MG's day. You're also at an advantage with those Specs, have the snipers stick with the marksmen and ensure those SADAR's are deterring crusher charges and dropping HE rounds into small groups.

[Marcus Jackson]

SL's need to have their own radio channel. When ever I try to coordinate with my fellow SLs I either have to pick between general, officer, and speak personally with my BO via the squad channel. This is not helpful when RO is bitching about his disgusting wife, and PO is crying hysterically over comms because of a spider being in the drop-ship. So coordinating between the only 4 people who are actually in charge of all the little idiots on the planet is suddenly REALLY hard, when everyone else is chatting over, under, and around us.

Retreating plans should always be something that the CO goes over with the SLs since it's our job to tell the CO if we need to retreat or not, CO should have final say, but the SLs should not have to be second guessed by anybody as to what the status on the ground is. Co needs to tell the SLs which squad will be holding the line for the longest, which squad has to be farthest away from the drop-ship and so on, just to come even close to an effective retreat.

[Sargeantmuffinman]

Updated. Now to talk about retreating.

[Karmac]

Well when it comes to retreating the first thing you gotta account for is you'll always lose men when you try to pull it off, so you'll want to figure out quickly what's 'acceptable losses' and what isn't. So say you've got three squads worth of men fighting in a building near the LZ, you can't have them all retreat at once because it'll take ages to drag the fight all the way back there and you'll take more casualties than you need to, so instead you'd leave a squads worth behind to cover the retreat, they're not expected to survive but with any luck they'll slow down the enemy enough to let the others get to the LZ and escape to the Almayer.

That's just a general example for retreating really, the more likely situation is you'll have less men than that to work with. Which is why you need to know how many men you need to sacrifice as a minimum to rescue the others. This does heavily imply marines won't be able to fend off the xenos as they retreat without taking casualties, but lets be real how often does that happen?

The best way to tell your men what the plan is here is to be straight with them, don't tell them you're asking them to die, tell them you're asking them to protect the others.

[Sleepy Retard]

In my past couple games as commander, I've always held a briefing at 12:20 and had the shuttles generally leave at 12:23-25.

You'd think Renos point would be a good one, why shouldn't we have briefing early and yadda yadda. Because RO is slow, marines are slow.

An earlier briefing is less prepared marines. Marines who aren't prepared don't go down and get what they need first. These marines have to wait to go down after they're ready and link up with their squad. Resulting in a few being killed and dsay salt.

It's not worth it to be much sooner with briefing, because more time benefits the marines greatly, to a limited degree. Medical has much more time to pump out pure gravy drugs, and the marines will be able to deploy all at once in a unified manner.

While the xenos do get stronger, you are stronger at the start if you have your entire squad and aren't missing 5-8 people from it since the commander thought an early briefing and a quick deployment was the best idea in the history of man kind.

Tl;dr give your marines ample time to gear up as don't rush a deployment. Marines who aren't ready aren't gonna deploy

Now, into the actual topic. Retreating. Retreating is never a bad thing, and it can put you in a good spot if done right. I like to announce the posibility of a retreat around ten minutes before it happens. As well, I get engineers to move all sentries to the drop zone.

In the case of an organized retreat, this works brilliantly. However, most of the time the marines retreat its hectic and chaotic as a mad dash for survival. In that case, instead of sending out a squad to be bait and die, I find it better to have two squads at the FOB and two at the LZ (assuming it is LV, whereas other maps are different) This lets the fob squads retreat first into the shuttle, and then the LZ squads can load in

When I am retreating my squad/telling a squad to retreat, I tell them to fire all of their UGLs as to buy time and deny the xenos space. It's saved my entire squad more than once, and UGLs are feee

[shotgunbill]

After some thought on how I'd contribute to this thread, I'm glad to present to you all my shitty thoughts on the most important part of the Commanding Officer: how they handle the first 30 minutes of the round. The early game, unironically, is the most important part of the Commanding Officer role. Good preparation, organization, and delegation here pays off tremendously later in the game. Sure, you might not win the round, but at least you'll have a fighting chance.

this is also what i do before the beginning of every round so please no judge ty

Pre-Round Set-Up

- Before you willingly choose to be a commander at the beginning of a round, have your game plan/briefing speech prepared and ready in MSWord. A lot of marines will give you shit for this, but at least you'll have a baseline game plan. Your game plan should also be put into speech form, so you can convey it at the meeting. This is also a great opportunity to test new strategies to see how they work in practice (take notes!).

- Accept the fact that you're going to be playing Textbox Simulator 2017 for the next two-three hours. It makes Commanding way easier.

Just After Round Start

- Turn on every single radio channel on your headset. Just do it. I don't give a shit. You're playing Textbox Simulator 2017 for the next two hours, deal with it.

- Say hello to every single SO on the Bridge, have a nice little chat. Be sure to call them by name, not just rank.

- Remember that game plan you just wrote out before the round started? Put that on a piece of paper, and call over the SOs to read it. Once you've all spent some time discussing the plan, get each SO to take a squad. If there are multiple squads working together to achieve the same objective, get the SOs to co-ordinate together. It'll save time if they want/need direction in the future.

- Just like the SOs, every SL should know what their mission is before Briefing. Every channel is going to be chaotic at this point, so getting orders to the SLs is going to be a little tricky. You know that little button in the Overwatch menu that lets you send specific messages to Squad Leaders only? This is a great way for your SOs to pass on your initial orders before Briefing begins. You could even set the squad objectives now.

- Make your first command announcement thoughtful, detailed, and interesting. As the "first impression", it defines your character/persona as a CO - but especially your perceived competence. Let's be honest: we all die a little when we see that Command makes an announcement saying "briefing at 12:20" and nothing more.

- Now that you've got some time to spare, delegate any remaining responsibilities to the XO and to the SOs. The XO should look after any issue arising from the MPs or if the CL needs anything, while the SOs should thinking about how they will be working with requisitions this round.

- Get a little creepy and listen to the squad radio channels for a bit. Get a good read on the personalities of the more vocal members of each squad, including Squad Leaders. This will help you out massively later when it comes to the mid/late-game; you'll get a better idea as to how certain squads will react and perform during the round.

Briefing

- Briefing should be held somewhere between 12:15 and 12:20. Too early, and the marines will resent you for not letting them get their cool gadgets. Too late, and you'll stir up discontent in the men. The 15-20 minute mark seems to meet that nice sweet spot. It's also tradition, so it creates that expectation.

- Be at the Briefing Room two or three minutes before the assigned Briefing time. Briefing's always an echo chamber at this point. The marines will get to see, first hand, how you handle pressure. They will try to get a rise out of you. They will be rowdy. Don't scream and yell for the MPs to maintain orders unless you truly have to do so. Don't succumb to the urge to talk back; a petulant CO is a weak CO.

- The Briefing speech is another important ritual, so pick up that megaphone and get ready. A briefing should have four components:

• The Prelude: Don't immediately launch into your game plan. Briefing's going to be chaos with everyone talking at once. Use a fluffy, but short introduction to get the men to settle down.
• The Point: Go through the basics of what we already know - the USS Almayer's responding to an distress beacon, yadda yadda, etc. You can use this opportunity to talk about conditions down at the away-site, albeit briefly. The Point is ultimately used to set up the Problem.
• The Problem: Marine players crave purpose. You get to be a bit of a storyteller here, so come up with a plot to go with your plan. Introduce an element that they aren't expecting. Are there suspected elements from the Colonial Liberation Force on the planet? According to your best "intelligence", there very well might be. Don't go into exhaustive depth here; just focus on giving the marines an idea that they are part of something bigger, and that this mission is their chance to contribute to this plot. Remember: SS13 is a game about stories, so why don't make one?
• The Plan: List squad objectives one at a time. Be sure that each squad knows what they are doing, and which dropship they will be leaving on.

- Your final comments should remind the marines that they are only as strong as the rest of their squad. Remind them that they are entering a potentially dangerous situation. Remind them to stay together and stay alive.

- When you dismiss the men, give them a moment to see if any of them salute. If they do, salute back. If none of them salute, give them a salute. It probably isn't appropriate military protocol, but it shows respect. It also firmly indicates that Briefing is now official over.

[Marcus Jackson]

As an SL, retreat has almost always been called way too late, and usually ends up with my squad being gutted and several SL's being torn to shreds.

A better idea for retreat is to do what I call "Leapfrog", where one squad hunkers down and gets ready to fire, while another one gets ready to move. The best place to do it is inside buildings, or when there is a clear line of battle between the Xenos and Marines like the river, as the squads should only be leaping about 10 to 15 squares at a given time.

The only problem is that FF is a super high possibility, and that once a squad starts to retreat they may well just keep running all the way to the LZ.

Really CO's should start checking with Overwatch and SL's as soon as casualties and crit-wounds start to ramp up.

If the SL's all say: "We're doing fine on supplies, but are getting absolutely slaughtered." the CO should NOT send down more supply crates, and actually LISTEN to the SL's who are fighting.

[Sargeantmuffinman]

This has been updated, now with a different topic in mind!

[Sambalu]

I'd order my men to loop through maintenance, entering the MP's offices through the tunnels. Then up the ladder, Have two standards enter the commaner's office via maintenance corridor and take out the commander if he is inside, if not have them take positions at the door. When they are in position, I would order all of my men to attack simultaneously. The standards coming out of the CO's office would take out the two SOs in the cubicles on their side, while the team breaching from the brig ladder would take out the SOs closest to them.

Using the element of surprise, we should be able to take out most of the command staff, with the surviving members being outnumbered and outgunned. The immedeately after taking out all command staff, have the medic tend to my men while I lock down the CIC.

To deal with the rest of the marines, I'd call in UPP reinforcements.

[Sargeantmuffinman]

I'd order my men to loop through maintenance, entering the MP's offices through the tunnels. Then up the ladder, Have two standards enter the commaner's office via maintenance corridor and take out the commander if he is inside, if not have them take positions at the door. When they are in position, I would order all of my men to attack simultaneously. The standards coming out of the CO's office would take out the two SOs in the cubicles on their side, while the team breaching from the brig ladder would take out the SOs closest to them.

Using the element of surprise, we should be able to take out most of the command staff, with the surviving members being outnumbered and outgunned. The immedeately after taking out all command staff, have the medic tend to my men while I lock down the CIC.

To deal with the rest of the marines, I'd call in UPP reinforcements.

A few problems I have with the plan is that the CIC will always be busy so they may have trouble with securing it entirely. Additonally the brig will have an MP or CMP in it so your element of surprise may be foiled. The marines will respond if the officers send a warning out via the communication console and the XO/CO will most likely be present at the console.

[zoboomafoo]

Here's how I would go about the situation in your main post:

First thing we have to do is get to the upper deck without being spotted. To do this I would take the ladders closest to the shuttle landing site, up to the pods. This is risky as they are right next to alpha prep, but if we get up there without being seen we are home free pretty much. Then we would loop around the back of the ship by the SD to get to south maint (no one should see us because noone should be in that back hallway yet). Then we would go to the CIC in maint and I would do a similar plan to sambulu's, except I would take me and 2 standards to the commanders and murder him while the heavy, another standard and a medic would attack from the ladder. Being quick here is critical to prevent them from rushing the armory, but if they don't it is the XO and 4 lt's armed with pistols and unarmored vs. 6 fully armed UPP. This should be an easy fight as 2 of the lt's would die almost immediately on breaching the room. Then rush to lockdown the CIC and open the armories for those sweet, sweet tactical shotguns. Then ask UPP high command for reinforcements and wait for them to arrive or for the marines to blow open the lockdown, where I would then lift it and make a daring escape to murder as many people as possible before probably being gunned down by a superior force.

IF the CIC is alerted to our presence by us being spotted, I would still carry out the same plan in order to maintain at least a little suprise by coming in the side doors instead of the front doors, and maybe take out a couple people immediately. However, this will be a tougher fight as we are against probably even numbers who are fully armed and armored (tactical shotguns are monstrous in the CIC) so we will probably take casualties, if not outright fail. I would still try for it though.