Strife's Ice colony strategy (The madman's plan.)

[RadiantFlash]

Ice colony is tough. It really is. For commanders, for marines, even for aliens at times.

Theres been a sort of, no good way, to deal with the stalemate that ends up occuring revolving around getting underground as a marine.

However, My tactic as CO, has worked 2/3 times so far. It was called crazy when it worked, and called stupid when it didn't. Regardless, here's how it works.

Squad deployments, start as one squad on the Alamo, to set up telecoms. This, unfortantely, is the key to the entire game.

If the marines can't get telecoms up within fifteen minutes of deployment, they'll usually outright lose. (Find a squad with atleast 2 engineers, and try to make sure one is competent.)

The other three squads, deploy via the Normandy. One squad immiedately heads east, to turn on the underground's power,
the second squad fortfies the elevator lobby just south of LZ 1.
Finally, the third squad sets up in the hall south of the chapel, and medical lobby.

Normally, the aliens push down this hall, where the third squad sets up. It's something they just seem to do, since every hive is usually south of that hall or so, generally, that hall is the fastest route to the marines.

Medical lobby provides a good spot for flanking fire, covereded by the window holder tiles, whatever they're called.

Now you're probably asking, what happens when the marines obviously get swarmed?

The answer here, is simple. Xenos are strongest underground and it's all about timing. Ideally, you''ll have a lot of your barricades in place at by 12:35, any later and good xenos will crush your forces. (xenos aren't always amazingly skilled players though, so theres a fair leeway.)

Phase II

The xenos will start to assault your barricades proper, by then at the very latest, if not sooner.
At this point, the first squad should return from underground engineering and assist the other squads.
As the fight goes on, Marines till take losses, xenos will take loses, and boiler gas will be a pain for the marines.

This is when you, as a commander, send the fourth squad at telecoms, west to research(Leaving a small fire-team to guard telecoms.)

Now, assuming the xenos did not start a hive in research, in which case, you're going to have a bad day. (If it's in research caves, You're actually fine.) However, if not, which is the case 90% of the time,
The fourth squad can head down the research elevator, and start a flank.
When the flank starts, the marines from the first, second and third squad, need to start a push down the hall in between boiler gas attacks.
Assuming the flanking squad has enough marines to make a differance, It'll either draw enough marines away from your assault that your assault and push forward enough to start to link up with the flank, Or the flank with hit the aliens in their exposed side, for rather deadly results.

As the marines move up, the squad engineers need to be building barricades to help secure forward positions.
From there, the marines can usually trap a few t3s, sometimes even the queen, between the flank and the marine force, and manage a route.

Phase III

After that it's just general cleanup, and you've usually broken the xenos back.

Thats the best case scenario. The problem with this strategy, is it requires three things.
1: Engineers MUST be competent. If you can't get telecoms or enough barricades positioned properly, you'll get your ass handed to you as a marine.
2: Squad numbers. Whatever squad is at telecoms, /has/ to have their entire squad with them, and no rambos running off alone. If they have marines alone, they lose the critical number required for the flank.
3:Coordination. If the flanking marines push to late, or too early, Either the assaulting marines get murderized, or the flanking marines get killed. It has to be a coordinated timing, which can be hard, given how much the standard marines hate orders.

Finally, Friendly fire. This is the number one problem, that marines have to deal with. If marines shoot each other up too much to be effective in this strategy, you've already lost.

You just have to hope the marines don't shoot an unusually high amount of marines during the attack.

Troubleshooting: If the marine flank fails. Pull back your flanking marines from research, sent them above ground to cargo to join up with the main force via the cargo elevator.
If the marine attack force fails, do the same, except pull back your marine force to the FOB barricades (Assuming your engineers were good enough to make them.
If the xenos for some reason made a hive above ground, well. This strategy is kind of useless, ish? Sweep the underground, before taking your cargo elevator up or redeploy via LZ 1.


As a side note: This whole strategy stemmed from me noticing that any marine assaults underground from above ground tend to fail.
They either attack too late in the game, or can't get a good foothold in time before their rushed. Another issue, is sending only two squads via LZ 2, isn't usually enough to hold your ground outside the LZ2 if you're attacked early.

[SolarMacharius]

I like this plan. Marines tend to go to two extremes on Ice. Either no one is deployed underground at start, or everyone is deployed underground at start. In all honesty three squads is enough to hold an underground hive off long enough for the flank (and maybe you could get with two squads).

Also Telecomms was moved, so it shouldn't take fifteen minutes to reach. It takes less than five minutes to reach it now, as its just outside the hangar at lz1. I could see temporarily splitting Alpha into two fire teams. One that starts working on the fortifications at lz1, and one who gets tcomms up and running. You don't have to build an FOB above ground because the majority of troops will be underground anyways.

I feel like Ice above all inspires the greatest tactical creativity out of people as there is no set "meta" to win it unlike the other maps. I am glad that you came up with this plan, and may implement it in the future.

[RadiantFlash]

I like this plan. Marines tend to go to two extremes on Ice. Either no one is deployed underground at start, or everyone is deployed underground at start. In all honesty three squads is enough to hold an underground hive off long enough for the flank (and maybe you could get with two squads).

Also Telecomms was moved, so it shouldn't take fifteen minutes to reach. It takes less than five minutes to reach it now, as its just outside the hangar at lz1. I could see temporarily splitting Alpha into two fire teams. One that starts working on the fortifications at lz1, and one who gets tcomms up and running. You don't have to build an FOB above ground because the majority of troops will be underground anyways.

I feel like Ice above all inspires the greatest tactical creativity out of people as there is no set "meta" to win it unlike the other maps. I am glad that you came up with this plan, and may implement it in the future.

The fifteen minutes isn't so much about taking it to reach, as it is engineers being incompetent. You don't want to know how bad it is at times. It took Alpha's engineer 11 minutes to get telecoms up last round.

Also, it turned out the marines actually won, despite my plan failing. so thats still technically 3/3 I think?

The xenos were down to 15 when I retreated out of the underground via the normandy, so I guess it sort of worked.

The reason my plan failed the prior round, was that marine engineers A: Didn't build barricades where they needed to,
B: Telecoms took forever to get up,
C: The flanking squad wasn't as cohesive as it needed to be, and only went underground with eight people, instead of 12-14

[Sulaboy]

This plan is meta, no squads scouting out the surface building to look for survivors, and no one ought to know about the aliens until they see one. While the plan is near it feels like a standard meta rush. While I love stomping Xenos, especially on ice, but we have to remember that the Xenos are players, and the survivors who roam about the map are players as well. Imagine being a survivor that round and never seeing marines besides the fire team at telecoms if they are lucky. This is my main problem with this plan, it could win you rounds, but that's not what everyone wants.

[RadiantFlash]

This plan is meta, no squads scouting out the surface building to look for survivors, and no one ought to know about the aliens until they see one. While the plan is near it feels like a standard meta rush. While I love stomping Xenos, especially on ice, but we have to remember that the Xenos are players, and the survivors who roam about the map are players as well. Imagine being a survivor that round and never seeing marines besides the fire team at telecoms if they are lucky. This is my main problem with this plan, it could win you rounds, but that's not what everyone wants.

The plan is sort meta in a sense, but also not.

If it was a standard distress signal, what survivor in their right mind would not be hiding where the majority of the colony is, and where it's warmer, Underground. First place the marines would look.

I address what the xenos do, and what to do in the scenario in my strategy, because thats the way it tends to go, and it's a way for commanders to know what to do in the situation. I could do the exact same thing for every marine strategy that is put into place which would make all marine strategies meta by that definition.

I would also contest that this is metarushing. if marines can't deploy by another LZ, and /stay/ at that LZ, whats the point of having the second LZ? It's not like i'm ordering all four squads to run out and assault early. My plan follows the natural progression of a round, especially since it's xenos that are the ones that are attacking first.

Why do marines set up in hydro every round of LV? Why do marines get orders to go search lambda and research most times on big red, without clearing the other buildings like admin, or colonial offices?
(for the record, when I am CO, I have squads clear every building on the other maps before pressing to either research complex on Big red.)

As for survivors being on the top-side, When I do my plan, I tend to split up a fire-team of the squad at telecoms, to go check the bar, command, and medical topside, while the rest of the squad digs in at telecoms. I've had them rescue survivors from disposals before that were being harrassed by a xeno or two.

The point of my strategy, is A: To give marines a chance at actually winning a fight underground, and B: An alternative to what every other commander does- Ignore the underground for almost the entire game.

If xenos are going to do the same thing every round, and happen to lose because of it, they'll just relocate their hive and not attack the marine FOB. Strategies and standards can evolve and change.

[Sulaboy]

-snip

While using LZ2 as a drop site is not meta, sending three squads to patrol the caves seems excessive. I understand that this game's design leads to some inherently meta things happening, but my arguement is that having three squads sweep the underground level first isn't very realistic. I think the proper strategy would be to send one or two squads down to sweep the underground while having the other two sweep surface level. You could always send the squads on a sweep that ends at warehouse, where they would link up with the underground squads via the elevator, or maybe they would use another enterance like the area some elevator for a flank.

The strategy is good, but my problem with it is that it would be too good. You could get away with it because I'd imagine this strategy wouldn't be used every ice colony op. I just hope you keep this in mind while commanding on ice. A commander's job isn't to win the round but to make the round fun for both sides.

[Arbs]

I was your XO when you tried it on Ice, and i have to say I had my doubts at first.

While it did not go exactly as expected mostly because marines coukdnt get it together, it still left us enough room for manuevering. So after the underground got overrun, we redeployed via DS1 into the surface and so on. Once we pushed them back we could redeploy via DS2 to clear out the underground.

It was a long round, but this ability to manuever like that gave us the chance for victory.

So yeah i approve of this.

[Omicega]

The strategy is good because it breaks the Ice stalemate one way or another. Either all three squads punch through and skip the hours-long ladder bullshit, or they're slaughtered by xenos in minutes which also writes out the need to spend 4 hours watching both sides stare at each other from one end of a ladder.

[RobBrown4PM]

Banzai ladder charges are the only way to go.

[misto]

fast strike ds2 ice colony attacks are appealing in theory, but incredibly tough in practice. unless your engies are extremely on the ball, you waste 5 to 10 minutes waiting for them to open the doors to let you out of lz2 (giving the xenos plenty of time to notice you and prepare) and then they have to try to fortify the halls fast without being able to receive supply drops due to being underground.

also, if comms aren't up ASAP dopes will run off in all directions in the underground and get fucked up there too.

this -might work- if the engies are absolute speedy geniuses who were loaded down with extra metal before briefing, and who then pick the just perfect spots to begin putting barricades as soon as they got out into the halls. consider sending down the tcomms fixing team a little before ds2 is sent to minimize time without comms in underground