Reducing Marine Attrition

[sw4gbag]

Reducing attrition is no easy task, it is virtually impossible to micromanage each marine, but you can center your strategy on reducing attrition by being smart and implenmenting some of the strategies on this guide.

Attrition is one of the biggest factors which causes xeno victories.
What is attrition?

Attrition is "the action or process of gradually reducing the strength or effectiveness of someone or something through sustained attack or pressure."
Marines start off with a good number of "expendable" marines and irreplaceable equipment, keep this in mind for later.
Let's start off with the biggest factors which cause KIA and injuries.

The first thing that comes in mind is friendly fire, there is no easy way to reduce this, but if you're sending squads in a narrow space to assault, such as places found in Prison Station, underground in Ice, or Lambda/ETA in Solaris, you DON'T want to send all four squads at once. Sending a large number of marines is not just a horrible idea, it's ineffective and deadly. You will find friendly fire much more common in these spaces and KIA's by xeno's suited for CQC such as warriors, ravagers, and bottle necks which can be easily exploited by boilers. The best way to send marines in small spaces and bottlenecks is by sending one squad at once, with the second nearby in a building, this will reduce friendly fire and injuries, and improve the effectiveness of marines firepower as less marines will be pushed around and will have more space to fire in.

The second thing that comes to mind is how some commanders view marines as expendable. This problem is more of an IC thing than an OOC problem. Lore-wise Colonial Marines are viewed as expendable, in CM SS13. Commanders such as Bill Carson do great at acting as a commander who views and uses marines as cannon-fodder and giving little regard to equipment which can't be replaced. If you want to be an effective commander or XO, you need to do the opposite of this. Do not send marines in careless pushes without support of medics, medevac, and CAS. Being an effective commander using CAS and planning extensively early in the round as if you were fighting CLF a threat is not powergaming or metagaming, preparing as if you were fighting some bullet resistant alien creature is.

The third thing that comes to mind, which is rather minor, is leaving a large number of medics on FOB duty, you SHOULD do this to account for medics that will die fighting xenos early on, but leaving more than three to five medics on low pop is a horrible idea, medics are one of the essential factors in keeping marines alive and reducing KIA's and injuries. Make sure DS1 or DS2 has a medevac and if possible, send a doctor or synth down to the FOB so marines can trickle back into fighting.
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Fourth is equipment and engineering, during evacs, it is very common to see nearly irreplaceable equipment such as M56D's or sentry guns left at the FOB, make sure you mention to bring equipment back on an evac announcement and/or on the engineering channel.
Regarding engineering, an effective defense is an effective counter to attrition, allowing marines to have a relatively safe place to inflict attrition back on the xeno's buys time for marines. Secondly, make use of barricades during offense early in the round. This can help counter very common losses from effective charger attacks and ravager/warrior abilities.


[PLACEHOLDER]


Typos will be fixed and formatting will be added later.

[sw4gbag]

[PLACEHOLDER]

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[Szunti]

Marines will get spat, gassed, delimbed by ravs, hugged, screeched. Most need medics' attention and they will be overloaded soon. I think the only solution is to attack as quickly as possible, marines have to do enough damage while they still have the numbers. Or just defend, but we all know the marines can't stay behind the barricades.

What do you think about medics healing minor injuries first? I think it could be more efficient in some cases. What often happens is that the first marines die then noone else ever gets any treatment, because medics are busy with defibbing. Defibbed marines aren't that useful either because they often still need medevac, but now not even the less injured marines can hold the xenos and as more and more marines get paincrit the line collapses and everyone dies. Think about it this way: if someone will die anyway, who should die? The ones who take the most time and resources to heal and contribute the least.

[sw4gbag]

Marines will get spat, gassed, delimbed by ravs, hugged, screeched. Most need medics' attention and they will be overloaded soon. I think the only solution is to attack as quickly as possible, marines have to do enough damage while they still have the numbers. Or just defend, but we all know the marines can't stay behind the barricades.

What do you think about medics healing minor injuries first? I think it could be more efficient in some cases. What often happens is that the first marines die then noone else ever gets any treatment, because medics are busy with defibbing. Defibbed marines aren't that useful either because they often still need medevac, but now not even the less injured marines can hold the xenos and as more and more marines get paincrit the line collapses and everyone dies. Think about it this way: if someone will die anyway, who should die? The ones who take the most time and resources to heal and contribute the least.

Anything that is above 60 brute or 40 burn and doesn't need surgery, can easily be treated by one first-aid kit. The problem is you can't individually tell marines exactly what to do. This guide is a set of solutions and proper responses to preparing assaults and plans.
Saving as much marines as possible should be viewed as the priority, rather than, if someone will die anyway, who should die?

[Fitchace]

Reducing attrition is no easy task, it is virtually impossible to micromanage each marine, but you can center your strategy on reducing attrition by being smart and implenmenting some of the strategies on this guide.



The second thing that comes to mind is how some commanders view marines as expendable. This problem is more of an IC thing than an OOC problem. Lore-wise Colonial Marines are viewed as expendable, in CM SS13. Commanders such as Bill Carson do great at acting as a commander who views and uses marines as cannon-fodder and giving little regard to equipment which can't be replaced. If you want to be an effective commander or XO, you need to do the opposite of this. Do not send marines in careless pushes without support of medics, medevac, and CAS. Being an effective commander using CAS and planning extensively early in the round as if you were fighting CLF a threat is not powergaming or metagaming, preparing as if you were fighting some bullet resistant alien creature is.

When a squad is ordered to push at a certain location, it is the LT's or the SL's job to make sure his medics are with him, and CAS is being called.

[sw4gbag]

When a squad is ordered to push at a certain location, it is the LT's or the SL's job to make sure his medics are with him, and CAS is being called.

Most experienced SL's and LT's know this, a good tip but this isn't this type of guide.

[Arbs]

Most experienced SL's and LT's know this, a good tip but this isn't this type of guide.

What he's trying to say is that a CO/XO will work on a more "strategic level". It's the LTs/SLs job to take care of fire missions and make sure support is provided.