Most effective place for a medic?

[Griffith78]

I've been playing medic a lot and trying 3 different methods to see how I can maximize lives saved, of course it depends on the situation but let's just say there is a battle on one front-line in these contexts:

- fight with the marines right in the front, heal them when damaged right there

- stay back by the cades and wait until a wounded shows up

- run to the front and grab wounded right from a xenos claw, bring them to safety where other medics are waiting , treat and repeat.

I find that the the third one is especially effective , but I am curious about other people's tactics, thoughts?

[Sulaboy]

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Q9hgqkdTFHc

[CABAL]

Medic and Smartgunners should stay in one spot in "formation": Behind atlest one PFC.

Medical channel is a nice place for them to discuss their status. In situation where squad has two medics, one should heal and pop tramadol like candy to marines and the another one should stay behind, but not too behind, in safe spot where his duties are to revive. If "Combat" medic received damage, he should change place with his "comrade".

Waiting for wounded to come is a bad idea, marines sometimes just need a painkiller and something for burn damage, but they still can fight.
Going frontline is just being gloryfied PFC that is picked first by any harraser, despite robustness.
Grabbing wounded from frontlines is also something that PFC's should do, becouse they can do that, they are disposable and it won't risk death of medic, or waste his time.

[Griffith78]

Medic and Smartgunners should stay in one spot in "formation": Behind atlest one PFC.

Medical channel is a nice place for them to discuss their status. In situation where squad has two medics, one should heal and pop tramadol like candy to marines and the another one should stay behind, but not too behind, in safe spot where his duties are to revive. If "Combat" medic received damage, he should change place with his "comrade".

Waiting for wounded to come is a bad idea, marines sometimes just need a painkiller and something for burn damage, but they still can fight.
Going frontline is just being gloryfied PFC that is picked first by any harraser, despite robustness.
Grabbing wounded from frontlines is also something that PFC's should do, becouse they can do that, they are disposable and it won't risk death of medic, or waste his time.

Yeah when you are alone with your squad its pretty easy to coordinate with the other medics and stay in a nice formation, however when other squads converge you start having problem. Marines run up from anywhere demanding treatment, smartgunners run off and everything is a big cluster of marines. The reason why I think grabbing wounded from the frontline is the best is because the other marines prioritize chasing the xeno over grabbing the guy on the floor, leaving them to be carried away. Like I would say that medics should only engage in combat in defense of themselves or their patient but being on the frontline in that respect should be alright so long as you fire off a few shots, grab the patient and get him healed up.

[CABAL]

Then find few PFC's and ask them to drag wounded. It's a chance for a little bit of RP, too.
Avoid PFC's without nicknames, I learned to not trust, or stand near them.

[Griffith78]

Yeah assigning some PFCs is a good idea actually, especially with SL support in the comms

And probably a safe bet lol, yesterday a mute PFC without a nickname tried to throw a nade at a xeno infront of us and it landed on my tile

[Grubstank]

My observations are that it really doesn't take much for a push to fail -- and that once a push starts to fail, it can turn into a marine loss really quickly. In a lot of ways, success can mostly be related back to time -- the time a marine spends pushing, the time they wait doing nothing, and the time they're stuck in medical hell. Your option number 2 is really the worst for that. Waiting behind barricades guarantees your safety, but also means that PFCs consume a lot of time either limping back to you, or dragging another PFC back to you. In a lot of cases, that's valuable time that they can stay on the front.

You can also extend this to support roles, like medbay or PO. Words cannot describe my disgust with transport POs who wait five minutes on the ground at each side before starting the return trip. In the worst case, that can add almost twenty minutes to a marine's time in medical hell (ie-- just missing the flight on the way up, and just missing the flight back down when you're finally out of medbay). Add to that the fact that doctors might not have their shit together (eg -- working in order of arrival or decreasing severity; not prioritizing the lightly wounded), and it's no surprise that we have so many evacs at 13:00-13:30. If you deploy, get wounded at 12:30, and spend the next fourty minutes in the medical/transport loop, then you'd be lucky to be back down in time to kiss the FOB goodbye. It's no good having 60 PFCs if 30 of them are stuck in medical hell.

that's a bit of a tangent, but it does apply to my take on medics -- your option number three is the best imo, for the fact that it minimizes logistics times, maximizes the number of marines kept in the game (ie, defibbed), and that it doesn't divert an additional PFC's time from fighting on the front line, to dragging wounded.

Avoid PFC's without nicknames, I learned to not trust, or stand near them.

rude );

[TheReaver545]

My playstyle as medic is a combination of 1 and 3. I'm in the front keeping our boys on the front for as long as humanly possible. As a frontline medic you're pure support you shouldn't fight unless you absolutely have to. You see a marine get neurod pick'em up let the other marines keep fighting. Marine fell in acid cloud pop your mask on run in and pull em out of the damned xenos claws. Someone takes a ff to the back you're there to trauma, splint, tram then bicard (maybe a QC) them in about 30 seconds flat. Saves them time from having to walk back to you possibly paincrit on the way then walk back to the front. Also if your squad is falling back and you got 2-3 wounded that need dragged back guess what if you're a smart medic and buy a couple of roller beds your squad can drag em out fast as fuck and nobody gets left behind on the xeno counter attack. I'v used my tactics to great effect many times and it usually keeps the squad going forward unless I get overwhelmed.

The biggest problem is that you're a "meta" target. Secondly if you suffer from tunnel vision medicing you won't notice the flow of the battle going on and it might lead to some rough patches in your very near future.

[Vispain]

right on the frontline chargin' clearly.

[edgardo]

Dchat

[Maxim Inc]

I just want them to stop manning the cades and come defib me....is that to much to ask for? Get back from the cades you idiot your dinky smg won't do shit.

[Avalanchee]

Best way to save a life is to take one.
Combat medics rise up.

[Urytion]

Situation dependent.

If you're at the frontline (like say at river just as the fog drops on LV) then the best thing you can do is sit in the back and let the wounded come/get dragged to you. You'll probably be drowning in wounded before long anyway, and every time you leave the cades, you risk a medic dying, which will cause more marines to die.

If you're just scouting and skirmishing, or in the middle of a retreat, that's when you start grabbing marines out of the hands of the aliens.

I try to avoid healing on the line, especially if I don't know the person I'm healing. Marines are dumb, don't stand still, and will shoot you.

[dasWurmtMich]

You safe more lifes on the frontline than sitting behind cades, while you should generally be behind your PFC's you are a COMBAT medic. Not a doctor.

That way you get the best assessment of what happened to the patient, did he get roasted by blue flames or just destroyed by a ravager? If you need to a safer place for actually treating the patient because of gas or harrasing lurkers, grab the patient and TREAT HIM WHILE DRAGGING!

Dont be afraid to whip out your gun and temporarily fill a gap in the PFC wall after that PFC got knocked out/killed. The moment your squad has repelled the attack start tending to the wounded, once again, dont waste time with just dragging. Allways treat while drag (scan and trauma kits)

If you are in the frontline, generally try to safe lifes rather then get another meaningless shot at a alien that will escape unharmed anyway. That includes help intent shaking people up that got kocked down or dragging em out of acid or danger zones (such as corners where they can easily get dragged off).

But if you see a kill potential, TAKE IT. PB'ing a t3 and killing it or whatever is so much more worth it than just saving bald PFC #15 (though you really want to safe robust players)
Simple truth is you dont win by saving what you love, you win by killing your enemy (looking at you SW:TLJ)
Also, sometimes YOU are the one extra gun that can win the game by killing the queen or whatever. Dont be afraid to be part of offensive pushes, tho you need to know the tactical situation, know your limits and use common sense.

Best way to safe lifes on the frontline is preventing people from getting dragged off.

Frontline medic is really the only way to go. I allways lose my shit when I see medics behind cades double/triple stacking on a patient while 4 other people on the frontlines are on their 5 minute rez timer or someone is dying beneath a corpse and getting ignored by everyone else.

[FGRSentinel]

Close to the front and actually willing to move to help. I remember one round where half a squad went permadead because the medic behind them refused to push up (even long after the healthy members of the squad pushed deeper and the sounds of combat were off in the distance) to defib and medivac the dead and wounded without two damn squads escorting them. I know people will say "PFCs aren't worth as much as a medic/engineer/spec/SG/SL" but I think we can all agree that 5-7 PFCs are worth far more during a push than a medic who isn't treating anyone at any point.

[TrollerNoob]

Remember, you're a COMBAT Medic, you're just as capable of fighting as any other marine. Take a shotty, and there should be no risk of being at the front to actively tend to marines.

A bad medic is one who let's them and their patient die in the backlines because the only thing they brought was an m39 against elder lurker (926)

[Gnorse]

fighting on the frontline when you've got nothing to do, then rushing to the first wounded marine you see ---> good.
fighting on the frontline when you've got a mountain of marines to heal just so you can shoot your pew pew m39 ---> bad.

[Kineem]

by my side, plucking grapes off of a grapevine and personally feeding me both food and chems whenever i need you to, patching up every little boo boo i get from young runners

► Show Spoiler

In the front or near the front, at all times. The only exception is if you personally need to evac a patient because the POs are nonexistent or if the marines look like they're about to be routed, so you fall back to a safer position while treating the wounded and pushing back up when it seems clear. When there are no wounded you are the exact same as an average marine. You fight. You don't sit around like a bozo in LV Hydro waiting for someone to bitchslap you and hand you a wounded guy, you pick up your shotgun or your rifle and head out there to kick some ass. When somebody inevitably gets nailed by an idiot with AP loaded and burst fire toggled aimed for the head, you calm your raging murderboner instead of tunnel visioning on a Defender all the way at the edge of your screen. Grab them, pull them somewhere you and they won't get pestered by an alien, SPLINT THEM IMMEDIATELY WITHOUT JITTERING THEM SO MUCH YOU TURN THEIR LUNGS TO PASTE, then finally treat them to the best of your ability while warning them of anything that they might want to evac over (such as IB) and then moving on.

there's not much else to say. it's simple as hell, is the most effective, and probably is the most entertaining for you as a player since you get to fight and heal people. if you don't like fighting, than what the hell are you doing playing squad medic instead of doctor?

[Colonel_Gaddawful]

It helps to establish a medic station near the front right in the middle of the staging area, preferably in a busy landmark you expect to be full of marines, both for roleplay and aesthetic reasons. Marines running past you subconsciously go "there's where I go if I get hurt, or drag injured friendlies". This is also you helping the roleplay and immersion, because in war movies and documentaries the medic station and ammo dump full of shouting officers and moaning wounded, with ammo bearers and stretcher bearers running about gives people a familiar place to focus their defence on, and their assault from. If you make a medic station and help people, they will like it, they will stick around. When people stick around, ammo bearers, will drop loads, officers will hang out, it will become a little firebase. Its hard to get people to follow orders and keep the team together, so take advantage of psychology if you're a medic, if you set up a medic station, people will gravitate around it. The same goes with engis and PFCs carrying ammo boxes. If you build it, they will come and you will focus the team more than any LT (sorry command players).

A medic wants to spend as little time dragging people as possible, so getting the PFCs to keep dragging you a steady stream of wounded is a good thing, they can't do that if they don't know where to drag them so set up in one spot and move only when the front does. You will find that if you set up beds and some tables and put your spare medkits and defib around, before long it will be a busy place with barricades machineguns and ammo dumps. This sounds odd but trust me I'm not robust so I do engi, SL, and medic roles. When I do standard I spend a lot of time hauling boxes. Five or six players all in with each other in meta playing as engis medics and standards carrying the stuff people need could control the whole team by controlling the map. People will go where the cades, ammo, and medics are. So work with the people carrying stuff and the engis to make a good little post everytime the front moves.

The combat in CMSS13 typically goes: I run forward, I make contact, I engage until I'm hurt/need to reload/the enemy is responding, I fall back. Rinse and repeat until one team starts to falter and a push is made. So you'll see along the front lines large clusters of marines, with small groups going forward to duke it out for 20-30 seconds before falling back to safety. Then when weakness is sensed the team pushes in together. You want to be right in that cluster from which marines detach to go up and attack. There you have safety in numbers, proximity to the front, and the team doesn't have to hunt down a medic while bleeding. I do not recommend joining the groups that go up to engage the enemy, any utility that a medic brings a small combat group is outweighed by the risk of a medic dying. I wear no armor and carry only a pistol when I medic, and seldom die unless the front collapses fast and I'm too busy treating some people to notice. POSITION POSITION POSITION. Put yourself in the right place and the wounded will come, the xenos won't, and you'll survive from roundstart easy. Engineers are your best friend.

[Exodus]

Personally, I find that it's healthy to ensure that a solid portion of the Marine force is surrounding you at all times. I don't think it's always efficient to let them all go in front, because that's when you start getting opportunistic Lurkers trying to nab you from the back, and I certainly don't think it's healthy to be at the frontline since being torn to ribbons makes it very hard to work.

As it was mentioned above, though, it is very easy for a push to begin to fail. I find that the ability to know when a situation has gone into screwed territory is a good skill to have. Don't be afraid to heroically advance in the opposite direction of the enemy force if its pretty obvious that they're going to be over-run. You can do a good bit of healing on the others who have recognized you're going to lose your position, and more Medics falling back to your next position ensures that you'll be able to hold there.

So... stay near the frontlines enough that you can fix the grunts while they unga, but don't be afraid to abandon them once your push turns into a Xeno Chase Sequence. Surviving means 1+ medic back somewhere else where they can do good work instead of just dying trying to heal someone with four broken bones in paincrit.

Alternatively, be a hero with a rollerbed. Then you don't have to be a coward, you can be a "hero" while you run away.