An ass guide to A.S.S: Assault, Support, Security.
“All right, sweethearts, what are you waiting for? Breakfast in bed? It’s another glorious day in the Corps. A day in the Marine Corps is like a day on the farm: Every meal’s a banquet. Every paycheck a fortune! Every formation’s a parade! I love the Corps!” - Gunnery Sergeant Apone
Hello, Squad Leader/Lieutenant/Captain/Major, you’ve returned to the USS Almayer but its not quite as you remember it. We’ve got little green fellas running around calling themselves ‘Oscars’ and ‘Kilos’: you’re a long way from the Sulacco, friend. Let’s get to work in explaining what’s going on.
A.S.S. stands for Assault, Support, Security, a PR by Nivrak that is currently on an extended period of on and off test merge. The PR is notable for adding two new squads, Kilo and Oscar - while fundamentally changing how the other squads work. The Almayer’s men are now separated into three categories.
A.S.S. Breakdown
ASSAULT - Alpha and Delta squads. These squads contain the vast majority of marines groundside, including two smartgunners and two specialists each. ASSAULT squads are intended to be frontline, they’re the ungaball, the main force - whatever you want to call them.
ASSAULT gets shit done. Primarily autonomous from CIC, and going where the enemy is presenting their asses to be kicked. These players are primarily looking to kick ass and take names, to push the front forward and earn that epic marine major.
SUPPORT - Charlie, Oscar and Kilo. Depending on population, further squads will unlock starting with just Charlie, and expanding to Oscar and Kilo at 120 and 80 population respectively. SUPPORT squads are auxiliary teams, much smaller and lacking in specialists. Featuring one squad leader, one fireteam leader, one combat technician, one medic and a handful of riflemen. What they lack in manpower, they make up for in organisation. SUPPORT is here to listen to your orders to perform more complicated manoeuvres. These players are primarily looking for an organised, small squad experience where they get to perform a wider variety of objectives.
SECURITY - Bravo. The Fobbits. SECURITY squads are intended to garrison held positions be it the FOB, COMMUNICATIONS or a secured MEDICAL BAY. These players are primarily looking for a more relaxed experience and are mostly happy to guard places you want guarded, maybe they’ll go kill a lurker or two while they’re at it.
Now you may be thinking, man I have to lead/Overwatch Alpha, Bravo, Charlie, Delta, Echo(maybe), Foxtrot, Oscar AND Kilo? This seems like a lot, man. Don’t you worry too hard about that, I’ll be splitting this into a HIGHPOP and LOWPOP section.
Man I just wanted to play Gunship Pilot but now I’m the ACO according to ARES and I don’t really know what to do from here with all these squads man. SIX? SIX squads to manage???
PLAYING A.S.S. ON LOWPOP
The first rule I learnt regarding how to A.S.S. on lowpop is that I did not need to A.S.S. on lowpop. Due to population locks on the additional squads, A.S.S. is mostly inconsequential on lowpop where tactics really don’t exist. Given both squads (xenos/marines) have next to no manpower shipside or groundside, lowpop has always been a murderball on both sides: this is totally okay and A.S.S. supports this. Due to the nonexistence of Kilo below 80 pop and Oscar below 120 pop this is a non issue. See below, a lowpop marine manifest.
As a result, aspiring ACO GPs all you have to do is tell the marines where to do and they’ll perform the imperfect murderball you’ve always dreamed of. If you’re wanting to do more complex maneuvers and still work within A.S.S. on this pop - Charlie is available to you as the designated lowpop SUPPORT squad, with Alpha/Delta on ASSAULT and Bravo on SECURITY.
Now that we have a Captain, a few Staff Officers, some squad leaders and god forbid maybe a Major onboard we can get to use A.S.S. to its full advantage. Have you ever wanted to do off meta plans, but found marines not really wanting to take part? Maybe they ignore you, or half ass it or organisation just breaks down: it feels like ass, right? Well, now we have A.S.S. to help fix that.
PLAYING A.S.S. ON HIGHPOP
Due to being a primarily voluntary system, we’re now able to shift marines around into specialised squads depending on their preference. No more Delta FOB, Alpha comms, Bravo Frontline, Charlie dick about Almayer playing basketball.
No, instead marine players can go into the round with a broad expectation of what they might end up doing. Due to being a voluntary system, we’re going to end up with more willing, enthusiastic volunteers for our not suicidal plans. This is primarily through use of our SUPPORT players.
Ever wanted to do a huge flank? Now you have three specialised squads willing to work together to achieve it.
Ever wanted to do a cool paradrop behind enemy lines? Now you can work with the scout and our support players to achieve it. Hell, you could paradrop them all into separate locations for D Day landings larp if you really wanted to.
Ever wanted to have a backline team equipped with suppressors gunning down lurkers? Now you can.
What A.S.S. offers for you is a system of variety that will give you more leeway in executing plans that you want to do. Maybe those plans won’t work, maybe they will - these are the gambles we take when we go off meta.
CIC Gameplay
But how do I handle this from the CIC? Currently, there are changes being made to further accommodate A.S.S. within Overwatch consoles For now, we have the SUPPORT OVERWATCH CONSOLE at the south most Overwatch console.
This allows you to have SOs delegated to overseeing Alpha/Delta on one section of CIC, and one overseeing Charlie/Oscar/Kilo on the other section of CIC.
With Bravo’s console available if ever needed.
Currently the SUPPORT OVERWATCH CONSOLE is lacking some features such as promoting leaders, assigning objectives and a tactical map but these are being worked on.
The SUPPORT OVERWATCH CONSOLE allows you to oversee three squads at once by tabbing into their respective windows without having to constantly sign in and out of squads.
Until the QOL features are re-added to this console, you can sign into squads individually on another console to assign objectives/leads if ever needed.
Okay now what?
But how exactly do I use these squads you may be asking yourself? How on earth do I micromanage six squads at once?
You don’t. You don’t have to micromanage six squads at once. Not even your staff officers need to. Consider the following idea.
Bravo typically does its own thing, occasionally recovering bodies, maybe occasionally fighting lurkers. You don’t need to micromanage Bravo.
Alpha and Delta, sure you can try to micromanage them in your normal non A.S.S. rounds but do they really listen to you? Don’t they usually just follow an ungaball? Why not let them, and allow the ungaball’s momentum to shape their push?
Why not, instead, use Charlie, Oscar and KIlo as your specialist forces? Why not maneuver, and play RTS with your smaller support squads and use SUPPORT as your hammer to ASSAULT’S anvil. Now you only need to give Alpha and Delta a direction to push through, and if needed, fallback orders.
Now you only need to micromanage three squads, smaller squads who are actively volunteering to listen to you and your inane wacky bullshit plans?
Closing this guide, I thought I’d share a few potential plan ideas of what you could do with A.S.S. to give you some ideas. Some of these are much, much harder to pull off than others. I’m sure some of them wouldn’t work at all, but hell would they be fun if they did.
Wacky ASS Plans
HAMMER AND ANVIL: AN OFFENSIVE PLAN. Make use of the SUPPORT squads for a classic HAMMER AND ANVIL flank, make use of ASSAULT to pin the hive in place before flanking a nearby choke they’re not guarding. When the hive move to SUPPORT, have ASSAULT push. When they rotate back to ASSAULT, have SUPPORT push.
CREEPING FOB - A DEFENSIVE PLAN. Use the SUPPORT squads to build up your supply points. Hold the choke points outside the caves and bait the hive into the open. A home away from home, a FOB away from the FOB.
DECAPITATION - AN OFFENSIVE PLAN. Use the SUPPORT squads to perform a hive dive on an ovi’d Queen, kill the Queen and decapitate the hive in a brutal strike directly on the hive. Hope to high hell that ASSAULT can keep the hive distracted, and push in when the hive falls back to counterattack SUPPORT.
GOING DARK - A DEFENSIVE PLAN. Making use of the SUPPORT squads to control the backline, enforce patrols of the colony. For added flavour, ask the SUPPORT teams to suppress their weapons to raise the larp factor.
D DAY - AN OFFENSIVE PLAN. Making use of both ASSAULT and SUPPORT squads, conduct a flank on every possible opening to the caves that you can. Use an overwhelming number of smaller flanking teams that link up at key objectives to push the caves with brute force alone.
MARKET GARDEN - AN OFFENSIVE PLAN. Send the scout in behind enemy lines, and have them lase a series of paradrops for the SUPPORT squads. Possibly in different areas depending on objectives you’d like them to reach. Backline the hive, embody the lurker. Try not to feed captures.
25 KILL STREAK - A DEFENSIVE PLAN. Making use of ASSAULT as a distraction force, use the SUPPORT squads to build up communications into megafobs of their own right before pulling back and letting CAS rain hell on the hive. Nuke the colony from above, or from the FOB if everything goes wrong.
Closing words
So far, as much as people were originally quite hostile to A.S.S. the more we’ve been playing with it, the more people are beginning to like it. I hope this guide gives you a better idea of how you can make use of A.S.S. in your rounds. Good luck, marines. o7
Here’s some guides that might also be useful in the meanwhile.