An Idiot’s Guide to Squad Leader: The Babysitter of the Frontline
“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
So, you’ve decided to take up the mantle of Leader for one of the USS Almayer’s four main squads, huh? You think you’re ready for the responsibility that comes with being a leader of men? A role model for the weak and directionless marines you’ll soon enough be entrusted to command? Well you’ve come to the right place. Let my idiotic ass guide you through the tips and tricks of the trade so that you may become a professional babysitter of the frontline.
A Bravo Sergeant in their natural habitat, far away from women the terrors of the frontline.
Squad Selection
The most important decision you can make when you start playing Squad Leader is picking your Squad. And just as every leader has their own unique style, each squad has its own unique culture that will determine how well they’re likely to receive you and your orders.
-
Alpha: A mixture of experienced marines and brand new players, most Alpha marines are responsive to orders. Whether that’s because they’re too new to know better or experienced enough to recognize the importance of said orders is up to you to discover.
-
Bravo: The learner’s squad, the FOB squad, they build our defenses so that you don’t have to. If you’re looking for a crash course in FOB-economics and groundside logistics management then Bravo is the squad for you.
-
Charlie: The artistic squad, attractive to all marines who are more scared of coming across as awkward than they are of death. While Alpha & Delta may be the poster children of marine bullshittery, Charlie is the backbone that holds the frontline together.
-
Delta: Robust? Surely. Experienced? Definitely. Two fries short of a happy meal? Without a doubt. Delta is a disorganized smattering of people who think they’re marines more than an actual coherent squad, in order to take control of that you’ve gotta have a few screws loose yourself.
The fate that befalls all Delta Sergeants, no matter how robust.
Squad Composition
-
The Fireteam Leader: In theory? Your second in command. In practice? Someone who will pull out a shotgun and pointblank you with a blast of buckshot to get the shiny “L” next to your head next to theirs instead. In all seriousness the
Radio Telephone OperatorFireteam Leader is your designated JTAC operator. Its your job to keep them honed in on providing coordinates for your mortar operator or tossing flares/lases for your CAS Pilot. -
The Specialist: The crowning jewel of your squad, protect them with every single resource you can bring to the table. That is, unless they start gibbing marines with rockets, lighting the entire frontline on fire, dying alone in some random corner of the map, tossing lit grenades into your backpack, or whining about how they can’t kill that one boiler. Otherwise? A good and well-supported specialist could singlehandedly win you the operation.
-
The Smartgunner: An incredibly useful tool for scaring xenomorphs inclined to overextend, protecting the corpsmen and wounded marines in your backline, and dealing consistent bursts of damage. Oh, we weren’t talking about the M37A2 Pump Shotgun? Damn. The Smartgunner operates in a similar niche to your Specialist, though they won’t be getting any flashy kills or leading any badass pushes. They will be exceptional in serving as a deterrent to xeno attackers and providing covering fire to any marine within their extended sight.
-
The Comtech: I’m sure I could come up with some snarky anecdote about your squad’s designated engineering team, but if I did I’m afraid they might build a labyrinthine maze of barricades outside my front door and starve me out. An underappreciated and underplayed part of the classic marine squad, yet the only ones with the resources and skills to build the defensive lines that’ll keep the warrior metasquad from kicking down your door and stealing your pension.
-
The Corpsman: Have you ever been hit with such an unfortunate series of friendly fire incidents that you find yourself in critical condition on the ground of LV-624? Well, you can count on your friendly neighborhood corpsman to walk right past your dying body and get lunged by a warrior! The single most important marine you can have in your squad, solely due to the fact that they are the only marine on the ground that can bring you back into the fight after you’ve died. If you’ve lost all your corpsmen, you’ve already lost the fight.
-
The Rifleman: The foundation of your squad. The bread and butter of the United States Colonial Marines. The one person on the field of battle that you can trust to send a full magazine of AP 10x24mm into your back as you try to coordinate with the CIC. You will get nothing done if you don’t have a healthy amount of riflemen standing at your back. You will flounder in every single push, no matter how well planned and supplied without them. Do not underestimate their utility.
Communication
In Command’s Ear
You are the only member of your squad that has access to the Command Channel (:v), a direct line to the CIC and all of its Staff Officers, Captains, and Commanders. This means you’re privy to the various discussions that your Command Staff is having on said channel, and although you may not be a commissioned officer of the United States Colonial Marine Corps it is absolutely your duty to speak up.
While your SOs, XO, and CO are sitting nice and pretty up in their air conditioned CIC you’re fighting against a horde of angry Xenomorphs intent on separating your head from its shoulders. They’re not in the thick of the fight and therefore they can’t see what you’re seeing, that makes it your job to TELL THEM! Tell your Staff Officers where large numbers of Xenomorphs are located, tell your Captain how many Tier-3s you’ve spotted and what kind, tell your Major when you see a potential flank (either for you to take or coming to take you out). Hell, why not call the CMO and tell him about those bowel issues you’ve been having! More information is ALWAYS better and will allow your Command Staff to better plan for the victory you’re intent on delivering to them.
Supply & Demand
The marines under your command are going to run through bullets faster than a knife fight in a phone booth, and whether you’re ruling over the FOB with an iron fist or pumping Xenomorphs full of buckshot on the frontline it’s your job to keep them supplied. Yes that’s right, it’s YOUR job to keep the marines supplied, not some private who is hyper-focused on ordering loot boxes with lunge mines in them.
The key to accomplishing this task is communication; talk to your Specialist, talk to your Smartgunner, talk to your Riflemen, find out what they’re running low on and what they need in order to keep laying down the USCMC’s righteous wrath on the Xenomorph menace. And once you’ve talked to your marines it’s time to take their requests to Requisitions, and by that I mean it’s time to shout at your designated Staff Officer. While you may be the liaison between your Squad and Command Staff, the Staff Officer is the liaison between you and the rest of the ship — a good SO will be on top of their game and send your requests out as soon as you make them known, but depending on your luck you may need to go over their head to the XO, CO, or req staff themselves.
For Bravo this task is the most important, as it’s the solemn duty of any self-respecting Bravo Sergeant to pull out their laser designator and send FOB Coordinates back shipside. It’s the pleasure of every Bravo Sergeant to sort through the drops that the Quartermaster and their Technicians send them, organizing boxes of munitions into neat and organized little rows for ease of access and just because it’s nicer to look at.
Intra-Squad Comms
The most obvious way you as a Squad Leader will be making use of communication lines is by talking to your own squad members! Whether its building a rapport with your PFCs, finding out what resources and ammo types your fighting men and women are running low on, or learning that your Scout Spec ran off to the farthest corner of the map and is fighting Predators on their lonesome.
The only time you should not be talking on squad comms is when you’re talking on command comms, or in the unfortunate event that the communications relay has gone offline (let’s hope it wasn’t your squad that got assigned to defend it). You should be rallying your marines to your position at all times, keeping them informed of the sights and strategies that you and your Staff Officer have seen while reminding them that they do not fight alone.
Above all else, though, do not underestimate the power of personality! Your marines will take on the world for YOU, their Squad Leader, as long as you’re not some silent, bland, and uninteresting individual. Tell them made up stories about your escapades in our beloved fictional universe. Shit talk the other squads and scream “Alpha Pride Worldwide!” until your lungs give out. Don’t be a nobody, you’re in one of the most visible roles in the entire game. If you don’t want to be seen, heard, and looked to for guidance and comedic relief then don’t play this role.
The Laser Designator and You
The Laser Designator is such an important and powerful tool that it would be irresponsible of me to not dedicate an entire section if its own to the discussion of the best and most efficient ways to make us of it. If you take any singular lesson away from this entire guide, please let it be that the laser designator is The. Most. Important. Tool. At. Your. Disposal.
Joint Terminal Attack Control (JTAC)
Your laser designator is the skeleton key of the JTAC world, small, portable, and infinitely re-usable both for acquiring targets for your CAS Pilot and coordinates for your Mortar Operator. If you inspect your handy, dandy tool you’ll find that you’ve been given a letter and number with which to identify it – the prefix of which is decided according to your squad (A = Alpha, B = Bravo, C = Charlie, D = Delta, X = Command). In the event you’re calling out some shots for the man in the Gunship, that alphanumeric identifier is what you’ll need to use in order to tell them exactly where to fire.
Now, alt + click your laser designator and you’ll notice its titular laser has shifted to a nice and bright green. This means you’ve successfully changed its mode off of spotting for CAS and on to acquiring coordinates for a location on the battlefield. When you ctrl + click a tile (just as you would when CAS spotting) your short windup will be followed by a large display telling you the LATITUDE and LONGITUDE for that exact tile. Latitude is your North/South position, in which the further north you move the larger the number gets and the further south, the smaller. That leaves Longitude as your West/East position, in which the further west you move the smaller the number gets and the further east, the larger. Keep that information in mind whenever you’re acquiring coordinates, it will be incredibly useful for dialing offsets on the mortar!
Orbital Bombardment
JTAC’s considerably more devastating cousin is the brainchild of both yourself and your command staff, with you once again playing the role of spotter for the ripest and readiest coordinates. Just as you are your command staff’s eyes on the ground for information and watching the flow of the battlefield, you are their prime operative when it comes to gathering the most effective OB coordinates to rain down orbital hellfire on your xenomorph opponents.
Each type of OB requires a different approach to spotting and timing, each having its own unique uses and levels of effectiveness at different points in an operation.
-
High Explosive (HE) warheads are incredibly useful in the wide open air, their ability to wreak havoc significantly reduced within caves or other areas made up of indestructible materials. However, when you see the prime opportunity to drop an HE bomb right smack in the center of the xenomorph line it will devastate them more than any other warhead is capable of.
-
Incendiary warheads are the perfect middleground, effective in the open air and useful in close quarters due to its ability to wrap around walls and corners. It’s true purpose shines, though, when coordinates are acquired for ever so slightly behind the xenomorph frontline; the fire will form a wall with the unique ability of murdering anything that walks into it, presenting you and your fellow marines with the opportunity to push them into it.
-
Cluster warheads work excellently, as one might expect, in a closed off and tightly-packed arena. It’s larger effective area and quirk of dropping several bombs instead of just one means its purpose is served better when the xenomorphs don’t have a wide area that they can run through. You should be getting cluster bomb coordinates for tight chokepoints and mouths to caves.
Information Gathering
This beautiful piece of hardware also has the wonderful ability to expand your sight beyond the range of what is normally available to us measly humans. Use it to peer deep into the xenomorph backline, looking for weaknesses in their defenses, information about their manpower and composition, as well as groups of them massing up in preparation to charge you down or flank around your rear.
When you’re sitting around, waiting, thinking, and planning for the future of the operation you should do so with your laser designator in your hand. Peering overs the heads of your comrades in arms as you gather the information your command staff needs to coordinate and guide your hand to the xenomorph Queen’s throat.
A pristine Alpha Sergeant, only because they got hugged 5 minutes after dropping.
Your Loadout
As a Squad Leader you have the widest array of equipment available to you for the cheapest prices of any marine. What this means is that you have an incredible amount of room to maneuver when crafting your kit and deciding what gear you want to take into battle.
I will say, however, that you should generally take your kit in one of two directions.
-
The Backline Leader: A Sergeant kitted with an RTO Pack and more flares than any rifleman could possibly dream of. This SL excels in managing logistics, fire support, and keeping the CIC updated on the various twists and turns occurring on the frontline.
-
The Frontline Leader: A Sergeant that either equips themself with two weapons or an excessive amount of ammo. This SL marks themself as an excellent combat leader, organizing the marines under their command into devastating flankers and stalwart defenders.
I will not offer you my thoughts and opinions on every single piece of equipment available to you as Squad Leader. The weapons, armor, and utilities that you carry will ultimately be unique to your own style as a player and a leader. However, as a Squad Leader you do have access to SQUAD KITS – essentially prepacked loadouts of a few varieties that you yourself can make use of or hand out to one of the many marines under your command.
M4RA Sniper Kit
- M4RA Battle Rifle
- S8 4x Telescopic Scope
- Suppressor
- Extended Barrel
- 2 M4RA Armor Piercing magazines.
The M4RA Sniper kit is useful under two circumstances:
-
You latejoined to discover that all of the attachments and ammo for more useful guns have disappeared.
-
You’re attempting to secure the backline, in which case you might want the extended vision to spot sneaky lurkers and runners trying to kidnap your brand new PVT – and even then you can use your beautiful laser designator for such.
Personally, I’d never take the kit. It’s situationally useful at best, especially when considering the other kits at your disposal.
M41A Standard Kit
- M41A Pulse Rifle Mk2
- 2 M41A Armor Piercing Magazines
- 1 Silencer
- 1 Extended Barrel
- 1 Angled Grip
If nobody in your squad, you included, want to make use of a flamethrower, M2C, M56D, grenade launcher, MOU53, or XM88, then take the M41A Standard. You can never go wrong with a Mk2 and you’ll save your squad and yourself from the mad dash for extended barrels and angled grips, not to mention the free AP Mags.
With that said though, there are so many better alternatives to the M41A Standard kit that a part of you should question whether or not you really want to be a slave to the meta.
M240 Pyrotechnician Support Kit
- Pyrotechnician G4-1 Fuel Tank
- M240A1 Incinerator Unit
- 2 Incinerator Fuel Tanks
- 1 Large incinerator Fuel Tank (Gel)
- 1 Pocket Extinguisher
- 1 Underbarrel Extinguisher.
It’s incredibly easy to write off the flamer as the tool of Xenomorph agents, after all we’ve all seen pushes get absolutely annihilated by one man’s poorly timed flaming. However, as a Squad Leader you’re in a unique position to actually use the flamer strategically, seeing as you’re dedicating a significant amount of your crayon-chewing intellect to thinking about where and how to lead the marines under your command.
Use it to put an end to a xenomorph flank that command warned you about, or use it to give you the time to warn command about it! Use it to cover your retreat when you can sense the marine frontline faltering, you might just save the life of your specialist, corpsman, or a handful of marines.
M2C Heavy Machine Gun Kit
- Machine Gun Instructional Pamphlet
- M2C Heavy Machine Gun
- 4 M2C Box Magazines
- 1 M2C Magazine Storage Belt
We’ve all seen the one gif of the M2C at the req line. We all know how devastating it can be for both xenomorphs and marines. Whether you’re using it yourself as a Squad Leader, which I’d encourage you to do, or handing it out to a comtech or rifleman I’d urge you to exercise caution. And in the case of the latter two, make sure they’re someone you trust not to break every bone in your body during a push.
M56D Heavy Machine Gun Kit
- Machine Gun Instructional Pamphlet
- M56D Heavy Machine Gun
- 2 M56D Drum Magazines
- M56D Tripod
- Wrench
- Screwdriver
- 1 M56D Drum Storage Belt.
The M56D is a tool of unparalleled defensive utility, which realistically means that you should only be taking it for your own use if you’ve been placed in charge of Bravo. Otherwise, hand it out to your combat technicians and PFCs. They don’t have nearly as many responsibilities as you do and can therefore dedicate much more of their time to hunkering down in one position to keep everyone safe.
M79 Grenade Launcher Kit
- M79 Grenade Launcher
- 3 Starshell Grenades
- 3 HIRR Baton Slugs
- 3 AGM Hornets.
I say this to you in the kindest way I can, don’t use the grenade launcher as a grenade launcher. Covet your baton slugs like a moth covets the flame, you can use them as a tool of unparalleled control on the battlefield – send warriors, lurkers, and runners flying off of your fallen marines, saving them from capture and death at the same time.
MOU-53 Shotgun Kit
- MOU-53 Shotgun
- MOU-53 Stock
I myself have never been a fan of the MOU53, it’s not a weapon whose purpose and actual abilities intrigue me in any way. I have consistently seen it used more to cause fractures for your fellow marines than to actually frag a single living xenomorph, though I’ve seen flechette be unloaded into several already deceased defenders.
XM88 Heavy Rifle Kit
- XM88 Heavy Rifle
- XM88 Stock
- XS-9 Targeting Relay
- 2 Boxes of .458 SOCOM
- XM88 Ammunition Belt
Like the MOU53, this is another case of to each their own. I am not a big fan of the glorified bolt-action rifle, and I have not often seen it successfully used against xenomorphs on the ground. Though I have seen unsuspecting marines get their heads shattered like a watermelon because the man holding the trigger for this machine was too busy thinking about meaty AP numbers to pay attention to what they were shooting.
Basic Engineering Supplies Kit
- Construction Pouch
- 50 Metal
- 30 Plasteel
- 15 Barbed Wire
- 1 Electronics Pouch
- 3 High Capacity Batteries
- 3 APC Circuit Boards
- Welding Goggles
This. THIS is the holy grail of all the kits available to you. Sure, all of the weapons-centered kits are useful to you as an individual or to the individual marine in your squad who you give it to, but this? The metal, the plasteel, the wire, the batteries and boards? You don’t even need to use it yourself! Toss it at req, Bravo, or any unsuspecting comtech to make use of. The power to spawn these resources for free is impossible to understate the utility of.
