Auxiliary Support Officer
The ultimate marine support
Preface: Ever since the Auxiliary Support Officer role was first released the vast majority of players don’t understand its point and purpose. Some call it a do nothing bloat role that at best can be described as QM+ however this cannot be farther from the truth. The ASO is in fact the single most powerful support role the marines have at their disposal, not counting the CO/XO/Synth in which all 3 are strictly governed and regulated by OOC rules and regulations. There is nothing that the ASO cannot do or accomplish to make the lives of marines easier and the operation run smoother - the sole exception being advanced surgery such as larva removal.
I am the only platinum medal ASO on the server with over 200 hours played - I don’t say this to brag but to illustrate the point that there are more platinum medal nurses running around, that’s how underused and ignored this role is. I am making this guide in hopes of shedding some light on the potential of its usefulness and hopefully more support mains will start playing it more often. If you enjoy helping people’s lives/rounds go smoother, always having something to do and having massive amounts of authority with little oversight, this is the role for you.
Command: The Auxiliary Support Officer primary job description is being third in command of the ship and having direct control and responsibility for each of the following departments: intelligence, requisitions, engineering, pilots/jtac. Medical is the single department that you don’t have complete authority or access over. You have almost total access to all parts of the Almayer except for four locations - 1. The Morgue 2. Chemistry 3. Research 4. AI Core. On top of all your access you are given the highest number of skills any marine posses - Leadership, Requisitions, Construction, Engineering, Intelligence, Policing, JTAC, Piloting, Vehicle, Powerloader and medical equal to a nurse. Only the Synth beats the ASO in terms of raw skill/knowledge.
The ASO is third in the chain of command aboard the USS Almayer. That means your direct and only supervisor is the XO/CO and you will be expected to take over the reins of the operation at various times. If they don’t wake up you’re 100% expected to lead the operation as you are one of the very few roles that spawns in with the “Senior Command Access” on your ID. A CMO being the highest ranking officer to wake up and deferring their command to a Staff Officer is understandable, a ASO being the highest ranking officer to wake up and deferring their command to the CMO is not.
With recent changes to the SOP, the XO may now deploy to lead ground side troops even if no CO wakes up. However this requires them to ensure that CIC is well staffed, and editing the ID of the sole bronze medal SO to run things isn’t going to cut it in majority of cases. It wont happen every single round, but you will be called upon to run CIC eventually.
On top of occasionally being called into CIC to run the show you may also be called to help deal with survivors. Editing their IDs and giving them access as needed depending on the circumstances. You may also be called to deal with appeals regarding military police and prisoners. There is also the rare occasion you may simply be tasked with overwatching a squad, however this is very rare and majority of the time you will be needed elsewhere.
To sum things up, you have the power and have the potential to accomplish any single task and deal with any single situation that arises except for complex medical surgery/research.
Intelligence: If every single department was fully staffed and you were genuinely not needed in CIC, requisitions, engineering or the hangar, intelligence is where you would default to. You are the overwatch officer of the Intelligence Officers and primarily responsible for intelligence sorting and processing. Intelligence Officers can sort intel themselves if required however it is a complete waste of their time and you handling it lets them focus on actually being deployed and gathering the documents/vials in the first place. Intelligence Officers are mostly self reliant and capable of handling themselves without issue. If one happens to run off into the jungle alone and gets captured, there isn’t much you can do about that. Giving squad orders about marine positions and potential gaps in the enemy lines when comms are out can be useful or yelling at trapped IOs to head to LZ2 for a pickup if cut off from the FOB. The majority of your time spent in the intel room will be sorting out and processing the actual intel rather than watching helmet cameras.
Typically your job when it comes to intel is taking crates from the Alamo/Normandy/Hangar/Medbay and dragging it upstairs to research and then the intel room. Intelligence Officers will generally dump all recovered intel onto a FOB supplies crate or make one using wood and then send it up. Be sure to pause at research and check the crate for any research documents/grants and vials. Simply drop these items off at the door and move the remaining intel to the main sorting room.
Once you’ve dropped off all the research documents/vials and have brought the bulk of the paper/folders/disks to the sorting room you can being the processing.
There is no absolute 100% correct way of sorting through intel and you’ll find people will do things in their own way slightly but the general principle remains the same.
- Read all Paper Scrap and Progress Report - throw it on a rack - will always give info.
- Read all Folder - those that gave info place on a rack - those that didn’t leave on the floor.
- Read all Technical Manual - those that gave info place on a rack - those that didn’t leave on the floor.
- Activate the Intel Computer to log all the intel you’ve discovered.
- Click the “IC” tab in the top right of your screen and click the “View Objective” option.
- Sort the disks by color and then use the data passwords stored in “View Objective” to process them.
- Once a disk has completed processing simply throw it on a rack and leave incomplete ones on the floor.
- Any Health Analyzer , Advanced Mass-Spectrometer or Autopsy Scanner - throw on rack.
You want to put some effort into ensuring the room is clean, tidy and sorted intel is very distinguishable to non-sorted. That way if you have to cryo or something happens and you’re unable to process anymore intel the next person can come in and just pick right off without having to resort every single thing again.
Requisitions: Most people would argue that requisitions is the single most important department and absolutely vital in every single operation. Without requisitions marines would be unable to spawn in extra powerful items such as; mortar shells, weapon specialist ammo, plastasteel, armor-piercing ammo and various attachments to their weapons such as magnetic harness or the B8 smart scope. Not to mention front line supply drops, ensuring extra OB shells are brought up and delivered and of course the nuke.
Some Quarter Masters might think that they’re 100% in-charge of requisitions and that they can tell anyone, including you, to buzz off and leave requisitions, however they clearly didn’t read the SOP and don’t understand you’re their direct superior. A good QM will value a ASO because they can help them in many ways such as editing access for their CTs and getting crates from restricted areas. A bad QM will show how much of an ego they have and how little they understand chain of command by throwing a fit and telling a ASO to leave. That being said a good ASO will support and offer assistance to the QM by whatever means necessary, raiding squad prep, getting extra engineering materials, getting extra crates, bringing parachutes to the Normandy, etc. A bad ASO will attempt to run the department and marginalize the QM’s role to being a CT+. If you want to run requisitions just roll as a QM, if you want to help/support requisitions roll as ASO. However if no QM wakes up you will 100% be expected to take over and ensure the line is manned and supply drops are created.
Long story short you will almost certainly be helping out the requisitions department more so than any other over the course of your entire playtime as a ASO. If you’re not a fan of requisitions do not bother playing ASO as you will not enjoy it whatsoever. It is very rare for a round to start and have a fully staffed and experienced requisitions department with a QM and two Cargo Techs. So as soon as you wake up you will more or less bee-line it straight to the requisitions department to ensure both desks are open and staffed. If both desks are staffed then you can get started on making the FOB crate if no QM woke up.
Every single crate location on the Almayer
These two crates in upper engineering are locked behind the big red button in the CE’s office, simply press it to open the shutters. One of them will have metal + plastasteel and the other will have inflatable barriers
Lower engineering behind the SMES - has spare metal and plastasteel as well as Uranium
The Ordnance Workshop has 2 crates - The highlighted closet also contains two big mortar backpacks which are quite useful in the first few FOB drops
Just south of the Hangar/Alamo
Kitchen crates
Starboard-Fore Fuel Pump Crate - Just north of CIC
Armor workshop crates - Just north from Intel/Research/AI Core
North of upper engi/CE office
East of the CE’s office
There is one ‘secret’ crate location I left out, but no fun in spoiling how to get to it!
Spare Medical Body Scanner
Just east of Starboard-Aft Lifeboat Fuel Pump - Unpacking the box deploys the scanner and makes it unmovable so just bring the box to medical for them to take down on the Alamo.
Green Trash Cart Locations
Mess Hall/Lounge
Lower Deck Construction Site/South Hangar
Upper Deck Port-Aft Maints/South of Upper Engineering
Requisitions Auxiliary Storage Room
MRE and Flare Supply Crates
North Maints of Alpha/Bravo Prep and in Alpha/Bravo Bunks
South Maints of Charlie/Delta Bunks
South of the Kitchen/West of Charlie/Delta Bunks
South of Upper Engineering/Port-Aft Maints
Lower Deck Construction Site/South Hangar
Big Yellow Buckets and Janitorial Carts
South of the Liaison’s Office
East of Port-Fore Fuel Pump in between two escape pods
West of Alpha/Bravo bunks
South of Hangar
North Maints of ASO Office
The brig
North of CIC
North of Upper Medical
The North Lifeboat
Ordnance Workshop
Tips and tricks: 10 plastic sheets = 1 crate, you can get plastic from weapon cases that marines leave around all the time such as from the XM51, or Incinerator. You have full access to marine squad prep so be sure to check it every now and then for empty cases and SSD marines.
The green trash cart bins act as crates - drag them on the elevator lift to refund for free budget!
You have complete authority to edit Cargo Tech ID to allow them to raid marine squad prep in order to make ammunition crates. There is a computer right next to briefing to the west.
I could go into more detail about requisitions but quite frankly you should not be playing ASO until you’ve played at the very least a few rounds of CT and a few rounds of QM. You should know what you’re doing and I’d highly recommend checking out smellyhippie’s requisitions guide if you’re brand new: Requisitions Guide!
Engineering: A few years ago before the rank reshuffle the Chief Engineer was third in the command of the ship and simply needed the XO’s permission to deploy. Nowadays you’ll basically never see a CE as the aCO and a change in policy dictates that the ASO must be onboard the ship in order for the CE to deploy unless approved by a CO. As such every time you play ASO you are freeing up all the MTs and CE to deploy to the FOB freely to assist with its construction. You have construction/engineering skills so anything that requires a MT/CE you can handle with ease.
Ever since the Almayer engine generator change, engineering doesn’t have all that much to do save build a T.V. in medbay and a clubhouse somewhere interesting. Really at the end of the day their primary responsibility is to reload the OB and more often than not a Staff Officer does it anyways unless the operation is really hectic and busy. It’s quite frankly a miracle if you get MTs that don’t break into the brig for fun. Those that try to be helpful by gathering metal from maints and delivering it to requisitions are few and far between.
You are also responsible for Ordnance Technicians but they’ll either know exactly what they’re doing and require no assistance or they’ll have blown themselves up and the entire workshop before they can even ask for help. A good idea is to drop off some phoron before you take their crates and mortar bags. It’s extremely rare someone like a researcher will directly ask you for help if no OT/CE are around but it can occur and you should have a basic knowledge of mixing chems so you don’t blow yourself up.
Other than ensuring the OB is chambered your only responsibility is to ensure the SMES are turned on correctly and not causing a power drain on the station. The amount of times a fully stored SMES has come into play during a round is about 1/100. However the amount of times a new MT/CE set the SMES input to full and didn’t bother with the output, resulting in CIC losing power in 8 minutes of round start is something like 10/100. Just set Input to 250, set output to 240 and everything will be fine.
Piloting/JTAC: The ASO is the direct supervisor of both the pilots of the Alamo (Dropship/Transport) and Normandy (Gunship/CAS) with max piloting skills. For the most part the POs can take care of themselves however there will be times when the CAS PO randomly crashes/cryos and medics are screaming for medevac, FOB is under siege and paradrops are required or intel officers are trying to fulon up half the entire hive. As such you will have to step in and pilot the Normandy and conduct flybys for the marines. If you’ve never operated CAS before, be sure to play a few rounds and get use to it. Here is a great guide by Jam for new Normandy Pilots: CAS, what's good? what's bad? I don't know but here's a arbitrary opinionated guide on it.
Just like gunship pilot, you should play a few rounds as a transport pilot, get into a few stressful FOB siege holds and just get use to handling the Alamo. When it comes to the Alamo, the ASO does have the authority to pilot the Alamo down to the colony for whatever reason - however they cannot be running around the FOB doing random things. I’ve messaged multiple admins regarding this OOC restriction placed on the ASO and the gist is you can go down on the Alamo, grab a crate or two, and go immediately back up to the Almayer in one cycle. You’re more or less not allowed to leave the Landing Zone, if you deploy to the FOB and are running around repairing cades, shooting xenos or healing marines, expect an angry admin message. - Unless it’s Nuclear Protocol which we’ll get to.
Medical: Though the ASO no direct authority over the medical department asides from just marine rank in itself, they do have medical skills to treat marines as if they were a squad medic/nurse. You have complete authority to take any medical items you desire from medbay, however you don’t need much. This means you should always be having a defibrillator, hand held scanner and standard medical items to bring any marine back to life. The amount of times I’ve ran across someone randomly dying in maints, revived a dead OT who blew themselves up, revived a CT that went down the req elevator or helped stabilize dead marines coming up from a failed FOB hold is quite often. Here is a great guide by Steelpoint if you are brand new to medical: Comprehensive Corpsman Guide
Despite not having research access, a decent chunk of intel points can come from dead xeno bodies being dragged into the secure confinement cells. If no researchers are around, if the CMO is extremely busy, you can very easily just ask the XO for access and they will more or less always grant it to you when it comes to securing intel points. There may also be times where the XO/CO directly asks you to supervise researchers making greenos and give you access to keep and eye on things.
Nuclear Protocol:
The ASO’s single OOC restriction is they are not allowed to deploy to the FOB to help defend/construct it. However all this changes when the 2 hour mark hits and the nuke is ordered. You are essentially the main officer in charge of the nuke 9/10 times it is ordered. The Nuke can only be ordered through intel points and can only be brought up via the requisitions elevator, as such it’s naturally going to be your responsibility for its safe keeping, deployment and eventual activation. This is more or less the only time you’ll ever be visiting your office - to get your armor. You should have a full set of medical gear, engineering gear, JTAC gear and standard weapon of choice.
ASO’s office is just west of the Hangar/Normandy.
Closing Remarks: The ASO is the marine support specialist, they have almost no oversight, almost all access, multiple skills, massive amounts of command authority and if you put in the effort can really make an impact on each and every round you’re in. I highly recommend more people try out and play ASO if they’re interested in support roles and enjoy helping others while being almost a complete ghost to the majority of the crew. Thanks for taking the time to read through the guide I hope you learned something, feel free to leave any comments or questions regarding anything. Hope you have a great day and your next round is lots of fun!