So I’ve been playing CM for some time now and I’ve invested more hours into playing as a hospital corpsman. However, I still can’t figure out what loadout is most efficient for maintaining a balance between combat capabilities and having sufficient medical for extended operation times. I’ve recently been using the m240a1 with an occasional smart pistol or vp78 but I’d like some more recommendations for how to store medical equipment and some gun recommendations best.
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This comes with practice. There is a billion fucking HM loadouts. as long as your doing your job you will develop your own style. There is no such thing as the best, simply- what works for you
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I agree with WestRover. When I play HC I don’t even bring a sidearm, just a gun and 2 or 3 mags for it. Make the most of the space you have by learning how to maximize space. Autoinjectors in your helmet, IB kit in your webbing, etc. As a HC, you’re much more valuable treating your squad then on the line.
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Actually the loadout that this guy wrote in his guide is pretty good, although I modified it a little - Comprehensive Corpsman Guide - #37 by Steelpoint
First of all I would like to explain why you should NOT use pistols and a flamethrower - a pistol is certainly very compact, but you have an entire armor slot to fit one full weapon, which can be a shotgun or an HPR (both are incredibly good, I prefer the latter ). The shotgun is literally the most meta weapon for a field medic because with buckshots it will literally one-shot any runner. HPR (mag har + vertical grip) is a thing that can hold 1200 rounds in one pouch because of the box magazine. NEVER throw away yellow mag boxes because they are refillable from 10x24 boxes. Being on fire, xenomorphs in some cases can heal faster than losing damage on weed, so to hell with flamethrowers + you can easily kill couple of own comrades.
Returning to the medic. First of all, expect that you will have to walk outside the FOB for an hour and only YOU, YOU will be able to fix a Marine with 600 burn damage alone in the middle of the fucking desert. Plus you have to be incredibly durable and have a decent weapon of sorts. For these purposes, do not hesitate to spend 28 Points on buying b12 armor, because YOU need it, it has huge protection against various damage and you yourself will less often receive fractures or damage to organs, which will turn you from a medic into mincemeat.
Choose a lifesaver belt, the setup will be something like this:
Fe, IA, D+, KD, MB - custom chems from chemline in medbay (read about them on wiki).
Pouches - revival mix and magazine pouch, sometimes large one from req.
Satchel - 4 medkit boxes and MD. Why MD? You’ll just know when to work your butt off, because it’s very easy to become autistic as a medic and forget about the world around you while you’re treating a patient, and the motion detector is a good thing to remind you that you’re not playing The Sims.
First box is surgical kit, medevac bed, grafting things, 2 bloodpacks and stasis bag, 2 box - full of splints, 3 box - full of medkits and one pillbottle of simple Bicardine, 4 box - full of medkits from burns + Kelo pillbottle.
The drop pouch will allow you to take TWO large items, so two defibrillators are what we need. Someone can tell you that why is this, because you can charge defibrillators from chargers. FORGET IT. You’ll soon realize that when you get a few patients who, due to the amount of damage, require multiple defibrillations, your 15-use thing will run out faster than you’d like. However, also do not forget that it is impossible to defibrillate someone without first injecting Revival Mix. This gives a huge recovery from epinephrine and with this thing the dead will rise in seconds (only one use is always enough).
Everything else I can say is the main thing is to understand that if the corpse has more total damage than ~ minus 200-210, then first try to fix it with medkits and a numpad. Then, if medkits did not help you achieve the desired figure, try using a graft after them on the most damaged areas (usually the chest, groin and head). Also, if the amount of damage from Brute or Burn is more than 200, first try to make it less than 200. After that you can defibrillate. Splints, pills - everything after your patient has at least risen from the dead so that he enters a state of slow self-healing from the things you gave him.
Regular bleeding - feel free to ignore, they have practically no effect on marines, because they always have a passive healing from food or just like that. Internal bleeding - take a roller bed from armor, take a Surgicall kit and go ahead and cut the poor fellow right in an open field, with tramadol in his mouth.
There is also such a thing as positioning. Imagine that all the Marines around you are assholes who want to push you and prevent you from putting a splint on a dying man, so take the second intention, stand so that neither you nor the patient can be pushed and go about your business.
If someone has died, please do not immediately drag them to the FOB if hes not hugged or TOO fucked up with organs (hearbreak or you just see his lungs or liver are destroyed). While you are saving him alone, several more people will die on the battlefield and your task is to help them all, because half of the doctors around you will either fight in the front like idiots (or me) or they will do it very slowly. Sometimes the best option is to drag the corpse literally around the corner and revive it there, so that you spend as little time as possible on safety precautions. Perhaps the things I say will be condemned by others, but usually a medic who revived several people around him right in the face of a ravager is better than one who dragged one to the base and thereby wasted a lot of time, while the rest managed to die in perma-death.
This will actually come with experience, because you need to feel when it’s worth dragging the Marine further, and when you see that a push is happening or a state where the xenomorphs cannot instantly crush the front, then you just need to run behind the first line of defense and do your thing. If the front has collapsed, do not try to save all the corpses, but only one on the bed roller, because if you die, the team will lose the most important support (engineers are not important ;3).
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Drugs
The only drug I get from medical is imidalozine/alkysine for treating brain damage.
Pharmacy drugs are more efficient and more useful but I don’t like waiting in the line for them so I keep it simple. If IA came in a bottle in prep I wouldn’t ever go to medical for drugs.
Kit
I used to stuff a medkit full of MRE’s and splints but you can’t do that after morrow nerfed them. Still, just splints alone is useful but you don’t tend to go through 30+
I always take the revive injector pouch and an autoinjector pouch filled with tricord and dexalin+ injectors, the tricord for treating small booboos that don’t need bicard/kelo and the dex+ for getting wounded people up ASAP.
5 each of the advanced brute/burn bandages, never use one up fully so you can restock them fast at a medvendor
Weapons
Usually just a mod88 because:
- Fits in suit slot WITH its magazines
- Deals decent damage to all xeno castes
- Can be wielded and used immediately with one hand
- Has ok accuracy and magazine size so you can afford missing shots and shooting things at medium range
I see some people use the smartpistol, and I would too if not for it’s damage and accuracy being so bad; the only thing it has going for it imo is you can’t accidentally shoot your patient.
Any other pistol you can just forget about.
SMG’s can be good or bad depending on current CM balance. They’re far more often on the poo end of balance and not worth using though. You also don’t get as much magazine storage.
Flamethrower is a very strong medic weapon; 1 canister is more than enough fuel so you don’t need to carry much extra with you (1 extra at least is a good idea though), it will block off attack routes xenos are using, and most runner/lurker players will run for safety after being set on fire. It’s the strongest medic weapon imo, but the problem is you will very very often accidentally set your patient on fire, because xenos players will focus them and stand on/near them. It also has a long wield time and fire delay so it’s not very good if you’re attacked by surprise. Flamer with nozzle is neat but it has inherent RNG inaccuracy in the shot that invalidates 90% of why you’d use it; being accurate and not setting your patient on fire. What’s the point if you click on the lurker next to your patient and the RNG throws the fireball onto your patient instead? The weapon balance in this game I sometimes just smh.
You don’t need much ammo. That’s a mistake some make, shoving in half a dozen mags. HPR and Mk1 are good for this.
Your job is to keep riflemen up and fighting, not engaging in constant combat at the front. It’s stupidly obvious but that is the job of a rifleman - to fight and carry the ammo you can’t. It’s in their name. Your ammo should be used to fend off backliners and not a lot else.
That said, this is my standard loadout, usually good for +1.5 hour rounds. It’s a ton of shit, and you don’t need as much, but it will keep you going while other medics flee on search of a vendor.
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As many others here have said, there is no real “best” or “meta” loadout for medic. It’s all what’s good for you. That being said, I would like to recommend a few things your loadout SHOULD have in order for you to actually do your job:
- Trauma Kits
- Burn Kits
- Splints
- Pills (especially IA)
- Epinephrine autoinjector
- Defibrillator
- Surgical line
- Synth-graft
And that’s about it. Most of this is stuff in your “Essential Medical Supplies” kit anyways. Frankly speaking, you don’t even need a gun. I know quite a few medics who are straight up defenseless and still do a great job. Just do what works for you, and you’ll go far as medic 
Do note that you definitely should not carry only these things, but this is the bare minimum I’d suggest for any medic loadout.
I like to say that the best loadout is the one that you can work the fastest with. If it’s great for someone else but leaves you constantly checking around for gear, it’s a bad loadout for you. Fuck around on a private server, or just keep playing, and you’ll find what fits your playstyle. And don’t sleep on the medical storage rig!
As a totes pro corpsman main (im not)
I choose whatever seems cool in that very second unless i now within my very soul that it SUCKS.
Surprisingly I don’t suck as a corpsman. Unlike comtech where there is only two good strats where you focus on c4/bc or mats with corpman i see the role where you have way more options even if it isnt 150% effective loadout. My advise as a comtech main who dabbles in corpsman from time to time is to find items that you know aren’t good like (in my opinion) the reagent pouches for bicard, kelo, tram pouches when the tricord and revival pouches exist.
I would like to add a few words, as if taking counterarguments from my pocket, responding to advice from above. To say that a corpsman is a medic who only heals and never fights - this person is definitely confusing you with a medic who works on a ship. The main difference is that you are both. You should have a weapon powerful enough to be able to kill at least low-rank xenomorphs. If you only want to treat, then there is a shipside doctor, otherwise you will shoot a lot. It is extremely naive to assume a spherical situation when there will be many Marines at the front, and you will only defibrillate corpses. THIS IS WRONG. At some point, dozens of exceptions will appear and you will suffer because your weapon will be a fucking pistol. To play this role for a long time, you need to be able to combine business with pleasure - if you want, you can just take HPR and, while no new corpses appear, serve as fire support and add up damage.
There is no reason to not take a weapon, your gun choice as a Corpsman is more constrained by how much ammo you can carry. Its why the old meta was for Medics to take HPRs due to the high ammo count, that’s still quite viable.
Flamers, M41A Mk1, HPRs, Pistols (with ammo belt), even SMGs to a extent, these are quite useful guns due to their small ammo requirements.
You can also buy a set of M4 armour for the 4 inventory slots, those could make a big diff in carrying an extra magazine or two.
You can’t go wrong with a weapon choice, but some guns are easier to sustain without needing resupply than others.
In fact, I used to take M4 armor because of the 4 armor slots, now with the acid rework and all that, I would prefer B12, because you will become a tank medic who will be very durable and thus more likely that you will survive to the end of the round and you will save many lives.
If you go with a pistol you know you’re giving up opportunities from the outset.
When you’ve got a Mk1 and an AP mag you might take advantage of those opportunities and then get in over your head and die, or get carried away from your duties and lose people. I’ve seen plenty of medics who forget they’re a medic and instead man a cadeline with an HPR or try to chase queen to finish it off and that’s all well and good but it’s entirely contrary to the job at the end of the day. If you’re robusting xenos you’re not reviving and treating people. Every moment you’re robusting a xeno is a moment you’re not being a medic.
And in any case, the mod88 (the only pistol I think is in a good place) is very nearly a half-mag AP M41, it’s not a knockoff useless weapon. It’s not as good as an M41 but it’s close enough and has more utility for medic use-cases: Running full speed and still shooting, being accurate one-handed so you can drag and shoot, wielding it nearly instantly, and carrying a decent amount of ammo with few storage slots.
I don’t think anyone goes wrong in either case, you’re just specializing yourself for different things - but I do find that if I’m kitting myself out to frontline, I lose focus on doing medic things. Remove the incentive to frontline and the focus snaps back to the medic things foremost, and yeah that does mean you might miss out on a warrior kill or whatever but that’s fine, it’s not my goal to capitalize on and kill xenos when I’m a medic and only having a pistol helps remind me that I shouldn’t be trying to do it when I’m in a role that’s significantly less expendable than the average PFC.
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As a corpsman sort of main, I go for the base drugs along with IA, a smart tank of oxy for suturing and other stuff, and a hypo of dex plus with a liquid bottle for it.
The IA for obvious reasons, the smart tank let’s me refill an oxy ainjector as needed so I can deal with suturing immediately on bleeding marines. Blood loss means using blood bags, which can be a pain in the ass to get if the techs are lazy and don’t bring vendors back to the FOB.
You don’t really need much dex+ for it to be effective, so the most efficient use of it is just one hypo hit and done, and even then you won’t be using it much, so better to keep a bottle refill on you for those rounds that take forever.
Beyond that, nothing special. I don’t really see the point of going for advanced chems until the base ones are gone.