I made this on the old forums, so I might as well make it here with current, up-to-date modifications.
So … you want to be a Starcraft Ghost in CM eh?
Well, you came to the right place.
Let’s start with your gear:
Equipment:
So … the first thing you’ll notice is that you have a no-charge, perma-cloak … pretty sweet right?
Well turns out you have a couple of limitations while cloaked, mainly being:
Unable to fire weapons in cloak, and for 2-3 seconds after de-cloaking.
You also cannot prime grenades while cloaked.
You can do these, however, while you are cloaked:
Grab things while cloaked.
Throw things (like knives)
Stab critically wounded xenos to finish them off
Laze for CAS and OB (a cloaked circle will appear above your head, but it will inherit the same alpha as your character. Alpha=Transparency
You have Thermal Med-HUD NVG’s, which is pretty sweet for noticing threats in the dark and beyond without giving away your position, as well as telling which marines are save-able/revivable when you’re lurking in the dark behind enemy lines.
You also have the M4RA CUSTOM Battle Rifle, Which is a pretty decent rifle and if you attach the bayonet, you deal the most melee damage in the game besides a predator Glaive.
You have armor and a helmet as well (do not turn your armor light on, it’s a dead giveaway for any xeno that even slightly notices you). This armor is required to both equip, and use your cloak. This also doubles as a backpack
In your gear, you have a thermal tarp. This thermal tarp, when closed, rapidly cloaks to essentially the same level as yours. This is REALLY good at getting a downed marine back to medics where they can be revived.
Alright, moving towards the more customizable part of your gear-set.
I get an extra normal magazine, and then 2 more impact magazines in terms of spec points / gear.
For your belt slot, I typically choose the ammo belt to carry my normal ammo.
I then get the first-aid pouch, and then the large mag pouch to hold my impact magazines and have my armor hold the incendiary magazines.
I usually get a mag-harness or Red-Dot with an angled-grip for faster wield time, and a bayonet for the barrel attachment.
You should also seriously consider getting throwing knives so you can deal damage while cloaked. Knives do 75 damage each, and go through armor. So if you examine a xeno, and they’re in crit, throw a knife or 2 at them. If they go down, finish them off with your battle-rifle bayonet. If not, they’ll be too worried about getting their ass kicked to worry about you picking up your knives.
If there are other xenos around trying to hunt you, then back off, you have plenty of knives.
Alright, now let’s go with gameplay:
Gameplay:
The first thing you’ll notice is that your cloak is either STUPIDLY hard to detect, or it’s like you’re not cloaked at all.
I have, at times, just walked past an entire xeno incursion force and not a SINGLE care was given.
However, anyone who is deliberately hunting you, and is good at spotting you … you should get out of there instead of sticking around waiting for THEM to leave.
There are several “ways” to play scout/ghost spec.
This is the way I personally have started playing away from my original play-style:
Search & Rescue:
Probably the biggest, most important thing you can do with acceptable risk.
In your gear, you have a thermal tarp. This thermal tarp, when closed, rapidly increases it’s alpha to essentially the same level as yours. This is REALLY good at getting a downed marine back to medics where they can be revived.
What I would do, is at the beginning of the OP, before you even hit dirt, is get 3 PDT’s. After you get those PDT’s, what you’re gonna wanna do is label each of those PDT’s Alpha-Delta Spec (skipping yourself obviously)
Give the PDT bracelets to each of the specialists, and have them attach it to their uniform.
Has a specialist gone down and they need retrieving because they are either too far in or behind xeno lines?
Get that Spec’s PDT Locator Tube from your cloak backpack … Ping it … find the target … put them in the cloaking bag … extract. Simple as that.
Sabotage:
If you can sabotage the back-line, this gives the marines land, they have more room to breathe, and more time to treat wounded and get them back onto the field, giving themselves more land, and time.
If you can sabotage the side-lines and ganking positions, this gives the marines that are travelling to and from the FOB and front-line a safer route of passage.
Sabotaging the side-lines and ganking positions:
This is probably one of the easiest way to contribute to the battle. Because you can do it literally on the way to anything, or just dedicate yourself to it.
On the way to the side of the back-line? Clear purple sac nodes along the way. Drones don’t really re-weed the colony because they’re too busy near the front/back line supporting their main force. Which really fucks over the flankers who want to recover because … they have no weeds to recover on.
On the way to the hive? Sabotage their back-line by clearing weeds along the way so they have less move-speed to escape if they get pushed.
pre-load incendiary in the chamber, then load stun- I mean impact rounds as the main magazine. This will make your first shot tag them for incendiary damage-over-time. Then hitting them with impact rounds FORCES them to do 1 of 2 things:
Keep running with a small chance of success because impact rounds both stun, slow, and silence.
Put out the fire by rolling on the ground, stunning themselves in the process so you can just kill them.
They can’t LEAP or POUNCE, because impact-rounds STUN and DAZE. They can’t … really do ANY ability.
If you can sabotage the back-line, this gives the marines land, they have more room to breathe, and more time to treat wounded and get them back onto the field, giving themselves more land, and time.
If you can sabotage the side-lines and ganking positions, this gives the marines that are travelling to and from the FOB and front-line a safer route of passage.
Sabotaging the Hive:
This is probably the most Sky-Risk, Sky-Reward thing you can do.
First thing is finding the hive. This should be some-what easy considering the meta and all that.
Second thing is to evaluate the situation.
If there are caps in there, you should see if there are any gaps or eggs planted (usually there will be, but there might be some gaps). If NOT, then you basically have god-signed permission to free those caps and let them cause HAVOC inside of the hive.
If there is absolutely nothing in the hive, not even a larva, and there’s no eggs planted … even better, you have, once again, god-signed permission to destroy the Hive Core
Usually, however, the above will not be present. Which is when you turn your time to one of 2 things:
1: Paintin’ The Target
If the hive location isn’t deep underground, then get cords of juuuuust outside of the hive’s “thick resin ceiling”, and have command load HE or Incendiary in the OB Chamber.
Give the cords.
Confirm hits.
GET THE FUCK OUTTA DODGE BEFORE HALF IF NOT ALL OF THE HIVE COME CRASHING DOWN ANGRILY ON YOU.
2: THIS IS MY RIFLE. THERE ARE MANY LIKE IT, BUT THIS ONE IS MINE!
This is where the process is a little tedious.
If you equipped a scope and a suppressor, this will be eaaaaaasyyyyyyy.
Get a clear shot on the core, or near the hive.
Wait for larva to pop out or rest. Then de-cloak, shoot 1 or 2 shots on them, re-cloak.
You can also knife a larva if they happen to get too close to you, it kills them that way too. They only have 10-ish health.
Nothin’ to it except getting out of dodge or making another position if some xenos want to try and ruin your day.
How to make yourself more unseen.
Tile/Profile Disruption & Cloaking
You would be shocked how many people do NOT know where to hide in a high-risk or high-threat situation.
The more pattern and uniformity a tile has, the harder it is to hide on it.
The more “stuff” or “non-linear” lines a tile has, the easier it is to hide on it.
Take Medbay Treatment Atrium or med bay in general for example. On an open tile you stick out like a sore-thumb. Pure-White, Straight-Lines, not much on the tile.
If you’re in a situation like that, consider being on the IV-Drip tile, the medical resting beds to the west before you get into the lobby, or perhaps re-positioning.
On Solaris, or heaven forbid Shiva’s with pure-white snow, you usually will either want to be on shallow-snow, grass, or something inside of a building to disrupt your profile.
Remember, the human brain and the human brain controlling the xenomorph characters are looking for a vertical profile, or straight lines. Straight lines don’t typically occur in nature (or tiles) unless they’re man-made objects, xeno-made weeds/object, or already disrupted by exploded, damaged tiles, or other such distortions.
Here is the greatest 3-step-process piece of advice I can probably give you for remaining unseen while cloaked:
- Is there a xeno hunting, or do they actively have you in their sights?
If so, run away as best you can, and re-position. Your cloak will NOT be able to conceal you from an active ghost hunter, especially certain xenos that are absolutely fucking cracked and have their gamma-settings on their computer turned up to eye-bleed (cough cough, looking at you triple-digit prime xenos) - Is there a xeno near you?
If so, STOP moving or get to a nearby tile with enough tile-disruption to conceal you effectively. - Is there nothing around?
Keep moving.
The main thing about scout is to ALWAYS be checking your surroundings, and ALWAYS having an escape option or a plan in case things go sour.
Remember:
“The greatest weapon a ghost has is their mind. Everything else is supplemental.” -Nova