How important is an OT to the round?, or Why don't people play OT more?

General Acid Goop
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Hi there. Fellow OT enjoyer here. How important is an OT to the round, really? It’s like - I make four or so rockets for the SADAR, pump out some claymores for runners and create some grenades for marines. Sure. Fantastic stuff, but if say there were no OT’s, it seems life goes on with or without OT’s. Is my presence helpful? Is it detrimental? Why do I need to marine-proof my explosives to make sure they don’t friendly fire? Did I add the right primer in my grenade so it isn’t a dud? What if I forgot to blast cap the grenade and it kills 5 marines?

I think what I’m trying to ask here is do any of you even use my explosives? Please acknowledge me. Please use my grenades. I even labeled what they do. They’re helpful. I promise. I know your pack is full, but I bet if you dropped that extra flare pack in your bag, you could fit my m15 grenade which will destroy the xenos. Please. You’ll get more flares in the resupply.

I sit here, up in the Almayer in my shop doing math for your benefit, and you don’t even use my explosives. I risk blowing myself up so you don’t have to. I over-engineer and take the utmost care in making these products and you just look at my grenade and don’t even use them.

This makes me sad and I’m going to cry all over my keyboard causing electrical damage. Please use my explosives. I’ll make more if you do, all you have to do is ask. Thank you.

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OT is simply a force multiplier, assuming you’ve made the explosives correctly (which you likely did). All of your explosives will likely be used or at least brought to the front. However, bad marines + OT grenades results in a lot of friendly fire, which isn’t your fault. While good marines + OT grenades results in some damn fine hits, which isn’t technically because of your actions.

Just blow up your workshop and cyro like the rest of us. Be a man

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Correct take

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The expectation for OT, partly because it’s not played often, is that if you make anything at all you’re positively contributed to the round. It might be one of the most low expectation roles in the game, if you don’t detonate your lab then no one will notice your presence if you make nothing.

If OT does make something, it’s very much felt and OT itself can win or lose games for the Marines.

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People don’t play OT because:

  • There’s no way to understand the role at all without opening the wiki. You get no in-game guidance at all, and no way to figure anything out without reading guides (not fun)
  • Some people don’t like doing chemistry and ratios in a shooter game
  • You don’t actually get to use the fun explosives
    • The feeling of knowing you made super cool nuke grenades wears off at some point
  • Once you figure out the “meta” explosives, you’re mostly just making the same things until you get bored of the role.
  • Some people (me) quit after the gibber-9000 rockets were “rebalanced” where their explosive power was reduced but shrapnel.. amount.. was increased..
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i like ot they give me big booms

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The responses already hit almost every point exactly but I join in anyways for fun.

Its not critical to the round in anyway similar to MT, except you have a unique function you can preform in whatever way you choose. You can make the sweatiest most try hard device combinations before first drop, or you can make joke devices that dont even leave your workshop. I’ve told a bunch of PVTs that enter the shop to not stress because anything we make is just sprinkles for the round. Some spice. Its the perfect role to avoid marines and continue to learn parts of the game with low stress. Id be playing a lot more burrower and carrier if OT didnt exist.

Brother if I know OT’s cooking M15’s and it isnt me, I’m gonna grab an explosive pouch or (because it can hold 6, but ill nade rig if there are more) and the M79 (I still havent learned the new name). The only thing that would make second guess loading up on them is if someone else wants some. Gotta share the love (and opportunity to grief unintentionally.)

I love this. Making me laugh out loud thinking about how many marines ask me why I don’t just make ethanol nades when I do Incen. Some of its to play with range or colour, but I also think its goofy and lame to do (ignoring property/capacity memes.) Even the cheaper M40s I make have napalm in them. That’s just how I prefer to do things though, and I spend a lot of observer time learning and watching other OTs craft too. The process is pretty unique from OT to OT weirdly enough (learned a lot of mechanical interactions that way too.)

No one wants to be the guy who throws the round with anything OT related (its like 95% of the time a nade, and 4% of the time a claymore, and 1% a rocket/mortar when it does happen.) I’d be happy if marines werent too afraid to load them and unload them someplace visible within the FOB for when they are needed or wanted. I’d never demand a PVT rifleman use anything I avoided as a PVT cause it wasnt really until I started playing OT that I started to pick up OT equipment. I could count most active OT mains I’ve seen over the past few months on both hands. We are kinda shrouded in obscurity sadly.

Thank you fellow OT, and please make me any stupid napalm for my M240 when I’m a marine. Goodluck, godspeed

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As someone who players xeno, OT is really, really fucking annoying.

It isnt the mines, or the sadar rockets. nuke mortars are moderately annoying but it isnt them either.

incen maxcaps. incen maxcaps ruin xenos days, spam them like crazy and xenos will cry.

REALLY sticky fire is also annoying, and any fire that sticks around for a while with wide area. Fire stops xeno healing, so ANY lifesteal caste gets fucked even by shity fire.

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An OT is in a unique position to produce massive amounts of thermite basically instantly.

Thermite is not very useful, however,

If you wanted to fill this spot on solaris with regular walls for uh, whatever reason(don’t knock it- there’s def some strat to be found there)- it’s those green circles I made. That’s 36 tiles.

So, to build 36 wall girders, it will cost 72 metal- however, with the OT’s ability to mass produce thermite, he can allow the girders to be moved from around LZ to that spot for basically free. So, then the cost to build 36 regular walls drop- total cost is 252, but the thermite would reduce that cost to 180. Now, that’s still crazy expensive- but it is MUCH cheaper.

OT can build smoke tanks- what use is that? Well, you could fill it with tomato juice to heal burns at 1 dmg, 20% chance to heal. That’s neat. A lot of OTs fall into a trap of making CLF3 and throwing it in an incinerator tank- well that’s WRONG. CLF3 has the Igniting trait, which means when exposed to its smoke/spray, it ignites creatures and(I believe?) adds stacks of fire. Smoke CLF3 is a very powerful incinerator fuel & it is VERY good at area denial, as the smoke lingers and walking into it will again ignite xenos.

You could also, for example, dedicate your self to making as absolutely many nades as you can, with a measly 2x2 explosion area- now, what use would that be? Well, if you could make for example, 30 nades, and set the timers to 30 seconds. So, let’s say there’s an FOB siege, and queen et al are pressing on a flank, activate the 10 or so nades, throw them all over, and boom- every time the xenos push up they’ve got to be paranoid about these random nades going off, knocking them around.

These are all niche & stranges strats, but like- if you play OT, and you decide to make the biggest SADAR rocket you can… look, it’s all been done before… coming up with unusual plans of action is much more rewarding, much more interesting, albeit difficult to execute. Here, here’s another one I just thought of-

Make a mortar shell, make it the max cap metal foam. Let’s say it’s FOB siege. Queen has just pushed up and screeched- you talked it over with the mortar operator, and he launches the metal foam mortar- behind the xeno’s lines. Then you have a big marine push, and if the xenos pull back, they’ll be trapped/slowed down enough to grab some ez kills if only thanks to the temporary confusion.

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Replace “traps” with “bombs” and then it fits perfectly.

Don’t even get me wrong you could have fun with OT, mortar shells have a fuckton of potential for wizardry and multi shrap type ordnance -should there be no shrap cap- could be a sleeper gamebreaking strat.
But who fucking cares if you can’t enjoy it yourself, and someone might see this argument working on researchers too, but as a gold medal researcher I must say that it happens but it’s not that painful.
What is painful is feeling that you are griefing. A well made stim could only grief xenos which is all fine and dandy, but give a PVT the mother of all bombs and they will grief literally everyone in record time, which is not fun.

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