I’m primarily a highpop player, but from time to time I’ve had the opportunity to play during lowpop. How does one adapt from having support to having to do things yourself?
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You don’t. Better pray enough people fill in for support roles, or you play the support role and bemoan when no one else plays the other support roles.
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just play lolz, lowpop main here.
Deadpop will have you experience crazy things like, CMO command, 1 medic 5 CTs, no ASO no req, but you just gotta mog through it and you’ll be fine. Accept that you’ll probably die horribly and it’ll be more fun
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understand that xenocord will be active even at lowpop, and marines will get shit on %80 of the time
also I hope you like multi tasking
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You don’t so much adapt as get used to pulling double duty. Sometimes you shove an MP or SO into cargo and just pray to god they don’t suck.
I think a couple weeks back I latejoined as CO and I actually ended up running Cargo because the only CT was a newbie Cargo tech. Same thing with getting medical to do intel processing.
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If you play lowpop as marine, accept that you are going to die and the xenos are going to fucking wipe the floor with you. The only reason why marine winrates aren’t 75% overall is because lowpop exists.
You basically NEED to pack enough meds (Honestly, just use unga) since medics are too few to be a reliable source of healing, and everyone needs to work much better together to survive- Recovering bodies is paramount (HEDP for the win), as is pushing for kills since each marine and xenomorph are worth a lot more.
In most cases, you simply won’t have support, period. FOB doesn’t get finished, comms isn’t up until an hour in, no medics on the frontline or FOB, there’s no mortar, CAS, or OBs because the literal one person who bothers to call them in went to Brazil, etc.
You kind of just have to deal with it. Similarly, as xeno if not enough robustos roll, you’re kind of just screwed. A handful of good players can carry the hive solo against lowpop-strength marines- It’s not uncommon to see 1 Queen and 1 robust xeno change the tide.
As such, what tends to happen is really fast wipes planetside before the 1 hour mark.
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Play support roles, or at least SL.
If you insist on going PFC, don’t go for those snowflake kits that require the right stage of the moon for you to shoot a xeno.
Play it really safe in general, nobody is coming to rescue you and while on highpop 5 idiots suicide flanking is nothing serious, on lowpop it’s something that may cause marines the round.
P. S. I keep suggesting that lowpop should be balanced independently from high pop and you can lower the number of xenos there by maybe 20% and it would be a lot more enjoyable.
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Simple. Go FTL. Take radio backpack and pack it with one green pack and 2 normal flare packs. Marines usually do not pack flares and that lonely CAS pilot will salivate over a green flare on low pop. Rest of the backpack space I leave up to you to decide.
As FTL you are a PFC+ in other words you have allot of useful skills. Check the crew manifest on 00:10 min round time mark and look for how many CTs you have. If you have like only 3 of them pack a tool belt and fill your pocket slots with ammo pouches. Go north hangar and hack the 2 vends for boards, batts and there are free welding googles around there.
When it comes to weapons you can go MK1 or MK2. I usually go MK2 with mag harn, UBS, solid stock and bayo. I know that yall will hate on the solid stock but in the combination with bayo its basically a machete built in to your weapon. UBS is for clearing resin doors and shaking off vamp lurks, runners and other t1/t2s. If you run MK1 you can do the same build but you can’t attach a solid stock.
I run my meds in 5 slot webbings and my helmet.
Helmet - 2 epi injectors,
Webbing - bic,tra,kel inside the injector pouch (3 of them spawn in medbay also docs get them in their kits), bandage, splint and it leaves you with 2 free slots for unga juice or anything else you need.
Now FTLs can buy trashy NVGs but NVGs nonetheless. I usually go with med optic and NVGs for saving the dead and having an advantage with fast pushing.
If you are a psycho and managed to have enough gear and STILL have a free pocket slot you can pack a first responder pouch with a roller, scanner, stasis and a item of your choice (I usually go with epi or mini extinguisher) for saving folks.
Now all the tools we have picked will help us in adapting to almost every single situation low pop can throw at you. No CTs available to fix sensors/comms? No worries because you ARE A FUCKING CT. Is no one using JTAC? Well hello there 4 JTAC skill! No one ballsy enough to push the resin? That mk2 build will make it easier to break those doors and nodes. You can really do allot (that’s why its called PFC+) but the secret is in trying to become the change you want to see in the USCM. In the end it doesn’t really matter cus you are only a human after all and not some god machine (synth) so you will die BUT YOU WILL DIE TRYING.
TLDR: Low pop sucks you will die. Try to fill in the roles that your team lacks with multi skilled classes and well thought out builds that do not specialize on one or two things but more.
(Just realized that I turned this rant in to a build drop lol sorry :3)
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It’s funny when discussing low pop. I wonder how much of our balance discussions are influenced by high-pop versus low-pop.
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as a chronic lowpop HM main, you kind of just learn to cope. I find lowpop enjoyable personally because Im able to operate mostly independently in terms of my job, and it gives me more room to rp because a lot of it is lowkey just kind of waiting for something to happen especially if you’re shipside. Its also slightly more lenient in terms of ic conduct, and when youre used to a whole lot of nothing, when something happens it can make an impact on the entire round
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Play medic, and get good at it. At real deadpop, marines have maybe 0-1 halfway decent people healing, and if you can make sure there’s at least one person who isn’t a bronze medal random name bravo slinging kits, that’s damn near the biggest force multiplier available.
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also found this out, if there is an io (somehow not dead on the front somewhere) and there shipside, they can punch in ob cords and launch them from there room
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Lowpop is an interesting beast. “To be a hero one doesn’t need to step forward if everyone else steps back” comes to mind. As many have mentioned CIC/Engi/Med/Req teams are usually woefully undermanned, nevermind combat roles, so it makes everything you do more impactful and soft-forces more player mindfulness. Do you get on the DS with two packs of flares/meds/food/ammo or just two empty hands like one would on high pop because things are semi-reliable? Do you risk grab-dragging that guy who just fell over? Do you toss your last mag to the guy next to you since you still have a half mag? Use your last meds on the guy next to you? (Yes)
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I both love and hate lowpop as a HM main. On the one hand, I thrive under pressure. I love pushing myself trying to save 5 dead marines at once while trying to pay attention to the ebb and flow of the battle space. It really helped me hone my ability to multi-task heal people. If you can HM lowpop, you can definitely HM highpop.
However, that shit is exhausting and I only have one or two of those rounds in me at best. Mad respect to anyone who does this on the norm.
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part of the reason i play synth low pop is purely the fact i am able to lock in and elevate a lot of the struggle support players get during low pop
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Yeah, that’s true. Lowpop players will think xenos have the advantage, highpop players will think marines have the advantage. I suppose neither are strictly wrong, but it does make balance discussions a little wild.
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As a lowpop player, really you just got to start to play as if its a one way trip down to the colony. ( and many of time it really is)
build your kit to max your ammo load and start to learn were to loot the colony as need for spare guns and ammo.
also be really sparing with your ammo… its funny i have started to play highpop now a days and i have found i am going through so much more ammo then i use to.
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I am blessed that in the morning it’s lowpop and late in the day it’s highpop. Is 70 lowpop now by the way? I remember when 30 was lowpop. Anywhy… I love lowpop the most, the rp is way better. You care about your team way more because on lowpop everyone matters, loosing 5 marines on lowpop is over your half squad gone and on highpop it means literally nothing. You bond with others way better in lowpop. Highpop seems for me just lrp and tdm and a perfect time for people to try roles and get banned. Do people get banned in lowpop? 
no they are to busy to do their role and survive. I am lucky that i can deside to play lowpop and highpop, the perfect balance for a cm player
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@Spy23 We need the Low Pop CO here.
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Good afternoon Ideasguys, it’s an honour to have been invited to speak at todays tribunal
This is a bit of a tough one, since I haven’t played a real highpop game of CM since like 2021, and dont have much of an image to hold lowpop up to. That said, the times I did used to play it, felt like I had logged on to a different game entirely.
I’d compare it to going from a round of Battlefield, to some random ass ARMA server with 7 players online, where everyone gets the insane gear, but nobody has a mic and dies in two seconds.
From an individual players point of view, the only real advice I can give is this:
The general rule of thumb with 80 players - nobody can be trusted to follow through, and if you want something done right, you’ll have to do it yourself.
Picture yourself as a lone gunslinger in the wild west, maybe riding with a small group, if you’re lucky.
You go to Req, ask for the biggest gun they have, ask for enough ammo to last you 2 hours of combat, and then some.
You get hit? You get a frac? You’d have better packed medical supplies, because you can bet your ass nobody else did.
You fight alone, but you fight like hell.
All of this, and you will still die to bad luck in 9 out of 10 rounds, with nothing you can do about it.
But let me tell you, that 1 blessed round where you lock in, is worth every death to get there.
From a Command point of view, lowpop throws conventional strategies out the window in almost every occasion:
When you join as an SL, XO/CO, or a Queen, you have just joined a game of highstakes poker, where everyone goes all-in before a single card is down.
Every single round is decided by the first engagement, with no exceptions.
Your job as the Commander is to bluff with half a hand, grappling with the Xenos to set the most advantageous location for the first engagement, and pray they dont have an ace up their sleeve.
When you do the maths on what exactly composes the 80 players online:
- 5-10 of them are staff, and are too lazy to play the game
- At LEAST 20 players are bald af, trying to use lowpop to learn to play the game, because highpop told them it was “easier”
- 30 players are your average Joes, they dont do much on their own, but with a good leader at the helm, they can be moulded into killing machines
- The last 20 players are the deciding factor in each round, depending on how they are distributed between Marine and Xeno. They have 3000 hours on every role, wield a small army of meta-buddies, and WILL kill you and your whole family.
You either have what it takes to win the day then and there, or you dont, and you lose your most capable assets in a single moment. There is very rarely a second chance, and even then, people can rarely capitalize on them.
Organize Marines into a fight you know they can win, and turn 3 troops into 50, or pack up and go home.
Overall, to TLDR this post, whether I am playing CO/SL/HM, I always try to live by favourite quote from Oceans 11 (the best movie of all time)
Danny: “Play long enough, you never change the stakes, the house takes you. Unless, when that perfect hand comes along, you bet big, and then you take the house.”
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