All the time I see marine squads rushing in positions at top speed, even when surrounded by enemies or being stalked by them. It brings to my mind my experience with the game Aliens: Dark Descent, where you control a group of 4-5 marines: they always maintain a diamond formation (as follows).
Although the game uses AI in order to maintain a tight formation (unless you give specific orders, such as to rush to a position/cover, or send someone to collect items), I think adopting basic formations and slowing down could severily help coordination in some situations.
Sometimes marines rush in a room surrounded by xenos in the dark and get picked off, only to retreat and get punished for stepping on one another and not properly defending it’s back, or move in running through some dark plains and getting destroyed by lurkers and runners, constantly breaking apart and splitting, as many rush forward disregarding others that are slower and need some time to set up.
In the image above, the diamond formation could be replicated by putting in the middle a high-priority member, such as a member that is hurt, being carried, a medic or one that uses IFF (smartgunner), and the sides covered by marines using the regular firearms. Thus, FF could be diminished if the team trusted each other to maintain their side of the formation when attacked by “less-threatening” targets such as drones, lurkers and runners.
I feel like it could help a bunch if I conducted a tiny study on formations and how to apply them in different situations. Perhaps even discussing an ideal squad prep?
My guy. This is SS-13. We all are some form of mentally damaged individual that pour some autistic level of dedication into a single role to be the best at it. And CM players are the cream of the crop of that combat wise.
There is a reason why marines are sometimes called “Unga brained”
If you want to really feel how bad it is, go play SO.
But a hot tip, you need good RP and need to get your squad to like you. Otherwise nobody will listen to your orders.
“Unga brain” imo is just a result of the inconsistency of leadership on every level.
If you can’t trust your leader to organize properly, and you can’t trust fellow marines to organize properly, there is no point in attempting to be organized properly. It’s better (or at least easier) to just organize organically, or “improperly” if you are a solo marine or xeno.
The game does not necessitate it or discipline marines in any way to do so.
tbh tho, if marines actually could organize, the game is so much easier… That’s why when 2 really good players are battle buddies (and they know how to play around eachother), they score massive frag counts. Group vs Group pvp is a million times more efficient with teamwork, especially since guns deal so much dmg even solo…
Boy, you and i both know the pain of SO.
Yes, a lot of unga moments come from marines not trusting command.
But you also know how often they are dumb for doing so.
Dont pretend the struggel of SO aint real.
Like, the ammounts of squads i saw run into certain doom after i begged them to turn around. And the respons i get is “nah, i’d win”.
I feel like i got ptsd from that shit.
Formations like that just don’t work in ss13. Getting two dudes to walk next to each other is a lil difficult. In the middle of combat it’s not ideal and gives no advantage
This is a point and click adventure! The dopamine that hits when i click on xenos is more addictive then heroin! HOW DARE OTHER MARINES STAND IN MY WAY AS I ACHIEVE PURE BLISS
If marines actually coordinated fire support and didn’t act like a bunch of numbskull muppets they’d win every game.
But they don’t- Unless you’re playing hardcore milsim Arma LARP, you will never be able to get strangers to act even remotely as cohesive as a unit.
Furthermore, as said before- specific formations in CM just don’t work very well. We’re playing a game where marines are an undying Zerg horde run by necromancers, whereas xenos are a small, elite SOCOM unit on fentanyl. A single tanky xeno would break your formation instantly, not even considering boilers, chargers, etc.
Aliens- Dark Descent has squishy suicidal AI. CM has apes who’ve trained themselves for thousands of hours on a single caste. The two games play completely differently.
Better to just go “IFF back, non-IFF front, ,abcd charge”
In thunderdome one time, I was playing UPP and the other side had basic marines, the shutters opened up and they literally rained hellfire upon us because they were all in a musket firing line absolutely killing a Kommando and 2 more UPP
bunched together, less people able to shoot, people in front not able to retreat, bad against queen, bad against boiler, bad against acid runner, bad against caps, friendly fire
Spread out non formation, many able to shoot, able to retreat if needed, good against AOE marines happy because they not shooting eachother, xenos unhappy, nothing they can do
Marines literally exhibit crowd mentality after a few minutes of deployment. What you need to even consider keeping a squad together is discipline. And this is CM where people come to be ungas and shoot shit. No one takes the game that seriously. At least not enough people for a squad to be a proper one in military terms. There’s little fun in that. And I speak of that having played ARMA 3 with a proper squad.
Formations provide no benefit unless its a straight line formation. Reason why people don’t move in sync, try and get 6 people to coordinate pressing forward at the same times multiple times in perfect sync. Challenge impossible.
Observe a couple PvE rounds for formations, they are announced in discord before they happen.
In PvE there are only 10 groundside marines and there are still cases where they can’t keep a proper firing formation.
And competent marines do keep a formation of sorts if it is possible for them, to not step into each other’s line of fire when chasing a xeno so that everyone can shoot at it, usually done by keeping to the sides of the hallway/room/whatever and never moving into the other side.
