They are the worst squad. They:
on top of that, if echo gets a objective to do something and xenos find out about it, they are all perma for command
it suffers from the same thing as flankers
also their RP comes down to „good soldiers follow orders” as they PB someone they dont like
All of these are true except the color scheme.
Honestly, the fact that the IO team isn’t Echo is beyond me. They’re a squad you can insert people into that has a green motif and would realistically and understandably have a different objective than the rest of the marines.
Recolor Intel Squad to that tasty mint green and let the ASO sort them out.
Can hardly believe I’m agreeing with Shacker but yeah, Echo eats into command attention, particularly on low-mid pop hours and only applies further pressure on the CIC
In my mind, echo fills a exceptionally niche role of giving command the ability of another squad to roll out with their own objectives should there be enough people to form said squad. That being said, foxtrot already fills this role and adds more onto it with a specialist + Squad lead that you did not have to take from other squads to make.
In all honesty, outside of a super niche/high pop thing, its practically useless outside of super specific situations.
Like:
Extra marines for bodyguarding CO when he deploys?
But MPs are already typically good enough unless there’s only one MP awake, which then MAYBE might work but lacking a tracker for CO will severely hinder them.
Perhaps telecom defense?
Bravo already handles it pretty well 9/10. so it often doesn’t warrant taking from the 4 squads to form a 5th squad for them to simply sit around.
Maybe flanking marines?
typically far too few marines in echo to make any difference in a flank unless the xenomorphs were already on the backfoot and can’t repel 6 marines without specialist/SG. Better to just assign one full squad like Charlie or delta to a flank rather than scrape together a mishmash of a squad to do it.
Intel squad?
Intel already has a squad, of which you can transfer marines to. Forming echo simply for intel does not make any sense.
JTAC gang?
This is the only viable option, of which you could probably attach a open SO (you can sometimes find a 5th SO on high pop) and a small squad to attach them. But outside of this, JTAC operations are typically not a super high priority and the marines typically work this out already so its’ just wasted time forming said squad.
All in all, What is the point of the ability to form echo? I honestly would need to find the test merge/PR that allowed that change to really know why it was made an option. But I suppose the more the merrier??
Intel already got the ability to be made into a squad a while back
thespy says it all. Echo is a super-niche tool. I’d not be sad if it was removed, but I don’t see a huge pressing need to remove it, I’ve personally never witnessed Echo be abused for anything, and frankly I’ve not actually witnessed anyone being put into Echo squad in a long time.
I think there’s a tremendous amount of RP potential and chances to utilize unusual tactics with Echo squad. I hope we don’t see it leave us.
I have a couple of ideas in mind that I would like to try out with them someday!
However, I hope we don’t see people continue to get upset and cause issues IC and OOC over it.
Niche, as said above
I’ve used Echo a couple of times as command, formed midround out of people needed for that task rather than a preset of professional buddies, when there were enough resources and reason to manage and command them, and they did just fine, like any other squad
The real issue isn’t Echo itself as a concept. It’s the problem players who claim ownership of/belonging to the squad. The few times I gave them the benefit of the doubt and formed their squad roundstart they ignored my only condition of fulfilling their assigned niche or ignored all orders in favor of running around the map and providing free caps and wasting limited slots and equipment that could’ve been used for the fun of players who were less toxic
Just ban the professional buddies stirring this month’s flavor of CM drama soup and boom, Echo won’t be complained about anymore
I honestly think there is nothing wrong with echo existing. and furthermore i never saw it be abused. Why would you remove something that works L O L
I did tag this as acid goop.
Generally I still don’t like echo, but as spear mentioned the issue is generally problem players who don’t even do the actual objective they were entrusted with.
Word for word the scenario of me giving them the benefit of the doubt happened twice in a row both times I used them. One time an SO - who I imagine was also a metabuddy of some of the squad - insisted he will watch them from the bravo console. They wiped within 5 minutes of deploy anyway. Just never used them again after that, instead opting to use a regular squad - usually the smallest pop one - for niche objectives instead.
Only thing I could see Echo being used for, round-after-round, is transferring say, half of Bravo into it at roundstart.
Note: I’m a fobbitmain.
The reason for this, is because we already lose half of Bravo at the start, because people ditch the FOB/comms duty to go to the front. So, if we transfer them, Bravo’s SL gets a slightly less bad headache, Bravo’s SO gets a lessened headache, Bravo as a whole gets a lessened headache, because now they don’t have to worry about “Where the fuck is half the squad?”
Anytime I’ve rolled XO and was asked to activate Echo for whatever reason I’ve done it simply because I like the color green and if putting a marine inside of Echo makes them happy and elevates their round then I’m happy to do it.
However setting up Echo in any capacity is 90% of the time a marine nerf unless the entire squad is a meta gang and is working together on discord. It’s a million times better to simply inflate and make the intel squad robust by giving the IOs dedicated babysitters. The vast majority of XO/SO never even use the :e radio channel and just continue spamming ,abcd Charge leaving Echo in the dark even when they have direct objectives to be doing.
I’ve had some Echo squads follow orders given and ask for objectives, really put in effort into being helpful/useful, getting downed marines, going for back line sensor tower/pylons etc and straight up push marines to victory.
I’ve also had some Echo squads form up and deploy, never to say another message over the radio again and disregard all all orders and announcements.
Echo all in all is a great concept, I’ve had plenty of fantastic rounds where Echo was around and am entirely against removing it. However clearly there are some people that have more or less come to the conclusion they are unable to have fun unless they are in the squad and if someone denies them that privilege then they turn against command which has kind of made itself shown in some player reports recently.
This is what they are meant for.
Personally i want to do echo FORECON rip off (i make them into the paradrop squad)
Deny echo, move on.
Lions do not care about the opinions of sheep.gif
I think the proof you need to remove echo is in the report the echo metagang used against Caroline. They twisted every possible option to try and get him in trouble because their precious squad got denied. Wahh wahh wahh holy fuck echo players are so pretentious. The amount of times I’ve had dudes like Caleb blood worth or whatever his name is join as a spec/sg, demand to be put into echo, told no I don’t put specs/SGs in echo, and then immediately cryo (and presumably mald in dchat) is insane.
These dudes need to have their egos checked and if they’re not going to police themselves then the squad should just be removed. This isn’t a new issue either, I love you thwomp, but holy fuck it was the same shit when he was leading the echo cord back in 2022 when echo got added.
I agree with Dross. I see green, I am happy. Keep Echo in.
Keep the squad but enforce standards.
Colonial marines drama strikes again
To this day I remember my echo squad that I asked CIC to make. It was a round on Hybrisa and I wanted to do a random drop but I didn’t have a reason why. So I decided that I will make a suicide squad whos reason was to fix and hold sensors. I was playing as an FTL and I just phoned the XO to make swap me to echo and send a message that echo is recruiting under my name. I got about 5 folks and then I closed the draft. I explained to them our mission and that our survival chances are slim. After I made them my personal brief we went to req for chutes. We explained what we will be doing to the GP so he would understand what to do. Our plan was that I will random drop and after I drop down I pop a green flare and the rest of my squad drops on my position. From that point we moved into caves and looked for sensors. Sadly xenos made a hive right next to sensors so we had to bail. We lost only one guy on that mission and gained a lot of intel while standing up to the RP standards. Echo squad is a gimmick squad that is made when someone wants to do something risky but sending an actual squad to do that might get them wiped and the OP fucked.
Keep the green devils in.
pros of echo:
if a bunch of people that are actually good at the game form this, you’ll have a squad that can win the game
cons:
everything else
