Quoting Mithrix from Risk of Rain “Speed, speed is war”
Joking aside, if you’re a medic and you’re not taking M4 what are you doing with your life?
Edit: As for the guy above me, I hate people like you as a medic. if you got over 6+ fracts and you’re not a spec/SL you’re going up
As a plat medal medic I’m ashamed at the fact that only now I’ve learned of this way of handling shitty patients
If they don’t want to go, don’t force it.
If you don’t want to go back to fob or up to the ship and stop being a burden to the front line, I wont fix you anymore. and waste my splints
the people who have a fuckton of broken bones are the ones usually not cadehugging/fragging the xenos by going deep and not fearRPing
you shouldnt complain about them since they’re the ones trying to win the game for you.
Yeah, that’s cool and all, but all that light armor movement tech goes out the window when both your legs are broken and splinted and your moving slower than a dude with heavy armor and just instantly die again when they throw themselves into the choke. Unable to move fast enough to dodge the rav that’s about to rip half their splints off and kill em again.
There is a point where John Robosto becomes a burden to deal with just as much as Jane Cadehugger and Frank Fluoridestare
Movement is not a thing when you are CQCing even with light armor. Some xenos even prime underestimate how much DPS 1-2 marines can do in CQC and drop dead within 2-4 seconds.
A marine with 2 broken legs pushing has still more kill potential than the cadehuggers.
They do, but they should get that splinted, or ideally, fixed. ESPECIALLY if they’re wearing medium armor. You sacrifice a lot of game impact by not being speedy because you’re forced into an extremely slow, predictable, defensive playstyle with slower armors - you are much less likely to catch anyone off guard, force a win, or successfuly zone an enemy if they have hours in the game because your positions are inherently much weaker and easier to take advantage of (unless you hit a PB on a t1/t2, or hold a position that is already really strong for you and can only really be fought by waiting for you to leave it).
The game opens up a lot once you learn to fix every frac, and dodge every xeno attack that fracs when possible. And the only reason medium armor gives you less xeno fracs in general is because it forces you to play really slow - FF fracs are just an annoying part of life and symptom of working with inexperienced teammates. But if you’re primarily fighting xenos and not your team, light armor becomes much more worthwhile because it doesn’t sacrifice the strength of your positions and even if you get fracced, at least it doesn’t slow nearly as much as a frac in medium/heavy. You still move much faster then heavy/medium with 1 splinted frac then you would just running medium/heavy without splinted fracs - and if you get a splinted frac as medium/heavy you lose much more speed then a splinted frac in light, you become almost completely useless outside of PB kills and have to get it surgerized immediately (altho with light, you also want to get splinted fracs surgerized immediately anyway). For those who rely on PB kills to win, it’s kinda viable since you kinda rely on the enemy approaching to pb them anyway and EOD/B12 draws xenos towards u bcus u move slower, but for those who just use Mk2 mostly or MOU, you lose kill pressure by playing in a predictable way and are very easy to take advantage of - you aren’t as capable of making the plays anymore, your team is. But, it’s not necessary to zone quickly, just zone safely, so there is viability in b12/heavy there too.
It’s like a pawn with a gun (heavy armor) vs a rook with a gun (light armor). Sure you both have guns, but that doesn’t change how much harder it is to maintain your distance and attack/support from good positions and most importantly react swiftly to changes in the battlefield.
I’ve been meaning to write a full guide about this someday. But the gist of it is there are kinda three different frontline playstyles in CM.
First, lets start with the light armor playstyle. Those are the people I’d call jagers or hunters. And those are the very same people that would usually get most kills on the marine side. If you play that way, you wear light armor, have your MD and binos and carefully avoid any substantial risks. You basic plan is setting up ambushes on xenos when they overextend in some way. At it’s most basic it’s just standing there in the 2nd line and counter-charging whenever you see a vulnerable xeno. If there’s none you do nothing and preserve your ammo. Obviously there’s a lot more to this playstyle, which I’m not going to get deeper into here.
Now, the second playstyle is your generic line infantry. At the most basic it’s holding your sector of the line. You’re gonna use a lot ammo, get injured quite a bit and not score anywhere close to as many kills as the first guy. And ideally you want to follow whenever command leads and SL goes, because those are the hotspot areas and someone always has to plug the holes there. It’s kind of a thankless job, but someone still has to do it. If marine line infantry can’t hold the line, marines lose. The jagers won’t. They’re just gonna evac and go cryo. Here, mobility is not as important, and you’re gonna get screeched a bit or get grabbed in all sorts of ways, so the best armor here is arguable.
The third playstyle is assault infantry. Or what we used to call “vanguards”. Those are the people who specialize on breaching and fighting in chokes. If you thought the previous job was thankless, here’s something even worse. There’s a lot of overlap with line infantry, but there can be a bit of specialization too in terms of your kit. Now, in chokes you naturally have a very limited mobility - you often can’t run back much, because the guy covering you is blocking(hopefully he’s at least gonna cover you), you can’t dodge stuff like warrior grabs much, most of the time you shouldn’t dodge perpendicularly because you’re gonna compromise the firing lines of other people. So you have to expect to inevitably take quite a few slashes. And here the heavier armors can keep you in one piece for say 3 breaching attempts instead of 1.
Cool, so it still narrows down to “Jagers” getting light armor and everyone else getting B12. I almost feel kind of dirty praising B12, because I have a gut feeling that all of those praises will somehow nerf the armor, with outright removal from PFC vendor being an option.
There more so Four different kinds of frontline playstyles. yes you are correct in the first three, Jagers, line and vanguards. But there is forth one that being the screen or skirmishers. You likely ether didn’t notice there existence or simply lumped them in with the Jagers as they are quite similar in many respects.
The Skirmishers usually are the lads you see on the main frontline wearing no armor/ or light pushing forward the line.
They as the name implies skirmishes. They take point on the parts of the map that are open and light the way with flares and clear weeds. what makes them different from the Jagers is that they don’t wait for the xenos to overextend but instead move in for a quick slap and rush back to main line to draw the xenos in allowing the Jagers to rush the xeno.
They serve two main rolls First off they deny xenos healing by forcing them to fight and secondly they take out weeds farther into the xenos line.
Again the reason you likely mixed them with the jagers is that there loadouts are mutually compatible for the most part. So most the time the same player that act as Jagers also tend to act like skirmishers depending on the circumstances… so i guess you could say the are the same kind of troop but acting with their roll differently. One being more proactive while the other being reactive.
Anywho this happens to be the Roll i mostly play other then as Vanguard… hence why like ether no armor or Medium armor( B12).
But you forgot the siiixth type of infantry, light armor users that alternate grabbing corpses and screen medics, doing cpr, and stripping armor.
Speed is no longer king unfortunately and a while ago it was viable to wear service jackets to go even faster
One thing light armor has is increased acid protection but that’s it
A good alternative is the M4
Speed isn’t necessary for playing well, but speed makes it much easier to kill xenos.
Knowing when to go for the kill is almost all gamesense (knowing when the xeno player fucked up or is vulnerable, calculating that the reward (potentially eliminating an enemy player) is worth the risk (being capped/perma’d)).
Most things simply factor INTO gamesense-
E.g. competent fragger teammates massively decrease the risk and boost the reward by a lot, recognising the signs of overextension by xenos, mechanical knowledge, etc.
Now, having good gamesense is great, but when it comes to actually executing your decisions, you’re still limited mechanically. Your gamesense might tell you that you WILL kill a xeno if you chase, but how are you going to chase if you’re slower than the xeno?
How will you crit them if you’re too slow to keep up?
Will you catch them resting in time?
Is the risk-reward worth it when your chances of chasing and killing are lower, while your odds of failing to run away from an unfavourable situation rise?
Having high speed makes you much deadlier in offensive situations where your enemy isn’t really in much shape to fight 1v1. Heavy does not. It increases your TTK so you have more time to eliminate your target, but imo raising your TTK is irrelevant 50% of the time when the enemy team can just tackle and cap you, and also has multiple stun abilities in their arsenal. Being tanky helps, but not as much as speed does. I value heavy more due to the fact that it reduces attrition by a lot, e.g. less fractures, IB, etc.
Armour gives value when you take damage. However, it gives a lot of value when you do.
Speed gives value because it lets you prevent situations where you take damage, while also opening new situations to remove enemy players.
Point being, light armour is far from essential and a good player will frag no matter what armour they choose: but overall, light armour helps more than medium or heavy re: eliminating enemy players. Pick whatever suits your playstyle, but honestly imo any armour is ‘good’ except for medium, which was designed to be mediocre. (seriously, don’t take the M3, just take B12 at that point)
I’d argue, against competent players speed (especially as rifleman, who has no way to improve their mobility), speed is still so so vital. You lose a lot of punish game and positional superiority by not having speed - a good offense is the best defense after all. Plus, speed on its own is a good defense. If your enemy is far too pressured to respond they simply cannot fight back. And you have full freedom of when to engage and disengage and thus effectively, enemy cannot leverage low ttks or high dmg ability combos thus you live longer while you can choose when to attack and try to kill and pressure and stuff, which is defensive positional superiority and is probs the most common and necessary types of positional superiority in this game.
But also because most players suck, the TTK improvement does help maintain higher consistency in gameplay output. Defensive, low-impact playstyles don’t have as high game impact - and are very easy to take advantage of given enough experience. However, if the thing that matters most is not dying and just being a consistent additive threat (especially as a new or high ping player) then TTK improvement is probably better over time because it lowers your odds of loss even if your gains are less. But without taking reins and controlling impact yourself aswell - while your little piece is more consistent, everyone else will fail to create impact too on average. Your winrate will even out to 50%/50% winrates instead of say, 55% marine winrate or higher, and it will be much more difficult to increase this winrate the less you play to make that difference yourself. But if you were a new or high ping player, your winrate with light armor might be like 40% marine winrate, but your heavy would be 50%.The less skill you have the more you gain, the more skill you have the more you lose
However, I think light still adds a lot more TTK improvement then medium/heavy even with minimal experience, and massively improves winrate with minimal effort. Simply being able to space xenos as you said, feels much more important then being able to tank a few more slashes - the cases you die by slashes are usually in backline or in groupfights - which both benefit greatly from improved speed (although less so in backline small fights, you can run b12 and SMG for example and catch frags on backline benos 1v1 given all the necessary factors to do so). B12/EOD is also useful against warriors, who may not be able to kill you instantly with their combo (although they’ll probably still frac) which is great with things like SMG (especially with ap ammo) which has VERY low ttk on warrior. I think small, effective HP ttk improvements CAN change kill threshholds on things like combos - which means you have a chance at a comeback, and thus can be very strong in the right circumstance. Against runners, acid runners, lurkers, and warriors it’s useful against all of them. But would you live longer and better on average tanking that, or running from that? When it gets to groupfights, the effective HP that may make a 4 second ttk into a 5 second ttk, turns into a 2 second ttk into a 2.5 second ttk - because the more dmg someone deals (and in the case of groupfights, its multiplicative of the number of enemies slashing you) which means the high hp matters less as your ttk gain from hp is proportional not additive
I think b12 and EOD teaches a lesson to marines that playing defensive, supportive, and focused on making good positional plays are vital to success as marine. Light armor will give better results irregardless, but may also crutch players on learning these things, which if they tried to learn the game using b12 and EOD would later make their playstyle in light armor even stronger and harder to fight.
People don’t understand how speed works. The problem is the formula of the movement delay. You are able to move only if next_move < world.time where next_move = last_move + movement_delay, movement_delay is base movement delay plus all the modifiers. Sounds simple right? But here is the catch: world.time updates only every half a tick. While modifiers can be less than half a tick. This is why there is no visible difference between running medium and heavy armor. They both fall in the same threshold, in the same half a tick. To make a difference you need to get more modifiers, like weeds, bonebreaks, weild delay etc. M4 is a decent armor, for example, and I personally pick it every time because of armor slots for mags. But as soon as you get your leg fracced, you become a literal snail, because it brings you to the next half a tick so to speak. While in light armor you still keep decent speed in most circumstances. Nonetheless, heavy armor is actually a good pick. Just you will kinda have to get surgery as soon as you get a bonebreak or two, while with light armor you can still be effective with a few fracs.
I would even say a blasphemous thing, but I feel like chasing speed is a bit overrated aside from some situations and weapons. You do absolutely need speed with some cqc guns like m39 (but probably not that much for m37, as you don’t try to catch up with runners, you wait for them to get to you). But with m41a chasing is not that crucial, in most fights you only get like 1-2 extra tiles of movement from wearing a lighter armor. Off-screen damage is actually broken, so just keeping shooting after the enemy escaped your screen will net you almost the same result. Also most xenos are not that fast and you can keep with them even in heavy armor off-weeds. So it’s really about what playstyle you prefer, and what enemy you are put against.
Probably another thing to consider, is the more you are dying, the more pressure you put on medics. If medics get overwhelmed, the front is very likely to collapse. So investing in your survivability might be even more valuable. I’d like to see a round where everyone takes heavy armor and becoming free caps.
B12 best armor don’t even @ me
Personally i’ve used medium armour the most because I still remember the good old days of there not being light nor heavy armours. It was the most sovl choice. But I have recently made the change to heavy armour, and I realized that medium was the completely wrong choice.
Medium armour seemingly offers no benefits at all other than an extra armour inventory slot, not really that useful. I once coped a bit by justifying my use saying that it has better burn protection, but I don’t even know if that’s true anymore. I remember that you’d trip over acid in light armour but not medium, which was useful for me.
Light armour is great for chasing and running away, but one lurker pounce and you die. You won’t be able to chase anything after you get 3 fractures anyways. On the frontline you’re usually bogged down and just wait for xenos to overextend, so what use is your speed there. Try to run in there to secure a kill and you may get a kill, but you also end up with a broken body.
Heavy armour… for some reason it has the same speed as medium armour, and way better protection. You get less fractures, and you can survive lurker pounces, which means that if the lurker is stupid you get up and PB them, then finish them off with the m41. In light armour you would probably be keeled over from pain due to a million fractures. Same goes for medium if the lurker was lucky. It’s good for backline duty and doing mostly solo stuff, which I personally quite end up doing.
Leave zoomers to their light armour so they can zoom around. In the end, fragging is more about clicking the evil aliens and gamesense, knowing when to punish T3s when they overextend. Heavy armour makes you look buff too, so you can look more menacing.
I have no idea about EOD or B12.
Yeah it’s why everything that isn’t medium armour is good
Medium armour is ass and offers less to the table than heavy- In a vacuum (I.e. no fracs, no weeds, etc.) heavy and medium movement speed is basically the same.
Light is so fast that you can still chase and frag even with a busted leg, whilst heavy hug boxes you by reducing the number of fracs you get on average for the same damage taken.
Ultimately imo I am still of the opinion that light armour is still the best defensive choice as well, because speed is the only thing that saves you from being capped (whether by failure to evade or screech) outside of DPS checking every xeno (goodluck) or killing yourself (cringe but selling your soul is worth having more fun)
Imo B12 > M4 since I never really needed that extra inventory space anyway
Just as much as you do in any other standard marine armor if lurker is aiming bodyparts that your armor doesn’t cover, which is feet and hands. The rest is pure RNG. It is almost just as easy to give 3 fractures to marine in heavy armor as it is to marine in light armor. Only that in heavy/B12 armor you won’t get those fracs as easily in places that hurt more to be fraced, like chest, or groin.
Medium armor has “medium” melee armor, while heavy has “mediumhigh”. This isn’t “way better protection”, it is barerly better protection against xenos. Internal damage protection similarly is only one “tier” higher. It is “way better” against 0-5 AP bullets, but against any AP it isn’t different from wearing light armor.
EOD is just new (not that new, but the most recent) name for heavy armor after rework that gave it better bullet and bomb protection. As mentioned previously, you fare a bit better against no AP bullets and if FFed by HEDP, xenos have a free cap from you in heavy armor instead of dying in light armor and getting revived 30 seconds later. B12 is just a medium armor with heavy armor melee armor and heavy armor internal damage protection on top.