Hello hello people, happy holiday season.
I’ve been remembering the jolly times of what the squads used to be and decided to share a few of my tales/experiences/perceptions, feel free to add to the thread with your own. I want to make sure I’m not the only delusional one.
Squad Designation/ my own nicknames for them:
Alpha - Main force/Competent squad - Alpha Ambushers
Bravo - FOB squad, that if not put on FOB will - Bravo Builders
Charlie - Frontline squad/ Last supper squad - Sour grapes / Charlie Chargers
Delta - Designated Suicide Squad/ Highest Lethality squad - Delta Dare Devils
Echo - Actual special snowflake squad/Signal of a marine or xeno steamroll - Echo Specialists
Foxtrot - The bench squad/ usually 5 or 10 people, the precursor to O/K - Foxtrot Bench Sitters
Kilo - The first of two ASS squads/ Backline dedicated squad - Kilo Killers
Oscar - The second squad/ Flanking squad major - Oscar Outlaws
Delta and Charlie’s banter in my personal memory has always been dedicated to them being sat right across one from the other, different to Delta-Alpha Banter.
Delta-Alpha banter comes from two facts: Both are frontline squads and both are usually together and get to take the piss out of eachother.
As a Deltard in my heart and soul I would always play into the idea that Delta was the UNGA squad while Alpha was the Planning squad. There was teasing of how they didn’t respond in time to something or exploited the push, and they would tease us about how we got baited into a trap and almost wiped five to six times a day. It was fun banter, we would often compete to who would kill the most xenos/ targets.
I do miss the Delta hivemind a bit, because some of the more experienced players did stop playing a while ago so there isn’t as much of a “we’re silently communicating between us with stares.“ but it is still there and slowly recovering. People would see you with an m2c and join you in shooting xenos in a line, they would see a marine alone pushing and push with, recover bodies.
Bravo is the cool squad that I in the past had some prejudice against and played into that by saying they would sit on their asses watching the frontline fight as they made tea and biscuits, that was until I started SL’ing for bravo and using bravo as a QRF, saving a few frontlines in the process. Then I found out that bravo has one of the more experienced and fearless players around.
That was when we didn’t get told by CIC to push some random place and got ourselves wiped in a whimsy “OH LOOK A WARRIOR, KILL KILL KILL.“ which I am about as guilty of as making fun of.
Alpha is the standard experience/squad, they feel a bit vanilla but also feel like one of the more competent squads in following orders. They also house quite a lot of experienced players who chose the squad for life.
Roleplaying in both delta and alpha is pretty much only ever around pre-drop because they are the squads that really get punished if a speech bubble pops around their heads. This is still my favourite guide because of the funny little tale it tells, which is hauntingly real.
I do think that macros are important/funny but I don’t think people have the time or liberty to roleplay while down in the frontline, That’s why Bravo and Charlie have the more “HRP” air to them, they get downtime. Plus some people on delta and alpha likely just don’t like to get attached to people because they will die in 5 seconds flat by a warrior/lurker.
I do often roleplay with delta and alpha pre drop when I get shoved into their squads. I love the people in Delta very dearly because they do look out for the others and take care of their own squad. Every time we got a private I’d comment on it and get someone to babysit them.