The ungaball was never something marines chose to do - we’ve tried for years to split squads and have just alpha hold one spot or charlie on another, we’ve tried flanks and maneuvers - it did work to some degree years ago but xenos have gotten stronger since.
Trying to look at it from the perspective of systems (or systemic incentive) and not individual balance cases:
Asymmetric scaling
Small squads need to be more efficient than large blobs.
An already existing design implementation of this is friendly fire - it’s the reason only 5 people in the ungaball can fight at once as the rest can’t shoot through their team mates. So a small squad of 5 marines is maximally combat effective and utilizes their combat width efficiently.
The problem is that a small squad scales worse when it comes to logistics, pushing, and especially, casualties. The medic can’t get people up any faster or safer than in an ungaball, the squad can’t resupply any faster or safer than in an ungaball, and a small squad of marines is not meaningfully harder to detect than the ungaball is.
This is the core problem - Asymmetric scaling - to resolve to make small squads useful
Map Objectives
I think this is an element that could help - 5-8 objectives on the map that marines want to secure; we sort of have this in some ways, but it’s not really formalized. Comms and Sensors are good examples, and in some maps we have medical/surgery tables, or access locks with turrets. Small things like this give marines a reason to spread out, but the current inability of small groups to hold ground has made small objectives untenable to hold/bother with.
When it comes to specific cases of asymmetric scaling, I’m really struggling with ideas that are going to help a small squad more than an ungaball.
What I can think of:
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Universal defibs - Anyone can use defibs, but the effective drugs, surgeries, etc. still relies on the medic. This would enable a small squad to keep themselves going even if their medic is killed, but without making the whole squad into medics.
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Replenishable sentries - Something an engineer can put down to buy time/safety and which can be abandoned without severe cost. It helps improve squad strength/resilience without adding people. Just let the engineer replace lost sentries or recover and repair them instead of permanently losing them.
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Resupply drops - I think this is planned anyway? Something like a small limited drop pod for certain supplies that can be called down like the ASAB (or w/e) beacon on whiskey outpost.
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Squad Leader passive Aura - As long as the squad leader is close by, everyone in the squad has a passive buff to endurance or accuracy or something.
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Throwable IFF mines - Something like an incendiary mine that you can just toss and it’ll auto-trigger when a xeno comes close. Add IFF so if a marine is next to it, then it wont trigger. This would make it more effective/dangerous when fighting a small group that might hide a bunch of them around the room, whereas ungaball it’ll never trigger because there’s too many marines.
Basically just trying to think of things that will help a small squad more than it’ll help an ungaball.