Try to be both a coward and fearless. If you’re frontlining, the xenos will generally take note of your playstyle and use that against you. So don’t let them.
When you get Pred WL. Preds take nearly no damage from anything, and can kill everything in just a couple hits.
Or if you get to play Whiteout.
I was pred WL for a little while. Very overrated imo. Preds aren’t actually that strong, their main advantage is their speed. They’re good but only if you can click good. (I can’t.)
Getting robust is primarily due to understanding the game. Don’t get burnt out, and don’t get caught up with wins or losses- that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t care at all, since you won’t get better that way. You need to focus on “How do I win more?” or “How do I frag more?” and think of the situations you might be put in. Some situations, you WILL lose, so you need to learn how to avoid that, and take the fights you win more often then not. That doesn’t mean “Don’t be aggressive”, nor “Don’t be defensive”. Theres times where both are applicable, and you learn to get better at choosing what to do as you get better.
Think about the game outside of the game too. Think “how can I get better, what can I do better next time, what were my mistakes in my last round”. You often won’t know your mistakes until you get enough experience.
If your mindset is “When will I get robust” as opposed to “How do I make myself robust” you probably won’t be getting robust anytime soon. Play both xeno and marine if you don’t… the skills tie hand in hand, and xeno learns a lot of things faster then playing exclusively marine, while marine learns a lot of things faster then playing exclusively xeno.
Some fundamental skills you need to remember and understand (lemme know if i missed any):
- Positioning
This is something primarily learned by experience and putting actual thought into it. The differences between good positioning and bad positioning can win fights before they even begin: Knowing the value of your enemies positioning is also vital here. Learning good positioning lets you win more fights, push easier, and generally help your team more. Winning a fight is not always about getting a kill: it can just be avoiding a fight even, or pushing an enemy back a bit which lets you clear some weeds and open up opportunities.
Your aim is to set up an advantageous state for yourself and your teammates, aswell as a disadvantageous state for your enemies. Or, make your enemy think they have an advantageous state, so that you can get easier frags/caps.
The bonus, if an enemy pushes your good position, (this is what overextending is) you will have a higher likelihood of a kill. It’s not so cut and dry though. If an enemy thinks they have good positioning but they don’t, you can abuse that to get a better position for yourself, and punish the enemy further. If you bait an enemy into a bad position, then you will have better chances in that fight. If it’s a neutral position, then you need to realize what you are able to do in that fight to give your team an advantage.
Learn what you need to value and when. A xeno on low HP can’t fight you, so you can easily take their resin nodes and push them back to a worse position. A sentinel can be an easy kill, or a giant threat, depending on what position you are in and what enemies or amount of enemies you are facing. If theres good terrain, learn how to use that terrain to your advantage to win fights, or play it safe if the enemy can use it better.
Some positions you may not even be noticed until it’s too late: which means it can be very advantageous, and lead to easy kills. You need to look out for this as marine, and always pay close attention to the environment around you, so that you do not get blindsided by xenos. As xeno, you want to melt flares and look for flanks so you can blindside marines easier, ASWELL as try to be aware of what cheese or bait they may be planning.
- Movement
Knowing the movement system is important, since this game RELIES on you knowing it. Utilizing it well lets you dodge slashes, abilities, or bullets (using cover). Skill in movement and prediction of enemy movement helps you in a lot of situations. Movement itself provides valuable CC in the form of bodyblock/bodypush. This works on any caste, and with any marine, and gives you kill opportunities. With xenos, it is VERY useful to know bodypushing, especially as acid runner and other fast castes who can bodypush as fast as they move. For slow castes, it’s still important, but generally more difficult.
Movement can help with PBing too. For PBs, if you move onto a tile next to a xeno, then immediately click their sprite, it can often make PBing easier or more unexpected. The biggest thing to look out for: if a sprite starts moving, that means they are delayed from moving for however long their movespeed is, and they are immediately on that next tile. You get better at looking at this, and you can understand the exact location every person is, and it helps a lot, especially for xeno (all melee strikes). Remember when learning to pb, always aim for the tile next to you… if you do not hit the spriteclick, your gun will not fire, and you will be put on pb delay. However, it’s better then missing your shot entirely, and helps you get better at pbing.
If using a rifle, do NOT do this. You will still fire at almost full speed so long as you hit your spriteclicks in pb range with proper delay (while using burst fire)- but do NOT miss and hit the tile, or it will be terrible for you. At that point you’ll want to move away from the target, since pb delay only stops you from pbing iirc. If you don’t want to risk clicking while on delay, just aim behind the target.
- Spriteclick Accuracy
Depending on who you are fighting, this can be easy, or a nightmare. T3s are generally easy to shoot, t2s and t1s slightly less easy, and fast castes you need to practice because it’s a nightmare. You need to make sure you click intentionally and time your clicks, remember you can always lead your cursor in the direction that your enemy is moving to. If you know their sprite will be there by reading your opponent, you will have a much easier time clicking them. Your own movement can influence where they will go, if they move reactively.
You almost always want to aim for spriteclicks, since it means all your bullets will hit. (when using accurate weapons). Low/medium range weapons (m39, flech mou) you should use in their intended range, to hit the bullets and get full damage.
For certain castes, it’s more important then others. Warrior relies HEAVILY on their positioning and spriteclick accuracy, while acid runner relies on their movement and positioning (since they can use direc slash and that’s generally easier then spriteclicking.).
I’m not a good person to ask about this tho. I can spriteclick often, but I am definitely no warrior main. It really is just about practice. If running in straight lines, you will get spriteclicked extra easily.
- Situational Awareness
Remember the battles you have had, the battles you have won, the battles you shouldn’t take, the battles you should take, and the underlying situation you find yourself in. If you push a warrior choke, expect to get lunged. If you dont get lunged 50% of the time, that’s still a battle you shouldn’t take, since you are lunged 50% of the time. However, if you have fire support, perhaps that chance goes down to 20% or 30%… oftentimes the warrior would even run from that position, since if they lunge, they may get shot.
A good warrior will realize 1 or 2 people is still winnable, since they have tons of escape options after a lunge. To them, it’s a safe play, and leads to either a marine perma, cap, or bonebreak. Bad trade for you, no? If they have teammates nearby, their teammates can bodyshield the warrior or cc non-stunned opponents, and setup a bad day for you as a marine even if you have 3 marines supporting you… unless you stay out of their range. You can almost always use the tools at your advantage to push an enemy, so long as you do it right.
Take a safer approach… if theres a warrior stack, and you cant even think of countering it reliably. You need to push slowly, with heavy support… If you are going to get singled out, then just get out of a dumb position. If you are going to put yourself in a worse position, that means you need to ensure the position is secure before pushing further. If you hellpush and die, you accomplish nothing. If you figure out the situations where you can hellpush and win though, you can give a great advantage to your team. If you don’t trust your teammates to help you, but you trust yourself to help your teammates, then let them push.
If you think you have downtime, that means you are not doing enough. Slash that resin wall, hold that advantageous position, try and learn where the xenos are, harass that annoying xeno, rotate to a different point of interest, help that marine push, or even slash the weeds to just take that slight win. That doesn’t mean always be taking fights… It just means look for and take the free advantages that xenos give up. Opportunity cost is important.
Some situations are unwinnable as you are just a single cog in the machine, but that doesn’t mean you have nothing to learn from them. Xenos inherently snowball the more they kill, which makes it a lot more difficult for marines, and thus you have to put your skills to the test to try and bring back a game. That’s why you should always be aiming to bring back bodies when possible.
Limit test. This helps you get more skilled, and helps you learn faster.
- Spatial Awareness (of your allies, and your enemies)
Knowing where your enemy is (or where they aren’t) let’s you push easier. To practice this, play with and without motion detector. If you push an area and have no clue what enemies are there, that’s a spatial awareness issue. If you have no clue what weapons your allies are using, the skill level of your allies, where your allies are in relation to you, that’s often a spatial awareness issue. Ties directly with positioning, since you will often want a safer position in order to push easier.
If you know an enemy is on the other side of the map or even a battle, you have a better picture of the overall battlefield, and know where best to push.
Sometimes you will get no easy knowledge. (ie: a warrior stack just evolves, or you just land and have no clue if theres a warrior stack, lurker gang, etc). In that case, you may want to do the move you think is best for the worst case situation, or figure out how best to gain information just to comfort you and your allies. Flares are amazing for this. Motion detector too.
Check the backlines… if you see or hear of lurkers and people going missing, that means backlines needs more support. If backlines don’t get support there, the backline is fulfilling their win condition, and can easily start to target medics or people going to FOB for surgery, which leads to everyone on the front being bonebroken, dying, or dead, which means death of the front eventually. just NEVER give backliners that easy win condition. It’s genuinely an instant fallback from front situation, unless the front is going exceedingly well. Good backliners will try their hardest to fulfill this win condition- so it will be a second front you have to worry about. Bad or new backliners will be rooted out easily if the marines try.
Check the front… if theres body piles, often that means a loss unless you can push and recover bodies. You need to figure out how much of a risk you can take, and how you can ease that tension a bit, since you and your team often NEED to put yourself in that sort of situation to save the game in order to win the game.
If theres a dancer, berserker, crusher, etc. Expect people to get bonebroken often. Those castes have absurdly high bonebreak rates with minimal effort… If theres a boiler, focus on dodging the globs and countering glob pushes. If there’s a queen, dodge the screes when possible, and let the people infront bait the screech so that you can push the queen. If noone baits the screech, the queen will be able to have free reign with pushing, since everyone will run away the second they hear stomps. If medics are bad, people need to actively support the medics, otherwise that’s a strong win condition for xenos. A fallback may be necessary if medics start piling up bodies, or marines start piling up bonebreaks.
- Game Knowledge (know how to use everything in your arsenal)
Practice with the guns you use. If you use a mk2 and can’t shoot for shit, then you need to get good. If you use a m37 buckshot and cant pb, then get good. Try handicapping yourself with a m39: at first you may think “THIS SUCKS” but then you’ll slowly start to realize how much different it is from your normal gun, and how you can’t even use it the same. If you can kill with a m39, you can kill with a mk2, since the mk2 is generally better in every situation. Learn the situations the m39 is good in, the situations the m39 sucks, etc etc. Learn gun mechanics (like pb), learn the enemy, learn how your teammates play around you. Find the loadout you love most and figure out how best you can use it to help your team (or in order to have fun. This is a videogame, after all).
ALL guns can be used to your advantage. It’s your job to figure out HOW to use it, and learn how not to grief your team in the process. Ofcourse, if you aren’t using a rifle (mk2, m4ra, etc) in your loadout, you need to realize that this game is a LOT harder when dealing with falloff. When in doubt, take a rifle for every situation. Other guns are very situational.
Even using your armor correctly is up to you. If you have medium or above armor, generally you’re going to want to go get surgery for bonebreaks everytime you get one since the slowdown is very debilitating. This is the cost for less bonebreaks overall, since FF is the greatest source of bonebreaks, and is what that armor protects from the most. However, if you have light armor, you will be slowed down less, and can be on the battlefield with one or two bonebreaks without being at a huge disadvantage… Generally you will still want surgery though, since having splints come undone is really bad in combat, and is often not worth the risk.
This isn’t something you learn over one round- its something you learn as you play a lot. You get cleaner gameplay as you learn your favorite loadout, and a lot of these skills become more obvious to you even if you don’t understand what you are doing. Learn more loadouts as you get better. Get better at spriteclicking by playing warrior. Get better at movement by playing acid runner or marine. Etc etc. It’s all up to you, and there’s a hell of a lot of content in this game for you to explore.
Some people misapply their knowledge and think “Oh we’ve already lost”. and just throw out their brains. You need to always try to win, even in the worst case scenario- if that means relying on Mortars, CAS, etc, then do that. Do the most you can do with your current skill level, and you’ll get better, and you’ll learn more about the game, even as you are losing. Take permadeath as an opportunity to get better. Take nerfs as a challenge, and see if they’re really as bad as they feel.
And don’t forget you can just close the game if you are not enjoying it… a lot of things in this game are frustrating, annoying to fight, etc. and taking a break will help you untilt. You can always cryo midround, or ghost as a xeno. Sometimes it will give you a better perspective on why you have such a hard time dealing with that threat. You can even spectate your greatest enemies or the players who you think are the best at the game, and learn their playstyles to help you improve.
tldr: get good. guh, i rambled.
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Play both xeno and marine
HARD DISAGREE, DO NOT TRUST THIS CONTROLLED XENO OPERATIVE
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you cant just uproot the evil xenomorph like that…
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You get “robust” when other people start saying you are I guess. People think A. A. ‘Gramps’ Silverton is robust when I am trash at combat but I know engineering and recklessly gamble to retrieve bodies or decon stuff.
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Very true.
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You get “robust” when you finally get your name on the end of round leaderboard. Easiest way to do that is to either torture give medics a job by constantly getting yourself killed, or to play medic and steal everyone’s defib (they totally won’t mind it when you wordlessly drag their near-perma patients away from them)!
In all seriousness, I wouldn’t worry too much about being “robust”. It’s cool and all, but as long as you play to a level you’re satisfied with, that’s all anyone can ask of you. Remember, this is a game. They’re meant to be fun, so make it!
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Very good point. Look the honest answer is as he said, do not worry. This is a 2d Spaceman game running on a 20 year old engine. Their is no cash prize for being number 1. Honestly, being competent is more important than being robust.
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Idk, aiming to get robust can be fulfilling if you are a perfectionist or enjoy the game enough… But yeah- There’s no point in worrying about it so long as you are enjoying the game…
The main way I see robust is “Are they hard to fight, if you are the xeno?”. Very skilled players are way more difficult, since they have enough experience to at minimum, turn a fight around, and often, counter-frag.
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Incorrect. The CIA has offered me $10,000 to become the #1 CM player. (They’re onto you guys)
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I am ungovernable.
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robustness is like the Lego movie, you learn to be a master builder and make anything you have into the best quality thing it can be
also reading player made guides like Responsibilities of the Hive can help just an example 
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(the best quality weapons are toolboxes)
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Someone should really add robusto toolboxes having the same effect as buckshot, toolboxing benos to death would be so cool and robust
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I disagree to your disagreement.
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I’ve been playing since 2016 and im not robust, just enjoy the ride gamer
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Play as FTL and coordinate mortar and CAS. Or pick up some of the spec support roles when the opportunity arises, both give you the opportunity to be more of an observer and still provide combat support, especially the spotter role.
You got to remain vigilant of skirmishing Xenos and the mobbing frontline Xenos and be in the position where the skirmishing xenos are buffered by your surrounding marines and you are in a good position to laze or snipe from to assault the mobbing frontline xenos.
And if you’re still getting murdered use the zoom feature as a spectator and observe how each faction interacts and the notable players on each side.
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You are robust at breaking your hip.
OP, in all seriousness, robustness may not be for you
If you cant be robust the next best option is to be infamous.
Ducky, Windhealer, Beck, Chad Pollard, Gramps, Greg and his speechs; that one fucking guy who lisps all the time; ADHD and his dumb tunnels… I am not sure all or any of them are great at the game.
They are just memorable as fuck. Forget robust and go for memorable
I dont care or remember Gramps for his xeno kills… i remember him for our verbal, physical, and sometimes homicidal sparring matchs we have everytime we interact.
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