Squad Leading 101
"Alright, alpha, we’re pushing nort- wait, where is everyone? Is my squad only made of 5 people? Space Jesus Christ did they all get kidnapped? Where did everything go wrong?"
You might have found yourself in that case, wanting to be a charismatic leader and either ending up as one of the first squad casualties or just as lost as every other member of your squad.
This guide is here to teach YOU how to become the squad leader you've always dreamt to be.
Gear & Features
The squad leader has access to a lot of unique gear contrary to every other squad roles, larger pouches, unique weapon kits and even direct access to the fabled MOU53. Truth is, mix and match, pick things depending on how you like to play. A few things of note are:
- Cheaper specialized magazines (AP, extended)
- Medical skill of 1, letting him use auto-injectors instantly (good to pair with the Auto-injector pouch)
- Free B12 pattern marine armor, one of the more robust piece of armor available to all marines
- Cheap access to the whistle, take it, you will see why later.
You have a unique "leading skill", that may be transferred to whoever is given the acting SL role; those allow you to use several abilities for free, granting a small buff to the friendly entities around you. Both scale depending on the caster's leading skill.
Issue order - Move grants a small movement speed bonus
Issue order - Hold grants a small damage resistance bonus
How to lead
Right, all is well, we are geared, what about the actual job, what do we do? You lead a squad of 20 crayon eating maggots that will do their best to ignore you. And thus, the crucial part of being a squad leader is to be heard. Once people listen to you and your orders, everything should go well, normally, would you know what you’re doing.
One of the first mistakes when picking Squad leader is expecting everyone to follow your command. You are playing a video game with people who want to have fun, not actually trained marines. As such, many will simply utter orders such as "move east to engineering" and realize that no one is doing anything.
Another crucial part is making sure that people like you, no one wants to listen to the orders of someone who called them an idiot seconds ago, that is common sense.
As such, if you want to LEAD you must be: HEARD and RESPECTED.
How to be heard
In RMC, there are few ways to be heard, or well. Rather seen:
- The most efficient way to make VISIBLE EYE CATCHING text is by going CAPSLOCK and putting!! at the end of your message. This will make it bold, effectively highlighting it for everyone who can see it.
Expected result
- Use LOCAL chat, this will make the text you say pop out above your head instead of inside the chat box. Paired with the other tips, it will make sure that people focused ON what's happening can see the order
- Repeat the order if needed. Better twice than once. Don't overdo it, no one wants some guy spamming local with the same message 10 times.
- Give SHORT orders, someone can read in a whim and understand, such as the holy SL trinity: "HOLD!!","BACK!!" and "PUSH!!"
- Tell your squad when using your WHISTLE to focus on the orders. Use it when giving out the order.
How to be respected
Essential part on the long run, and very easy to do.
- Treat your marines with respect, they follow YOUR command, better make them want to.
- Regularity and reputation, being a successful leader and/or regular to a specific squad brings respect.
- Answer every question you can, do not ignore your marines or leave them hanging.
- Compliment your DAMN squaddies, John Rifleman did a sick frag? "Good one Mikey!" Doctor just revived you? "Thanks doc, couldn't do it without you" etc.
Now that you know how to make people hear your orders and listen to them, what more can you do?
Post-landing squad brief
Might not sound like much, but gathering your men after you just touched down, getting them in line and telling them a good list of what you expect them to DO and NOT do helps for that sweet marine RP and get them prepped.
Hell, you can even try to do formations with this, by asking people to stand in a certain position of the squad, etc.
Some of my personal favorites are:
- STAY TOGETHER, YOU CAN'T SEE THE SL? YOU GO TO THE SL.
- WEAPONS READY, BROTHERS SAFE. YOU ARE READY TO COVER YOUR FELLOW MARINE AND RUSH AFTER HIM IF HE GETS NABBED!
- FOLLOW ORDERS, MY ORDERS. You, the SL, lead the charge. Your decision is over command's when it comes to executing CIC's big plan.
- KILL OVER GROUND TACTIC. See correspondent paragraph in Strategy planning)
The SL Pipeline
A personal ladder I have built after becoming a SL main myself, it's a numbered list of steps of what you need to know to efficiently squad in my eyes. The skill of a SL have a very high ceiling. Limited by the squad and it's cohesion, along with your ability to lead. It goes as follows:
- Learning to be heard and give orders
- Wrangle your marines
- Learning to be a tactician
- Leading your squad, to not their death
- Gut feeling for queen screech
- Ability to keep your squad on the move and lead your side of the operation on your own.
- Live (optional)
Strategy planning
This part will cover the more "strategic" part of playing squad leader. Whilst less important than being able to lead your squad, it is the key to ensuring you're doing your part to turn that crashing operation into a GLORIOUS MARINE MAJOR, OORAH!
Comms - communication? The talk.
Just as it is important you talk to your squad, it is important you talk to the eyes in the squad, the CIC. They have the big picture (most of the time), and if they know what you're doing, they will (hopefully) adjust things to ensure that you can kill those dirty bugs, together. Together? As in every marine. Because you're not alone. There are three other squads with three others leaders (not as good as you, because you've read this and they haven't, obviously.) but still.
Use a phonepack if comms are down, else give regular status reports in the command channel or in your squad channel. Hell, Queen's dead thanks to your men? Type me that ":v QUEEN DEAD ON [your squad], LET'S FUCKING GOOOOO!!"
Pushing? Backing? What, how and why.
Those dirty 'nids are smart, but you're smarter. You want to know when it's the right time to go in and fuck shit up. Obviously you have your squad orders given by the CIC. Execute them at priority, but make sure it doesn't wipe your squad.
Using your MOVE order is most appropriate when having to do direct maneuvers.
You order to and BACK OFF when:
- You see a tsunami of 'nids coming your way (likely already too late).
- Your squad hears the dreaded stomps of the queen.
- The queen is T-rex walking into you.
You order to and PUSH when:
- The Queen just screamed. Nothing can stop you. It's time to make those bugs eat lads and save your brothers in arms.
- You have the full go ahead from CIC and YOU got the feeling it's a good idea.
Squad formation and tactics
Don't hesitate to think of efficient ways to have your squad deal with the threats she faces, make your own, or ask around, some few of my own experience are:
KILL OVER GROUND Tactic
You're here to kill all of them xenonids, not push into the gardens because daddy XO wants you to. Tell to your squaddies to make sure to focus on kills rather than holding some shit spot.
A good xenonid is a dead xenonid. The Hivelord you didn't finish off earlier because you stood behind cades might very well come later and acidify your fortress in your back
DUAL GUARD Formation (FOB exclusive)
Wrangle your marines, know your FOB chokes.
Assign riflemen to choke guard, they go to a specific choke with a cardinal name (E.G "north choke"). They watch with binocs for any sort of contact and are ready to yell "MAJOR CONTACT AT [choke]" in squad radio and back off if needed until support arrives.
Excess manpower to support guard, they are to listen closely to radio and guard chokes at their discretion, they MUST move to any major contact reports to cull back the offense.
Do note that any special role, such as SGO, WS and CTs may be exempt from those as they already have their specific role to play.
Extras
Use Sheep mentality to your advantage. A SL is much like a shepherd. A few regulars know you and know to follow you around? The rest of the flock will.
Squad cohesion is an invisible resource you must keep high. It's lowered by loosing members, spreading out and overall lacking leadership. If low, people will scatter, act on their own and be generally in greater danger.
If High, either kept by a good speech, high morale or marines that worked together and trust each other? You may very well lead an operation on your own to success. Lasering a queen as she poked out of her vermin hole to try and puncture the glorious unit you're leading.
BIND YOUR ORDERS. Did you know you can keybind emotes as well as sentences ? It's very useful when you're fumbling around doing stuff, being able to say "PUSH !!" on command. Just be sure to be responsible while using it, spamming it will overdo it.
But HOW ? you may ask ? Well don't you worry, I got you.
First, find your keybinds.yml file, in the game files. Path should be something among the lines of:
[Your disk] (C:)/Users/[Your user]/AppData/Roaming/Space Station 14/data
Once in there, you will find your keybinds.yml file. You can edit it with the regular notepad app and add whatever you want.
Some useful commands explained to go with the example:
"mod1" makes it so the key you bind after it must be held for it to work
"key" the key you want to bind it on, if it was just E, it would say "PUSH !!" when E is pressed
"type: Command" it ensures you say the word, as it is basically running a command console
"function: say" makes your character SAY something, if you want to emote something, use "function: me"
Conclusion
Being a squad leader is not easy, but crucial to get a good squad, both in cohesion and efficiency. The tactics and formations you apply are at your own discretion, but remember: Communicate, keep your squad together and adjust to threats best you can to keep your squad alive.
To go along with that, feel free to make your squad leader an interesting character, charismatic/unique characters are always more pleasant to follow/go along with into battle.
You are the heart and brain of the squad. You're here to lead your marines to victory, or peril together. Be humble and always seek to improve.
Other very good sources on how to be a good squad leader on people that likely know more than me and have for way longer:
