Medpacks are NOT optional
halfofaheaven
Join Date: 2012-11-09 Member: 168660Members, Reinforced - Supporter, Reinforced - Gold
Join Date: 2012-11-09 Member: 168660Members, Reinforced - Supporter, Reinforced - Gold
So on two separate occasions just today, after complaining about not getting meds in fights against fades and lerks, two different marine comms told me they don't med marines who are on their own. In neither case was it rarely ever them just missing particular fights: one was clearly and repeatedly making a choice not to drop any medpacks as sort of punishment for not being where they asked everyone to be, the other was making a choice to let anyone fighting higher lifeforms alone die because they thought it was hopeless anyway.
Now before people write this off as just another guy being butthurt over not getting all the attention all the time, let me explain.
Medpacks are BY FAR the most important investment as a marine commander. Both in terms of return value and in terms of resource management/prioritising. Every bit of additional damage each medpack buys you is well worth the res, especially on higher lifeforms. Those 10 more bullets someone gets into that fade might just be the 10 bullets that finish it off or enable the next marine around the corner to kill it. Worst case scenario, you're still buying time by enforcing a retreat.
Pub commanders everywhere, please med your marines. Unless you're on 1 or 2 RTs and need to recap, there's never a good enough excuse not to support your team.
Now before people write this off as just another guy being butthurt over not getting all the attention all the time, let me explain.
Medpacks are BY FAR the most important investment as a marine commander. Both in terms of return value and in terms of resource management/prioritising. Every bit of additional damage each medpack buys you is well worth the res, especially on higher lifeforms. Those 10 more bullets someone gets into that fade might just be the 10 bullets that finish it off or enable the next marine around the corner to kill it. Worst case scenario, you're still buying time by enforcing a retreat.
Pub commanders everywhere, please med your marines. Unless you're on 1 or 2 RTs and need to recap, there's never a good enough excuse not to support your team.
Comments
The only times it's acceptable to pass up meds is when you are on 1-2 RTs and need to rebuild or if the marine is clearly about to die.
While this is a bad investment (1 Marine vs 4), I find this shows how strong good medpacking can be:
sigh
Despite the well worded OP, this case was not mentioned.. and it occurs often in pubs..
SOLDIER NEEDS AMMO! SOLDIER NEEDS AMMO! SOLDIER NEEDS AMMO! SOLDIER NEEDS AMMO! SOLDIER NEEDS AMMO!
"They do? Well I'll be damned! I sure hope they get it."
But this sounds a lot like you're a GOOD commander who is paying attention!
It pisses me off to no end when the commander doesn't talk or communicate in much of any way, and just seems to be afk the whole time, apart from dropping structures and if you're lucky: being able to perform a beacon.
I said that to Gibs and friends yesterday. Fun stuff.
Works really well, since commander now knows it's not another "I spawned and pressed Q instead of W" request, and even if there were multiple requests at one time, comm now knows where else support is needed. However, system can be modified with relative ease to be more comfortable for commanders.
What would be cool, is if current locations was showed under player name that is speaking, shouldn't be a problem since you see player location in team chat messages. Even cooler, if clicking on talking person's name would take you there, much like alert messages.
Or at least make "say TEXT" bindable, so you can bind "say <<<Need ammo" and when you press the button it looks like "(Crevice) xen32: <<<Need ammo".
Another cool thing would be is to modify "Soldier is under attack" and "Soldier needs ammo" text messages to be more informative: ProKiller1998 is under attack at Pipeline, Deathbringer3000 needs ammo at Chasm.
Even better, if status was there as well, i.e.: Deathbringer3000 needs ammo at Chasm (30% ammo), ProKiller1998 is under attack (40% health)
Clicking on those takes you to that place where they are already, which is cool. More info would help reacting to multiple requests, instead of asking "Who else asked for ammo? Request again please"
I'm a technically average player, but I play intelligently enough to make it worth a comm's while. But yeah, good comms will know the difference between useful and useless ramboing while bad comms will think every solo marine is being useless.
I told one of those comms yesterday that by investing in medpacks, you're not necessarily buying kills directly. Most of all you're buying time. If you don't understand the value of time, you shouldn't be commanding.
There is absolutely no reason to not give ammo to marines. Furthermore you can pretty much predict when marines will need ammo if you comm with your map opened all the time ( which not enough comms do imo).
And if marine solo rifle vs fade, lol just w8 and upgrade something. All this talk is pub related cuz for pros , this topic is waste of time
If the solo marine is doing useful work then yes that marine gets shiny med support if im able.
So I guess for every comm it should boil down to 'is it useful to med this person'.
If the marine wants constant heals, then use the armory obv. I find it especially annoying when marines complain about not getting meds when they throw themselves into suicide scenarios.
Sounds exactly like what a horrible pubhero commander would do. Those 'suicide scenarios' are more often than not the only thing preventing the game from being reduced into a hopeless uphill battle of holding one or two phase gates.
Go watch a few minutes of competitive play.
Though I will concede that you cannot med at the rate you normally would in a public game, assuming you're on a server in which you have twice as many marines to med; in this case, yeah, you might want to buy an extra armory or so. Of course the problem is that people tend to glue themselves to it...
As for this, suiciding on alien RTs is actually a part of the game. If you can harass an alien natural with just an LMG, what's the loss to you? 1 death on the scoreboard. You lose no res since you had an LMG. However, aliens have to pull back from biting your RTs or expanding their base in order to response to the res harass. But if you have a shotty/rifle pressure team, and a fade responds, yes. I would expect meds. Learning when to med and how much to med is the key.
There's snacks and refreshments in the corner
There is a difference between "tons" and topping off all Marines at 100 hp. It costs resources, but if you're over 3 RTs you can easily keep medding while still getting upgrades. Albeit, you need to make sure each medkit counts (lands) otherwise you'll start seeing repercussions.
An armory is a terrible idea. Not only is it a whole 10 T.Res for what could only be 3-4 medkits, but it encourages clinginess (as someone else kindly pointed out). Not only that, but the armory is no longer active once in combat. Even if I were to stand(face first, since armory only heals if you are face-first) next to an armory in combat, it would only heal me at the rate of 25hp/1sec(?), whereas that Skulk/Fade around the corner can do 150hp/1sec. It also adds an obstacle for Aliens to hide behind, and even jump off of.
In conclusion, an Armory is terrible. Learn to med/ammo your marines. The Armory only is useful when the Aliens are chipping the marines, not combating them. (Chipping, as in Gorgespit, Lerkspikes, Skulkparasite, small damage, ect.).
Yes, good technique in large servers especially if the spam is ultimately not helping to actually win engagements. I have sure made the mistake of repeatedly medding groups of marines who just cant aim and get destroyed, resulting in minimal upgrades by the time a dozen engagements have been fought and lost.
Edit: esp. those named SNB