TGMC:Field Commander

This page is a part of the TGMC wiki. TGMC is a project based on the CM-SS13 codebase.

This page is currently under construction! The following page is currently in the process of being created, is undergoing a major structural rework and/or is being moved. The reason for this is: "Marine meta is always changing due to new content, so expect this page to change a lot."

LtCol Chelf Inzurt says: "Hello there! This job is very hard with either little to no reward when nothing seems to be right or a huge payoff when everything comes together. Please take the time to get familiar with the expectations of the Field Commander. If being a Field Commander is overwhelming, that's expected! Try other jobs before being Field Commander!"

COMMAND

Field Commander

Access: All Access Difficulty: Very Hard Rank: Lieutenant (starting), Major (25hrs), Lieutenant Colonel (125hrs) Class: Marines Supervisors: Captain Duties: Lead your Marines on the ground to horrible, certain, glorious death. Work with the Captain to formulate and execute plans. Communicate information over radio. Call in Orbital support as needed, fail to supply proper hits. Get decapitated within minutes. Try to issue orders and get ignored. Attempt to coordinate a strategy with formations and flanking included only to be laughed at. Guides: Guide to engineering, Guide to medicine, Guide to Requisitions, Guide to Fire Support Quote:"We need a new FC again; our FC silo rushed alone and got killed by minions."

Introduction

So you've graduated from the TerraGov Academy as a fresh cadet and now are thrust into fighting against aliens in deep space! Welcome to the beginning of your career as a field officer, you butter bar! You are a part of the TerraGov Marine Corps on a mission to handle distress calls. You work with the Captain on mission planning and execution, and will lead the marines groundside. You're an important leader and point of morale for your team, so it's important that you try to stay alive.

See this insignia? This is your initial rank. It looks like a butter bar, you O1.

Be advised that players going as Field Commander must be familiar with support jobs to truly make use of all the assets the Field Commander can provide.

More information about skills

Field Commander Skills
Medical	2/5
Surgery	1/5
Engineering	3/5
Construction	2/5
Police	2/2
Powerloader	2/4
Leadership	4/4
CQC	1
Smartgun	-4
Melee	0
Firearms	1
Stamina	0

Default radio commands:

• .v for Command
• .u for Requisitions
• .m for Medical
• .s for Fire Support
• .e for Engineering
• .q for ALPHA SQUAD
• .b for BRAVO SQUAD
• .c for CHARLIE SQUAD
• .d for DELTA SQUAD
• , for General radio
• For custom squads, the radio prefix
  is usually the first letter of the squad name

Playing Field Commander

Being Field Commander shows the difference between Command and Control.

Control entails ordering marines to follow since it's their job and there are punitive consequences for not following.

Command entails having marines follow you since your presence will guide them to victory. Both entail that you strategize and support the marines. An incompetent Field Commander will easily astray marines, waste resources, or lose planetside due to ignorance and inefficiency; at best, this Field Commander get decapitated. Such Field Commanders are forgotten in the passage of time; competent Field Commander with a commanding presence are remembered.

You are responsible for ensuring marines are in quality status to eliminate the xenomorphs. This means you must know how to maneuver & supply the marines, how to secure & protect mining drills, how to communicate & coordinate with CIC and shipside, how to construct & maintain the FOB, how to heal & revive marines, and, the most important of them all, how to direct & control the unga. Essentially, you're the RO, CSE, SO, and CMO (but without surgery skills) with captain access that can deploy to planetside. Every bit of knowledge that can help you leverage marines to win against xenomorphs is important.

Compared to the Captain and CIC, you are with the marines and their hardship. CIC is Chair Force, whereby you are Marine. While captain or whoever is in CIC remains in shipside detached from the boots on the ground, you suffer alongside the marines, which makes all the taste of victory and camaraderie the better.

No matter how outdated this guide gets, regardless of the codebase changes and server meta, there are many factors that you can control beside yelling at the marines.

There is one factor that you absolutely cannot control, it is the sheer unga in marines. It's advised to keep a low expectation on marines listening to you. The TGMC culture values mindless pushes over strategic maneuvers, marines are not forced by the rules to listen to you, and may do as they wish. What you must remember is that you and others are just people playing a game, they might enjoy more to do other stuff than listening to your every word, if this is the case simply keep calm, and try to simply communicate so that they may know what's going on and make good decisions on their own.

Field Commander's Three Focus Points

You focus on three things: communication, logistics, and tactical movements (explained further in During Operation: Planetside and Engaging). Essentially, you make sure the unga doesn't get stomp by xenomorphs.

Command and Communication

Communication is a requirement for organization, and your job is to provide just that. Marines need a leader to guide them to destroying xenomorphs.

• Rapport: Before launch, greet everyone into the operation over radio, have some casual talks and such and ask if anyone needs anything from you (which will so make you look competent).
• Army Ants: Tell marines what they can help out with such as loading the supplies. No one wants to wait for deployment and do nothing until then, so they will most often help out. It is always a good idea to double check by asking over comms if everything is ready.
• Tagging Xenomorphs: During deployment and in groundside, you communicate even more: ALWAYS call out where enemies are, and the direction they are headed. It is also a good idea to tell marines to regroup every 10 minutes or less.
• Getting Objectives: Call out locations such as where the current objectives is. The current meta as of the time at Summer 2021 has three possible objectives: generators, silos, and xenomorphs. Generators are in engineering, but silos are usually somewhere in the corners of the map, thus you call out "silos are north east", "silos are south west", and thus you will only need one silo pinpointer so that all the marines have the information of where the silos are.
• "DANGER CLOSE, CIC!": Another thing to communicate is when you're calling a bombardment or some sort of air support upon a location, or anything that harms the enemy but also the allies, so remember to call out where you're using it, and telling them to back off.
• Order marines around:

Don't be afraid to order people, you won't be told not to do it; in fact, your job encourages it. A good Commander gives out orders, as orders are communication too. Orders are the opposite to information, but do the same result. Information tells a marine what's up, but he can react however he wishes towards it, while an order does not tell him what's going on, but he'll react however you told him to, which is hopefully the most efficient way to approach the situation. If you want to be even better, give orders, then explain why.

• Do not infight, do not abuse your marines: These are your team, your family, your comrades, and unnecessary conflicts with them makes no sense, thus try to not create them, never insult marines regardless of how wrong they do, try to tell them what they did wrong instead. No one likes an asshole for a Leader. Always keep calm and respect your fellow.
• Creating a Presence: Having a reputation will make people think you know what you're doing, thus, they'll listen to you more. If you lack a reputation, fear not! Simply make one on the spot. Speak on comms, have casual talks pre deployment, and person-to-person ones too. The more talkative you are is always the better.
• Leading by Example: Marines move with their eyes and not with their ears, meaning that they don't read chat but follow other marines. You stand out among the marines to direct marines into whatever the mission demands. They will not charge if you do not charge.

Logistics and Marines' Toys

There are six toys that marines love to use:

Requisition

You must order fultons. It is in the operation tab. No exception. It costs 15 points, which takes an insignificant amount from the initial requisition points. If you do not purchase this, then almost every veteran marines will yell at you, or the nearest person who has access to requisition, for not buying this.

If there are no captain, requisition officer, chief ship engineer, ship technician, or synthetic, you must run requisition.

The Forward Operation Base

Assuming you know how to build the FOB and know your planetside maps, you will ensure the quality of the FOB when engineers construct them. All flanks of the FOB must be taken in consideration, meaning that any reinforced walls that can be melted and breached into FOB must have barricades and a sentry that alert the marines. Choose the LZ with the least amount of ways for xenomorph to breach.

Due to the importance of the FOB, marines can construct the FOB with a drone before deployment. You can find the computer for the FOB drone west of the Alamo. Note that you must finish constructing the FOB with the drone and take the materials out of the FOB drone since launching the Alamo, tadpole, or Condor before the FOB drone finishes will render it unusable. If you are too busy preparing other things, you can let an engineer build the FOB with the drone; however, you must get clear communication that they are using the drone. Do not assume that giving an order to an engineer will magically make them construct the FOB with the drone.

The Alamo

The primary dropshop. This transports the marines from either LZ1 or LZ2, delivering abled bodies to the fight and supplies from requisition to the FOB. What the Alamo should have before deployment:

• Sentries
• Surgery table with anesthetic & an MD that has surgery tools
• MRE
• Medical supplies, especially the NanoMed Plus & IV drips with O- blood pack
• Flares
• Mortar
• Supply beacon
• OB beacon
• Metal and plasteel
• Plasma cutter
• Ammo, especially ammo boxes, and especially the ammo variety crate Requisitions has at the start of the round.

If the tadpole is not being deployed, then the Alamo should have the bluespace export pad.

The Tadpole

Requisition's weapon to surpass Metal Gear. You can find it northwest of the Alamo.

The tadpole is primarily used to deploy marines anywhere in the map (except in caves), but unlike drop pods, the tadpole can help marines with generating requisition points. Landing near one or two miners, securing the landing zone, and fending off xenomorphs will secure marines a victory with spec weapons from requisition.

What the Tadpole should have before deployment:

• Miner upgrade, especially overclock (can be produced in autolathe); NO EXCEPTION
• Sentries in its hardpoint attachments
• Supply beacon
• Heavy smartgun in its hardpoint attachment
• MRE
• Medical supplies, especially IV drips with O- blood pack
• Flares
• Metals and plasteels
• Plasma cutter
• Ammo, especially ammo boxes

If the tadpole is not being deployed, then focus on Alamo

To land the tadpole, there must be a landing zone that can fit its 7x9 dimension. You can set the landing zone in the computer within the tadpole's cockpit. Tadpole cannot land if there are walls, whether resin or not, within the landing zone. If you want to clear the landing zone, you can deploy marines with drop pods to cut away resin walls.

To ensure that xenomorphs will have a hard time sieging the tadpole, find landing zones where you can block potential flanks from xenomorphs. Xenomorphs cannot melt the tadpole's hull and windows. You do not need to have all three entry and exit points to be guarded by marines if you can block one or two with the landscape. The tadpole's entry and exit points for marines to get in and out of the tadpole are its portside, starboard, and rear end.

OB

Refer to this page for OB: Guide to Fire Support

Beginning of Operation: Shipside Preparations

To prepare for deployment, make an announcement to help marines know what is coming. This is one way to do briefing. Marines may not hear you over the radio much less have a radio in the beginning, so having them hear your voice in the announcement is a sure way to have their attention. Note that briefings are strictly optional; actually trying to do one will usually instantly lose the respect of your marines, which makes your job as a leader nearly impossible. Forcing marines to attend to the briefing room begs for mutiny.

For the announcement, you must include:

• Time of deployment
• Expected landing zone
• Expected time to open shutters
• Whether the tadpole is in use or not

During Operation: Planetside Engagement

The Field Commander will often be out in the field, but it is advised that they don't go alone as they can be easily taken out. Wrangling your marines is a hard task, and often you should gain their trust in your ability to lead them. Make sure you give clear and concise orders, don't input an essay, and don't input anything vague. Marines often love to go alone, so make sure you often tell them to partner up and give certain tasks to squads. If you can manage that, you're a better Field Commander than most.

If you have orders for marines whether to push or retreat, remember to repeat yourself often. Grind in the head of marines that they are recommended to follow your orders.

Opening Shutters

Before letting the marines, and yourself, unga, ensure that the FOB is complete. Give marines a time to finish polishing the FOB such as setting up turrets, building more barricade lines, activating supply beacons, checking for unsupervised flanks, and etc. If marines are not picking up the slack for polishing the FOB, you can complete the FOB yourself since you have high engineering skills.

The Engagement

The inevitable. You cycle between a combat medic, a SL, and the primordial PVT.

Have a plan in mind and prepare to adapt. To be a robust Field Commander, you want to be dynamic and adapt to any situation. There are a few xenomorphs that are on the defensive? Order a push. There are multiple xenomorphs that are on the offensive? Capture and defend a miner, then get better gear. You're going down a hallway but that hallway is walled off, or has turrets? Order marines to go around it. A fixed plan will collapse in the event something doesn't go accordingly, a dynamic plan fixes that.

If you trust that you can off xenomorphs with marines, then expect the chance to die and pray that someone else that is competent in leading the marines will replace you. When you unga with marines, you can only make suggestions and hope that marines listen to your orders; marines only listen to the unga, and it is in your best interest to align yourself with the unga to know when to push and when to retreat.

Use flanks and other tactical movements: Flanks can catch xenomorph off guard even despite having x-ray and night vision, some of the better examples are going around a resin maze and meeting 0 resistance instead of wasting an OB and lots of time and resources, or flanking xenomorph's defenses and killing the hurt xenomorph's at the back while the ones that are healthy are stuck at the front fighting. A flank can break a stalemate, and catch hurt xenomorphs off guard, potentially scoring a few kills. This is also very useful against chokepoints, as the very well covered turrets from one side may be poorly protected from the other.

Use air support and artillery: Air support can be very effective, as of the time i write this we have CAS, OB, mortar and Railgun. All of these are useful when pushing a chokepoint or a hallway, they are not meant to kill xenomorphs, albeit they could do so, but they are more meant to cause them to retreat. The more ground you gain the more freedom of movement you have thus the most chances to flank you have, plus it gives the xenomorphs less places to escape to, making finding and killing them easier. Aim at where xenomorphs will be at, not where they were.

Always stick together Cooperation is always more effective, if you stick together and the enemy doesn't, you'll be fighting less people with more people on your side, making constant victories be easy to achieve. The enemy team could do this too, however.

Be extra careful: As the Field Commander, or any Commander in general, you're not as expendable as a marine. Once the Field Commander dies, the mind that was holding the entire plan is now dead too, thus there is no longer a plan, there is no longer organization, morale is lost, and the marines retreat. Unless you're in a winning battle, your death will make defeat more likely.

The Marine's Deathball

The best part of your job. Use Rally Order and Send Order practically as often as you're allowed to if you see marines getting split up on the minimap. Move Order is the best buff most of the time, it allows marines to chase kills they'd otherwise have no chance of taking down, and gives xenos less time to heal as you push. Do not go first if you can help it, because even just your buffs are worth more than practically anything you could do shooting xenos, and that's ignoring your medical and engineering skills. If nobody else is taking initiative, though, you might just have to.

Requisition and Tadpole

Marines will start to run out of initial supplies that they brought to deployment, especially specialized ammo like the T-29 drums for the smartgun and materials like metals for the FOB.

If there is someone with requisition access such as the RO, ST, CO, SO, synthetic, or AI, use the requisition radio channel with .u to communicate to shipside that supplies are needed. Always get confirmation from shipside if they receive the order.

The FOB Camp

The dreaded. You should mostly focus on getting marines to drag dead minions onto the ASRS pad, to keep some semblance of an economy going. If the xenos aren't clever enough to realize that their own minions are the only thing keeping your hold afloat (they never are) then you can actually turn things around eventually, provided they don't make a good enough push. Focus on welding and patching holes where engineers are too dead or occupied to do so, and make sure to constantly use orders in accordance with the situation. Also keep your tactical binoculars handy, they're most powerful in non-caves areas like those that surround most LZs.

Evacuation

When the FOB fails to prevent xenomorphs from breaching, it is time to evac. Set a time based on the operation time for evac, and continue to yell at marines on when to leave. You have Alamo access, so you can evac at will if the xenomorphs prove to be overwhelming the evac. Spam Rally Order and Send Order on cooldown, because there will always be people who somehow don't notice the first three times.

This is the time to bring the marines and supplies to the Alamo. Get everything, but not the xenomorph, from the FOB into the Alamo.

Equipment for Success

You start out with

• A sword
• Your vendor
• An outdated pistol
• An armored beret that doesn't protect against decap somehow prevents your head from being cut off

The Field Commander's vendor has

• Medevac bed and medevac beacon
• Supply beacon
• OB beacon

You should ought to have

• Medical HUD Glasses
• Storage to hold medical supplies
• Storage to hold engineering tools
• A weapon to ward off xenomorphs

The sword is more ceremonial than anything; it's best to replace this with a doctor's belt to hold most necessary medical supplies, but it's still about as good as a machete. There is definitely one person on board who would always appreciate you handing it to them. Your beret is very fashionable, and well-armored, but it lacks the storage and modularity of real helmets, while also conveniently telling xenos who the most important person on the battlefield is. Finally, the pistol's definitely effective when it's actually loaded, but no auto-eject and a small magazine is rarely the path to success.

You also have access to anything abandoned in the CIC, the Squad Prep area (you can use the non-point-based vendors), and anywhere else on the ship, as you have access to everything. You can even order equipment for yourself in Req, but doing this is a good way to get shouted at proportional to how many points you spend and how quickly you die on the ground while that 80-point rifle gets melted by acid. And you can't heal people or weld barricades while you're shooting a minigun! Leave the actual frontline killing to the PFCs. Please.

Orders

All Command staff and assigned Squad Leaders have access to Orders which can be used to buff nearby troops. Using one causes you to shout out a unique phrase over the radio. After giving an Order, there is a one-minute cooldown period until you can give another one, but cooldowns for Orders and Markers are separate.

Order effects are influenced by your Leadership skill, which increases both the effect and range.

Order	Description
Move order	Increases movement speed by 0.1 per Leadership level Great for retreats and getting to objectives quickly
Hold order	Reduces damage received by 5% per Leadership level Increases pain resistance, reduces the effects of dizziness and jitteriness
Focus order	Increases accuracy by 10% plus 5% per Leadership level Makes Aiming instant
Rally marker	Places a directional pointer and a map icon, urging marines to Rally at a given point.
Attack marker	Places a directional pointer and a map icon, urging marines to Attack a given point.
Defend marker	Places a directional pointer and a map icon, urging marines to Defend a given point.
Retreat marker	Places a directional pointer and a map icon, urging marines to Retreat from a given point.

Tips

• Use your Medical and Engineering skills, whenever you're not busy staring at the map trying to figure out how three squad marines died in the caves two minutes after the shutters fell the best path to victory.
• Promoting cooperation between your team members is often more effective that degrading them for not doing things exactly as you wanted
• Have your team focus on fixing miners; income is an important part of any operation
• There's a lot of random chatter over the radio, no matter how big your text is. Send Order overlays on the screen and makes a distinct sound, so use it whenever you have something important to say.
• Consult your tacmap. A lot.

TGMC Roles
	TerraGov Marines Ranks	Command	Captain, Field Commander, Staff Officer, Pilot Officer, Transport Officer, Mech Pilot
		Vehicle Crew	Assault Crewman, Transport Crewman
		Engineering and Supply	Chief Ship Engineer, Requisitions Officer, Ship Technician
		Medical	Chief Medical Officer, Medical Doctor, Researcher
		Marines	Squad Leader, Squad Smartgunner, Squad Engineer, Squad Corpsman, Squad Marine
		Civilians	Corporate Liaison
		Silicon	Combat robots, Synthetic, AI
	Xenomorphs Playtime	Tier 0	Larva, Minions
		Tier 1	Drone, Runner, Defender, Sentinel
		Tier 2	Hivelord, Carrier, Hunter, Wraith, Bull, Warrior, Puppeteer, Spitter
		Tier 3	Gorger, Defiler, Widow, Ravager, Warlock, Behemoth, Crusher, Praetorian, Boiler
		Tier 4	Shrike, Queen, King, Hivemind
	Others		Zombie, Emergency Response Teams, Sons of Mars, Survivor