A comprehensive guide to the Squad Medic

[Jesstreeter]

Hello everyone! Most of you know me - Or I'd at least like to think you would. I play Jessie 'Jester' Streeter and am pretty much exclusively a Squad Medic.

As a foreword, I'd like to mention that everything contained here-in is up to personal preference and what I write here is simply how I like to play as a medic, and the setup that I personally use. As there doesn't seem to be a guide on the forums (Besides Disco's, which I didn't like too much - But again, personal preference.) and my recent rich experience in the role, I thought I'd add my two cents, especially since most people seem to enjoy the way I play as a medic.

This will be pretty in-depth and probably long, so read the sections that interest you - Or read the whole thing, I'm sure there's a few tips in here, even as an experienced medic.

First of all, it is important to understand that all chemicals (excluding Hyperzine and Dermaline, but more on that later) causes an overdose at anything above 30 units. This can cause anything from brain damage to internal organ damage and can absolutely kill someone, both due to a build-up of toxins damage, but also damage to internal organs.

Your Loadout

Your loadout should consist of the following:

1x USCM Medic Uniform. (From the Medic prep vendor.) with a webbing attached (From the Medic prep vendor.)

Armour, including marine boots and squad gloves. (Note: If you want to be cool, grab some latex gloves and a sterile mask from the medbay storage.)

Health Scanner HUD. (Medic prep vendor.)

USCM Medic Backpack. (You should spawn with this, can also be gotten from Medic prep vendor in case you lose it.)

Combat Lifesaver bag. (Medic prep vendor.)

Your trusty 10mm pulse rifle. (My recommendation.)

A medical encryption key, slotted into your squad headset. (Medic prep vendor.)

And, a medic helmet, gotten from a medic prep vendor.

I carry 2x Pulse Rifle ammo in my pockets, and also two in my armour. More usually isn't needed.

Inside the Lifesaver Bag

Now, the default Lifesaver Bag isn't the most useful and you will run out of supplies very quickly. I recommend dumping out all the rolls of gauze, the ointments, all Dylovene, Kelotane, Bicaridine and Oxycodeone injectors, as well as the Russian Red pills. (More about these later.)

Instead, fill it up with all of the pill bottles from the Medic Prep vendor; Dylovene, Tramadol, Kelotane, Inaprovaline and anti-biotics.

Now, you'll want to fill up your lifesaver bag with the following: Two Tricordrazine Auto-Injectors (For a total of four.) Three Quick Clot Auto-injectors (For a total of five.) and two Dexalin Plus auto-injectors (For a total of four.)

Optionally - and I like to do this since I always know where my injectors are - you can sort out the internal lay-out of your lifesaver bag. I like to keep my Tricordrazine Auto-Injectors in the four slots after my pill bottles, then the five Quick Clots, and finally the four Dexalin Plus auto-injectors.

Inside the Medic Backpack

The set-up of your backpack can be very widely modified and mostly depends on your playstyle. Personally I like to use the following setup:

One Hypospray. (Medic prep vendor.)
One stasis bag. (Medic prep vendor.)
A health analyzer. (Medic prep vendor.)
Two Advanced First Aid Kits (Medic Prep vendor.) Alternatively, if your other squad medic has taken two, you can take one from the medical spare room. It's to the right/east as you step past the second two medical doors.
An Emergency Oxygen kit. Can be acquired from the same place as above.
And finally, but not least, an emergency defibrillator.
Optional: Bring a cable coil to fix bionic burn damage.

Inside your Webbing

I recommend these:

One (or two) Hyposprays
One (or two) Tricordrazine Auto-Injectors.

These really are the most optional out of all the things mentioned here and can be modified to your wishes, but I strongly recommend these as it allows you to help more people a lot faster.

This loadout, I feel, gives you the best opportunity to accomodate your squad for the entirety of the round. You will more than likely need to stock up on Quick Clots from the planet-side NanoMeds in the med dome. (Or alternatively, Sulaco medbay.)

Chemicals

Now, Colonial Marines has a wide variety of different chemicals, and I won't touch upon them all, simply the ones you will encounter the most often as a Squad Medic. If you wish to know more, consult the Wiki.

Alkysine: Cures Brain Damage.

Bicaridine: Cures only brute damage.

Clone/Cryoxadone: Cures all types of damage, including genetic. Needs to be in a cold Cryo Tube, however.

Dermaline: Cures only Burn damage, faster than Kelotane. Overdoses at 15 units.

Dexalin: Cures only Suffocation damage.

Dexalin Plus: Cures all Suffocation damage the patient is currently suffering from.

Dylovene: Cures only Toxins damage. Will also counter Soporific and its effects. Makes Tricordrazine if mixed with Inaprovaline.

Hyperzine: Speeds you up - allowing even rapid movement in heavy armour. Has a 1% chance every tick to cause heart damage between 1-5 units. At 6 units and above, it will cause 1 heart damage in addition to the 1% chance.

Imidazoline: Cures non-genetic eye damage.

Inaprovaline: Stabilises people, good for keeping them alive. Makes Tricordrazine if mixed with Dylovene.

Kelotane: Cures only burn damage.

Oxycodeone: Extreme pain killer, more effective than Tramadol, but not as easy to come by.

Paracetamol: Mild pain killer.

Peridaxon: Cures organ damage, including eye and brain damage.

Soporific: A sedative used to render people unconcious.

Spaceacillin: An anti-biotic that cures infections. Extremely volatile and hard to get rid of above 30 units, as it takes forever for the dosage to decrease. Can easily kill someone if overdosed. Recommend Dialysis if 30+.

Tramadol: A moderate pain killer - Slightly better than Paracetamol, but worse than Oxycodeone. Easy to come by.

Tricordrazine: Cures brute, burn and toxins damage. Is a great jack-of-all-trades medicine.

Russian Red: Cures Radiation Poisoning. Is virtually useless in most rounds.

Injuries

In Colonial Marines, your squad mates will get injured - From anything like slashing to friendly fire. Here is a list of injuries and how to deal with them.

Brute damage: Caused by being slashed, punched, jabbed, stabbed and generally any other violent activity you can imagine. Counter with a trauma kit.

Burn damage: Caused by acid, acidic blood spray from alien injuries, boiler acid spit, boiler acid clouds and researcher screw-ups. Counter with a burn kit.

Toxins damage: Can be caused by overdoses, spit from Aliens and breathing in phoron. Counter with Dylovene.

Oxygen damage: Can be caused by a low blood level, being in space, a room that had it's air sucked out, being in hard crit and lung damage. Counter with Dexalin/Dexalin Plus.

Radiation Poisoning: Causes toxins damage, as well as visual and audible hallucations.

Brain damage: Perhaps the most annoying of injuries. It causes blurry vision and can even progress to blindness. Can incapacitate you if it gets serious. Alkysine can counter this. Will require surgery most times.

Broken Limb: Can cause the person to drop what is in their hands, or will make them slower if in the legs/feet. Can be aided by using a medical splint to ease pain and likelihood of dropping what's in your hands. Will require surgery.

Bone fractures: The deadliest enemy. Will cause internal bleeding, perforated lungs, pain and just general misery. If your patient has these and you don't know where they are - ask them. If they're in the chest, use a roller bed or a wheelchair to move them, otherwise their lungs will likely get perforated by a loose rib and their chance of dying tenfolds. If in the head, you can move them if the need arises, but use a rollerbed if you can. Will require surgery.

Internal bleeding: Often caused by the above or an alien tail stab. Use a quick-clot on the unfortunate victim to stop it. This will cause external bleeding in place of the internal bleeding.

Perforated lungs: Likely the one injury you will lose the most patients to. Can be countered (depending on severity) by pumping the poor soul full of Dexalin, alternatively you can take a huge chuck of it away with Dexalin Plus. I advise not doing this until around ~100 Oxygen damage. (Or whatever number you feel comfortable with, depending on the patient.) Inaprovaline can also help to work against this in milder cases. Can be fixed by Peridaxon if there are no bone fractures in chest. Otherwise, surgery is needed.

Blood loss: The silent killer. At 80% blood, you'll start to take minor oxygen damage. 19-21, causing you to be stable but out of breath. Deadly if combined with perforated lungs. At 70%, you start taking increased Oxygen damage per tick depending on the amount of blood lost. Iron pills can counter this, along with force-feeding the victim food (any food), restoring 3 units of blood per tick. (Take note that this isn't 3%) ) It's worth noting you start out with 570 units of blood.

External Bleeding: Perhaps one of the simplest bodily injuries one can suffer from. Use a trauma kit to stem the bleeding.

Alcohol Poisoning: Is rare, but it exists. Will not show up on your scanner, save for "A weird substance in their blood." Treat with Dylovene and perhaps Tricord as it can cause massive toxins damage.

Severed limbs: Rarer, but happens. You'll need to target the area where the limb was attached to and use a brute kit to stem the bleeding and bandage the stump. Will often result in pain crit for the victim, make sure to administer Tramadol.

Bionic Limbs

A lot of people have/use bionic limbs, including myself. These cannot suffer from broken bones, but have other cons. Brute damage must be welded with a welder. Don't do this without sufficient eye protection in the form of a welder mask or welder goggles. Burn damage must be treated with cable coil.

Tools of the trade

The Emergency Defibrillator

Can be used on any patient that has not been dead for longer than 40 seconds.
Make sure to inject them with Inaprovaline and Dexalin/Dexalin Plus so that they'll stay alive.
Has a damage treshhold of a 100units, combined. E.G 26 burn damage, 26 toxins damage, 26 burn damage and 26 Oxygen damage, for a total of 104, will be too much.
Cures 8-15 damage on a succesful resuscitation.
You can cure their brute and burn damage to bring them back with burn/trauma kits if you are quick, allowing you to bring them below the 100u treshhold and succesfully resuscitate them.
If their toxin or oxygen damage equals or is above 100, they will need to be cloned.

The Stasis Bag

A utility tool, most useful to use on people with perforated lungs. Be aware that it can actually kill the patient if their damage is severe enough, so I recommend patching them up as well as you can before you resort to using it. It should only be used in cases where you think you will run out of Dexalin, if you already have, or the patient will otherwise die. It causes genetic damage, so the patient will need to be shoved in a cryo-tube afterwards.

The Hypospray

The hypospray comes pre-loaded with 30 units of Tricordrazine and will inject the patient with 5 units at a time.

The Health Analyzer

Your most useful tool. Allows you to view a breakdown of the target's different damages, if they have bone fractures, their blood level in a percentage, as well as if they have brain damage. It does not show damage to the eyes or any internal organs.

The behaviour of a good squad medic

A squad medic does not seek out a fight. They stick to their squad and takes care of any injuries that may arise during or out of combat. Never wander off on your own and always have at least one person to escort you if you need to travel between two points. If you are with your squad and you run into combat, stay off the front lines, as this will minimalise the potential risk of friendly fire - but also make sure you are not alone at the very back, so you don't get picked off. Try to stay in the middle of your squad and simply deal with your injured. Only draw your weapon if the front line falls and you, or your patient, are in direct danger of being assaulted.

A recommendation is asking Medical over the radio at round start to make you either Bicaridine or Peridaxon pills - Whichever you feel is more important.

The steps of a great squad medic.

First, scan your victim.

Second, stop all internal bleeding. Alternatively, fix oxygen damage if severe.

Third, stem bleeding with trauma kits.

Fourth, patch up brute damage and burn damage. Alternatively, fix oxygen damage.

Fifth, bone fractures? Splint them and then get them on a rollerbed and med-evac them. If they have a broken limb, inform them of this and ask them if they would like to be med-evac'd or not.

Sixth, re-assure them they'll live.

Credits

I'd like to give a HUGE thanks to Freemysoul for putting up with all my questions and answering them diligently, especially regarding Food/Iron restoring blood, defibbing and Hyperzine. I actually learned quite a few things from him.
And also Noize, for doing his best to help me and putting up with me poking him.

[Zantus]

+1 by kath

[TeknoKot]

just store seven mags in an empty first aid kit and bunch of dexalin plus/quick clot in another for transporting your SL/SPC/boyfriend from massive suffocation.

also, stasis bags does genetic damage when holding the person after five to eight minutes, killing them regardless, just useful to drag marines out of an assault.

[Varnock]

I always love to see more medical personnel.

My only question is why you prefer the rifle over the one handed smg. Just preference?

[Surrealistik]

SMG is trash vs the Rifle. I would never use it as an Engineer and I expect the same is true of a Medic, even if the SMG is somewhat more convenient.

[Jesstreeter]

I always love to see more medical personnel.

My only question is why you prefer the rifle over the one handed smg. Just preference?

I don't think the SMG does enough damage, and it has virtually no penetration against T3s.

But yes, personal preference, really.

[forwardslashN]

Great guide and covers a bunch of things you generally won't see together in the same place. But I didn't really do much to help on this, so most of it was freemysoul. Great job either way!

[Jesstreeter]

just store seven mags in an empty first aid kit and bunch of dexalin plus/quick clot in another for transporting your SL/SPC/boyfriend from massive suffocation.

also, stasis bags does genetic damage when holding the person after five to eight minutes, killing them regardless, just useful to drag marines out of an assault.

Yeah, I actually forgot to mention the genetic damage, derp. But yeah, that's why I said only use them for emergencies.

The first aid kit thing is a good suggestion. Kind of like boxes before they did away with those. It's just too much hassle for me, personally - I generally never go through magazines anyways.

[Fritigern]

Put many an hour into the medic role, so this guide rings mostly true for me.

Only a few things I would disagree with. Firstly, the lack of a flashlight and flares. I always put an active flashlight in my pocket, because often times in a firefight I'm alone at rear of the marine line and spotting threats trying to flank is usually what keeps me and the guys I'm working on alive. Same goes for keeping a flare in your backpack, those things are life savers. Second is the makeup of your lifesaver bag and the priority given to tricordazine over bicaradine. First point being that I think you should always keep at least two trauma kits in there for fast access -- digging through medkits really delays treatment and slows down the conga line of healing goodness. Second, tricord is catch all but pretty damn weak, and I always felt that getting a marine combat ready, especially during said combat, was the the most important thing you could do. With that in mind I always take half of the allotted bicaradine injectors in the vendor and use them during combat operations. That's not to say that I don't use tricord, as my normal procedure for treating wounded is to greet them with a stab from my hypospray to start counteracting whatever is wrong with them even before I get my health analyzer out, but you'll get a bigger payoff with bicaradine. Also I don't feel you emphasized the need for tramadol enough. You should be popping those in a marine's mouth as soon as possible like you're on a flirty dinner date.

[Jesstreeter]

-snip-

You have a very different playstyle from me. I never stay at the back of marine lines (At least, I try as much to as Humanly possible) due to the ease of getting picked off. With how rarely I'm on the front lines, a flashlight is just a useless tool to me. As for flares, sure, they're useful, but I simply prioritise medical supplies over them, as usually grunts can easily bring four-six of them per person.

I used to keep to keep two Bicaridine Auto-Injectors and two Tricordrazines Auto-Injectors, but more often than not, I get Bicaridine from Medical in pill form and just throw away one of the Tricord auto-injectors. c:
Otherwise, yeah, Bicaridine is great for brute damage, but the auto-injectors also only come with 5u injections, and have limited use as such, in my opinion.

All in all though, that's very minor details, and swapping a magazine out for a flashlight is hardly a big deal. It's a nice suggestion for medics that like to stay on the frontlines and enter combat themselves, though! c:

[NoShamNoWow]

I usually take a regular medkit, empty it, and fill it with all the pills. Just my two-cents

[Disco Dalek]

Great guide overall and, frankly, more comprehensive than mine in several areas. Always interesting to see a different style of loadout. While our preferences are definitely different, I can understand the thought process behind yours. From what I can tell, your loadout focuses on being able to react quickly to any injury while mine is geared towards packing as much medical equipment as possible. You manage to get webbing too... I haven't been able to snag webbing in several months since I'm locked in prep all day.

[forwardslashN]

Great guide overall and, frankly, more comprehensive than mine in several areas. Always interesting to see a different style of loadout. While our preferences are definitely different, I can understand the thought process behind yours. From what I can tell, your loadout focuses on being able to react quickly to any injury while mine is geared towards packing as much medical equipment as possible. You manage to get webbing too... I haven't been able to snag webbing in several months since I'm locked in prep all day.

I really like your guide and it's my personal preference for a dedicated triage guy. Jess's guide is more of a combat medic.

[Jesstreeter]

Great guide overall and, frankly, more comprehensive than mine in several areas. Always interesting to see a different style of loadout. While our preferences are definitely different, I can understand the thought process behind yours. From what I can tell, your loadout focuses on being able to react quickly to any injury while mine is geared towards packing as much medical equipment as possible. You manage to get webbing too... I haven't been able to snag webbing in several months since I'm locked in prep all day.

To be honest, I usually rush to my prep, grab the medic uniform, slap on my armour, grab a pulse rifle and run directly to the RO and ask for a webbing and an RDS. This way I skip the ~15 minutes queue as well as the RO running out of RDS/Webbings. It also makes it easier to get an overview of what you have and what you don't have when doing prep work, since you can load all of it in one go, instead of over several instances. I also usually try to sweet-talk Medical for pills whilst I prep.

But yeah, my loadout's really more of a jack-of-all-trades designed to handle anything the round can possibly throw at you in a way that you can have a guy stabilised as fast as possible from Crit and on his way to the Rasputin/Vindicator. That's how I usually medic. It's why I don't mind packing so many first aid kits, because I sort out my inventory/stock during the down time between each engagement.

[Dyne]

*cough* Ask your engineers for webbing, they get an unused spare. *cough*

[Fritigern]

*cough* Ask your engineers for webbing, they get an unused spare. *cough*

Those mother fuckers..

[Disco Dalek]

I really like your guide and it's my personal preference for a dedicated triage guy. Jess's guide is more of a combat medic.

Thanks, I've always enjoyed triage more than running into the hive and getting murdered while trying to patch my entire squad up (though it still happens quite often). You get more supplies, but the important ones are often stored in several different containers and take a few spare minutes to sort as the round progresses.

*cough* Ask your engineers for webbing, they get an unused spare. *cough*

I nearly forgot about that. Makes me wonder why medics don't just get webbing like the engineers. What makes them so special? #stopengineerbias

[Surrealistik]

*cough* Ask your engineers for webbing, they get an unused spare. *cough*

They can have my webbing when they pry it from my cold, dead hands.


Seriously though they should get webbing by default; make a suggestion thread.

[Dyne]

They can have my webbing when they pry it from my cold, dead hands.

Engineers get three webbing sets in their vendor.

[Surrealistik]

Engineers get three webbing sets in their vendor.

Seriously though they should get webbing by default; make a suggestion thread.

[Dyne]

They used to get webbing, now they have belts.
Giving/asking webbing from your actual squads promotes communication and cohesion.

[Surrealistik]

In practice, that's not what occurs; since I resumed playing, I have yet to be asked once for a spare webbing.

[Dyne]

In practice, that's not what occurs; since I resumed playing, I have yet to be asked once for a spare webbing.

Then offer one. Medics dont even know you get a spare.

[Surrealistik]

Then offer one. Medics dont even know you get a spare.

Even veteran players don't make the request; and one spare isn't enough for multiple medics; better they just get it as part of their standard issue.

The idea of asking other Marines for important gear is pretty dumb; I can't imagine having to ask Medics for metal even though I could technically do my job without it.

[Rey]

Syringe cases are greatly underappreciated, you can stuff almost anything in them and then use the hand labeler in medbay for quick access.
So you could use 2 spaces in the medic bag to have 6 more quicklots/bicardine/tricord injectors, etc.

It is also a good idea to grab 2 dylovene/kelotane pill bottles and just move 7 of the pills into the other, because by default there are only 7 in there but it can contain up to 14.