Commanding Officer

COMMAND

Commanding Officer

Difficulty: Very Hard Supervisors: Marine Law, USCM High Command Rank: Not defined Duties: Lead your small battalion and complete the mission. Guides: Leadership ; Marine Law Unlock Requirements: Not available. Detailed Description: |__________| Your job is HEAVY ROLEPLAY and requires you to stay IN CHARACTER at all times. While you support the Company, you report to the USCM High Command, not the corporate office. Your primary task is the safety of the ship and her crew, and ensuring the survival and the success of the marines. Your first order of buisness should be briefing the marines on the mission they are about to undertake. If you require any help, use adminhelp to talk to game staff about what you're suppposed to do. Godspeed, commander! |__________|

"How many drops is this for you, Lieutenant?"

"Thirty-eight. Simulated."

"How many combat drops?"

"Uh, two... Including this one."

― Ripley, Lt. Gorman and Pvt. Vasquez, Aliens

No army operates without good leadership, an army without a chain-of-command is a defeated army, it's your job and duty to represent the United Americas Allied Command and cooperate with the Company to solve the situation down in the planet.

The Commanding Officer is held in higher standard from all the crew of Almayer and expected to have the most top responsibilities from all other marines, because of this reason, the role is currently whitelisted, click here to go to the whitelist form.

Your Mission

You are the Commanding Officer of the USS Almayer where you have been tasked with a mission to investigate an automatic distress call from the research facility on the planet Big-Red or another map that you're playing. Your mission is to command the Marines to conduct a Search and Rescue (S.A.R) or a simple investigation on what has happened to the facility. Your ship contains a platoon of 4 squads of marines and the ship's crew (including the MPs, Staff Officers and so on) which makes up five squads. Your sole objective of this mission is to find out what happened, deal with the situation, possibly evacuate any ground personnel and go home with minimal loses. The lives of your platoon rest on your decisions and abilities as the commanding officer of the ship to succeed in this mission. You will also be responsible for the lives of the men and women that fall under your command.

You will also need to brief the marines on what they will be doing as in for example: "Marines, we have received a distress call from the research facility Solaris Ridge where we have been dispatched to investigate." (This is just an example of what a Commanding Officer could say, and after that, you can assign objectives for each squad). How you want this mission to go is entirely up to you to complete the mission.

As the Commanding Officer of the mission, you are to be in RP at all times from briefing the marines to ordering squads around. Don't act like an idiot! You will be held responsible for the failure of the mission if it turns south. You will possibly be demoted if you haven't met acceptable standards. Think carefully about your decisions.

In the event that you leave the ship to oversee ground operations or otherwise, it is important to know who you will be leaving in charge. They will be following the Chain of Command on who ever oversees ship side duties.

Note: Do not commit suicide without a valid RP reason; otherwise you may end with a command job ban. If you are unsure about your RP reason for suicide, you can ahelp any of the staff online to make sure you won't be job banned for it.

Your Tools

You can only go planetside and be part of the ground operation, provided you leave the Executive Officer in charge of the Almayer. That's EXTREMELY not recommended, however, since you are more useful on the Almayer for everybody - including you.

As Commanding Officer, your most significant tools are not weapons and grenades, but the leadership and all military structure under your command:

• The Command staff: These are the direct successors of the command if you are away and have the primary mission of helping the squads down below. They operate by using the overwatch consoles to support the squads and by micromanaging them so you won't have to concentrate on four squads at the same time

• The Marine Platoon: you have four squads under your command, each formed by 1 Squad Leader, 2 to 4 Squad Medics, 2 to 4 Squad Engineers, 1 Squad Smartgunner, 1 well equipped Squad Specialists and endless waves made from fresh reinforcements of redshirts, erm... Standard Marines. In the course of the operation, you have contact with them, give orders to them (but give them to the Squad Leader first) and generally maintain order, structure, and discipline of the Marines. They were trained for a long time to be the representation of your wrath on the battlefield, so manage as if they were your own pieces in a chess game.

• The Military Police: A handful of Military Police and their leader, the Chief MP that answer directly to you. They are here to hunt anyone that breaks the Marine Law. Use them to make sure Marines don't get unruly on the Almayer.

• Medical staff: Since they are civilians, they don't receive orders from you, although they should listen. They are led by a Chief Medical Officer and composed of Doctors. It's recommended you let them be autonomous for roleplay and gameplay reasons since that micromanagement can make their job worse than it is. Researcher is also medical, make sure to provide them resources and ask them for shining equipment for your goons.

• Engineering: The engineers don't do much besides setting the engine up and fixing any broken thing on Almayer. It's important to note that you can authorize the Maintenance Technician to go down planetside to assist in the construction of the FOB, but make sure they are not needed in the Almayer to keep the reactors up and running, otherwise you will find the CIC and every other department out of power and you will no longer be able to use the CIC consoles, losing precious time.

• Supply: Supply is an important part of the Almayer. They provide weapons, equipment, supplies, medicine, and ammo for your ship and marines. You should always have direct contact with the Requisitions Officer to coordinate supply drops and what to order.

• Synthetic: A stronger version of a human made from silicone and science, they're programmed to assist the Almayer in various supporting tasks and are not meant for combat situations. Remember, they completely understand Marine Law and never break it, so as long as your orders do not conflict with Marine Law, (or the rules) they will be followed through.

• The Tank Crew: One of the deadliest weapons fielded by the USCM, if only authorized. Having competent Tank Crewman can turn the tide of any battle, if you're losing on the front your tank will be able to hold any enemy back.

You also have the incredibly useful communications console, with the various abilities of:

• Making a general announcement: a general announcement will be heard by ALL Marines and Survivors (but not xenomorphs). It's highly useful for making sure all marines are aware of any updated orders and the general situation of the battle, aka whether or not an area has been lost or gained.

• Sending a message to USCM High Command: Even the boss has a boss. Sometimes in times of need, you need to contact the High Command to ask for their support or to inform them of something important.

• Send a distress signal: Sending a signal will spawn a crew of Responders or an infected pod full of xenomorphs composed by dead players - useful for when you need help defending the ship and want to call those dead players back to the action.

Mutually exclusive with activating Self-Destruct

• Setting Primary Landing Zone: Allows you to select a primary landing zone, if one isn't chosen 25 minutes into the round the primary LZ is defaulted as LZ one. Setting a primary landing zone means that the other landing zone computer cannot be used by the OPFOR, an example is choosing LZ one as the primary means that LZ twos computer will be disabled for use.

• Initiate the Almayer's escape pods: When everything goes haywire, you can always use this option to attempt to preserve the lives of your Marines and escape like a coward. The escape pods will take 3 minutes to launch. Note that you can only occupy three people inside the pod; otherwise the pod's thrusters will blow up due to overload capacity.

• Activate the Almayer's Self-Destruct Mechanism: One can activate the Self-Destruct System if all seems lost and there are aliens aboard. Every 10 minutes, a safety rod will pop up and can be activated. After activating all 6 rods, one must go to the Self-Destruct Control Panel and can detonate the entire ship if they think the mission is lost. Remember to build defenses around and inside the SD room to have a better chance of detonating the ship.

Mutually exclusive with sending a distress signal.

• Award Medal: Commanding Officers (and ONLY Commanding Officers) can award medals for various marines through their heroic acts. See below for more information.

Supply Drops and Orbital Bombardment

Please refer to Supply Drops in the Staff Officer section.

Your Actual Tools

As the Commanding Officer, you have access to a few unique items. While you should always be leading from the Almayer, however, there may be circumstances where you may need to lead the Marines from the front, either on the colony or on the Almayer itself.

You spawn with a special issue Mateba, an extremely powerful auto-revolver that can dish out massive damage, it's powerful enough to knock a Human off of their feet, which is normally used for Battlefield Executions. You also have access to a Whistle for coordinating the marines and a special prototype weapon the, M46C Pulse Rifle which can be found in the command armory. Additionally you have your Command Tablet which is a portable communication console on the go. It can be found in your bathroom. Finally, you spawn with binoculars, for long-range recon.

How to Lead

Now that the Commanding Officer is a whitelisted role, some basic things don't need to be said anymore. Don't go AFK, don't be a super-dictator. As a fresh CO, there are some things you need to keep in mind. One, you might be called the Commanding Officer, but you're more suited for the title coordinator. Don't see your SLs and SOs as pawns, but rather valuable tools (that sometimes talk back to you) who have a mind of their own. With this in mind, you'll have two overarching leadership styles:

One, being a gentle guiding hand for the marines. This involves giving your squads and SOs some leeway to perform what they think is best, as they're the ones on the ground so they'll know a little bit better than you will. This, in essence, is being firm; but polite, as no marine respects a Commanding Officer who is excessively strict and hostile towards them. If you're going to go this way, I would suggest giving the two chattiest/competent squads semi-autonomy objectives, whereas the less chatty/competent squads are given things such as FoB or Power duty.

Two, be a dictatorlike Commanding Officer who is incredibly strict and stomps dissent with his Military Police. This works exceptionally well if you have compliant and quiet squads who won't be likely to oppose you. You'll want to threaten no support, brig times, and other horrible things in the hopes of getting your marines to follow your orders. With this kind of control scheme, you'll be wanting to have no autonomy for your marines and be continually giving them orders, or they'll stop listening to you. As a note, this can and will result in a disastrous mutiny that will get BOTH sides killed. Be warned.

Here are some things you'll want not to do when you're a Commanding Officer, lest a mutiny happens or the marines flat out ignore you:

• The Commanding Officer stays silent or won't talk over the console or radio.
• The Commanding Officer leaves the bridge or walks around the ship without good reason.
• The Commanding Officer doesn't give the briefing or delays deployment for no good reason.
• The Commanding Officer provides wack-a-doodle or different orders.
• The Commanding Officer insults the lower ranks regularly or expresses contempt.
• The Commanding Officer insults Marines who die in battle.
• The Commanding Officer refuses to acknowledge suggestions.
• The Commanding Officer orders any lower rank who disagrees or criticizes them to cease talking.
• The Commanding Officer refuses any responsibility for failures.

If you as a player see a Commanding Officer checking off most of this box, alert staff via an "Ahelp" as this will allow them to take action if needed, and if it's severe enough they might be taken off the whitelist.

Mutinies

Mutinies can happen for many reasons, but it's mostly due to the marines not liking something you did. Expect there to be a mutiny because you didn't hand out a particular drug, didn't call up the shuttle instantly or they will simply blame you for the operation failure. Whatever the case may be, you have two options of handling it. Conceding to their demands and stepping down, or fighting them off - with lethals or not. If you decide to fight fire with fire, remember that the Military Police will always be on your side, unless High Command (Admins) grants them permission to overthrow you from Command.

Taking on the mutiny head-on can be scary at first, but remember that you've got an always loyal crew of MPs and possibly bridge staff, and an easily defendable location. You'll be able to funnel them in and hopefully tazer them down, arresting them in progress. If it comes to guns, you'll be ready to fight them off if the mutiny is relatively small. Make sure to announce over the command system that a mutiny is happening, and for any free marines on the Almayer to assist. You'll have plenty of loyalists ready to die for you and the Corps.

Of course, the best course of action is to prevent the mutiny outright. Make sure you treat your marines right, and they'll treat you right.

Abilities: Orders

Orders are a timed active ability that characters trained in leadership can activate. The duration of the ability is related to how high the character's leadership skill is, an example being that the Commanding Officer's order will last longer than a Squad leader's order. The leadership skill also determines the intensification of the ability, the higher it is, the more intense the effects of the order are on surrounding players. Note that these abilities do not stack and that the abilities cover your visual view range and no further.

Orders:	Description:
Move!	Increased mobility and chance to dodge projectiles.
Hold!	Increased resistance to pain and combat wounds.
Focus!	Increased gun accuracy and effective range.

Medals

To show that a member of the Almayer's crew has gone above and beyond during the mission you can log into the communications computer and use it to submit an award. This award then appears after the round, and it will also print-out an actual award that can be pinned onto the deserving players. Note that abusing the system or making tons of fake awards will result in removal from Commanding Officer whitelist.

Your Skillset

To find out about how the skill system works head over to the skills system page.

Sources and Reading

• Marine Combat Guide (General Tactics and Strategies)
• Commanding Officer Discussion Thread (Tactics, tips, and tricks)

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Good luck Commanding Officer, you'll need it.