(I decided to write this after seeing 1. A deathsquad trooper who didn’t know how to fire his weapon or even leave centcomm and 2. A group of 4-5 deathsquad troopers fail to kill a single man with CQC and a fire axe)
So you’re minding your own business one day as a ghost when you get a pop up:
Would you like to be a part of an elite nanotrasen emergency response team? Answer in 30s.
If you picked yes and have no idea what to do, then look no further, I got ya covered.
If you pick yes, your name will be put into a hat to be respawned as either and ERT Trooper, Elite ERT Trooper or a Death Commando. You’ll be given an objective and placed in the centcomm ERT bay. To your right is the equipment room, which may or may not be open. To your north is the Centcomm west corridor, which leads on to the admin office (north), shuttle bay (west) and centcomm proper (east). You’ll want to gear up in the equipment room (if available), sort out your inventory, then head to the shuttle bay with your teammates. Agree on a plan, then get everyone aboard the shuttle, click on the console in the middle and press “send to arrivals”. Then complete your objectives as best you can. It will likely be hard, as ERTs only show up when an admin decides the station is a complete mess, but thankfully, you have some pretty sweet gear to help you along.
Your Equipment
All ERT Troopers get the following general gear:
- Standard Internals set
- Stun Baton
- Energy Gun
- Centcomm Bowman Headset - Protects from flashbangs and gives access to a special centcomm frequency, for private communication with your fellow teammates. Depending on your assigned role, you will also gain access to the relevant department channel.
- All access ID card
- Your special ERT hardsuit. Provides good quality protection from all damage types whilst being spaceproof and (I think) no slowdown. Keep it on at all times, as it will make you recognisable to your team. Comes in different patterns depending on your role.
Additionally, you will either be assigned as a security, medical or engineering operative, or as the team commander. Each gets specialist gear for their assigned task.
Security:
You have the simplest task, but also the task that often brings about the failure of the team. Your job is to do most of the shooty shooty bang bang. You have better weapons than your teammates and so you should protect them and bring down big threats such as changelings.
- Tactical Energy Gun - Essentially the Head of Security’s gun, but with more stun shots. Abuse the hell out of the ranged instant stun to down targets, then handcuff/dump the rest of the charge on kill mode into them.
- Security Belt - Holds a selection of security gear. I recommend dumping the pepperspray becuase it’s useless and giving the flash to someone else, then filling up the slots with more grenades and handcuffs.
- SecHUD - Lets you identify criminals and/or people impersonating security staff, and also lets you set beepsky after hostiles (I AM THE LAW).
- Box of Handcuffs - Literally just a box with more handcuffs
In your locker in the equipment room you can find:
- Telescopic Riot Shield - Like a regular riot shield, but retractable to fit inside your backpack. Makes you unpushable, blocks all melee attacks to the chest and some ranged ones too while you hold it.
- Box of Handcuffs
- Box of Flashbangs
- Box of Tear Gas Grenades
Medical
You’ve got a wide range of medical supplies, so you have a fairly simple job: keep your team alive and healthy. Obviously since you have an energy gun and baton you can fight too, but generally leave that to the security guys unless they need the help. See if you can nab a pair of handcuffs and a flashbang or two off of them, they’ll make dealing with hostiles easier for you
- Medibeam Gun. Continuously heals anyone targeted by it. Don’t cross the beams if you have more than one medic, or you’ll all explode into a fireball of bad ghostbusters references.
- Combat Stimulant Injector - a hypospray with triple capacity and double volume per injection. Each injection contains:
3.233 units of Epinephrine.
3.233 units of Omnizine.
1.267 units of Leporazine.
1.567 units of Atropine.
If you can find a chem dispenser you can refill it with hellchems and use it as a melee weapon. - First Aid Kit
- Medical HUD - for telling who’s dying and who isn’t.
- Medical Belt - put your hypospray, scanner and some supplies from your medkit in here for ease of reach.
Additionally, your locker contains:
- Combat Defibrillator - Works like the CMO’s compact defibrillator, but you can stun people with it by using disarm intent or induce heart attack with harm.
- One of each basic medkit type
- Medibot
Engineering
While everyone else on your team is dealing with the people who messed the station up, it’s your job to actually fix it. You have all the tools necessary to fix comms or power or giant holes, and some weapons so that you don’t just instantly get murdered whilst trying to fix the problem.
- RCD - builds and dismantles things quickly, but has limited ammo. Use wisely.
- 1x Compressed Matter Cartridge - Extra RCD ammo. You can also feed it metal, glass or rods in a pinch but this isn’t very economical.
- Toolbelt - Has a full toolset for hacking, construction and deconstruction.
- Meson Goggles - Allow you to see the layout of rooms through walls, and needed to safely work on singularities or supermatter crystals.
- First Aid Kit
Additionally, your locker contains:
- 3x Compressed Matter Cartridges - Extra RCD ammo. You can also feed it metal, glass or rods in a pinch but this isn’t very economical.
- A bunch of metal, glass and plasteel - For building things, very simple.
- Box of Metal Foam Grenades - Rapidly repair hull breaches.
Commander
You’re in charge. You have a mix of all three sets of equipment, plus some extras. Co-ordinate your team and ensure they don’t run off to die.
- Switchblade - A 20 Brute Melee weapon, retractable to fit into your pocket.
- Security Belt - Same as the security officer’s one
- SecHUDs - Same as the security officer one
Additionally, your locker contains:
- Desert Eagle - A massively powerful handgun, dealing 60 brute per shot. 7 Round magazine.
- 2x .50 Mag - Extra ammo for your Desert Eagle.
- Intellicard - Used for transporting AIs and checking their laws. Use on an AI core to transfer the AI into the card, then check its laws. If the AI is malfunctioning, then you can kill it by deep frying the intellicard and eating it.
- First Aid Kit
- Flash
- Handcuff Box
Additionally, the equipment room contains:
- 2x Spare Energy Guns
- 2x Security ERT Gear Lockers
- 2x Medical ERT Gear Lockers
- 2x Engineering ERT Gear Lockers
- 1x Commander ERT Gear Locker
- 2x Composition C4 - Plant on walls/doors to blow them down, 10s timer by default, click on them in hand to customise the timer.
- Box of Zipties
- Box of Syringes
- Box of EMP Grenades - Heavily stun and damage cyborgs/IPCs, disrupt headsets, mess with door/locker settings and drain the charge of energy weapons nearby. Careful you don’t drain your teammates’ charge with these.
- Rapid Syringe Gun - loads up to six syringes full of chemicals, the injects them into targets hit. Not suitable for dispensing healing as each shot does minor damage. Terrifying if you can find a chem dispenser, useless if not.
- Ion Rifle - Too big to fit in backpacks. Heavily damages mechs and cyborgs, creates EMP effect in a 3x3 AoE from the impact tile.
- Extended Capacity Emergency Oxygen Tank
- Security Auto Rifle - A rather weak ballistic rifle, still worth taking because it’s not deflected all the time by DEswords or Eshields.
- Mechanical Toolbox
- First Aid Kit
- Mindshield Implant Lockbox
- Crowbar, Radio and Handcuffs
""“Elite”"" ERTs
Sometimes, you will be part of an elite ERT, which has some of its gear replaced with more powerful versions:
Pulse Carbine - Replaces Tactical Energy Gun. In addition to the normal firing modes, this gun can also fire pulse lances. They do 50 burn damage and heavily damage terrain. This makes the gun overpowered. Enemy? Stun-Pulse-Pulse-Pulse-Pulse and they’re dead, all in about three seconds. Wall? Just blast it down. Xeno Queen? Four hits and they’re dead.
Pulse Pistol - Replaces Energy Gun. Same stats as the carbine, but it fits in pockets and has less charge for the pulse setting.
Industrial RCD - Replaces RCD. Same as RCD but it holds much more ammo.
Experimental Combat Stimulant Injector - Replaces the regular version. It contains 8u Quantum Medicine and 2u Synaptise per injection, healing you very fast.
Energy Sword - Replaces Switchblade. Massively powerful melee weapon, just don’t get shoved and drop it.
How to not all die horribly
Despite all the sweet gear, most ERTs all end up dead, becuase they screw up and end up dooming themselves due to some basic errors.
Stick Together
I really can’t stress this enough. Most of you will be specialist roles, and so rely on each other for support. Running off as a security officer and getting hurt with no medics nearby means you’ll probably get assassinated while you’re weak by an enterprising antagonist, who you have now given your equipment to, good job. Similarly, Medics and Engineers are really not that well equipped compared to say nukeops, and if you’re alone robust antagonists can and will murk you for your gear. Stay in a group, as this allows the better armed teammates to protect the medics and engineers whilst they do their thing, and ensures that anything you come across can be dealt with.
Protect Each Other
Medics and Engineers may end up with their gun in their backpack and their hands full healing or repairing. This is a prime time for them to be jumped, so keep them safe during this time.
Take The Right Gear
Malf AI? Make sure you bring the ion rifle and EMPs. Nukeops or DEsword murder? Bring ballistic weapons. Carp user? Take flashbangs. Centcomm itself also has lots of sweet loot for you to find, and you have all access to it, so feel free to loot it before setting out. Some notable contents include a Deathsquad SWAT Suit, a Pulse Carbine, multiple Autorevolvers, X4, Jaws of Life and about 7 or 8 security autorifles.
That should be enough to get you started. I’ll add a bit about the deathsquad specifically when I have time.
And please, don’t friendly fire with pulse weapons.