Alternative builds(SP)

[Giant Moth]

So, has anybody tried out any of the alternative builds yet, and what's your experience with them? Such as geting a melee focused tacsquad, a ranged focus force commander, or a(gods forbid) ranged focus Assault Squad.

I've heard that ranged force commander can be quite good, being able to carry stuff like plasma cannon or missile launcher, and focus your devastators on purely anti infantry with their heavy bolters.

[Noble]

Is this for single player? If it is, could you add a tag to your thread title indicating so? It doesn't make much sense in the context of multiplayer. :)

[Giant Moth]

Added a tag.

[AntiCommie]

I tried a melee tacs squad (Basically, everyone melee, since I brough dread, FC, ASM, TAC). It worked ok, but I never seemed to have enough melee weapons to give everyone. I see it being possible, but not optimal.

I'm definately going to replay the campaign again and try a variation on each. My next plan is to cap all the support (Meaning arty) call ins I can for the campaign. I'm going to play like rolling thunder, where my units are all ranged and I call in support or use explosives everytime I can.

[McGibs]

I played through on captain with primarily melee (with scout snipers as support)

Melee tac squad gets awesome as soon as you get veterans, and beef up thier HP with seals. Thaddeus in assualt termie armor still sucks though. Apparently everyone just shoots him in his big exposed noodle.

FC with hammer kicks some ass. Overall I found it to be a pretty fun build. I'll try a ranged build next playthrough.

[Pyro Paul]

your tactical marine squad with melee can be absolutely devestating once you get term armor and company vets. throw out a taunt and they become damage sponges allowing every one else to just dish out death

i did a run with assault marines with ranged weapon profecency, and they did kind of turn out pretty good primarly because i handed a flame thrower to the guy. Asssault jumping in then cooking up the scattered squads acctually ended up a rather successful tactic against some of the Nids while playing on a highly infested world... but really it was a tough path to get to that point and not really worth it in the end because by then all my squads where still very much so better than him at dealing with everything.

[konfeta]

Ranged Force Commander does well enough. Only fault is that his damage output begins to lag behind later on unless you give him Termie Amor or a Heavy Weapon, but that means you can't use any Commander items with a Heavy Weapon and only a specialized Teleporters in Termie armor.

He did very well with a no-set up time Plasma Cannon I gave him, though, and later on in Termie Armor w/ Assault Canon and +ranged damage/armor powerfist.

It's an interesting balance. Early on his damage output is very weak compared to a melee spec, so he is support with banner. Later on, he is a second Devastator that has less damage/range, compensating with Orbital Bombardment and the melee charge skill.