In offline practice, you can pick up a mobile sentry somewhere. I was able to pick this up both as squad leader and as tech.
Dunno where you guys got in your runs, but in my second run (as tech) i did NOT take the sg with me. If you didn't totally suck at the game, you probably got to the part where the tech guy has to hack a terminal, meanwhile you get stormed by aliens (from 2 sides after a while). It's where the 'tutorial' says you can place your sentry.

small hint again: bring the sentry, because by the time i figured out how to hack that thing, 2 of my squad mates had died

Seem to have missed the space-button roll as well. And i think mouse 3 is secondary weapon as well? (only used 1 to weld/unweld doors)

When I played the heavy weapons guy, I actually carried 2 sentries. I didn't have any primary weapon, though. Still, having two set up for the part that J's talking about was quite helpful.

I just found out that you can change between characters when you're playing in offline mode .. lol. Here i am always starting a new game to play another class.

Oh and i ran my medic in the same pit as in my first run, so there i died again. But this time i knew i could continue and made it to the finish with 2 characters.

I just tried installing my microphone btw.

oh, good, now Ox won't be the only one with a Belgian accent.

What, you mean Ox doesn't speak "Oxford English"?

Haha, I barely speak any English No but I find that the accent gets even amplified over a mic, for some reason. It's a lot less worse in actual conversation, but over a mic you're always saying sentences in isolation which tends to bring out the worst accent-wise.

I didn't get a response from you yesterday J so we played Alien Swarm with me, Derf, Shiny and Satis. Was a boatload of fun, especially Derf wandering off on his own all the time (classic), me being a bitch and letting others take my heat (not so classic, but I had to compensate for the lack of gear I could steal ) and most of all Satis running chasing me through a level while being headraped by them little headhumper aliens.

The bad news is that I was stuck as the tech guy because Satis stole the heavy weapons spot. But it wasn't all that awful really, the game really 'rewards' you for being a tech guy because you are very much indispensable to the team on most levels (literally, if you die with a locked door ahead the team is 100% fucked), and the whole 'solve mini puzzles while hell breaks loose around you' thing has its charm.

We stopped 60% or so into the campaign (on normal) as me and Derf had to work the next day. I actually worked till 3 AM after the game on something else too. But it was worth it. Can't wait to see the user-made stuff!! What a great gift from the V-men.

P.S. we may want to reconsider Derf's role. Not that he does a bad job, but his playing style kinda is at odds with the leader's squad reinforcing aura. But that'd mean he'd have to give up his shotty...mmm.

Only heavy weapons can really run off into the front like he does without screwing the team in the process. Next time I'll play tech or something so someone else can use the heavy.

Yeah, I started out staying close and doing alot of "team-worky" stuff, but I soon found out the leader doesn't really have any obviously leader abilities (except apparent radius bonuses Satis mentioned), so toward the 2nd half of our session, i evolved back into my natural recon habits So yeah, not much of an officer at all

However, i would argue that recon could be handy.... e.g., i once stumbled across 2 massive aliens when i was ahead on recon duty and it worked out pretty well, cos during my retreat (and having shouted "oh shit! what the fuck! sentry! sentry!), Satis had setup a Sentry and we dealt with the situation quite well.

Maybe im more adept at Tech? Since Tech moves the quickest? That is of course, if someone fancies the Officer position. [edit]... or whatever. Maybe Rinox can try Officer since he seems to be more nautrally inclined to direct, and I can try heavy?

The whole game was fun as hell though. Shiny's "what-does-this-button-do?" momments at the start were funny as hell. Mostly a joke on Ox since he got a few grenades in the back

http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2010/07 ... ell-kinda/

Nah man, my survivability is pretty good. Ok i got fucked by parasite once, but who knew about them anyway?

Oh, and i LOVE the idea of running off on recon duty and setting mines

This was indeed fun but has a pretty big learning curve for me. I have never played a game like it so I was and still am a bit wtf does this do state of mind. Sorry for all the friendly fire. The good thing was as the medic I could at least heal the damage I did.

Nah, you actually did fine by my books. We always had healing when it was needed, so yeah i guess that's good.

Yeah Shiny did fine imho. Maybe we should ration our healing more in the future but that's something we'll get a feel for along the way. Same with sentry use.

yea, good, looking forward to another run in the near future. Interesting at going first person, though I think I'll avoid it for now.