Imagine that you have just loaded into a Barotrauma game of Combine Assault™ and have no idea what to do. Despite everyone begging you to remain and go to Fabrication, you leave Nexus nonetheless since you’re a humorous combine soldier with a large minigun. You blow him and every other civilian in Fabrication to pieces in reaction when a civilian (a mongrel dog and sinner) blows his vile breath close to you, earning you a ban! Oh no! Who could have expected this?
Don’t worry, smooth brained monkey, this guide will help you become Combine Assault’s™ Most Valuable Player!
Getting Started: A basic rundown of CA™
Each faction has certain objectives to meet in order to achieve the prized Victory Royale™, the majority of which simply include eliminating the opposition before that group physically AND metaphorically blasts them to pieces (more on that in the resistance section).
- Combine
- Civilians
- Resistance
- G-man
- Xen
Each faction has its own unique goals they need to accomplish to obtain the coveted Victory Royale™, most of which just include blowing the other side away before the other side blows them up both figuratively AND literally (more on that in the resistance section).
Being a Combine: or how I learned to stop worrying and Love the Advisors
Congratulations! You’ve rolled into a coveted position inside The Combine! Now you can vent all of your high school angst on those demeaning civvies! Aside from the fact that that one recently made a HEV outfit and those civil servants definitely have a lot of Russian cocktails on hand, perhaps not. *BONK now all your clothes are gone, you’re laughed at by resistance and yelled at by your combine brethren. how could you prevent this? Here’s how;
The six classes that make up the Combine faction each have a unique loadout that alters how and in what role they play. The main concept of the combine is to force citizens to create tera-steel in return for the meal coupons they require for rations, all the while keeping an eye out for opposition goons trying to stop you.
Consul
The Consul is THE highest ranking member of the combine and THE person that no one listens to and also THE person who gets yelled at for moving the station or being 1 CM from the nexus. As the consul you will have to do the arduous task of looking through cameras and spotting the leader from minute 1 only for no one listen when you call it out.
The Consul is armed with the finest weaponry The Combine can provide: a flimsy suit and a revolver that tickles anyone with actual armor on, Consul also has access to unique crafting recipes only he can make. as the consul you will have to yell at soldier to stop RDMing civilians and protect the nexus from resistance infiltration (spoilers: he wont)
The other unique perk the consul has is his ability to open apartments, which no other combine besides ordinal has, but you should leave the raids to him since again, you have nothing for protection and are better suited watching cameras and yelling things with !announce which is a thing you can do! or use the button above the chat box (make sure lua is installed)
Tips for playing Consul:
- Never leave nexus alone, always have a guard, you are very important and have a very important item that would give people all-access to the nexus.
- Try to get kitted out with some better weapons ASAP, an armed consul is an alive consul
- Watch the cameras and report any suspicious behavior to the combines, 9/10 its the resistance doing some funny stuff
- STOP MOVING THE SUB
Ordinal
The Ordinal is THE second-highest ranking member of the Combine and THE second person to die/execute civvies for no reason/Be an overall try-hard/nerd. The ordinal is the Combine’s commander and is responsible for giving out orders, ordering arrests, and telling combine where to go and what to do (but they never listen).
Ordinal’s are equipped with a pulse rifle which kills any thing that moves, armor that only high-caliber rounds or a well-placed bottle of vodka to the head can penetrate, a backpack that recharges most items, overwatch access, and an implant that increases movement speed.
Like mentioned before, ordinal can open the door to apartments, allowing him to raid them when necessary or when you get laughed at by a civ and finessed for all your clothes.
use the !announce command to let consul know that his only role in life is to sit on a camera and hope the combine listens to him as he has no unique gimmick.
Tips for playing ordinal:
- Try not to die or get stunned, your equipment is VERY valuable and if a near-do-well like the leader or spy gets it then the combine is as good as dead!
- Coordinate with your fellow combine, order arrests of suspicious civilians, and make sure everyone is doing their jobs
- Raid apartments when any signs of resistance activity is found inside of them, you dont want fabricators and radios active in a place the other combine cant access
Combine Soldier
The Soldier is the Brick wall class of the combine, they pump out and shrug off damage and stuns, have more health than other classes, and are probably the class people get banned playing as the most. They have the task of not letting intrusive thoughts tell them to leave nexus un-guarded, go to fabs and kill everyone there, instead they should protect the consul and nexus until ordinal or some other combine needs help from a walking tank with a minigun.
Soldiers are one of three (3) Combine classes to have a variant, one can choose either a suppressor or charger, each with different armor, weapons, and probability of being a try-hard:
The Suppressor is the class one is most likely to randomly roll and comes with potent armor, a really big minigun that shreds anything and everything, and a penchant for being banned.
The Charger is the second loadout a soldier can take, they come with Stronger armor than a suppressor, a big heavy shotgun that stuns and chunks health bars, and a hard-on for try-harding
Tips for playing Combine Soldier:
- Please for the love of god do NOT randomly execute civilians for breathing on you unless they do something truly antagonistic like trying to stun you or attacking you and even then you should try to keep them alive for interrogation (will be covered later)
- Protect consul and the nexus so spy/resistance cant walk-in and assassinate consul/blow up the reactor
- Be ready to unleash utter suffering upon those heathen resistance when the time comes, your minigun and shotgun are potent weapons!
Grunt
The Grunt is the basic maintenance guy in charge of repairing broken junction boxes after failed reactor sabotage, fixing walls after someone puts a hole in them, fixing wires after someone trolls them, and throwing grenades into crowded rooms DO NOT
The Grunt is equipped with serviceable armor and an SMG, a very versatile weapon in the right hands. The grunt is also the only class that spawns with a multiool, capable of rewiring things, fixing them, and detaching things, as well as a plasma emitter, which is both a welder and plasma cutter in one!
The Grunt is also one of the classes that can spawn as a spy (covered in the resistance section)
Tips for playing Grunt:
- Make sure to fix any broken junction boxes, walls, and wiring you come across, without power the nexus becomes undefended and fabs becomes unusable.
- you spawn with 2 grenades in your tool-bag, throw these at civilians in fabrication for the funny, use them to get out-of-reach opponents and send them flying.
Tips for Grunt spy:
- You spawn with a versatile weapon and utility items, allowing you greater freedom round-start to plan some sabotage and get used to playing spy.
Civil Protection
Pick up that can. CPs are the police, keeping an eye on civilians, making sure they make tera-steel, and confiscating contraband/watching for resistance activities. Civil Protection have the unique ability to drag people at full speed, useful for bringing them to prison for interrogation/a round-long time-out.
Civil Protection have two loadouts they can pick:
Civil Protection are equipped with useful armor, a USP match used to shoot people in the legs, a stun baton (guess what it does), and handcuffs.
CP Elite are painted a cool red, have a SMG, stun baton, and handcuffs, they also have better access than CPs. CP elite are different from normal CPs in that they can’t be spy whereas normal CP can.
Tips for Civil Protection:
- Use the stun baton, not your gun
- Make sure civilians are producing tera-steel and not vodka or other contraband and arrest them when they do (they always do)
- use your baton to interrogate prisoners in order to get the names of the spy
Tips for CP spy:
- You are the other guy expected to patrol fabs besides the Civil Worker, meaning you can *ahem “not notice” when the leader is producing 20 hev suits and smgs and a radio
- use your drag speed to cover up murders of both you and your resistance buddies
Being a Combine: Continued
Civil Worker
Scrap distributer, Vodka to the head enjoyer, it’s everybody’s favorite class to bully, the Civil Worker! A CW is charged with distributing the scrap necessary to create tera-steel, monitoring fabrication, and healing people/killing infestations depending on class chosen.
A CW is equipped with garbage weapons, armor, and intellect. they can access the nexus and the offices and that’s it. one of their loadouts gives them a med-kit they can use to heal downed and injured people (because god knows the other combine wont do it). the other gives them immunity to infections and an immolator, an infection-clearing, jeff-killing machine.
CW is the last Combine that can roll spy, and the hardest spy role to play.
Tips for playing Civil Worker:
- Don’t distribute more scrap than needed, civilians don’t need a crate of scrap (though they will get their hands on it, in that case just watch them closer)
- Don’t distribute Less scrap than needed, civilians tend to not like only having a single stack of scrap and you wont like it when you get stunned and robbed of your shoes and ID
- Heal people who need it when playing as the medic loadout
- Clear infestations to stop them from killing people and kill Jeff so he doesn’t one-shot everyone as the hazard loadout
- DONT GET STUNNED (impossible)
Tips for playing Civil Worker spy:
- Hand out a lot of scrap so the resistance can get more resources, more tera-steel in their hands is more items they can use to overthrow the Combine
- the immolator is a powerful weapon but takes time to build damage, time that may let someone gun you down or escape
- use health pens to save the leader when he get’s caught 10 seconds into a round
Malfunction
you may have stopped in-between your bouts of random murder to ask “why is my health going down? what’s this weird symbol on my screen?” well that my friend, is MALFUNCTION!
Malfunction is given to any Combine who kills an innocent civilian (read: not a resistance member) or innocent combine (read: not a spy). it slowly drains health, gives psychosis, a speed debuff, and can be fatal if not treated with a health pen.
Interrogation
when you arrest someone and bring them in to jail, you have to interrogate them, which can only be done with a stun baton. while the prisoner is in jail, smack them twice until they get stunned then wait for them to get up then smack them again, healing them as needed. if they are resistance they have a chance to disclose the names of the leader and spy.
reminder that at 10 minutes, a message will send that tells you that you can interrogate anti-citizens, this only applies to people who spawn as anti-citizens round-start, not all prisoners, you can interrogate them anytime.
General tips for Combine:
- Avoid killing civilians when possible, only they can produce steel and malfunction sucks
- Contraband is NOT an instant indicator of resistance status, arrest first, kill only if necessary. it may have just been a civilian doing a little trolling or helping the resistance out.
- The Ordinal and CP spawn with stun batons, use them, nothing is more embarrassing than watching a combine with a baton choose to gun down countless civilians and leave them to die.
- Try to release civilians who don’t appear to be resistance and have been interrogated, unless they committed a major crime, like attacking a combine or calling the ordinal a doo doo head.
- Don’t wander around aimlessly, always try to do something, whether it be patrolling fabs or searching for resistance.
- Don’t be a try-hard, no one likes the guy counting tera-steel and acting like he’s actually The Combine, it tends to be a one-way ticket to a free bottle over the head and subsequent ballast trip.
Civilian life: A primer on getting gunned down in the street like a dog
Welcome to City-12/15/industrial-23/Rustworks! as a new citizen of whatever map the host decided to stumble onto, you are tasked with producing tera-steel, stealing combine’s shoes, making dank contraband, and surviving till round-end.
Civilian life and you
as a civilian, you are not important, you aren’t resistance, you aren’t combine, and you definitely aint Xen. Your only reprieve from this reality is the hard labor of producing tera-steel, a material in every recipe and something the combine can’t craft, so they need you to make it.
“but what, pray tell, if i decide NOT to produce steel? what if it decide to hmmmm run around and troll?” you can’t survive on an empty stomach, over the course of the round you will get hungry and need rations to fix it, the combine are the only ones capable of vouchers for rations. you will also get sleepy and need to head to a bed.
Civilians will always win if they simply survive to the end of the round, baring any recruitments which change team, they can do this in any way they see fit. Whether they choose to be a loyalist dog or a resistance groupie as long as they survive to round-end they win.
Basics of Crafting
If the CW/CP arent incompetent they will usually hand out stacks of scrap, if not just yell at them until they do or hope someone vodkas them and takes their ID. once you have the scrap use it to produce universal terasteel, the main ingredient in almost all crafting recipes from weapons to healing to vodka (somehow).
Now you COULD make a stack, hand it over for a voucher, grab a ration and repeat, but you could also make stuff with the tera-steel, nobody will complain when you pump out health pens. Another thing you can try crafting is vodka, which is an item that allows you to ward off hunger by drinking it, but it’s primary use is being slammed over someone’s head in order to rob them.
Be warned though, Vodka stuns are variable depending on who they hit, don’t be surprised when the soldier you just stunned gets right back up and sends you to the swiss cheese factory.
Tips for playing Civilian:
- Keep a couple health pens on you for safe-keeping, you never know when a stray bullet will be lodged in your skull or a fellow civilian will need help.
- Make multiple stacks of tera-steel, one to trade for a voucher and one to make other items
- Some maps have multiple fabricators close together, use this to pump out double the steel and double the items
- If playing loyalists, Don’t be mad when you get vodka stunned, robbed, beaten, shot to death, ran over, violated, and laughed at by the people you sell out for a crumb of a ration
- If playing resistance groupie, there are many ways to aid the resistance from spraying posters to handing over steel and vodka. the leader is THE most important member of the resistance, so he would appreciate someone willing to take the fall for spraying posters and making contraband to give him time to recruit and grow the resistance
- all maps have a room that comes with 1-3 vodka pre-placed, grab one in case of a Combine randomly trying to execute you or some other threat comes along
Sickness
Sickness is a debuff that civilians can get if they purposefully kill another civilian, even if resistance, or a combine, as normal civilians aren’t accustomed to killing and it’s totally not a mechanic to stop non-resistance members from just killing combine.
While not as bad as malfunction sickness is pretty bad and should be avoided.
Piece De Resistance: A guide to tearing your hair out because spy died 1 minute into a round
Picture this: you’re a normal civilian in city-15 in the fabricator is where you spend most of your days, chillin-out, maxing , relaxing, all cool and all stunning some CW outside of the nexus. when a couple a guys who were up to no good started making trouble in your neighborhood, they spray one little poster and suddenly- VIVE LA RESITANCE! Welcome to the resistance Civilian! you’ve just been forcefully recruited to fight against the intergalactic war machine known, as The Combine!
The resistance are made up of 5 distinct yet equally important classes, but they all have the goal of overthrowing the Combine either by killing them all, or blowing the nexus reactor, surviving for 120 seconds and winning that way.
The Resistance can accomplish this with the unique recipes for crafting only they have access to. and a special !comms command or button that they can use to talk to each other that only resistance member cans see.
Resistance Leader
The Leader is THE most important member of the resistance and THE guy who does all the recruiting, planning, and heavy-lifting for the resistance (god knows the spy wont do it). He’s tasked with spraying posters (or getting someone else to) and using those sprayed posters to recruit more civilians into the resistance.
The leader spawns as a bog-standard civilian, picked at random from the players given the civilian role (unless they opted-out before round start of course). The Leader does, however have a few tricks up his sleeve, he can use !gear to spawn in a box containing useful items such as a ration, 8 tera-steel, a multitool, and best of all, a spray can for spreading the resistance. !gear is loud, however so make sure not to do it close to anyone or you can enjoy a one-way trip to prison and execution.
The leader also has a recipe unique to him, the HEV suit, which is the most powerful armor in the game but requires batteries to run and sucks power more than Chinese spyware.
Tips for playing Resistance Leader:
- Always try and recruit competent people first, don’t recruit the idiot running around making a nuisance of himself.
- However you try and take down the combine, you will need guns and armor, either make SMGs from fabs or stun and rob a combine, preferably a CP or ordinal.
- HEV suits are powerful but are always a sign that the resistance is around, only make them when you’re confident you and the resistance can take on the combine head-on.
- Make sure to use resistance comms to check on the spy and get his role, if he’s smart he can take your steel and make items far away from more suspicious eyes
Resistance Spy
The Spy is THE guy on the inside, a Combine loyal to the resistance who can relay information on combine radio chatter and movements to the other resistance, and THE guy who will be yelled at for being utterly useless all round. He’s tasked with spying on the combine, freeing the anti-citizen when possible, and doing things other resistance can’t as a combine.
The Spy is equipped with whatever the Grunt, CP, or CW spawns with, along with having access to the resistance comms channel and resistance crafting recipes.
Tips for playing spy:
- At the start of the round spy will get a pop-up informing him of his position as spy and the name of the leader, use this when deciding who to arrest and who to let go
- As a combine you have a lot more freedom than other resistance members, use this to your advantage to go places other people cant
- Don’t run around all round doing nothing, not only will the combine hate you, but the resistance will as well and they aren’t so shy about stunning you to do your job better.
Resistance Operative
The Operative is the normal everyday civilian who got recruited by the leader after a poster was sprayed, they are the guys who aid the resistance in making items like tera-steel, weapons, and radios used to call Gordon Freeman.
The Operative has whatever items they had before recruitment, and gains access to resistance comms and crafting.
Tips for playing Resistance Operative:
- You aren’t told the names of the leader, other Operatives, or spy when recruited, use comms to ask their names so you don’t kill the spy by accident
- Try to remain inconspicuous, at least until you’ve produced enough guns and stolen enough armor to fight the combine
- Seize moments of opportunity, a CP or Ordinal wandering alone, Ordinal getting head crabbed because he didn’t change out his suit battery, CW getting stunned and robbed for the hundredth time
- have a backup plan in place in case a frontal assault doesn’t go as planned, a radio can be used to call gordon, or a xen flower can spread an infection the combine would have to deal with
Anti-Citizen
The Anti-Citizen is THE guy who gets to spend all round in jail until they execute you because spy and leader got caught in the open. The Anti is tasked with getting out of jail and providing an extra set of hands to the resistance.
The Anti-Citizen is equipped with a prison outfit and resistance comms and recipes.
Tips for playing Anti-Citizen:
- Don’t
- Ten-minutes into a round, if RP mode is off, the combine can interrogate you to give out the names of the leader and spy, make sure you aren’t in prison by then
- Smooth-talkers make the best use of Anti-Citizen, get the combine to let you out, Rely on them not listening to each other to stay hidden
Gordon Freeman
The man Himself, Gordon Freeman will spawn if a resistance radio is wired and allowed to charge to 100%, Gordon is THE guy who can turn the tide of a round and THE guy who will die because he forgot to put a battery in his suit and THE guy who gets yelled at more than spy.
Gordon Freeman is equipped with an HEV suit, his unique crowbar, a gravity gun, and a battery for his suit which he will never use.
Tips for playing Gordon Freeman:
- Gordon Freeman is picked from currently dead players and spawns in a respawn shuttle, always be ready to spawn in as Gordon
- Use his gravity gun to stun and fling combine then the crowbar to finish them off, it’s like a stun baton and knife in one
- PUT YOUR SUIT BATTERY IN WHEN YOU GET INTO COMBAT
- If you die, the resistance has 120 seconds to win or they lose automatically, try not to die
General resistance Tips:
- Always be on the look out either for moments of opportunity or for passing combine
- Communicate and coordinate with your team, let them know what you’re doing and where
- Don’t do stupid things like make a volatile compound N and sit in fabs till it explodes, you will be banned
- do stupid things like make a volatile compound N and sit in nexus till it explodes, you will be thanked
G-Man: A teleporting, healing, hiring, reactor griefing machine
On rare occasions, when a lucky civilian has enough karma, they get spawned in as G-man, a mysterious man accomplishing strange goals only he knows the reasons for, hiring civilians to bring these goals to fruition. Or he spends all round teleporting around getting stuck on things, and griefing reactor till he’s told to stop by the host.
G-Man is made up of two parts, the G-man himself and his Hire.
G-Man
The G-Man is THE main player in the G-Man side, he is the one tasked with completing three random objectives ranging from really easy to probably just better to not do anything.
G-Man is Immortal, nothing can kill or stun him, His briefcase lets him teleport around and inside it has 3 orbs that bypass the “recently healed” debuff and let him heal anyone to full.
Tips for playing G-Man:
- Make sure to hire someone competent, when you need both spy and a civvie dead you dont want captain useless to be the only guy you have on hand
- DONT LET ANYONE GET YOUR BREIFCASE, it is what lets you teleport, and contains the 3 healing orbs you need for some objectives
- Take advantage of your immortality, G-man makes for a perfect shield for his Hire to kill combine he had no business beating
- You still have limited interaction capabilities, things such as bodies and reactor/fabricators can still be used by you
- Use the fact that you can still craft to your advantage, take steel from your hire and go to combine fabs to craft weapons and items he will need so he doesn’t have to cast suspicion on himself
- When you complete two objectives everyone gets a pop-up telling them the final one, make sure it’s either already being done or is easy enough to do
G-Man’s Hire
The Hire is THE guy who has to help G-Man do his objectives, and THE guy who will be mistaken for resistance and killed only for combine to cry because they got malfunction. The Hire is tasked with helping G-Man complete all 3 objectives and there’s one objective only they can complete, dying.
The Hire has whatever items they had before bring recruited, and gains access to resistance crafting recipes but not comms (unless they were resistance before hand, in which case G-Man takes precedence over resistance)
Tips for playing G-Man’s Hire:
- Take advantage of G-Man’s unique abilites; have him teleport around to gain info on your targets, have him craft items you need, use him as a shield from gun-fire and take down resistance and combine alike for free
- The “have the hire die by someone else’s hands” objective means you have to die from someone else, not by suicide
- You count for the G-Mans “heal a civilian from critical state back to full” objective
- If you were resistance before-hand, take advantage of this by spreading misinformation to the resistance and take your target out
Xen: Or how I learned to stop worrying and love the Consul’s soft, pliable skull
Oh no! you were killed by one of many ways to die in Combine Assault™! Don’t worry though, whether it be by RDM or glorious revolution, any and all players who die will eventually respawn as a headcrab, loyal to the fifth and final team in CA™, XEN. Xen is the least fun and a broken team that can’t actually win, but it’s always funny to take everyone down as jeff, or kill the consul as a headcrab.
Xen is made up of three distinct classes, baring an upcoming rework.
Headcrab
The Headcrab is THE least fun class in the game and THE class that everyone loves to hate when they get killed by them, especially the Consul and Leader. The Headcrab is tasked with being a nuisance and trying to hopefully score a kill on a civilian or combine to transform into the slightly stronger yet equally slow Headcrab Zombie
The Headcrab has nothing except for its bite which stuns people not immune to it and lets them get turned into a Headcrab Zombie.
Tips for playing Headcrab:
- Try to surprise people, you’re squishy and slow, but pack a mean bite
- Ordinal, Soldier, Grunt, and Civil Protection are immune to your bite as long as they have a battery in their suit, avoid them unless you know they don’t have power to their suits
- Don’t be afraid to !optout when stuck
Headcrab Zombie
The Zombie is THE Monster who immediately throws away all allegiance to dance on the poor fool who got caught by a Headcrab. tasked with killing and infecting more people with headcrabs.
The Headcrab Zombie is equipped with whatever the person infected had, including armor and ID, so different zombies have different access levels
Tips for playing Headcrab Zombie:
- You have much, much more interaction abilities than the Headcrab, use this to open doors for your friends and get into places they couldn’t
- You have so much health it’s absurd, anything less than a full SMG mag wont put you down and even then you still regenerate
- You carry the same damage a headcrab can put out with more health, use this to your advantage
JEFF
The be all end all of Xen, JEFF is THE guy no one wants running at them full speed and THE only guy who can make a Combine Soldier run in fear. Jeff is tasked with killing literally everyone that isn’t Xen.
Jeff is immortal, conventional weapons do nothing to him, only an immolator can damage Jeff, and Jeff packs a mean punch capable of one-shotting anyone not in soldier-tier armor making Jeff the strongest entity in the game
Jeff is created when someone either ingests a Xen flower or dies to toxins from a xen infection.
Tips for Playing as Jeff:
- You have the access level of whoever you were before turning, use this to access places people typically run to when you exist, like the nexus’ upper levels
- Watch out for immolators, they are the only thing capable of stopping you, if a CW hazard exists avoid them, the combine tend to yell at civilians to make an immolator if one doesn’t exist
- Avoid Being trapped, nothing is worse than getting baited into a room you have no access to and the door closed on you, rendering you useless unless someone accidentally opens the door (they always do)
- You pack a mean punch and walk fast, you don’t have to waste time smacking people more than once, just punch and go you have people to slap.
Conclusion: final words and some general tips
Playing Combine Assault™ is fun, easy, and sometimes really tense, as long as everyone at least tries to play the game properly and doesn’t troll or game-throw. as long as you follow your role and do what’s asked of you, you should find it Easy to learn the intricacies and advanced mechanics and strategies other players use.
Here are some Basic tips for playing CA™ in general:
- Don’t ruin someone’s round at the beginning for stupid reasons, no one wants to sit in dead chat or as a headcrab because you decided to execute them for closing a door in your face.
- If you don’t know how something works or how to do something just ask and someone will tell you
- Don’t be stupid and people won’t want to mess with you beyond what their role asks them too
Most importantly, remember to have fun 🙂
Credit to StrongestSchizo