Listen up recruits and listen well. I'm not your momma, I'm not your boss and I certainly don't want to hold your hand and play kissy face on the battlefield. I've seen too many soldiers wandering the burn zone crying like kindergarteners when they should be grown men and women.

I want to give a lesson on how to not be a scrub.

You are the bleeding edge of soldier technology. You are an immortal among the billions that walk these worlds like zombie biomass. The megacorporations want to sell you the rights to print their suits and weapons and they are rushing to be the first to come up with the designs we need. Sometimes those designs are changed on us too. Most are just plain missing-in-action. Deal with it.

What I want to help you with is teaching you how to spend your study time and how to specialize. Why? Because the scrubs do it wrong and cry like little children. I'm sick of the crying kids. It's like being trapped on an Interbus shuttle for 120 AU with a crying baby in the seat next to you. In the Sebiestor tribe thirteen year old girls can fight better than some of these immortal scrubs. So quit your bitching, sack up and do it right.

Like I said before I don't want to hold your hand. You need to learn to think for yourself. I just want to point you in the right direction.

Step one: you have to be able to kill.

Pick a weapon and get operations to 3. That will let you use the advanced version of it which is good enough to start with. You know what a scrub would do? Go all-in and try and get proficiency 5 and then complain because he can't kill with it. They cry to get their brain wiped and reprinted so they can use the weapon the soldier next to them is killing with. Its the soldier that is doing the killing. They could kill you with a spoon if they wanted to. I want to kill you with a spoon right now but I have self control.

Step two: pick a basic frame.

Specialization comes later. Every soldier needs a dropsuit. Pick a frame and get to the advanced version. Don't worry about that purty prototype stuff until later and certainly don't worry about specialized versions.

Step three: core skills.

Train all those skills that affect every suit on the market. They all have armor and shields. You also need to tweak the electronics and power systems so learn about that stuff too. You'd think those smart R&D guys would design a suit that can carry everything we want. They don't so you have to be able to improve those designs yourself. There are a lot of core skills and you choose which ones to train up based on what you need but most will do you good. Advanced everything is good enough. Complex stuff comes later.

Step four: don't be a scrub.

Now, here's point of all this. Choice of weapons and suits is going to continually evolve. You have to fight with what we have today and you have to adapt as tactics and technology changes. There are those that want constant brain-wipes or respecs or whatever. All they are doing is chasing after those that know what they are doing. They see what they think is the most powerful thing on the battlefield and they spend all their time training into it at the expensive of everything that makes them a more effective, and more importantly, more versatile soldier. The moment something is tweaked they feel trapped and all "it's not my fault."

It is your fault, scrub. Adapt and move on. Eventually, you'll train into most of it anyway.

Step five: don't specialize yet.

Now that you can fit an advanced basic frame like a pro it's not time to specialize just yet. Remember that part about being versatile? Well, here we go.

Every infantry soldier should be able to effectively use some form of primary weapon such as an assault rifle. There are not a lot of choices but there are a few ways to go right now. You already picked your weapon, right?

Next, you should be able to deal with vehicles. At the moment the swarm launcher is your best bet. Train it up to operation 3. If you want a challenge the Gallente Plasma Cannon could be interesting. The packed AV grenades are great to have around too.

Then, you need to be able to deal with snipers and other rooftop dwelling creatures. Train up a few levels in sniper to deal with them. Snipers are not evil. Their point is to be a pain in the ass that you have to deal with. Now, deal with them.

Finally, it's worth it for every foot soldier to learn how to use drop uplinks. Battles are won with those things. Uplinks can turn the tide. I spawn scrubs all day long right where I want them because they aren't smart enough to do it themselves.

The goal here is to be able to use a variety of middle level gear effectively. You will become a more well rounded soldier. You will be able to adapt to the changing conditions in the burn zone. You should be able to fight at short range and long, against infantry and vehicles, and to break out of bad situation and turn a battle around.

Step six: now you can specialize.

You should be smart enough at this point to pick a specialty and to train into it. You should be smart enough to not focus too much on that last 3% bonus to something when you'd be better off choosing versatility.

Remember: scrubs whine, real soldiers adapt.

Now leave me alone. My beer is getting warm and that Matari woman over there is checking me out.