How to properly assemble a combat insertion team

1. Kill the Company's PR guy. He's affable, well-liked, and is just trying to put the best face on Company policy he doesn't 100% agree with.

   He's also easily the most skilled team member with a heavy plasma rifle, a trained killer, a clone of the Director of R&D (or a robot that looks just like her), and totally committed to killing every single team member (except maybe for hosts).

2. Equipment. Decentralise everything. You don't want your laser beam-powered single point of failure M16A1 autoloader failing at the crucial moment just because the PR guy took time off from fighting to explode the commsat.
3. Can your weapons actually harm the bad guys? There's nothing worse than getting to an airless world and discovering that your needle guns fire a knockout drug that doesn't work, and that the only weapon you've got that can harm the bastards is a flamethrower, which unfortunately doesn't work too well without an atmosphere.
4. Can you use your weapons at the drop zone? Your mission is to flush out the bad guys holed up in an oil refinery. Are high explosives or incendiary grenades really your best choice of weapon?
5. Intelligence. Prof. Wunderkind might be female, frail and not a fighter, but not only have her radical ideas about alien metabolism never occurred to anybody else, they also just might be correct. So please remember to pack the mixed aspirin and talcum powder and a blowdart she recommended -- the worst that can happen is that you go back without having used them.

Yes, I lived in Texas for a long, long time.

No, I do not scream "Yeehaw!"

Aside from all that, you do have to keep in mind that the average Texan household contains seven guns, and the only person I know who was a junior member of the NRA was from Texas. This kinda puts a little backup into the idea that those good ol' boys would be useful to have around.

More tips on saving the lives of a combat squad:

First, some serious ones, based on time in the Combined Cadet Force.

• Assign a job to everyone, and make damn sure they know what it is. So, when the shit hits the fan in a big way, Simpson will know his job is to find cover and radio for help, whatever it takes.
• Do basic combat drills. If you panic when the big gribbly monster pops up, you're dead. If you all instinctively drop to the ground, roll, and move into mutually supportive fireteams, you're sorted.
• Always take more equipment than you think you need. Take long coils of rope anywhere you go. Take extra ammo. For Pete's sake take a pistol, as your main weapon will always fail when you really need it. Oh yeah, and take torches. Why does nobody take torches?
• When moving along a dark, seemingly deserted corridor, do it properly. The point man (also known as Scout, Cannon Fodder) should look ahead. The team leader always goes number two in the order of march. Look forwards and to one side. Number three looks to the other side. The last man looks backwards. If you have more men than this, use at least one to check the ceiling.
• If something needs investigating, send two people together. The rest get into an all-round defence, each covering a set arc of fire. The two scouts (frequently, but necessarily, the scout and the team leader) go to a point near the object of interest. One stops a good 10 meters back, and keeps a bloody gun pointed at it. The other approaches with a lot of caution. If more people can be spared to cover the searcher, good, but do not overdo numbers. There's no sense in taking thirty people to cover an apparently dead body.
• Which brings me onto my next point: When searching a body, first remove their weapons, or anything that could be used as a weapon (eg fountain pen). Cover is needed for this as well. Then, when the body has been disarmed, one person lies on top of it. They roll it slowly towards them... the person covering looks underneath. If there is anything that looks even vaguely metallic underneath, yell 'Grenade!', and the other searcher will drop the body and roll away.

These are a few more gleaned from watching lots of bad films.

• In addition to what Codic has said about choosing a leader above, machfive makes a good point: it's worth choosing the leader yourself, as otherwise the crack team of special operatives will either be assigned a battle-hardened veteran CO whom they resent, or a fresh-faced, inexperienced, cowardly CO whom they resent.
• If you have a pair of lovers on your team, at least one of them is guaranteed to die. It's in the small print. This is not least because they won't keep their minds on the battle.
• The black guy or the old guy will give his life valiantly, dying only as his ammo gives out. Give him vast amounts of ammo and increase his life expectancy accordingly.
• The embittered veteran is useful, but only until the final battle, as his resentment will cause him to try to take on (the enemy platoon/alien queen/dragon) single handed. This is a Bad Idea. Capital B, capital I.

I will add more as I think of them. If anyone has any suggestions, /msg me, or add your own w/u, if you have a few.

• Know when to fall back. If you aren't equipped to fight, aliens, arachnids or main battle tanks, the best thing you can do for your unit (not to mention your society or even your species) is to leave the battlefield as expediently as possible and report what you have seen to headquarters. It is their responsibility to re-arm you before sending you to deal with the situation personally, or to call in air support or an artillery time-on-target.
• Don't take off your boots unless half your unit is ready to start shooting. The enemy always attacks when you take your boots off, it's just one of those things.
• Assaulting downhill on a frozen Winter day trapping the opposing force between you and a lake sounds like a good idea, but it isn't. Trust me on this.
• Before setting out, pick 3 locations at random, and make sure all the team leaders know where they are. Give directions as "310 degrees, 5 miles from point A". Don't give out coordinates on the Clansman radio, it's not encrypted.
• Drink plenty of water and wear a hat. I once participated in an exercise in which 35 out of 42 people in my platoon suffered from dehydration, sunburn or something more serious. If you can't stand, run, think or wear webbing on your shoulders, you're no use to your unit.
• Protect your machine gunner. The gunner is 70% of the firepower of a 12-person patrol. Don't give the job to a gung-ho Blaine-from-Predator-wannabe. And don't deploy your unit without looking at a contour map and thinking about where the gunner should be first.