Ross' quick & dirty class guides

A brief guide to the role of each class, from a long-time (8 years) RO player.

Introduction

I first started playing Red Orchestra: Ostfront fairly soon after its release, and over the years have accrued more hours than I wish to count playing Ostfront, Darkest Hour, Mare Nostrum, Carpathian Crosses, Heroes of Stalingrad, and Rising Storm. I've played every class and every vehicle, but one thing that remains constant across both games and all of the mods is that many players don't really seem to know what they're doing with the class they've chosen.

Many people have differing ideas of what each class should be doing, but my own are based on extensive experience both playing and leading those classes. A lot of the guides on workshop are overly obtuse or set out in a confusing and cluttered manner. Many are also of questionable correctness, so I decided to post up a simple run-down of the roles of each class.

Rifleman & Elite Rifleman

Rifleman

You exist for one purpose, and one purpose only: to seize and hold ground for your team, and to repel attack. All other concerns – including killing the enemy – are secondary. If you are a rifleman and you are not in a cap zone or on your way to one, you are a burden to your team and probably making more experienced players foam at the mouth with rage. Don't be that guy who sits just outside of the crucial cap area trying to pick off enemies on the other side of the map.

You have a bolt-action rifle and a bayonet, and some grenades. These are all you need. Your rifle is accurate and powerful, and while it is slow-firing, it is the deadliest weapon in the game in experienced hands. Your bayonet makes you ruthlessly efficient in close-range combat, and your grenades give you the ability to clear out a room or trench ahead of your attack. Stay close to your team mates, stay in a cap zone, and try not to get shot. You may find this class frustrating at first, but the rifleman is truly the backbone of the team and essential for a victory.

Elite Rifleman

You are a rifleman who lucked out and got himself a fancy new rifle. Don't think for a second that this makes you a precious, unique snowflake that doesn't need to be capping. Do everything a rifleman does, because that is what you are. You just have a little more firepower to do it with.

Assault & Elite Assault

Assault

You have a bullet hose and some grenades. You, like the rifleman, are primarily required to find a cap zone and sit in it. The difference here is that you have a short-ranged weapon that spews lead and hatred at everything in a general area to your front, making you the preferred choice when the cap zone lies within a building or densely-packed urban area; your team may also need you to clear out a building that isn't part of a cap zone, but overlooks one. If you come across a grenade, pick it up. If you come across ammo, pick it up. If you come across a PPSh with a drum mag, regardless of what weapon you are currently carrying, pick that up and ditch your own weapon. If you are not carrying a PPSh with drum mag and between ten and twelve grenades, you are not doing your job properly.

Make good use of these assets to kill every living thing inside a building or trench, but make sure they aren't your friends first. Be liberal with grenades, two to a window or door is a good place to start; they are essentially a renewable resource as people die all around you without having used theirs, and they are invaluable for clearing out rooms. Soviet soldiers in Stalingrad referred to them as "pocket artillery", that should give you the right idea about their use. Remember, there is no such thing as grenade spam in war - you're trying to win, not be a super duper honourable MLG pro. The more explosives you can put into a group of clustered enemies, the better.

As for your submachine gun - I recommend you practice firing from the hip. When playing assault (or any other time I get my hands on a PPSh), I make perhaps half of my shots over ironsights and the rest are from the hip. The PPSh in particular handles quite nicely in game and gives a good sense of where it is being pointed at all times, so you can just point and shoot without having to look over the sights. Fluid movement, fluid shooting - these should be your goal.

Please note - this does not carry across to Rising Storm since the US assault role got a BAR last time I played. In that regard, the Marines' assault class is more like a more mobile machine gunner.

Machine Gunner

Machine Gunner

You are the primary firepower of your squad. This class is best left alone unless you are a very experienced player; the main hurdle facing new MG players is not actually getting kills with the weapon, but rather finding a good place to shoot from that won't get you a bullet in the brain the moment you open fire. Your weapon is very big, very loud, and spits out tracers that make it possible for the enemy to figure out where you are pretty much as soon as your first few bullets leave the barrel. To counter this, you need to have an eye for good, concealed spots, out of the way and not obvious (so no upstairs windows). You also need to move, and move often. Capping is a secondary objective to you, and so is even killing the enemy; as long as you keep their heads down long enough for your squad to move in for the kill or get to cover safely, you're doing your job. Be careful to only fire in short bursts to avoid giving yourself away, burning through your ammo too fast, or melting your barrel.

Point to note - enfilading fire is always best. This means firing at the longest axis of a group of enemies. Imagine you are trying to knock down dominoes rather than airgun targets at the county fair.

Marksman ("Sniper")

Marksman

Sniper rifles are strange and confusing devices best left to powerful wizards. I'm not kidding; leave this class alone until you're a very experienced player. There are few things more infuriating than being killed over and over by either machine gunners or snipers because your own team's sniper is trying to use his rifle as a 'rifle with training wheels'. The scope is so you can spot well-concealed MG nests, enemy snipers, and differentiate the enemy team's platoon commander from a regular grunt. This class is not something you take to get kills with, and you should only put yourself in the cap zone as a last resort (or if there is an excellent shooting position in it).

Your main goal is to find and kill priority targets that can make things bad for your buddies – MGs, enemy snipers, squad and team leaders (especially if the latter is anywhere near a radio, look for the peaked cap and binoculars), tank crew stupid enough to sit still with their heads popped up, or engineers and AT rifles if you have tanks of your own to worry about. In addition, your scope allows you to provide information to the rest of your team (particularly the commander) as to which enemies are where and what they are doing.

Move carefully and avoid confrontations if you can; relocate often and don't do the usual new player thing of standing in a single window shooting at everything that moves (and missing). For that matter, don't stand in windows at all. The further from a window or door you are, the safer you are; look for cover deep inside a room or find a spot which is covered entirely by a deep shadow. Do not ever poke your rifle out of the window because it is so painfully obvious you will be shot at by everyone and everything nearby, and then they will laugh at you and call you mean words.

Do not even briefly entertain the thought of using this class until you are a dead shot with the bolt-action rifles and you have spent some time in single player or empty servers finding good, well-hidden positions to shoot from. Seriously, please. Blood pressure medication is not something I need to be spending money on right now.

Tank Hunters - AT Rifleman & Engineer

Anti-Tank Rifleman

Your job is to kill tanks. Yes, tanks. Not infantry. I know it is hilarious to watch someone's arm fly off because you shot them with a comically large bullet, but while you are laughing it up your team is most likely getting their ♥♥♥♥ pushed in by an enemy tank they cannot do anything about.

Set your rifle up in a well-concealed position with decent cover, and move between shots if you can. Your rifle goes off with such an immense bang that pretty much everyone and their mother is going to know where you are when you let your first shot go. For heaven's sake, stay away from friendly snipers or machine gunners; the last thing they need is to get shot by a bullet attracted by your obnoxiously loud rifle.

Aim for weak points – hatches, vision slits, the turret ring, the gun, gunsights and periscopes, or the sides and rear of the tank. If the tank rears up over a hill or mound and exposes its floor, don't hesitate for an instant; the armour underneath is practically paper compared to anywhere else and you have a good chance of seriously damaging it. You also have AT grenades for when the tank gets too close for comfort – just remember that they are big and heavy, so you have to be pretty close to throw them. They are impact-fused and if you can land one on a tank's deck it will almost always kill it.

If you are not having any luck with the AT rifle, check where you're shooting – the rifle is not useless, you are just hitting the tank in a strongly-armoured area. Both the T-34 M1942 and PzIV G are vulnerable from the sides and rear and have small frontal weak positions too.

Expert mode: hit Google Image Search and find some of the old training diagrams the Soviets made for the PTRD/PTRS rifles. These show you exactly which areas you can and can't damage.

Engineer

Of all the infantry classes in the game, you are by far the most destructive. You have an SMG for hosing down dudes at close range, satchels for blasting open doors, walls, windowframes or other obstructions, and a couple of AT grenades just for good measure.

First of all, decide what you're going to do – if you want to blow up a door, then ditch the AT grenades. If you want to kill a tank, ditch the satchels. Carrying both will slow you down too much and you will get murdered. Ideally, have a teammate pick them up, or at least leave them somewhere you can come back and pick them up as soon as you're ready. Things you can blow up with satchels will glow yellow and are usually marked by little target icons on the map or tactical overlay. Satchels can be used on massed infantry or tanks in a pinch, thanks to their sheer explosive power.

When hunting tanks, be sure to wait for the tank to get close and then get distracted by something. Avoid running across its front as the hull gunner will tear you a new one; run around the side or back of the tank and hope its turret isn't pointed at you. Getting close enough is the hardest part. Be wary of infantry.

Leadership roles: SL/TL

DO NOT TOUCH THESE CLASSES UNTIL YOU HAVE SOME EXPERIENCE. Taking a leadership class just because you want a self-loading rifle or SMG is not only infuriating for those who play those roles well, but also generally leads to your team losing horribly. Do not be "that guy".

No, seriously, don't.

Squad Leader

The squad leader has many hats. In most game modes, he serves as a mobile spawn for his own squad members - but only if he is outside an objective. For this reason, sometimes it is better for squad leaders to sit just outside an objective (in cover, of course) to allow their troops to spawn in and push rather than have to run the length of the map to get to the fight.

However, squad leaders also cap objectives more efficiently than standard riflemen. They also carry smoke grenades that can be used to mark positions for reference or to screen an advance. Smoke is best used by throwing it between the enemy's reinforcements and his frontline troops, because if you throw it between yourself and him he will know to fire through the smoke and you cannot return fire accurately. Smoke also makes for blatantly obvious artillery targets.

As well as increasing the rate of reinforcement at the front, directing his squad, and providing smoke, the squad leader also has the ability to mark artillery targets for the commander. This can be done on your own initiative or you can mark positions the commander cannot physically see himself (for instance, if he's busy on the radio). Use the map to check your marks are actually accurate and make damn sure everyone knows where a strike is coming in.

Team Leader

The TL is the big boss with all the toys. By accessing a radio, you can call a recon flight, a respawn wave, or artillery. You also have smoke like the SL, but your team do not spawn on your position. This role is best left to the most experienced players, I strongly suggest you accumulate a lot of hours on the other classes before touching this one.

Recon is useful to pinpoint enemy positions, but its main use is to mark artillery on the main enemy axis of advance or defence point - the commander can sit by the radio to relay the intel while asking his squad leaders to mark whichever grid squares he sees the most enemy in, or thinks is the best place for a breakthrough.

Respawn waves are often used as an act of desperation as an objective is being lost, but they are actually best used right before an attack to ensure your team is up to full strength. Attacking while a third of your troops are waiting to spawn is a great way to lose horribly.

You have three main types of artillery, and each has a different purpose. Mortars offer relatively long-lasting, localised suppression and are used to flush out annoying snipers or MGs or to rapidly respond to an enemy breakthrough. They have the smallest area of effect, the shortest cooldown, and the least explosive power. With that said, they are more than powerful enough to really ruin the other team's day.

Howitzers are the next level, and offer mid-term heavy suppression of a large position. The most obvious use of these is to cut off reinforcement lanes: call them between the objective and the enemy spawn, not on the objective itself. They can also be used as emergency close defence in the direst of situations, but mortars are better for defensive purposes thanks to their shorter cooldown.

Rocket artillery is the most powerful form and is an almost exclusively offensive tool. Unlike the other types, there are no multiple salvoes here. The rocket battery will fire one massive barrage, and then they have the longest cooldown of any type of artillery support. Each rocket has enormous explosive power. Most people abuse rockets horribly, calling them where mortars or howitzers should be called and so leaving their artillery on cooldown when they need it most. As a rule of thumb, rockets should only be used immediately before a massed attack on an objective - for example, on Red October, I call recon to verify enemy positions, then smoke the approaches and force a respawn wave, and then call rocket artillery on the objective and order my team to assault it as soon as the last rocket has hit the ground. This has enormous shock value as any enemy who wasn't killed outright by the rockets will probably still be hiding in a corner, ankle deep in a puddle of his own urine. Oh, and rockets also make a terrifying howl as you call them, so the enemy will know exactly what they are in for.

Again, DON'T PLAY THESE ROLES UNTIL YOU ARE EXPERIENCED IN THE OTHERS. Pay attention to successful commanders on your team, see what they do, and then remember that for when it is your turn to try.

[Kangaroo]

Gday mate, not a bad guide at all, interesting informative and useful stuff for noob & vet alike. Sound principles make sense & assist the newcomer & remind the dinosaurs. Cool bananas champ. Ciao for now, kind regards & all the best, Kangaroo, Terra Australis Incognito.

[Odds]

Adding to a part in your guide, if you're a rifleman on certain maps, you should NEVER die purposefully on the frontline without throwing your grenades. Big, open maps with lots of trenches, trees, or places to hide behind are perfect targets to lob the 2 Balls o Death Stalin or the Fuhrer gave you.

If you're unsure if you should throw one or not, quickly press T and look at the minimap. Check for any blue dots directly infront of you, then throw.

[MintWolfX01]

Yeah i love this it helped me allot. I'm definitely gonna play this soon. Very informative, simple and funny in a sense. It helps allot

[Katz]

Very simplified and informative Guide.

there are many things here that i had no idea about with my 700+ hours.

[No_Step_On_Snek]

What about Tanks me boy

[rule .303]

As long as you can avoid calling it on your own team, yes.

[Fornax The Lazy]

Excellent guide,Stil I want to ask :if there's no commander on spot and artillery is desperately needed,should I be the commander to call it?

[rule .303]

Sometimes they do, sometimes they don't. I don't play in a group.

[Kraken]

Are you playing with a clan or group of friends or something? I'm not sure if people in a public server actually listen or coordinate with the commander that much at all beyond marking artillery spots.

[rule .303]

Satchels are a really good general-purpose fuck you weapon. I use them against tanks or large clusters of infantry. If you're able to creep up on a bunch of guys clustered together it can make a hell of a mess.

They're not half bad for blowing up pursuers, either.