And also, a third diving roughneck!

(6:27) Level 5 ('Assault on the Control Room') on Heroic. After the last instalment on auto-diving Marines, namely BCM661, I had some ideas I wanted to try out. You see them implemented here in three new set-ups, and I show a successful play for each one. My starting point is the set-up last used.

Released July 25th 2026, gameplay recorded July 22nd 2026.

00:02 (Set-up 1 creation) The idea for this first set-up was to bring along a Shade, to be used to plug the gap after auto-diving initiation (I reckoned that a Shade would be a more effective plug than a Ghost). I wanted the Marines almost in the diving area, and with the Shade close behind, so the plugging could occur quickly. I figured that to initiate the diving, Marines could either get pushed in by the Shade, or else I could shoot them. It would depend on how things ended up configured.

Well, I launched into things and it worked out fine. I hadn't intended for any Marines to enter the diving area prematurely, which they actually both did, but it didn't matter, as they ended up in the sort of positions I wanted them. I don't say that the configuration I ended up with was the best possible, but it looked good enough, so I got a final delayed checkpoint to finish.

01:08 (Play) This play went for about 12 minutes. From the outset they were to the right of the hog, and never showed any sign of being able to transit to the other side. That may've partly been due to the fact that a leg of the Shade was sticking out somewhat, acting as a barrier. But bear in mind, I'd had similar 'side-locked' diving in my previous movie.

After more than 8 minutes, one of the Marines escaped (not shown) and found himself standing on a Ghost, but I shot him to get him back in. Eventually I used shooting to force both Marines to the other side (such as seen near the end of BCM661), and after a bit of diving around they both escaped, as shown. In those escape clips you can see a trail of blood, from when I'd forced them over.

Note: the clips are in chronological order, except for the swivel clip, which otherwise would've been third.

02:37 (Set-up 2 creation) The key idea for this second set-up was to have a full enclosure already formed, and with the Marines perched on Ghosts. To initiate things, I'd simply need to shoot the Marines off their perches, which would be easy. No need to try and plug a gap every time, something which in my past work had frequently lead to failures.

Of course, it took a bit of tricky work to get the Marines perched, I checkpointed for making tries, as I knew it was likely to take a few. In my footage I just show how it finally happened. As for plugging the gap (another tricky operation of course), really it would've been better to do that before perching the Marines, but never mind.

03:24 (Play) Initiation was very easy, as expected. This play went for about 5 minutes, until I boarded the hog and apparently splattered a Marine. I guess his head just happened to get high enough. But I must say, I later did some testing, trying to kill Marines like that, and it tended to take perseverance. I could only do it with the rear tyres. With the left rear it seemed significantly easier (if there was a Marine on that side).

04:03 (Set-up 3 creation) This final set-up is just a modification of the previous one, in which I've added a third perched Marine. He was the only other Marine available for the job, the Pelican Marines having gone inactive. To get him off the tank I had to get him ejected, as he wouldn't have dismounted (it was the same in BCM520).

I decided to have him on the left side of the hog. I had trouble getting him up via diving though, which may've been because he was diving somewhat uphill, so I eventually tried giving him a nudge. It shifted a Ghost slightly, but things looked okay so I checkpointed to complete the set-up.

04:54 (Play) At the start of this play, notice that one of the original Marines has moved a bit. I'm not sure when that happened, but it may've involved a brief spot of diving. As a matter of fact, my extra Marine had done a dive just before I flew off to checkpoint; but happily it didn't shift his position appreciably.

Something you might immediately notice about this set-up is that the Marines protest when shot. Somehow the vocal glitch has cleared up. Yay! It was nice to have the Marines fully voiced at last. That alone made this set-up more enjoyable to play than the previous one.

The play lasted about 5 minutes, and occasionally I shot a Marine to get him out of a rut (diving on the spot, seemingly finding no way out) or in one case (shown) because he escaped. The clips are in chronological order.

Something I noticed, in playing this set-up. Remember how, in the previous set-up, the AR guy alternated between two Grunt sounds? In this new set-up, the new AR guy would be like that too, if diving around on his own or with the Aussie. But when the AR guys are diving around together, they switch to only using one Grunt sound each (different for the two). So, their grunting audio is not independent; it can be affected by the other guy.

Closing remarks The set-ups involved certain tricky operations, and for those I always got a delayed tunnel checkpoint beforehand so I could easily retry if needed. I didn't show any of that routine checkpointing, but I did mention one instance of it in an early caption.

I didn't bother to show any bad plays this time. I've shown plenty of that sort of thing in my previous two movies. But of course, plays didn't always go well.

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