Support's role in SMNC is, oddly enough, to support his team. While his shotgun, airstrikes, and heal/hurt beam are all rather powerful enough to give him some fighting ability, he is best played in such a way that he compliments his teams efforts. However he must be adaptable. Simply following a player and healing them all match is usually a waste of his abilities, as is running around Commando style and never bothering to heal or otherwise help his team.

Support also has very good area denial abilities as his Firebase, airstrikes, and Shotgun's damage are all great at preventing the enemy from moving into a certain area.

Comparing Support to Combat Girl, Support is less suited to multitasking, is more likely to pocket heal one player, has slightly better combat potential at close range, and requires much more committment in terms of choosing a spot to throw a turret.

A good Support needs to know the map well in order to make good use of his Firebase and Airstrikes. He also needs to know how much damage different pros are able to output in order to determine if he has a better chance saving a teammate by healing them or by attacking whoever is threatening them. A good Support needs to pay attention to what his team is doing, and be willing to change his strategy on the fly to best help his team to victory. During intense team fights he needs to know who he should heal first, when to stop healing and just join the fight, and when to back off from a confrontation.

Support's heal beam heals at double the rate of Combat Girl's combat healer, but only heals one target. This means Support needs to put a little more thought into its use. Generally Support wants to be healing his teammates more than he wants to run around fighting, especially in Super Crossfire where the health regen rate is much lower. You always want to be healing someone if you have absolutely nothing better you could be doing, as this will help your team and earn you some money. Right as the match starts, try to give your Commando some extra armor, then your Strikers, then finally start following your Enforcer's around as they can protect you and you will likely do more good for your team if you keep their health up.

When every teammate nearby you is at full health, it's generally not a high priority to keep healing them to give them armor if there are enemies nearby, so focus on tossing airstrikes and tapping enemies with your shotgun, or even slowing them with the Heal/Hurt beam so your Enforcer's can finish them. If the enemies are focusing on damaging any teammate nearby you, you generally want to heal them before doing anything else unless you can secure a kill easily. The only times you might want to back away from your team are when you are finishing off an enemy or when you need a Firebase set up in a specific location.

However, if your team is constantly overextending and dying, or simply not making any concentrated effort to push, you might need to get aggressive. At this point, it might be best to resort to trying to keep the enemy back with shotgun damage and airstrikes and only focus on healing nearby teammates if they run near you with 75% or less health. Your shotgun actually outputs amazing damage, and your heal/hurt beam does a health drain and slow, meaning if you play carefully but aggressively, you can actually push bot lanes rather effectively and do fairly decent chunks of damage to enemy pros. Just remember you aren't an Enforcer or a Striker, and don't completely ignore healing your team even if they aren't pushing bot lanes as effectively as you would like. Also keep in mind that you still want to either always be near a teammate or your Firebase, as while Support can usually run away from a 1 v 1, he tends to be in serious trouble the moment the fight becomes a 2 v 1 in the enemy team's favor.

Overclock:
Increases your speed slightly, the rate of fire of your Firebase, and reduces skill cooldown while active. Useful for speeding up the rate you toss airstrikes, letting you get your turret back up quick, or making a quick getaway. Not usually a high priority for build orders, but a handy skill regardless.

Firebase:
Support's main area denial ability. Toss outs a powerful but easily destroyed turret that shoots nearby enemy pros and bots within a short range. At rank 4, it also heals nearby teammates slightly. Knowing where to toss this out is pretty much what separates good Supports from OK Supports.

Airstrike:
Toss it out and shortly after tossing it, it will do a large amount of damage and knockback wherever it lands unless there is a layer above it, in which case that gets hit instead. Its possible to purposefully airstrike someone on a platform above you once you get the hang of it, so watch where enemies are using team vison. If it lands on a player or a bot, it does bonus damage to them. The bonus damage still hits even if the airstrike wouldn't otherwise hit them. It also disables Assault's fly.

Build orders:

Firebase build: (Good for area denial)
1. Firebase
2. Airstrike
3. Offense
4. Firebase
5. Airstrike
6. Offense
7. Overclock
8. Firebase
9. Airstrike
10. Offense
11. Overclock
12. Overclock
13. Defense
14. Defense
15. Defense

Airstrike build: (Firebase is still pretty strong at level 2, early point in defense should let you be more independent in case you have to secure a kill after a sucessful airstrike)
1. Airstrike
2. Firebase
3. Offense
4. Airstrike
5. Offense
6. Defense
7. Overclock
8. Airstrike
9. Offense
10. Firebase
11. Firebase
12. Overclock
13. Overclock
14. Defense
15. Defense

Whether you upgrade Defense or Overclock first is a matter of preference. Although Overclock will let you toss out more airstrikes. Some people get better mileage out of the Firebase build by focusing on Offense before airstrikes. Don't be afraid to experiment a bit. What is most important is that Support at least gets Firebase to rank 2 early on.

Probably the reason you are bothering with this guide in the first place. I won't list every good Firebase location, because honestly that would take forever, so I'll just list a few good ones, and a few that are questionably effective, but worked for me in the past.

I won't list any for Gun Mountain, because honestly there are fewer BAD places to put a Firebase there than good ones. I also won't list any for Spunky because most of the good ones there are pretty obvious and there aren't a whole lot of "Thinking outside the box" type locations.

G3:

Advantages:
-Easy to do early on
-Prevents the other team from easily pushing that lane
-Takes care of bots on that lane
Disadvantages
-Hard to defend
-Easily spotted
-Nearly impossible to defend against enemies that sneak up from behind or use the ejector
-Almost every player knows this spot
-Requires your team to have already pushed that bot lane to the turret


Advantages:
-Nobody ever does this, so you might catch people by suprise
-Tags bots
-Prevents players from even reaching their bot lane unless they sneak around using the middle jumpad
Disadvantages
-Requires you to overextend
-Nearly impossible to defend
-One of the reasons nobody ever does this is because its insanely easy to counter


Advantages
-Prevents enemies from safely using that middle jump pad to get on top, and cuts off a key escape route
-Hard to position yourself to hit the turret from where it can't hit you
-Prevents the most direct route to the anni
Disadvantages
-Requires the Support to practically pocket the turret in order to defend
-Does nothing about bot lanes
-If the other team isn't trying to hold that area, they are free to just push bot lanes without worrying about you


Pretend the Support and Firebase are Icemen in that pic.
Advantages
-Covers a bot lane
-Might catch someone by surprise
Disadvanages
-Easily destroyed


or

Both defend anni where the Ejector can't hit them, but both can easily be destroyed with long range weapons

Bullet Gorge


Advantages
-Covers a bot lane
-Hard to spot
Disadvantage
-Everyone knows this spot
-Easily destroyed when spotted


Advantages
-Covers a bot lane
-Rarely done, so it might catch player's by surprise
Disadvantages
-Easily destroyed from jungle


Advantage
-Easily defended
-Doesn't require Support to overextend
-Makes it difficult for the opposing team to overextend on that side
-Cover's a bot lane
Disadvantage
-Very unlikely to get you a kill
-If the enemy decides to shoot it from out of range, Support will likely need to stay and keep healing it
-Useless if you are already winning on that side


Advantages
-Less commonly done than putting the turret right near the anni, so might catch the enemy by surprise
-Attacks the enemy as soon as they enter the jungle
-Very likely to get you a kill or at least prevent the enemy from winning an anni fight
-If placed a little further back it can also cover a bot lane by sacrificing a little bit of its jungle control
Disadvantage
-Will likely require the Support to keep healing it
-Harder to defend than placing the turret behind the wall
-Only covers a small, although important area
-Requires your team to have good jungle control to set it up


Advantages
-When done before that turret is destroyed, it won't attack your firebase until after it is set up if placed correctly, and the firebase can easily destroy the turret if it is shooting at something else
-When done after the turret is destroyed, offers some minor jungle control and good lane control
-Hard to destroy without sneaking around
-Unlikely to be spotted until after its already firing at someone
Disadvantage
-Enemy turret could destroy it
-Enemy Support can easily destroy it
-Easily shot from out of range


Advantages
-Offers some jungle control
-Good spot for a level 4 turret to heal teammates
-Doesn't require much defending
Disadvantages
-Easily destroyed from out of range
-No lane control
-Otherwise an unimpressive spot


Advantages
-Covers a bot lane
-Covers an escape route
Disadvantages
-Hard to defend
-Super easy to destroy from out of range
-Coverage is minimal
-Either you are overextending to put it there, or there are probably already better Firebase locations

Loco Moco
Oh boy, there are way way way too many to list here so I'll just list a few most people don't know about


Advantages
-Very hard to spot if you aren't in the jungle
-Prevents easy usage of the jump pad to the anni
-Offers good lane control, and some jungle control
Disadvantages
-Very dangerous for a Support to get up there if the enemy has even one pro in the jungle
-If the Jump pad is active, it could glitch up your Firebase
-If the Jump pad gets bought while the Firebase is there, some sort of glitch occurs where your Firebase appears to be destroyed but still exists in some way, not entirely sure of the specifics
-Easily destroyed from Jungle when spotted, especially by enemy Support's.
-Borders on being an exploit


Advantages
-Offers more coverage than the above spot while avoiding the jump pad induced glitch
Disadvantages
-Harder to place a Firebase here
-More easily destroyed when spotted


Advantages
-Rarely ever done, so it often takes people by surprise
-Covers a bot lane
Disadvantages
-Easily spotted and destroyed from jungle, while offering barely any jungle coverage to compensate
-Somewhat easily destroyed even from the lanes when spotted
-Doesn't offer much lane coverage, more of a gimmick really

There are literally dozens more good spots on Loco, but I really can't list all of them. Try to think outside the box and determine where you think a good Firebase location would be.