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.