Take a look at the Infection maneuvers, and think about the skills for them. That’s the stuff you need to win.
Next, you need to be good at something in conflict scenes, maybe able to hold your own in both DoW and Firefight! but this does not mean you must be a slick talker and a tower of strength on the battlefield. You could as easily be the signals guy, or stubborn, or knowledgeable, or whatever.
You don’t need iron to survive. All you need to survive anything but close combat is, well, someone else to get shot before you. For close combat, well, iron sure helps, but it’s still not necessary.
Here’s the thing: You don’t have to get hit by SSWs unless you want to (and when there’s like a V3 hit incoming and you’re the only one in iron, you probably do want to take that, since it’ll be superficial to you but mortal to anyone else, but generally you don’t want to be taking the hits while there are grunts to do it). You get to pick who gets hit.