Commando Archive

I think removing or adding requirements is a dead-end argument. While it did happen in beta, It is very unlikely at this stage in the game that they will do anything that would change requirements for elite professions.

My suggestionsare rather radical.

* Move the heavy acid rifle into the same tree as flame thrower and have it do the same specials as the flame thrower. The only differences will be the animation and the type of damage done. The same modifers that apply to flame thrower would apply to acid rifle; the acid would DOT as well. Leave the damage-taken modifiers as they are, or maybe make them a little lower than rifleman but not much. Possibly even reduce the damage done on the inital shot, since the burn is so effective anyway.

* In the place of the HAR tree add a Special Operations tree. There you add a wide variety of skills and mods: melee defense, ranged defense, (melee toughness?), 1 or 2 unarmed specials, maybe a camoflage special, maybe a "fortify position" special that increases defenses at the cost of mobility. Basically give the commando things that make sense and make use of his melee skills. A commando with decent grenades could go unarmed, and just lob grenades as his main ranged attack if he so wished, use cannons for long range, and melee for close range.

* Speed up grenades and make them a viable alternative in medium range combat. This way commandos aren't forced to use their flame thrower / HARall the time. Good grenades would mean he could go unarmed and not suffer the damage modifer of the flamethrower and HAR.

* Give master commando some extra defense mods and maybe an extra melee special.

In the end we are talking about a guy who when wielding the real heavy stuff is sort of weighed down and takes big damage if he doesnt kill his target. Meanwhile he is proficient and hand-to-hand combat and can use things like grenades to suplement this. He also posesses skills that aid him in sneak attacks and in defending a position.

Does this not sound like a good definition of commando?

Commando's are powerful, as are Bounty Hunters. They need powerful professions to use many skill points so that you will not have things like " Master Commando + Master Bounty Hunter " this is the only way to prevent that. What else would they put? Except something in Scout may be reasonable.

Also this prevents too many people being Commando's. We don't want 45% of the population running around as Commando's do we?

If they ditched the HAR, (face it...no ones used it. I do, but only for friendly duels) and in place added a tree for the launcher pistol I wouldn't mind. This way the commanod would be short AND meduim fighters. They would have a big setback from using their flame all the time BUT they would have the option to use their much less powerful but faster launcher pistol. I said this in another thread and I will ask it here: WHAT OTHER PROFFESSION GETS A WEAPON CERT AND GETS NO SPECIALS OR MODS FOR IT!?!?!

This issue, more than even the HAR is the commandos downfall. BH's get a pistol tree for their scatter, smugglers get a skill tree for some pistol specials (they dont even get a weapon at novice..smugglers need some love)

The more and more I play this game the more I anticipate Final Fantasy 11 and World of Warcraft.

Other ranged combatants do not have to become unarmed specialist simply to enter their profession. Other ranged combatants have specials with ranges much greater than 16m. Pistoleers and Carbineers get bonuses to shoot while moving. Commandos have difficulty staying away from opponents because we seem to stop repeatedly each time we take a shot.

I short, commandos are not like other ranged professions. Just like brawlers, we are designed to fight toe to toe with opponents.Like brawlers, we are close combatants. Brawlers don't receive a damage multiplier from other brawlers and neither should we.

Well said MasterSynn, this is especially annoying for PvE, as many MOBs can hit at 16m.I only needed to get owned in .8 seconds by a blue MOB once to realize that this change was completely wrong for an elite class, much less an elite class with brawler as a prereq.

Why not just take out the har string, since its obvious no one uses it, and put in a commando specific melee combat string, like kick boxing style or something, something thats not TKA, but then the unarmed would be beneficial for commando.

True, unarmed is rather pointless for a commando, make unarmed a requirement for pistoleer since they actually get a melee skill. If you need to give a required tree for commando make it something from the scout trees, like exploration or survival. Commando's are supposed to be elite infantry kinda like navy seals, so outdoor type skills should be a requirement.

Also at least in close combat a commando has a higher chance to hit their targets, look at riflemen their accuracy in close range is the worst of any profession and they take a dmg penalty. At least commando's have a much higher chance to get off a warning shot or suppression and hit or a powerful shot to take out the target, riflemen just get stomped with their -90 accuracy in close range with their T21's.

"Remove the unarmed requirement for commando, make it so only master marksman is required to become commando." Hmmm, now that I think about the extra damage you guys take from melee... Since you have to have unarmed, why should you suck the unarmed damage?

I see it this way. If they keep the melee damage against you guys, remove the unarmed requirement for commando. If they make you keep unarmed, removed the extra unarmed damage against you.

From a game mechanic/realism/common sense point of view...

If a commando is taught heavy weapons and unarmed, shouldnt they be more prepared to deal with melee damage better than a straight say rifleman?

... An unarmed guy rushes up to a sniper(rifleman in the bushes). The rifleman is a good shot, but not trained in melee and not prepared to be kung foo'd. Rifleman gets an arse kicking.

... An unarmed guy rushes up to a commando standing in the open. The commando is not as a good shot(heavy weapons not as accurate) but has a good solid hand to hand/heavy weapons combo training. The melee guy runs up and attacks. Since the commando is more prepared to to handle the kung fu moves, the big extra damage the melee guy has gotten is less, and the fight is on more even terms. The hand to hand guy might whip on the commando or the commando may just deliver a gun stock to the head of the melee guy, followed buy a torch or whatever.

Basically, if you are gonna make the commando learn hand to hand, then it should help them lesson the melee mod against them to almost nothing. If the melee mod is going to stay, remove the unarmed requirement.

They way it is now is unfair. Ohh, incase someone things I am biased, I am not. My combat character is a pistoleer.

grand, thats exactly what i mean. Good example too.

And honestly, i do prefer the removal of unarmed as a requirement than the removal of the 2.5x damage penalty. I could seriously use those extra 29 skill points somewhere else... after all, commando does not have a true 'ranged' ability, those 29 points could easily go into dabbling in rifleman/carbineer/pistoleer skill trees or into medic or scouting stuff.

Well I for one would like to see the UA IV requirement give us some benefit. Any benefit. As it is we can't really draw upon the skills learned in any of our pre-requisite classes unless we're using the launcher pistol. Then we can use pistol specials and some of the combat support specials. Woo-hoo. I haven't used any rifle or carbine specials since I got novice commando. It'd be nice if the flamer used it's own specials and the HAR used rifle specials (maybe not hit the mind pool though). I started going with a commando character when I saw that it requried Crafting IV in addition to the unarmed stuff. I thought it would be totally cool to get a weaponsmith/elite combat character and make my own stuff. That way the expendables wouldn't be so bad and it'd be fun to go prospecting and blow up the country side while you were doing it. I was really bummed when they removed the Crafting IV requirement and instead put in Unarmed IV (Bad beta testers...bad bad beta testers).

As far as the melee penalty goes I think it should work as follows:

2x melee damage at novice commando -.25x damage per level attained in the weapon. So if you were at flamer I you would take 1.75x. So someone at flamer IV would take normal damage.

Commando does not have *any* ranged weaponcapability or utilityaside from the fireball-lobber from 64m that wont hit jack if you or target are moving (flamer has no hit-on move accuracy bonuses) orstatic-target-only-shoot-at-exact-range-or-miss heavy cannons/rocket launcher.If you pick up rifle/pistol/carbine you become a lev4 gun user in the marksman tree. Thats one huge weakness right there to start with.

Then comes unarmed4. supposedly this gives us the melee defense. +2 melee defense is the only modifier found in the entire unarmed tree. In reality, I think that the heavy weapons did not give any PENALTY to melee and had that measly +2 melee defense...because they were considered melee weapons back then, not ranged.

So the issue here is SOE considering 18m weapons as 'ranged'. We do have the +2 unarmed defense NOW, but it does nothing. The whole change was in our heavy weps getting that penalty in melee.

Seeing this, why are we still required to be unarmed4? It never really gave us ANYTHING to begin with.. remember, our melee defense did not come from the +2 melee defense in unarmed 4 but because of the fact that having a heavy weapon equipped meant no melee penalties.

It would make more sense to make us be master marksmen only.

Or better yet, go back to commandos needing engineering4. Why? Simply add 'lite' versions of the commando expendable weapons that do not require subcomponents so that commandos can make their own expendables.

Say, 'LC12' (light C12) grenade template is received at novice commando, and all other 'lite' grenade templatesup to Lcryoban are received at their respective commando cert. boxes (that way only wepsmiths can make the proton,imperial and thermal grenades)... these 'lite' grenades would have lower damage range and higher ham cost. Same with heavy weapons... instead of 'heavy' just let the commandos make 'regular' versions... at novice receive template to make Lightning Cannon, at box2 get particle beam, box4 get Acid Stream and Rocket Launcher at Master Commando. Damage ranges would be about half of what a wepsmith-made 'heavy rocket launcher/heavy particle cannon/etc' would ever do.

This would allow a commando to equip himself but still have to go to a wepsmith to get the 'good stuff'. If a HPBC does 1200-2200 damage spd 6.0, make the commando engineering4 made PBC do 600-1100 damage 10.0 spd.

"Also at least in close combat a commando has a higher chance to hit their targets, look at riflemen their accuracy in close range is the worst of any profession and they take a dmg penalty. At least commando's have a much higher chance to get off a warning shot or suppression and hit or a powerful shot to take out the target, riflemen just get stomped with their -90 accuracy in close range with their T21's."

That is untrue bulboz.

Riflemen can switch from their T21 to a Spraystick to go from long range to medium/short range gunfights. If they get in melee they do die though...but they do have access to all their riflemen specials while using those rifles. Commandos get only the flame special at 18m range or less and cannot switch to any other commando weapon for long range or medium range combat..especially after using the special. And commando has LESS chance of pulling off a supression fire because its weapons do not have as high accuracy modifiers as most rifles and to boot have no 'while moving' accuracy mods.

But this aint about riflemen. Its about the commando forced to waste points in unarmed tree. Ask any commando/tkasi precision4 if his so called 'melee defenses' help him any with that horrid penalty. It doesnt. They barely last 1 or 2 more bites from a mob before they too die.

Removing the unarmed requirement will free up points that could be used to dabble in other weapon lines, giving the commando a true advantage in using a wide variety of weapons, not just specializing in 1 type.

They can't change the pre req;s this far into game development, they can change what the class does but not the pre-req's. Unarmed is fine they just need to revamp the 2.5x damage deal, how about we start simple instead of revamping everything?