Commando Archive

Very nice post, it definitely hits upon a number of things I've been thinking over myself. The Explore line as a prerequisite fits not only in terms of roleplay (commandos are supposed to hit hard *and* fast) but it gives a nice advantage in some pvp or pve encounters (run away, run away!).

A couple of issues with where the types of grenades are moved to:
- Glop grenades should be moved to the acid tree since they work by spraying acid after the detonator in them goes of.f
- Thermal detonators should go in the flame line as they are 'thermal' (work by heat)

So glops -> acid tree, thermal -> flame, Imperials should then be moved to the HW line.

Also, I'd love to see E-Webs implemented - to balence their power, have someone using take greatly increased damage from melee (ala riflemen, perhaps even higher). E-Webs could also require two Commandos to use (in the movies so see a couple STs crewing one). That option could be problematic though because A) the E-Web would have to pump out huge damage to compensate for it taking 2 people and B) It wouldn't be terribly exciting for the person not in the gunner position.

But overall I'd definitely give the Commando concept an "aye".

One other possibility is instead of having UA (or something else) in the infiltration tree have bonuses to-hit and the ability to examine npcs/droids/PCs(?), much like scouts/rangers have with creatures. That'd be a real boon to a Commando using any of their weapons as it is not a special intensive profession (*the to-hit bonus to creatures only applies to non spec-move attacks). This would allow a reduction in all the +accuracy modifiers for individual weapons, making the Commando weaker against creatures but stronger against everything else.

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Giobiwan wrote:

Ton...please send your CV to SOE...I think youll do a very good job there....cause if you dont know more about Commandos in RL or SWG...at leats you got a LOOOOOOOTTTT more creativitythan our devs.

Nice Ideas!!!

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What is CV? And to whom in SOE should I send it? If you want to submit it and know where to do so, please feel free. I would appreciate it (please jsut give props where they are due).

Also, I agree with tha poster behind Swiss on the Glop going to Acid Tree. I didn't know it did Acid damage. I think the Thermal needs to stay Artillery since it is the most powerful of the group, though I can understand your reasoning to put it in Flamer. I was going for the power of the tree line that the grenade was in for the power of the grenade. So I think it should be Infil1 = Cryban; Acid2 = Glop; Art3 = Imp; Flame4 = Therm.I would put the last two reversed, but your comment has merit and Artillery already has a lot of good certs.

Out of curiosity...

How would you guys feel about them having to wipe all th current Commando Weapons in order to make some of these changes to both weapons and skills? Consolidate Beam weapon skill mods, Launcher weapons skill mods, Acid Weapons skill mods (changing the Acid Beam Rifle to Hvy Acid Rifle, and making Hvy Acid Rifle just Acid Rifle, as above), and of coarse, leave the Flamer by its lonesome. The E-WEB & Repeater would either get it's own set of mods, or added to the Beam Weapons. Of coarse also implementing all the other changes listed above (regarding vitality add-ons/reloading, etc.)

Would this be worth it to you to have all the current Commando Weapons wiped (if it needed to be done)?

From what I've heard, you guys don't really want the Commando Weapons the way they are now anyway, right?

I could care less about my current weps honestly, paid about 15k each (more for a good LP) but I hardly ever use them (novelty value only for the most part). Having to get new ones might be exensive but it'd definitely be worth it in comparison to what we have now.

I would not mind them removing the current weapons, provided they issued us a FREE replacement (lower stats than player made ) till the wepaons smiths can actually make them.

That is all we need to have, is them wipe all our weapons and our smiths say sorry no resoucres available to make them!

As to the rest of your posts, on paper this looks great and makes sense, however my faith in the devs is at rock bottom right now. I can Bs with the best of them and what they have done so far is BS us to no end. They really do not have a clue what to do with us and my feeling is they may remove the commando line altogether before they do a massive overhaul to the profession.

Face it, right now if you want great AE's go Rifleman who at 64 meters can spam 2500 pt dmg AE's (and has AP 3). A commando has no hope to compete with that even tho we are the "artillary" of the game.

Right now the Devs need to answer these questions seriously

1) what is the role of the commando and is that in effect now

2) what is the damage output of the commando supposed to be and is that in effect now

3) How does the commando compare to the rest of the classes in DMG/ps vs other classes.

4) Can the Commando compete on a battle field in player vs player at this point in time and have the samekill ratio (or close to it) as other classes using their primary weapons other than the LP.

5) Can a commando be considered heavy weapon support at close range with a defense of 0 and AP0 weapons.

6) Is the commando class even a viable class at this point in time in PVP or PVE, using their own skills.

7) and Last but not least, name at least one function a commando can perform from a support point of view that is not performed better by either a pistolier or Rifleman (taking over the planetary NPC base does not count as that is a pre-requisit set by the devs themsleves in order to take over the base)

I thought I had some free time.

Well done.

I hate to compare something as different as a rocket laucher to a particle beam cannon, but the devs say that a spraystick and a t21 are alike enough to use the same mods. Just some more food for thought....

aye, that looks very good, thanks for taking the time to lay out something like that! It looks fantastic and I hope the Devs see it.

Wolve44-

Good points at the bottom of your post. Ideally, these changes would come in conjunction with a res spawn that wouldbe primarily for Commando weapons. A great (relatively shor-term) spawning of Commando-based weapons resources all over at high concentrations and varying quality (but somewhat disproportionately high) so that all the old Commandos could buy the best new weapons to go along with the revisions. THe spawn rate afterwards (I would assume) would prolly be still few and far between for these resources, but this initial one would be to allow the servers to be repopulated with Commando weapons. Another thought is for the Devs to put on the bazaars a certain amount of 'bad' new-version weapons, for relatively cheap. This makes it fairly easy to find them with albeit a litttle bit of work and limited quantity. I would think an automatic replacement would be difficult, but then again, I'm not a programmer, so i don't really know. For the rest, I understand your frustration, but I was hoping we'd be able to have more constructivism here, like the last part of your post is like.

Swiss - Good point.

Iv - I work nights. Have some time to dothis stuff at work. It was your post that got me thinking, so you can take some of thecredit here. THanks for the inspiration.

BTW - anyone wanting to, please feel free to send this to the Devs with your applications for Correspondent. I'm not a Commando, so I'm not qualified, and I don't have the time (or patience) to do it the way it should be done anyway. In fact, I WANT you all to submit this tree to the Devs if you like it. Add any subtle cahnges you want, to make it personal, but the core should remain the same. The more submissions they get, the more likely it is that they will start considering the problems.

Thanks.

bump for fun

One thing to add...

Since almost all commando weapons are DOT and way long time between shots, give commando weapons XP for DOT damage for that weapon type, and commando XP (based on the above tree).

If that is too much due to the amount of DOT that can be done (I have no specifics on this), then raise the XP levels per box accordingly to balance.

This can easily be tested out mathmatically w/o actually playing. They know what the resoures can give the weapons made from them for stats. They can figure on an average weapon and a maxed out weapon, both sliced and unsliced (avg and max) and powered-up and not. Then determine what kind of DOT it can do and how much XP the Commando would get from that in comparison to the BH for pistol, carbine, or rifle in the same time frame based on spd (# of shots) and dmg. Match it up accordingly for the XP values and there you go! If they keep making the resources as scarce as they are, then some consideration has to go into that (since BH's can use a CDEF to increase in their profession while the Commando has to use Commando weapons), and the difficulty in crafting these weapons based on amount of resources required should be considered too. I wouldn't be surprised if the XP values came out to be very similar at that point.

Alternately, maybe the DOT XP should just be half of what the normal XP value of that amount of dmg is, but DOT XP needs to be given, or it will take someone more than 5x as long to reach Master of this profession than of BH, which should be comparable.

Great post. I really hope the Devs consider it. I had posted before about a lack of vision for the existing class. This thread's author has cogently explained exactly what is wrong with the Commando class right now.

Actualy, if any Dev reads this post, I have one question: What is YOUR vision for the class? We can talk until we are blue in the face about our conception, but what is yours and how is it set apart from the other Elite and Hybrid combat classes?

Please consider significant restructures. Changing some weapons and some specials is a baby step to a very broken and battered class.