Commando Archive
Thread: Commando Prereqs
IdrisTycho wrote:
Ok let me put this to you:
The only other profession that has a dual-novice-profession requirement is BH (1 column from scout, and 1 from marksman). BH gets specials with their weapons. BH requires exploration 4 which has the side benefit of terrain negotiation. BH gets the sub-game of Jedi missions.
Don't forget Smuggler...as far as I know, they still require one Pistol of Marksman and the Unarmed Tree. Are they not a "dual-novice-profession"? BH's get one main type of benefit, but guess what, so do we...Squad Leader also has dual Novice requirements.
Commando does not get terrain negotiation, they do not get specials, and they do not get a sub-game. Instead they get unarmed skillwhich is useless within the confines of the commando tree. It provides no benefit whatsoever to a commando that doesn't use it for some other profession combo. If unarmed 4 had some real use to it (like exploration 4) I wouldn't feel this way, but as it stands unarmed 4 is useless unless you make a use for it through template selection.
Ok...here is the use...we get a Melee weapon that can use any of the Unarmed tree's specials...this will be of great use to Novice Commandos (when we get the XP issue sorted out)...it's also of great use as a doorway pre-req to other melee professions...AND it's a huge doorway to Smuggler...So, as you can see, Post-CU, there ARE benefits to our unarmed pre-req...It also opens up the possibility of going TK, which inturn could allow us to go armor-less, which inturn would lead to less movement penalities.
Don't forget...Commandos get something that NO OTHER profession gets...We get weapons that no only pump up the damage capabilities of different specials, but also convert them to AOE and can add a DoT(depending on the weapon)...what other professions get those same abilities?
So in the end a commando has templates forced on him to conserve skill points namely Commando, TKM, and Smuggler, and a couple of melee elites. So he has all these weapons and none of his prereqs give him any real ability to use them or even set him up to gain those abilities. He has to burn more skill points to be able to move around on hilly terrain, and then there is the issue of medic skills. I am sorry Garvin I simply cannot agree with you on this one. In fact it seems to me that you resigned yourself to not fight this with the developers and simply accepted it and embraced it as if it makes sense.
I don't see it as "forced"...we can still dabble any direction we want in the same way BH and Smuggler can...We can still spend the remaining points in ranged professions, or use our common melee pre-req as an open door to any other melee profession...If "hilly terrains" are in our way, guess what, the same is true for our target (they can't shoot through a hill any better then we can, but the bigger exception is that we have more ranged possibilities then other professions, so we have the luxury of NOT CHASING our targets)...
Pre-CU our unarmed pre-req doesn't make sense and is there as "background" story for us...But Post-CU, it's my opinion that it does make sense in that we will be able to USE what we get from the unarmed tree WITH a Commando weapon...It also helps in that we are one of 2 professions that are best set up to dabble either melee or ranged (the door is totally open) and even better, Ranged Specialist is also a common pre-req with a few professions (CM for example) so I feel we have the best pre-reqs of any profession out there (more directions we can go comfortably)...it has nothing to do with me "just accepting it"...but more to do with me embracing Commando as MORE then just a Ranged profession...seems to me that the people who want to get rid of the Unarmed pre-req want Commando to ONLY be a ranged profession...a valid wish, but not something I personally agree with.
To me unarmed 4 may sound rightfor a commando, but for all practical purposes it is wasted skill points for people who don't want the above professions in their template. Either some extra melee benefits or weapons need to be added to Commando, or the unarmed 4 req needs to go.
It's only a waste for folks who have no desire to use our Massassi Knucklers or ever consider dabbling any further Melee skills...the problem with that is NOT EVERY Commando feels that way...To those who want to use that weapon or want to dabble further in Melee professions, having the Unarmed Pre-req as the other 50% of our pre-reqs is the best thing for them...that's why we are the most template friendly profession...it's our versatility alone in the directions we have open to us.
Message Edited by garvin on 04-11-2005 12:15 PM
IdrisTycho wrote:
I am sorry for insulting you Garvin, indeed I have respected the effort you put forth for the commando community. I do not mean to belittle that work that was done for no charge.
However you have to do me a favor and cut back on the laundry list responses, at least to my posts. I try to make posts that if any person were to come along and read one randomly they might have some clue as to what I was talking about. Be honest, if you are scanning a thread for useful information would you read the 500 line posts that quote every line and respond to every line of a previous post, possibly also including posts previous even to that one? If so you have more patience than most. A good post makes its own points as briefly as possible. If the post requires the inclusion of some other post in its contents it does it judiciously, sparingly so as not to fill a thread with what has already been stated before.
By disecting my posts you violated that etiquette and in a sense insult me withnit-picking attacks against my opinion. Just because you see others do that here does not make it right. There are plenty of bad posts on these forums; there is lots of bad posting etiquette here. I would not be holding this technique up as a shining example of proper discussion if I were you. It is argumentative and confrontational.
ITS SORT OF LIKE TYPING IN ALL CAPS.
By the way I have been lurking and posting in the commando forums since the first few days after the game went live. I have been a commando since before they were good, and long after they were gimped. Sure there has been lots of good discussion over the years, but most of it has never amounted to real improvements to commandos. This is our moment to get things worked out.
I guess I just took offense to the previous commando correspondent so vehemently opposing what seemed only rational to me. I felt like you were using your position to take a stand against what seemed right for commandos rather than soliciting the general opinion. I gave mine, you gave yours, beyond that we should have involved more people's opinions. In the end the correspondent's job is to act as a go between for the players and the developers right? It's not to make the decisions for the players on what must be and what musn't.
No worries...if you weren't a "passionate" commando, I'd respect you less...but seeing your passion is something that inspires respect...
I will try and remember to not post "inbetween the lines" on your posts...it's a habit of mine because sometimes I skim posts to fast (I actually read every single post and response in this community and several others (get's boring at work)...
This topic, it just so happens, is one that I'm obviously extremely interested in...I've always liked the idea of Commandos being the "inbetween" profession...and I feel like we've all tried to so hard to make Commando mean something, that finally, when our unarmed pre-req is beginning to actually become useful, I'd hate to see us lose that...I'd also hate to see the Melee Commandos get the shaft just because other Commandos feel Ranged Commandos is the way to go...
In the end, it all comes down to personal opinion...believe it or not, our community is very split on this subject...that's one of the reasons I feel like "inbetween" is a good place for us to stay...
Back to the topic: so you don't think the melee component needsto be increasedwithin our profession in order for commando to qualify as truly inbetween? Shortly and sweetly, that's my problem. It's too little if we're inbetween and too much if we're ranged. May I ask, if the devs were to consolidate some of the existing legs in the master tree and add one or two that deal specifically with melee, would you be in favor of that? I think about it this way; of all of them, Commando seems more to me like the hardened soldier-type, it makes sense that they should be able to defend themselves well *without* their heavy weapons, or even weapons of any kind. Kinda like boot camp.
IdrisTycho wrote:This may be an accurate statement on the live servers but it is WAY off the mark on the TC server.
Right now commando is nothing more than an armor/weapon certification tree. You get no specials at all from this tree. This means that if you want to fire these weapons with anything other than novice marksman specials, you need a second tree of combat, like pistols carbines, or rifles.
Sure you could dabble lightly in ranged skills and then pickup TKM for your so called "fall back" but this would make you neither good in ranged attacking nor good in melee. I think templates that involve master commando will require a pure ranged template. For example the template: Master Commando, Master Pistoleer, Smuggler 4440 would provide lots of nice specials to use with the plasma flame thrower.
This means the age old template of Master Commando/TKM is no longer viable. Or if you take it, you will be spending what few points you have left in a skills tree like carbines or whatever. I think the the requirements of commando need to reflect its ranged disposition and be changed to
- Marksman: Pistols 4, or Carbines 4, or Rifles 4
- Marksman: Ranged Support 4
This would give them a few more points to spend on skills like healing, or more ranged skill. As it stands I highly doubt that any commando will take a template involving TKM and be very competitive vs. one that doesn't.
I'll see. I have just that template now, planning on having TKM/Master Commando/Marksman 0444 probably, with a little scout to round things out...hopefully it'll be viable for awhile, I plan on using the heck outta my flamers and such before I'm done. If not, we'll see what develops, I intend on being a viable player no matter what.
AlmightyBob wrote:
Just the opposite...I want to see our melee abilities and weapons increased, but I'm taking it one step at a time (i.e going from no melee compensation pre-CU, to some melee post-CU, to hopefully a lot more when the GCW revamp rolls around)..
I see this discussion as 2 points...(1) Should we have a Melee pre-req, & (2) If we have a Melee pre-req, should we get more...To me, the answer is yes to both points...When it comes to our pre-reqs and what we get from them, I think we are heading in the right direction, and I more then expect that direction to continue...Having the Unarmed Pre-req is a good barginning chip...it got us some melee mods and the knucklers. I also believe that much of our defense boost stems from the fact that we have a melee pre-req combined with have ranges that pre-CU place us in Melee range.
IdrisTycho wrote:How exactly is our plasma flame thrower going to benefit a melee stacker compared to a ranged stacker?I just see all these ranged weapons in Commando and naturally come to the conclusion that it is a ranged profession. Now if I saw unarmed mods and/or a few knuckler weapons, etc., then I could start to see it from your point of view. But one knuckler weapon does make the tree worthwhile to a TKM. There needs to be a better balance of unarmed gear/mods and ranged gear/mods if we are to expect this to be a real hybrid.Even smuggler has unarmed mods.
I'd be down with that. TK is my first love, burning stuff my second...if I could gain some benefits from Commando when I'm using my knucklers, that'd be fantastic. Give me a new special or two, give me some added melee accuracy/damage/speed/whatever, and I'll be more in love with Commando. I consider myself more melee-oriented anyway, one of the things I like with Commando--I'm best getting right up in somebody's face and then setting them on fire
Burn, baby, burn...
The perfect commando balance in my mind is one where the columns give you:
- Grenade weapons and skill modifiers
- Melee weapons and skill modifiers
- Ranged weapons and skill modifiers
- Heavy weapons and skill modifiers
My rationale behind this is that a commando is an expert at all forms of combat. Maybe not a true master of anything, but he has great skill in all forms and can use these disparate skills together to orchestrate some amazing assaults and/or defenses. The commando doesn't expect to win by melee, and he doesn't expect to win by ranged weapons, he simply expects to win by whatever meansare necessary.
Currently there is a decent balance of weapons and skills for grenades, heavy weapons, and ranged weapons. If the certifications and skill mods in the acid rifle column were redistributed into the beam and rocket launcher columns, and the 4th column became a melee column with some extras for melee folks,I think that could fix it. The new tree might look a bit like this:
Novice Commando
- Launcher Pistolcertification
- Massassi Knuckler certification
- General Melee Speed
- General Melee Accuracy
- General Ranged Speed
- General Ranged Accuracy
Column 1: Grenades
- Grenade certifications
- Thrown weapon accuracy
- Thrown weapon speed
Column 2: Ranged weapons
- Heavy Acid Rifle certification
- Heavy Particle Beam cannon certification
- Lightning Cannon certification
- General Ranged speed
- General Ranged Accuracy
Column 3: Heavy weapons
- Flame Thrower cerification
- Rocket Launcher certification
- Heavy Acid Stream Launcher certification
- Heavy Weapons Speed
- Heavy Weapons Accuracy
Column 4: Melee
- Melee Weapon with built-in status affect
- Melee Weapon with built-in status affect
- General Melee Speed
- General Melee Accuacy
- Plasma Flame Thrower certification
- Proton Rifle certification
- Proton Grenade certification
- Melee Weapon with built-in status affect (AoE)
- General Melee Speed
- General Melee Accuracy
- General Ranged Speed
- General Ranged Accuracy
- Heavy Weapon Speed
- Heavy Weapon Accuracy
The blue stuffare added things that I am suggesting. I honestly couldn't tell you what sort of states would be required for the melee weapons, I would have to do a ton of research into the melee professions to determine what sort of role Commandos should play and thus what kind of states they should get access to. But I am thinking it should be some sort of built-in blind or stun. They might not do quite as much damage per second as the melee weapons of other melee trees, but the built in affects might still makethem desirable. The new melee weapons don't have to be knucklers, they could be anything: swords, pikes, hammers, whips maybe?
The defenses and armor certs are left out since they should be scattered across the tree to avoid people dabbling in defense. The layout does otherwise encourage dabblers. The heavy weapons line would be something that any dabbler could take, but since limitations onpowerups, skill mods, and special usage might apply to these, they might not change your master rifleman special into the I-Win button. The ranged weapons which are lower damage would on the otherhand work with any special or powerup, so would the melee weapons. All weapons would earn HW exp and all trees would require that, except the grenades.
The master commando would be someone who was very capable in both melee and ranged and had access to some very nice weapons. He could either specialize in melee and use the additional ranged abilities as a closing-in technique, or specialize in ranged and use the melee abilities as a way to apply states to his opponent. Anyway you slice it, it makes master commando attractive but not the end-all be-all FoTM template.
garvin wrote:
AlmightyBob wrote:Just the opposite...I want to see our melee abilities and weapons increased, but I'm taking it one step at a time (i.e going from no melee compensation pre-CU, to some melee post-CU, to hopefully a lot more when the GCW revamp rolls around)..
I see this discussion as 2 points...(1) Should we have a Melee pre-req, & (2) If we have a Melee pre-req, should we get more...To me, the answer is yes to both points...When it comes to our pre-reqs and what we get from them, I think we are heading in the right direction, and I more then expect that direction to continue...Having the Unarmed Pre-req is a good barginning chip...it got us some melee mods and the knucklers. I also believe that much of our defense boost stems from the fact that we have a melee pre-req combined with have ranges that pre-CU place us in Melee range.
I'm in the boat with you, Garvin. And really, my interests are a little more selfish with my template than what's good for Commandos or what's good for melee characters...being what I am gives me far greater range of effectiveness than either one by itself. If somebody asks me for help with a mission, Corvette, Krayt dragons, whatever, I can (and do) ask, 'Do you need damage, or a tank?' Certainly I can't do everything, but I can still be both tank and heavy weapons specialist as needed, stand toe-to-toe with a Krayt keeping its attention on me while everybody else blasts away at it, or I can hit it with my flamethrower from a discreet distance while somebody else tanks it. For me, the melee component is more who I am than the ranged, not that flamethrowers have any great range anyway where the few specials are concerned. I would very much love to have *more* melee capability in the Commando lineup, not less...give us some blade attacks, and something like a sword to go with it, perhaps, who knows, if swordsmen can have a powerhammer that I believe has blast damage, why couldn't we? I already toss a 'nade as a Commando to soften up my targets, and finish 'em off with my knucklers, so heavy weapons skill and melee skill don't have to be mutually exclusive.
I confess I havent read the entire thread, mainly cause it sort of turned into a mini flame war (not even big flames! come on guys we are commando!
). While I agree that as a commando one would need to be skilled in unarmed combat since weapons could break and such. But I would love a republic commando approach and get rid of the crappy massi-whatever- knuckler and put in the wrist mounted vibro blade as this is a MUCH coooler option (but keep in mind it would still be an unarmed "weapon"). Then adding some kind of quick thrust attack when an opponent gets in close, with good dmg on a medium timer. If you've played republic commando you'll know how helpful this weapon is. Anyway at the moment, even with all the changes that are going to happen I still hate the unarmed prereqs and unless something can be done like i've suggested above I will continue to hate it. Will this stop me from playing a commando? NO, will it stop me enjoying it? maybe a little. But I'll never turn my back on the commando profession!
IdrisTycho wrote:I steered away from adding specials to the tree since the developers chose to put the specials into the weapons instead. So that is what I suggest. Instead of adding specials, lets add melee weapons with built-in specials. That would be more fair to the melee folks since the ranged folks are getting that feature from commando already.
Not sure what you mean by 'built-in specials'...DoT's you mean? That can be a slippery slope, there, so many think DoT's are what's wrong with the present combat system as it stands (not saying they're right, not saying they're wrong, but that seems to be a common complaint, particularly from PVP'ers). I personally would rather see more things to do *with* the weapons than just some uber component of the weapons themselves. Besides which, that could make the existing weapons more useful, why I suggested the 'bash' attack (kinda like that name myself
), it's something I can see heavy weapons users developing...I can't recall where I read about a team of riflemen who developed their own pseudo-martial art, may've been fiction but the idea was sound, it included ways to use the butt of the weapon to knock down an opponent, ways to jab with the barrel, slapping people with the stock, how to tuck in the gun and roll from a blow to get back to your feet, even ways to roll, lash out with both feet to strike your opponent, then kipup to a standing position, all without losing your grip on the gun.That's only melee possibilities; lots of ranged possibilities seem well, possible too, redundant as that sounds. That's one of the things I haven't liked about Commando as it stands, pre-CU, with flamethrower you pretty much have two specials, plus two advanced versions of them, the same happens with acid rifle, gives my FT toolbar plenty of room for various foods to down while I'm in combat but I'd happily trade in the real estate for more things to do with the weapons. I like versatility, it's one of the reasons I chose my template. Sure I could be a better tank with Swordsman or Pikes added to TKM, or a better ranged fighter with Rifleman or Carbineer added to Master Commando, but I'm not in this to be 'teh uLtImAtE uber', I'm in it to do well at what I want to do. Which at the moment is alternate slamming things with my fists and blowing stuff up
That's subject to change without notice, too.
AlmightyBob wrote:I confess, at the beginning of the thread I really wanted to see the melee component go, but since then I've really warmed up to the melee side of commando. I only wonder why you're being so patient, Garvin. I want to see them change things in a big way when the CU goes live.Chess, call it bashing, and I love that idea. It could actually be a pretty damaging attack, depending on the equipped weapon: surely, it's got to hurt to be crowned with a rocket launcher!Adding such a ranged-weapon melee feature would be only natural due to the size of many of our heavies. Idris makes a valid point, but perhaps such a melee bash should be the built-in special when a target closes to melee range. No more firing missiles at your feet (sure, it's a game, so we don't usually mind being suicidal, but would you do that in real life?)! Additionally, the dev's wouldn't need to create any new melee weapons (which would likely go down well with other combat types, since we are already very well endowed with certifications).
Wayell, I dunno...yah, hitting somebody with a rocket launcher might do more than hitting them with a lag pistol, but first, trying to code every single weapon's different melee damage when used like that (which I assume they haven't done with the 'pistolwhip' that I wish I could recall if that's really what it's called) might be a mess, and second, when you're dealing with weapons that aren't *meant* to be swung that way, it's gonna limit your ability some. Swinging a rocket launcher at somebody versus swinging a mace, for instance, one's balanced for such things, one definitely isn't, both will hurt when they hit, but my money's on the mace
I guess you could make it a special for the weapon itself...I'd honestly rather see it useful for whatever you pick up, but that's just me 
Since the prereq for Commando is unarmed, not armed, what you say might be the better option, quite true. Wouldn't want to get anybody's panties in a bunch saying that if we have that, our prereq should be armed melee, not unarmed...not that I'd necessarily have anything against doing that, all honesty.