Commando Archive

I said earlier the biggest turnoff about speed looting is its repetative nature and its bad odds. ive spent an entire day running the vette without a single powerplant or barrel, but ill jump on for 30 min one night and pull 2 in one mission. As far as ive found, there is absolutely nothing you can do to increase your odds, either. so: missions become a science of effiency.

the easiest ticket to pull is the assassin mission, which is ironicly the most dificult mission to beat. so this is usually the choice for speed looters who wanna get on, check loot, get off, and pull another ticket quickly. To get people the badge, i like to have a full squad, preferably with at least 1 jedi or 4-6 commandos. dificulties lie in needing to access the officerarea and kill a 250k+ HAM admiral, but ill get to that stuff later.

the distruct mission is of moderate dificulty to beat, and moderate time to pull a ticket. This can be beaten in a reasonable time with a minimum of at least 3 people. the primary dificulty is accessing the bridge.

the rescue mission is the most time consuming ticket to pull, involving a trip across lok and Dant, but is the easiest mission to beat. Ive done it comfortably with two people, and could probably solo it without too much sweating.

I tend to categorize the enemy into groups, primarily by HAM, and what i can and cant kill easily. Ensigns, rebel sailors, and 1st mates make up the easy category, and primarily populate the entry deck, with a few on the main. The mid level category is made up of the rebel commandants, commanders, regular battle droids, and a few characters i call the rankless (named NPCs with no rank). all of these have considerable HAM (around 100k) and weapons strength that can kill or incapacitate in one shot. Taking them down usually involves a buffed and armored group of people that all assult at the same time. even so it takes a while. There are a few on theentry deck, mostly in the back, but there are several on the main deck and top deck, primarily in areas you NEED to go. The last category is obvious, 200K+ HAM, consisting of the SBD and admirals. mostly, i try not to mess with them unless i have to.

Anyone who knows the ship knows that it is primarily divided up into three decks: the entry deck, the main deck (which runs the length of the ship), and the top deck. The top deck provides us with a loot point in an armoire(second room down the hall), and the operations disc #4, which will give us the bridge code. The Entry deck provides us with access codes for the armory and bridge, as well as a droid part to be used on the main deck. The main deck provides us with everything else. Ship aft (engine room), port side gives access to the ship distruct computer, starboard contains the security switch for the meeting room door. You can use the droid part to fix the droid and avoid the electric floor problem, but most times i just hit the switch and die. its faster. the meeting room contains the elevator switch for bridge and prisoner access. the Star room tunnel on the fore starboard side gives us 2 loot spots (one armoire, and one broken astromech droid), as well as the code for the port officer area near the bridge. it stands to reason then that the port tunnel gives us the code for the starboard officers area. the Main star room tunnel gives us acces to the front of the ship, and acces to another ship distruct computer. In the front of the ship we have three choices. the armory is in the middle (with another armoire loot), the right elevator takes us up and gives access to the prisoner release code, and the left elevator gives us the bridge, officer areas and prisoner room.

Tactics: A big key to vette ownage is going to be in the tactics with which you choose to run it. Speed looting is simple. start upstairs, then grab the armory code, head downstairs, grab the second and third loots, put in the armory code, and get the fourth loot. Loot items are randomly: crash and burn spice, an LLC, an E11 carbine, a Ryyk blade, a stun baton, a stuffed bantha (which has value among collectors), a berserker rifle barrel or schematic (both are valuable, but both are required to make a berserker rifle so one is kind of useless without the other), or at last the av21 powerplant.

a well made rifle can go for several mil, so i usually sell the barrels for a mil a peice, and schematics for a little less. The powerplant is useless without the schematic (received for beating the vette), but as it is rare, i try to get at least 2 mil for it. considering that i can do 10 to 15 hours worth of vette runs to pull a single powerplant or barrel, i think those prices are pretty good, and are actually lower than most of my competitors.

Your tactics change a good deal when attempting to beat a mission, but having a good knowledge of what has to happen is important. i am often hired by various groups to coordinate or lead missions in order to get the members specific badges or AV21 schematics. When doing so, i like to have at least one other person who is famaliar with the vette, to aid in keeping the group coordinated.

The big key to all the missions is that you need acess to the bridge area (though not necessarily the bridge). This means someone has to get the droid part, run through the SBDs inthe engine room, open the meeting room door, then go to the meeting room and turn on the bridge elevator. I usually only have one person do this, or do it myself. the rest of the group is better focused in clearing a path from the entry deck to the front of the ship. this consists of: swatting the ensigns in the first hallway leading to the elevator, killing the 1st mate, sailors, and one rankless that hang out in the star room, whacking the rebel commandant and his lackies that live by the hyperdrive and front hallway, and come commodores that live outside the armory area. working as a cohesive, tight group, this is rarely dificult, however, as they get closer to the front of the ship, order starts to fall apart and must be maintained. once the hallway is cleared and the elevator is on, the mission can be split 3 ways. the first sends the group up to clear the entry way to the bridge, enters the port officer area, and kills the admiral. the second clears all the way into the bridge, while one individual runs back to the hyperdrive, and one to the engines. They can then quickly adjust the switches as necessary to destroy the ship. The last option is to split the group in two, sending one to clear the way to the prisoners (by the bridge) while the other group clears the way to the prisoner code (via the starboard elevator). and voila! any of the three missions are complete, working primarily off the same template.

A problem i have seen groups run into, from time to time, is inaccountability of their members. occasionally, dishonest speedlooters too lazy to pull a ticket for themselves will volunteer to be a part of a bigger group. as soon as they are onboard, they leave the group, hit the loot points, and escape pod back to naboo before anyone knows what the heck happened. the only indication is a missing party member, and empty loot spots. to avoid this, make sure you know who everyone in the group is, and assign a perticular member with loot accountablity (to be shared groundside). usually, the easiest time to round up the loot is after the mission has been completed, and everyone is on their way to the pods,as there are less distractions.

Back towards the original thread topic, a big issue in the corvette run is the SBD. they kill highly buffed players with relative ease, and are time consuming to destroy. However, a long standing problem with the vette code can tend to work in our favor: Im sure people have noticed that there is an error in the code that governs the spawning of the SBD. originally, there were only a few, locked in the engine room, but the DEVS decided people were looting too easily, and added more SBD to pretty much any room that is mission or loot specific. However, they were sloppy in thier coding, as this was a quick fix, and, and they screwed it up (and still havent fixed it, months later). What happens is every instance the corvette runs, it spawns a new set of SBD at each point. Depending on how many people run it in a day, by evening, the rooms may be completely full of spawned SBD. (the server reload every morning resets this). This can work in our favor, however. The quickfix SBD dont have the same guidance the ones in the engine room do, and when properly motivated (by a well placed flamecone) they will fight and kill off a good portion of the crew. while the crew and the SBD fight, they really dont care who is walking around the ship, and it takes alot of pressure off of whoever is making the run. nice to know, huh.

if anyone has any questions or feedback, feel free to email me.

Shug

12pt Master WeaponSmith Master Force Crafter

-843 2827 Dantooine, Mining Outpost

"Bring me that Horizon"
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Nice post, nbd9k. I also do the assassin mission (imperial) because getting the ticket is so easy. Usually I can go up twice (solo) in one buff, including the time to get a second ticket.

Shug, as I mentioned, the npc's in the corvette drop yellow-named weapons occasionally. Also CA's but so far I have only got one which was pretty useless (survey +3). On the imp missions I get mostly carbines/rifles/pistols/bowcasters (low speed / low ham / high damage / or dot), but a friend of mine looted a mind fire lva in a neutral mission.

Voltrox - Master Loot Whore, 12 point kill-stealer
Lacci - Master Doc / Musician 4000 / Dancer 4003 (+25 med exp, +25 med assy, +25 music enh, +25 dance enh)
Selling buffs and other medical supplies at 2 S Main in Brenn, Naboo, and -195 -5830 near Coronet.

As a human with fully migrated mind, I just get fully buffed (inclunding ent) and use quick heal, no timer, and I don't bother trying to sneek, I just run right through spamming strafe 2, CM's also can use AOE poisons, diseases that piss everyone off. I can beet destroy in 6 mins, and completely loot in 11.

Member of the Rock alliance.
CO of DD 214
Member of EC-p8r militia
"Have faith in God, but believe in antimatter"
Bounty Hunters kill for credits, Commando's kill for the hell of it!

This has probably been replied to now by all the posts above but thats what I get for only checking this forum once or twice a month...

Anyhoos as a Master Smuggler, Master Commando (and had novice medic when I done this)I can solo the weaker SBD's. On the 'vette I have found they vary in HAM from around 130k - 200k. I cant confirm this 100% as normally im running for my life through the 'vette for loot and only loot as im bored silly with fighting things to get creds. Still I do go up in clan groups a lot and I do occasionally fight my way through the 'vette missions and once upon a time I thought I would attempt to solo a SBD.

I had with me 2 crates of Lightning Beam Cannons, Kryat and Form Fitted Flamer, various other consumables and plenty of spices food and drinkplus full Entertainer and Doc buffs several PSG's and tripple layered compo and healing stims. All my items were sliced.

To kill the SBD (140k HAM) it took me about 10 - 15 mins (it was probably 20)and during that time I used up almost a full crate of Lightning Beam Cannons (7 to a crate I came out with one LBC with 3 charges left meaning 210 shots I think) and done a lot of running back and forth and feigning death and flaming and using lifts and taking off my armour and feigning death and getting up and runnning and taking off my armour and using lifts and feign...

You get the picture.

Without the buffs etc I wouldnt have survived its hits whenever it got me in 10m range it ruined my armour and wasted my consumables and all I got was the satisfaction of killing it. Id never do it again.

I have however seen TKM's and 2-Handed Swords stand up to them with a just a doc healing and a commando raining hellfire on them and win without too much trouble.

bout the SBD's i have a way that works sometimes but you have to have a group you use your DOT on them then back off then the others in the group start attacking them. Then you come back start buring them again. its worked for me but not always

Best bet is to take some PC with a lot of stacked defense mods, a Combat Medic -- to heal the TANK and then Flame on. While a TKM won't do hardly any damage the SBD at least won't be able to touch them much while you flame away at them. But again only when you need to

You don't need to be defense-stacked to tank SBDs, you just need a TKM that knows what they're doing. My method is simple: good composite armor (80/80/80), Centor of Being running constantly, taunt, and autoattack. I have done a lot of tanking down there for my guild andI do very well despite the fact that I'm not a stacker. The mistake most TKMs make down there is spamming specials. I see tons of them down there spamming the hell out of Unarmed Hit 3. Next thing you know, your brandy runs out and the mind bar is next to nothing. I do it like this: taunt a SBD who is running amok into a corner, start the CoB macro, and taunt him again at 30 second intervals. Just autoattacking you can go toe to toe with him for a LONG time this way. There is no sense special attacking a SBD as a TKM, they are highly resistant to kinetic and you have very little armor piercing. Let the swordsmen, riflemen, and others do the damage, TKs are there to tank.

I'm currently working my way to master Commando as well, so it will be interesting to see what new tactics I employ in the DWB when I'm done with that.

(gnn[[[[[[[[[[]nnnWX9ggggggggggggggggggggggggggggg)

Sea-to Hidal - Krayt Oasis, Tattooine - <BGH>

Trust me, the minute you land a successful /taunt a SBD will drop everything and run across the room to where you are to go melee with you. After that it will stick to you like glue until a heavy damage dealer gets a good shot on it. All you do then is /taunt again. If you have 80/80/80 composite armor you can take its blaster shots a lot better if for some reason the SBD starts shooting at you. What sucks is this expensive armor will take a huge beating down there, but such is the life of the group tank. /shrug

I have never landed a successfull KD on a SBD, but I have seen them get knocked down by a ranged attack. They are also immune to intimidate, blind, dizzy, and stun states. Any encounter with a SBD just boils down to keeping it busy until the whole group can gang up on the cursed thing. SBDs are the reason feign death ability is GODLY in the DWB.

(gnn[[[[[[[[[[]nnnWX9ggggggggggggggggggggggggggggg)

Sea-to Hidal - Krayt Oasis, Tattooine - <BGH>