Commando Archive

As for the charges debacle, why cant we just have a weapon that requires us to buy "top-ups". I.e a novice weaponsmith can make us different types of rockets, specialist fuel or acid packs or whatever, just to justify the high price and high Weaponsmith level to make our weapons? I mean the earliest level for just the launcher pistol is Expert I believe and then everything else is either Specialist and Master, so no wonder they are expensive and for a throw away weapon is totally rediculous. Just let them be charged, but for us to buy extra charges at a much cheaper and lower levelled weaponsmith rate. This will not only benefit us but also the weaponsmiths and will bring about the state in which Higher/lower levelled artisans were promised before live, where the higher levelled required the lower levelled to work.

Just an idea but sounds plausable to me.

I think it would really easy for a weapon to use charges, but not disapear after they are used. Then, we could just drag another stack of ammo onto it. The reason why I say this is because power-ups work just like we would want our charged weapons to work. You can only have one power-up at a time, and they accurately track how many times you use it. When they are used up, then they are gone; just add another stack of ammo to the weapon.

I think the devs are going down the wrong path by letting special moves work for the pistol launcher. This is an obvious cop-out and game play balancing clearly hasn't been thought through.

Why in the world would you make it so that to be a viable commando (something that already takes a tremendous amount oftraining points relative to other classes), you are compelled to also be a pistoleer (or rifleman if they add the same for acid or beam rifles or whatever)? This is asiniine. Basically what you have left is a template that's probably more effective at dealing DPS than a comparable pistoleer, but ohh how uninteresting. You now lack the option to train in scout, medic, artisan, or entertaineretc. etc. That same pistoleer can become a smuggler, a creature handler, a droid builder, etc. etc. And guess what. The only reason your DPS is higher is because the weapon does more damage...

I think the devs really need to go back to the drawing board a bit. Here are somethoughts on how to improve the class:

Commandos should be a jack of all trades for light weapons and unarmed combat, with the unique ability to be very effective against heavily armored or stationary / slow-moving combatants via the use of heavy weapons, explosives and heavy armor. This would be consistent with their very high combat focused starting requirements. It seems like we're close to being the jack-of-all light weapons, but woefully far from being effective users of heavy weapons, explosives or heavy armor. Here aresome thoughts on each of these categories:

1. Light Weapons: The commando needs some commando only skills that round these skill sets out. This should include not only enhanced accuracy, damage, defence with reduced delay, but also a few unique unarmed, pistol, carbine and rifle abilities. Commandos should not be as effective as an elite in each class, but should be able to tackle reasonably difficult oponents. This will allow commandos to switch to light weapons where they are more effective than heavy weapons or explosives (more on this later).

2. Heavy Weapons: Heavy weapons should be much higher damage per second ("DPS") in some circumstances than light weapons, but perhaps (slightly) less effective than light weapons in certain circumstances as well. I see heavy weapons as weapons that have some combination of long range, high armor penetration, long recharge, high accuracy against stationary or very slow moving targets, high damage, potential for collateral damage, and long initial charge. What this means is that heavy weapons should be MUCH more effective against a heavily armored stationary or slow moving target than light weapons. Heavy weapons would be more effective against stationary unarmed targets or armored moving targets than light weapons. However, heavy weapons should be less effective than light weapons against fast moving relatively unarmed targets (where unarmed means that the armor is equal or less than the penetration factor of the light weapon). Moreover, as a general rule heavy weapons should suffer a severe penalty when the commando is moving at faster than a walk (I say walk because with the heavy armor suggestion below you can have a heavily armored, slow-moving effective commando). Heavy weapons could be divided into categories that are as follows: Special friendly (lower ham) vs. special unfriendly, very long range vs. medium range, collateral damage vs. no collateral damage, very high armor penetration vs. moderate to good armor penetration, very inaccurate for moving targets vs. reasonable accuracy vs. moving targets, very high damage vs. high (or even moderate) damage, special utility against droids vs. no special utility against droids, and on damage type. NOTE: To balance heavy weapons a combination of purchasing ammunition or recharging energy cells could be implemented to keep their usemore regulated tospecial circumstances. However, the solution is NOT to make the entire weapon disappear after so many uses.

3. Explosives: As I lack experience in this area so I won't go into to much detail. However, I feel that explosives should both be in the form of grenades as well as placed explosives (I think of like c-4 or whatever) to take out structures (or even AT-STs or whatever you call them) with timers or triggers. I also think personel mines should be allowed (with a max life so that the server gets rid of them eventually). Having mines could give scouts another purpose (finding them) as well as maybe giving commandos some low-marginal ability level in this area.

4. Additional changes:

a. Heavy Armor: Commandos should probably have some type of heavy armor as an option that actually moderately reduces their running speed. This would enable them to take the concentrated fire that will inevitably be directed against them in big pvp battles. It would also enable them to take a hit from a Turret or AT-ST (or whatever you call them). This makes sense as commandos would be focusing fire on these targets and these targets (if intelligent) would focus fire on the guns that are doing the most damage to them. This heavy armor should be dramatically more effective against heavy weapon fire, but should not make them all but impervious to small arms as that would be unbalancing. Perhaps a tradeoff would be to keep its effectiveness very high against ranged type attacks (perhaps by focusing on energy, heat, etc.) while allowing kinetics to penetrate it more effectively (although it should still take a kinetic damage dealer moderately longer to drop a heavily armored commando than to drop a lightly armored riflemen, carbineer, or even pistoleer.

b. Stationary VERY heavy weapon certificates: Commandos should be the heavy gunners manning heavy turrets. I have yet to see the developer’s vision on this area implemented so I will refrain from commenting further. Other types of marksmen might be able to use the turrets with some effectiveness, but commandos should be substantially more effective in this area.

5. Miscellenous combat imrovements:

a. Lacking a certificate for an area shouldn't reduce damage; it should reduce accuracy and increase delay. This just makes sense.

b. Armor should have its effectiveness skewed against the weapon's armor penetration in a way that makes more sense than the seemingly linear setup we have now. In other words, giving a weapon with a armor penetration ("AP") value of 3 a 25% enhanced damage against armor resistance ("AR") of 2, a 50% enhanced damage against AR 1, and a 75% enhanced damage against AR 0 is not the best way to implement armor penetration. Armor penetration should be more of a threshold where once you are over an AR you have full effectiveness. In other words, an AP of a 3 should be as effective against an AR of 2 as it is against an AR of 1 or 0, not more so. It's reasonable to give it less effectiveness against an AR of 3 (say a 25% decrease across the board). It should then drop off in effectiveness against each subsequently greater AR value. As it stands now why not just make a weapon with an AR of 3 have a greater damage min and max vs. an AR of 2. That's effectively what the current system as I understand it stands. However, perhaps my understanding is off. This deserves some further investigation. However, it's hard to do with player made armor all having an AR of 1.

c. Walk vs. run accuracy penalty: Very simply put, if you walk or your target is walking the accuracy penalty you receive should be less than that if you were running or if your target was running. Heavy weapon's extra-severe moving target penalty should be noticeable only where at least one of the targets is running, not walking. A commando should be effective when wearing the heavy armor I talk about above (or merely walking for whatever reason) against a slow-moving target (be it another heavy armored commando or a tank-type vehicle or a slow moving AT-ST).

d. Accuracy in general: Large targets should be VERY easy to hit, even when the targeter is running at the same time the target is running. I'm thinking of AT-STs, Krayt dragons, and the like here.

Those are my thoughts. I think if implemented they would dramatically improve the commando class, and game play as a whole for all of the combat professions. The bottom line is that commandos should be the single most effective class in combat. This should only be a marginal improvement against other players. But it should be a HUGE improvement against large, heavily armored, stationary or slow-moving targets. This would define our class. Add in explosives, heavy armor, and mines and you have a complete combat hybrid class that would make all of us happy. However, a word of caution. Commandos should not be SO much better than other combat classes in strict pvp skirmishes. We should be better, but the edge only where we have an opportunity to "set-up" so to speak with a heavy weapon or the ability to take advantage of explosives. In a straight shoot-out where the other party is moving a lot, our advantage should be minimal. If we are forced to move as well our accuracy should drop a lot.

Good Idea Jedi Lord!!

But the tree is seriously mess up

we need unarmed as a req. Well give us a branch of unarmed special commando move that would help our melee defence

Why have we so many heavy weapon in so many different branch? Bring them all under one branch called Heavy Weapon with cert at each tier.

Stealth it is a must for commando come bring us that branch with the visual camo as a skill would greatly like to see it

for the last one either Demolition or Commando Focus training where we would have a limited yet continuous improvement in all our range weapon (rifle-carbine-pistol) not something excessif as in the Focus only profession but something with some cool commando only move and soft improvement. or if it is demolition do something about mine and nade... but I would see that going into heavy weapon... Grenade launcher would be something to add to the game too...but hey it's only a suggestion

All those idea were taken on the board somewhere from different people, but I think it resume what people want..Make the commando time and effort worthwhile cause presently...they are no fun and if you think people go commando for the actual profession you got it alllllll wrong... people are going commando cause they expect the change to be great and that it will make commando a great class...a little like I hope

Presently Commando is one of the class that require alot of prerequisite and give nada....I think it should worth all those prereq. come on....you got so much idea on this board to improve the commando class, at least use them am sure it can only be for the better...

And IMHOUgly speed with avg low damage is unacceptable...if you want to increase the time it take to use the weapon do it on special only...not all the time..

Ok first and foremost, even if the news is a little unsettling I am happy to see that they have acknowledged the problems with the commando profession and working to a solution.

I will start with the Launcher Pistol Topic. I like this idea because it will allow us to use one of our "exotic" weapons with a more common and powerful skill. This also lets us make use of our marksmen training (what’s unarmed for many ask). One thing I would like to add that I saw was the incorporating of the carbine and riflemen skills to be used by some of our other weapons. Example: Acid Rifle using Rifle skills and Flame-thrower/particle weapons using the carbine skill. I have taken a personal liking to the carbine and at the moment my carbineer skills are the only thing keeping me alive when I break out my lighter.

Second is the issue of our "exotic" weapons being secondary weapon. Ok I think they want to help us, but to make my flame-thrower a mob-killing machine maybe is not the right answer, even though I wont complain if they make it that way. But when I chose to be a commando it was because of these weapons and their current lethality (ok acid rifles don’t exist but acid does and people don’t screw with acid). With these weapons being the poster boys of our profession, and now apparently only playing a small role in it, what the point now? Being a commando you will have earned the excellent skill of being able to only in the most specific of situations because they are unique! **edit**? I was in this to burn down houses, melt the flesh of my enemies and blow the hell outta their heavy armor, at what point did this become the skill of a priss?

Third is an idea posted by a fellow commando to make the weapons with charges use ammo instead. This would create even more reasons for weaponsmiths to pay attention to the commando and their weapons. I think that would be an awesome idea if tweaked correctly for balance, and would definitely have me at Thoax’s door begging him for a Rocket launcher, a particle cannon, and the respective ammo in a HUGE quantity!

Now maybe this is me but I have a vision of what a commando is, let me share.

The commando was officially born in WWII and has since then been a man of legend. These men (women probably too, don’t want to offend anyone) have been the one who truly get into the nitty gritty of the fight and take it to the enemies. Going on missions that would never be asked of regular troops these guys went out mostly as volunteers, putting themselves in harms way to get their job done. Trained in the use of all sorts of weapons from hand to hand, to the use of their enemies weapons these guys are a force that is feared. In Vietnam the Vietcong put out huge bounties on the heads of special operations soldiers. Their combat skills are unrivaled in the field and I see none of this yet in SWG. I understand the need for balance, but don’t come up with a class that is supposed to be the cream of the crop if they wont be.

When I started SWG I wanted to be a Commando as a primary skill with maybe some support skills from medic included. Now in its current state commando is only a backup skill, and anyone who chooses to be a commnado is either crazy or wholly dedicated to getting it. I stand somewhere in between, I do not want to abandon my initial idea to go be a bounty hunter like so many others, or a pistoleer because of the sheer killing power, but things are starting to look dark for the commando.

As always I cannot express more gratitude to dev team for showing interest to our complications and is working to fix the situation. I look forward to anything they do, as there is now way to make things worse, so I will be watching my update log for the message "tweaked commando profession."

Don’t mean to be an ass, but that’s what I think, it got a little messy back there (I typed this at my loving work so there may have been some bleed over anger). There, I think I got all my ranting out.

Ok here are my ideas:

You have 4 lines:

First Line: uses unarmed and gives you all your defensive bonuses. Stun, Dizzy etc. Also could throw some charget weapon and throwing weap bonuses in here.

Second LIne: Launcher Pistol line. New special moves and bonuses to hit with pistol.

Third Line: Heavy Acid Rifle Line. New special moves and bonuses to hit with rifle.

Fourth line: Heavy Weapon line. Primary the flamethrower which acts similar to a carbine with special moves and bonuse to hit.

This would be in line with our other skills and compliments us well. Like a BH basically.

Recap:

Pistol for health damage in close battles

Rifle doesmind damage for far away.

Flamethrower does a combination of action/mind to compliment both.

We would be original and actually make sense as a class.

Rickap2: nice post and I couldnt have said it better myself.

On edit above:

Flamethrower does a combination of action/mind to compliment both.

Flamethrower does a combination of action/HEALTH to compliment both.

Regarding Special moves:

Well they want us to use the special moves in order to cause more damage. Sadly the commando doesnt have a lot of moves he could be proud of.

Acid single/cone

Flame single/cone

If I am looking at other professions like theBounty HunterI really wonder why we have such a poor varity. I would strongly suggest the Devs give us a greater range of moves with differnt kind of effects to choose from.

Guys, we can't accept the launcher pistol as our main weapons. This is obviously a ploy to get us to shut up for a while, and now we're gunna be stuck using the lag-a-nator and forced to go pistoleer! This is ridiculous, no other high endprofession gets a weapon that uses attacks from another high end profession. why? its cookie cutter! They need to rework the tree entirely. my idea is as follows...

Field Tactics: Keep this as the gernade line. Need to fix it to where gernades do much more damage and a nice sized AoE (Area of Effect for those who don't know). BUT, i'd like them to add in a special for each gernade. Take, say the Glop Gernade, let us have a special that will make the glop gernade (and that gernade only preferably) have a snare or a root effect.

Heavy Weapons Support: Make this an accuracy, aiming, and speed line (accuracy while moving too) for out heavy weapons. Also add a bonus damageto armor (much like in scout, the hunting tree, that has "creature knowledge". so, itd be "Armor knowledge"...sorta). Also, a new special thing would be nice (similar to dodge, counterattack and cover for pistol, carbine and rifle respectivly) but i can't think of what. i'll leave that to you guys, or the devs. (parry might be a good one, but its a tad bit unoriginal)

FlameThrower Specialization: This is a bit narrow, need to change it up to incorperate more weapon types. I read on this board somewhere a great idea. It was to change it to all the heavy weapons with chaotic fire, meaning damage that sprays, squirts and such. The Flame Thrower and Acid Rifle are prime examples. And for the specials...Tier 1) a higher then normal damage DoT, single target. Tier 2) A shot aimed at their feet to knock them over and keep them at idle range.Tier 3) Can't think of anything atm...Tier 4) a massive AoE DoT. Rename Chaotic Fire Heavy Weapons. Also, put your meele defence and defence vs. things (knockdown, stun, etc.) and also the necessary weapon certs.

Acid Rifle Specialization: Once again, a bit narrow. Change this to weapons with linear fire (that shoot straight, like the marksmen weapons), like the launcher pistol and beam rifle. For the specials...Tier 1) higher then normal damage attack. Tier 2) An attack that damages and has a good chance of making the target dizzy. Tier 3)Can't think of anything atm...Tier 4) an attack damages all three HAM pools. Rename Linear Fire Heavy Weapons. Also, add your ranged defence things and what ever Defence Vs. things that don't go in Chaotic. Spread out the certs here too.

Master Commando: give a few more bonuses and that last gernade spec.

Thats my idea, it takes us from a secondary class to a primary class!!

Hiya Eisei Kai'shi Clan Kryshi

Commando in Training

"Quality may be better then quantity, but quantity has a quality all it’s own."

You know, I really wouldnt mind having a tree solely dedicated to Grenades Crafting along with the components like the Enhanced Destructive Pulse Channeling stuff. I saw those attachments with Grenade Assembly mods and I can't think of any place these mods will fit into.

And urm, artilleryman seems to be a really bad name for completing Field Tactics IV, our range is DEFINITELY not that of an Artillery (In fact its even shorter then fast weapons). When I used the title, my friend thought that I have the ability to call for fire support from the air or wadever. But this is a minor issue so no worries.

And yea, pls dont allow any of our weapons to have any connectivity with carbine,rifle or pistol. This way of doing things is simply making things worse and eventually fubar.

Well, here's my idea:

Have one tree solely dedicated to Grenades & Grenades manufacturing.

Have one tree solely dedicated to Acid Rifle & Flamethrower

Have one tree solely dedicated to Heavy weaponary that have charges like Beam cannon and such

Well, that leaves and empty tree. You guys could name it as "Intermediate Commando Special Abilities" just like wad the other professions have. In this tree, give us ample Melee Def and the Range defense taht we should have. Or maybe throw in a special move or 2 to make things better. This tree should make the General Abilities of a Commando to be more effective and powerful.

Just my 2 cents

this is GREAT news. Now if we could just get an estimated time on all this....I think launcher pistols should have a big explosion. I was dissapointed with the weak graphics of some grenades. Launcher pistols should have a big explosion. Besides why don't they just use tab? the 8 rancors in groups also block the targets

The Pistol Changes sound nice and All, and i'm Sure i will beusing it Extensivly...However i am much More interested in What they are Going to do with the Beam rifle. Is it going to be the same, Rifle moves but Heavy weapon exp?....Personaly I would much Prefer the Exp Be Spilt in half...Half Exp Pistol/Rifle and the Other half heavy, Seing how ther are"heavy" pistols and Riffles....But still Pistols and Rifles.

these responses are almost the worst I could have imagined. The Dev whowrote those responses must beentirely out of touch with this game.

You say that special moves is where our weapons should shine...are you kidding or something??? Have you ever even bothered to pick one up?!?! These weapons and moves SUCK! Even my"basic" marksman profession special moves work better. We can't even target a single HAM pool, we have to chip away at it randomly.

You think the current area-effect is good? Why the #@$$ would I want to do 100-400 points of damage to a bunch of mobs? So I can get killed even faster during the 10sec recharge? In that same 10 seconds, a guy with a pistol can kill the whole pack of mobs that I just pissed off. Tell me people, who is going to want to group with a commando if theyaggro whole camps using our "special" moves? By the way, if this "oh so special" move happens to kill anything before I hit it with a non-special move I don't get any XP anyway.

Why would I want to rely on my Launcher Pistol? If I wanted to use a pistol I would be a pistoleer and to 10x the damage than any commando will ever be capable of at this rate. We didn't choose this profession to put on light shows, we wanted to do HEAVY damage. Yes, slow recharge, but *heavy* damage. How much damage? Simple, take a pistoleer with a good ScoutBlaster (yes, ScoutBlaster, mine is 59-121 speed 1.3) and use your best damage/sec special moves to beat a mob for 6seconds.The total damage ranges from 800-1800 (BS3/fan)in our team's tests.Our heavy weapon should do an equal amount of damage toa target in the same time period.

too @#$@ pissed to write more now