Commando Archive

Its hard to test right now, but this is the first pass to try and determine the roles of the Commando Weapons:

Our Weapon List

Grenades: Fragmentation, Cyoban, Glop, Imperial Detonator, Thermal Detonator, Proton.

Pistols: Launcher Pistol.

Basic Heavy: Acid Rifle, Flame Thrower.

Charged Heavy: Rocket Launcher, Particle Beam Cannon, Acid Beam Cannon, Lightening Beam Cannon.

My thoughts on how the profession is supposed to be functioning:

Starting out

Launcher Pistol: Our Launcher Pistol is our basic weapon, uncharged and used in most situations that you cannot control. Early on in your commando career, you will use Launcher Pistol exclusively, because you will be relying on the accuracy / speed gained from the pistol line of your novice marksman tree. Eventually, as you gain heavy weapons exp, the "situational" weapons will take over and you will have your heavy weapons hotkeyed.

Primary duo

Flame Thrower: This is clearly intended to be our weapon for close range (read: melee) combat. It relies on a DoT and some AoE benefits to make it desireable. It is uncharged, so it will likely be one of our mainstays that eventually take over the Launcher Pistol at close range. It fulfills our role as dangerous up close by providing a "big hit" and then a DoT to keep the dps up while the special recycles. The flamethrower should domore damage than a comperable melee specialist to make up for the fact that we have no defensive bonuses (which they can stack because of the low cost of specialist).

Acid Rifle: The Acid Rifle will be our primary weapon for distance fighting. It operates similar to rifles or carbines in that it is meant for distance fighting. Once we progress far enough along this line to acquire the required speed and accuracy (from using the launcher pistol) it will be the mainstay in our two part heavy weapon combination. We will "pull" with the Acid Rifle, hopefully killing a foe outright, and then finish with the flamethrower up close ifour opponentstill lives. Note one of the primary distictions between our ranged weapon, the acid rifle, and themarksman specialisttrees is that thespecialist tree can targeta HAM bar exclusively making them very effective, and also that specialists get signifigant defensive bonuses and greater accuracy while moving, as well as certain very important special abilities. We pay the price of being immobile, and vulnerable to deliver the very big and very effective shots. Accordingly, the Acid Rifle should do much more damage than the best Rifleman, to make up for their defensive and mobility (ie + Accuracy While Moving, which is lacking in our tree) bonuses. The Acid Rifle will be our primary means to do so, with the flamethrower being our backup for close combat if the Acid Rifle fails us.

Situational Weapons

The rest of ourweapons are charged and are very situational.

Grenades: There are general purpose AoE weapons. They have varying effects and purposes, and are designed to give us the "king of AoE" designation. They should do less damage than the Rocket Launcher to one foe, but should have a greater raidius. Cheap versions should be readilly available, with more powerful ones being very rare and very powerful.

Rocket Launcher: Our rocket laucher should be used for long distance, high impact fighting. The tradeoff of it being charged should equate to much greater damage than our Acid Rifle to a single target, with a small (or no) AoE effect for realism and to create friendly fire situations for same teams.

Cannons: Our three cannons should be used to target oneof HAMexclusively, and should operate above the proficiency of a max marksman specialist. These weapons should be used when fighting high AR foes, with a HAM stat that is "off base" with the rest, (ie much lower). Our cannons should be our anti-vehicle/droid weapons. We pay for the high damage by lack of defense and lack of mobility. Our cannons should be some of our most situational weapons, but in the right situation, namely against highly armored foes, with disproportionate HAM ratings they shoudl be extremely deadly.

Overall Role

The commandos role is very clear. We are distinguished from the specialists, both melee and marksman by our lack of defense and lack of accuracy while moving, as well as not having any "special use" abilities. We are the stationary, vulnerable targets that make things go BOOM.

Our "jump start" weapon is the Launcher Pistol, desinged to take advantage of our previous training (Novice Marksman Pistol branch) to get us proficient in the use of Heavy Weapons, specifically to make up for the fact that our novice training provides +pistol speed and accuracy, but, rightfully so, no bonuses to any heavy weapons. Once proficient in our heavy weapons, the Launcher Pistol will become only a general use type weapon, when we cannot control the situation around us (such as travel and reactionary PvP).

Our basic heavy weapons are uncharged, with the Acid Rifle being our basic "distance" weapon, while the flamethrower is our basic heavy "melee" weapon. Our general combat should be spent switching between these two weapons.

Our specialist weapons are expensive, effective, of limited use and charged. These weapons provide the Commando with the versitility to do unique roles and gives group members a reason to say "we need some commandos if we want to take out that heavilly armored AT-AT." Our lack of mobility and lack of defense leaves us vulnerable in PvP, which is compensated by our role as AT-ST eliminators.

Simply put, what we lack in defense and mobility, we should make up for in general, and more importantly specific circumstance, offense. We should, as a general rule, kill fast or die fast.

What is everyone's thoughts on this? Lets refine this out, and submit it to SOE to see if they agree, or to explain how their view differs from ours. It is important that we know our role, before we make a lot of suggestions.

gobhigh,

I think our purposes are best served now to get what is implimented working. If we see that the rare resources are too stringent once everything is established and working, then we can pick up a new cause, but for now, we should limit ourresponses so they have real meaning.

We should survive first, then work on thriving.

/Agree Completely

However...

"Our lack of mobility and lack of defense leaves us vulnerable in PvP, which is compensated by our role as AT-ST eliminators."

Does this mean then that all commandos should be rebels?Are Commandos strictly made for the GCWand Battlefields, etc?

Well, what I'm getting at really is that I hope the Devs will indroduce "Heavy Vehicles" in more PvE places in the game. Other than Droidekas and AT-ST/ATs what else is there?

Kreister,

The purpose here is not for us to define the role, but rather to make sure that we know what to expect. I use fantasy games as a basis. In fantasy, everyone knows that a wizard is smart and a warrior is strong. People base their decisions on what they like to play. If a commando is one thing, but everyone thinks its another, then it is difficult to give meaningful suggestions to the developers on how to make our class the way its supposed to be.

Step what is finding out what role the devs want us to have. To do that, I analyzed the skill tree, in light of seeing almost every other professions tree to see the "trend." I am fairly confident that the aboveis what the developers intend.

Once we know what they intend, THEN we can say:

You want us to be the vulnerable big hitters, with a specialized role of anti-vehicle combatants. Our "big hits" are no bigger than ranged specialists, ergo, we need an adjustment. Until we know what we are supposed to do, its hard to tell them what is wrong.

Strike,

Also, "Armor" does not mean just typical armor. Certain very powerful monsters have high armor ratings too, so they will be vulnerable to commando weapons as well.

A clarification would go a long way and I agree that we can't solve problems if we don't know the direction our class is going. I for one would love to know so I can decide if I need to move on or not. I sure do wish Garibaldi_di_Alia was around to add some comments and maybe even send this on with some backing behind it to the Devs..

I had an incident last night that made this whole post make SO much sense. Especially the line about us being vulnerable.

I ran with some friends to the Krayt Graveyard, one of them wanted to see one. Well, she managed to pull it on to us. Fortunately, there was another large group there that was prepping to attack it, so the fight's on. After the other group got it's attention, I whipped out my trusty flamethrower and moved into range. I started blasting away at it and it turned on me. BUT!!! I was wearing full composite and took not one but TWO hits and survived. By then it had moved off to someone else, with me standing there in awe. I got a few stim shots off and went back in for a flame shot. Yes, it's gimped right now, but what the hell. I managed to get it off and then took two more hits from the krayt.

If the specials get the boost they are describing and they fix the problem with the multiple power couplers (the main reason elite weapons blow major chunks) we are going to be SO deadly, the frustration from the past three months will be worth it. Then this post will make perfect sense.

Thats about what I was thinking for our current weapons (once they work). Trying to take down at AT-ST or vehicle with standard blaster weapons or melee is virtually impossible. The thing has AR 3, so normal attacks do around 10-15 per hit. The standard attack from the flamethrower does about same, but I noticed that flame single did the normal damage, slightly reduced by deflects. This is where our Heavy weapons should shine.I would hope that the special moves on the acid rifle would at least allow us to compete with pistoleers and carbiners in dueling. Personally I would much rather see repeater blasters as our main dueling weapon, but thats probably not goin to happen anytime soon,for the time being I'll be happy if they fix our current arsenal. Keep in mind that we end up with +80 on flamer/acid rifle, so thats not that much less than what the pistoleers/carbiners get. So basically:

Flamethrower- close range dot/ aoe dot damage

Acid Rifle- Mainstay ranged weapon

Rocket launcher/ PBC/ASC/LBC/grenades- situational for aoe or against heavily armored targets.

Launcher Pistol- stepstone to get first tier skills

This is supposed to go to the Devs, so people please keep it civilized.

sounds fine

1 issue is about the charged weapons. what consensus are we willing to make, as a whole, about this issue. I don't have a problem with our specialist weapons being charged. But with the current rarity of resources to make these weapons, it will cost horrindously high to get these weapons over and over again. As it stands now, I don't see any commandos actually using them when they can cost 50k+ and be only used 25 times, then you have to buy them again. An ability to recharge these expensive weapons would alleviate this problem. Also, making the resourses much easier to obtain would do this also. I am more in favor of the first option myeself as these weapons should be rare but not throw away weapons like grenades.

Excellent!!!!

However a Commando in real life is far more deadlier then a sniper. I know SWG is not real life but I do think we should get more defense. I am not sure what damage our weapons will pack but consider this...

The Prerequiste for a RifleMan is a 4 boxes, for Commando it is 20. We use up almost all our points to reach master status while the Rifleman has alsmost triple the points.

The Advantage I see here is that we are deadly from far and close and have the ability to take out vehicles. A Rifle won't do much against armored vehicles

Good post though

/agreed

We may not be much now, but when player vehicles make it into PVP we will be critical.