Commando Archive

Hi All-

After grinding it out over the past weeks and making it to commando last night, imagine how disappointed I was that I couldn't equip my new acid rifle. After jumping in and reading many posts, including all of our monthly representative's views, I wanted to share my own opinions about the role of the commando as it relates to SWG.

As I see it, commandos in the real world are the military elite: the airborne, the green berets, the seals, the rangers, etc. They are specialist forces that get called in when there's a dirty job that no one else wants to do. Their missions involve increased risk, secrecy, and typically follow the model of show up quickly, remain undetected until it's too late, perform a crippling strike, and withdraw before the enemy can react. This role is not represented in SWG.

Commando in SWG is, in my opinion, one of the hardest 2nd tier professions to achieve. Compared to TK students who only have to master one form of melee combat to advance and learn devestating moves like UA knockdown (don't get me started about the meditate skill), etc., Commandos have to train UA/Brawler and achieve master marksman before training novice commando. This requires patience, grinding, and takes a lot of skill credits.

I have a friend who has mastered Teras Kasi and Creature Handler andhe is almost about to master Pistoleer. As aTK master, he found himself with tons of additional skill credits to spend on other professions. Likewise with all other professions except Bounty Hunter, players who choose to specialize in Creature Handling or Carbine find themselves with lots of other professions to choose from. By comparison, Commandos burn tons of points achieving novice status.

Our reward for this increased workloadis mediocre weaponry that, if the recent proposed fixes go into effect, may have massive special attacks, but in fact do far less damage in a sustained fight than someone who only has Pistoleer mastery.This makes no sense whatsoever, no matter how you look at it. From a real world perspective, there is no way you can convince me that a Navy seal withspecial demolitions isgoing to have less impact than a PFC with a Browning and an M-16. Not ever. From a gameplay perspective, SWG penalizes Commandos for all their hard work in two ways - the aforementioned mediocre weapons and the skill credit penalty.

The bottom line is that the benefits of the Commando profession need to become commensurate with the costs and work required to attain it. Either the skills required to train it need to be modified (e.g., lose UA?), or else the rewards need to be increased. As long as a TK student and a Novice commando can go toe to toe with a creature like a Rancor and have the TK student do more damange with his vibroknuckler and emerge with twice as much experience or more towards advancement than the Commando with a flame thrower, this profession is seriously unbalanced. This example should be valid for Commando v. Rifle, Commando v. Pistoleer, etc. simply based on the comparison of the minimum criteria for the professions.

I invite the developers to seriously consider the skill credit investment and then actively test a properly equipped novice commando and a novice TK student against a MOB in a stustained fight and look at the damage / experience ratio. I'd also invite them to go on any server and compare damages of the weapons available at player vendors. Last night I saw a sub-2 second pistol that had a damage range of 60-130ish unsliced. Compare this with a 20-200 flamethrower with a 6 second rate of fire and the problem becomes obvious. 180-390 damage (without considering health shot2, etc. ) vs. 20-200. Multiply for the duration of a 5 minute fight. The way the game plays currently, PFC Johnson and his FWG2 willprevail every time. It's rubbish.

Regards-