Commando Archive
Thread: My Take On What The Commando Should Be.
I have a RL military background, and I have meet and talked to several people in the Special Forces, (SEALS, Rangers, Green Berets and Air Force Para-Rescue). So I have a little experience on this type of combat profession.
Myvision of a Commando is a well rounded warrior, one who can deal out damage from upclose and personal to medium ranged combat to long ranged combat to using heavy weapons. So lets take a look at the weapons currently available to the Commando Profession, and my take on how they should work. (I know most of this has been covered before, but I just needed to vent my frustation this morning. :tongue
Launcher Pistol - A decent weapon even though its damage type is Blast, it should have a little bit higher damage potential. This is also the only weapon we have so far that the accuracy modifiers carry over from Master Marksman but gives xp for heavy weapons. This is a short ranged weapon, for anything from 5 to 20 meters this should be super accurate. Additional Pistol Accuracy and specials should come from the Field Tactics Skill tree.
Grenades - C12, C22, Glop, Cyroban, Thermal Detonator, Photon - if produced by a good weaponsmith I have found C12's that deal out some great damage (800 max). Basically right now these are a money sink, they work ok against a stationary target, but are practically useless against a moving target. Also short ranged weapons to be used from 10 to 30 meters from your target. These skills would stay in the Field Support tree with Combat xp.
Rocket Launchers - Heavy Particle Beam Cannon - Heavy Acid Launcher - Lightning Cannon -Again these are a huge money sink especially at 1000 credits a shot on the RL, accuracy on these are not what they should be. These should be "lock-on" weapons otherwise once you hit whatever button you have this on to fire, the first couple of seconds before the launcher would lock-onto its target. Personally instead ofthese missing its target, I could deal with a possibilitywith a least one dud rocket or mis-fire out of the set. Long Ranged weapons whose best accuracy is at the 65-70 meter range. With these staying in the Heavy Weapons Support skill tree, and sharing heavy weapons xp with the flame thrower.
Flame Thrower - This lately is the Commando's key weapon that is both loved and scorned by Commandos and non-commandos. Deals out tremendous damage when it hits its target. But accuracy islacking at best, to almost non-exsistent when you really need it. There is no reason a flame thrower whould miss at point blank range against a stationary target. And my personal feeling is this should be a medium ranged weapon with specials usable at20 to 30 meters. And to balance this out some if used under 15 meters thenthe userruns the risk ofbeing injured by the back blast. Also my feeling is the specials timer needs to be decreased by 50% from the 8 to 16 second to 4 and 8 seconds between specials. And to prevent "dabbling" just for the flame thrower, the lowest time between specials would only come with Master Commando. The current timer is what is killing commandos the most in PvE, and once we switch out the FT for another weapon the timer should automatically goto 0 so we can use the new weapon when we need it or even use a stim pack. This would also keep its own skill tree which the current specials coming in as you gain the xp.
Heavy Acid Rifle - The red headed step child of the Commando Profession, like the Flame thrower accuracy is poor even under the best situations. My suggestion is to make this an actual rifle using the same type of acid beamlike the DXR6 carbine butmake the damage at about 200 min to 600 max. and make its bestoperational range at 50-65 meters. But this would be the only weapon that would incur the extra melee damage like the riflemen when equipped. But I feel forRiflemen and this really should be dropped to either 1x or 1.5x. This should have its own skill tree. And the rifle accuracy and speed modifiers from the Marksman Profession should carry over to this. With accuracy and speed increases as you progress thru the skill tree and some possible extra specials.
And I feel that Commandos should get Terrain Negoiation modifier of +10 for each levelin the Field Tactics Treewhich wouldtop out ata total of +40 at Field Tactics 4 and would not stack with the terrain modifier from the Scout profession. Which is no more than a Scout would have or even a Combat Medic.This would help those who need the pointsfor other professions that they want to keep instead of tying up an additional 29 points in the scout profession.
But thats my take on what the Commando Profession should be. I'm not saying that the Commando should be the Uber warrior. But this would make the commando a more viable warrior, and capable of holding their own in either PvE or PvP combat no matter which faction your fighting for. This would not hurt any other professions, the TKA would still be the best fighter up close, the Pistoleer, Carbineer, Riflemen and Bounty Hunterswould still be good at their ranges. But this would bring the Commandos on par with the other combat classes, and give everyone a somewhat equal chance.
Thanks for reading my little rant, but lets keep everything constructive.
Regarding Terrain Negotiation, I think the general thinking in this game is that choosing a profession/skill setis meant to involve trade-offs. So if you're a Master Commando and want terrain negitiations, feel free to dabble in Scout. If you want Novice Medic, feel free to do that too. If you want Terrain Negotiation, Novice Medic and CH skills and Pistoleer skills...then no, you can't do that.
I admit that it would be nice to recapture the 29 points I have tied up in Scout, but the skills system is all about trade offs. I get my Scout skills, but it prevents me from taking some TKA...
It will all be good again when the creature mounts are released...though I'm not sure if you can have a mount and a tank out at the same time (and since most mounts are non-CH pets...except Carrion Spat...they almost certainly can't let non-CHs use their mounts as tanks).
but I digress...
I agree with most of what was said here, except this - the timer on the specials and inability to switch to a new attack after using one should stay. Even with the flame thrower (especially with it). Being able to flame someone, then right away switch to the launcher pistol and use it is not fair.
I'd even go so far as to say that apenalty for the use of the flame thrower (the melee damage penalty) should be kept - but .... and this is very important ... there should be no delay in effect on the use of meds while the cooldown timer is in effect (except for any separate delay on the use of the meds themselves).
It wouldn't be fair to be able to just switch weapons out and lose the delay timer on the special weapons firing. But you shouldn't be prevented from healing, or harvesting, or anything else because that timer is in effect. You should not be able to perform combat activities during that time, but you should be able to perform non-combat activities, and that is the worst part about the current penalty.
The melee damage penalty itself is still problematic, and should be significantly reduced if not completely negated by the time someone hits master commando, but it's not necessarily bad for some sort of penalty to be in effect. As was said elsewhere, if you let something that can do melee damage through to hit you, you deserve to get hit. Just as if commandos come up on something and hit it hard from within special range. Fair is fair.
Thanks for the compliments guys. I figured I would pop in and answer some of the concerns a couple people had.
For Jeren_Sehn: The main reason I'm promoting the idea of the Terrain Negoiation. For one thing it wouldn't give the Commando any signicant advantage over the other combat classes. But it would keep in the generalvision I havefor someone being a Master Commando.
For Terpfan1980: I can understand your concerns with this, hopefully you will see this again. But one main reason I advocate the timer resetting at switching weapons is during that time a commando is still taking the extra melee damage. Plus in either a PvE or PvP battle the ability to change weapons on the fly is whatcould keep a commando alive a little longer. That and there is no other combat profession that has a restriction on like this on changine weapons. Say this for example your running a mission that has multiple targets, you go up and use a Flame Special on the first target, and thenyour ableswitch to a pistol or carbine to work on the other targets. Now one thing I wouldn't mind(if it can be programmed in) is once you use a special and switch weapons you can't switch back to your flame thrower until the timer on the specials has run out. Which would prevent a double use of specials just by quickly changing weapons. I would think most people would agree with compromise.
I understand that (in real life) Commandos would all be pretty good at covering territory quickly. For game purposes though, Commandos have enough skill points to get Terrain Negotiation if they want it...I'm a Master Commando and I have Explore IV.
Terrain Negotiation is a skill that removes a lot of the annoyance of wandering around in this game. It's a great convenience. I just think it's a great convenience that you're supposed to spend additional skill points on if you want it badly.
If we were going for what I would like to see in Commando, the ability to treat minor injuries on the battlefield would be nice too, so there's an argument for giving them aMedicine Use bump of 5. Except, that it would lead all of us to drop Novice Medic and free up those 15 skill points to be spent elsewhere, likely in a second combat profession.
Don't get me wrong, I think the Commando is underpowered for PvP and PvE, as (on a solo basis) he or shetends to be less capable than Pistoleers in either, unless he or shehas millions of spare credits to spend on limited-use heavy weapons. Moving ancillary useful skills into the Commando line would make the Commando a more powerful class...though it would do so by allowing the Commando to dabble in "other" combat skills. If that's the best they can do to balance the class so be it, though I would rather they add to effectiveness of the core Commando abilities.
I've never understood why Combat Medics get Terrain Negotiation at all. I think the designers momentarily lost sight of why they created the skill point system, and now it's just too late to take it back without the Combat Medics screaming nerf.
But i cannot agree with the reduction in the cool down timer. The cool down is 2 times the weapons speed. And there is methods of reducing the speed by a great amount. I also feel that as a commando rather than giving us terrain negotiation we should infact lose some of that. Take away the melee damage modifier and slow us down while we move. We're supposed to be the high powered tanks of the game. But tanks don't move very fast in the majority of situations. I would say start with a -25 to terrain negotiation and as we work up feild tactics lessen it by 5 until we reached master commando.
Best example would be to look at how the class balancing was done in the ancient game Team Fortress Classic. The Heavy Weapons guy was a tank. He could saw anything up really quick once that chain gun got moving. But the downfall was he moved extremely slow. This allowed for the faster moving classes to still have a chance against them. I don't know how many HW guys i had killed playing as a spy because i could move and circle them before they could saw me down. (Note i am not saying turn this game into an FPS. Rather a comparison of class balancing)
Heavy weapons should be just that and slow us down actually. But we should not take 2.5 times the damage in being slowed down. That would give TKA's a chance against us but allow us to remain useful in PvE. Its about balancing. Give and Take.