Commando Archive

It's become clear that the commando profession as a whole is essentially little more than the marksman profession with alot of weapon certs. While that might be all well and good I actually wonder if maybe the profession needs to be totally re-evaluated and rebuilt quite literally from the ground up again.

As it stands we unfocussed on what we do which naturally leads to players on these forums butting heads on what is considered the way to move forwards. Some say we're the heavy damage dealers who run in with all guns blazing, others say we're a support profession for groups and there's even some who say that diversity in our combat skills is what we're there for.

But overall I'd say that any change they make means certain aspects of the profession will be lost, so if thats the case for the sake of creativity it might be worth totally going over the profession again so that you're not struggling to simply slot the current peices together as best as possible leading to a weak result. Every strong design starts with a strong foundation afterall.

So first of all taking a brief look at things just what is a commando? Well its a fusion of master marksman and unarmed, quite literally the two opposite professions you'd expect throw together. A logical assumption therefore is that it's fair to make the commando mid-range damage dealer who wades in behind the front line meat shields causing mass damage but has the close range skills and defences to pull out if needed. The other way to put that across is that if you're team is pulling out then commandos would cover the retreat. So what role do we fill? We're defenders, if melee players are the shore which the waves of enemies break upon then the commando is flood wall which ensures that anything which is tough enough to break through doesn't get any further without a serious amount of damage.

The last line of defence if you will.

With that in mind I think that disposable ranged weapons need to be ripped out and only save a handful as a bonus for master commando. The rest of the tree should focus on this role as the defender. First place to start is that the acid rifle should be taken out or revised as a mid-range alternate to the flamethrower. These weapons need to be focussed on rapid and constant damage but at a fixed range. Commando's should be nearly unable to hit anything outside of a 30m radius if they are to really be balanced as a defender. The bonus would be a substantial damage increase.

Some people might find that shocking but look at the concept, melee players are fast attackers with high damage. Getting 3000 points of damage every second is fine when you're going nose to nose with the enemy and completely unable to cause any damage at range. Looking at the longer range weapons you typically see around 2000 damage every second for some professions. In the case of rifles you have a major mind drain leading to them being able to cause alot of damage very fast but only for a short duration. Commando's being a mix of ranged weapons and melee combat should be smack bang in the middle with 2500 damage every second with a moderate drain in specials so that they can keep up with the melee tanks at the front line. Because there 'defender' weapons cannot hit outside of 30m that wouldn't mean they were overpowered and if they ensure that accuracy drops significantly low when you move it means that for a commando to hit something they need to be stationary.

Of course if a commando is missing alot then they aren't very good offenders, so a stationary master commando should almost never miss (just like a melee fighters on the frontline) however as soon as they start to move the accuracy drops dramatically (like a ranged profession) but far more severly.

Once that basic skill is set up to keep things fun you'd need alternate types of defender activities. The first thing that occours to me is tripmines or static defences, commmandos were originally supposed to be creative after all, often making best of what was at hand. For an SWG Ranger to make a flash grenade from aninmals resources is fair enough so why not allow a commando to rig a thermal detonator as a tripmine? Aside from the grenade usage certs there should be things that a commando can craft for defensive purposes to cover a retreat and act as a last line of defence. Call it 'Improvided Combat Crafting' or something if you will.

So you'd have the familiar grenades tree, this combat crafting one, the defencer (flamer and acidrifle) tree leaving just one more. Since the unarmed skills haven't been looked at and the same for the LP why not make the last tree focussed on close range combat. This would be things you switch to when the enemy gets too close for the AR and the flamer to be effectice. The launcher pistol to be fair feels a bit odd to have it sitting under close range weaponry, I'd almost think it would be better to add specials for it along with the grenade tree as it would be used at the same kind of range. For close range combat I'd really like to see an introduction of unarmed skills and the option for a combat knife. The kind of things which are used to give the commando some breathing space rather than cause damage, knockdown and blinding attacks which give you the chance to back off. Something on par with what they'll do with smuggler dirty fighting which sits between unarmed 4 and tka novice in terms of power and functionality.

Thats pretty much all I wanted to say, if the devs try to simply fix the profession I can see it resulting in a messy conclusion. They never really focussed the commando on a role and its lead to a profession which is nothing but weapon certs without any really 'fun' aspect or variety in how it's used.

Tal-N Chratk
Ahazi Master Bioengineer / Hunt Master / Rifleman
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Tal'N Chratk
Shadowfire Bounterhunter / Commando