Commando Archive

This is what I'll be emailing off later today as the official letter. I'll check this post when I get home, before zippin it off just to make sure, I didn't miss anything.

Week 2, July 29, 2003

Realizing we haven’t had a patch since last week, a lot of the following is redundant. So, I’ll try to summarize what was on last weeks letter, and not repeat word for word.

1) Weapon Certification for Heavy Acid Rifle and Beam Rifle: Broken-not recognizing any certifications. Rumored to be in TC to work. Still, after reading the notes, they are a little confusing, because there is no listed Beam Rifle Certification ingame at this time. So will this weapon be configured to recognize the heavy acid rifle? or will it get its own cert?

2) Poor stats on the Heavy weapons, or more specifically the ineffectiveness of HWs.
Rumor has it; it's because the "armor rating" of weapons is not working properly, so the damage multipliers are not giving the “heavy-weapons” the heavy hits. This still does not address the poor accuracy of the weapon, which until you reach the tier 3 levels, makes it impossible to rely on your weapon for killing normal low level mobs. It’s also impossible to group and earn reasonable exp with the current system based on damage dealt.

Also reported to us, by one of the weaponcrafters with regards to the heavy weapon ineffectiveness issue: (quoted by the crafter)
“The thing is that guns that use multiple blaster power handlers (Heavy Acid Rifle, Flame Thrower, DX2, DXR6, T21, and about half the other fire arms) are not getting any damage increases. That's why you're seeing FWG5 with much higher damage than a DX2. We know it's a bug because we've tested it using different handlers, some max out experimentation and some with no experimentation: we get the same results. This is causing your Heavy Acid Rifles and flame-throwers to have fairly low damage and also higher delay than they should. For example the Heavy Acid Rifle is short on dmg by 40 min and 80 max, plus the speed should be 1.6 lower overall. Same applies for Flame Thrower. And that's just base damage, we'd probably get more from experimentation."

3.) Insane delay time to recover from the special attacks.
Definitely still recording 10 to 15 sec recovery times for using the specials. Rumored in the development notes, is that these moves are going to be improved on the damage side. So, after implementation, this delay may be valid. However, low level commando accuracy mods are still an issue since we miss 75% of the time. One suggestion was to add some accuracy mods to the novice level, and/or improve the range modifiers or improve the accuracy of the special moves.

4.) The extreme difficulty in getting resources for the weapons which totally gates the profession. Still a major concern with no relief in site. Just in the last 3 days ingame, I’ve gotten a score of tells asking me where I got my flame-thrower. I’ve had to tell them, that no class 3 liquid fuel (Chilastra) has been sighted since the first few days after release, so no one can make any flamers at this time. Seems to me, that the database is too random on the respawning of resources. It often seems that same resources keep respawning while whole classes of others never or rarely do. It was my understanding that quality of resources would be the “rarity” of the recycling resources, not the whole class of inorganics (IE groups of steels, irons and other chemicals)

5.) General components that we craft are in the wrong line, and basically do nothing to improve the actual grenades.
Still no notes to this being improved. Also, splat or splash aoe for the grenades seems to only work if multiple targets are directly on top of each other. The 10m radius for most grenades seems to only be true with regards to the thrower being able to hurt himself, and since most grenades have ideals of 10m, its sort of a suicide move to throw that close.
A common topic on the commando crafts, was to do away with the grenade enhancements altogether and replace it with other neat ideas, like weaker throws that we craft and heavy weapon powerups (which are not in the game atm).

This week’s pet peeve is basically the same as last weeks. When I use my pistol, things con yellow. When I switch to my flame-thrower, the same target cons dark blue. So, when I kill with my thrower, I get less overall exp, that is if I can kill it at all. Anything that cons dark blue with my flame-thrower can kill me without fear of dying. Things that con green to me against my flame-thrower have a 50/50 chance of killing me. An Ikopi is death on four legs if I try to solely use my flame-thrower.

In closing, I’ve gotten no response from a dev on the issues we sent last week. Realizing that they’ve been working on a ton of issues, it’s understandable. The feeling I get is that, many of us, are unsure if these things are working as intended, or what the true role of the commando is in SWG. Our poor damage output makes it impossible to group, since we can’t compete with other range user against npcs and mobs. It would be nice to get an update to the commando definition. The strategy guide is confusing a lot of players, because it’s woefully inaccurate. There are no vehicles ingame to blow up, and no real structures either, not that we have anything specific that targets structures or vehicles. Basically a good ole fashion Pistol can do a better job. Ok so, maybe there are 2 pet peeves.

Yep, sounds about right... now on to week 3!

I'm not sure if I am missing something, but I still don't see a certification for acid stream launchers either.

Other than that...Looks fantastic!

The Launcher Pistol and Beam Rilfe giving the wrong exp.. Did I miss that?

Take a look at my post on Working on Next Weeks List thread... I gave some ideas on how to make the Commando weapons unique, useful, and kinda fun. Take a look and see if anything is worth adding to your email.

meh ...

There are 2 weaponcraft certs that are called Acid Stream Launcher. The tier 4 firearms one makes the Beam Rifle, and the Master one makes the heavy acid cannon (not rifle).

The Beam Rifle is bugged, no idea on the the cannon at this time.

this sucks - why don't they fix it? or do they just love to nerf everything and make the game suck as much as possible.

at times i love the game but when i hear this crap it makes me wonder "what the heck are you guys doing!?". Clearly this profession is more broken then anything elsein the game.

You should also mention under time delay that there is an initial delay when firing the first shot as well.

I was test-dueling a pistoleer and he double tapped me before I even got a shot off

I know beam rifle was a weapon cert in Earlier Beta 3, before they added the flame and acid skill lines.

But the nice thing about it, its craftable by a non -Master Weaponsmith. If it was intended to be removed, but accidently left in, I think it should be adjusted to give HW exp, and use rifle moves from Marksman. This would help the gating issue of finding a Master Weaponsmith, and give us another weapon that has ingame skills already.

Plus, they are playing with it in TC, so I don't think its going to be deleted.. but who knows..

How about if you tell them to check the xp type the weapons give....5 times. And after they check it for the 5th time check again.

The easiest fix right now is to make the launcher pistol give hw xp. That alone could help save this class. We could atelast advance while we wait for them to fix us the rest of the way.

for the love of god how hard would it be to just change the xp for launcher pisols and part. beam cannons?

Good work, Garibaldi. Well said. Hopefully we can get this thing worked out before we all run out of skill points pursuing other professions