Development Cycle Archive

What defines theSquad Leaderrole in combat?

• A Squad Leader should bea coordinator -- able to direct the efforts of the group, maintain group composure and focus, distribute group resources, and provide battlefield support.

What unique abilities?

• Vitalize group - a temporary stat buff to secondaries.


• Modified form of Ranger /rescue - by rescuing, you have a chance to make the enemies attacking the rescued player change to target a different group member (provided another member is close by), giving the rescued player a chance to retreat or heal. Alternately, this command can redirect the next fire from all group members close enough to the enemies attacking the rescued player, doing damage plus /threatenShot. Anything to get the enemies away.


• Fortifications - make defensive bunkers (ranged combat defense only).


• Defense vs knockdown, dizzy, and other state effects for group members.


• More improved passive skill bonuses, such as medicine use, wound healing, mind healing, etc.


• Field survival - significantly improved heal rates when in camps. (SLs are survivalists, too.)


• Battalions - multiple groups led by a Squad Leader can combine to form battalions. Each SL can communicate with other SLs in the battalion to coordinate efforts. Battalions can get improved bonuses based on the 'battalion role' -- assault (bonuses to-hit and damage, str/quick/focus buffs) or defend (bonuses to defense, con/sta/will buffs) when within a certain range of one of the battalion SLs.

What should be their unique role in the Galactic Civil War?

• See "Battalions" above.

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irott wrote:

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Velisimner wrote:

Atrue SL has what it takes to lead troops into battle with a strategy in mind. A SL MUST BE COMBAT EFFECTIVE! I cannot see why people are suggesting that they have no combat abilities. i cant! if i was gonna follow someone into battle i would like to hope that they are doing their fair share of the fighting. i'd also follow a beautiful woman into battle but maybe im crazy...but a SL is a fighter too!

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The point is that the specific profession of Squad Leader shouldn't make you combat effective. Any combat skills should be gained from another profession. Every Squad Leader skill should work towards the groups advantage... not the just the SL.

The only case where I know a SL combo to be effective thats not combat related is doctor... and thats just as a support role as well. Though waisting the marksman skill points doesnt work for me.

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Heya Lithic, havent seen you in a while.

I agree with you on the point that to master SL takes so many points without much added benefit. But thats what this In Concept thread is for, to try and find a better system to make Squad Leader a better profession.

Also about the ranged weapon support, I agree 100% also. But any skills we get should be just that, some sort of ranged weapon support. We are not like smugglers who require pistol xp, or BHs who require carbine xp for one of their branches. We can pick whatever combat profession we want to go with SL. So the best option I see is to give SLs some personal skill mods at the level 4 box of each branch with some small skill mod like general ranged aiming, melee/ranged defense, terrain negotiation. Nothing in a large amount, just like +5 or something, its not much but it adds up. I mean Master dancers/musicians get +7 ranged melee and defense mods, we could at least get that at master....

We are never going to be an elite combat profession, thats just not in our nature. We can master an elite combat profession along with SL and use those skills in tandem, but we cant rely on SL alone to be combat effective.

Okay I am going to throw this out

Why not give the Squadleader some profession specific droids that are truly combative. Make that their special weapon and have rivial to some extend some of the CH stronger creatures. A supplement to their squad....

I had Master SL and dropped it. Some of the command seemed pretty nice at first, but most players see SLs as weak and useless. I think player perception is the biggest problem. That being said, I found basically everything useless in SL except /formup. I didn't see much effect from the bonuses that are currently in place.

SL should be a leader. Why not limit group size to 8 or 10 without a SL? I think you'd see more of them if you had to have one in order to get a big group together. I'd actually like to see the limit pushed way down, perhaps to 4 even.

I was looking for someplace to place my opinion and this seems like the best place to do so. First off this idea applies to three seperate professions but all together fits here.

-First off I think that the Squad leader should be allowed to call more NPC troops to command than any other profession, including creature handler.

-Second I think that the proposed Droid Handler profession should be absorbed into the current squad leader profession. They would be the only ones capable of using droids higher than level 10. I envision a squad leader being able to control a SQUAD!!!

-Third I think that Bio-Engineers should be able to create cloned sentient species, ie. bothans, humans, wookies, etc... These would only be available at master level and squad leaders would be the only ones able to control more than one. This could be interesting as quest schematics like we are seeing now such as exotic dancer's leotard from Jabba's palace, etc. Considering that most of the major wars in Star Wars are fought with droids or clones, this seems like an obvious addition. This could really get interesting by allowing weaponsmiths to craft special weapons and armor for bio-engineers to use in creating them.

-Fourth I think that they should be able to command additional faction pets during PVP, maybe with an increased maximum level or something. What Imperial squad leader doesn't deserve the chance to lead multiple storm troopers into battle against the rebel scum... and vice versus...

To sum it up, a squad leader should be able to command a group of faction pets, clones, and/or droids in battle, with a greater number of them available during PVP.

What basic combat elements should they possess?

the ability to cordinate a group

What defensive abilities?

To control faction based NPCs in defence of installations

Should add what advantage or asset in group combat?

Cordination, be able to set arrows and directional markers for the whole group to see (kinda like when u used the /find command)

What should be their unique role in the Galactic Civil War?

1) i think they should be able to control additional ammounts of faction pets due to their "leadership" skills.

2) when defending a faction base they should somehow be able to assist with the defence. Im thinking that there should be a terminal that only a SL could use inside of a faction base, this terminal zooms out giving an arial view of the base he/she is accessing. from here it should almost be like a stratagy game, the SL could select the active troops(NPCs) and direct them where to go and what to attack.

3) i saw eariler in this thread there was talk aboutSL mission termianals, i love that idea and it would make SL a bit more fun, and more used.

If you want to call multiple pets as a SL then master CH.

Generally the current abilities look great on paper, but fall short of what is truly usefull.

There are a lot of good ideas thus far and I'll not bother to say the same things in different words. Rather a few specific points in no particular order.

Currently there is no increase within the skill treeof the leadership bonus that is used to "roll" for success when using most SL commands. That leaves only rare skill tapes/armor attachments and racial choice human to accrue an for of bonus. I think this should be changed so that there are some general leadership increases within the skill tree.

Most of the bonuses SL gives to a group are passive in nature, /rally is an active duration based bonus. However the percived difference in hit/damage taken while having a SL leading is low to minamal. Anyone who does not have any terrian negotiation instantly notices the bonus that a SL confers. I think the combat oriented bonuses should be more noticable in thier effects upon combat.

There are allready so many different ways to get stats buffed in the game that I do not think that SL needs to incorperate more.

Given the current system for communicating with squad members (assuming no usage of voice chat) I think that much of the SL effect upon a group should stay passive, with timely situation specific active commands. Any anytime use action commands will lead to spamming and/or macro's that ultimatly detract from acctual leadership.

To my knowlegde SOE and Lucas Arts developed SWG in a way that attempts to level the playing field amoungst players in general. Such things as automaticly attacking back when attacked, radar, no true stealth, etc allow for gamers of varying skill/experience to play together much more evenly. Having said all that, there is no way to guarretee that a SL player will be a good leader. SWG can foster a skill set that encourages spamming and macros with SL but even that will not definatly level the playing field. In fact that could concevably only add another "bot" profession. there is so much more to leading a group than just skill bonuses and command usage.

I'll not go into a long disertation on leadership here. Those who know what I'm talking about hopefully agree.

Faction perks are dependent on faction rank and currently only work in PvP or faction missions. I see no reason to change this, or merge this with SL. It would be nice if some of the old perks were avalible, such as the orbital bombardment, but even those were limited to battlefields. SL as a moble recruiter could cause more problems then its worth, and would needlessly immesh SL with faction. I'd rather see faction rank X grant some limited recruiter functions.

Currently you earn better faction per kill solo than if you were in a group. I think that players in a group lead by a SL should earn faction per kill on par with solo kills. Faction missions should scale correctly to both the size of a group and its skill level. In my experience a group of 10 mixed classes, mostly elite combats, was able to spawn level 99 missions vs critters, but not factional.

I really like the idea of group missions for faction: The SL assembles the group and then gets to take one or two misions that are scaled to the groups abilities. To my mind this would be an either or deal. either the SL takes a mission or two for the group and no one else can take or have active missions, or each person takes missions as normal and the SL can't take any group missions. I don't see that this is needed for normal critter hunting as there are plenty of mobs that require a group to successfully hunt, but this concept could work as well in normal PvE.

Role delagation within groups looks rather interesting, but I want to think more on it before posting about it.

I do not think that being a SL should grant any additional weapon certs to the SL him/herself. I think that certain certs becoming "unlocked" by being in a group with a SL is interesting, easier to balance, and definatly could add some needed percieved usefullness to the SL profession. Examples include: Eweb blasters, smoke grenades, etc.

SL bases/bunkers/camps would be an interesting addition. With the need for camps to pull pets/vehicles/droids being removed the entire camping system will need a major overhaul. I think one craftable camp thats SL specific would help set us apart, perhaps the sole bonus of the camp would be to increase the SL's leadership while in or near it. Specific structures for combat such as bunkers, trenches, foxholes, ect would be nice as well, but will entail alot of code changes to combat. (difficulty in realization is no excuse but I understand that something of this nature is intensive)

Well enough out of me for now, thanks for all the great posts and ideas that inspired my tired ole grey matter.

+10 human leadership bonus sould do something...

like give +10 melee group defence