Pilot Archive

I think it sounds like a generally good idea. The one weakness I see in it, however, lies with the way combat currently seems to unfold: while tactical maps rock and all, they're ideally suited for large fleet encounters, or at least skirmishes between multiple large and ungainly vessels.

In other words, I think this would dovetail very nicely with an improved POB aspect of JtL. I think the usefulness (if not the coolness) would be rather stunted if limited near-exclusively to starfighter combat.

(Yea, there's a *hint hint* in there).

Certainly an interesting idea. You must consider, though, that an 'elite' profession on top of Pilot would give no other option. What I mean is that Pilot requires 0 skill points, so there is no trade off between being a Pilot or being another Profession... you simply do both. Having an 'elite' profession on top of Pilot that does require skill points would be one way to approach it, but I would have a hard time supporting that if the 'elite' profession provides bonuses that would un-balance combat against players choosing not to spend those skill points. A profession, even a stunted one, full of 'Squad Leader' type abilities with a low skill point cost would be something worth exploring, in my opinion.

Typically, the Pilot of a POB ship has enough to worry about. That person is already trying to coordinate a multi-player crew inside that one ship, so I'd hate to place the additional burden of Squadron coordination on that person.

One thought is simply giving the Group Leader of any group in space a few additional commands to help coordinate the group's actions. /designategrouptarget is one that would be particularly useful, though you have shown there are others.

Shona

I'll address your concerns one at a time.

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SheenaBrelya wrote:
Certainly an interesting idea. You must consider, though, that an 'elite' profession on top of Pilot would give no other option. What I mean is that Pilot requires 0 skill points, so there is no trade off between being a Pilot or being another Profession... you simply do both. Having an 'elite' profession on top of Pilot that does require skill points would be one way to approach it, but I would have a hard time supporting that if the 'elite' profession provides bonuses that would un-balance combat against players choosing not to spend those skill points. A profession, even a stunted one, full of 'Squad Leader' type abilities with a low skill point cost would be something worth exploring, in my opinion.

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The idea isn't to tie up skill points; the idea is to give players something else to work for after mastering pilot. A large part of the "Squadron Commander" concept is to have something to do with prestige points, which are currently worthless aside from the 30k entry fee into Deep Space.

I suppose it would also be great if it were mission and tier-based, just like the regular Pilot professions, but these would *require* groups since you're training to be a Squadron Commander...and after all, what's a Commander without command experience? Just a thought. That makes this slightly more difficult than just soloing a mission and filling in the boxes with the necessary prestige.

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Typically, the Pilot of a POB ship has enough to worry about. That person is already trying to coordinate a multi-player crew inside that one ship, so I'd hate to place the additional burden of Squadron coordination on that person.

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Instead of giving the Commander abilities to the pilot, they would go to the copilot, the person in the ops chair. That person typically doesn't have that much to do, in my experience. In fact, I'd like to either completely move droid command and specials over to the Pilot's chair, or split it so that both the copilot and pilot can run specials and droid commands. However, the basic idea of using this on POBs is to give that copilot more of a job, more importance, something to do.

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One thought is simply giving the Group Leader of any group in space a few additional commands to help coordinate the group's actions. /designategrouptarget is one that would be particularly useful, though you have shown there are others.

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That's another reason I've been pondering this. It's really difficult to designate and differentiate targets in our current system with a good-sized group.

I hope that answers some of your concerns.

I'm wondering if you see it as something everyone would attempt to do upon obtaining the 'normal' pilot Master/Ace, or something that few would pursue? For it not to become the natural progression of everyone, how would you see it limiting the people who try (or the people who succeed)?

I agree there are better ways to utilize the Ops Chair on a POB ship (I had to make a conscious effort to not come back saying 'make that an Ops Chair job'). With a skilled crew, and the ability of gunners to run Droid Programs, I am comfortable flying with a three player crew (which feels a little wrong).

Shona