Squad Leader Archive
Thread: Official Discussion: Tactics
Following is the description of theTactics tree from the Prima's Official Strategy Guide. Please submit your comments as to the success or failures of skills from theTacticstree here. Use this area to report any bugs, or issues you find with theTacticsbranch of the Squad Leader Profession
From the Prima's Official Strategy Guide:
The Squad Leader earns the /rally command which will bolster the team against enemy attacks. The Squad Leader earns a group bonus for Defense against ranged attacks. The Squad Leader earns the /retreat command. This command grants the entire group Burst Run, but will drastically reduce the Squad Leader's Health and Action pools.
TacticsI: Cost: 175,000 Squad Leader Experience - Commands Granted: Rally
TacticsII: Cost 250,000 Squad Leader Experience - SKILL MODS:Group Ranged Defense +10
TacticsIII: Cost: 350,000 Squad Leader Experience - Commands Granted: Retreat
TacticsIV: Cost 450,000 Squad Leader Experience - SKILL MODS: Group Ranged Defense +15
I have a decent amount to say about this line, it's the first I climbed so 
/rally is one of the most used skills in our class, on the bright side I fail WAY less then I did when I first began the profession, unfortunetally rally does not seem to do enough to warrant some of the negative connotations that comes with it. Namely being unable to harvest more then one SL has complained that his makes group members angry and I too have experianced this, unless you want to do something more effective ith rally I recommend to the devs that they allow players to camp/harvest while rallied.
/retreat is also a useless skill, when the battle goes south I never have enough HAM to pull this off. I can only do this with full AM. The ability works well when it does work, but I never get a chance to use it do to the crappy HAM costs on it.
My issues: What does rally do? I mean really, what does it do? It makes it easier to hit...some people think you hit all the time, some think it just gives a small bonus...what does it do besides not letting you sit, harvest, etc? It would be nice if it were easier to know what an ability does. As a pistoleer when I PMD1 (another tier1 ability) I know it tries to KD my opponent and does about 400 dmg. Rally also fails a lot. If it were ultra powerful then fine, it needs to fail a lot as a tier 1 ability. But it isn't ultra powerful so why should it fail at all? It was based on early Beta combat models when you could heal mind and wasn't changed since then? That's not an excuse.
/Retreat is hardly worth it. a 6 second burst run for your group that drains nearly 75% of your HAM? Its tier 3. At tier three in pistoleer I am getting a shot that does 5x my base in damage and often one shots low-mid CL creatures. This special would be better in the novice box, when considering utility and relative power.
I have an idea or two.
/covering fire.....Increases speed (not accuracy) of all group members attack. Any group member in Cover gets an additional bonus to cover
This allows for support by fire positions and better prone attacks
/assault... When ordered it gives a huge "attack while moving" bonus and an incresed melee abilities tomelee classes
This allows the close in fighter to preform better.
/Breakcontact should give massive ranged\melee defensive bonuses for a very short time.
My squad does not retreat it breaks contact. We don't run away. We return effective fire as we move away from a superior force.
Here's how it might look if we tied the commands togather.
Argus leads his sqaud to 70 meters of a storm trooper camp....u three rifleman over on that hill. use suppressive fire on one trooper each
get those maulers ready, the TKM goes in just after they do.
OK everyone ready?
/COVERING FIRE
ok the storm trooper are moving to attack the support by fire position
/ASSAULT
melee guys hit them in the flank. awesome this shold go quick
Holy C###, where did the Krayt come from?
/Break Contact
ArgusBackwater wrote:I have an idea or two...
These are by far the best ideas I have read on this forum. Here's why:
a) Diverse: You get a bonus to different things for different situations
b) Simple: These are no more difficult than /rally to implement, could be done in less than a month
c) Fits into the current idea of the game, and the profession (Nothing horribly complex or fancy)
Good one Argus. Thulium take note. This is my new top five:
1) Fix HAM costs
2) Fix failure rate
3) Add temperary speed boost (aka /coveringfire)
4) Add temperary melee boost (aka /assault)
5) Add temperary defense boost (aka /breakcontact)
Novice: +2 Group Def vs Intimidate, +5 Group Ranged Defence, +5 GroupCounterAttack, +5 Genral Ranged Accuracy( Does not apply to group )
Level 1: +2 Group Def vs Intimidate, +5 Group Ranged Defence, +5 GroupCounterAttack, +5 Genral Ranged Accuracy
/rally Fix the failure rate. And tell us what it does?
Level 2: +2 Group Def vs Intimidate, +5 Group Ranged Defence, +5 GroupCounterAttack, +5 Genral Ranged Accuracy
/TakeCover or Break contact. Double all of our applyed Group Defences, But reduce our accracy( keep it fair). This should last for 3-5 seconds long enough for the players to re asses the battle field and determine the threat.
Level 3: +2 Group Def vs Intimidate, +5 Group Ranged Defence, +5 GroupCounterAttack, +5 Genral Ranged Accuracy
/BattleCryuse suppresion fire, and Intimidate the other group( cool PVP? )
Level 4: +2 Group Def vs Intimidate, +5 Group Ranged Defence, +5 GroupCounterAttack, +5 Genral Ranged Accuracy
/SallyForth Double damage, 1 sec burst run, and reduced Meele/Ranged Def
Master: +2 Group Def vs Intimidate, +5 Group Ranged Defence, +5 GroupCounterAttack, +5 Genral Ranged Accuracy
There's a serious problem when we have no idea what a command does. I feel as if I have a general idea about what most of our ommands do, but I only know exactly what I'm doing and what's happening when I use three of them. All the rest of them, effects more obvious than others or not, are nebulous at best.
I think it would benefit us greatly to get an exact mechanics breakdown of what every single command we have does before we start outlining improvements for them. We should even have to ask for this, but this information is conspicuously absent and this should be addressed. I post this here because the discussion about /rally made me think about.
So there's my suggestion for this tree and all of the trees - before we submit another report or Top Five breakdown, we should get a mechanics-based explanation of exactly what our skills, commands, passives, and bonuses do. This shouldn't be too hard to compile as someone had to get a breakdown in a memo to code the math anyways. If I were you, Thulium, I would have demanded this first off, because I don't really think you can do your job without it.
gordon_wood wrote:
So there's my suggestion for this tree and all of the trees - before we submit another report or Top Five breakdown, we should get a mechanics-based explanation of exactly what our skills, commands, passives, and bonuses do. This shouldn't be too hard to compile as someone had to get a breakdown in a memo to code the math anyways. If I were you, Thulium, I would have demanded this first off, because I don't really think you can do your job without it.
The job can be done without it, but it is quite crippling and this IS the reason I started these threads. Not so much a discussion on how to fix the issues, but to learn all we can about them. I can *ask* for a dev to give us these specific technicalities, but I predict that they will mostly refuse. Isuspect the reason that we don't know the specific squad leadership xp formula is that the developers see this as a built-in "challenge" of the game: to dig in and study what we can do in order to make it more effective.
Unfortunately this "black box" approach does make it difficult for me to do my job as correspondent. We don't really know what the devs have in mind for the current and future of the profession. The strategy guide tells us one thing, but what are your actual results of using commands such as /rally??
I don't see how this relates to the XP formula at all.
Every other profession either has an explanation of what a command or skill literally does, or it is more than obvious to the user. The fact that some of our commands are nebulously covered at best (and in some cases not at all) is just lousy. Icould be missing one or two similar"mystery abilities" out of all of the professions but the existanceof such an ability doesn't invalidate my point.
You ask what the actual results are of me using /rally, but all I know for sure is that I use up a ton of Mind, everyone gets a little flag by their names, and no one can harvest or ressurect. That's it. If this is all it is evidenced to do, I should get mind back for using it and inconcveniencing half of my party, not vice versa. I have been a Squad Leader since June and I have never seen an appreciable effect when using /rally. Ever. I have seen actual tangible results from the use of /steadyaim, /formup, /boostmorale, and /retreat. Even if the effects weren't necessarily beneficial or even desirable, I could see that they were actually doing something in results. The rest of our commands, passives and bonuses remain vague at best and non-effectual at worst.
At the very least we should be able to know what our abilities do, and we should know what they do before HAM cost, failure rates, or residual effects are even discussed. I don't see how you can collate communityopinion about something none of us are qualified to address, for the simple fact that what we are being asked to address, in and of itself, is a complete mystery. I'm not faulting you for your optimism, but the reality of this situation is as stated.
All too true, Gordon, all too true... According to the Strategy guide /rally "bolsters the team against enemy attacks" which sounds to me like a defensive buff...but the few positive comments I've heard about rally imply that it's some sort of offensive buff. *shrugs helplesssly*
However, In case the devs continue to be unwilling to give us specifics on how /rally works... I would like to start running as many independed field tests as possible on this. Come Monday, I should have access to the Correspondent terminals on Test Centerand should be able to run more extensive tests. In the meantime, if anyone can post their results here for analysis it would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks!