Squad Leader Archive

Alright I've had my Roughnecks busting bases all week and weekend so I thought I'd share some of my experiences. There's a couple things I want to mention and I'm not sure how to get to them all so I'll just list these and kinda seperate thoughts.

I'd like to talk a little bit about my favorite day out. The group I had consisted of a core of: me (MSL/Rifles/novice BE), my ranged pointman (Mcarb/MBH/4000CM), melee pointman (Mdoc/MMedic/MSword), terminal specialist (MCommando/MSmuggler/novice SL), aoe utility (MCommando/MPistol/4000CM), ranged support #1 (MPistol/MBH/4000CM), and ranged support #2 (MRifle/MDoc). Our last spot switched out as the night went on, but was usually another ranged support.

-Our strategy was to move as quickly and directly as possible. Before the fight my utility man and myself set up hotel props about 100m out from the base. I always say these are great for PR and RP (public relations, roleplay), I highly reccomend these, a lot of fun for everyone. I'd start by calling in a lambda shuttle, utility calls in a transport. Then I set up an imperial pavilion and guard tower (these don't do anything except look really cool).

-Once in our camp I'd lay out the plan for the raid, giving specific instructions to the team. I won't repeat the talk here, but walk you through the atttack instead. Our attack goes straight up the center of the base, agroing as few as possible. All professions target the ranged pointman, everyone fires through him and he picks the targets. I would do this myself but he makes a much better fighter and healer than me, and I'm usually too busy with SL administrative duties (rally, volley, barking orders). We do not use aoe attacks except for the commandos...

-Commandos are a HUGE help. Our smuggler commando concentrates most of his efforts on hitting the enemy with Overwhelming Shot to modify state resistance and hitting KDs every 30sec. The pistoleer follows this with intimidates, stuns, warning shots, and disarming shots. This dramatically cuts out the damage abilites of the enemy.

-Once inside the base our melee pointman takes lead, and we switch targets to him. The designated BH and Smuggler quickly locate and slice their terminals. Once this is done, a small escort force walks with me to the BE terminal while the rest of the force guards the commando, who gets ready at his terminal. I stop my BE slicing at 22 and wait for the commando to tell me he's ready. When he does, I hit my last match and tell him I'm done. A few seconds later he tells me he's done. As soon as this happens I call retreat, burst run myself, and instruct everyone to vacate the building quietly and in an ordered fasion i.e. "Get the **edit** out of here it's gonna blow!". On my way out I punch the SL terminal and start the countdown. We rally at our field base and destroy any rebs that decide to follow that far. Nothings better than watching those Lambda shuttles take off as the base gets destroyed, I'll try and get some screenshots next time.

For each base this strategy will have to be tweaked a little, but the general concept stays the same. Pointmans lead fire and cut a direct path into the base. I call retreat soon after the BE terminal is sliced. We've destroyed large bases with 6 people like this.


I started leading my first S.F. raids yesterday, with no success yet. I called a scramble; disorganized group of 8, of mostly players I didn't know. That paired with our commando not ariving until about 10min before the base lost vuln made for a frustrating defeat. After a few trials the best we found to do was to have the previously mentioned melee pointman pull troops outside the base to be ambushed. Most of the troops inside were taken out like this. Next time I will use a similar tactic, but probably enter the base when it's about half cleared. I'm skeptical if an 8 person non-jedi group will be enough, but I think it's possible. Finding out that concussion shot has no effect on these troops makes precision attacks much more difficult, and commando aoe states seems a rather dangerous strategy, so I'm not sure what my next plan will be.

So again, I'll end this with a question: What strategies and group members do you like to use for destroying the higher level S.F. bases? Have you done it with an 8 person group without jedi? (several of my members were whining about not having a master defender, or having to have at least 5 jedi, really annoys me)

• why do you wait with the last BE slice till your commando tells you he is ready? Especially if he is smuggler, this should be no issue at all. Finish the BE, if this part is done, the rest is easy. (Honestly, even in SF activity, if my team managed to get the BE done, we always also managed to initiate the countdown. Of course, two times we were then blown out of the base when the countdown was running, and another time we went home after a cloaked jedi kept shutting down the countdown till vulnerability was over... We didn't know yet at that time, on how to catch a cloaker... but those are completely different issues, just finish the BE part.) In case of trouble, the Commando/Smuggler can at any time lay down next to his terminal and fake death... and when the BE part is done, jump up and quickly slice.


• arrange a strike on an SF base 30 minutes before it gets vulnerable, not at the middle of the vulnerability time. Experience has shown, if you give several people a set time, it will take at least 30 minutes till everybody is at place, declared, instructed and ready.


• Make a channel for SF basebusting, where everybody listens and talks. Group- or Guildchat are not sufficient.


• Forget about the nice props when going SF basebusting.Make everybody clone at the closest cloning facility and put the stating point in front of a base of your faction, where there is an officer (speak: recruiter) NPC outside. If there is no appropriate base nearby, have a deed of such a base along yourself and place it accordingly. Perhaps add one or two turrets to protect your people if things go badly wrong and the defenders decide to strike back, but be aware that the base will be gone after the operation... even if you leave it there after succeeding on the operation, the people who the other base belonged to will remove it. And as it's combatant, they will remove it, just consider it a field base which gets abandoned after the operation.

Message Edited by Sylow on 10-10-2005 04:56 PM

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I guess what I'm wondering about is if anyone has any techniques for getting cracking those bases. Right now I can't think of anything besides plain brute force that is going to get us through that. Two teams appears to be a necessity, but that's not going to stop me from trying it with 8 trustworthy men, as that's often all I have available. So any feedback along these lines would be much appreciated.

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I know three ways to do it:

1. Two man approach: one Jedi, one basebuster template. The Jedi runs in to draw all agro and then runs circles in the area, pulling the base defenders along behind. The second man runs in and slices... and as he has feign death from smuggler, he just plays dead if some NPCs return. This way is incredibly cheap and dirty and i refuse to ever do it.


2. Minimal team approach: one Jedi, a few basebusters: a Jedi runs around in the base, keeping the NPCs busy... or again, pulls them out. The basebusters move in and do the slicing, also killing the NPCs which return. (As they are not all smugglers, they have to stand and fight.) This approach is very risky and exhausting, cloning is very probable, but at least it's not a complete cheat.


3. Brute force approach: get at least 12 people, more are always welcome... a lot more, if you expecthostile SF players to turn up.Stay in close formation focus fire, hammer your way through the hostile defence, be ready for a long and exhausting battle. This way feels "fair" and "clean" to me, it's the most rewarding of all. It might include less of "tactics" than the others, but what some people call tactics in the first two approaches, i personally call an exploit of the system.
   

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Keeping bases on me is not something I had thought to do, but it's an excellent idea and I think I'll start that soon.

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As a small sidenote, i not only have the deed of a base in my backpack, i also always drag a few turret deeds around. Quickly dropping a turret in front of an SF base which you are just attacking will keep all but the most experienced SF players busy... and those minute or two which they use to kill the turret might very well be just the time you need to kill the base.

Edit:
PS: Information for all rebel players on Infinity, these tactics work only and exclusively on other servers, they can't be used on Infinity...

Message Edited by Sylow on 10-10-2005 06:02 PM

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Sylow wrote:
As a small sidenote, i not only have the deed of a base in my backpack, i also always drag a few turret deeds around. Quickly dropping a turret in front of an SF base which you are just attacking will keep all but the most experienced SF players busy... and those minute or two which they use to kill the turret might very well be just the time you need to kill the base.

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Dropping turrets during, before, after a PvP attack is considered on Ahazi a very very lame tactic, since during a large scale PvP attack on a large base cluster both side used combatant players to drop them right in the middle of the SF players.

Using this, as well as using PvE forward outposts as forward outpost to attack an base tend to end in forum flamewars initiated from both sides, so on Ahazi at least the turrets tactic is to be considered to be used on highly sensitive base.

Most PvP players at least got used to the usage of forward outposts as forward outpost, but both sides so far refrain from using alone standing turrets to create a "save haven" for their staged attack to avoid the flame fest afterwards.

Another thing in PvP base attacks is that lvl 88 and 92 NPCs are sometimes more hard to take down than the players defending them, especially since a uncarefull placed areashot can drag them out, so you have to deal with Players and NPCs, and in addition to that NPCs respawn with each slice (if you manage to get it and start slicing).

My personally view is that using combatant players to drop turrets is lame, though trying to create a save haven with a turret might at least help against the numerous hordes of high NPCs during a SF attack. My wishfull thinking is that turrets could be only dropped by SF players, if they are not attached to a base and my even more wishfull thinking would be that only commandos are able to drop turrets in the field at all.

p.s.
eg. dedicating each turret type to a single commando tree.

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What is the purpose, or difference, in the different turret types?

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Message Edited by Sylow on 10-10-2005 06:36 PM

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Loki_Ashaman wrote:

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_scout_ wrote:
p.s.
eg. dedicating each turret type to a single commando tree.

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What is the purpose, or difference, in the different turret types?

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There is close to none but there is room for giving them a purpose.

AFAIK currently they only differ in Health/HAM but all do the same damage, with the large tower turrets having because of their design a slightly better firearc/radius.

With kinetic/energy and elemental damage as well as the a large amount of semi interesting, though broken stats around, each turret could have done "a certain type damage" with "a certain type weakness" and rather than spamming 500 damage per second they could have done less damage but applied different stats to make any fight more "tactical" depending on the turret. But with stats broken and SOE DEVs appareantly being soooo busy with "whatever", well, you know how SWG is.

@sylow:
Respect for the players behind the screen across faction is currently totally missing on the Ahazi forum .
While being only close to a year on Ahazi I have seen veteran players who dont like each other more and more floating into the two seperate factions taking their grudges with them and polluting the factional conflict with their personal long time animosities, sometimes even going so far that recently one player stated in the forum, that he wished all his friends where in one faction while all he "disliked" being in the other faction.

With luckly the forum community being only a small subset of the Ahazi community, most larger guilds from one faction are very vocal on the Ahazi forum taking large portions of this subliminal animosities between the two veteran players bases into the factional conflict in game, making it hard to easily build up cross faction contacts ingame as well.

Sorry for this vent about the situation on the ahazi forum here .

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@Scout:

Honestly, i can't say much about the Infinity forum, i very rarely turn up there. The forum is mostly controled by a group of spammers who make sure that no thread manages to stay on topic for longer than 5 postings, unless the thread itself is badly off topic and / or has any somewhat amoral background.

Between those, the few Imperials hate Rebels and vice versa threads get lost and are rather hard to find. (There was one Rebel guild which was hated by most players... which recently broke up. Anyways, i knew that a good number of people in that guild were quite fair players, and they had perhaps the best PvP players on the server. But the guild also had a few people in there, guildleader included, who didn't hesitate half a second to use any exploit available to win a fight. )

So, while i usually consider it not worth my time, it at least is also not the bad flamefest you describe.

Message Edited by Sylow on 10-10-2005 07:09 PM

Has there been any dev or CSR feedback on the turret issue?

I'm now leaning towards making these a part of my aresenal, but still have some thinking to do about it. The idea of turrets as artillery is an interesting concept that I like. The only thing I don't like is how easy there are to place. It would be interesting dynamic to be intentionally brought into the game, but I think it should be balanced by any or all of:

• Restricting the players able to place. (Rank, Prof, and especially S.F member are all possibilities).


• Hefty timers on placement (not sure how this would work, but limiting the numbers seems like it would be necessary).


• Some kind of vulnerable construction or assembly period.

I wouldn't really expect any of these things to be implemented, but unless something similar is, I'll still feel uneasy about using this. I suppose I can pass it off on my concsious as being artillery though, we'll see...

• can't use it when attacking a base which is inside the boundaries of a city


• can't use it when the area is cluttered with lairs... (and, no, when going for basebusting, i certainly don't have the time to kill those lairs)


• can't use it in mountain area. (That's where my SF base is, along with a medical base and 3 turretson it... if they want to put turrets to trouble me, they first have to remove the base with the turrets, so they have room for their turrets...)

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KJFett3 wrote:

Don't think of the turrets as the actual artillary peice, but rather the incoming fire from one. If any of you played the old mechcommander computer game, think of the turrets like calling in the artillary strikes, not dragging a longtom along with you. Its up for the other side to locate where the fire is coming from and neutralize it.

They are alsolimited in that most don't have the lots, and the few that do are dedicating a part of themselves to do so. I feel that my ability to drop 6 in a battle is balanced by my not being able to use those 6 lots for anything but that.

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Alright, I still don't really like having to imagine that they're something besides what they are. I think I'll just keep it in my back pocket though, and try to think about how I would counter it.

I could see setting them down as a diversion as a possible strategy. Place one or two away from where you want to fight and let some of the enemy get distracted going after it while you're making your main assualt. May be able to split up their force.

One last question though: Can it be redeeded or repaired ever, and if so, what conditions apply to being able to do it?

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TireeG2 wrote:

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KJFett3 wrote:

Don't think of the turrets as the actual artillary peice, but rather the incoming fire from one. If any of you played the old mechcommander computer game, think of the turrets like calling in the artillary strikes, not dragging a longtom along with you. Its up for the other side to locate where the fire is coming from and neutralize it.

They are alsolimited in that most don't have the lots, and the few that do are dedicating a part of themselves to do so. I feel that my ability to drop 6 in a battle is balanced by my not being able to use those 6 lots for anything but that.

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Alright, I still don't really like having to imagine that they're something besides what they are. I think I'll just keep it in my back pocket though, and try to think about how I would counter it.

I could see setting them down as a diversion as a possible strategy. Place one or two away from where you want to fight and let some of the enemy get distracted going after it while you're making your main assualt. May be able to split up their force.

One last question though: Can it be redeeded or repaired ever, and if so, what conditions apply to being able to do it?

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They can not be redeeded. Once placed, they are down...pull them up and they vanish. Im not sure on repairs...they do cost maintinance, but I never bother with that....they are destroyed during the battle or pulled up by me later.

I'm not saying you have to use them, just don't complain when the other side does and you lose. Its a tactice we all have available. It would be like showing up and not using your rifle, dying and then getting mad because the opposing force used theirs.