CUEmu - Thread Posts

DiLune

Thu Mar 04, 2004 3:36 pm

Okay, this has been done before. Perhaps its been done to death. But with revamps coming on the horizon maybe its good to keep our skills sharp.

Let me set up the parameters: Imagine you have an overworked Dev who is going to be working on the revamp. He has tools at his fingertips. He does have the ability to create all new specials, but nothing outlandish. He can use old tools and tweak them in new ways if necessary.

Okay, what can you do with a squad leader that will really make him a leader? What direction do we want to go with the revamp? What tools (ie profession skills) will expand on your leadership abilities and make your groups even better than they are.

Think of a mix of active and passive abilities. The more powerful the ability the more it probably needs to be active (to avoid AFKing.)

Okay, what have you got? (Concise is good)

KardenTyrell

Thu Mar 04, 2004 4:33 pm

#2

"WAKE UP PRIVATE!"

Skill - /slapsoldier

- wakes up an incapacitated player

- "TK-231 reporting in" -
[|Arresting hawtpants members for a living|]

DiLune

Thu Mar 04, 2004 5:28 pm

#3

Actually, this isn't bad. Gets people up and running again. Set them to 1 point in the ability they were incapped in...medics or whoever takes care of healing them further. This wouldn't be a bad idea.

How about an ability that is very expensive but clears all negative states (intim, blind, KD, Dizzy, Warcry, Panic Shot, etc.) Then you could say have /formup1 and /formup2. 1 would have a lower chance of clearing each state and 2 of course would have higher.

Yeraze

Thu Mar 04, 2004 5:34 pm

#4

I agree with curing Delay & Intimidate, but I think Blind should stay in the realm of the Medics.

Personaly, I would like to see more "planning" features. Stuff like an overhead view where we can draw those same yellow lines on the ground (like you get with /find) to show patterns of attack, shared waypoints, long range recon, etc. Add perhaps some insertion/extraction abilities and some "60 gunner" cover-fire abilities, and I think we'ld be as kickass as can be.

Rebel Colonel Date Sunrunner
RAID Elder
Master Squad Leader - The True Jedi of SWG.
Master Carbineer
Master Alliance Pilot

KardenTyrell

Thu Mar 04, 2004 5:47 pm

#5

"Clear that smudge out of your eyes boy!" "Pull yourself together!"

/formup2

If your character stops walking....the blind status disappears.

Intimidate is cleared immediatly..same as delay effects from warcry 1,2 ,panicshot

- "TK-231 reporting in" -
[|Arresting hawtpants members for a living|]

Yeraze

Thu Mar 04, 2004 5:51 pm

#6

KardenTyrell wrote:
"Clear that smudge out of your eyes boy!" "Pull yourself together!"
/formup2
If your character stops walking....the blind status disappears.
Intimidate is cleared immediatly..same as delay effects from warcry 1,2 ,panicshot

heh.. I didn't think of that.. Maybe curing blind isn't so odd after all

Rebel Colonel Date Sunrunner
RAID Elder
Master Squad Leader - The True Jedi of SWG.
Master Carbineer
Master Alliance Pilot

MailekEOC

Thu Mar 04, 2004 8:44 pm

#7

I like the idea of having a skill like maybe /coverfire which basically is an area affect on targets making them delay or possibly go into the prone position. This can be countered by formup which should clear that effect.

We should have an anti knockdown move /onyourfeet, when used on afriendly it takes away the knockdown effect, we all know that this would be very useful.

For those who PvP, there is little tactics involved when the enemy KNOWS YOUR COMING. We should have the ability to go radar silence, making your squad not appear on the enemy radar. This could be a multi purpose use though, maybe Engineers can get the ability to craft a radar jamming device that only a tactician is able to use. Have them for limited uses so that artisans can make some money, a timer can be set on it, say 5 minutes till it wears off with x amount of uses. They could also be experimented on to increase the uses and time of the jamming.

How about this one, /mandown, you use this on an incapped teammate and it can either act as feign death, where he cannot be DB for X amount of time or have a flashing yellow ! above his name.

These are just a few I can think of, besides improving on our old skills, what is your thoughts?

Agent: PHANTOM

Mailek Oofiso
Elder Squad Leader ± Imperial Clone
f Magnumus Mysterium f
Vive la Saviour!

DiLune

Thu Mar 04, 2004 9:13 pm

#8

I like it. Keep it coming. I think this is the kind of stuff the devs are looking for.

BlkTom

Thu Mar 04, 2004 9:47 pm

#9

I posted something that had some ideas on this, here is a couple...

/Charge. Gives everyone a KD shot (aka /Chargeshot from Carbineer) where they also run forward to attack. Gives -20 to ranged combat defence and gives +20 to melee combat for 30 seconds. We have hardly anything that helps brawlers and this could be one, since most brawlers tell me that when they have someone KDed they are dead. Great for mixed party fun.

/Prep-talk. Gives +20 resistance to Intimidate, Dizzy, Blind, KD for 5 minutes. Can only be given when no one in the party is in combat. Obviously this is another aspect that SL is lacking is that most leaders prep talk their troops before a battle. This will add in passive defences but will give a time limit to not be to gross. Also doesn't help if you get jumped by a agro critter.

/Cool-down. After combat and only in a camp, you give a bonus to Regeneration rates for healing HAM of 50%. Lasts as long as the camp remains. Gives us a tie in to the whole camp aspect and after battle dealings most leaders have with their troops. Can't be used in combat (duh) and doesn't heal wounds or disease so it isn't over powered yet is still useful.

/Point blank Volley. Gives everyone in the group +30 to Point Blank range mods for purposes to hit and increases their damage by 100% for their next attack. Unlike Volley it is not the target the SL chooses, but what each member of the group is targeting.

Otherwise, to answer the question posed, what a SL is, they are the leader of a group of people usally of a military organization with backing of that miliary organization to help enforce their leadership role. In this game the SL lacks that military organization. Instead they are given abilities that should make any group much more effective in combat than they otherwise should be. I am also a strong believer RL as well of in the game of leading by exsample. No one wants to be told to do something dangerous while the person telling them to do this task remains behind. Thus I am hoping that SL will be given personal bonuses to their HAM to make them more effective in combat, and thus to the group, by lasting longer and being able to use their skills more, yet will help them survive outside of the group for solo adventures.

Vec Prybrom (ICE)
Master Squad Leader
Master Marksman
Master Rifleman

Man's gotta do what a man's gotta do.- Clint Eastwood

yurii

Fri Mar 05, 2004 12:24 pm

#10

For the radar thing, maybe something like the Ranger Camo-Kits only these could be SquadLeader-XRadar Kits. You make them with a crafting tool (not sure if SLs or Artisans or Armorsmiths can make these) using various materials that are planet specific and experiment on quality and quantity as per usual, and voila! use them on each individual member of the group.

It would then last as long as long it worked - just like the camo-kits. A bonus would be that these would be good against NPCs and players - but not creatures. I hope also that they would work better than camo-kits currently as those are very unreliable (even as a Master Ranger created them with really high quality materials).

The effect would be that the NPCs don't aggro (unless within a smaller range than usual) and players can't see the radar blip. I suppose this would neccessarily affect both the radar and the CNTRL+M radar screens.

-Yurii Mstislav
Los Planos, Lok
Comming soon: Arlaz (Bria) Squad Leader.
Wisdom is rarely found on the best-seller list.

JerynChoice

Fri Mar 05, 2004 2:13 pm

#11

Some good ideas here!

Some other ideas would be /coverfire, which would drastically reduce the chance of hitting one member of your squad - essentially making them "nearly unhittable" for three rounds or so. They'd still be affected by AoE attacks but would have a nasty amount of melee AND ranged defense for that limited time.

Someone brought up (a longwhile ago!) a /USO typecommand, which would allow entertainers to heal battle fatigue in the field. It makes sense that this could only be done at a camp site. Wonder how hard it would be to code this?

Perhaps our survival training causes people under our command to have reducedincapacitation time. Chefs can make a food that does this so the code is in there - would be nice to have 10% through 50% reduction to group incap times as we progress from Novice to Master.

InfluenzaSWTA

Fri Mar 05, 2004 2:33 pm

#12

Many, if not most, Squad Leader specials should have negative side-effects to them. We shouldn't have uber specials that are spammable; we should have a large set of specials applicable to different situations, which require timing, observation, and intelligence to use effectively. I don't like the idea of Squad Leaders being the equivalent of EQ bards, where we just click buttons and everyone does better.

I really feel that Squad Leader has the most potential of any class to require IN-LIFE skills to use effectively. While this isn't necessarily the #1 goal of an RPG, it would add a lot of depth to game combat.

Anyways, some ideas I've had in the past:

Active abilities:

Hold Positions: increases accuracy and defense of group members, but prevents them from running.

Blitz: increase weapon and movement speeds (if possible), but decrease defense and accuracy.

Heads Down: reduce Mind damage of group members, but increase that of the SL.

Sniper Cover: make group members who are incapacitated immune to /sniperShot. While active, SL cannot fire, only heal or drag bodies. Either make this a toggle-able ability (either ON or OFF, no timer), or set the timer to 30 seconds (less than the average incap time) and let the SL cancel the ability by starting an attack (but NOT cancelled by being attacked by an enemywhile at /peace... not sure if this distinction can be made).

Support Fire: increase the cone radius of all group member AOE attacks, at a high HAM cost to SL.

Passive abilities:

Ambush: any Rifleman who is prone and has /takeCover active does not show on radar.

Inspiration: small +defense to status changes. Make the Human +Leadership mod increase this.

Medic Support: increase AOE of Combat Medic ranged heals, reduce delay between Doctor's /cureDisease and /revive.

Just a few ideas.

---------
Korren Faihon, Squad Leader, Alliance Ace Pilot.
The Explorer's Guide to the Clone Relics

SWG Wiki: if we don't know it, no one does.
One of the reasons for the fall of the Roman Empire was, lacking the number 0, they had no way to indicate successful return from their C programs.

Skinktor

Fri Mar 05, 2004 8:34 pm

#13

Squad leader (in my opinion) needs to be a group buffer, similar to the way a CM can heal your whole group and heep everyone alive and fighting, a SL should be able to increase the overall effectiveness of everyone in the entire group.

Things a SL should be able to "buff"
-HAM bars-
I'm thinking a special similar to powerboost that would temporarily boost everyones ham bars, this would be a good one so maybe put that in at master, it can be scaled down etc so it is not "rediculous" but it would be a good concpet to work with.

-Defense Mods-
Since they are capping all the defence mods, a character that can raise your defense mods BEYOND that cap would be valuable ina group indeed. This should be a "passive" bonus which is constantly working, and not triggered. This bonus would be scaled up thru one of the branches of the SL tree. By itself this would not be enough of an incentive, so whatever branch this went into would also need some more stuff.

Hows about some bonuses to the misc state effects, such as dizzy, kd, etc. This ability would work like the one i just described only it would make everyone in the group harder to knock down, dizzy etc. This would be scaled up also in the same branch as the defense mod one. This could become the "team defense" branch of SL which basically boosts everyones defenses. Which would be nice, since SL has been broken since launch.

-Accuracy Mods-
This would basically give everyone a constant bonus to hit when grouped with the SL. This would be a "passive" skill as it would not need to be activated, but was rather constantly working.

-Terrain Negotiation-
This would scale up through a branch, granting terrain neg bonuses similar to what SL's currently have, but since this is a pretty weak incentive, it should be added into a branch that gets other things as well.

-Speed Mods-
This bonus would apply to everyones weapon speeds, and could be added into the same branch as the accuracy mods.
You could redo it as the SL "team offence" branch.

Thats 2 branches down, and if decent bonuses were introduced people would start taking Sl rather than looking at it and passing by in disgust.

That leaves 2 trees to deal with miscellaneous specials and etc.

Some cool misc specials I would like to see are

-an improved version of the /assist command that not only puts everyone on the same target, but gives them a bonus to hit that target.

-A special which increases the damage of the next special performed by everyone in the group. Maybe a x1.5 modifier added on top of everyones next special would work. This could also be used as a short term buff , giving said bonus to damage for a short time period (maybe 10 secs) rather than just 1 special.

-A special which lowers the damage suffered by everyone in the group for a short period of time. This would work similarly to synthsteak, however with a shorter duration. Possibly DR of 30% for 10 secs would work.

-Keep the special that gives everyone a free Burst run, but lower its ham costs

-A special which clears 1 state effect for everyone in the group, if done multiple times can clear all state effects.

-A special which un-incaps (as mentioned above) but that worked similarly to force of will having a chance to heal group members up to half of thier HAM, or to just heal them to 1. This special should issue recipients several wounds

-A group EQUILIBRIUM as per zabraks racial special. This is an awesome special, and if a SL could do it for everyone in his group he would indeed be a mighty leader. This would be a "master SL" worthy special.

-SL should also be able to have more than 1 faction pet, faction pets should be SL based, not CH based, this would be a nice bonus for a SL as he could sort of have his own "squad". This would be more of a skill than a special but whatever.

-A group regen bonus. When sitting in a camp the SL busts out this special and everyone regenerates 2x as fast as they normally would while they remain inside of the camp. This would also help heal mind a little faster, and would sort of make use of the scout requirements of SL

Thats a decent start I guess, SL needs group buffs, bonuses, special perks and etc, and ALL thier specials need to havea LOW ham cost as SL's are not only fighting, but helping everyone else.

Hope that helps.

Squad Leader Archive

Thread: What is Squad Leader