Squad Leader Archive

Tychus, that's actually a REALLY great idea. I hadn't thought of it as a progressing skill as much as a skill concept, but you're right that would be great. I'd love to see it get as high as 4-5 toons (though I doubt anyone but the most advanced manipulators would use all 5). You could throw some passive bonuses up that tree, or else one other grouping skill and make the increase in group numbers the passive bonus.

Okay, another 12 hours has gone by and I have re-re-re-rethought the new Squad Leader skills quite a bit in that time. They are still awful. But, that being said, I think there are some that we CAN salvage. There may even be a few that would work well in the Squad Leader tree.

First off, everything that issues a command to someone else's queue needs to be removed. I will not waver on this issue in the slightest. It's Star Wars, not StarCraft. And sadly that takes a huge chunk out of what we have left. But it does leave us some room to work. What I am going to try to do here is highlight what is POSITIVE about the proposed changes, and thus what is worth keeping.

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Skills We Can Keep

Assign Position: This skill has some merrit, and I can see how it would be useful. But I think it's still a little to vague. Instead of just being based on position, why not let us just break out groups up into platoons? That way we could have more than one set of Marksmen on different targets, or two sets of Tanks keeping the MOBs at bay. Or if we wanted to we could peel our group off into subgroups. Two brawlers, two marksmen and a healer per Toon.

Instead of just giving us Front Line, Support and Ranged, let us set the Toon sizes and number. Some people may only use it for those three sections. Some people may not. But if we are going to be able to buff different Toons with different skills, we should be able to pick and choose who based on how they are being used in the fight, not based on how they are lined up.

So replace Assign Position (in name) with Platoon Designation. Let us designate by color or number or something that we can manage.

Offensive and Defensive Stances: These are reasonable, I suppose. I don't like the build-in debuff but I would be understanding of it as long as the debuff is not nearly as powerful as the buff. For example, if it raises your Defense by 30%, it should only lower your Attack by 15%, and vice versa. Then it would be worth casting on separate groups. Healers, especially.

Forced March: Since we don't really know a lot about this one, it's hard to give it a good or bad rating. This skill COULD be interesting, but it sounds like it would require the Puppet Skill that makes people follow. Supposing that it doesn't, and it grants burst run as long as no one agros, it would be a good skill to have.

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So, everything else that I left out is a Puppet Master Skill except for the Smoke Em If You've Got Em skill, which was useful until I read that it had to be used in Camp. Aside that one, all of the other skills are BETTER performed with /sys or with a /flag or /mark skills:

Target: All group members get a target indicator over whatever the Squad Leader incidates.

TargetToon: All group members within a Toon get a target indicator over whatever the Squad Leader incidates.

We've been begging for that sort of thing since Day One. It would supplant many of the other skills that they are offering and we don't especially want. I'd rather have a Target skill than ALL of the Puppet Skills that have been offered us. It's more versatile, it's less controlling, and it encourages people to be involved in the fight rather than sit back and watch me fight for them.

More on Assign Position:

As has been suggested repeatedly for a month and a half on this forum, the ability to create subgroups is also something that scales well with advancement. For example, the first time you get the skill, you can break your squad into two subgroups; when you reach the next skillbox, you can now form three subgroups;later four and perhaps even five.

Abilities that get better as characters advance in skill are typically well received by players.

another thought advancing on that one by tychus, maybe SL's have a higher group max number. Like maybe at master we can have 30 people in a group instead of 20?

Amen. I don't know why SOE wants to forcfeed large groups down the SL's throats. Anything over 7 people and the group gets chaotic and less fun (and its an unnecessarily large group.) But the problem with a 10 member limit is that people can invite their droids and pets and the group leader has no say. A five person group can be a 15 person/pet/droid group quite quickly.

Personally I think 20 is way too large already.

For reference, militaries have discovered through centuries of experience that the most people can reasonably supervise 3-5subordinates (up to 7, but that's stretching it). That's why militaries utilize a chain of command. Take a basic infantry organization:

The smallest unit is a fire team - 3 soldiers and a team leader.

Next up is the squad leader, who typically has two fire teams. He doesn't direct each squad member individually, he directs his team leader.

Then the platoon leader, who has 3-4 squads. Again, he's not trying to lead 30+ people himself, he works through his squad leaders.

Looking at it from the top, the company commander moves his platoons, the platoon leader moves his squads, the squad leader moves his teams, and the team leader moves individual soldiers.

Obviously that's something of a simplification, but that's generally the way things work.

So in SWG, I'd rather see "regular" groups max out at 6-10, then allow SLs to acquire the ability to lead multiple groups. Barring that, increasing max group size from 10 to 20 as a squad leader advanced would be another possibility.