Squad Leader Archive

Role-Designate:

I think this would be a neat ability to add to player groups that would give the overall group an advantage. A group member can only hold one role-designation at a time, and there could only be one of each role in a group. A few examples may be the following:

Point Man: If a SL designates a member the point man, The entire group gets to see enemies that appear on his radar, even if those enemies are out of their radar range.

Team Medic: If a SL designates a member the team medic, then perhaps a message flashes warning the healer which member is near incap

Team Sharpshooter/Sniper: If a SL designates a member the team sniper, his effective range on his pistol/rifle/carbine is increased by half again (so they can attack from about 100 meters away)

I think more roles could be created and included and it would just add more of an advantage to grouping with a SL, if only aesthetically in some instances.

Tactical Orders:

I think a few more tactical orders and manuevers should be included in the game. I provide some examples below:

Flank: The flank ability would provide some kind of to-hit bonus when party members are firing on the same target from a 60-120 degree arc difference.

High Ground: The high ground ability would again allow some kind of To-hit bonus based on shooter elevation vs target.

Cover Fire: The cover fire ability could be granted to the SLs members, and be an attack that does no actual damage, but allows a member to select a fellow teammate, and cover for them, greatly reducing either a specific enemy, or multiple enemies chances of hitting his teammate.

Cover: The cover ability could be issued and force all the SLs teammates to receive a bonus to defense while removing mobility similar to the rifle tree's take cover ability.

Ambush: Just like han solo in ROTJ, a "puller" who gets a few people to chase him can lead the sentients into an ambush consisting of the rest of the party. assuming the party outnumbers those giving chase 3 to 1, perhaps they could surrender automatically, granting very little XP for the party, and somewhat reduced XP for the puller.

No one gets left behind: Enables auto-drag acceptance between all teammates so that no one has to be left behind (assuming the dreaded corpse run is brought back)

Advanced Volley Fire: Instead of just having the entire party attack the same target, which is wasteful unless your entire party attacks the same enemy pools (Depending on their weapons, different party members will attack health, action or mind pools, this makes for wasted effort on battlefields) This ability would allow the SL more control over his groups fire patterns, allowing him to do a /volleyfireH which would only make his pistol/unarmed types attack a target, /volleyfireA which would have his action pool damagers attack a target, or /volleyfireM which would have his mind pool damagers attack a target. This means he can have his squad focusing fire on 3 different targets in an efficient manner, instead of just having his entire group attack all 3 pools on a single target. the standard /volleyfire would still have the entire party attack the same target though, so that option is still there.

I know you could suggest that some of these tactics are useable in the game as it is, but the success of using these tactics that work both in the real world and the star wars one, are minimal in game. Itd be nice to see the tactics made into abilities.

Other Abilities:

Inspirational Speech: Players can set their own speech to go with the ability, but over a period of 3-5 minutes, the speech will provide some type of pools buff (Although no where near as powerful a buff as entertainers/medical people are able to give) it would probably provide a much more low level buff, but to multiple pools. The size of the buff would be dependent on skill level, or a random factor as well. The buff could last for an hour or so. This could be a great master SL ability.

These are just a few ideas off the top of my head at 5 in the morning. Im sure that the devs could come up with a much more sizeable list of well thought out and balanced abilities to make the SL a bit more worth pursuing.

As the current SL abilities stand, I think the group movement/burst run tree should be removed as a tree, and perhaps made into a single skill box instead, it seems a bit overdone. The ranged and melee defense trees are nice, as are most of the abilities granted in those trees, but it would be nice to see more added. The Volleyfire ability also seems to take up more real estate than is neccesary. Id like to see the advanced volley fire idea i described in this post instead of a volley fire that is just a bit more accurate or does a bit more damage.

Reeto (Tarquinas Novice SL)

Nar Cranor

www.swnsu.com

I;m not a SL, Im a Ranger, but i would really love to see this implemented!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Eter Solwalker

Naritus Medic/Carbineer/MASTER RANGER

The best thoughts are formulated either at 5am, or on the john.

I like all of the suggested additions, except one.

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Team Medic: If a SL designates a member the team medic, then perhaps a message flashes warning the healer which member is near incap

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I know many medics would be angered by this, as an insult to their skills, and I agree with them.

Instead, perhaps have a message flash across everyone elses screen if the medic gets aggroed?

And be able to designate up to three people as medics. Or one medic designation for every six people in the group, but always one? (youget one inany group,two if you have 12 members, and three if you have 18)

Good ideas.

i like these ideas

Just a thought but how about when in a group with a Squad Leader, the range of the heals is increased?

I like the tactical moves proposed. Covering fire especially sounds like an awesome ability. I think some target designation would be nice. Some kind of direct fire command. Where you designate targets to specific team members for example target an enemy and type /desg bindzor and then that target is now designated to bindzor. The SL should be more of a team leader and director then just another combat character who has some group buffs.

What about the ability to have more members in a group with a good squad leader?

Like maybe at Master Squad Leader you can have a group of 30 people, 28 at managment 4, 26 managment 3, 24 at M2 and 22 and M1 then novice squad leader can just have 20?

I really like these ideas and wanted to suggest a minor modification. I suspect the role designation might be a bit to code for some of the cases you mention, but something that would be easy, yet should be relatively simple to code is the ability to place "tags" on players/mobs that can only be seen by the group.

For example, when I was leading a group today against a Faction HQ, it would have been helpful to keep the designated "professionals" visible for my teammates. We were unsuccessful because the terminals didn't pop but it could definately be helpful if the rest of the group understood that certain people may need special "attention." (like, protect/revive the BioEngineer because he/she may not have the uber combat skill, but if he/she goes down, the mission will fail.) Perhaps even the ability to tag opponents, so that defenders can ALSO give certain people special attention... There are certain situations where you might wantdesignate a friendly (*cough* spies */cough*). In more generalized groups, just the ability to designate a point or lieutenant that is currently guiding the way, etc.

Thanks for the thread support and ideas. Im glad a few people actually read my thread.

I agree that volley fire and the movement mods taking up two trees is a waste. they are not worth spending the points on, and barely worth bothering with to attain master SL. They should each be made into one box.

A friendly /bump for a thread that presents positive ideas to help fix Squad Leader. (Devs, I hope you're reading these, cuz I hate bumping for the sake of bumping.)

Or you could have a Team Entertainer too. They can heal anytime they want anywhere they want, this would certainly be good on those hunting trips where you want to heal then get back into action. (Just remember to tip them )

heres a new twist for the designate team medic designation

i read somewhere that the medic comunity is not fond of system messages telling them who to heal. they feel its a bit insulting as it perfictly obvious how needs healing by looking at the group status bar.

so instead of a auto system message telling them who needs healing, how about the group status bar is automaticaly re-organized pushing group members with less damage to the top of the list so its easyer to prioritize how needs more healing

just a though, not sure if the med comunity would be insulted by this as well or not...