Squad Leader Archive

I think we are all in agreement right now that the squad leader profession is broken. The perks at too little, and the squad leader ability adds very little to player groups. Most of what it does can be achomplished by any character with a little personality, leadership ability, and tactics. The fix I propose it to make squad leader more of a faction oriented profession either rebel, imperial, or (with the addition of more player factions) Hutt and Valerian.

Currently any factionally aligned player can have a total of three faction NPCs (pets) that can be grouped and controlled. I recommend dropping this number to one. The leadership tree of squad leader should determine the amount of faction NPCs that a player can control (up to let's say six for now, but this number is flexible). This tree also alows for diferent formations that the squad can be placed in.Right now there are two wedge and collum, other could be implemented (Vee, Line, circle-for that last stand effect, etc.). I propose another tree being somewhat like a creature handlers trick tree, let me explain how this would work.

Unlike regular faction pets a squad leader requisitions troops from the recruiter (rebel, imperial, hutt, or even a mercenary dealer) in this manner they choose aquire troops, then they choose a race (would be faction dependent, say imperial you can only choose human or zabrek, rebel only human, mon-calamari, or twei'lek, mercanary or hutt/other fation any race. Then you choose a gender. You are then issued an NPC character of that race and gender with 1000 HAM, no equipment, and a basic uniform load. The player issues a weapon to the NPC (that may be changed), clothes the NPCto their likeing (The patch seems to have added a lot of faction points into the system of late, this will help create a sink for those points as players will now spend them on their NPCs to equip them with armor, etc and will add a sink for the economy as a squad leader will need to not only purchase 1 weapon for themselves, but 4 or five for their squad). The NPC squad leader pets can be "grown" by doing "tricks"or more precisely conditioning exercises (which will also heal NPC mind wounds, strength and stamina can be done via a medic like regular players) say first level "trick" is side straddle hops (jumping jacks) doing these increases the NPCs HAM in say 10 unit incriments per 5 minutes of performing the action. The next level is situps, which increases the HAM 20 units per 5 minutes performing the "trick". Finally push-ups which increase the HAM 50 units per 5 minutes performing the 'trick". These tricks can be done at cost to the squad leaders mind and to the pets strength and stamina. So a new pet may only be able to do 20 jumping jacks before he gets tired and has to quit, but an older pet may be able to do 500 before needing to rest. The max HAM can be just a generic number (say5000 -a good balance between stormtrooper and the higher end faction commandos etc) or race dependent.

Squad leader XP is gained by having these squad "pets" grouped with you and performing missions. Conditioning experience is gained by having members of your squad train in physical conoditioning.

These "squad members" should have more commands added to them than the ones that currrently are available to faction pets. Also unlike faction pets now they should suffer permanent death unless they have been dealt a death blow (something I still think should be implemented for creature handler pets) and they can not be put back in the datapad unless there are no more combat actions qued against them (another problem I find with creature handler pets, as when you're just about ready to beat their pet -poof- into the data pad it goes, no experience for you despite the wounds you took, and no permanent ill effects against their precious pet).

Another few things that should be implemented for this to work (and a re-cap of above)

Different types of faction armor available for requisition other than just Marine, and Stromtrooper.

Only 1 faction pet for regular players (no pets would really add a benefit for squad leaders, but I think the community backlash would be too much) those with faction pets now would be re-imbursed faction points and loose their excess pets.

AT-ST is no longer available for requisition (I would like to see it re-emerge though later on as a requisitionable player vehicle)

Other than the AT-ST players can still requisition their one faction pet from the current selection, and although yes, a dark trooper would still be much more powerful than a 5000 HAM faction pet, the plus is that you could have 4 5000 HAM pets (if you had the faction points they could theoretically all be in dark-trooper armor) and all armed with a high end player weapon. Which would make the squad leader a huge addition to the galactic war, and also a power player to the lesser factions, and even eventually with the forming of player cities to the militia and guild wars.

I understand that this would take a major over-haul of the profession, but that overhaul would make squad leader a much more beneficial profession and add to the concept of a the galactic civil war. Plus it would make the faction pets a little more personable than the current here are your points give me a tank.

I'd like to hear anything else you can think of to make this workable, please keep you replies constructive, but I am interested in hearing honest feedback. Hopefully this will catch the eye of the development team.

-Thanks