Squad Leader Archive
Thread: Experiences as a Squad Leader
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IbrahimGaunt
Sat Sep 10, 2005 5:50 am
#1
Aloha all,
I'm a fairly new SL on Farstar and my experiences have been interesting and varied so far. I've been warmly welcomed into a group with much excitement that there's been a SL to lead them into battle. I've been cooly ignored after gently announcing that I had SL 4444 and promptly left to sit there and fire whatever weapon I had as some other cl whatever wished to retain command either through ignorance of what a Squad Leader is, or wishing to be the leader of their group or whatever reason people choose. I certainly don't go in demanding that I lead the group, but it'd be nice if people recognised what I'd trained for. You wouldn't give a Master Pistoleer a rifle and tell him to go kill something, so why let a Squad Leader sit there and watch his pretty skills sit there and do nothing.
That said, being a Squad Leader is more than just the skills given by your template. It involves the ability to use /sysgroup messages effectively and keep an eye on all aspects of the combat at the same time. I personally don't use macro's as I find it easier to keep an eye on the visual timer. I keep an eye on everyone's health and the combat at hand and any creatures around that might give us some aggro, literally or otherwise. I also like to run camps so people can get inspiration buffs (for a while I had low level entertainer skills to keep the troops buffed up, sadly I've had to drop those for other template skills) I like to organise the group at the start so we know exactly who the medics are, who's pulling and generally what skills are within the group. A lot of people like to charge straight into combat, and more often that not, a group can work well together without organisation and go through lair after lair without a problem.
On the other hand, you get times where it all hits the fan and without the due organisation it all went rather horribly wrong. I remember a time when a cl80 member had left the group and we were fighting Banthas and this group had gone in guns blazing, had a go at me for trying to organise things and then suddenly wondered why they'd ended up being dead. They then blamed it on the cl80 having left the group, the creature then being Purple and of course instant death. The thing is, I've lead many a low cl group with a couple of reasonably high cl players and known who the medics were and slowly grinded a cl80 creature to death with a barrage of rallying and volley fires and me using my Combat Medic skills to keep everyone alive. The reality of that situation was that we hadn't taken the time to organise who was pulling and who was being medic, so we'd had a couple more creatures than we knew what to do with, and to be honest I did kind of sit back and let the person who'd had a go at me earlier for not organising medics slowly get repeatedly incapped by a Bantha till they had to clone. Mainly because he'd not a few moments earlier said 'Hey, these are only Bantha's, it's not the Corvette' in response to my attempts to organise the group.
The morale of the story is you can't please all of the people all of the time. You're lucky if you can please some any of the time. The Squad Leader profession seems to be something that either people are overjoyed to have in their group, or are completely ignorant of what we do. That said, I've also seen some Squad Leaders who didn't really do that much leading. I saw a MSL lead a group I was in and never saw a volley fire or rally once. It's times like that you can see why sometimes we can get a bad reputation.
I have had the template MCarb MSL CM 4000 as I could keep my troops fighting longer as a CM 4000 if the primary medics run out of their Mind pool which sometimes happens in the more intense combat situations. I tinkered with Rifles and Pistols for a bit, but Carbines allowed me to lead a squad of standard players or AOE'ers equally well. I've now dropped to Carbineer 2000 to keep the AOE and re-grinding for MCM. The problem with being a SL is that you will never be as fully combat effective as someone that has taken two other combat professions, I've tried mixing in the useful bits from other professions to round out my character, but you end up with a template that's jack-of-all, master of none. Fun to roleplay, but not very combat effective, and you'll never get a high cl, which means some people will never take you seriously. Which is a topic for another thread altogether.
My top 3 fave things about being a SL:
1) It's so much more fun leading a squad than sitting there firing at things wash, rinse, repeat.
2) It's really nice when you get a good group together that work well with each other and you can have some fun around a campfire
3) People wanting to join your group again because they enjoyed being in it before.
My main complaints will be fixed in the update hopefully, as for the new update, here's where I sit on the SL=GL / multiple SL's debate.
1) A squad leader should be the leader of the squad.
It sounds obvious, but apparently isn't. We have taken the time to choose a profession that leaves us with certain disadvantages like limited specials of our own and lowered combat effectiveness in general compared to other combat templates. We choose to be a Squad Leader on the basis that we'll be leading squads, not just tagging along because we happen to provide a few useful buffs.
2) Squad Leader stacking.
In short you're going to end up with the 'Too Many Chiefs, Not Enough Indians' scenario where all the Squad Leaders in a group are wanting to take command. Who gets to control the /sysgroup messages? Can you imagine the situations that could arise from that? 'Run this way!' 'no this way!' 'ignore him, follow me!!!' '!!!!!' and so on. As others have mentioned the concept of a Squad Leader and a Second In Command is a nice idea. It fits from a militaristic point of view and I have no doubt SOE are capable of coding it, it's just how it would be implemented that would require some discussion. I'll find a more relevant thread for the discussion of that though.
I'm a fairly new SL on Farstar and my experiences have been interesting and varied so far. I've been warmly welcomed into a group with much excitement that there's been a SL to lead them into battle. I've been cooly ignored after gently announcing that I had SL 4444 and promptly left to sit there and fire whatever weapon I had as some other cl whatever wished to retain command either through ignorance of what a Squad Leader is, or wishing to be the leader of their group or whatever reason people choose. I certainly don't go in demanding that I lead the group, but it'd be nice if people recognised what I'd trained for. You wouldn't give a Master Pistoleer a rifle and tell him to go kill something, so why let a Squad Leader sit there and watch his pretty skills sit there and do nothing.
That said, being a Squad Leader is more than just the skills given by your template. It involves the ability to use /sysgroup messages effectively and keep an eye on all aspects of the combat at the same time. I personally don't use macro's as I find it easier to keep an eye on the visual timer. I keep an eye on everyone's health and the combat at hand and any creatures around that might give us some aggro, literally or otherwise. I also like to run camps so people can get inspiration buffs (for a while I had low level entertainer skills to keep the troops buffed up, sadly I've had to drop those for other template skills) I like to organise the group at the start so we know exactly who the medics are, who's pulling and generally what skills are within the group. A lot of people like to charge straight into combat, and more often that not, a group can work well together without organisation and go through lair after lair without a problem.
On the other hand, you get times where it all hits the fan and without the due organisation it all went rather horribly wrong. I remember a time when a cl80 member had left the group and we were fighting Banthas and this group had gone in guns blazing, had a go at me for trying to organise things and then suddenly wondered why they'd ended up being dead. They then blamed it on the cl80 having left the group, the creature then being Purple and of course instant death. The thing is, I've lead many a low cl group with a couple of reasonably high cl players and known who the medics were and slowly grinded a cl80 creature to death with a barrage of rallying and volley fires and me using my Combat Medic skills to keep everyone alive. The reality of that situation was that we hadn't taken the time to organise who was pulling and who was being medic, so we'd had a couple more creatures than we knew what to do with, and to be honest I did kind of sit back and let the person who'd had a go at me earlier for not organising medics slowly get repeatedly incapped by a Bantha till they had to clone. Mainly because he'd not a few moments earlier said 'Hey, these are only Bantha's, it's not the Corvette' in response to my attempts to organise the group.
The morale of the story is you can't please all of the people all of the time. You're lucky if you can please some any of the time. The Squad Leader profession seems to be something that either people are overjoyed to have in their group, or are completely ignorant of what we do. That said, I've also seen some Squad Leaders who didn't really do that much leading. I saw a MSL lead a group I was in and never saw a volley fire or rally once. It's times like that you can see why sometimes we can get a bad reputation.
I have had the template MCarb MSL CM 4000 as I could keep my troops fighting longer as a CM 4000 if the primary medics run out of their Mind pool which sometimes happens in the more intense combat situations. I tinkered with Rifles and Pistols for a bit, but Carbines allowed me to lead a squad of standard players or AOE'ers equally well. I've now dropped to Carbineer 2000 to keep the AOE and re-grinding for MCM. The problem with being a SL is that you will never be as fully combat effective as someone that has taken two other combat professions, I've tried mixing in the useful bits from other professions to round out my character, but you end up with a template that's jack-of-all, master of none. Fun to roleplay, but not very combat effective, and you'll never get a high cl, which means some people will never take you seriously. Which is a topic for another thread altogether.
My top 3 fave things about being a SL:
1) It's so much more fun leading a squad than sitting there firing at things wash, rinse, repeat.
2) It's really nice when you get a good group together that work well with each other and you can have some fun around a campfire
3) People wanting to join your group again because they enjoyed being in it before.
My main complaints will be fixed in the update hopefully, as for the new update, here's where I sit on the SL=GL / multiple SL's debate.
1) A squad leader should be the leader of the squad.
It sounds obvious, but apparently isn't. We have taken the time to choose a profession that leaves us with certain disadvantages like limited specials of our own and lowered combat effectiveness in general compared to other combat templates. We choose to be a Squad Leader on the basis that we'll be leading squads, not just tagging along because we happen to provide a few useful buffs.
2) Squad Leader stacking.
In short you're going to end up with the 'Too Many Chiefs, Not Enough Indians' scenario where all the Squad Leaders in a group are wanting to take command. Who gets to control the /sysgroup messages? Can you imagine the situations that could arise from that? 'Run this way!' 'no this way!' 'ignore him, follow me!!!' '!!!!!' and so on. As others have mentioned the concept of a Squad Leader and a Second In Command is a nice idea. It fits from a militaristic point of view and I have no doubt SOE are capable of coding it, it's just how it would be implemented that would require some discussion. I'll find a more relevant thread for the discussion of that though.
captiansarcasmo
Sat Sep 10, 2005 9:37 am
#2
yup most all of this is right on. /sys is still tied to the gl so not much confusion there. but... there are spacial shouts for every sl command now so when grouped with multiple sl all you hear is "fire on my target" no "fire on my target" no "regroup to my location" no "lets get out of here!" .... "booyah!"
Wallid
Sun Sep 11, 2005 10:10 pm
#3
sounds good bro.
and again, thanks for the schoolin I got.
though it was quite the experience. 
most hunts I've been in run "acording to plan"
you and Korbain both had me on my toes which was fun and good challange.
ever sence I've started down the path of squadleader, and the more groups I work with, the more I see people interested in grouping up. They are familar with how I work, and how I run, as I am with them. I get the odd nutter, but it makes things interesting. and there is nothing like the herd of banthas comin right for you, right after you notice your healers mind bar is low (oh oh).
I personaly can't wait for the new patch. looks interesting. Personaly, I say we should have abilties that work if we are a subliment to a group, and just as a leader. That way we get the best of both sides, as well as the negatives. I am also very interested in the new temp buffs we get.
So far SquadLeader for me has been rather quite enjoyable profession, I wish I went for this sooner. I don't look at it as "broken", I look more at it as "a proffession that is more then just speicals."
Now all I need is to finish off carbines and I'm set (as much as I've grown used to pistols, I still prefer the control/ pulling I get with carbineer. Cripple shot helped me out alot.).
For all your Field Protections needs (as well as Reb Master Munitions Crafter ).
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