Squad Leader Archive
Thread: Official Squad Leader Discussion Threads
In an effort to bring some organization, I am creating the following Threads that will serve as the official discussion areas for the associated skills:
Use these areas to describe issues with the skills and abilities for each skill tree in the Squad Leader profession. Please keep comments focused, on-topic, and constructive. My hope is that these threads will serve as an in-depth study of the various aspects of Squad Leadership. I will likely base future reports to the developers on the results of these studies, and I expect that the developers may also be able to learn a little about the current state of affairs through this as well.
It is generally agreed that a true "fix" of the Squad Leader profession will require a LOT of changes, possibly including the additions of new skills and abilities to the Squad Leader tree. Many of you have already posted some excellent new ideas and I hope to encourage that as well. Please feel free to use THIS thread to advertise your ideas. Please give a concise description of your new idea concept and include a link to a thread where the idea can be discussed in detail.
Please use the Official Discussion threads to post field results, bugs, and issues with EXISTING Squad Leader abilities. If you have any ideas for new abilities, please include a short description and a link to a thread discussing the idea in greater detail
Thanks and good luck, everyone! If we work together on this, I still believe that there is Hope for Squad Leaders!
-Thulium
Message Edited by Thulium on 12-01-2003 09:46 AM
I didn't necessarily come up with these, but two of the best ideas I've heard:
HAM regen buff. People regen HAM a certain percentage faster (say up to 50% faster) when grouped with a Squad Leader.
Mounted Combat. A Master Squad Leader gives his squad the ability to use specials while mounted. This would be a lovely, nasty surprise in PVP and nice for those times in PVE when you are being attacked while traveling.
FastWillz and I must not have read this post, as we have been posting to the skills threads. He has some really great ideas btw, except for the playermaster ones. Here is my post to the leadership board:
I dissagree with FastWillz about having the ability to heal mind damage. Hover your cursor over the mind bar on your status bar sometime and see what it says the mind is. It's not concussion damage or head trauma, it's a drain of your mental capacity. I don't expect anybody who hasn't gone through basic combat training, or any kind of sports to understand. Drill Sergeants and coachs are squad leaders, so is the captian of a sports team. These are the guys and gals who influence you to push yourself past your self imposed limits, to pick yourself up when you feel tired and sore, and think you can't go on. They restore your mind to a can do attitude and help you get your head back into the game, i.e. they heal mind damage, they /boostmorale which is what this skill should do.
New active skill proposal for the Leadership range.
Leadership 1: /inranksInspection: The squad leader calls and inranks inspection and goes over his teams equipment. He makes sure weapons are clean and functional, equipment and armor is being properly worn and does not hamper movement, and gives an improptu pep talk. Secondary stats are buffed by the squad leaders leadership rating, stacks with doctor, food, and spice buffs. An inranks inspection buff lasts for 30 minutes. /inranksInspection cannot be called if any member of the team is in combat or mounted.
novice SL leadership +10
+15 leadership for Leadership I-III
+20 leadership for Leadership IV
+25 master SL
for a total buff of +100 (+110 for a human) to each sub stat at Master Squadleader, not an over powering buff but should be a noticable one.
What would buffing the secondary stats do? It would make people regen pools faster and reduce HAM on special moves by a small ammount. This ability would also make that +10 leadership that humans get do something.
Excellent Idea. This is a perfect example of what a Squad Leader does.
I also think that it should force every player to preform /salute as well. So there is a visual effect that it was accomplished.
Why did these four threads un-sticky?
I thought it was a good idea to have them at the top. That way the DEVs would not have to look far to see many of our ideas. LoL, like they look for them. 
I made the listing in this thread work as links to the other threads to clean things up a bit. (Thanks, irott!) I can re-float the sub-threads if they aren't used.
The problem Runesaber... is not that our skills are broken (most of them work as intended). It is just that they make little or no difference. We have no distinction from any other class that is "group leader". For example, a Combat medic that is group leader could use groupchat to keep the group in order and provide area heals and mind heals. Those skills are so much more effective in battle than anything we have.
I will break each branch down into what it currently has and how effective or ineffective it is.
Mobility - Contains two group skill mods. Group terrain negotiation is almost worthless with the introduction of mounts and speeders. Is still somewhat useful when leading newbies.
Group Burst Run Efficiency is good but most people don't even notice it... same with Group terrain negotiation (since quite a few have scouting skills).
Strategy - Gains two actual skills that the Squad Leader can use. Steady Aim is one of the skills that really works. It only works for one shot directly after the SL uses it. I personaly am unsure on whether the +10 bonus in the second box provides a more effective aim or just increases the chance of the SL not failing. This information would be useful.
The second skill is Volley Fire. This skill is the closest thing to control over the other people in the group. It is a one time skill that forces one "volley" of fire from the whole group on whichever target the SL has targeted. It fails quite often and provides no added damage. And a good leader would have everyone attacking the same target anyway. Again on the +10 bonus, unsure on how this effects the skill.
Leadership - This has, I think, the most useful skill in the SL toolbox. Formup gets rid of almost all status effects throughout the group (excluding pets). This is a great asset.
There are two boxes that give group melee defense mods which are always a good thing to have, yet many are unsure that they work since the skill mods only show up in the SLs skill mod box. The group has no way to tell.
The last box has Boostmorale which does not work as the definition says it does. It is defined as a skill the redistributes damage throughout the group. It currently redistributes wounds throughout the group. With a medic and some TKAs to meditate the wounds away... you can get rid of them. And with the introduction of Combat medics being able to heal mind while being wounded in their mind, this helps out a little. But it just seems like too many steps to get rid of these wounds. Plus many groupmembers become upset in gaining wounds they didnt have. This is something I would look at in the upcomeing HAM changes and see if there is a better way to implement it.
Tactics - Contains the rally skill. This skill is one of the more confusing ones. Many are unsure as to what added benefit this gives the group. It fails often and the biggest drawback is that it prevents scouts from harvesting and doctors from rezzing.
Again there are some group defense mods thrown in, this time ranged. Again no way to tell if you are getting any effect.
Retreat works, yet its almost never used in actual retreating. Most players just use it for gaining a quick boost of speed. The only situation I have ever used it to its definition was while defending a factional base and became overwhelmed. I used the skill and had the group make a run back to the saftey of the bases interior. But this still didn't save the group as many were picked off as they ran back. If this gave some sort of added ranged defense boost or dodge/counterattack/block boost during the temporary retreat, then it might help it be used for what it is supposed to be.
Novice/Master - Novice gains one of the most useful/most worthless skills in the game. Sysgroup is a great way to communicate to your group. Its really useful when you change the color of the message as white doesnt always show up too well. The downside of this.. is well whats the point. You can use groupchat to talk to your group just as easy. It is great for those who use it but some SLs just don't know how to use it.
Master Squad Leader gains just a few more of the group skill mods. No added skill no bonuses to the other skills, just the skill mods that not everyone is sure makes a difference.
So really the state of our profession is that we have no identifiable benefit to leading a group. We have a lack of skills and the skills we do have are sub par as they don't always work or provide just a quick fix. We are supposed to be able to create an effective fighting group but really we are just a headpiece while the rest of the group does all the work.
As the description of Master Squad Leader states: The Master Squad Leader can command other fighter's attention and respect.They can move a team quickly and direct a strike efficiently. A team with a Master Squad Leader at its head strikes fast and hard.
We are unable to even meet that description. Many of us here in the SL forums have banded together and formed quite a few ideas and proposals that would help this profession. A basic list can be found Here. I don't agree with all of them but they are just ideas and everyone should have their voice.
Our correspondant is kinda busy with work at the moment so hopfully I got all the issues out there that he would want to bring up. Anything that I missed please add to this.
The list of proposals that I linked in my above post are very unorganized and contain many debates, so I wouldn't assume that we want just what is posted first. There are a lot of great ideas that have come out of those debates and I would suggest, if you have the time, to read through them as they are near and dear to the hearts of many on the board.
SWG-Runesabre wrote:
It would be helpful for me in my planning and scheduling to havea "State of the Squad Leader" post that condenses what the current condition of the Squad Leader is, why they are issues and various ideas on what the players would like to see the Squad Leader become in the future.
What happened to Thunderheart's much-celebrated Top Five Issues report? You know, the ones we lost a correspondent over. Number 2 from that report should give you a good idea about what being an SL is all about. It reads:
2. Squad Leaders are not an asset to a group, are not sought after, and do not have sufficient abilities to be an actively desiriable class to play or play with. Suggested fix: This is a broad topic that will take some time to completely resolve. Groupwide HAM cost reducer, groupwide XP bonuses, and groupwide unique profession ability unlocking are some of the better suggested ideas. Increasing passive bonuses and implementing a movement speed bonus would also be terrific additions.
In other words, we kinda really suck. The only successful Squad Leaders are those that bring natural leadership talents to the board. The skill set doesn't help us lead at all.
http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=squad_leader&message.id=11275
Here'sa Thread that contained our original top five. I think most of these are still quite relevant.