Squad Leader Archive

Yeah, it is annoying that Smuggler gets so many bonus perks like spending faction points cheap, specially on military applications that should really go to SL (bases, troops, armor), let the smuggler get cheap furniture, let us get the cheap troops.

Only reason why they do this is: Han Solo

But to make sure this doesn't turn into a Smuggler vs SL thread and ignore the point of this thread....

I think that it would be cool to have Jawas and Raiders and the like with you. Jawas with Ion rifles and that you can actually dress up like a Raider to hang with your boys, and even use the same weapons.

Heh, sorry I kinda threw things off there... It was late when I wrote that. I think my following post is going to be a little off topic as well.

Anyway, I still want to stick firm to not having Squad leaders be the sole recipients of multiple faction pets. I am a not a fan of handler professions at all, though I still think that players should have multiple pets in certain circumstances. Creature Handlers should have their 3 creatures, Droid Engineers should have multiple droids (though to keep them balanced, only one combat droid), and Squad leaders should be able to have multiple troops.... wait did I just say that? Yes, but if you think about it, who are those troops? The answer is the players. They are able to fill that role, yet they are not able to play as a creature or a droid. It seems logical, as a Squad Leader, to recruit some troops and take out a target.... if you are playing a RPG, not a MMO. One of the largest goals for the devs is to provide player interaction, even if some players prefer to play solo.

Ok ill try to make a transition to the real topic... heh.

Keeping with the idea of RPG vs. MMO, say for example, a quest given to you by a corsec detective to investigate the Nyax compound would result in you getting a corsec cadet as a helper to assist you. That would happen in a RPG but not in a MMO, in the MMO case you would just call up your friends and have them help you. Though this is good player interaction, it leaves out a ton of content that the player could receive. But I think that the RPG version might do well in SWG, just a little tweaked. I will come back to this, but let me change gears a bit.

Now as a neutral player who has no interest of the GCW, you still might want to have some enemies; be they criminals, security officers, rival species (tuskens and jawas?), whole cities or planetary governments. This aspect of the game has not been touched yet would provide so much more to the players. Instead of making these faction joinable as in rebels and Imperial, where you are one or the other, your positive or negative standings would determine your bonuses/restrictions. Now to really do this right, the devs would have to change the way players gain/lose non-GCW faction. They could still keep the gain/loss by killing mobs in but reduce the numbers. The best way is by providing missions given by these factional NPCs. Getting back to my above example of RPG vs. MMO I said that the RPG quests might work well in SWG. This is the instance where I would think it would work best.

Lets keep with our example. You go and talk to a Corsec detective hanging out in the Tyrena cantina. He tells you he needs help investigating a thug camp or something. He tells you he is unable to make it but to meet up with his partner. You meet his partner outside of town and he follows you out to the designated WP. You destroy the camp. You go back to the cantina and you gain some Corsec faction, the only reward, unless money was discussed before the mission was taken (The result of which would be a lower gain of Corsec faction). Each time you take a mission you gain more and more good faction with Corsec. After you gain a certain amount of good faction, each time you talk to a corsec aligned NPC, they tell you to go see the Captain located in Coronet. You can still take missions and gain more faction but this would just be a message before they talk to you. If you go see the captain he will act a bit like a faction recruiter. He will “promote” you to a certain standing with Corsec at that point and you are then able to get a few basic perks.

This can work with many of the other factions, even jawas and tuskens. But you still might lose another kind of faction depending on whom you are gaining faction with. This way you can be Neutral, Rebel or Imperial and still gain these perks. Though being part of one of the GCW factions would affect your standings with certain factions based on their relation. And as you gain better and better standings you get access to better perks.

So with this system I can see PA’s going valerian or hutt and having skirmishes. Or RSF aligned players scouring Naboo for trouble. How does this relate to Squad Leaders? Well I guess it doesn’t relate to just them but I just wanted to discuss the faction/neutral topic. But I do have an idea that is specific to Squad Leaders that is realated to the Pet handler discussion.

The idea I recently had that might make everyone happy, was to provide a skill for SLs to control the faction pets of each group member. Now I know this can be done by programming it to follow someone’s orders, but it takes a while and each player might have a different command. I’m not sure about the programming restraints but I see it working a bit like this: The squad leader uses /squadcontrol or some similar command. For each player that has a faction pet, a popup box will display asking if they want their pet to be commanded by the SL. If they pick yes then the pet will follow the SLs commands regardless of what they are programmed to respond to. If they pick no then they will still have control over them. This way a SL can "handle" a group of faction pets, but they require real players to do so which will prevent solo play an aspect that is appealing to many in the Squad Leader community. We could even RP it up a bit by requiring that a "radio backpack" be equipped (hey, chefs got their own new clothes... why not us ^_^) for the skill to work. Restrictions would be the players who own the pets would have to be in a certain range, and the amount of pets to be controlled would go up as you go through the levels (nothing at novice to prevent dabblers? not sure about how to start it out), and a max of around 5 pets (not including your own).

Tell me what you guys think, and sorry to hijack your thread Blktom.

No problem Irott, as the thread was created to encourage thought on the subject and bring forth new ideas. It is a suggestion.

To play devil's avoccate Irott, I think teaming the NPC's of all the players in the group to re-issue commands is all based on the idea that your actually with people. It infact does not solve the problem presented, that Neutral players who are not part of a group don't even get followers to help them, with the underlining problem that if your alone and not in a group that your 1 faction follower isn't enough to do any help.

If your with a group of people, the Faction Follower arguement is a moot point. My point is, to use a personal exsample, that did the whole Emporer's Retreat by myself. I have a great 'clan' (sorry, stuck on CS in terms to a group of players), but even they are busy doing other things or are on only at certain times. I then end up doing alot of 'parks' by myself, even missions. When I do these missions, due to the massive amount of points it takes to be SL, I am relitivily weak when it comes to personal combat. One follower, even a AT ST, doesn't help that much when all it will ever attack is Rebs (unless something is dumb enough to attack it).

This is why I press so hard that SL get more than 1 faction follower and that my SL brothers and sisters who are neutral don't get anything when they should. It sucks being a SL and being alone, no one else understands that besides other Squad Leaders.

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