Squad Leader Archive

Hello All,

I just thought I'd start a thread where we can share some tactics that we find useful while leading a squad. PvE and PvP. I just started as a Squad Leader so I don't have a lot of the trees filled yet, but I have been leading my squads for the most part since I started this game (actually became a squad leader because I got tired of leading the way and not having a spiffy title)

Just a couple ideas to put out to the board.

PvP /rally I know it gives a burst run to the squad. Now on the battlefields brawlers die horribly while charging, but rock in defense. Rally could possibly work this way. When everyone spawns send a rally and have all your brawlers rush the opposing side. Its a bit zergish but might work. Also when you need that knockdown counter offensive it would be nice to have your fresh brawlers charging out after all the marksman dying from those nasty bleed shots. My buddy and and a brawler held off 7 opponents with being a brawler and the other a combat medic. So brawlers are awesome in base.

PvE Here I use one group in 2 squads. We tend to hunt snorbals (PETA would hate us) with me (a pistoleer) and brawler whipping on one target with team 2 witha pistoleer doing the same and a medic running between us healing and keeping an eye out for aggros.

These are just a few of my tactics. Thoughts, critiques and additions are most welcome.

Cai

Naritus Galaxy

unfortunately, this question is moot at the moment. Sure we as SLs do well in leading our groups in battle... but not because of our class! More because of our ability to lead, plan, and control situations in the heat of battle.

Our class skills and abilities surely don't help in this regard at the moment. It's sad...

Flookmastah,

I realize that the skill is a little jacked. But as you say we lead by superior tactics. Maybe we can't rely upon our skillset but we can rely upon ourselves having the best tactics available. I was just offering this as a way to help eachother and to help possibly be able to in a way sell our services to a wider audience. If squad leaders start getting known for not only bonuses but for being terrific leaders, we might get some of the notice that this class does need.

Best,

Cai

Naritus

First, excellent thread idea and thanks for suggestions so far. I've been reading this board for a while now anticipating but didn't want to post much until I had actually made Squad Leader which I did last night (woot!). Although new to the title, I've been leading groups for some time now and very much enjoy it (It seemed a natural fit to go to the Squad Leader profession) and feel like I have some useful advice. The bulk of my experience comes from leading groups of 3-8 primarily doing faction missions. Viva la revolution!

Here are my tips/tactics:

- It's easy to establish order and incoroporate new people into a group if you are already grouped with one or more people who trust your leadership and tactics. Any new group members quickly get with the program when they see everyone else following direction and especially when they see the enemies falling and the exp piling up.

- Have a system for your targets. Mine goes like this. When we approach the mobs, I identify the weakest one and announce that as the target. If there are more than one I'll announce up to three targets in the order we will attack them. This way everyone is on the same page even after things get crazy. If there are more than three I just take it as it comes and announce targets as the last identified one is about to fall.

- Always take out enemies from weakest to strongest. Getting one or more out of the equation early means you take far less damage overall.

- If everyone is using different weapon types make sure you tell everyone to work the Health pool so you are all attacking the same thing. If people attack different HAM pools, it's like having to kill an enemy two to three times.

- Have a 'Ready' checkdown system to make sure everyone is in position before the attack begins. After one or two encounters it becomes automatic. Everyone approaches, the target is identified, people get in position and give a quick, "rdy" in the group chat window. This way no one is caught unawares and everyone can be prone to get in those sometimes crucial beginning free shots.

- To divide loot, what little there is on mobs, I always ask that the group allow everyone to loot thier own mission corpses (when it's missions we're doing). This way it's basically fair and there's no conflict.

- I usually have the mission owner be the one to innitiate the attack. Since the person who innitiates usually takes extra damage this helps to spread that extra damage around and keeps group down time to a minimum.

- When doing missions, faction or otherwise, have people choose missions from different directions. (Most poeple all want to grab missions in the same direciton, figuring this will be more efficient. I don't subscribe to this theory, I think it's more confusing and can mean more faction enemies grouped in the same area. What I do is have one or two people grab missions to the W, the next two grab to the NW, the next two grab to the N, etc. This way you start out of town heading W and you can say, "OK Bob, we're folling you to your missions. Then when the ones to the W are done you go, "OK Sally, now we're following you to your missions." And so on. One note, this may not work as well if you have to travel extreme distances to get to any missions. If they're all within 600-1200m away from town this is a great system.

I hope this helps. Please offer any suggestions for improvement to these tactics if you think of anything. One thing I'm thinking of trying since attacking mind and action seem to kill enemies faster is, if there's enough in the group, have three or more pepole who target mind go after one target and three or more who target action go after another and see how that does.

Laren - Corbantis
Novice Squad Leader
Novice Carbineer

Great idea BlueCelt! I've been wondering some of these things myself. I've only been a SL a week or so I'm learning as I go. And I only have led pickup ad hoc groups ala Tusken Fort (not much actual leading or tactics get implemented there, just Attack! or Retreat!) or hunting on Lok ala /shout Hunting Group Forming...

That said I was finding it tough to get anyone to listen to my what-could-be-construed-as-orders, about all I could get a group of randoms to do was move in the same general direction, let alone start discussing tactics. Then in something of an epiphany, while hunting snorbals in fact, I was watching the health and mind pools drain slowly. People were shouting hit mind! hit body! tastes great! less filling! meanwhile bodies were dropping and the snorbal was living far too long. When we finally bested him and folks started running towards the next I wrote /sys wait! and hit my macro for /sys regroup at my position. They reluctantly came back. I then asked what everyone was shooting, pistol/rifle/carb/melee whatever declaring that we would be exclusively targeting whatever pool the majority of people could hit. It turned out that there were more health poolers (4 of 7 were pistol users + my 1h sword). After I gave the order that we only target health the next snorbal went down in record time with very very minimal group casualties. We were able to work together like this for a couple of hours with minimal downtime and everyone voiced that they were having fun and getting the all too crucial Mad XP. To the "well I won't get as much rifle xp if I cant use mind shot..." crowd. True. So for the very next group gathering at the starport I am going to request health pool only attackers, anyone else will be better served finding a different group. I'm not sure that my little epiphany constitutes atactic in the true sense, and it's probably old news among higher SLs, but it was news to me and served us well in this instance.

Now, what I'd really like to see in this threadis some actual military/SWAT down and dirty in the mix tactics. As in Flanking Manuevers, ambushes, guerilla tactics, room clearing rainbow 6 tactics, fireteam movement,supply logistics, you know seriousSun Tzu type battle decidingsht. Anyone up on this stuff, or have good links to sites that do?

Thanks,

-Psquire, Ahazi Aspiring Squad Leader