Squad Leader Archive

I now took a bit of time to test a few things, as the questions repeatedly came up and nobody was able to give a definite answer.

1. Volley Fire:
- functionality
The ability works as described, i got an increase of 14.9% of damage, this is pretty close to the mentioned 15%, i would consider this ability to be working very fine. The only serious issue it has is that it creates lots of agro, making it risky to use in many situations. Additionally, the cooldown time seems too long, making the team attack without marked target if a target is killed within the duration of the cooldown.
- SEAs
I tested with a total of +12 on volley fire on SEAs. They did not influence the effect in any way. The damage increase was at 14.8%, which is a rounding issue. (Base damage of my attacks increased a bit as the SEA also had carbine accuracy on it.) The cooldown timer also didn't change as far as i was able to detect... as i have no stop-clock here, this info is not 100% reliable, a single second of difference i would most certainly miss.
- ranged vs. melee
Volley fire affects attacks from any range.
- Jedi
This is currently still untested as i had no Jedi at hand.
- Droids and creatures
The ability actually also works on them, the damage output of my droid noticeably increased when i put volley fire on the target.
(As damage output always was significally below 100, i don't give a percentual increase, but i assume that it's the same 15% like before.)

2. Steady Aim
- functionality
The increased accuracy with steady aim directly translated into a damage increase of 5%. Unfortunately the bonus is only given for the very first shot, the ability often is displayed with a duration of around 20 seconds in the buff bar but as soon as an attack is executed, the symbol disappears. Also, the damage only is increased with the first shot, followup shots return to normal damage.
- SEAs
Testing was done with a +5 bonus on steady aim. No change in the inflicted damage was observed, i also was not able to detect any other positive sideeffect of the SEA. As a sidenote, combined with a carbine SEA, the percentual increase was a bit lower, this probably is an effect of diminuishing returns.
- ranged vs. melee
The effect of steady aim can be observed both in melee and ranged combat.
- Jedi
This is currently still untested as i had no Jedi at hand.
- Droids and creatures
Steady Aim does not affect them in any noticeable way.

3. Rally
- functionality
The ability according to description gives bonuses to offense and defense. The defensive capacity i only tested against melee attacks, it resulted in a general damage reduction of 17%. As the description of the skill says that defensive skills are boosted, people with higher defense values will see less of damage reduction while people with less defense will get more out of this.
The offensive part yielded a gain of 4% of damage with ranged weapons, with melee weapons i managed to get up to a bonus of 5%. This again is probably due to the accuracy being boosted, with my ranged template i get diminuishing results on ranged weapons that way.
- SEAs
There are no known skillmods for Rally and no SEAs available.
- ranged vs. melee
The defence vs. ranged attacks i didn't test yet but i trust in it to work the same as the melee attacks. The changed i failed to find anywhere, the effect was observable for melee at least. The accuracy and thus damage bonus is noticeable both in ranged and melee attacks.
- Jedi
This is currently still untested as i had no Jedi at hand.
- Droids and creatures
They are not affected by Rally in any noticeable way.

Thus i dare to conclude, all the tested three abilites have noticeable effects, but only Rally seems to work flawlessly. Volley Fire creates too much agro, making it a bad choice in fights against social targets, especially when they are ranged. It also needs an adjustment of cooldown time, this is just too long. (To avoid several targets marked at once, it might be necessary to reduce duration.)
Steady Aim ends after one shot, considering the long windup time, this definitely makes it a worthless move. Would it last the complete duration, which can very well be 20 seconds, it would be viable.

I hope this information helps.

Edit: Additionally i would propose that the skill modifiers should actually do something. Currently SEAs are totally worthless, it would be nice if they would actually affect the abilites.

Message Edited by Sylow on 05-26-2005 06:30 AM

Message Edited by Zekk- on 06-01-2005 03:29 PM

/formup

i tested this at the village where stun is quite prevelent. This worked perfectly, never a one fail. But the action/mind cost is quite high, and drain your mind fast when used alot.

/boostmoral

works perfect and is a little usefull i found just can help alleviate some people of mega wounds, works well when using the higher camps to heal wounds (since docs are nearly non existent)

Thanks for testing all that out, had to be a little frusterating doing so. Guess I'l forego SL clothes and get more defense clothes.

Wait a minute.. SteadyAim only worked for 1 shot? Did you double-check that?

I know when I use it, the buff icon remains displayed for the full 20-seconds (pre Pub17 that is).

Define "double-check"... when i noticed that effect, i tested it for several times, but it always showed the exactly same behaviour.

- steady aim symbol came up
- i checked on the symbol, duration was over 15 seconds
- i shot at the target, the moment i fired, the symbol disappeared
- the first attack in the attack log did more damage than all the following shots.

The only thing we can still hope for it, that this is only on the SL like that, when i tested that, my complete team was only my droid any more. When i find time (including the requirement, that the servers are running again and i can log in...), i'll try to check if the state stays on the rest of the team, or how it behaves there.

Additionally, i want to correct some statement of my post here. I thank that the duration of volley fire should not be reduced. While a reduced duration and cooldown seem very desireable in PvE, i feel that the current status might be more helpful in PvP. Anyways, to make up for the drawbacks of volley fire, i would propose that another ability would be added in the novice SL bow: command fire. It would work like this:

- the ability adds a similar marker to the target, but make it distinguishable from volley fire. Making it green or blue cuold be the easiest way.
- the ability gives no damage bonus on the target, it only marks it.
- the ability has litte or no action use.
- there is no windup and the cooldown of the ability is one second, so it can be applied very quickly again
- the marker on the current target is removed when the target dies
- the marker on the current target is removed when command fire is triggered
- the marker on the current target is removed when volley fire is triggered
- an active marker of volley fire is removed (and thus the volley fire on the target is lost) when command fire is triggered

This combination would give novice SLs a capable tool to command his team without giving an easy damage bonus at a low level. Additionally, high level SLs would be able to continuously coordinate their teams with ease, even when volley fire is in the cooldown period.

I think this ability would be very helpful while also not unbalancing the class in any way.

/salute

Your work is greatly appreciated.

---

Sylow wrote:
Define "double-check"... when i noticed that effect, i tested it for several times, but it always showed the exactly same behaviour.

- steady aim symbol came up
- i checked on the symbol, duration was over 15 seconds
- i shot at the target, the moment i fired, the symbol disappeared
- the first attack in the attack log did more damage than all the following shots.

The only thing we can still hope for it, that this is only on the SL like that, when i tested that, my complete team was only my droid any more. When i find time (including the requirement, that the servers are running again and i can log in...), i'll try to check if the state stays on the rest of the team, or how it behaves there.

Additionally, i want to correct some statement of my post here. I thank that the duration of volley fire should not be reduced. While a reduced duration and cooldown seem very desireable in PvE, i feel that the current status might be more helpful in PvP. Anyways, to make up for the drawbacks of volley fire, i would propose that another ability would be added in the novice SL bow: command fire. It would work like this:

- the ability adds a similar marker to the target, but make it distinguishable from volley fire. Making it green or blue cuold be the easiest way.
- the ability gives no damage bonus on the target, it only marks it.
- the ability has litte or no action use.
- there is no windup and the cooldown of the ability is one second, so it can be applied very quickly again
- the marker on the current target is removed when the target dies
- the marker on the current target is removed when command fire is triggered
- the marker on the current target is removed when volley fire is triggered
- an active marker of volley fire is removed (and thus the volley fire on the target is lost) when command fire is triggered

This combination would give novice SLs a capable tool to command his team without giving an easy damage bonus at a low level. Additionally, high level SLs would be able to continuously coordinate their teams with ease, even when volley fire is in the cooldown period.

I think this ability would be very helpful while also not unbalancing the class in any way.

---

I like this idea alot. Would be a very handy ability although I would like it to be useable in conjunction with voley fire. You could mark high priority targets with volley fire and lower priority targets with command fire. Keep it so that only one target can be marked with each ability though.

yeah /salute to you

thanks for the info.
Glad at least 2 of our abilities work(3 if ya count the semi-useless retreat).
Which is kinda sad considering how many abilities we have. You would never see any combat prof with 8 specials,of which less than 3 are that actually work, and only 2 of them 3 actually do anything useful in combat.
Comparing us to other profs,I'd have to say A.We shouldn't stand for this. and B.I'm the surprised the DEV's haven't been trying to fix our abilities that don't work(instead of nerfing our abilities that do).

Message Edited by Sylow on 06-09-2005 12:46 PM