Squad Leader Archive

Okay, I think we all agree that the new formula for calculating Squad Leader Experience is painfully ill-thought. Especially since the experience requirements for Squad Leader were based on the OLD formulas. Rather than moaning about the new formula, let's discuss the formula we'd LIKE to see... I'll toss out a few ideas:

Original Formula: Workable, but poor because it doesn't account for the success of the group asa whole.

New Formula: Thankfully accounts for group success, but encourages AFK "leadership" because your own contribution to the kill is *reducing* your leadership xp. Also, forumula doesn't include any multipliers so we're working with raw Combat XP, but our skills require xp levels more akin to weapons (ie x10)

The other "support" professions receive experience for using their skills (scouts, medics, entertainers)... Surely they aren't expecting SL's to get xp for using /sysgroup (the ONLY Novice Squad Leader skill), so if we are going to get experience for using our skills, we're gonna need some REAL Novice Squad Leader skills (...what a concept!).

The nature of Squad Leader is (supposedly) a hybrid of a "support" profession(Scout), and a Combat profession (Marksman), so BOTH sides should be taken into account, IMHO. Our own contribution shouldn't be detracting from our experience like the new system does, and neither should the rest of the group's like the old system did.

With all that in mind let's suppose the formula worked as followed: Total group combat XP (Yourself included) x Number of peopleyou are leading= SLXP.

Let's see how this would work out... A kimogila gives 17,517 weapons xp which means 1,752 combat xp. In a group of 20 this would mean:

Under the old system: Minimum, i.e. if you do 0 damage yourself = 0, to a maximum ie. if you do ALL the damage yourself): 1752 x 20 x 2 = 70,080

Under the new system: Minimum ie. if you do ALL the damage = 0, to a maximum ie. if you do NONE of the damage: 1752

Under the proposed system:1752 x19 = 33288

So this system wouldn't allow for the massive "powerlevelling"or punish you for supporting your teamrather than just hording all the xp for yourself like the old system, nor would it punish you for doing damage like the new system. However, like the new system, this DOES leave room for AFK levelling, but that needs to be addressed in almost ALL professions.

Regarding AFK levelling: I would suggest that the devs make it so that you do not receive ANY type of experience if you are AFK. Specifically for Squad Leader experience, you should only get credit for group members within your clip plane (and if they turned off xp for ALL afk'ers you wouldn't get xp from other people just /following you while AFK). Also a mechanism that required that you actually CONTRIBUTED to the fight (by healing, fighting or just using your active SL skills) in order to receive slxp could help this. Granted, all these suggestions are going to be a little tougher to code, but this sort of thing needs to get worked on eventually, REGARDLESS of what formula used to calculate SLXP.

You were writing this as I posted, so I'm going to copy and paste this into my thread.

Hah! You were reposting this as I was reading your thread!!

LOL.

Good to know we're on the same page...so to speak. Bottom line is that we're trying to be constructive with our chosen profession. Let's just hope the devs read and do something about this before the last few of us finally give up hope.