Squad Leader Archive
Thread: Everything I know about Squad Leaders Philosophy, Character Creation, Play Guide and More!
Introduction
Squad Leader is currently an underpowered profession, see my thread on this issue if you wish to discuss. However, in time, this will change, and the profession will be balanced with the other Hybrids. By the time you qualify to train in Novice Squad Leader, the profession could very well be all we dreamed for! 
Squad Leaders are not like any other profession in the game. Squad Leaders gain XP only by being in groups, and more specifically, only when they are the leader of the group. This means, unless you enjoy not only grouping, but leading groups, Squad Leader is not the profession for you. Squad Leader is not for the timid or shy. However, if you enjoy leadership and playing a support character, Squad Leader is definitely the profession for you.
It is important to remember that Squad Leader is a support role, one of the few in Star Wars Galaxies. Your job is not to do damage. Your job is not to take damage. If you want to do these things well, consider another profession. A Squad Leader is all about making a group as good as possible.
Philosophy
I believe three key traits are essential to being a good Squad Leader in SWG. These are Decisiveness, Understanding, and Responsibilty. Decisiveness is the willingness and ability to quickly make good decisions based on limited information. Not every decision you make will be correct. And many times you won't have enough information to make the best decision. However, a Squad Leader that is Decisive will find many a follower.
Sometimes, others will try to make decisions in the group. This is where Understanding is most important. By Understanding your group members concerns, you can make compromises, without ego nor tantrum, and ensure the happiness of the group members, as well as their combat effectiveness. A Squad Leader that is Understanding will find many a follower.
Finally, for when your decisions are wrong, or you simply don't understand, there is Responsibility. Being willing to humbly admit your mistakes and propose how you will correct such actions in the future are key to Responsibility. Things will go wrong, we are all human, and you must accept that now. Hopefully, those around you will accept this as well, and understand that you are taking on a great task. Responsibility is also about being mature, and placing the interests of the group above your own. More than any other trait, a Squad Leader that is Responsible will find many a follower.
Character Creation - Species
At this time, there are very little differences between the species in SWG. There are a few factors to keep in mind, however. As a Squad Leader, your Action and Mind pools are the most important. Species with bonuses to these (or at least, no penalties) will have an advantage.
None of the species bonuses are Squad Leader related. The Humans receive a +10 Leadership bonus, however the Leadership skill is no longer in the game. Personally, I enjoy the Mon Calamari. Others prefer Zabraks since their special abilities (Equalize and Vitalize) as well as their defensive bonuses are hard to overlook.
Character Creation - Stats
Early in your career, before actually becoming a Squad Leader, you will probably find Strength and Action related stats the most important, since the combat abilities you will be using the most draw upon these (as well as keep you alive). Once you begin using your Squad Leader special abilities, however, you will want to migrate your stats significantly towards Action and Mind. Many of those abilities cost around 150 Action and 150 Mind per use!!
Also, do not overlook the Cost Stats (Strength, Quickness, Focus) or the Regen Stats (Constitution, Stamina, Willpower). High Cost and Regen stats can vastly decrease downtime and significantly decrease the need for a large pool. Strongly consider maxing your Cost and Regen stats at the cost of your pool size.
Character Creation - Profession
Start as a Scout. Unless you plan on doing lots of Artisany things and want the Survey equipment, starting as a scout gives you the crafting tools, traps, and camp you need. Do not start as a Marksman, there are no advantages to doing so. You should immediately train in other newbie professions, so this decision is not a big deal besides equipment.
Character Creation - Starting Location
There are two factors to consider here, if you are not picking for role-play reasons. First, some areas are more popular with "newbies" and players who have no clue. Most of Tatooine is often crawling with them, for example. Theed, Naboo is also renowned for this. Second, some areas are deserted. Most of Rori and Talus can be very hard to find decent groups or training on. Because of these factors, I would recommend starting in one of the middle-population Corellia or Naboo towns. Both of those planets are also excellent newbie hunting grounds.
Other Useful Novice Professions
Each newbie profession costs 100 credits and 15 skill points. You can surrender the skill and recover the skill points if you ever decide you no longer want the skills. These have no other prerequisites, you can gain these skills as soon as you get off the shuttle.
- Marksman
- Obvious, required prerequisite to Squad Leader
- Medic
- Simply getting Novice Medic allows you to use /tenddamage and /tendwounds. These let you heal damage and wounds without doing any crafting or using any consumables. They cause Battle Fatigue and Focus and Willpower Wounds when you use them.
- Entertainer
- As Musician or Dancer you can heal your own Focus and Willpower Wounds, and Battle Fatigue (when in a hotel or cantina). Coupled with Medic, this makes you very self-sufficient.
Qualifying for Novice Squad Leader
The prerequisites for Novice Squad Leader are
- Ranged Weapon Support Specialist
- Exploration IV
- Survival IV
These are in the Marksman, Scout and Scout trees, respectively. #1 requires Combat XP, #2 requires Scout XP and #3 requires Wilderness XP. You should pursue all three of these trees simultaneously. Do not get Ranged Weapon Support Specialist, and then go start your Scout skills, as that will be much slower and much more inefficient.
- Combat XP is granted everytime you help kill something, at 10% of the Weapons XP granted (rounded down every time).
- Scout XP is granted everytime you harvest hides, bones, or meat, as well as from successfully using the /maskscent ability against aggressive creatures.
- Wilderness XP is granted everytime you disband a camp, the amount of XP is based on the time the camp was active, how many people visited it, and how many wounds or other activities were done in the camp.
Weapon Of Choice
As a Squad Leader, you are required to get Ranged Weapon Support Specialist, so obviously you're using a blaster of some sort to get that XP. Because Combat XP is required for Novice Squad Leader, you will probably find yourself qualifying for Novice Pistoleer, Novice Carbineer, or Novice Rifleman before, or around the time, you qualify for Novice Squad Leader. Thus, you will become proficient with a weapon... so which one do you choose?
I strongly recommend Carbines. As a Squad Leader, your goal is to make the group better. Part of this will involve "crowd control" or using special abilities to make monsters run away, get stunned, bleed, etc. The Carbine has a number of useful crowd-control special abilities. These include FullAutoArea, ChargeShot, WildShot, and SuppressionFire. While other weapons may be more useful as raw-damage or in PvP, I have found the Carbine to be very complimentary to Squad Leadership.
Simple Advice
Be a courteous, responsible player. It is appropriate to /tip players who give you training 10% of the value of that training (ie, 100 for Tier 1 skills). It is also appropriate to /tip entertainers an amount equal to, or up to twice the amount of, the battle fatigue they healed. This should amount to around 100 to 300 per trip if you aren't constantly in town.
Play Guide - Early On
Goal Get a feel for the game, and learn your own capabilities
End: Two or three skill boxes up the three prerequisite trees.
- Run delivery missions to get a sufficient number of credits to clone, insure, buy some skills, and some equipment. 5 to 10k should be sufficient for this. Take two city-to-city (same planet) missions to the same city, and take two city-to-city missions back to the original city. At around 600 credits per mission and 150 credits per shuttle trip, you should be making around 2100 credits per round trip.
- Clone and insure in your town of choice. If you do not do this, you will remain cloned at the Space Station, and will not be able to clone without wound penalties once your three free newbie deaths are used up.
- Get a weapon of the type of your choosing. You can either fight thugs outside town and hope they drop one, or buy one off a player, or have another player make one for you. Do this now, so all of your weapon XP you gain is with the correct weapon. A CDEF weapon is sufficient for now.
- Hunt. You should focus on soloing light blues, blues, and maybe whites until you have a good feel for the game and your capability. Stay around town until you get your 1000 weapons XP (shouldn't take long).
- Train (either from a player or an NPC) in your Intermediate weapons skill.
- Head out of town, 1000 meters out, past the no-build zone so you can build camps to get Survival XP. Look for lairs of Durnis, Paralopes, Squalls, or other slow, non-social animals. They should provide a steady stream of XP with minimal risk. Avoid cats and insects, they are social, fast-moving, and dangerous.
- Harvest every corpse, using the radial menu. You want to harvest hides twice as often as you harvest bones. You do not want to harvest meat. Use the radial menu instead of macros to ensure you are attempting to harvest a resource that exists on the corpse.
- When you're hurt, set up a camp, use CTRL-1 and /tenddamage to heal up, and then do some dancing to remove the mind wounds, and craft a new camp. This should provide a good amount of time and activity in the camp, and you should be able to get around 200 XP per camp this way.
To Dos:
- Upgrade your equipment!
- Consider simple armor. Bone Armor protects against blaster shots (only), and Mabari Armorweave protects against melee damage (only). Choose a few pieces depending on your most common opponent.
- Upgrade to a better weapon (if available). A well-made CDEF can do 30-61 damage. The first level of weapons beyond CDEFs start at 40-90 damage, and move well beyond 55-120 daamge.
Play Guide - Moving up
Goal: Identify your strengths, what you enjoy, learn what other players can do, and learn how to lead a group
End: Qualify for Novice Squad Leader
- You may need to move to tougher areas at this point to get good XP. Further from towns on starting planets can be sufficient. Rori and Talus are tougher versions of Naboo and Corellia. You may find you want to move onto Endor or Yavin IV, as well, but be warned those are expensive to travel to, considerably more difficult, and lack many luxuries of other planets (like Squad Leader trainers)
- Try forming, joining, and leading small groups (6 to 8 players or less). These are small enough to be personable and friendly, they are easy to manage loot/harvest and camp orders, and can be much more rewarding. Be wary of 20-man zerg groups, while you may get lots of XP, you will likely have very little fun, not learn much, and often spend much of your time arguing.
- Set up some macros that help you identify targets. I regularly use:
/wary I see a [%TT].
and
/proclaim My Target Is [%TT]. Get Ready to Kill It! - When forming a group, there are some things to do before starting the killing:
- Agree on a goal for the group. This could be to achieve an amount of XP, to play for a set numbers of hours, to reach a certain location, or just get as much XP as possible before everyone passes out.
- Set a waypoint on the CTRL-V Planetary Map that the group can move towards when there are no spawns nearby that are satisfactory. This helps with being decisive. All group members should be able to see this waypoint if you create it while grouped.
- Establish a loot/harvest order and a camp order. These are the orders in which people get turns to loot/harvest and camp.
- Discuss what targets are valid. Someone may really not want to hunt Gungans, another person might know that snakes can be very poisonous and dangerous. Its better to ask now, than to accidentally engage a creature that should have been avoided.
- Discuss what tactics you will use. There may not be many needed. You may want to specify a puller, a /warningshot user, a lair-shooter, or a main /assist person. You may want to discuss what to do if a large number of creatures are engaged.
- When the hunting begins, you will most likely be the person deciding what to attack next. It is key to be Decisive here. While you may not know much about the creatures, simply picking something and being confident can go a long way towards making the group effective. Avoid targets that you learn are too weak or too strong for your group. Use the con of the creatures, but don't depend on it.
- Be stern with those playing poorly, inappropriately, or causing unnecessary risk or downtime for you group. Grouping is a priveledge, and players who cannot work within a group and not get everyone killed have no right in groups like yours.
- Kick these types of people from a group if necessary. The other players will likely be glad you did, and you can all continue much more effectively.
- Determine when a camp is needed or not. Realize that XP from Camps is very valuable to many people, so its better to camp too often than too little. But remember to not have too much downtime or players will get bored or frustrated. Generally, if XP from camps is not at a premium, if you are sure you can survive another fight, do so!
- It will be your responsibility to settle disputes of loot/harvest and camps. Being Decisive and Understanding are key here.
Location of Squad Leader Trainers:
You now qualify for Novice Squad Leader. Novice skills cannot be taught by players, you must spend the 5000 credits at an NPC trainer.
They are located at:
- Bestine, Tatooine On the edge of the town is a circle of tents, the trainer is in one.
- Moenia, Naboo Between the hotel and the guild, on the opposite side of town from the cantina.
- Dearic, Talus Right in front of the combat guild.
- If you find anymore, let us know!!
To Dos:
- Upgrade your weapon - As a real Squad Leader now, you have different needs. Doing damage is not your goal anymore. You should consider having a weaponsmith craft you a custom weapon that has very high speed and very low specials cost. This will allow you to use your various weapon specials quickly with low cost. While odd, tell the weaponsmith to not put importance on damage
- Consider reducing the amount of armor you have - As a Squad Leader, you should be taking very little damage, and thus armor is less important. Also, armor reduces your stats, which are vitally important to using your specials. A fully-armored Squad Leader is a player who doesn't know his profession well!
- Cool clothes - Now that you wear a Squad Leader title over your head, outfit yourself appropriately!
(Rest of Guide Posted Below)
(This guide is sole property of myself, and may not be reprinted in any form without expressed permission of the author.)
(Sorry for the missed bold tag above, the Preview didn't look like that)
Play Guide - Novice Squad Leader
**From this point on, you must group, and be the group leader, to get Squad Leader XP.**
Goal: Get tremendous amounts of XP, establish a core group of friends, and use new skills
End: A reasonable amount of Squad Leader skill boxes are gained
- Hunt exclusively on Endor, Lok, Dantooine and Dathomir now, they will provide much more challenge, fun, and XP.
- Start working with bigger groups if you feel like (up to 15)
- Find reliable players of important professions who you work well with, and have similar play-times. Find a good brawler, pistoleer, and medic for sure.
- Always have one of these known players in your groups to ensure you have at least someone competent!
- Always be bringing in new people to your groups, you never know who they'll become someday! Can never have enough friends.
- You don't need Scout or Survival XP anymore, let those who need it, have it.
- Learn to tackle bigger and more difficult creatures and large groups of creatures.
- Learn to use the /sysgroup ability.
- Get the /rally command, and use it for big battles. It adds a To-Hit bonus for a minute or so to the whole group.
- Get the first box in Group Terrain Negotiation, this will greatly speed up the non-scouts in your groups over big hills.
- Get the /volleyfire command, and use it for directing the flow of battle. It can be used to switch people to a specific target, but can be a bit buggy.
- Get the first two skill boxes of Group Melee Defense, since most of the damage a hunting group takes is Melee.
- Get the first skill box of Group Ranged Defense, to help against the occasional ranged attacker.
- You should end this phase with a progression of 1 / 3 / 2 / 2 in the Squad Leader trees, reading from left to right. This gives you all the basics.
To Dos:
- Get the best weapon available - Befriend some weaponsmiths, at this point in your career you should be equipped with the best gun that can be made
- Find other Squad Leaders to share training costs with
- Give up skill boxes you no longer use as much to free up learning capacity for your advanced professions
Play Guide - Advanced Squad Leader
Goal Master Squad Leader, fight in the most dangerous places, against the toughest creatures
End Master Squad Leader box
- Should have no problems finding a group, your friends should be begging you to form a group whenever you log-on.
- No need to take newbies into your groups, they contribute little, can be easily killed, and often don't know what they're doing. Consider a Must-Show-Advanced-Profession-Title policy to join the group. A Novice Marksman would be turned away, but a Novice Pistoleer or Novice Ranger has shown they at least know enough to get somewhere.
- Don't tolerate any newbie-like play in your groups.
- Discover what you really love and go for it!!
- By now you've learned all you need to!
Conclusion
Squad Leader is a rewarding, enjoyable profession unlike any other. These are simply some tips and ideas I've come up with throughout Beta. As the game changes, or as you have other ideas, please post them here.
Thanks, and good luck!
- Vol
Once And Future Squad Leader
Naritus Server
(This guide is sole property of myself, and may not be reprinted in any form without expressed permission of the author.)
Madagain, future SL
Volatris, there is one point to consider when choosing your race:
Wookies can't speak Basic!
Now, seeing as how I'm playing a wookie character with a goal of hitting Squad Leader, you'd think I was deterred by this little fact; not so! It is, however, a serious consideration.
Yeah, thats an excellent point. I considered including it in the guide. But of course, at this time the language barrier is trivial for everyone but the newbiest of newbies (which frankly don't really interest a Squad Leader).
Wookiees do have immense stats... and like I said, SLs don't need armor... so they potentially the best race for Squad Leader, since they have the potential for the largest stats, and the Wookiee penalties are very negligible for a Squad Leader.
(A Crafter of newbie-usable stuff... A Brawler... these are professions where being a Wookiee might become a hinderance, but still not that much so)
To me, the biggest hassle about being a Wookiee is seeing "[Shryiwook]" on every single chat line... chat spam annoys me to no end!
thanx a bunch for all the tips on the profesion Volaris
Imhaving trouble making my character heal himself with dancing and as medic , do i have to like target myself or something in camp or what
Yeah target yourself (CTRL-1) before using /tenddamage.
You don't need to do that for dancing. Just remember you have to be in a camp or cantina... and you can only heal Battle Fatigue inside of a Cantina!
- Vol
Your document is very well written and layed out (I give you a lotta credit on that), but I'm somewhat opposed to a "manual" for being a squad leader. The squad leader is not something you just readhints from achart and pick the profession and do it. If you personally cannot lead people or figure out tactics on your own common sense, I recommend notbeing a squad leader. There's a certain natural instinct you need to leadpeople successfully... it's not just a matter of plugging in boxes in some profession you put experience points into. And no offense to anyone doing so, but if you really have to read a manual on becoming a squad leader, you shouldn't be one then
- Z
I believe the bonuses do affect pets, however I cannot say I have personally verified this.
And I agree, as I state repeatedly at the top of the document, if you are not a natural leader and comfortable with organizing hunting groups, SquadLeader is not for you. However, if you are one of those people, and just not familiar with the mechanics of SWG, then the guide can be of some use. No one should follow that stuff word-for-word, it just gives people an idea of what it all might involve.
- Vol