Squad Leader Archive

Well I can tell you what has worked for my pa on endor raids.

On person pulls the mob ranged.

Unarmed engade the mob.

Ranged engade the mob.

Docs and medics heal the unarmed people.

Pretty straight forward.

As xp is based on damage done the unarmed may not get as much as the ranged. But without the unarmed the ranged wouldn't be getting much at all as you would have joe pistol and jerry rifle running all over kingdom come kite'in the mobs. With docs and medics try to follow joe and jerry around.

So basicly your unarmed stop the mobs and keep them stationary. Ranged people use thier body/head/leg shots to knock the mob down. Healers keep the unarmed folks on thier feet during it all. The xp the unarmed get this way is still better then then soloing most mob types and with less down time. The ranged folks will see the lions share. For the medic types it is all now gravy. You should beable to keep the mobs rolling in so you not only get quality in the sense of high xp numbers but you get quantity in the numer of pulls you can do before you have to camp.

OK, I'm going to request some more specifics, if you can.

What specials are each role using?

Is the unarmed player using some form of knockdown? To my knowledge, this yields very low XP, and I'd rather not have to do that.

This is pretty much the common strategy from Beta, which was developed when the knockdown moves did damage and gave XP.

How much damage do the unarmed guys take? I've never needed a medic before in my ranged-only groups... is it absolutely necessary if I'm using brawlers?

Am I forced to tell brawlers: "You'll get bad XP, but its better than soloing. Thanks for helping the rest of us get big-time XP at your expense" ?

Hrmmm...

*goes off and contemplates*

Heh, you guys have never seen a Teras Kasi artist at work then. I was in a group doing missions up at the Emporer's Retreat, and the only melee-user we had was a Teras Kasi artist. He said he only had the novice and two other skill boxes, but the damage he was doing was incredible, any enemy he walked up to got annihilated. On top of that, he almost never got hit. He was one of the few who didn't blow a mission due to incap the whole time.

Anyway, that group functioned something like this; we had a designated puller, this guy with a full suit of chit. He would open fire, then the rest of us would join in. Our TKA would run up to the target and beat the crap out of them. The medic we had would start healing the puller until the focus of the target shifted to the TKA. If the target was part of a faction (like group of rebels), we would determine a killing order, then we would assign one person to each mob. When the puller fired, the people who had mob assignments would fire once at thier assignment, then focus on the main target. Once the main was dead, the group would focus on the next target in the killing order. The TKA would start absorbing that damage, with the medic still on him. Everyone got decent XP, and the medic was thrilled because the TKA would come out of a fight with a huge amount of wounds.

There doesn't seem to be much more strategy than that though without someone getting gypped out of XP. They need to make special moves have a higher yield of XP, maybe have a fake damage modifier or something.

I'm a bit confused...

You say "On top of that, he almost never got hit."

And then you say "Everyone got decent XP, and the medic was thrilled because the TKA would come out of a fight with a huge amount of wounds."

These seem contradictory...

Please help me understand.

(But yes, it sounds like there's far less strategy involved here than I presupposed, its just a matter of having a decent TKA)

Hello everyone,

I'm looking to promote a discussion here, an exchange of ideas.

I want to hear what strategies you use in combat with groups that have both melee and ranged group members, that also ensures fair XP for all of them.

I have led primarily ranged combatant-only groups for a while lately, and I do not feel the tactics we are currently using would allow a melee fighter to join us without either dying frequently, or getting almost no XP.

My knowledge of what skills melee fighters can bring to a group is also unfortunately limited.

I'm not going to taint the discussion by saying thetactics I'm using now, or what my thoughts are on changes, I want to hear uninfluenced, raw ideas about this topic, hopefully producing some ideas that are very innovative and fresh because they're not thinking within any bounds I'm setting.

So:

• What are the basic (or detailed, step-by-step) tactics and strategies that you employ to have medium to large (6 to 12) member groups of mixed melee/ranged take on tough creatures on the adventure planets, with minimum death and maximum XP for all involved?

Thanks for your time and responses,

- Vol
Novice Squad Leader, Novice Carbineer
Naritus Server
Fighting the toughest creatures with the best people and the most sophiticated tactics.

Just pure speculation, would it help to assign one ranged person to use a threaten shot type of attack every fifth or sixth move? It seems like it would get the mob off of the brawler for a few seconds each time, and might help the brawlers live a little longer against the tough ones. Does threaten shot work in PVP?

I would think against tough mobs/PVP mass state attacks of all kind are a very important key. Having a mixed group would grant you access to different kinds of state attacks(dizzy, blind, etc.)

I'm new to mmorpg's but this game is great and I think the support/organizing aspects of squad leader is going to be alot of fun.

p.s. thank you for all the info Voltaris

Jungle

scout, marksmen, medic, bartender

Starsider

A group is not balanced without at least one brawler and possibly more. It's hard to balance the exp, but the best way is to have the melee close in and taunt to keep the enemies off the riflemen. I can't speak for overall tactics really, because I've only played in small 4-5 man groups with friends.

We've been pretty successful with a couple brawlers (or melee) and a few range and a couple medics. The range actually starts the aggro. The brawler in our group has Taunt. So once the range draw man has taken half damage or so, the brawler taunts to take the aggro. The 2 melee attack while getting healed by the medics, keeping the enemy in one placeso the range is on their knees. When the taunter is down to low bars (usually low mind since that what the medics cant heal) then we throw a bunch of threaten shots in there. That 'll pull the enemy off long enough for the main melee to pull away, and the next melee to take the aggro. Our medics are also our range, so the melee gets good experience because the ranged is often taking time to heal. But I do think it seems like the range may get more xp, but actually, our brawler got to level 4 unarmored about the same time we got level 4 in our ranged weapon, and he plays less than us. So it seems to work out pretty well.

Let me clarify; the TKA would almost never get hit. But the mobs we were fighitng were so strong that when he DID get hit, he pretty much always got some wounds. I would say he probably got hit once or twice per mob, so if we were fighting 3 mobs that would mean at least 3 hits that gave him wounds. Maybe not a HUGE amount, but enough to keep our sole medic busy.

Xarche's "The VW"

This is from my personal squad usage. Your mileage may vary.

You set up two fire teams. Each team has at least one dedicated medic (combat medics are best, but doctors, or even someone with just stim pack ability will work) per 4 total team members. Fire team size varies on your squad size, but optimal is 8. Your melee will be at the forefront, followed by your medics, then your ranged.

Setup: Each fire team will line up in a rough diagonal line, with ranged specialists going in order due to weapons range (pistols first, followed by carbines, with rfiles last). Each fire team meets ata point, forming a rough V shape with the point towards the intended creature target. This position will take some time forming up at first, but after the first few kills, your squad will learn quickly, and forming up will take all of 5 seconds or so.

Execution: The lead puller (usually the one with the best armor) will advance to the forefront, and draw the creature in. On it's incoming, the melee will advance slightly forward to engage the creature. The medics will begin open healing on the melee. Ranged will creep forward to get a better position, eventually inverting the V slightly so that the two fireteams are forming a shape more like a W. At this stage, the melee are now surrounding the creature, the ranged are at optimal range, and the medics are in a centralized position so as to be able to ranged heal anyone (if combat medic) or run up and stim pack as needed.

Results: For the biggest red cons even with a squad of 15 to 20, this works wonders. One addition is having a dedicated medic to drag incap'd out of the way and revive them up.

Cons: People that do not listen, get over eager, warning/threaten shot without being told too, etc. Can make a bad situation worse really quick.

This might be a little off what you are saying but ima explain my group that i was in (not necessarily leading but i could feel how it was working) and you figure out what works for you.

Members: (general)

2-3 pistolers

1-2 carbineers

1-2 marksmen

1 medic

1 brawler

Target:Tortur farming

I want to note that all of those figures are ranged because i didn't know exactly who had what skills only that the torturs took LOTS of body damage which leads me to believe that many of us were using body shot or body shot two yet he was losing mind and action (not much) so its possible there were some riflemen and carboneers. Anyway no one was insanely skilled, i would say we were all probably still within the marksman tree. the medic though was mastered (working on novice doctor at the time). He just had lots of stimpacks though i assume. We managed to take on EVERY tortur with minimal losses (if any). There were 3 important people that seemed to make each attack work regardless of the rest of the party.

The brawler: He basically tanked and pulled. We allowed him to pull because we knew he would wanna take the most hits and stay within melee. However typical of brawlers (and i don't recommend this) his HAM bars scaled down. What i mean is, his health was REALLY high, action medium, and his mind was absurdly low. More on this problem in a sec....

The Medic: The medic was a personal friend of mine and another good leader (although he didn't lead, just tried to direct as the leader off the group kinda was self centered). As long as he stayed on the brawler, he could keep him alive indefinitely. This whole strat of course works best on single mobs but it could be spread to mulitple mobs if you simply had one of each of these guys. Anyway, he managed to keep the bralwer alive mostly but again, head shots (which seemed to happen randomly with torturs) took him down quick when he recieved em. The medic tried to stay as close as possible while staying just outside healing range (this making a slight buffer so that he is less likely to be targetted randomly by the tortur).

Me (ok the backup tank): No im not a brawler, im actually a pistolmen but I actually recommend pistoler for backup tank. Why? Well you could have two brawlers i suppose but pretty much every brawler is gonna have low mind (it seems to be a plague related to brawlers) while pistoleers don't necessarily have low mind (a lot of them dual profession with something that uses mind such as medics and artisans). I actually went out of my way (as Human) to completely balance all my HAM bars, which technically makes the best tank (better than the brawler) since the medic can heal me with almost the same efficency (900 health vs 1200 on brawler really isn't much of a difference) and i have enough mind to last longer. It generally worked perfect (till some inventory bug held up our medic and we all died lol). Should I have tanked instead? No because my minimum range modifier woulda sucked and the brawler IS good at melee. But I do make the best backup so that others (such as more medics or riflemen) don't get attacked.

Having those 3 people, we found that we were pretty good. Everything else is fluff. I don't mean that you don't NEED all those marskmen, only that each one isn't necessary to the strategy as much as it quickens the killing time. We managed to take a tortur out in about 1-2 min per tortur with anywhere from 2-3 min downtime (medic helped). Since only the brawler and me were taking damage those were the only people we waited on (and sometimes the medic if he needed to refill his HAM). Then back to killing more torturs which give nice xp and harvest xp i might add).

Thats what we used and it worked quite well, we used it till the wee hours of the morn and even as we lost a few members, it simply took longer but wasn't really harder or anything.

When teaming with friends I've noticed that unless ranged people "let" the brawlers get in there first, then against less than red cons the target will be dead before the brawlers getmuch xp.

I think there are some verygood advanced tactics to be practiced here (for example, using suppression fire to keep a target on its knees while the brawlers pound it), but that mixed brawler/ranged groups are going to be very frustrating for low level brawlers (and especially forlow level aspiring squad leaders).

It takes a group of very disciplined individuals to pull off the tactics required to get the most out of a mixed group, but the way that exp is currently distributed discourages using complementary tactics. Every fighter in the team gets the most exp for themselves by using their most powerful damage special as often as it cycles.

So, it's against the marksman's personal best interest to continually suppression-fire a criter while a brawler does most of the actual killing with thehuge melee damage bonuses againsta prone opponent. Heck, it's against the marksman's best interest to let the brawler hit something at all.

And so unless the group leader (squad leader) enforces some sort of tactical discipline and makes people take turns at dishing the suppressive fire and melee knockdowns (to go with the above example), the odds are high that the melees will get little more than table scraps. Squad leaders who wish to avoid conflict with exp-hungry groupmembersmay need to sacrifice their own advancement in order to shoulder a larger burden of support-special firing as opposed to damage-special firing.

Yep basically melee always gets the short end of the stick. Being a twice over TKA master in beta I can say this with absolute confidence.

We take more damage. We get more wounds. We have more downtime and we get less xp for it.

Yet for some reason I can't find myself going ranged...


The way groups compensated for it in beta, is group leaders would FORCE the ranged people to leave the lairs alone, and we would do melee only on lairs. Lairs used to give huge xp, so this would balance out to some extent. Then lairs took a huge xp hit.

Now there is no way to compensate for it. XP for groups needs to just divide somehow. This would also help squad leaders, because then they could concentrate less on doing damage and more on keeping the group working effectivly.