Group Melee Defense Context 1 (Source)

http://soe.lithium.com/board/message?board.id=squad_leader&message.id=4932

At the master level a squad leader has the following passive group bonuses.

• +60 Group Terrain Negotiation
• +60 Group Burst Run Efficiency
• +30 Group Ranged Defense
• +30 Group Melee Defense

We confer these "benefits" to our group mates (and ourselves) all the time at no cost to any of our pools, they're always on.

(added in after confirmation) Passive group bonuses like terrain negotiation, ranged defense, and melee defense are applied to your group galaxy wide. You could be at the Genosian Cave on Yavin 4 and your group could be at the Rebel Outpost on Rori and they would still have these modifiers active.

Group Ranged Defense

This is a hotly debated topic. I think it's one of the main draws of the Squad Leader profession yet few seem to know what it does and a great many believe it's not working. I'm not going to debate that right now, but I am currently taking Noules' post at face value. If you have not read it, or it's parent thread in Pistoleer I suggest you do so:

Group Ranged Defense Works: http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=squad_leader&message.id=4561

Weapons Accuracy Test : http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=pistoleer&message.id=14370

In a nutshell, every 2 points of +Ranged defense adds +1% chance that your attacker will miss you on any given shot. It stacks with other personal defense mods that people get from their own weapons professions. At the master SL level (+30) you essentially casue your enemies to miss your group 15% more. That's an additional 1 out of 7 shots that your enemies will -miss-.

It should be noted that this bonus can be nullified if the attacker has very very high accuracy (The "to-hit" cap is +95. If the (attacker's accuracy) > 95 + (Personal Ranged Def) + (Group Ranged Def) + (other mods?) then the attacker is still going to hit 95% of the time and your bonuses will be moot.

I think a lot of contention on whether or not this skill works properly stems from the fact that there's no on screen notification to players that "Mob X has just -miss-ed you due to your squad's defense bonus" or anything along those lines. No feedback leads people to believe that it's not working. If you look at the calculations derived in Noules' thread you'll see that our +defs are rolled in with a whole mess of others, there's no real easy way to say why an enemy -miss-ed on a particular shot, he just hits or he doesn't.

Now we can debate the effectiveness/gimpedness of a +15% bonus at Master all we want. At least now we have a starting point. Big thanks to Noules for his work.

Group Melee Defense

I'm not going to say a lot about this one except that, for the moment I believe that, (a) it works, and (b) it works exactly like Ranged Def (+15% more missed attacks against your groups).

Group Terrain Negotiation

Master GTN adds 60 points to all groupmate's personal Terrain Negotiation (which is how fast they can run up/down hills and crawl speed). My understanding, and please correct me if I'm wrong, of TN is that it is capped at +100 and the first 1-50 increases hill speed and the 51-100 range increases crawl speed. The only people that get their own terrain negotiation skills are Scouts (+50) and Rangers (+50). +60 Group TN makes all non scouts roughly as fast as Novice Rangers.

The main value in this skill is that it allows non-scouts (generally medical personal) to travel with your group at the same speed as the scouts. If you've been in a group without this skill you'll often see the radar showing your group stretching out in a long line with the scouts in front and the docs huffing and puffing in back. With just Mobility III (+50 group TN) you will see you entire squad stick together at the same speed. this will get you to your destination faster and reduce the chance of a rear straggler drawing aggro (the ones in the rear are most likey the worst equipped to deal with aggro).

Perhaps future uses of this skill will see more people crawling quickly in battle (being prone does make you harder to hit AND improves your accuracy to hit) and also might allow more combat people to drop Scout and Explore IV altogether and use those skills to bring more firepower to the table.

Group Burst Run Efficiency

Essentially this skill reduces the everyone's cost to use Burst Run. I do not yet have Mobility IV so I don't know how low the cost gets. But at +60 it's +10 better than master scout. I suspect suspect the cap is at +100 but that's a wild arse guess. I suspect any Explore IV scouts (+40) with group BRE (+60) might be able to Burst Run with 0 HAM costs. Burst run efficiency is a percentage reduction in the cost of a burst run. So at +100 your burst run is 100% less cost, or free. This does not modify the amount of time you can run or how long it takes to get the run back. It only modifies the cost.

On the surface this might seem useful for speeding long planet wide marches. But the time it takes for you to be able to Burst again after running is like 5 minutes or so. In that time people's mind and action are going to regenerate to full on their own. The /retreat skill (Tactics III - provides a short group burst run, squad-leader excluded) is about the only thing we have for actually speeding long marches until they impliment /forcedmarch.

I think Group BRE's only value is allowing groupmates to still be able to burst run out of danger when their HAMs are deathly low. Ususally most people will try to escape before it comes to that, or at the higher level battles it won't come to that because high mobs can one hit kill. I don't think it will be a bonus that is taken advantage much if at all, but when it is used hopefully it saves a life.