Group Melee Defense 1 (Source)
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).
