This is what a jedi would look like with stats like the CDO. No way would this get through play test because people freak out over jedi.
Jedi whatever officer
Cost 22
HP 70
Def 17
Att 9
Damage 20
SA
Twin
Jedi gain stealth
Movement at the end of this Jedi whatever officer turn a Allies with a force rating and melee move 6 squares
Non unique jedi gain +4 att
Rapport Allies with a force rating and melee cost 2 less.
Stealth
Allies with a force rating and melee get +2 Attack, +2 Defense, and +10 Damage.
At the end of this characters turn, 1 Allies with a force rating and melee within 6 squares may make an immediate attack at +10 Damage.

I agree that this would be to powerful but so is the CDO.

If this piece is not a humour piece, and meant as a genuine solve to the malady the melee force user faces...
It is perhaps a little undercosted, but... it would achieve the objective, without making jedi broken.

This solve 2 problem -
first, that jedi are all too often confronted by Vong or by a wall of shooter/direct damage (guilty, I use much the Durge squad, with San Hill and Poggle, lobot and Gha Nackt...)
second, that the jedi burns through their force points by turn 2, making them a halfHP beat.

Yet, surely this piece make jedi nasty - the +40 to damages, could be quite nasty - oh,
I forget, the player must become adjacent to benefit... nevermind, they never make it through the gauntlet because they can't dodge a wrench, they can't dodge a dodgeball.

---

So, maybe a structural change to the game mechanic need to happen?
Locally, we play some Standard 200/250, some Dynamic Duo...
but, we do think maybe all non-melee attack require a 'save', similar to W40Ks "To Hit" and "to wound" system.
this seems to be the least burdensome change, which affect all non-melee. The more attack made? the less likely there is to hit, and it is more the 'to wound' roll that people fear.
Combine with the force renewal overhaul, in line with WotC's "StarWarsTradingCardGame", and there you have a very easy fix to the state of meta etc...

some also ponder about "simultaneous turn resolution" - it is something I long advocate also,
which make the game ever more fast paced!

though as I have long advocate,
to each their own. Since there are not anymore an 'official' tournament replete with full proper prize support (this is not like Texas HoldEm or other league, where you can live and be a poker player), how people house rule or constrain a tournament is up to them.
Some propose only a JJWarsTrek tournament - and if they have fun, that is the main thing... though, those character never happen

NB: I also think the 'hyper technical ultra-competitive metametagame" and the affect of the players, their mindset...
this is something that cannot be ruled upon - which cause much of the distortion with some new pieces made, and people who quest to win any way they can most expediently.

Except, for the CDO, these three things apply only to allies named "Commando Droid", which are really crappy without some major help.
The CDO should lose the cannon shot and maybe the Coordinated Movement. I like the idea of a Jedi/Sith commander giving out some good bonuses to low level force allies.

I keep finding people saying things that fall under a certain viewpoint I have tried to present on these forums.

Make a set that has 20 unique jedi (or Melee for the Mandos) that all have good ranged defensive capabilities and decent movement (tons of options here, Charging Assault, Twin attack, GMA, Ambush, Backlash, Master Speed, Leaping Assault, etc.) and some with great capabilities. Nothing over the top, but just solid defense. This way you have options for builds, you have successful, competitive squads, and you have fun.

I would use sub factions for this purpose. I made an OR piece (that is an idea) that I thought would be fantastic for melee Army of Light faction
http://www.bloomilk.com/Custom/23279/newar-forrth

For Republic I might start a sub faction. Legacy uses Council Members as a sub faction, I love that idea, but it can be something else. Mace's Strike Force could be cool
New Republic, someone a while ago made Praxeum pieces, that could be cool. Anyway, thought being that a new set just contains lots of melee pieces that are not stifling, are balanced, and are unique from eachother.

@jen'ari,
sounds quite an interesting prospect - like a TL20 set, those were fun

Yeah, I didn't take it to mean you were serious about making this a mini. I saw it almost as a satire of the CDO (that was not intended to offend anyone) to point out what seems to be an attitude towards design that favors non-melee attackers over melee (Jedi especially) that (at least in my opinion) does not accurately reflect (pun intended) the relative power melee force users have over many other characters in-universe.

Whether by design intention or by accident, I think Lou's post shows that SWM (not trying to slight designers here) design has the result of being not very "Star-Warsy" in terms of its reflection of what is powerful in-universe, and it's convinced me that the conversations that dozens of people are having already--that melee needs help--deserve a lot of support.

I think the fact that every designer has their favorites is a reason why there might be some design tendencies that perpetuate the lack of melee power. If a designer happens to have Boba Fett as their favorite Character, there may be some tendencies resulting from that that result in a lack of support for melee, even if the goal is to try to achieve some more melee power. Perhaps no designer consciously favors ranged over melee, but that doesn't mean the effect of their designs does not favor one over the other.

Even if the game mechanics inherited from WotC make it more difficult to design powerful melee pieces than powerful ranged pieces, it does not explain why, with plenty of really excellent and creative designers, lack of melee power is still perceived to be a serious problem ~4 years after the community took over design.

Perhaps the problem at its "root" is a WOTC system that favors ranged, and perhaps any pruning done will be cosmetic, but even if the problem is WotC's, I think 4 years after inheriting the game, it's good to keep trying to think outside the box (hopefully without calling people's viewpoints "crap" that "needs to die," by the way), and try to diagnose the issue, which may actually have something to do with an attitude towards design that has the effect of perpetuating melee weakness. (I emphasize "effect" because I want to make it clear that intention may not be the most important thing here).

Even when no one intends to favor ranged over melee, there are still differences in how the relationship between the two plays out. To throw up an example of two things I have seen talked about a lot lately, lets take a look at Commando Droids vs. Jedi. Perhaps some designers think that the game should move toward a scenario where these two styles should be at parity. Perhaps some designers are more of the opinion where parity is important, but the squads that are slightly above most are ones that would be more powerful in the movies (rebel heroes, Jedi, whatever), so that there are a ton of playable options, but the most powerful options would be something that very much reflects "Star Wars" (whatever that means).

Anyways, what I am trying to get to is that it is hard to address what to do about melee when it's so hard to identify what the synthesis of the attitudes among the most influential designers would be. Honestly, I don't really have much of a dog in this fight because I don't get enough chances to play to see anyone abused by the meta. I love seeing the diversity and creativity of each V-set when they come out. But I think a drawback to that diversity is, as others have said, a lack of cohesive goals. For me, a more casual player, the status quo seems a little more attractive than a more cohesive but less creative design pool. But I feel for those who are quite upset by the lack of melee power.

It seems like the current state of melee is under what almost everyone I've seen posting thinks is ideal. Since I doubt this is intentional, perhaps some uncomfortable exploration needs to be done as to why the effects of design don't seem to be matching the goals of design. I realize that previous sentence may be taken as offensive by some designers, but I hope you can see that I mean it as a point to move forward. I realize that it's a sensitive issue, especially with at least one other design team under the impression it has fixed melee, but if there is a disconnect between goals and results, it's important to address it.

This is an interesting opinion. And I think it's an important one to consider: Not everyone who plays this game and likes the V-sets knows what the opinions and goals of the designers are. They see that ranged is dominant and reasonably (I did not say correctly) conclude that ranged is favored.

But once we got more information, it turns out that it is very unlikely there is a conscious decision to have ranged continue to be more powerful, and the idea (that ranged being more powerful is a design intention) is, as was so eloquently and respectably put, "crap" that "needs to die."

However, there's a somewhat more uncomfortable conclusion that needs to be drawn; that if ranged is not favored (but in effect ends up being so), the goal has been for melee to gain some power relative to ranged, and so far we as a community have failed to achieve that goal, if the polls that have been up lately are at all accurate.

I realize that there may be some tentativity because it's possible that some pieces could go too far in making melee powerful, but I guess I see little need for concern. Ranged is already too powerful, say many. Why not err on the side of making the too-powerful pieces be the true hardcore characters from the movies?

If something has to be too powerful, it might as well be the same guys/gals that were powerful in the Star Wars Universe. And if there is a strong skewing towards ranged in the structure of the game, the melee pieces that are aggressively made might not go as overboard as we think. The new Ani-Obi seems to be a great start.

Over the years I've seen lots of designers say something about it. And I can literally think of 1 who hasn't said that melee figures need the most help. And all he'd say is that he thought it was balanced enough most of the time.

I've never once heard a single person say they prefer shooters and that helped their designs. The imbalance from personal missions has been in the opposite direction. So what's that tell ya?

For example, Jake K did 2 sets recently, he's a huge Vong fan. Guess what he made, lots of nasty good Vong pieces. I made a number of strong Vong pieces over the years too, not because I like Vong, but because they were the worst.

I've also made lots of melee type pieces and some help to them. But early on we focused more on balancing the factions as a whole to be more competitive. Now I think we can work more closely on the melee issue. But it will never be solved either, as it's a WotC issue.

Short of a ton of errata, a bunch of banned pieces, and changing a bunch of WotC rules, we can't ever make it perfectly work. Which is why you all did all that stuff to try to get there.

That said, I pushed for bringing back old GOWK ruling, I also pushed for more usage of the LS Techs, I gave melee pieces evade, and I'm pushing for an errata to Ysalmari (not likely to happen as people aren't inclined to change any WotC rules). Of course my argument for that is that Ysalmari was errataed by WotC through a glossary update by Rob years ago, when he found out it didn't work the way he wanted via Transfer Essence. I'm of the opinion that we can go back to the original glossary idea, fix it, and rebalance the power to where it should be.

Basic idea is to get it to work inside the bubble, but jedi outside it are unaffected. A random blaster from near Thrawn should not affect a jedi away from it. The ysl doesn't follow the laser bolt for example.

I didn't know the vset designers well than or now so you would know more than I about their personal opinions.

My point being personal opinions don't mean anything when determining preference.

Shooters have been given tons more prefernece. Suppressive Fire by itself is literally a counter for Lightsaber Defense, Deflect, Reflect, Bubble or anything that can stop it from a force user. Its in incredible counter. What counters shooters? Force Disarm (someone else's idea where you pull their weapon out of their hand)or Disarming Slash (get adjacent and cut their blaster in half) could be wonderful ideas.

I think the ideas presented can go a long way. I don't understand why the game shifts so far one way than the other if the design team (designers and pt'ers) is really focused on balancing the game. Once again it goes back to discussions about the design process in and of itself being flawed.

Outsiders perspective