Bio Engineer Archive

I am currently 3,2,4,3 in BE. BE CH seems over done (IMHO). Looking at BE Ranger, seems like a path not many are going. Yet seems to be a good fit. Anyone have any advise?

It actually is a good profession to get.... You can track the hard DNA to get.... It would seem worth it... I want BE/CH just because I love to sell pets so I train them and when I get Transfer I will start selling more of them....

I'm gonna get alot of people from the choir saying at how I'm preaching because I'm a BE/Ranger but the fact is that it's an exceptionally good combination that looks to have been made even more potent under this new system. You don't even need to be a master ranger to have all of the fun, all you need is 4/0/4/0 or even 4/0/3/0 if you want to save some skills points for elsewhere, the tracking 4 box just gives you the ability to find players using /areatrack (I don't use it that much but it has come in handy occasionally) plus you get a nice meaty harvesting bonus plus the trivial skill of seeing the chance to hit for the animal you examine.

The main benefits from Ranger though are multiple for making clones:

The ability to outrun most animals, for a bio-eng this is very handy. Since a ranger is able to spring up hills like hell and covers ground a fraction faster than normal it means you are actually able to outrun species like the Rancor without burst run and actually hold your distance fromKimogila using burst run which lasts a bit longer. Those are however master scout benefits on the whole though.

Super crawling, is something which is invaluable. With wayfaring 4 you crawl around the same speed that most people can walk. However with maskscent you gain a 25% bonus from being prone so this really is very handy for moving in onto a potential donar from 64m without going at the snails pace usually found without Ranger skills.

Areatrack, is something which any bio-engineer would love. Especially under the new system where you're going to be after very specific dna. However for it to be really viable you need tracking 3 since that gives you the direction, name and distance all of the animals within a 500m radius. This skill will eventually be expanded so that a Ranger can spawn their own mini-mission by wanting to search for a certain animal and it gives you a string fo waypoints for a lair, group or single member of that species which is spawned especially for the ranger even though it might not have been in the area already. The full details for this new tracking skill was on the designer report about 2 months ago but they have only added /areatrack at the moment.

God-like maskscent, really makes dna sampling a breeze. You can quite easily burst run past CL30 enemies and run up to CL50 critters without it breaking on you very much. Yes, it does go sometimes but nothing is flawless. It also works up to around CL100 and possibly higher with tissues although I haven't tested that yet. While the maskscent skill mod does reach +100 at master scout you get very notable benefits from the camoflage skill mod which must help to bolster the maskscent skill further.

The additional harvesting skills, are very handy since we burn through organics like it was paper.

Superior Creature knowledge, used to be just a nice bit of triva and help you to avoid enemies with disease or see that a species was of a certain CL rating. Under the current system only the CL rating was genuinely valuable information however under the new one the ability to see special moves too is going to be fantastic since you won't need to reference a database each time you look at an animal and wonder if it's worth sampling.

And that is pretty much it, there are other lesser benefits like the message which tells you when your being stalked by animals that can come in handy when your concentrating on something else or when you wonder if nearby animals have been altered to your presense. The ranger trapping skills allow you to reliably trap CL50 critters so adhesive mesh and the tranquilizer trap (it slows their movement a huge amount) can be helpfuly when your trying to run away after an aggro. Then there's the Ranger camp which is basically a nice cool camp with some decent healing abilities plus it'll keep lesser aggro mobs away while your crafting.

So all in all yeah, I'd say the benefits are plentiful.

Tal... sometimes it seems we are the only Ranger/BE advocates out there.

I would only say this:

If you play BE to make Stimpacks and Tissue Components then you don't need Ranger. However, if you make a lot of clones then having Ranger (at least Wayfaring 1-4 and Tracking 1) is a can't-miss. In fact, with the upcoming changes to cloning I couldn't be happier with my decision to take Ranger skills. I can run willy-nilly (yes, willy-nilly) all over the landscape of any planet without fear of being attacked.

Thanks Tal,

You got me convinced

Well frankly given the new system the wayfaring skills aren't nearly as important since you won't be making CL50+ critters all that much so the master scout maskscent will surfice as long as you get used to crawling over to the higher mobs rather than walking or running.

Just to add my tuppence.....

Due to getting bored waiting for the changes, I dropped down to Novice BE and decided to go for Master Ranger and I have to say, it's been great fun. Gaining trapping and camping XP can be a chore, but you only need those skill boxes for master.

With the new BE changes going in, I'm having a hard time freeing up enough skill points to keep novice BE, so once I master Ranger (I'm to close not to), it's going to be a tough decision on when to drop it and go full on BE. Tracking things is so cool, I'm making a fortune filling orders for hide and meat, so it's a nice sideline if you tire of the grind. It's not enough to make me give up CH (I want to play with the toys I make), but it's a proffesion that's just that bit different, which makes a nice change

When considering going Ranger, also think about the other skills you will not be getting. I can't kill things worth a **edit**. My stims would be better if I had Doctor. I can't feign death. I don't have a vendor of my own.

On the other hand, how many of these things can't you buy or find in a PA? None of them. Going Ranger forced me to depend on others. But I can make some kickass clones.

Things I find really useful are seeing the critters CL, and maskscent. I could probably drop back to Master Scout and not lose a heck of a lot. But the future specific critter tracking will be very nice.

I thank you all for your responses. I will hold till I see what the patch brings and go from there. Once again thank

Rangers have god-like skills for staying undetected so get rifles and conceal shot so you can kill just about anything in the game given enough time and accuracy so you don't get picked up. With the new HAM system it becomes even easier since the bar regenerates faster.

i am also an advocate for BEeR. The only sucky thing is that I can either control a level 19 pet after the ch nerf or get +10 to my bowcaster. all the other options dont really appeal to me. Another thing being a master ranger adds is my role in a group situation becomes more important. Right now, I use my pet stims on the pets, throw traps at our targets and /tendd the incapped people. this keeps the docs only busy with keeping people not-dead, the targets all get debuffed, and the pets stay alive. last night, we had 3 people in a group including me. 1 tank (some kind of mite) pet and 2 utility probots. 1 player was a master dancer, working on comando, the other was a droid engineer, working on rifle. On endor, we were taking out bolle bols. Pretty much the whole time, the mite had about 5 bols on it, I was keeping it alive with my pet stims, range debuffing the main target and keeping the other 2 alive with my leet 66 point tenddamage. lots of work, but fun

I am a master ranger that just started BE (0/4/3/4) and so far it seems ok. I had to drop a lot of other skills to do this. I have 0 weapon skills now since I decided to take merchant along with BE/Ranger (mad cash!), and I dropped ch, so now I am riding around on a kaadu (equivelent to a bicycle), but being master ranger youcan do withoutweapon skills since camo/maskscent works very well, and you can run through hills like the wind. If you dont want to completely give up weapon skills, then Ranged Support 3 and one box in another ranged weapon skill is pretty good to at least warning shot off any creature you cant keep away from. Since you already have master scout you might invest the 16 points in CH (1/1/0/0)to get <25 level pet like a dewback mount.

I am considering dropping master ranger and the trapping and frontiering skill lines so I can free up skill points for other skills. This way I can still track, harvest and camouflage (except dathomir, but if you have plenty of materials, any master ranger would be happy to make a schematic for you for a small fee), which is really all i need for some good dna sampling.

Since I wont be hunting much I figure my cash flow from petstims, additives, andthe 2 accounts worth of harvesters I have runningwill be enough to be able to buy my resources from other people.

I am doing this for a while until I have collected a sizable amount of cash to not have to worry about money, then I will go on to master other classes.

-- Newb

Intrepid

Master Ranger, BE (0/4/3/4), Master Scout, Ex-Master Marksman, Ex-Master Squad Leader

Question on camo kits --

Each level of wayfaring grants more kits. Is that the capability to make the kits, or use them, or both?