Bio Engineer Archive
Thread: Question about Ranger camo
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Wongawago
Sat Apr 24, 2004 8:57 am
#1
Just wondering if there's any BE's out there that have master Ranger? And my main question, does having camo help get you close enough to the high levels (mutant rancors) on Dath to try and get a sample? With just master scout I'm getting detected most of the time before I can even get close enough to try and sample.
Thanks!
Bendi_James
Sat Apr 24, 2004 9:28 am
#2
I would like to know this as well. I have Explore 4, +25 Mask Scent and also Drink a Jawa Beer befoer tryin g to sample MR's. I still get detected. How good are the Camo kits for Dathomir....anyone tried them?
Tal-N
Sat Apr 24, 2004 10:26 am
#3
Camo kits are a deathtrap, if anything they seem to work better on NPCs rather than animals. So for dna sampling you only really need maskscent. One thing you might not expect but actually happens is that the camo skill mod actually improves the effectiveness of maskscent in practice. Once I hit wayfaring 3 I found that against mutant rancors it almost never breaks unless there is a group of them and against anything that is under CL70 I can run over to them with pretty much no risk of it breaking.
Remember that running lowers maskscent effectiveness by 25%, walking and standing gives you the default effetiveness while crawling gives you a 25% bonus to its effectiveness. Typically the value of the maskscent dictates what CL rating it can have a successful maskscent check against around half the time. So at +75 you have a 50/50 chance against CL75 mobs and at +100 you have a 50/50 against CL100, you will find however that you cannot use maskscent on anything higher than CL120 even though you can have a +125 maskscent skill mod. If you are a master scout then you have +100, running over to the mutant rancor lowers the effectiveness to +75 which is why its breaking so much. Naturally larger groups of mutants make things worse again.
meroc
Sat Apr 24, 2004 10:38 am
#4
As far as I can tell, Camo works for NPC's, Mask Scent is for critters. It may be that Camo also works against critters, but I haven't found anything that verifies that.
DialUp
Sat Apr 24, 2004 1:37 pm
#5
My room mate was a master ranger and we would go out looking for mutants. It was no better than maskscent. It broke on everything, like gaping spider hunters, just as quickly.
I read in the ranger forums that maskscent 4 0 0 0 is better than the 1 0 0 0 Ranger camo skill. I have not read the ranger forum in some time but it was an issues of theirs. Camo was just about useless, compared to mask, unless you wanted to hine from NPCs.
The only good thing I saw was - As soon as your mask broke, a Ranger could apply camo to you without waiting. This was nice when sampling mutants. I could pretty much keep moving towards them if I had a ranger following me around (assuming his mask/camo did not break 
)
)
Wongawago
Sun Apr 25, 2004 8:45 am
#6
Thanks a lot for all the info! Now I'm wondering if I should just forget all of ranger except tracking and use the rest on my points for some combat skills. Oh, and being a wookie drops my mask scent down to a max of 115 with cloting but I do keep a supply of beer. Drunk wookie sampling DNA......
Drunk wookie sampling DNA......
Zip_Moonblast
Sun Apr 25, 2004 9:25 am
#7
I believe that camo does work for both critters and npcs, mainly because the game won't let you turn on mask scent after you've turned on camo. In my experience, as others have said here, it's no more effective than mask scent, although it does last longer (if not broken), including staying on when you reappear at the cloning center and so forth. For BEs, its main use would be avoiding npcs while going after creatures to sample.
DND_Cas
Sun Apr 25, 2004 10:52 am
#8
As a Ranger I can tell you that Camo is massively broken (e.g. it breaks against very low level critters) and at the end of the day isn't any better than maskscent against critters. I'd stick with Mask Scent if I were you.
LordIAm
Sun Apr 25, 2004 11:16 am
#9
I will have to disagree with some of you....... I am a master ranger and am currently sampling Mutant Rancors on Dath as I type this, or should I say standing in a pack of mutant rancors. The kits arent broken, they work.
ArthurDentOnBria
Sun Apr 25, 2004 2:20 pm
#10
DND_Cas wrote:
As a Ranger I can tell you that Camo is massively broken (e.g. it breaks against very low level critters) and at the end of the day isn't any better than maskscent against critters. I'd stick with Mask Scent if I were you.
I don't think cammo is broken, but it's incredibly poorly implemented. What is so stupid about it is that I believe (from memory) you get some /conceal skill (+10 or whatever) at wayfairing 1, and at that level your master scout mask scent is much better. Then you have to get *2* more boxes of wayfairing before your /conceal skill mod goes up. Then you don't get cammo kits of any planets where you'd actually need it until the 4th level box, so arguably /conceal is completely worthless until wayfairing 4, at which time it becomes somewhat better than mask scent. But you really have to ask yourself whether that amount of skill point investment (and hassle in creating the darn things) is worth it. And don't forget you don't get the dath cammo kit until *master ranger* (good lord! who thought that was a good idea?). Dabbling into the wayfairing line of ranger is unthinkable.
Oh, and as far as the issue about cammo kits working on NPC's, this is a big point of debate in the ranger forum. The devs has stated very clearly that cammo kits were not meant to work on NPC's which of course pissed rangers off to no end. But some rangers maintain that the "bug" where they work (somewhat) against NPC's is still there. Anyhow, don't get /conceal thinking that you'll be hiding from nightsisters. Because even if it does work now it may not any day.
Message Edited by ArthurDentOnBria on 04-25-2004 02:23 PM
RancorPoker
Mon Apr 26, 2004 1:29 pm
#11
ArthurDentOnBria wrote:
DND_Cas wrote:
As a Ranger I can tell you that Camo is massively broken (e.g. it breaks against very low level critters) and at the end of the day isn't any better than maskscent against critters. I'd stick with Mask Scent if I were you.
I don't think cammo is broken, but it's incredibly poorly implemented. What is so stupid about it is that I believe (from memory) you get some /conceal skill (+10 or whatever) at wayfairing 1, and at that level your master scout mask scent is much better. Then you have to get *2* more boxes of wayfairing before your /conceal skill mod goes up. Then you don't get cammo kits of any planets where you'd actually need it until the 4th level box, so arguably /conceal is completely worthless until wayfairing 4, at which time it becomes somewhat better than mask scent. But you really have to ask yourself whether that amount of skill point investment (and hassle in creating the darn things) is worth it. And don't forget you don't get the dath cammo kit until *master ranger* (good lord! who thought that was a good idea?). Dabbling into the wayfairing line of ranger is unthinkable.
Oh, and as far as the issue about cammo kits working on NPC's, this is a big point of debate in the ranger forum. The devs has stated very clearly that cammo kits were not meant to work on NPC's which of course pissed rangers off to no end. But some rangers maintain that the "bug" where they work (somewhat) against NPC's is still there. Anyhow, don't get /conceal thinking that you'll be hiding from nightsisters. Because even if it does work now it may not any day.
Message Edited by ArthurDentOnBria on 04-25-2004 02:23 PM
Agreed. My main has been a ranger twice (now levelling rifleman) and I dropped it until they fix the prof (likely never). Whenever the devs break (or nerf) something, they state thatsaid modwas never meant to work that way. In October, Iwould run circles around nightsisters. Two days ago I was detected by them every time. Camo is simply broken. Why, you all ask? Back in the day, the skill mod for /conceal stated that the ranger would have the ability to camo against npc's.Come publish 6, and the ability stopped working as it had. Presently,npc's will not detect me about 40% of the time (estimate). When they do, about 80% of the time would draw an aggro from one of the mob npc's (not the whole group). Among the 40%, I'd get scout xp for passing the group (prior to the scout xp cap). If I were overt and faction farming, the stormtroopers would not aggro me even if I was tef'd. So, the elements where the code works is still there. I have a feeling that the /conceal code was sopoorly written andunorganized that when the old dev was promoted, thereplacementsaw the mess and decided to 'redefine the design and hope we don't notice.' Either that, or they broke it on purpose to force people out and sumarily remove the prof.
Forcreatures,/conceal works great at master. It really only breaks while I'm speeding by on my swoop. I could run straight to mutant rancor without a problem. With maskscent/camo clothing at +25, I was walking up to enraged kimo's without drawing an aggro.
RancorPoker
Mon Apr 26, 2004 1:40 pm
#12
ArthurDentOnBria wrote:
DND_Cas wrote:
As a Ranger I can tell you that Camo is massively broken (e.g. it breaks against very low level critters) and at the end of the day isn't any better than maskscent against critters. I'd stick with Mask Scent if I were you.
I don't think cammo is broken, but it's incredibly poorly implemented. What is so stupid about it is that I believe (from memory) you get some /conceal skill (+10 or whatever) at wayfairing 1, and at that level your master scout mask scent is much better. Then you have to get *2* more boxes of wayfairing before your /conceal skill mod goes up. Then you don't get cammo kits of any planets where you'd actually need it until the 4th level box, so arguably /conceal is completely worthless until wayfairing 4, at which time it becomes somewhat better than mask scent. But you really have to ask yourself whether that amount of skill point investment (and hassle in creating the darn things) is worth it. And don't forget you don't get the dath cammo kit until *master ranger* (good lord! who thought that was a good idea?). Dabbling into the wayfairing line of ranger is unthinkable.
Oh, and as far as the issue about cammo kits working on NPC's, this is a big point of debate in the ranger forum. The devs has stated very clearly that cammo kits were not meant to work on NPC's which of course pissed rangers off to no end. But some rangers maintain that the "bug" where they work (somewhat) against NPC's is still there. Anyhow, don't get /conceal thinking that you'll be hiding from nightsisters. Because even if it does work now it may not any day.
Message Edited by ArthurDentOnBria on 04-25-2004 02:23 PM
Agreed. My main has been a ranger twice (now levelling rifleman) and I dropped it until they fix the prof (likely never). Whenever the devs break (or nerf) something, they state thatsaid modwas never meant to work that way. In October, Iwould run circles around nightsisters. Two days ago I was detected by them every time. Camo is simply broken. Why, you all ask? Back in the day, the skill mod for /conceal stated that the ranger would have the ability to camo against npc's.Come publish 6, and the ability stopped working as it had. Presently,npc's will not detect me about 40% of the time (estimate). When they do, about 80% of the time would draw an aggro from one of the mob npc's (not the whole group). Among the 40%, I'd get scout xp for passing the group (prior to the scout xp cap). If I were overt and faction farming, the stormtroopers would not aggro me even if I was tef'd. So, the elements where the code works is still there. I have a feeling that the /conceal code was sopoorly written andunorganized that when the old dev was promoted, thereplacementsaw the mess and decided to 'redefine the design and hope we don't notice.' Either that, or they broke it on purpose to force people out and sumarily remove the prof.
Forcreatures,/conceal works great at master. It really only breaks while I'm speeding by on my swoop. I could run straight to mutant rancor without a problem. With maskscent/camo clothing at +25, I was walking up to enraged kimo's without drawing an aggro.
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