Development Cycle Archive

Traps on humanoids. Plain and simple. I'm sorry..but if I were to stick a thorn in your eyeball..you'd be just as blind as any other animal. Poison gas...dead. Tranquilizers..sleepin like a baby. It's a simple fact, we're NOT that high above animals on the food chain (go sit in a tiger cage and tell him how superior you are, hehe) so the whole 'traps can't hit humanoids' is just dumb. Besides..it would finally explain why on Naboo a bounty hunter actually needs master scout, lol.

As for in-combat..Scouts don't fight fair. the goal is to not fight at all, and if you do..kill the enemy asap. Bonuses to cover, conceal, crawlign while concealed, etc. Traps useable on people and animals both. a higher radar radius than other players. a master scout should get the beginning stages of a ranger's tracking, very small chance, can only see that there have been creatures there recently. Master scout camps should have the ability to repel animals (their knowledge of animal behavior-hunting, masking scent-exploration, and of dealing with animals and humanoids-trapping as well as their camping skills, would allow them to build camps that would maskscent everyone in the camp. (at ranger levels, this could become actual cover). Camps should not vanish during combat, but rather running combat from camps should be encouraged. it's how wars are fought, with forward bases of operations, not by running 500 miles through a forest, setting up camp for 30 seconds, and calling droids and pets. A scout's camp should stay up until disbanded, or until the scout logs out. It would make no more lag than now, because people already leave abandoned camps all over. and each player is allowed one until it's disbanded.

A scout's tent should function as a small dwelling. Healing wounds should be done IN the tent, not out in the dirty ground. The tent itself should allow healing, dancing, music, whatever. Ranger camps should allow healing battle fatigue even. Rangers are all about being able to survive in the wild, without town runs for healing. That's not to say scout camps should make entertainers obsolete. someone would still have to DO the entertaining. But having a stable camp would give doctors, entertainers a place to pull out crafting droids, set up stimpacks, etc, and wait back there with one or two guards, perhaps pets, or troopers while the combat profs do their thing-combat-supported by combat medic healers. When they've cleared the spawn, or wave (ie at tusken) and are in need of healing, they retreat back to base, where waiting docs, chefs, entertainers are there to clear their mind, heal their wounds, and patch them up. THEN, and only then, would the scouts fill the role in the GCW that they fill in the real world.

What defines the Scout role in combat?
Scout is non combat-profession except for traps. It (for ranger profession too) should be more important for scouting in a faction area.

What offensive abilities?
More ability to attack at creatures, not for NPC or people.

What defensive abilities?
- Improvements block vs creatures

What unique abilities?
- Harvesting for hides, meat and bones and milk of course.
- Only to used a binocular (100m), that should be very useful for scouting! Can NOT be used to other professions except commando for a special binocular.
Crafting of binocular can only by artisan. Higher level binoculor for master scout, can used for more long distance (above 150m)
- Novice scout has standard binocular in his/her inventory.

What defines theScout role in combat?

• As scouts are not primerily combat units their defensive role should be fairly strong.


• Their ability to understand the creatures of the galaxy give them very valuable knowledge which should be relayed to group members.


• Trapping should be their main focus in combat and restricting the progression and stength of enemy creatures/pets. However, it would be useful to allow trapping of NPC's and players, snares, pits etc.. are basic ideas - more below.


• The ability to scout the area and inform the group of enemy presence and power. Possibly finding weak links in a defensive structure??


• The support ability to allow group members to re-group, heal and trade.


• Overall: intelligence, enemy combat restriction, facilitating group co-ordination and regeneration.

What basic combat elements should they possess?

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  Primarily trapping, no other weapon other than a knife should be standard for scouts. They are not there to be cannon fodder. They need to be able to restrict the forward march of the enemy, confuse and scatter them and finally remove them from the field when possible.

What offensive abilities?

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  Traps giving Bleed, Blind, Dizzy, Drop Weapon (forces weapon in hand to return to inventory), HAM usage drains (effecting the Strength, Quickness and/orFocus ensuring the enemy use of specialactions costs more)are examples of offensive traps. At present Trapping powers are very subtle so it's often worth Scouts training in a simple weapon to use instead of traps.

What defensive abilities?

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  Traps consisting of Slow down, Hold, Stun, Scatter (force all enemy Squad Leader modifiers to temporarily be removed), Fear (retreat), Incap blow to pets (useable when a HAM bar is down to 25 or so, followed by a Force Store trap)and HAM regen restrict (effecting the Constitution, Stamina and/or Willpower forcing a slower regeneration rate) should all be accessable to non-Ranger scouts and be visibly powerful.


• At Master level their ability to understand creatures gives them the ability to have a chance of pacifying enemy pets (at Ranger level this skill obviously develops to allow the pacifying of greater level pets and even the ability to redirect the creatures target to a member of the owners party)

What unique abilities?

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  The ability to toggle on a radar overlay that changes the colours of enemy dots to a gradient from white to red according to the creature's difficulty level.


• 
  
  The ability to use the radar to examine creatures. Hovering over the dots gives name and lvl, it's radial menu allows examine.

Should add what advantage or asset in group combat?

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  Scouts offer the unique abilities of traps to slow down the attack of their enemy creatures.


• Provide the group with camps to heal and regroup.


• Provide valuablebiological resources to the crafting community.


• The ability to scout the horizon for enemy. This could be applied to the groups radar. When the group expand their radar distance they always see the enemy creatures that are within the scouts radar. This may well be a Master level and could also only beavailable to group memberswhenledby a Squad Leader.

How could/should they interact with other professions?

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  The Squad Leader should be a Scout's main partner in combat. The infomation gathered by the Scout can be redistributed to the rest of the group when a SL is in charge. Information such as weakest resistance. This could be used by the scout using the command /shoutweakness this shouts out to all members to use electric weapons for instance. Equally /shoutstrength could do the opposite. These commands only work if a SL is leading though.


• Scouting the area can give the SL vital information to prepare it's group in combat. Therefore there should be some sort of basic camo before Ranger to hide from combat units such as AT-AT/ST's NPC's and even Turrets and scanners. A Scouts knowledge of trapping allows a chance of avoiding mine fields and disarming them - Master Rangers could even re-program them to self distruct - damaging all nearby units, or even turn them against their owners.


• Co-ordinating with SL's could allow for some artillery combat. Scout's 'paint' a waypoint for artillery controlled by the SL and his/her team.

What interaction / dependencies should exist with other combatants?

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  As mentioned above skills that require a SL to lead before they are available would enhance the group combat enjoyment.


• There needs to be some reconstruction of merchants. Allowing merchants to create business partnerships giving financial deals according to faction/class/status or simply name would allow more scope for Scouts to craft a business selling their harvested resources, traps, camps, but also waypoints. Information is a valuable resource that is not really implemented in the game for us players to bargin over. Allowing vendors to sell maps (essentially Waypoints with a descriptive text) will get those scouts out and exploring - as more and more static dungeons and other POI's turn up (that will hopefully not appear on our POI tabs) scouts will be able to trade their knowledge of the environment to others.

What should be their unique role in the Galactic Civil War?

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  In one word: reconnoissance. It would be nice to allow HQs to build a radar shield so randomly wandering a planet with the overlay map on will not reveal these structures and those within them. A scout on the other hand CAN see through these radar shields. This would mainly apply to IMP scouts of course, though I'm sure the Empire want some of their bases kept secret from prying eyes.