Merchant Archive

I have no expectation this will ever come to pass. But from time to time we all spout off our loony ideas just to see if they strike a chord. But the devgods are a deaf lot, so they rarely hear what we are saying. Nonetheless, we can always dream.

As a MWS/MArtisan/Merchant, my combat skills will be gimped once the CU hits. Like many others, my biggest problem will be surveying/harvesting. I can think of ways to mitigate the problem (take up scout for maskscent, use an X34 so red dots are visible on the radar sooner), but I face the reality that my daily harvester runs will probably include a few trips to the cloner. What to do?

This will not solve all the problems, but it could take one out of the mix. The merchant quest would be available at some level of merchant. It should be above novice but below master. Let's just say that you'd have to have at least one line filled out. The purpose of the merchant quest is to protect yourself against aggro NPC's on any given planet. This would be available to you on one planet only. I spend most of my time on Talus. This would protect me from Chunkers, Binayres, rougue CorSecs and Aa'kuans (the others seem to be firendly to me). You could do the same on the planet of your choice.

The quest would allow for several possiblities. Depending on the way you wanted to play it you could seek protection from the law (the Empire, Cor-Sec, etc), the criminals (Hutts, etc.) or you could seek to open a working relationship with the factions hostile to you. You could work to put criminals in jail for the law, fence goods for gangs, produce goods for either one or seek to bribe people in one capacity or another to accomplish your goal. Once you have completed the quest, aggro NPC's won't attack you either because they view you as being protected by a stronger force or because you have earned their trust. The approach you take is up to you.

This shouldn't be like a theme park or a Corvette style mission. Maybe not as long and involved as a Jedi grind, but we are taliking a significant bonus here. It shouldn't be easy to get and you should have to show some merchant skill to accomplish it. Missions would include things like delivering stacks of resources with fairly specific qualities (20k steel, 500+SR, 700+OQ); acquiring a schem for a new good and finding someone to make it. then selling a set quantity, bribing an official (with a sliding scale low bribe = low chance that official will respond) or just your good old kill this guy mission.

The main thing is that the missions should be varied and there should also be a chance you fail at it. So even if you try to bribe the Prefect with a billion credits, there will always be a chance he has ST's arrest you for attempted bribery. Maybe the best way to approach it is to have a meter. When you reach a certain point on that, your quest is completed. But if you fail on a task, you lose points.

The basic thought here is that in real life, a merchant would try to find ways to deal with potential threats. What route they took to accomplish that would depend on the type of person. And there is always a chance that what they did would fail and they'd have to start all over again. But it should also be something that's hard to game and involves at least some skill in selling a product or selling yourself (figuratively).

I know it's just a pipe dream, but I do wonder what others would think about something like this.

CrazyBob - grumpy old weaponsmith
Check your global south of Dearic on Bria