Ranger Archive

In the top 5 bug responce, it was stated that the Ranger profession concept/direction is to be the ultimate hunters. Being that new aspects of the SWG world have changed/neutralized some of our benefits, I would like to put together a list of capabilities that allow for good hunting characters. In order to do this I would like to ask, what is a good creature hunting profession combination?

Please do not lament the difficulties/issues in the Ranger profession here. The intent is to put together a collection of skills that those who do hunt find useful inhunting with the world the way it is now.

Please post profession combination ideas and reasoning here. This way when NRaas gets backwe can assemble a list of good hunting capabilities that would be beneficial.

I agree with pretty much all StealthNuck said.

Pretty sure our Creature Hit bonus actually makes the creatures Hit us more often because of it..heh.

000000000000000000Dyrwen Sy-X
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000000000000000000Imperial Master Ranger.
000000000000000000Meat Manager
000000000000000000Hide Heretic.
000000000000000000Bone Busybody.
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000000000000000000General PAC Man 
000000000000000000Penny Arcade Clan 
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I like some of the Modular camp ideas, but some of them seem a little nuts... Portable Cloning Center? I think Mission Terminal would be intertesting... but I'm not sure.

I really like some of our hunting stuff though. Skillful strike sounds awesome.More traps are greatly needed. I like the lure, but the snare seems kind of redundant with Phecnacine darts and Adhesive Mesh. We already have two Area Of Effect traps... one that blinds and one that dizzies and stuns. The increased damage is also great. Although I do like to-hit bonuses, they aren't enough.

And hunting lodges would we awesome...

So good work so far. I'd add to the list, but this is what I would have added. But I'll think about it.

Kyyran Evagg'orr
Master Scout/ Master Ranger/ Rifleman
Official Rifleman's Motto: Of all the things I've lost, I miss my mind the most.

Cloning centre on camps seems a little far, but a one time use only shuttport, which would only go one way i would like(make us really popular in a group hehe)

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BigSlimUK wrote:

Cloning centre on camps seems a little far, but a one time use only shuttport, which would only go one way i would like(make us really popular in a group hehe)

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It's somewhat difficult to pinpoint the best profession complement to ranger since everyone has a different play style and different opinions on what is fun, but obviously, in order to hunt at all, any ranger has to have some combat skills. Since we as rangers have no perceptible combat skills by ourselves (I can't see that the to-hit bonuses make the tiniest difference - I seem to have an equal chance of hitting NPCs as I do creatures), anyone that wants to make master within their lifetime has to be able to kill creatures by themselves. Technically, you could just use /maskscent and /camoflouge all the time and group with others that are hunting creatures to gain scouting xp, but it would take forever to level up that way, so it is not really a realistic option. In essence though, rangers really are self-sufficient once they have some secondary combat skills.

So, in order to really make us the best hunting profession, I like the idea that we should have some specialized weapon that is really only effective against creatures, or that we do more damage to creatures because we know their weak spots.

• More craftable modules added as skill levels increase.
  
• Modules can consist of:
  
  
  
  • Tents - Asthetic?
    
  • Beds - Each bed increase's healing modifier.
    
  • Mission Terminals - Higher levels only.
    
  • Maintenance Shack - To repair vehicles(to a certain extent only)
    
  • Portable Cloning center - One use only, Master level.
    
  • Security Perimeter - higher effectiveness at higher levels.
    
  • Craftiing stations - weapons, armour etc.
    
  • Something to allow a Ranger to set the amount of time base stays up - longer time up = lesser healing modifiers(gradual decay)
    
  
  
• Special camps like hunting blinds are module applicable.
  

• Make them droppable, so we can place them and lure animals into them
  
• Give at least 4, one at each skill level with varying effects.
  
• Snare - creature trapped time dependent on quality of trap and Ranger level, can hold for up to one minute.
  
• Lure - need I say more.
  
• Area effect damage trap.
  
• Area effect blind, shock trap.
  
• Need to be useful against high and low level creatures.
  

• Stays up permanently until taken down; does not redeed.
  
• Only craftable by Master Rangers.
  
• Takes up one lot.
  
• Includes healing modifier, storage space, personal crafting stations, anything else that would be really nifty and make me dizzy.
  
• Can't remember any of the other ideas for this one
• 
  

Greetings fellow Rangers.

I honestly think that many things that would make us better hunters, we have already asked for. However, I have a couple of thoughts about what is to come with /conceal. If it is no longer going to work on npc's, then no one is going to use it. It is just not any better then /maskscent. I have to believe that the Dev team is smart enough to know this, so it stands to reason that the whole wayfaring tree will be getting a rework. My thought on this is, if it is not going to function any differently than /maskscent, just make it an improvement on /maskscent instead. Longer duration and better chance to avoid detection etc... I have no problem with that. But I will not waste time and resources crafting kits that do the same thing just 'cause they have a different name and are a cute idea. I do not think many other people will either. I do not really use it at all now anyway because it is really buggy. Sometimes when I use it, it will not let me use maskscent afterword until I log and do a fullscan. Just not worth the trouble. Some other things:

Camps: A food and chemical crafting station? This I think falls under the 'looked good on paper' catagory. This is of no use to me. Let us experiment on the effectiveness of our traps and give us a general crafting station in addition. That would be useful indeed.I also like the idea of the highest level camp not disbanding when you leave and being a mobile base of operations.

Traps: I have never heard of a trap that was thrown before. You set traps, you throw grenades.Dont get me wrong, the traps are cool, they just either dont work, or do not do enough to make them viable. Again, most of them have nice theories behind them, but they obviously do not work like they are supposed to. Not to mention that those that do work, have no chance of working on higher level creatures. We as the master hunters should not have this problem. My view is that the scouts can have traps, I want POISONS!!! That sounds cool! Give us a skill to concoct poisons that can be thrown, or even launched from a weapon like the acid rifle! The coding would basicly already be in the game from the flame thrower and the acid rifle or even the combat medic disease skill. I am not asking for them to do insane damage like the commando weapons, but a nice solid bleed effect, administered from a dart gun, that as our skill in it progressed had better and better chances of notalerting the creatures of our presense. Even if the creaturedid aggro it would still be a nice addition. Of coarse the materials used wouldaffect the damage it would do and over how long a time framethe damage would be done. The weapons could even be limited use like the acid rifle to keep the market for them strong...

Forage: Well, this does have a use. Not a good one, but I will tell you what I use it for. I use it to feed my creatures when they are hungry. This really is not a unique skill anyway, scouts can do it just as well. The easy fix is to put ranger only foraged items in, but I think we can come up with something better then that.

Tracking: A /track skill that gave us a waypoint would be cool. Or some sort of ambush skill that let us sit in hiding waiting for our prey would fit the 'hunter' role as well. Maybe you would have to find a place where the creatures commonly are, and then use the skill. The skill would force the game to spawn the type of creature you were after if you used it successfully. This would make Explorer missions practical.

Other: I think that if we are going to be forced to buy other combat professions to support our ranger skills, then we need some serious damage and damage prevention bonuses. Lets face it, commando's are much better at killing creatures then we are. Unless we recieve some serious help, they can just pick up some scout, and be the best hunters in the game. We need a straight damage increase, or some sort of critical hit system. Also, our own damage reduction vs creatures would not hurt either. Again the coding is already in place for any number of options. It would need a little tweaking, but a dodge or counter attack would rule.

That is just a couple of my thoughts. G'day all

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Gwee-Godo wrote:

I honestly think that many things that would make us better hunters, we have already asked for.

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The long version:

I've got to agree with this. Personally, I've always viewed ranger as the Ultimate Outdoorsman: we can explore, hunt, trap, and in general live off the land in the wild without much technology. The devs' vision of us as Ultimate Creature Hunters is very similar to the vision of an outdoorsman. Since our prey is found in the wild 99% of the time, it only makes sense that a creature hunter would learn to live off the land in the wild and become an outdoorsman. I really think that all of the different views listed in the State of the Profession List (Nature, Park, Military, and Hunter)sharea common theme in the outdoorsman aspect, and this theme has allowed us to formulate very similar ideas regardless of which view we believed to be right. It follows that most if not all of our requests are applicable and consistent with the Creature Hunter view.

The short version:

I agree with Gwee, many of the things we have asked for already would make us better hunters.

Of course, this does not change the fact that I would like conceal to work against npc's and players in addition to creatures (I particularly like the idea of making a concealed player very difficult to hit in pvp until the conceal is broken). Ultimate Creature Hunter should not be tantamount to being useless in humanoid fighting.

There have been some very good, well thought out ideas posted here (and throughout this forum). Kudos to those who have taken the time and put forth the effort to help improve our chosen profession (I like to think of it as a way of life, but I'm a nut anyhow...).

I'm sure the idea has been posted before, but I think a ranger specific weapon (a bow is what I think of) would not only make us better hunters, but help to distinguish us. The bows would be craftable and equippable by rangers only, and as we progress through the skill tree, we "learn" the ability to craft better heads and shafts (different heads could cause different types of damage, maybe, and shafts could be constructed for varying degrees of distance, strength, etc.)

Most rangers I know use traps we learn at scout (P-Darts seem to be the most useful), so maybe this bow could take the place of the advanced trapping tree. In fact, some of the craftable arrowheads might even do the same job that, say, a flash bomb or a sonic pulse "trap" do (as Gwee-Godo said above, traps are set, not thrown)

Since we are apparently not meant to be a combat oriented class, it should be an excellent PvE weapon. With its customizeable arrows the smart ranger should be able to make precisehits on any given animals weak spot (much the same concept as the "Skillful Strike" one mentioned above).

/begin dramatization

"Hey, these are Endorian Arachne droppings," ranger X thinks to himself "And from the odor of the spoor on this tree here, I would say its a warrior. Hm... Those are tough buggers, but if I recall correctly, they do have a weakness. Luckily I made a few stun damage arrowheads..."

/end dramatization

Like I said, I know the idea has been presented before, but so far I haven't been told that the idea is impossible, so I will continue to be a proponent of it until someone gives me reasons why it would never work.

Okay, I'll shut up now

I realize that the HTFB has a weapon and droid crafting station, but I was just trying ( and not well I suppose ) to say that unless we can actually use it for something it is dumb to even have it. It is great for other prof's but it should be great for us first and foremost. Idid not spend the points onranger because I wanted to help people craftwhile away from cities. Let the crafters stayin the cities and pay us to round up the resources they need. Besides,Being able to experiment on camo kit quantity is silly because I do not believe that most Rangers actaully use them enough to make this an asset.

I agree fully that we probably should not have both a specialized weapon and damage bonus and reduction. I really do not care which, but I think we deserve one of them. Rifleman is a great aid to the Ranger profession, but that is rifleman. I want something that I can say, 'i am good at hunting because i am a ranger.' Not because I have a good accompanying prof. I think that if the dev's can focus on what their vision of us is, then we will do alright. I Started being a ranger exactly because I wanted to be a great hunter so I think that there is promise in our future. I just hope they dont nerf us, before they give us some fix's or changes to make up for it. I think it would be a complete waste of time to fix something that is not hurting the community, and that the effort going into this 'fix' could be better spent on reworking the profession.

I see your point. If we can't conceal ourselves from NPCs, then camo kits will be nothing more than resource drains with the rare exception of the occasional group member that doesn't have /maskScent. And even now I don't use camo kits very often, so basically the crafting stations are only there for other people. I guess that's why I haven't bothered making any ranger camps in a while.

Gwee-Godo, you've hit the nail squarely on the head on all of your points as far as I'm concerned. But there are a couple of comments I'd like to make in response.

1) I'm guessing you don't yet have Frontiering IV because the high tech field base kit (or HTFB as everyone likes to abbreviate it to) does actually have both a Food and Chemical Crafting Station and a Weapon, Droid and Generic Crafting Station in it, but I think that that Field Base Kit should have a WDG station and not a FC station. I can see the benefit to medics and such, but overall, if we ever get to experiment on our traps and camps, then it makes much more sense to have the WDG station first, especially since we can already experiment with camo kits.

2) We're actually supposed to be getting the /track skill that does something similar to what you suggest. Unfortunately, it falls under the "we're working on it" category of skills that we were told about in August, so who know when it'll come along.

3) We should either have the damage and defensive bonuses that you mention or a specialized weapon or attack command like citizenkane680 suggests, but not both. Unless of course the special weapon is used only for advanced traps and/or other means of causing states that don't do direct damage. The fact is, for being an elite PvE profession, we are woefully underequipped to handle any hunting at all, let alone being the ultimate creature hunters we're supposed to be, without taking up some additional skills. We are the only profession that is not self-sufficient in what we're supposed to be able to do. This is both a liability and an asset because we're not required to take any one combat skill, such as the smuggler requirement to have Pistols IV, or the commando requirement to have Unarmed IV and (I think) Master Marksman, so we are given much more flexibility.

At any rate, our profession is sorely lacking, but then again, so are most of the other professions. We got some early attention when they were done with the major bug squashing, but they basically only teased us with what we could become.