Ranger Archive
Thread: Hypothetical Trap building question...
Somthing about this just doesn't sit well with me...
Persoanlly I've done the crafter gig for years now, finally giving it up to have some fun 
but I'd rather be stuck crafting boobytraps myself than pass it off to someone else. It just feels wrong to me.
Taking Rambo as an example of a post-publish ranger...can you imagine him trapsing through the woods setting up ambushes and traps from a factory crate ? He makes them on his own from local materials. Maybe a few lumps of C4, but it's all improv. It has the right feel...
Other than for grinding purposes, I don't even care to use factories for making traps now.....carry a few stacks of materials and make them on the fly as needed.
Okay, maybe a WS makes the actual high explosive materials. But to maintain some sembelance of the outdoor survivalist image we all so love, I say we keep most of it in the family.
However Commandos are NOT crafters. It would be out of place to have another combat profession craft our components.
I can easily imagine us going throe 100 or so traps in a single hunt. And having to constantly buy new trap component every day and carry a hole backpack full of the to be sure to have enough for a hunt is not fun.
Now if we made our own single use trap components, we could just have a factory to restock from and while we would have to could carry a lot we would at least always have a ready supply.
Having single use enhancers in self-made components, would have the same effect as having to buy single use components (or slightly worse). Constantly buying the enhancers, and making the components would be too much work, and more the likely most traps would end up being made with out enhancers. Moreover, that would mean low sales in enhancers and as thus even more difficulty in finding them.
In addition, it has to be relatively cheep for us to use our traps, even is I pay 100 000 for a carbineer, the final price per kill will quite low. If traps end up costing a lot to use then they will not be used very often, or only in extreme emergencies. Moreover, that would not only be a shame, but also give us a unnecessary handicap.
So, I say either we craft everything our self, and with no special named resources. Or we make the final assembly with cheep multi-use components that we buy from crafters.
Calculus_Entropy wrote:
As a continuation of my original question...WHY sohuld we able to? No one else has that freedom, why should we?
This is just for discussion, and does not reflect my view on the subject.
I touched on this in my other post, but I will give it a separate response. If traps are to be useful with out being unbalancing we have to use them often. And that mean we have to be able to carry enough on us for a nights trip. If we say one encounter, say every 15 minutes, and 10 traps per encounter that is 120 traps in a 3 hour session.
Buying 100k steel, 100k copper, 100k polymers, 100k solid petrochemical fuel, and so on depending on what we need, will make it possible to carry enough. But if we have to carry say 4 crates of the 3 triggers, and another 4 crates of each of the 4 trap types that is 28 crates for just one night, or half a back pack.
The question is, how many would pay say 100 cr for components to a trap that you could use once and that might even miss, and only did damage like a c12 grenade?
On the other hand having the trap do massive damage so it is worth the credit will be unbalancing.
So if booby-trap are to be useful, they have to be cheep. And making then our self is one way to keep them that way.
After all, if some crafter has to make them, they will wand to make a decent profit off them. And even with only 10 units per component that can end up being rather expensive.
I understand the desire to make us more interdependent on the other professions, but I also see our profession getting gimped into needing money to pay for this kind of material if we have to buy it from someone else. Basically: Self reliance is the point of a stealthy paramilitary ranger because if I have to stock up with a WS and DE before I head out into the field, I've probably done something wrong. The only time I need a crafter for items I already know how to use should be with the holographic projectors, because I obviously don't know how to make that outa twigs and berries and scrap metal.
Sort of like BH's needing their droids bought, (tangental thought: If we use a droid to get a bio-sig, make that built by DEs too) we need some high tech stuff bought on occasion as well. But because we're actually focused on the crafting of items specific to our profession, we should be capable of producing most of the products therein.
Dyrwen wrote:
Personally the "why we should be self-sufficient" is based mainly on the fact that we have been self sufficient for the past 2 years. Yes we all buy stims, we all buy food, we all buy spice, and we all buy weapons. But this is a device which we are reliant on to survive. We craft it ourself and we survive on our own if need be. I think the "holographic projectors" that come at master should be built by DEs just because a product of that kind of technology needs interloping in other professions. Although the devices we produce to attack other people via mines, thrown devices with states, etc, should be experimentable (for more uses) and only produced by the Ranger themselves.
I understand the desire to make us more interdependent on the other professions, but I also see our profession getting gimped into needing money to pay for this kind of material if we have to buy it from someone else. Basically: Self reliance is the point of a stealthy paramilitary ranger because if I have to stock up with a WS and DE before I head out into the field, I've probably done something wrong. The only time I need a crafter for items I already know how to use should be with the holographic projectors, because I obviously don't know how to make that outa twigs and berries and scrap metal.
Sort of like BH's needing their droids bought, (tangental thought: If we use a droid to get a bio-sig, make that built by DEs too) we need some high tech stuff bought on occasion as well. But because we're actually focused on the crafting of items specific to our profession, we should be capable of producing most of the products therein.
This pretty well sums up my feeling as well. I will say that Calc, and probably the Dev team as well, will not buy into the "because we have been independant for 2 years" response. I think the response of "because we have to survive on our own" is a more appropriate reply. We can't be on a mission, and suddenly realize as Phenix pointed out, "Oh crap I'm out of material "x" now I'm screwed" and have to risk death heading back to get components.
If anything I think this new vision of us grants us more solo play as stealthy, recon type players, are generally on their own. I also agree with not having another combat profession craft anything for us. If anything happens and we become interdependant on another profession it should be DE alone in a best case scenario, and DE and Weaponsmith in the worst case scenario.
Rancorrider4 wrote:
If anything I think this new vision of us grants us more solo play as stealthy, recon type players, are generally on their own. I also agree with not having another combat profession craft anything for us. If anything happens and we become interdependant on another profession it should be DE alone in a best case scenario, and DE and Weaponsmith in the worst case scenario.
And in that vein, the solo ability as stealth makes plenty of sense because we can't /conceal other people anymore like we used to. We're not reliant on people for the "better" use of our skills, but instead we're spies sneaking in on our own, or with other rangers, trying to kill or steal whatever. If we somehow worked to make other professions better through our abilities then I could understand us being reliant on other profession in more so in the process, since we'd own a commodity that is to be processed equally. I agree with your thoughts though.
I would say that some of the higher level traps would require components from other professions. I mean, the Rambo example.. Rambo didn't make his own C4 out of some chicken wire? He just made the trap assembly & trigger mechanism.
Personally I would like to see some relativly simple traps (such as nets & maybe flash bangs) as being self sufficant, since all of the items are pritty easy to construct, and dont require any specialist knowledge. But for things like high explosives like mines & other such detonators, I think that it would be more realistic to let other professions create the explosive, and we the ranger simply encorperate that explosive into a trap.
That way, we have the best of both worlds. Were not completely dependent on other professions for materials (eg, if we need to, we can produce a half decent trap and do a good amount of damage), but if we want to completely devastate our enemy, we should get expert materials to help.
Calculus_Entropy wrote:
As a continuation of my original question...WHY sohuld we able to? No one else has that freedom, why should we?
This is just for discussion, and does not reflect my view on the subject.
Because we've had that freedom since the game launched.
We have always crafted our own traps. Flash bombs, darts, sonic pulses. Why should that change?
Oh, because now other professions notice us? Do they want Scouts to buy traps from WS now as well?
Tell them Calc. When we get profession specific weapons, specials, accuracy and speed mods.. then I'll buy my traps at the shop.
A few static traps that I have to place on the ground is no reason to take the crafting of my traps away from me.
You guys talk about these traps as if they are the-end-all be-all. Going through hundreds a night? You think you're going to plant hundreds of traps in a night? These aren't the traps you can run around and throw at your target.
These Ranger traps are first strike weapons. How many first strikes do you have in a night?
Or, speaking about the absence of other offensive weapons in Ranger, in a single fight?
Oku Kee'lus Weaponsmith
shaped charges, explosive shells, trigger assembly
Ranger:
Trap Housing, biological effects, looted animal parts (kliknik glands)
Creating an interdependancy between rangers and the crafting community will benefit others as well.
If you think of it this way, the special forces, or rangers, or SAS do not actually make the grenades or weapons they use. while they can definately use the environment to make ground traps and other types of weaposn, they are far inferior than the high quality components made from a weaponsmith.
Interdependancy between professions is generally a good thing. While the "outdoorsman" has a lot of merit to be self-sustainable, the paramilitary ranger relies on smarts, training and equipment to be effective. The wilderness ranger is not as dependant.