Ranger Archive

I'm going to have a very spastic, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde moment here, while my Smuggler and Ranger halves duke it out over whom should have the ability to get people through cities past NPCs that don't like them.

I'll admit right off the bat, I lean slightly more to my Smuggler side than my Ranger side. I'm trying to be fair.

I have a Master Smuggler also and I understand your argument. However rangers use concealment and they should be able to sneak around in enemy cities. Sort of like "special forces".

If there are a large number of opposing faction, then there is a very high possibility that someone in the rangers group's cammo will break, so it is not so much useful for "smuggling someone through the heart of the city". It would be good for sneaking around the city, trying not to get too close and having a chance to get by the patrols. This would probably work most effectively for the ranger alone.

Smugglers should be able to effectively smuggle people through the heart of the city with much greater success. I really don’t think it would be necessary to nerf rangers to help smugglers. We track NPC's and we have a skill that gives us stealth against NPC's. If we are finally able to use these skills for something beneficial, it would really suck to have that taken away to appease another class.

In the smuggler revamp, much is being done in terms of contraband checks. Items will have various degrees of legality while highly illegal items will possibly be confiscated. Our concealment abilities should help keep us from being attacked by NPC's on site, but they should have no benefit in terms of avoiding contraband scans. This is where the smuggler is designed to come into play.

There needs to be a real "underworld" beneath the cities.

I have a smuggler and a ranger on different toons. I had mentioned on the ranger boards about how our cammo ability will finally have a GCW related role now since enemy troopers will attack on sight. We could cammo ourselves and friends in order to move into enemy cities and scope out enemy positions without immediately being attacked on sight. I do feel that a ranger who is a high end (scout) should have such a role.

One of the rangers was a smuggler also and they suggested that Ranger needed to be nerfed so that their cammo did not work against factional NPC's in cities. This bothers me obviously since I think ranger already has concealment abilities and they havent been really useful in the past. Keep in mind that for every NPC in range there is a "dice roll" that occurs, and for each roll our cammo could "break", so it is not without great risk to try sneaking around in an enemy city. Also the larger our party is, the more likely that one of our cammo's would break so I don’t see this competing with smuggling. It also should have no benefit in allowing us to avoid contraband scans. (if it does, then I agree that it should not)

However as a smuggler also and as someone who is familiar with allot of green-marine's posts this brings up an idea of having a real "underworld". I am talking about a network of caves and run down city streets underneath the major cities which allows smugglers to get to various places in the "underword." To enter this "underworld" you would actually need to slice into a special location and people entering the underworld would need to be grouped with a smuggler. You would actually move around through a "dungeon" type of environment and everyone who is grouped with the smuggler would take on the smugglers "faction status". These underwords should have back doors into the cantinas, banks and other points of interest throughout the city. Also smugglers should have and extra option to land in these underworld's directly. This would entice players who want to operate in the enemy cities to actually ride there aboard the smugglers MP ship since landing at the startports should amount to immediate detection and attack.

In the underworld there might be Jabba's thugs and Valarians and other people of the underworld down there, and a smuggler who had good faction with these would be able to move their party throughout the underworld without being attacked.

I also see this adding to PVE and the Jedi BH conflicts: for example, a Jedi gets attacked buy a bounty hunter or others while getting a mind buff in a cantina. The smuggler groups with the Jedi, and slices a door in the back of the cantina. The Smuggler and the Jedi head down into the underworld where there is a space terminal where the Jedi can get to their ship.

These underworlds could be very useful for getting artisans and non-combat classes through Imperial cities.

There could also be allot of smuggler specific content added to these locations as they could be the staging point for their smuggler specific misisons.

An artisan finds some resources for sale on the bazaar in an enemy controlled city. The artisan hires the smuggler to load him up on the smugglers' YT where they land in the underworld beneath the city. The smuggler sneaks the artisan through the underworld and into the bank where there is a bazaar terminal. The smuggler then takes the artisan back throught the underworld, back onto their ship and flies the artisan back home.

This could be coold for PVP as well since a ranger could sneak into a cantina past the factional guard and see there were 3 overt players in it. The smuggler then loads up some imperials in her YT-1300 and lands in the underworld. She then takes her gank squad through the back "underworld" door of the cantina and gank the overt rebels there. (I have both imp and rebel toons so I trade off in the scenarios, dont assume factional bias.)

By implementing this content in this way, it would benefit not just smugglers, but all players.