Ranger Archive

I have to assume that people are being deliberately obtuse.

I have stated explicitly at least twice that it is impossible for the Ranger profession to generate the kind of wealth earned by crafters or even harvester managers. The devs simply can't do it, without crocking overall game balance in some way. I don't know how people got the idea that I'm angry about our economic realities.

The crux of the argument is that creature hunting is a fundamentally limited economic activity, thus if we allow ourselves to be typecast as "ultimate creature hunters" we are allowing ourselves to be made essentially irrelevant to the game. There must be tangible reasons to play a Ranger (or any other profession). If you think it's just so gosh darn neat to be a Ranger, well good for you, but that's not good enough from a game-balance perspective. We can't be relevant economically, so that means we have to be relevant militarily or we're just plain not relevant.

Any sane discussion of our role in SWG has to start by rejecting the (alleged) devs' Vision of us as "ultimate creature hunters", and the Outdoorsman document does not do that; it says right on the label that it is written in accordance with it.

You calling it a blue-collar occupation is based on your conviction that Ranger is an economic strata. It's not. You can avoid the point that there's other ways to make money outside of skill trees, but that doesn't remove the reality.

Image Designers can run harvesters too. Does that mean that profession doesn't have economic issues? Do you want Rangers to be as important to the game as Image Designers?

The Outdoorsman concept handles this. Defense, weaponry, support, etc. You said it is irrelevant but I disagree. In fact that contradicts your earlier assertion: "The purpose of a Ranger is to secure territory". The Outdoorsman Camp concept does exactly this

I said it was irrelevant because in the original thread, it was. The thread was about Ranger roles in combat. Camps happen before or after combat.

In any case, before we can start talking about elaborate camp proposals, we need the devs to decided just what the heck camps are supposed to do in this game, and how important they're supposed to be. The "modular camp" bit is just wishful thinking at this point. We were promised advanced camps of a much simpler nature a long time ago and they never materialized, so why do we think an even more complex approach, one that touches on so many other aspects of the game, is going to happen in anything like a reasonable time frame?

What do you guys do with all the money anyways?

Any or all of: T21s, other rifles, powerups, food/drink, spice, vehicle maintainence, insurance, pet stims, travel fees, maint on my three houses and factory, paying healers/entertainers decent tips for their work, new pets....

50 to 70 cpu?!? I have trouble convincing people to take it for 35 cpu, and even then they think that I am getting the better deal here.

As JB points out, you can turn a decent amount of credits each hour by running missions. Figure out how much you can harvest in an hour if you eschew missions. Divide. That's the minimum amount your resources are worth. If people won't pay that much, then just go run missions and, unless you need the Scouting experience or the resources for your own camps and traps, let the corpses rot. If people give you lip, explain the math to them, and ask them to tell you why you should take a cut in pay to work for them.

Not true. Not true at all. Want counter examples? Just look at the relative profits of miners and architects. Miners sell ore at 3cr/u - 5cr/u. This is standard, we all know this. What a lot of people don't understand however is that architects generally sell their goods priced at beteen 4cr/u - 5cr/u.

I don't know what kind of rocket scientists you have on your server, but I quite assure you the Architect I hang with did not get her sixty MILLION credit bank account by selling her work for cost.

What's hurting rangers is not simply that they are a supplier rather than a manufacturer (that's silly).

It's not silly -- it's economic reality. If crafters aren't adding value to the resources, they'll quit. If people on your server are selling goods for cost, they're either stupid (and will eventually quit after they dig their own graves), or they're dumping to try to force the competition out of the market.

It's irrelevant if you have nothing to spend it on

There's always going to be something to spend it on. What if a nice skill tape comes up for auction? How about these new weapons on test -- the ones made from looted or quested schematics with low use limits, maybe also requiring looted components? Do you think (say) that new Geonoshian disruptor rifle is going to sell for only as much as a good T21? Heck, what happens when inflation drives up the prices of all the goods you do use, only your income doesn't rise to match?

---

Image Designers can run harvesters too. Does that mean that profession doesn't have economic issues? Do you want Rangers to be as important to the game as Image Designers?

---

Yep. That's exactly what I'm talking about. You insist this is a class based discussion. I am insisting it is not because there's ways to make money that have nothing to do with the class you're playing.

Again, and again and again, I do not disagree that Rangers themselves can not make money as their crafting kin too. That's entirely as intended, and entirely makes sense. Being a Ranger, as a player, is partly about eskewing the trappings of pure merchantilism. The balance in this game as a whole is that the person who finds there way to Ranger happens to enjoy hunting in the wilderness just as the person who is sitting around crafting all day enjoys sitting around and crafting all day. The rewards you insist on comparing on an economic level are not comparable at all. The balance of a massive persistent state world has to encompass the probabilities of who will do what. If everyone became a crafter, there'd be no market. If everyone became a Ranger, we'd all be stuck hunting Gnorts.

The Devs think at a far wider level when designing these things.

---

Camps happen before or after combat.

---

But your premise that you're not an Outdoorsman partly derives from this, and it makes it relevant because the Outdoorman concept covers camps that are useful during combat.

---

The "modular camp" bit is just wishful thinking at this point

---

No, it's not. Because TH has said they are actually going forward with it. We don't know the details, but since they're going forward with it, in our position as end users, there's as much probability they'll come with modular slots for turrets which can contribute to combat as they'll come with just modules for better crafting stations or something else similarly useless (since who cares if there's a mod on a crafting station when the only thing that can get experimented on is Camo Kits with questionable usefulness).

---

Heck, what happens when inflation drives up the prices of all the goods you do use, only your income doesn't rise to match?

---

There's operating effectively and operating at the pinnacle of potential. A Ranger does not need to operate at the same level as someone who's saving up faction points for a Rebel HQ. The methodologies and requirements of hunting are not that simple. I don't need a max sliced Krayt weapon to go out and hunt. I, as with most, adjust my expectations based on what I want.

Since you quoted the 60 million credits of your architect friend, it's yet another example of you wanting more money. Accept that you'll never see 60 million credits just hunting organics and you'll start looking at the options available to everyone. Accept that the game is not designed to bring into economic parity the wide variety of career opportunities. Musicians, Dancers and Image Designers will never see that sort of money. Pikeman likely neither. Advanced Combatants will. Advanced Crafters will. Rangers are in the middle but can only function with advanced combat skills, so they can. But not from farming resources. Adjust your expectations.

For a point of comparison: I have 10 million credits. Right before I shut down my energy business I was making 1 million a week, profit. I could have sustained that until they pulled the plug on Eclipse if I didn't get burned out with just churning credits. I was charging 1cpu for energy when most were scaling to PE, and 0.75cpu to my PA, which I tipped back to them after they purchased. I built it up from nothing back in late July. I had customers that were with me since then. I spent an incredible amount of time on it, had a seven sheet Excel workbook churning constantly and for 3/4 of my career, made contract deliveries daily. I bent over backwards to work the heck out of that business because I enjoyed it. I kept 10 of my best performing Fusions (16s and 18s BERs) because I have deals worked out with my former partners and my city's new supplier that if I ever need need money again, I'll place them, farm for a week and just deliver the million or so radioactive I draw.

It cost me 29 skill points.

That's not bragging. That's the reality of the opportunities available to everyone who wants to use the skill points they have left over. And there's more skill points if you don't need the subtle increase in harvestables nor the useless advanced Traps and don't care if you don't carry the Master title over your head.


Just as Image Designers seek riches elsewhere, so should Rangers. Yes, it’s an expensive investment for little reward. So? Why stubbornly accept that? Never wait for the game to give you a hand out. If you want to achieve NOW, change how you play NOW.


This isn't about DFH against the Outdoorsman. I actually don't even know what this is about anymore. I'm not actually convinced you've read, or digested, most of that proposal.

---

I have to assume that people are being deliberately obtuse.

---

I am assuming you are not being purposely argumentative. I give people as much chance as I can. As such, what exactly are you trying to achieve that can't be achieved by the Outdoorsman as we understand it to be?

---

NRaas wrote:

"They're outdoorsman! They shouldn't even need money at all."

What do you guys do with all the money anyways?

---

Travel....clone...insure...repeat...(weapons and armor very rarely). That's it, that's the list. I don't even buy weapons or armor anymore. Like Nraas I only have VK's and a helmet, and those hold up for a darn long time. I never need large gobs of money and can live very comfortably with <200K.

Message Edited by Calculus_Entropy on 02-03-2004 02:46 PM