Ranger Archive

My comments are in yellow:

---

Phenix1050 wrote:

Just looking over the proposal, (not mine, Klif_Hangars) I would say that the basic idea is good but some things I don't think would work. While I agree that ALL camps should be modular, I don't think that scout camps should have "modules" at all. I think that at the scout level (especially novice scout) you're basically a boy scout. Your camps should reflect the simplicity of your knowledge and should be fairly cut and dry. I think all camps should heal wounds at least at a slow rate, because you when camping you are in effect, resting yourself. Now the type of camp would affect the heal rate, of course, as well as any modifiers. However, coming from your design, I would propose this:

• A basic camp kit that required 3 items to make it: the structural componant, the lighting componant and the camp layout componant. The structural would behide and bone, the lighting would bewood or metal and chemical and the layout would be metal or wood. All would be able to be experimented upon, in two catogories: comfort (wound healing), durability (max time it could stay up) and quality. The lighting componant could also provide a safty experimentation, which would add a VERY small passive maskscent (the lighting makes them wary to approach

First, I'd like to thank you for the feedback. I'll try to respond with some explanations about why I made the decisions I did in my proposal. As far as the scout camps being simple, I tried to take this into account. This is why the scout's BMCK in my proposal only has 3 optional slots, and why it can only accept camp components made by other scouts (ranger and squad leader components would not work in it). Giving scouts a degree of custimizability while still keeping it fairly simple. I made healing (passive and medic) an added ability that the camp only gets if the right components are added because healing, in my opinion, is not a natural and automatic feature of a camp, especially not in this game. Really powerful fortifications, a squad leader camp requiring all 6 optional slots to be filled with combat-related components, should not have healing, and really powerful hunting blinds (with all optional component slots filled with combat components), an advanced Ranger camp,shouldn't either. It follows from this that healing is not a basic feature of all camps, and that is why I said it should be an added component.

• Now, as for squad leaders having their own camps, I am in complete agreement with this. however, they must be made in such a way that they could NEVER provide passive healing modifiers. The idea here is that the SL camps would be more along the lines of battle defenses and fortifications. I doubt the people in the trenches in WWI were able to get very well rested in places like this. Their camps would be experimentable in durability, protection (passive defence modifier) and effectiveness (passive attack modifier)

The idea behind my proposal is to encourage class interdependency. If a squad leader wants his camp to have healing abilities, they would have to pay a ranger to make them a medical component. Fortifications made by the squad leader would never be able to have a very powerful healing ability (only two slots are available for medical components if the SL makes his camp a Fortification; two medical components would give the camp healing power roughly equal to the current Scout Multi-person camp kit at best). I think you are saying that ALL SL camps should be fortifications, while I want SL camps to have the capacity to accept ranger components and be something else. I agree that people in trenches could not heal very well, but they did sleep in the trenches and got some rest.

Basically, I guess I disagree with you. Under my proposal, a squad leader camp that does not disband in combat will never have the capacity to heal players more than a scout multi-person camp. If a squad leader wants to buy the components from a Ranger, they can make a 'Base of Operations' type camp that provides some defenses, some healing, and some general crafting utility. However, it will always be more expensive for them to do this than it is for a Ranger, since SL would have to buy the components from a Ranger. Finally, SL can never have a MASH camp with its special properties, so Rangers would have a monopoly there.

• Rangers should be the ultimate campers, in my mind. They should have the most slots available to them, more even than the Squad leaders could, since we have BASES while they have FORTIFICATIONS. It's semantically different and I think that a base could be a one-stop shop for healing after a battle, whereas a fortification could only serve a single purpose: a place to fight from. In my mind having a place to RECOVER from fighting is much more difficult than making a place to fight from. Have a shovel? dig a hole. There, you have a place to fight from.

I agree, Rangers should be the ultimate campers. Once again though, we come to a difference of opinion. You say SL should ONLY have Fortification camps, and Rangers should ONLY have Base-like camps, while I think SL and Ranger shouldshare a"Base of Operations" type camp (although Ranger should make all the components required for such a camp). Sharing this type of camp is not too bad in my opinion because both Professions have their own special camp types with special properties. Rangers, being superior campers, would be able to make 2 special camp types (MASH and Hunting Blind) while Squad Leaders would only be able to make one special camp type (Fortification).

I will say that I like the idea of the Ranger Modular Camp having more slots than the Squad Leader camps. Say, 8 optional components in the Ranger Camp? then change all "If 4 out of 6 optional slots..." in my previous post to "If 5 out of 8 optional slots..."

• You propose only 3 basic types of camps which would then have to have a certain amount of particular modules to become another type of camp. By including a camp layout componant, you would be able to keep the system as much like it is as possible, which would make coding easier (and therefore much more likely to be implemented). The camp layouts would be the same as they are now, only squad leaders would have new layouts like bunkers and fortifications and Rangers would have hunting blinds and (what I really like from your proposal), the long-term field base which if you go according to MY view of it, would have8 slots, but it would requirea stays-up-in-battle module, which would take up two slots.

This is certainly another way to do it, and I wouldn't mind it being done this way. I like my plan better (of course I'm a little biased :smileytongue, but these are very good ideas.

• What I like about my proposal is that it includes several different proffessions. In fact, almost every single elite proffession could, in theory add to the quality of a Rangers camp. however, the Ranger should have the ability to make enough modules so that he or she can still solo. The latent wound healing (comfort) should be something we can make better with a module, as should the ability to repel aggros and hide from NPC's (a camoflage module-very high resource cost) could be applied to the camp. While you don't argue against this, I think it should be a foremost part of the proposal. Every proffession should be able to help Rangers out, and be helped in return.

I have to disagree a little here. I feel that only professions based off of scout (and only some of those) should have any ability to affect camps. If you start giving other professions the ability to make camp components, then before too long you start getting people saying "I can make a camp component, why can't I make a simple camp so I can call my pet/droid/vehicle?" And it all goes downhill from there. Thats just my opinion though. As far as the passive wound healing module, this is what all those 'medical components' would do, and I decided to make the camo ability of a camp a latent characteristic of the Hunting Blind so that squad leaders could not buy a camo module and put it in there camps (keeping camo a Ranger-unique skill in camps and out of it).

• I think it's possible that Bounty Hunters could have their own type of camp too. Purely speaking for fairness, they do have to become master scouts rather than just doing two lines like the SL's. in theory they should have a camp kit to match their dedication. Perhaps something along the lines of a medium size camp (low healing power) but that would also provide an aiming system to increase the likelyhood of their droids finding a target (while on the same planet as their target) and would also increase their to-hit modifier. Just a suggestion, obviously needs some fine tuning.

I wouldn't mind giving BH's a fewsimple camps, provided one of their lines was converted to require wilderness survival xp. However, from my conversations with BH's in game, most haven't wanted camps at all. They would much rather have some kind of pc/npc only trap system, and an improved Investigation line.

So thats it. I think eventually, we're gonna nail down a solid proposal for modular camps and the devs aren't going to be able to ignore such a well-thought-out and amazingly intelligent idea. (okay, they could, but I have faith in NRass and the intelligence of the devs).

Also I'd like to apologize to Proxus571, who apparently came up with the modular camp idea. I did not read your post, but I assume fromt what Klif says that YOU came up with modular camping. I, independant of you, thought of this idea as well, and I accidentally assumed credit for an idea that had already been put on the market. Sorry for stealing your thunder. Which is an odd expression because people hate bad weather. Me, I like it when people steal my thunder. Good, YOU take the bad weather, I'll keep the sunshine. Stealing peoples thunder sounds like a valuable community service. In fact, people should pay others to steal their thunder. Though I suppose it wouldn't be stealing then, would it. No, it'd be selling and collecting thunder. Where was I? oh yeah. stealing ideas. sorry proxus.

I'm not sure who posted the idea originally now. I gave thanks to Proxus because I first saw this idea in a thread that NRaas had linked through his "Ranger Threads" page. That thread was posted back in August, so I assumed he was the originator. If you posted the idea before that, than I'd like to thank you for the original idea.

till next time everyone: peace, love and Rangering

---

"That top level camp of yours, should stay up if the Ranger enters combat, or leaves it."

Ok, then jump aboard the modular camp proposal. Witha "combat fortification"module, this would be possible in any camp.

"Yes the camp, someday repel creatures and we should not have to fight. But it will not repel NPC. I have been attacked by NPC several times while in camp trying to heal."

In this case we need a "Humanoid defensive barrier" module, probably available in the Squad Leader profession. The barrier would make humanoids think twice about attacking the encampment.

"All camps will automatically disband when the owner gets a certain distance away (say 1km, maybe less depending on technical issues"

Excellent compromise, we will have to see what the developer considers the maximum distance, but I like the idea.

As for the rest... I will be moving onto version two of this thread soon, as my last idea was shot down horribly (almost immediately by myself and everyone else).

Just need to catch up on the rest of this thread first....

I think BF affects how much damage you take.. so the more BF you have the more damage you take... and it might affect other things as well.. I'm not sure though.

The new combat system that comes out might give BF a bigger role, and if that happens, then I figured we'll just cover our bases by have a small camp heal personal BF, without the need for an Entertainer.

Why are mission terminals in camps silly and abusive?

We have crafting stations.. so if that's not silly then terminals shouldn't be. Abusive? We would have an edge when it comes to geting hunting missions... but.. we are rangers, so we should have an edge. I don't see the problem.

-----------------------------------------------

Terminals in and of themselves are not silly or abusive - putting them in camps potentially is.

An "edge" is when you have a slight advantage. An example of an effective "edge" is that we can take missions to destroy X number of a certain creature and then track it down with our cool tracking ability. It becomes "abusive" when you can go out, find a lair of piket longhorns, pop open your trusty camp, and THEN take a mission to destroy X piket longhorns. See? Silly and abusive. =)

If you want to have it simply be able to show regular missions - lair destroy missions - that is not so bad, from an abusiveness standpoint. However, I think it MIGHT be programmatically significantly more complicated. I suspect that there is a good deal of back-end math necessary to figure out where a mission is in relation to the mission terminal. Having mission terminals that are always in the same place might well be different than having a "mobile" mission terminal that has to position itself AND find where the mission is, both itself and in relation to the terminal,on the fly.

actually i think having mission terminals in our master camps will actually aid the entire community at large while also creating greater need for having a master ranger in the group.

1. creates less lag in cities. Hunting groups gather in cities trying to get missions.Giving us this optionallows the group to stay active in the wild and draw away added lag for people trying to get around or form groups in these major cities. How many timeshave we seen our fps drop to 1 or zero when in a major city filled with people, creatures, driods and vehicles?

2. It is not a form of cheating because ultimately you still have to do the mission but the advantage is that it saves your group the time andhassle of going back to the city. So while people are healing up, they can also take up new missions. This gives people more action time and less drag time. keeping the game fun and the hunt ongoing. This also adds another great point for team play and having a ranger in the group.

If the objective was to try and push people to cities, then it is quite pointless having our crafting stations in camp. Having said that, i believe that the intention is to create less lag.If we can have personal crafting stations at home and in our camp, would having mission terminals in our top end camp really be cheating?

As I said -

Having the "destroy a lair" mission terminal is not all that abusive - it's the "kill 45 durnis" mission terminal thiat is. I have a suspicion that the former, though, is possibly challenging from a programming standpoint.

~Wen