Ranger Archive

Simply put, I bring this up with rangers in mind.

A ranger is someone, like scout, who should be able to live off the land. So why does even this "self sufficient" profession require artisan? Are you saying that rangers don't know anything about plants? So why do they need artisan and a flora fauna survey tool to be able to find and harvest plants? In any of my wilderness classess we always learned about plants first, animals second, because plants are what you will see most of out in the wild.

Given that, and the requirement for Flora/Fauna stuff for camo kits etc. I think that Rangers or Scouts should have a kill based ability or something that essentially doubles as a flora/fauna survey tool. Maybe give it crappy range and not work as fast as a survey tool, since it all has to be done by eye and by hand. But they should still be able to do it. Kinda silly to be a ranger who knows lots about animals and can tell you what specials a dappled guallama has but he has no idea how to look for trees, tell you what kind they are, there properities, or how to chop a tree limb off............

Wow, a non Ranger complaining about this? The only thing that requires artisan for us to be self sufficient. We all had a huge problem with this when they brought in camo kits. It's rediculous. The only thing I can think of is that they were thinking of the "relying on other professions" deal. But this is such a major part of the class, and one of the FEW things that make unique. A few days after we had them, I looked for Tatooine Flora on the whole galaxy and found nothing. So relying on surveyors to get it is not woring.

They either need to make it less specific flora so we can get what ever we can find on the bazaar. Or make is so our useless /forage skill can find things for that ingrediant.

Yes, they left alot of us scratching our heads when they removed Polymer from our Field Bases and then made us turn to Artisans for our sticks and moss when we had a perfectly underused skill that could have been used for this very thing, Foraging!

Here's a simple counter to the oft-quoted 'self-sufficiency' argument, since the game mechanic reasons for not allowing rangers to survey w/o purchasing the skills has fallen on all but deaf ears:

Rangers are foragers not Farmers. I don't think anyone doubts that rangers could identify ANY kind of natural resource they come across. Unfortunately, there's a gaping chasm between finding some sprigs of wild oats and the mass producing things like cereal grains, fruits, etc. Besides,geneticists and botanists often know more about the biology and growth of organics than rangers ever will, but bioengineers, doctors and the like still have to survey for their organic components or buy them from farmers. And they require equally specific resources as rangers do, generally in far larger quantities.

As for the bazaar availability argument, most people who harvest flora regularly are not yet aware of the new market rangers represent, so it will take some time for them to get up to speed. In addition, with so many rangers griping about how camo works, any prospector who toured these boards to find out about the viability of supplying rangers would likely decide against it, perceiving little or no demand.

Finally, very few people rely on the bazaar to supply them with resources, for good reason. The bazaar is a simply crappy place to buy them. So smart, successful crafters almost always use personal contacts to obtain their supplies. Seems to work well enough for them. =]

Besides, the very people who are buying your meat and hides and bones are often the exact same people who are best equipped to help you get the flora you need.

In the end it's really not worth complaining about.

We don't need to know a plants individual properties and how to grow them properly to know that they would make for good camouflage...

It doesn't bother you in the least that they removed a perfectly reasonable polymer component from our High Tech Field Bases just so they could make us buy our twigs from Surveyors?!

It doesn't bother you that we have a virtually useless skill that could have used this exact purpose to give it a much needed boost in the arm?!

I feel like I am going insane! I don't understand how anyone could think these changes were logical!

If they allow us to forage for our own floral components for camo kits and returnthe more reasonable polymer component toour Ranger camps, wouldn't this acheive the same economic result and make logical sense as well?!

I am done with this topic. I don't seem to be getting through to anyone on this subject.

If everyone thinks it makes sense that those super-duper bases would require hides... so be it.

If everyone is happy going to your local artisan to buy twigs and grass and moss... fine

If everyone is happy having a nie-useless skill called Forage... great.

I am getting too upset about this subject and how little sense it makes, so I'm going to give up...

Happy crawling...