Ranger Archive
Thread: Between the Master Pre-req, and the two tree Pre-req, the compromise revamp proposal
I know a lot of people read my proposal I posted on balrozgul, titled CONCEALMENT, DETECTION, DETERMENT, ENTRENCHMENT, The 140 SP path to Master, even if a lot of you didn't get to post on it, or actually make it all the way through the post itself. Basically I was talking about four sets of skills that could be used to define who we are and what we do in the world of SWG. CONCEALMENT is talking about our ability to hide, DETECTION is about our ability to discover hidden enemies, DETERMENT is about our ability to deter an enemy from moving in the wilderness freely, and ENTRENCHMENT is about our ability to construct camps in a military style in the wilderness.
Ive held onto those four principles as a cornerstone of who a ranger needs to become in the game, and as they are taken directly from our current setup they are an obvious endorsement of ranger prerequisites as master scout and only master scout. I know there is a strong push by the devs towards a two tree prereq as well as an internal debate among rangers about which two trees those should be. There is actually a compromise solution, one skill that we could probably abandon while still holding true to the ideals of a ranger. That skill is ENTRENCHMENT.
Now, I am not suggesting that my ideas about a camp becoming more appropriately a military style forward outpost be abandoned. Rather, I suggest that this idea be moved somewhere else. Those of you who read my other post, WHAT IS SCOUT? know that I drew the comparison between survival tree and the organizational leadership skills often uncovered in training camp, and that I made the obvious conclusions that it is the perfect prerequisite for our friends the Squad Leaders. Building a camp, a REAL camp, is not a task for a single person alone, it is a task reserved for a group, and more specifically a group with a Leader. Therefore, I suggest that we move the entire idea of an armed camp to squad leader. The way to make it work is to eliminate the camping mod entirely and make camps a function of group size.
Basic Camp = 1 person
Multiperson Camp = 2-3 people
Improved Camp = 4 people
High Quality = 5 people
Field Base = 6 people
High Tech Field Base = 7-8 people
Making this change means that instead of holding onto four primary skills we will only hang on to 3, and in which case our ranger prerequisites will go to 4440 scout. This is 120 skill points, and while the setup of three trees is slightly unconventional, it in facts puts us almost exactly in the same category as Squad Leader, Bounty Hunter, Commando, Smuggler, Combat Medic, and Bio Engineer, all of whom spend 121 skill points. This leaves us with the three primary skills, bulletted for easy reference: (The fourth tree could easily be used to fill in combat and defensive modifiers)
CONCEALMENT:
1. Allow simultaneous use of /maskscent and /conceal to be applied in layers. This solves the problem of beginning rangers not being able to conceal as effectively as his pre-req at exploration four. Exploration4(70MS) +Wayfaring1(40Conceal) = 110 points of concealment in two layers giving two checks against creatures and one against npc's.
2. Create new command /camo, which uses a camo kit, provides one additional layer for npc's and creatures as well as dropping us from radar and visual. This skill would draw also from camouflage skill modifier so that a master ranger, 4440 scout would have three layers of protection, +100, +100, +70 at his full level of protection. An enemy would have to successfully break all layers of concealment before engaging first strike combat (if attacked said creature would be able to defend itself as well as its immediate mob family). /Camo would automatically drop in combat and cannot be reapplied while in combat.
DETECTION:
1. Create new tool used Tto aid a ranger in the wild. Can work as a cross between a survey device and the radar, with toggled layers to filter out creatures, npc's, pc's, lairs and other engageable structures. Ranger would presumably be entering information into the device which helps him/her to keep track of the surroundings. Device would also have a "Send Report" button enabling ranger to instantly send a picture of what the device shows to the squad leader running the group. Status report could become more interactive to higher levels of SL with masters able to see and filter exactly what the ranger sees.
2. Allow rangers the ability to see through concealment. Beginning rangers could have the potential to see particle effects and as the skill is progressed it could lead to the ranger seeing a concealed player completely.
DETERMENT:
1. Ranger traps are to be set on the ground. After being set a ranger would be given an option to conceal them. (Sometimes you want your enemy to see the trap, and therefore walk into the one you really have set for them) Enemy rangers would have the ability to see through the concealment according to the detection mods, to decamouflage it, and to defuse it (according to their trapping mods).
2. Ranger traps needen't necessarily apply the expected set of states to be effective. Some of my previous ideas include applying a friendly TEF and/or cause creatures npc's to attack each other, dismounting vehicle trap (NPC's do it to check for contraband so it must be possible), traps to hold creatures in order to unleash them on an unsuspecting target later, also this trap might be able to hold babies so that a creature handler might be able to tame it after disposing of the rest of the family.
3. Traps that root should pop up as a targetable structure like a lair, with its own hitpoints, applying its root until the trap has been destroyed via those hitpoints. Trap should hold anything within 5m in order to assure that a melee player would be able to work himself free. A trap of this design might not hold down a group for very long but it would lend itself to being extremely effective against single targets.
I know a lot of you would not look kindly upon giving up our beloved ranger camps, as they have been for a long time our best source of eye-candy when aweing people. I myself am hesitant to even suggest it, however the logic behind it is sound and I hope that some of you can see why this might be in our best interests. If we can hold onto these three core principles we will all be able to get what we want, to be better hunters, to be able to participate, and to have our own unique function in SWG.
Thanks for your time,
Bal Rozguul
Message Edited by ZalokOnan on 08-13-2005 09:49 PM
So what's wrong with dropping the SP per box in the Ranger trees and leaving everything else alone?
Drop by one the number of skill points per box to attain Ranger skills, much as they did with IDs.
Short, sweet, to the point, not much recoding, no skills lost... rather simple in design and implementation.
JB
Yeah i have to agree with JB on this one. Ive tried over and over to think of what tiers rangers could drop in order to reduce our skill points but its just not possible without loosing something or an area.
Dropping the skill points by one point would be a bad idea for any other profession simply because you could dabble pretty easily with most other templates taking up almost master marksman or brawler. Ranger on the other hand would require full mastery of the scout profession still in which not a lot of people invest heavily. We wouldnt devalue our profession or skills and wouldnt become a dabbler profession due to lower skill point costs.
Its the best option all around really. It rewards us by giving us more free skill points whilst at the same time it doesnt degrade the profession.
I thought we didn't want to take the easy road of Skill Point reduction, but Skill Improvments. Make our 140 SP investment worthwhile... althought a SP reduction with Skill Improvements would be nice!
I just don't want the devs to say here's your token SP reduction, then leave us stranded (as we have been) in Revamp Purgatory.
WeiQuin wrote:
I thought we didn't want to take the easy road of Skill Point reduction, but Skill Improvments. Make our 140 SP investment worthwhile... althought a SP reduction with Skill Improvements would be nice!
I just don't want the devs to say here's your token SP reduction, then leave us stranded (as we have been) in Revamp Purgatory.
I share your concerns almost exactly, but I fear that the developers are dead set on a skill point reduction and will not take seriously the idea of balancing us with a master scout pre-req. In this way we keep the core of a recon infantry soldier, we actually do gain a lot of skills and only have to conceed one thing, which as of now is entirely decorational.
I agree with Zal. Keeping the master scout pre-req and getting a skillset boost that warrants such a cost would be ideal. But that most likely isn't going to happen. Getting a one point per box reduction like Image Designer isn't very appealing, either-- an extra 16 skillpoints wouldn't do much, and ID's have pretty much been forgotten entirely since their reduction. That is NOT the kind of 'fix' I want.
As it is, I hardly bother with camps anymore, and I know I'm not alone. I wouldn't shed a tear if I lost the ability to drop a HTFB, even if they are cool looking.
al-djinn'i
Master Ranger
Nastzguehl wrote:
As a master rifleman and master ranger 16 more points wouldn't give me much more usefull skills or am I missing something?
QFE
that might get me novice carbineer. or maybe 2or 3 BH boxes. really not going to help a whole lot.
Owen-Lars wrote:
Yeah i have to agree with JB on this one. Ive tried over and over to think of what tiers rangers could drop in order to reduce our skill points but its just not possible without loosing something or an area.
Dropping the skill points by one point would be a bad idea for any other profession simply because you could dabble pretty easily with most other templates taking up almost master marksman or brawler. Ranger on the other hand would require full mastery of the scout profession still in which not a lot of people invest heavily. We wouldnt devalue our profession or skills and wouldnt become a dabbler profession due to lower skill point costs.
Its the best option all around really. It rewards us by giving us more free skill points whilst at the same time it doesnt degrade the profession.
I have a misgiving about this approach, myself. Which is that, what happens when it is forgotten 'why' the skill points were changed instead of dropping a couple lines in scout (to master Ranger)? Not that anyone can foresee changes, I simply worry that if an exception is made (in this case Ranger being different from other professions) then the reason it was made can be forgotten causing more unbalance down the road. I'm not saying I have a solution, I'm just wondering if anyone else has considered this and if so, maybe has some thoughts as well.
As for the initial proposal well it's interesting however I would strongly be against moving the higher Camps out of Ranger. I very much enjoy tents and personally find it rewarding - it's one of the reasons I enjoy Ranger. Removing them would remove that reason for me.
On the whole, I think simply that the best approach to making Ranger more balanced (since it alone still requires Master Scout currently) would be to make it meaningful to have Master Ranger, ie - the mods vs. critters, some defenses - something to make it more equitable with a CL of 80.
Removing a line from Scout, instead, or moving it at any rate, would really gut the whole Ranger thing imo - and it really seems more like a patchwork solution.
Pruning down the skill points required, while I note my misgivings above, is at least more balanced overall, but doesn't give Rangers any bonus, beyond freeing up aprox. the same skill points as other CL 80s. Note, I'd really enjoy retaining some or all of the medic I currently have >< Stims only suck!
At any rate, I think the devs are infinitely more likely to consider the pruning idea, much more than any other 
Just my two bits.