Ranger Archive
Thread: Rangers Abilities.
As I make my climb up the Ranger Skill lines I find myself increasingly dissapointed in the abilities rangers are getting.
Camo kits.
They should work on players too.
Should be based on distance, terrain, time of day, your skill, opponents skill. If successful it removes you from thier radar. The closer the opponent is the fewer actions you can perform without alerting him to your presence. Of course attacking automatically removes the camo effect. Visual sighting of somebody under camo should break camo as well.
There should be various kits that only work in certain enviroments like a desert camo kit should not work in a jungle and vice versa.
Hiding Our Tracks.
We should have the ability to Hide our tracks that improves as we improve up the skill line. beginning tactics greatly reduce movement speed when actively hiding tracks but as you improve the speed penalty is reduced and eventually removed.
Camps
There should be a new type of camp for master rangers that not only has the fence but also has automated attack defenses on the level of small automated sentries. These camps would actually require a small power generator that engineers could make.
When a camp has reached its max xp requirement it should let the owner know or at least state it on the camp status pad.
Maskscent
should not do any good if the creature can see us.... too many times I have been able to run right through the lair of aggro creatures gaining maskscent xp and it wouldnt break .... maskscent should allow you to pass relatively closer to an aggro creature but i shouldnt be able to bonk it on the head without it noticing me.
Traps.
Rangers should get some traps that work on people. (if they do i havnt seen them so disregard) Traps I would like to see would be able to do the normal stun, dizzy etc ... plus have some that can temporarily disable weapons. Im sorry but once a commando finds a ranger the ranger is pretty much toast we should have the ability to slow thier attack via these traps if it only affords us the ability to escape.
Pack Animals.
Rangers should be able to pack animals. Nothing aggressive and we cant train them ourselves but we should be able to use trained animals. Hunters and explorers often ride horses in real life why cant we? These pack animals should have inventory capabilities via special packs that animals wear like saddle bags etc.... tailors can make these bags as well as other pet wearable items such as a saddle which improves riding speed and control etc ...
Rangers should gain the ability to harvest more than one type of resource eventually being able to use every part of an animal once they make master.
Wilderness survival kits.
using things from nature we should be able to make our own medicine kits that act as first aid.
Blow darts.
We should get anew weapon type that allows us to make our own poisons and then utilize them in blow dart weapons. tranquilizars should allow us to put a player/creature to incap state without causing damage. if we were to attack them it would neutralize the effect (to be fair) ... this would be great fo again escaping. I would suggest also limiting how often this would work on the same person within a short period of time to prevent griefing. ..... standard pvp rules still apply meaning we cant use this on a non enemy.
just a few quick unorganized ideas as i really havnt had time to sit down and think about the profession (im a new ranger and this is my first post to this forum.)
Cyberthugg maybe I can help a little here:
Camo kits.
They should work on players too.
Should be based on distance, terrain, time of day, your skill, opponents skill. If successful it removes you from thier radar. The closer the opponent is the fewer actions you can perform without alerting him to your presence. Of course attacking automatically removes the camo effect. Visual sighting of somebody under camo should break camo as well.
There should be various kits that only work in certain enviroments like a desert camo kit should not work in a jungle and vice versa.
Pretty nice Idea but a couple things I noticed. First their is no real line of sight in this game. Not in the traditional sense at any rate. You need line of sight from your character to a creature for aim or you may loose sight of that creature and your bonus, but thats really about it. I mean you don't even have to face a creature to shoot is, your laser goes backward and clips through your body in some cases.....
I do like the idea of distance, terrain, time of day, skill, opponents skill. Visual sighting is kind of tough without coding something to say that person not only does not appear on your radar, but doesn't appear in game if you haven't broke thier camo. Actions giving bonuses to being spotted is nice though.
Camo Kits are planet specific, and most planets in SWG have very specific environments, I think thats the closest you're going to get.
Hiding Our Tracks.
We should have the ability to Hide our tracks that improves as we improve up the skill line. beginning tactics greatly reduce movement speed when actively hiding tracks but as you improve the speed penalty is reduced and eventually removed.
Are you talking in terms for other players tracking us, or creatures. I'm not sure I understand what the benefit would be.
Camps
There should be a new type of camp for master rangers that not only has the fence but also has automated attack defenses on the level of small automated sentries. These camps would actually require a small power generator that engineers could make.
When a camp has reached its max xp requirement it should let the owner know or at least state it on the camp status pad.
I don't know if you are aware of this post, but on the Squad Leader board they talk about the ability to fortify and add defenses to ranger camps. It was also pruposed on the Ranger board out of professional courtesy (http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=ranger&message.id=18133)can't see where this should be a ranger ability. The max XP threshold being shown in the camp status pad would be fantastic though.
Maskscent
should not do any good if the creature can see us.... too many times I have been able to run right through the lair of aggro creatures gaining maskscent xp and it wouldnt break .... maskscent should allow you to pass relatively closer to an aggro creature but i shouldnt be able to bonk it on the head without it noticing me.
This goes back to what I said before about there really not being any type of working line of sight. I think the solution would be that if you have maskscent on and you enter an aggro creatures aggro radius you're toast. OR so that there is an actual point to the skill, it halves the creatures aggro, so no matter what, unless you are in camo, you can't get closer than half they're aggro.
Traps.
Rangers should get some traps that work on people. (if they do i havnt seen them so disregard) Traps I would like to see would be able to do the normal stun, dizzy etc ... plus have some that can temporarily disable weapons. Im sorry but once a commando finds a ranger the ranger is pretty much toast we should have the ability to slow thier attack via these traps if it only affords us the ability to escape.
Rangers are supposed to be creature oriented. Most of our traps are creature oriented as well. I would like to think that the darts and poison traps should work on players/NPC's as well. Don't forget that Holocron has made mention that traps are being revamped to allow for traps like tripwire that will do a knock down on someone as well.
Pack Animals.
Rangers should be able to pack animals. Nothing aggressive and we cant train them ourselves but we should be able to use trained animals. Hunters and explorers often ride horses in real life why cant we? These pack animals should have inventory capabilities via special packs that animals wear like saddle bags etc.... tailors can make these bags as well as other pet wearable items such as a saddle which improves riding speed and control etc ...
I wouldn't even worry about this until the creature mount patch is done.
Rangers should gain the ability to harvest more than one type of resource eventually being able to use every part of an animal once they make master.
Already been addressed in State of the Profession
Wilderness survival kits.
using things from nature we should be able to make our own medicine kits that act as first aid.
This would only work if it was limited to first aid, and didn't work as well as a medics version of it. Plus it gives me a reason to forage
Blow darts.
We should get anew weapon type that allows us to make our own poisons and then utilize them in blow dart weapons. tranquilizars should allow us to put a player/creature to incap state without causing damage. if we were to attack them it would neutralize the effect (to be fair) ... this would be great fo again escaping. I would suggest also limiting how often this would work on the same person within a short period of time to prevent griefing. ..... standard pvp rules still apply meaning we cant use this on a non enemy.
I think this is along the lines of the ranger specific weapon, Bow, in the State of the Profession
hiding tracks could be useful against stalking creatures but i thinkt he best use would be in pvp vs other trackers.
I understand some stuff was addressed by that other post i mostly wrote this quick n dirty to give me a reminder for a more detailed post later but do appreciate any feedback.
oh and one other thing ... I know about the bow .. Id still like to see the dartgun/blowgun
i didn't even think of stalking creatures....I would think that maskscent and conceal should take care of that...in fact conceal should definetly make it harder for stalking creatures to find you.
NRass can you ask if this is true or not???
I would think that hiding my tracks would be part of my conceal skill.
"Pack Animals."
This is a very cool idea, that solves some issues that Rangers are having with inventory storage.
Sort of like a Storage Droid, but more wilderness oriented.
Of course a Creature Handler would need to trainthe specifiedcreature to store stuff. 
"Wilderness survival kits."
Other Rangers have requested foragable herbal medicines, I'll put it on the list.
"in fact conceal should definetly make it harder for stalking creatures to find you."
/conceal and /maskscent make all creatures ignore you completely (if you succeed).
Rangers get a Stalking message when an aggressive creatures has its eyes on you...
When you see the message, use /maskscent,if you succeed the creature will stop stalking.
Thanx for the info Nraas. I'm still new to ranger and was just jotting down some initial things I had noticed.
Some interesting ideas.
Camo kits, as they are now, when working right, should be working well IMO. I don't think the game would allow someone to be not show up on radar, from what I have read on how the machanics work. And they have said they will not give anything that makes us invisable. Remember, Rangers are more of a PvE profession, not so much a PvP profession.
Hiding Tracks, not sure what that would do, the game doesn't leave tracks when you run. What is the bennefit of this? Has some possibilities, such as throwing off stalking creatures.
Mask Scent, are you crazy? They are finally getting it so it works as it's supposed to. There is no problem with running right next to a creature. If all it lets us do is run a little closer, there is no benefit. I already can run within 40m or so, skirting the herd. This is one of the very few cool things we get as ranger. sheesh 
Traps, yes we all agree we should have one or two NPC/PC traps. They said there were going to work on that. In fact they have said they are going to work on more traps for rangers in general, since the 2 we get are pretty lame. The best traps are still in scout. They also need to make our traps work against CH pets.
Being more of a PvE profession is even more reason to give us the ability to hide from other players as we arnt designed to be able to fight them. Either give us the tools to fight or the tools to hide. And I am not asking them to give us the ability to completely disappear permanently.
The hide tracks is what Ithink /conceal should be doing and it should work against other players as well.
Its not working correctly and if theya re fixing it then fine but I was able to run through several highly aggressive high lvl mob lairs and actually do /pet on one of them without getting attacked ..... sounds kind of silly to me.
I really dont consider what we have traps they are basically grenades for animals. I'd like the ability to actually make "traps" that can be laid out and checked on much like harvestors are done. Im not asking for the massive ability to gather like harvestors do but in exchange we should be able to put out a great many. I would like to see better animal grenades than what we have but I also add that Id like to see some actual traps.
thanx for the feedback
Don't forget that both Bio Engineers and Creature Handlers use Maskscent in order to get close. They need to be very close to their target creature in order to either tame or sample dna. Although it may be 'silly' its a necessary part of the game at the moment. Do like some of the other ideas though
Cyberthugg wrote:
Its not working correctly and if theya re fixing it then fine but I was able to run through several highly aggressive high lvl mob lairs and actually do /pet on one of them without getting attacked ..... sounds kind of silly to me.