Ranger Archive

Not seeking to add fuel to the flames of the cammo wars but here's my experience off Live today.

Character is a novice ranger, no cammo skill at all. I have a pile of crates of cammo in my inventory though, so decided to give it a try and see how well it worked or not.

Starting at my house on Tatooine, I set out to walk into town. /conceal self brought up, as expected, the message that I didn't have that skill. I opened my inventory, dragged a Tat cammo kit to my toolbar, hit the button and got the 'you're hidden from view' message. There is no graphic effect, you remain visible, you don't drop off radar (Just a fyi, in case anyone wondered / asked)

About 150m from the house are a bunch of thug types. I'm -5k with them and we regularly spar as I'm going about my daily rounds. Today I got the big cold shoulder. This was PROBABLY because the con grey to me (CL65) but it may have been the cammo.

Nearby a herd? flock? bunch of scyk were aggroing on a cupa. Figuring that they'd be in an 'alert' state I wandered in, nothing.

Right, into Espa. Red dot Imps all around. Much waving, dancing and general tom-foolery, but no aggro on my rebel comby butt. Again these conned grey to me, they're about lvl30 so -26 to me. Flew over to Bestine to do some business, could see lots of red dots but again, lvl 30's. So, no aggro. Tried shooting a couple, purely for scientific purposes, and still nothing from the surviviors. Cammo did not break on combat, did not break on travelling on the same planet either by local shuttle or starship.

Travelled to Bestine. Theed. Landed outside the starport and of course, its an Imp town just thick with lvl 50+ imps. No aggro during loading, which was a relief, but as soon as I walked past a stormy (CL50) he fired on me. A very short gunfight later I looted his lunch money and a nice Solo poster for the bazaar. I cammoed up, walked back past his buddies and NOTHING.

They conned green and blue to me, so I'd have expected aggro if not cammoed. Near the fountain a yellow con stormy ignored me too.

Odd thing was that the civilians popped question marks whenever I went near them, so they're 'checking' too?

I had no aggro, even from some high level cats and a couple of purple conning red mobs so, cammo works regardless of your CL?? One of the yellow con cats fought back once I shot it in the head, but its mates just sat around looking feline and bored.

Once my cammo wore off (about half an hour) I was still able to walk past a CL30 stormy patrol without aggro, just a cluster of ????'s going up.


Conclusions:

Grey mobs no longer aggro, regardless of their aggressiveness.

Grey mobs no longer aggro, regardless of their faction. (At least in this limited 'test')

Cammo gives protection against all levels of MoB regardless of the players skill. Remember, this was applied by a ranger who has no cammo modifier.

Cammo doesn't break in combat. Social mobs in the same pack as the target will continue to ignore you.

The cammo pack itself does not give the player any cammo skill (mine remained at 0 once pack applied) but appears to offer the same protection as a Master ranger would expect, at least on low level planets.

Woot, they finally fixed one of our skill's.....but oh wait, they didn't do it for us.....they did it for everyone else

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Starson wrote:
Woot, they finally fixed one of our skill's.....but oh wait, they didn't do it for us.....they did it for everyone else

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Chin up bud, sometimes you've got to "take one for the team"


/choke
/gag

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Almagill wrote:

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Starson wrote:
Woot, they finally fixed one of our skill's.....but oh wait, they didn't do it for us.....they did it for everyone else

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Chin up bud, sometimes you've got to "take one for the team"


/choke
/gag

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Family Guy:

"Since when did they change 'for' to 'from?'"

With 3 other people in a family speeder going to the village, we all camo'd ourselves. I went all out, and did the +25 clothes, and +21 terratta camo food. They all broke within 1k of the village. I re-applied to them and their camo ran out before mine did. I went through like 18 camo kits. I didn't make it more than halfway on my +146 camo.

My opinon... Camo kits are a little useful for Rangers on themselves. Camo kits are useless for non-Rangers.

Level 80+ Gotals saw right through my Kashyyyk camo on the Ryatt Trails.I was kinda hoping this was not gonna be the case. I can go all over most of Kash now without any aggro, but that's when I dont bother to camo! Grey cons just ignore me now apart for a brief ? In fact its safer to no bother with camo or mask scent at all when around grey con aggros, because they immediately attack you if they break it! This has got to be a bug?!?

Wait... so what is the story with food? As long as a person cannot get a very long concealment I am fine (hey, if I am gonna make money I need to have this camo wear off fast). so what does the food do exactly, assuming a non-ranger has camoed him/herself and had a bite of food that *somehow* makes them blend into the scenery (huh?).

Also, I mean, no knock to the crafters or anything, but if they are gonna use a box full of meat, leather and bone to make themselves blend in, well, without the SP investment I assume they wouldn;t do a very good job at it. But if you's lasted that long... well, thats not a good sign for business. Anyone know how long the camo on a full crafter works? Also, if you were pulling mobs one at a time like that, I fear uber professions becomeing even more uber... I just really hope that this product goes to crafters like it was intended and not some Jedi or bounty hunter (god no, please ANYONE but them). Leaving aside ranger BHs of course :-D

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SeanBlader wrote:

With 3 other people in a family speeder going to the village, we all camo'd ourselves. I went all out, and did the +25 clothes, and +21 terratta camo food. They all broke within 1k of the village. I re-applied to them and their camo ran out before mine did. I went through like 18 camo kits. I didn't make it more than halfway on my +146 camo.

My opinon... Camo kits are a little useful for Rangers on themselves. Camo kits are useless for non-Rangers.

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Were you all rangers? I'm assuming not?

When you say 'we all camo'd ourselves', do you mean that they had a dath pack and applied it?

The modifiers from food etc would only affect, or should only affect the wearer. The cammo level of the person applying is the only thing that ought to be affecting 'duration' when applied to others (who have no other mods).

You say that yours ran out after theirs, once you had reapplied. That makes me think they're not rangers and it busting on them first is pretty much as it should be. You have skill mods they don't.

I can't remember who it was, a master ranger though, who pointed out that a trip to the village would take 4 kits for him, so if you were all master rangers you're a little down on the average with 18 kits. OTOH, if only you are MR and they are, say, tailors, thats a wee bit worrying. I know that, going on foot as a Master Ranger, I could, if I was careful, get there on one, at most two kits. But that was going out of my way to avoid aggro and certainly going out of my way to avoid combat.

Not trying to change your mind that cammo kits are only a little useful for Rangers and useless for non-rangers, but think of how the trip would have gone WITHOUT cammo. It is meant to give you, with the appropriate cammo skill level, a little protection, it's not a magic 'you can't see me' kit.

For Artie San, wandering out to fiddle with his harvesters on Dathomir, I honestly think that the cammo kits are going to be responsible for more dead artisans than anything else. Do they understand that the chances of detection go up if you are on a vehicle? Go up if the creature is already spooked? Or, if they are at their harvester and some yahoo storms through with a train or angry red MoBs that theres a high probability that they'll detect him on a roll given that they are now 'alert'? That the difference between your cammo skill level and the CL of the beast seems to have an influence on whether you get spotted?

Excuse me if I sound a little frustrated.

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Almagill wrote:

Were you all rangers? I'm assuming not?

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I thoughtdrew the picture well enough.

4 people in one speeder.
one Humanmaster ranger/Carbineer
one Zabrackmaster CH/Pikeman
one Humanmaster doctor/fencer
one Humanmaster BH/smuggler

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SeanBlader wrote:
Excuse me if I sound a little frustrated.

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Almagill wrote:

Were you all rangers? I'm assuming not?

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I thought drew the picture well enough.

4 people in one speeder.
one Human master ranger/Carbineer
one Zabrack master CH/Pikeman
one Human master doctor/fencer
one Human master BH/smuggler

I gave them kits I had crafted. *I* being the master Ranger, put on the camo clothes and consumed some terratta, which was +21 to camouflage. We started off camoing ourselves, and rode out. Within 1 kilometer of the Science outpost, all their camo broke and they got aggroed, not at the same time but all very close together.

While I was still in the back seat of the speeder, and the BH/Smuggler was driving above and behind me, I re-applied their camo kits, while we were still in motion. The camo that I (being the master ranger with effective +146 camo skill) still didn't last on this second application more than another 1 kilometer. Mine did however. Applied to myself in total for the trip out, 2 camo kits. Applied to the rest of the group for the whole trip out, probably like 16.

Anything else I missed? It was me who posted that it was taking about 4 kits round trip.

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Don't bite me Just trying to get the facts straight.

"With 3 other people in a family speeder going to the village, we all camo'd ourselves. I went all out, and did the +25 clothes, and +21 terratta camo food. They all broke within 1k of the village. I re-applied to them and their camo ran out before mine did. I went through like 18 camo kits. I didn't make it more than halfway on my +146 camo.

My opinon... Camo kits are a little useful for Rangers on themselves. Camo kits are useless for non-Rangers."


OK, so now I know, not having to assume, that the other players were not rangers. Only two, other than you, had any cammo mods (well, scout maskscent). They initially applied their own cammo, which broke, which is pretty much to be expected for a number of reasons:

they don't have much if any underlying cammo skill
they're travelling in a vehicle, something that does seem to increase the chances of breaking
they're travelling in a high traffic area so the critters are likely to be 'alert' already

You say that your cammo lasted longer on you than it did when you applied it to them, again, as expected.

I honestly couldn't remember who had made the 4 packs per trip comment, if I had done I'd have said it was yourself. 4 packs to go to and from the village, by bike, isn't that bad. The average for the rest of the party was a bit higher and, given their templates etc, that seems about right.

Just a thought, cos I've never actually timed it, but how long is the trip, timewise? Cammo kits last about 30 mins? (nah, thats daft thinking, Ken, its never a 30+ minute trip...)

Unfortunately we don't get told in the combat logs what actually broke our cammo (or does it show in the verbose version? dunno). Given that lag can mean you've gone past a high level critter and then a couple of hundred metres away you see "a nightsister rancor hits ken' for n points" when there's clearly not a rancor in sight, the actual breaking of the cammo could be taking place away back up the trail and only making its way through the lag a while later when you're surrounded by grey mobs.

Anyhow, am not criticising or disbelieving or even just being plain awkward. All am trying to do is work out what variables are coming in to play, which are creating unexpected results, which are behaving as before and then trying to work out 'why' stuff happens like what it do.

I would however go back to the comment / question I posed in my earlier reply. "how far would they have got non-cammoed?" If they were able to avoid aggro at all, then cammo does have some use for non-rangers, even if it is severely limited on adventure planets.

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JascoSmlee wrote:
Level 80+ Gotals saw right through my Kashyyyk camo on the Ryatt Trails.I was kinda hoping this was not gonna be the case. I can go all over most of Kash now without any aggro, but that's when I dont bother to camo! Grey cons just ignore me now apart for a brief ? In fact its safer to no bother with camo or mask scent at all when around grey con aggros, because they immediately attack you if they break it! This has got to be a bug?!?

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From what am reading it seems to be a general issue with the Kash cammo not working, full stop. I rather suspect the critters up ther eare coded slightly differently (and that opens up a whole different can of worms about how things are being cobbled together atm, but hey... ) resulting in slightly different behaviours.

I'd assumed, before the VERY limited run through I'd done, that the chance of detection would increase the greater the difference between you and the creature doing the check. I mean, that would be 'sensible' and consistent. Think of it as a slope of potential, the greater the height above you they are, the more chance they have to detection, the lower below you the less chance.

Now am not at all sure what we've got. If TC was still froggified I'd go run a block of tests, now we're seeing what sort of issues are coming up, but, well, blah...

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SeanBlader wrote:

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Almagill wrote:

Don't bite me Just trying to get the facts straight.

....

They initially applied their own cammo, which broke, which is pretty much to be expected for a number of reasons:

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Sounds to me like you're arguing a point or trying to explain. Hopefully to someone other than me, because otherwise you're really wasting your breath. I posted my informal and not-entirely scientific tests as an example of the stupidity of the idea in the first place. I specifically made it a point to have them apply to themselves first so that it could be shown how unsuccessful it would be to get from the bazaar. I was able to test a number of different scenario's all within the span of a one way trip. Self applied by a non-ranger, applied by an enhanced ranger to a non-ranger, and an enhanced ranger applying it to self. In the speeder we'd all have been dead if we weren't level 80 players, as all four of us got hit at least once. I'm not the one you should be trying to convince, not by a longshot, hence the continued frustration.

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Almagill wrote:

"how far would they have got non-cammoed?"

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The trip back I was a passenger in the Bounty Hunter's AV-21. We never got aggroed once without camo or maskscent at all. The conclusion is that if you go faster than the spawns you've got nothing to worry about until you get to your destination.

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ROFLMAO

you think am trying to convince you that, what? Cammo is now 'good' and the cure for all that ills the feebler professions?

My position on cammo for all has been and will remain that it is a bad idea. Not because of some notion taht it takes something precious out of our profession and gives it to others to use for free (though that IS an issue) but because the artisan-types that have been popping up in here and in other places going 'oh goodums, we can slap camo on go dance fairy circles round our harvies' are being sold a pup. A three legged one eyed worm infested pup, with mange.

Camo barely works for those of us who have/had the skill to use it. For those with no modifiers (which is why I asked what the other folk in the speeder was, to confirm that they had no or little modifiers) its damn nearly a suicide pill. It is going to encourage Artie San to go plonk his harvies in even more stupid places, because for a few minutes he felt invulnerable, and then when it busts, they are going to be critter snacks as they have a) little or no combat skills to fight back and b) little or no terrain negotiation to let them beat feet out of trouble.

All I was doing in my post is trying to pick your brains, and those of other players, to try and get a better idea of just how the bloomin' stuff is working, or not.

Away back when the arties started getting all 'excited' about cammo-for-all I was the one saying "Be careful what you ask for, you might get it". They've got it. Now let's hear how they yell foul when they realise just what they got.

Apologies if itcame over as me trying to tell you that the stuff is worthwhile. It does have its use, it is limited, it needs skill and it needs patience. It also needs the fatalistic ranger mentality of "oh bugger, am dead again, glad I don't wear armour or carry much thats decayable". 99/100 when cammo works, its the ranger under it that's done the work, not the magic potion in the pack