CUEmu - Thread Posts

Necrolyte07

Sun Aug 22, 2004 5:38 am

Being that the devs have many professions that possibly need to be revamped, I have thought of a possible way to revamp the Ranger profession while keeping most of the existing framework. I've read many other posts that have had suggestions (hat's off to Owen-Lars; excellent post) that involved redoing many aspects of the profession. While I think these ideas are good, they might be impractical from a dev's point of view.

As far as the role of the Ranger goes, it's basically been unanimous that they should be the end-all character as far as exploration and creature combat/harvesting is concerned. I think that Rangers should be better at taking down large creatures than a Bounty Hunter, or possibly even a Jedi.

Overall Ideas:

Scouting Droids:

Although I don't own one, I've read quite a bit about these things and beleive that they are good additions to the game and the Scout/Ranger professions as a whole.

The changes that I would make to the creature harvesting aspect of these droids is that the best harvesting droid should only be able to harvest 30%-35% of what a Master Ranger would be able to harvest from that creature.

The Ranger and the droid should be able to harvest the same creature, that way an Artisan can buy a scouting droid and still harvest a meager amount of resources and save himself/herself the 29 xp it takes to get to Hunting 4 on the Scout tree; the Scout/Ranger will get a 30% boost in harvesting efficency and be able to get xp and resources faster.

As for the trapping aspect of the droids, I think that this will provide a good market for our traps and enable us to get some extra cash. However, in order to not nerf the Scouts/Rangers, the range of the droid's trap throwing should be 10m less than a Ranger's; the best trapping droid's traps should hit less often than Master Rangers (like 75% of what a Master Ranger's accuracy is with traps).

Skill Tree Ideas:

Wayfaring:

Terrain Negotiation:

With the advent of vehicles that everyone can use, the Terrain Negotiation skill mod became less important, since any profession is now able to explore faster. When I was playing before the vehicles were created, I wanted a speeder to get me places faster. In order to keep the speeders without reducing the effectiveness of Terrain Negotiation I propose this: a character with a higher Terrain Negotiation skill mod should be able to traverse terrain faster while mounted, and the decay rate of using vehicles should be reduced (because the Ranger is so effective at getting around difficult terrain and is able to avoid unneeded wear and damage to the bike).

It would also be nice if Terrain Negotiation sped up all forms of movement (i.e. swimming).

Camo Kits:

When I was reading about what camo kits can do and how players can apply them to other players, I thought that these might be an opportunity for the Rangers to be able to create buffs of sorts. Of course the would pale in comparison to those of a Doctor, but they should be pretty effective; enough for a Ranger to earn some extra cash with them. What I propose is that the camo kits provide the following benefits to whomever they are applied upon:

1. the player does not show up on the (CTRL + M) map or the circular radar
2. the enemy players get a 20%-50% accuracy reduction when targeting concealed players
3. enemy players who are targeting concealed players may, at random, lose the ranger as a target and can re-aquire it after a few seconds

The strengths of #2 and #3 would depend upon the experimental effectiveness of the camo kit. Also, instead of just disappearing like the /MaskScent does when the player is spotted, have the camo kit work on a timer similar to that of other buffs. The enemies would still be able to see through the camo and attack the player, but the camo kit won't disappear upon such an event. The accuracy reduction mostly counteracts the accuracy bonuses given to a player when the target is at an ideal range (i.e if the weapon gets a +45 accurcy modifier, and the camo kit reduces accuracy by 50%, the attacker would have the effect of a -5% modifier on accuracy).

Advanced Trapping:

Most posts suggested creating specialized weapons that only Rangers could use in order to hunt better with. This seems quite impractical from a dev's perspective since that would require messing with other professions (such as Weaponsmith) in order to allow them to craft these specialized weapons. There are also professions like Pikeman (or so I've read) who's weapons need to be improved anyway; the devs will probably fix/improve what they already have before creating new weapons.

Instead of specialized weapons, there should be more traps that are more effective at taking down creatures; the traps will be the Ranger's "specialized" weapon. Traps that do pool damage should deal more damage based upon the trapping skill of the Ranger who throws them. A novice Scout should be able to take away 5% pool damage from a single trap, while a master Ranger should be able to take away (at most) 20% with the same trap. This way most of the damage can be done by traps and the final hit is all that a weapon is needed for. This, of course, means that multiple traps of the same kind can be used in faster intervals, in order to make them a more practical combat tool.

The Ranger's traps should focus more on area-effect traps, kind of like how the Combat Medic focuses on area healing, while the Medic focuses on more direct healing. Here are a few proposals for trap ideas:

- Pulse Trap (Master Ranger): emits a pulse that damages the creature's health, mind, and action pools at the same time. effects a single target (I'm unsure of whether to make this an area-of-effect)
- Area XX Biotoxin (Master Ranger): (same 3 as below but with area of effect. Might be a bad idea....)

- Adhesive Mist (Adv Trap 4): does the same thing as an Adhesive Mesh, but effects an area instead of a single target

- Mind Biotoxin (Adv Trap 3): does gradual damage to the creature's mind pool; hits a single target
- Action Biotoxin (Adv Trap 3): does gradual damage to the creature's action pool; hits a single target
- Health Biotoxin (Adv Trap 3): does gradual damage to the creature's health pool; hits a single target

- Stun Gas (Adv Trap 2): forces the creatures down a stance (standing to kneeling, kneeling to prone). Works well with dizzy effect. Effects an area around the target

-Phermone Trap (Adv Trap 1): all effected creatures break off combat & don't persue. Will attack the player again if he/she attacks the creatures immideately afterwards. Area of effect trap. Helps the Ranger get out of unwated combat & helps a lot after using Rescue command.

Traps should be easier for the devs to make, since they don't have many parameters to balance, and don't require the intervention of other professions (like weaponsmiths) in order to create. As for the biotoxin traps, those might need some Bio Engineer crafted components, but that might be able to be overlooked for simplicity sake; the Bio Engineer could possibly make enhancements for the trap though.

Since no Chef would want to buy poisoned meats to put in his/her food, here's a little explanation of how the biotoxin works: the toxin enters the creatures bloodstream and uses the oxygen in its blood to survive, thus suffocating the creature. When the supply of oxygen from the blood is depleted (i.e. the creature has stopped breathing and died), the biotoxin becomes inert and decays away.

These suggestions are meant to not only improve the Ranger's trapping abilities, but to make sure the lower-level traps have a place in a Master Ranger's hunting arsenal.

Tracking:

Skll Mods:

A Ranger, and possibly even a Scout, should have a skill mod that increaces not only the accuracy of attacks against creatures, but also increaces the damage done to a creature with a certain weapon, so that any other profession attacking with a weapon will do less damage when attacking a creature than a Ranger would with the same weapon.

Area Track:

I love this ability. Although it's mostly useless its still fun to have and even comes into good use sometimes. An increaced range would be nice though; maybe have the range go up as the player's "tracking" mod increaces (starts at 500m and increaces to 1000m or even 1500m).

I was thinking that at Master Ranger, the player would get an "Area Track: Location" ability. When the player highlights a target (creature, player, npc) on the tracking result list and clicks "ok", a waypoint is created to the target's current location, so the player may get to the target quicker. This would not make the distance and direction abilities useless, since these factors might influence the player's decision of which target to highlight. This would also not update its self as the target moves; it would only give the waypoint of the target at the time of the /areatrack command.

Hunting abilities:

Instead of giving the Ranger specialized weapons, giving the player abilities seems a bit more plausable. Here are a few that I thought of:

- Hunter Shot 1 (Tracking 2): deals extra damage and doesn't give away the Ranger's position (similar to Rifleman's Conceal Shot). This ability can only be used on a creature as a target.

- Hunter Shot 2 (Tacking 4): deals more damage than Hunter Shot 1

- Hunter Shot 3 (Master Ranger): deals more damage than Hunter Shot 2

- Hunter Hit 1 (Tracking 2): melee version of Hunter Shot 1. Increaces attack and defense vs creatures, but doesn't hide the player from the creature.

- Hunter Hit 2 (Tracking 4): more effective in attack and defence than Hunter Hit 1

- Hunter Hit 3 (Tracking 4): more effective in attack and defence than Hunter Hit 2

Frontiering:

Dealing with Buffs:

Most complaints about buffs, as far as camping is concerned, are that people don't want to sit in a camp because waiting uses up the duration time of buffs. I have two ideas on how this can be fixed:

1. since the game tracks when the player is in battle, have the buff's timer decrement only when the player is engaged in combat. That way they won't mind waiting in a camp since their buffs will stay intact. To balance this, the maximum time that a buff lasts could be reduced by about 1 hour, since they don't have to account for traveling anymore (they'd still have 2 hours or so remaining).

2. have the buff timer stop only when the buffed player is in a camp (or maybe even in a town/structure). This would make waiting in a camp desirable for a person with a buff, especially if the player is waiting on a friend. A special state might be made in order to visually represent this, like when a player takes a seat or gets in a vehicle. Just for kicks, the buff timer could stop only when a player is in one of the chairs at the campsite (since they already have a symbol for that); make a basic camp and watch them fight over the single chair...lol.

Experimentation:

I'm all for having modular camp kits, but as I've stated with many things before, that might be impractical from a dev's point of view. Instead, allowing the player to use a crafting station to experiment with camps could possibly be easier to implement. Here are some ideas on what aspects could be crafted:

Healing Effectiveness: determines how fast the camp heals wounds/damage on its own.
Repellant Potency: determines how strong of creatures can be repelled with the camp.

Foraging:

Although foraging is a useful ability, I'd like to see some more potent food stuffs being foraged by the Ranger. They shouldn't exceed the foods that a Chef could make, but still be more worth eating (maybe up to +200 pool points for 20 mins).

The /forage command should also allow the Ranger to pick up plant organic materials, similar to the Medical Forage ability. This should be able to pick up more than one pieces of resource at a time; maybe it could go up as the forage ability increaces. This addition would probably break the game in the Ranger's favor, but I figured it would be worth mentioning for discussion purposes. Come to think of it, I haven't used the Medical Forage ability since I first got the Novice Medic ability (I'm Master Medic now); I should probably try it out again.

Battle Fatigue Healing:

It's been widely said that camps should be able to heal people's battle fatigue. I think that this could benefit Entertainers so that they can actually be more useful out in the wild and in groups instead of just going afk in the canteena. I have two ideas for this; one or both could be implemented:

1. Allow battle fatigue to be gradually healed in a camp with the players' other wounds. Entertainers would speed up this processs; this speed would be modified by the healing ability of the camp.

2. Give the Ranger (or possibly even a Scout) a passive ability that allows him/her to heal battle fatigue in camps. This would not apply to other players, just to Rangers. A skill mod could be added to increace the natural rate of recovery in the Frontiering (or even Survival) tree. The rationale behind this is that a Ranger would probably feel "at home" in a camp and would therefore be able to relax, whereas other professions would prefer being in a city.

Final Comments:

Well, that's my two cents on the matter. Feel free to make any comments that you like about my ideas, but please keep the flame to a minimum; constructive criticism is far more useful and makes the message boards more enjoyable to read. I know that there are some really bad ideas on this post; I've even marked a few as being really bad. I did so to both let you know that this is a "risky" proposal, and to just say the idea and ask for your input/discussion on the matter.

Thanks for reading.

Calculus_Entropy

Sun Aug 22, 2004 10:37 pm

#2

Bump, so I remember to read this in the morning.

Calculus Entropy
Ranger Blue Glowie Emeritus
Garindan used /areatrack to find Han.

SofMod

Mon Aug 23, 2004 4:25 am

#3

/agreed

I should hope that Rangers can get some PVP traps to make them more worth while in PVP.

Sofmod-Bloodfin
Kekoa-Kauri

Calculus_Entropy

Mon Aug 23, 2004 7:03 am

#4

Necrolyte07 wrote:

how do I bump this to the top?

Sorry, I was bumping it when I posted last...

Bumping is simply replying to a post so that it moves to the top of the list.

Calculus Entropy
Ranger Blue Glowie Emeritus
Garindan used /areatrack to find Han.

Necrolyte07

Mon Aug 23, 2004 7:28 am

#5

Since the Ranger should be a PvE expert, he/she shouldn't be good at PvP as well. If the traps were usable in both PvE and PvP, the game would be broken in the Ranger's favor. Imagine immobilizing all the brawlers that came at you with an Adhesive Mesh, or Placing dizzy and stun on about 5 enemy players. For PvP, one of the other professions should be taken; my character is a Rifleman and a Ranger. Granted you won't be as effective as a Bounty Hunter, but if your'e only a Rifleman you won't be either.
If anything, the Ranger's role in PvP should be to counteract the Creature Handlers; kind of how Bounty Hunters are supposed to counteract Jedi (or so I hear).

There was a post by Owen-Lars called "Ranger Sumit Pack" that had a lot of cool ideas, but they probably wouldn't add to the Ranger's role in the GCW a whole lot. Sure there are some people who like to get some intel on an enemy before rushing in, but most people don't really feel like doing that. Also, there are easier ways to achieve the goals that were made in the post.

The post mentioned an ability called "Pathfinding" (explained in note 1.2) where the Ranger would get a movement speed bonus at the cost of attack and defense bonuses. Who would want to do this when he/she could just get on a speeder and get back to safety much faster?

The "Stealth" ability (note 1.5) acts the same way as my suggestion for the Camo Kits, except with my suggestion the benefits can be passed on to non-Rangers as well.

The "Infiltrator" abilty (note 1.6) sounds cool but in practice wouldn't be very useful. If you do manage to get to the enemy base, then what? If you're trying to find out what players are in the base, that can easily be found out by using the "Areatrack: player" ability. If you're trying to listen in on the enemys' plans, that won't work either. If what a group of people are planning is so important, they would just get in a group and use groupchat to discuss the plans; as far as I can tell, nobody can listen in on a groupchat except for the members of the group.

The post went on at lengths on how a reconassiance system should work. It called for a ranger taking an overhead screenshot of an area and sending it back to a Squad Leader who is back in a terminal (note 1.4). It later described a /recon (note 1.9) and an /uplinkrecon (note 2.0) ability. This whole process can be done much simpler with about the same level of results and requiring no dev intervention. Here's how to do it:

1. have some Rangers and a few non-Rangers form a group
2. have the Rangers each pick a direction and head out in that direction; the non-Rangers stay with the main part of the force
3. the Rangers use "Areatrack: player" to look for enemy players
4. if any Ranger finds something, he/she send a message using groupchat to warn everyone that enemies are approaching and gives the direction
5. the non-Rangers at the base use spatial chat to tell the rest of the force that enemies are comming from a certain direction.

This requries the same amount of coordination as the post's suggestoin, but without the need to add new features. Having the /areatrack ability have a longer range would help this, though.

As for the part where an evac shuttle comes to pick up a squad/player (note 1.4 paragraph 2), I think that when they add starships in the game (which I've heard they are) this problem will solve its self.

I don't really like the "Disrupt Comms" ability (note 2.1). To me the radar acts mostly as what they player's character notices about the world around him/her and isn't an actual device that the player holds. That's why my suggestion about the camo kits removed the player from the radar; if the radar were in fact a machine based on movement, thermal, or whatever, then the camo kits wouldn't really hide the player from the radar. The fact that it would affect both sides would only act to anger a lot of players, and if it ended up that your side was the one who used the most tactics and needed the radar the most, you just hindered your team.

I also don't really like the "Ground Trap" idea (note 1.7). It fairly unlikely that a player would trigger a trap if there were only one laid on the ground. A mine field of sorts would be needed, and after a few people went into the land mine, everyone would wise-up and not go to that area. Friendly players would also be effected by the mines as well. There's also the fact that if an innocent player who was not involved in the conflict stepped on the trap, that would be bad as well. Imagine how bad it would feel to know that you blasted some newbie Scout on the way to his first hunting trip. Also, if people got combat xp for getting people with their traps, what's stopping players from littering traffic areas around towns with ground traps and getting free combat xp from players who are walking by?

This isn't meant to flame anyone's efforts at improving the Ranger profession. It's good that people are speaking their minds about how to make this profession fun for everyone. I know that there will be a similar post to this about mine. There were also some things that I liked that were in Owen-Lars' post. The idea on how to use foraged items to heal wounds and stuff is awsome (note 1.3); I also think that the "Priority Mark" ability would help out a lot (note 1.8).

As far as what I think the Ranger's role should be in the GCW, I think it should have two:

1. Recon - The Ranger goes ahead of the main attack force and uses /areatrack to find out if there's someone comming, or to see what and how many enemies are present.

2. Combat Support - The Ranger shouldn't have a direct PvP role. It should be to mostly to support other players; the Ranger player's combat effectiveness should come in one of the other combat professions (like Rifleman). One way this will be accomplished is the give Camo Kits to allied players to hide them from the radar and make them harder to hit. I do think that there should be some form of "traps" that can be used on players and npcs, but they shouldn't be the ones that are used against creatures in PvE. They should be grenades; Rangers should be able to use grenades to attack enemies.

Giving the Rangers certifications for using certain grenades in combat would go well with the "Advanced Trapping" tree. I'm not necessarialy suggesting that they should be able to lob Thermal Detonators during combat, but they should have some grenades to give them an area of effect combat role. One suggestion for a grenade is as follows:

- Ambush Grenade : The grenade does some blast damage and stuns the effected targets (it's my understanding that "stun" makes the effected target miss a round of combat and lowers the target's stats for a bit)

The Ranger's role in combat would be as follows:

1. The Ranger first buffs the squad with Camo Kits
2. The squad positions its self in a spot with a reasonable advantage for an attack
3. The Ranger starts off the attack by throwing an Ambush Grenade or some other form of Grenade.
4. The squad uses its normal combat abilities, along with any Ranger traps or the Ranger's combat abilities from a combat profession.

Other grenades that are unique because they do acid damage or other attack types/ status ailments.

As far as crafting the grenades is concrened, I can think of two possible scenarios:

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

1. The Ranger crafts his/her own grenades with a Weapon Crafting Tool. Schematics (along with certifications) are given along the "Advanced Trapping" tree.

Pros: It allows the Ranger to be more self-sufficent. It also doesn't require messing with the Weaponsmith profession.

Cons: It is more logical for a Weaponsmith to craft grenades, since they are also weapons.

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

2. A Weaponsmith crafts the grenades and sells them with other weapons.

Pros: it allows the Weaponsmith to have a new market for selling items, since each grenade can only be used once and Rangers would have to keep comming back for more grenades.

Cons: it would require messing with the Weaponsmith profession. The weaponsmiths would need to learn the details of crafting and selling grenades.

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

Well, here's what I think about the Ranger's role in PvP. I went into such lengths with this reply because it was brought to my attention that I didn't mention a Ranger's PvP role, and I figured you'd at least want to hear my opinions on what that should be. Although it's a much simpler concept than most others on the message board, I think that it still adds a good role for a Ranger in PvP. It would be more likely to actually be added into the game (assuming my ideas are good), since not too many changes would be needed to make (except for the long list of traps and grenades...).

Thanks for reading.

Kachada

Mon Aug 23, 2004 7:51 am

#6

Much smaller/simpler idea...

New Defense:
Ranger Evasion

Works like this: Critter swings at you. 1st Defensive roll of Melee/ranged defense determines if you are "hit". Second, if you are "hit" you have your normal secondary roll of Block, Counterattack or Dodge. If this fails as well, a ranger would have a third roll of "Ranger Evasion" which would basically be the same thing as dodge, but would only be rolled when being attacked by creatures.

Whaddya think?

You know, this would really enhace the usefullness of "rescue" as well, since we'd be better at evading creature attacks.

Message Edited by Kachada on 08-23-2004 10:54 AM

Kachada
Master Rifleman of Bria
-------------------------------
Krakoa
Aspiring Ranger & Swordsman

Kachada

Mon Aug 23, 2004 7:59 am

#7

Another simple single idea:

New camp:
Portable Bacta Chamber

A small coffin-sized tube. Being in it alone would heal poisons, disease, and bleeds at rate comparable with TKA meditate. More than one person can enter the chamber, but for each person in the tank, the healing power is reduced.

Kachada
Master Rifleman of Bria
-------------------------------
Krakoa
Aspiring Ranger & Swordsman

JokitoRoyo

Mon Aug 23, 2004 9:48 am

#8

Nice Ideas. Some have been mentioned before, some are new. Nice to see that there are so many of us that are very close to being on the same page.

My only question is why does Hunter Shot 3 come at Master Ranger while Hunter Hit 2 and 3 comes with tracking 4?

I assume that was a typo but thought I'd point it out to clear up any mis-understanding.

I really like the whole Hunter hit/shot idea though.

Keep up the good work!

-Deleted Pesoj Maub Ex-Master Ranger/Ex-Master Rifleman Ex-SOE Customer

Come on by forum.swgranger.com the camp is up and the punchbowl is deployed!

Necrolyte07

Mon Aug 23, 2004 10:21 am

#9

Thanks for your comments. I'm glad you like my ideas.

As for the Hunter Hit thing... yah, it's a typo. I cut and pasted the line above. I'll see if I can fix that.

Necrolyte07

Mon Aug 23, 2004 10:22 am

#10

umm.. how do I edit posts thatI made?

Kachada

Mon Aug 23, 2004 10:25 am

#11

You can't as a new member. Need more time and posts before they let you.

Kachada
Master Rifleman of Bria
-------------------------------
Krakoa
Aspiring Ranger & Swordsman

Owen-Lars

Mon Aug 23, 2004 11:25 am

#12

hehe apart from the fact you completelymissed the point of thesumit pack thread there are some great ideas here, nice work.

All the ideas you referenced were not proposal ideas, simply things to spur imagination around the central point of the post which was Ranger Roles, not ranger proposal. If we ever get the confimation or hints from the devs to work towards stealth/hunting roles THEN ill present a proposal. But as of now, we dont realy knowwhat our roles should be, are they the same of the devs?, do they likeour own ideas for our roles? So there is no point fleshing out massive ideas for skills etc when we dont even know if we should be working towards the role or not.

As for this thread, i completely agree about rangers not having a direct role in PvP but rather playing a support role, however i disagree with the suggestion of rangers tossing grenades, even if they only do state effects. Ive done commando and i know friends who still are comandos so i know how much work their grenades need work. Lets just leave grenades firmly in their territory.

PvPthrowable traps i realy wanted for BHs because it suited them perfectly but now trapping isnt a req im not sure what to think. I dont realy want throwable traps to effect players for us rangers because it just seems to much like BH/Commando grenades, so thats where a few people suggested ground traps, more specifically in regards to the Outdoorsman Proposal. They would allow us to utilise Freds Stealth ideas alot if we were able to get very close to them and place traps. That way it would be as if we are using the environment (placing ground traps like holes etc) to trap people rather than trapping them directly (thrown traps).

Another point to remember is that although ideas may be very pointless or very useful now, the combat balance and GCW revamp are going to redefine the way this game is played so much. For example each ranger hasopinions on how usefull harvest droids are, they slow me down personally but that isnt the case for everyone. After the CB hits, i fully expect us to be taking alot longer killing creatures, at more risk and alot more technique coming into play so having a harvester droid will most definatly be worth it to keep agro off you and still harvest for you. Its little things like this that limit our ability to suggest full proof ideas because we just dont know how much things are going to change during the combat balance.

THORTAC BALCOR
The Lost Ranger
RANGER

Necrolyte07

Mon Aug 23, 2004 12:59 pm

#13

how do I bump this to the top?

Also, I thought of another trap that would seem pretty useful:

- Stinkspray Trap: does the same thing as a stink bomb but with area of effect

revamp for Stink Bomb: does what it originally does but makes it so that creatures can't use their special abilities for a limited time during combat (like poison or dizzy strike).

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Thread: Ranger Revamp Ideas