Ranger Archive

Foraging Revamp:

The focus that I would like to see forage headed in is to support traps and camps with new items that can either be optional or required components or powerups. I would also like to see foraging linked to Ranger and Scout only quests, to be discussed later.

• New Items:

1. Scrap Metal, perhaps an item that could increase the damage of some traps?


2. Foraged Stones, to throw at things (further below in the creature knowledge section.)


3. Animal Teeth, same thing with damage increase, but possibly a wounding ability


4. Animal Horns, knockdown effect? They could be quite heavy hehe.


5. Resilient Bark, increasing the range of a few traps, as it is lighter than bone?


6. Poisonous Residue, increase the amount of damage or grant a poison-duration effect on a trap?

• Alterations:

1. Increase the stack size of foraged fish bait with the increase of the foraging modifier.


2. Addalootableschematic, that can only be crafted by a Novice Chef, that can combine two foraged items into a single edible item. This item (which should be a bowl orperhapsa modification of the already-existant Cooking utensils schematic) would have the sum of both foraged items' enhancement bonusesand last for 20 minutes, with a filling of 15. The way it could work is adding an item like a Bowl or something, with a storage space of 2, that acts like a viewscreen printer or a datadisk repair kit. You deposit the first forageable item, then the second, and when the second is deposited into the container they are combined into a finished item deposited in the player's inventory. The bowl is not destroyed inthe process, though. This item should not have any bonus above 100, so it does not necessarily have the potential to directly compete with Chefs, Doctors or Smugglers, but it might need to be tweaked a bit. This is only necessary if foraged item stacking, as stated above, is not possible. I find this method would be more appealing, though.

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Creature Knowledge Revamp:

• Basic Changes

1. Restore creature knowledge to it's original information display.


2. Add features of Creature Knowledge information: Whether or not it is able to be trained as a mount, Every resource that the creature yields (some creatures I see only yield Avian meat according to the /examine info, and yes this was pre-CU, but they still were able to be harvested for Avian Bones,) whether or not they are within a radius of assist to another creature, what the regeneration rates of a creature are, and what the creature's landspeed is.

• Application Alterations

1. Allow Creature Knowledge to add to the To-Hit bonus against creatures, and allow the creature to-hit bonus to apply with all attacks, not just the "Default" ones.


2. Allow Creature Knowledge to provide a percentile bonus to avoiding a death-blow from creatures. Not a triple-incap, mind you, and this should not cap at 100% at Master.


3. Allow Creature Knowledge to apply a bonus to creature milking and egg harvesting, if it "won't fly" as a result of creature harvesting.

• /Rescue becomes Animal Manipulation

1. Box One: [Flush Out] If you have foraged stones in your inventory, this ability allows you to frighten small creatures, in a cone area in front of the user at a maximum range of 35 meters. This is meant to only affect "small" type creatures. This type is stated after harvesting a creature, in case it is an unfamiliar term to you. It is intended to split up a group of creatures, without initiating combat, to allow people to "pull" them individually and split up the creatures from their "area of assist."


2. Box Two: [Feign Weakness] Attracts aggresiveness of creatures engaged in combat with the target player. This ability can also be used against a target creature, causing them to stalk the user but without initiating combat after a period of time longer than normal (and yes, they do attack after stalking for a while. I think that these are the creatures that might be insta-breaking our camo and mask scent.


3. Box Three: [Frighten] This ability causes a non-=aggressive creature of medium or smaller size to run from the user. This enables a group to attack targets one at a time, and also causes a cone-area in which creatures affected will retreat from combat. Only creatures lower than the user's CL are affected (But I think a different type of check should be used. I am open to suggestions.)


4. Box Four: [Challenge the Pack Leader] One creature every 30 minutes may be challenged. This ability enables the Rangfer to enter into combat with a target creature, and prevents nearby creatures of the same species from initiating combat with the Ranger until the fight is finished with the creature targeted by this ability.

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Tracking Revamp:

• Basic Changes

1. Fix the separating function of /areatrack.


2. remove shuttleports from /areatrack information, as everyone can find a shuttleport.


3. Correct the issue of NPCs on Kashyyyk that render as unattackable (specifically Etyyy) not appearing on the radar or under /areatrack.


4. Display the results in an alphabetical order already!


5. Allow tracking on mounts and vehicles, but only while they are not moving.

• Usefulness Enhancements

1. Because the radar interfaceall but replaced /areatrack within 250 meters, because the radar can zoom out and the information can be displayed if you hover the pointer over the radar dot, we either need to be able to track over a farther distance, or the radar needs to be restricted. This skill does not need to be an extension of the basic user interface.


2. Reveal Factional Bases under /areatrack person information, not including the added structures on them including the turrets.


3. The /areatrack interface needs to show groups of creatures, separated somehow, so that the Ranger can determine how large of a group they are going to encounter.


4. Note on the /areatrack results which characters are concealed, if characters using force cloak or cover are included.

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Trapping Revamp:

• Basic Changes

1. Restore traps to their proper function.


2. Show the damage, range, proficiency, effect, and speed of traps on the trap itself. No more flavor text!


3. Show trapping modifier of user on the traps.


4. Because all but 2 traps in SWG can be found in the Scout trees, I believe we need more traps or more options during trap making.


5. Add a Trap throwing speed modifier to the Trapping skill tree, which would allow a 1.5 to 2.0 second throw speed at Master or Trapping 4, whichever is more acceptable.

• Crafting Changes

1. Allow experimentation on status effect duration, speed of fire, and quantity.


2. Allow the crafting stage to have optional components for the above proposed foragable items.


3. Allow a module and item to enable certain traps to be able to apply on NPC's instead of creatures, which should be the default target for traps in this system (creatures, that is.)


4. Allow the +13 experimentation points at Master Ranger for traps, +6 at Master Scout, +4 at Trapping 4 of Scout, and +0 at novice scout. Resource quality should count for traps, but the important stats should be Decay Resistance and Potential Energy, averaged together to equal the percentage on the resource quality indicator bar.


5. Give bonus to craft experimentation while in a HTFB, even if the station already has a bonus via an implanted crafting station through the modular system. This should be a bonus of +15, in addition to the station's existing modifier, and would hopefully work only on Scout / Ranger items to prevent exploitation of any sort.


6. Allow this list of already existant objects to be optional components in the modular design of trapping [Actually, it would be better to leave point #2 as it is without expanding. I will probably have another thread to detail what components already in existence can be used for.


7. In light of #4 under "Basic Fixes,"I suggest a "generic" trap schematic for both ground and thrown placement be made available to a Novice Ranger. This schematic would be molded into the Ranger's ideal trap, using the optional components, reasonable resource requirements as the base needs for each template individually, and to be able to experiment on the abilities that each component lends to the trap itself. (For example, I use Rancor Bile in this template, so I will be able to experiment on the strength or duration of the poison during that stage of crafting.)

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Camoflauge / ConcealmentRevamp:

• Basic Changes

1. Restore it to it's intended usefulness.


2. Do not break on creatures that would not attack someone without camoflauge!!!!!


3. Make the Camoflauge and Mask Scent modifier a percentage, because Owen has not received whether or not this is already the method used to determine the efficiency of camo or mask scent as of yet.

• Necessary Alterations

1. Box Two of the Camoflauge tree: Ifa creature attacks a concealed Ranger, as long as the camoflauge is still active, the creature should have a significant debuff in it's melee and ranged accuracy, but more ranged than melee as they should be able to smell us / hear us when we are close to them.


2. Make it work on creatures at least 10 levels above ours.


3. Give us the possibiliy to achieve radar and visual concealment (as the Jedi have with their force cloak.)

• Addition: Fog of War

1. This ability can only be used outside of an NPC city. It can be used in a player city or the wilderness.


2. When a Ranger has camoflauged every member of their group, if they are still within the group they can activate an ability via radar scrambler (crafted by droidsmiths of course) that removes his group members from the radar of their enemies, and / or their own group members (I would prefer this to hide the radar blips from enemies, but if the Devs don't think it could work like this and still be efficient then I will accept the alternative.)


3. This would give us usefulness in the GCW, of course, but it would also make us a necessary group member! This ability would not work on anyone within 15-25 meters of the player(s) in the group, and this ability could only be used if the Ranger is in the same group and has personally camoflauged their group members.


4. As soon as a group member steps within said distance of any creature / npc / player, their radar signal would return to the radar of the person who uncovered them, and if the uncoverer initiates an attack the group member's radar signal is completely visable.

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Creature Harvesting / Looting:

• Harvesting

1. Allow a harvesting bonus to increase the stack size of fish, fish chum, mollusks and crustaceans harvested.


2. Allow Ranger Harvesting to increase the stack size of eggs taken from a lair.


3. Alter the creature AI to have a check versus concealment if someone is taking eggs from a lair, but only if they restore the mask scent and camoflauge abilities to their intended level of usefulness.


4. Allow Ranger Harvesting to increase the amount of milk taken from a creature.

• Looting

1. Allow Harvesting Bonuses to apply to looting components from creatures. Not the stats of the items, but the chance of looting one and / or the size of the stack.


2. Allow Creature Knowledge to reveal what items can be looted from a creature, not what items will be looted from a creatuer (as that is impossible.)


3. Add items, similar to those found on Kashyyykian creatures, that serve as optional components to our traps, camps and camoflauge.

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Ranger / Scout specific Quests:

• Kashyyyk Quests for Rangers and Scouts to obtain schematics for the furniture of Wookie Civilizations. This is only for eye-candy.

1. Chairs


2. Tables


3. Containers? (Backpacks, possibly)


4. War Masks / Paint? (Paint could be applied by an Image Designer for additional Skin tatoos.)


5. Camp fire appearance module for camps, assuming we get our module approach.


6. Clothing? Perhaps we could obtain a schematic to give to artisans so that they can make new Wookie garments, or maybe they could be an animal hide cloak.

• Kashyyykian Rodian Hunters - The purpose of these quests is to appeal to any sense of overpowering our profession that the Devs might have by just "giving" these abilities to us, even though TH and Holocron fully support the Outdoorsman proposal.

1. Quest for a series of ground-placeable trap schematics that can be traded, and the quest can be redone. Once the schematic is learned (and can only be learned by a Master Scout,) it is a permanent schematic. The trapping experimentation modifiers for this trap should be contained within the Ranger tree of trapping, but allowa +10 to it's experimentationat Master Scout.


2. Permanent schematic for Rodian Hunter Camp Kit (with that cool stretched animal bone / hide combo as the roof!)


3. Learn the secret of modular camps? If they don't want us to have modular camps as a basic skill revamp, then maybe they would give it as a quest? Tradable schematic, Master Ranger required to learn it, can only be crated in groups of 10 (this is subject to popular opinion and discussions / alterations as well.)

• Animal Calls (Ranger and CH, perhaps Master Scout. This is not final, and is certainly open to discussion or suggestions.) [Revisions on this are still being considered. I will update it when I have completed the revisions.]

1. Dathomir - Predator-mimicry: A Nightsister asks you to kill a creature which has actually beentaking the lives of their precious Rancors. Kill it, and return with its tooth to receive the predator call, which will repel creatures outside of combat or cause them to retreatfrom combat. Retreat is new to me, but I believe I have never successfully damaged a retreating creature / npc yet.


2. Naboo - Prey-mimicry: A Gungan Kaadu-tamer asks you to kill the Plain Tusk Cats that claim the lives of their Kaadus. The Prey-Mimicry animal call would attract creatures, but cause them to initiate an attack against you if they successfully break your camoflauge or mask scent. In combat, it would act as /rescue, drawing creatures off of the players near you though instead of one player. It is also an option to have this effect only one creature, or act as a true rescue and apply to all creatures attacking the target player.


3. Endor - Companion Mimicry: The Ewok elder which you get this mission from will ask for you to milk an aggressive creature, which spawns as an enhanced or altered version of a creature already present. Return the milk to receive the animal call. It serves as a boost to camoflauge / mask scent success while remaining in close proximity to creatures in the area you used the animal call, and allows a higher yield of milk when obtaining it from a creature.


4. There is a warm-up timer of 5 seconds, and a cool down of 15 seconds. The companion call cannot be used in combat, but the Predator and Prey calls can be used in both combat and out of combat. The buff timer should be 10 to 15 minutes for some of these calls.


5. It must be equipped to use.


6. This has been reconsolidated into the creature knowledge section.

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Camping Revamp (And the survival aspects of the survival tree):

• Cloaking

1. Droidsmith-crafter parts, to the equivalent of a radar-scrambler.


2. Ranger-made "shrubbed" enclosement. Basically, it would replace a fencing around the camp with dense bushes.

• Crafting

1. Architect-made crafting station module, able to house any crafting station. Why we were assumed to know how to create a Weapon / Droid / General or Food / Chemical crafting station, I'll never know.


2. Architect-made factory station, to combine our already-made traps and camp kits into a single crate, with the numerical limitations that they already have when we create factory schematics to produce our own crates. This is similar to a recycler, in that we drag the items onto the station within our camp, and it would have an output hopper that would contain the crate of items we had just deposited.

• Eye-Candy and Main Components

1. Chair module


2. Table module


3. Roof module


4. Technical module (crafting)


5. Concealment module (2 of othem)


6. Creature-repulsion module!


7. Camp Light source module


8. Display Module (either strung-up fish or a stretched hide)


9. tent module

This is crafted into a single kit, and when the camp is disbanded it is reforemd into a kit in the owner's inventory. If the player wishes for a new camp, they must speak to the quest-giver for their task required.

• Survival Tree

1. Somewhere in the Survival Tree, there should be a Poison Recovery, Disease Recovery, and Bleed Recovery abilities.


2. These are in line with the Elite Combat Profession abilities Dizzy Recovery, Stunned Recovery, Knockdown Recovery, and others that I can't remember right now .


3. Our recovery abilities should have a long cool-down timer, though, so as not to step on the toes of the healers yet again. I still think sticking with a 30 minute timer is best.

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Yeah, I love you guys too

I'm a fan of the quests, the trap modifications, and well, everything I suppose. I'm all about Ranger specialization and I think maybe quests designed specifically for us would be quite nice in terms of a business thing.

So when you say these things will be available to Rangers, do you mean Masters? That's about the only thought I can gather on the matter as of now..

Man, you guys, you are hilarious! What do I have to do? Title my post with the words "Revamp, Suggestions, Please Owen!, I have an idea!, or Looking for feedback?"

I'd like to think that these ideas would help our profession, and I am not done with it, but I still thought that you guys would at least tell me what you think

I like it.

These are excellent ideas.

It's good to see a few people have an opinion hehe.

I want tents that don't leak in rain storms

I wanna be able to go inside my tents like the NPCs get (as safe as being inside a house when in them) along with everything else BioEngine said and the whole outdoorsman proposal, and invisibility, and...

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LastEE wrote:
I wanna be able to go inside my tents like the NPCs get (as safe as being inside a house when in them) along with everything else BioEngine said and the whole outdoorsman proposal, and invisibility, and...

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I've come to the conclusion that, if you truly mean to have the tents contain graphics of the interior, that it would not be very good as it would cause lots of lag. The best we could get is for them to be a non-collidable structure. If you would want graphics for the inside and outside of the tent, both surfaces would have to be rendered. One-layered graphics help keep the lag at it's current status.

I'd like for them to at least have entrances or something. You know, we can see the door, but we can't open it. Hehe.

Sorry I haven't replied sooner but I had to leave this thread for the weekend as I didn't have the time to properly read and respond to the stuff during the week.

My main comment is that a significant portion of the skill tree seems to be contained outside the skill tree (i.e. in quests). While quests and such are nice, limiting the skill tree in such a way can cut out quite a few people (especially if a lot of the skills are handed out on Kashyyyk). Fixes to the Ranger profession should probably avoid requiring players to do significantly more than picking up the skill tree again.

And some comments on other stuff:

Basic fix 5 (foraged food stacking): This change would be quite exploitable. Foraged foods currently have a decent effect with a low filling. Allowing you to stack too many of them could lead to them becoming much more powerful than intended (I seem to recall some foraged foods giving something like 100 health with 5 filling--20 of those = 2000 extra health, on top of any of the other bonuses).

Basic fix 12 (traps at half the effective time again): I'd argue that this would be a bad fix. Currently, you can just throw a new trap after the last one has worn off 50% (or longer). Such a change would basically lead to trap spamming at the beginning of combat and it would be extremely difficult to safely reapply certain traps for maximum duration.

As for the trapping revamp, I still like the idea of modular trapping. While basic fixes are nice, most of them will just lead to a reproduction of other professions' skills. I'd rather get something slightly more unique (ground traps, modular traps [or possibly something like Phenix's crossbow idea], etc). Also, having experimentation without caring about quality is quite difficult in the current system. If we want standard experimentation, quality will need to matter (although a modular form of experimentation might be able to get around this).

Edit: Oh yeah, other than the above, most of it looks nice.

Message Edited by Nemo0 on 06-11-2005 07:54 PM

Updated with a few bits I forgot to put.

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Nemo0 wrote:
Sorry I haven't replied sooner but I had to leave this thread for the weekend as I didn't have the time to properly read and respond to the stuff during the week.

My main comment is that a significant portion of the skill tree seems to be contained outside the skill tree (i.e. in quests). While quests and such are nice, limiting the skill tree in such a way can cut out quite a few people (especially if a lot of the skills are handed out on Kashyyyk). Fixes to the Ranger profession should probably avoid requiring players to do significantly more than picking up the skill tree again.

And some comments on other stuff:

Basic fix 5 (foraged food stacking): This change would be quite exploitable. Foraged foods currently have a decent effect with a low filling. Allowing you to stack too many of them could lead to them becoming much more powerful than intended (I seem to recall some foraged foods giving something like 100 health with 5 filling--20 of those = 2000 extra health, on top of any of the other bonuses).

Basic fix 12 (traps at half the effective time again): I'd argue that this would be a bad fix. Currently, you can just throw a new trap after the last one has worn off 50% (or longer). Such a change would basically lead to trap spamming at the beginning of combat and it would be extremely difficult to safely reapply certain traps for maximum duration.

As for the trapping revamp, I still like the idea of modular trapping. While basic fixes are nice, most of them will just lead to a reproduction of other professions' skills. I'd rather get something slightly more unique (ground traps, modular traps [or possibly something like Phenix's crossbow idea], etc). Also, having experimentation without caring about quality is quite difficult in the current system. If we want standard experimentation, quality will need to matter (although a modular form of experimentation might be able to get around this).

Edit: Oh yeah, other than the above, most of it looks nice.

Message Edited by Nemo0 on 06-11-2005 07:54 PM

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The part about the skill tree being contained in quests is more along the lines of item-based abilities. /Areatrack doesn't require an item, nor does /rescue, nor does /forage, but placing camps is not a command and thus it requires the item, and our traps do not have a command but we can throw them because we have a radial menu option that non-scouts do not. The Animal Calls, for example, would not replace an ability of ours, unless the Devs did decide to implement Animal Calls in replacement of /rescue. In that case, the calls would need to be given to us as a schematic. Perhaps they could be use-based, only having so many uses per crafted item, but I do not want them implemented in a fasion that you use it once and it disappears or is destroyed, because hunters reuse an animal call. They do not "wear out" after a single use.

Foraging: All of them only give +49 or +50 to regeneration or the total of all three stats, in different combinations. If you would like, I can find and repost the information on foraged items that someone posted on the Scout forum. I know the filling is 5, and another factor would be duration, but I still think that foraging should be looked upon when they consider our revamp. The stacking that I am talking about is multiple types of foraged food, not multiple applications of the same foraged item (ie only consuming one al'ther twi'pek, because consuming another would not increase the bonus, but consuming a different namedforaged item with the same bonus would increase it.) Perhaps there should be a limit to 3 foraged item types stacking on top of each other, or maybe we can push for a single foraged item applying in addition to a doc buff / chef buff / spice buff.

I was thinking that one way to make /forage useful again would be to add non-edible items to foraging that we could use to enhance our traps, in either damage, range, duration, or stack size. While this would remove the ability to crate items with the foraged items, that would mean that the bonus applied to a trap via a foraged item would need to be significant enough to craft each one by hand. Also, it could also be considered that foraged items be allowed to serve as an optional component of Chef food crafting, that increases the abilities of a chef crafted item that shares stat modifications with the foraged item. If the foraged items were able to be used in factory schematic foods, then they could apply a bonus but not go past the cap of the food's already-instilled stat increases.

The other quest items should be eye-candy rewards, or significantly useful. This means that the Ranger-specific weapons would need to be more powerful in one respect than other weapons of their CL requirement. Even though DPS would be nice, I personally think that our Ranger-specific wepaons that I have mentioned here should have a significantly high wounding percentage, and a high condition value to boot.

I'll edit the title. I just was wondering if you guys were waiting till you thought I was finished or didn't really like these ideas.