Smuggler Archive
Thread: For Fun! The Crime Lord Profession for the Space Expansion!
A space expansion extension of the Smuggler profession, crime lords are capable of surrounding themselves with thugs, running seemingly legitimate businesses, providing people with exciting new jobs/missions and getting interesting and powerful items from their abilities.
While smuggler would provide high end content in my ideas for allowing them to get to some locations and accept certain types of missions, Crime Lords would be capable of getting players to incredibly difficult and epic encounters, akin to fighting Gods in EverQuest. Large planetary and Spacial combat battles through their information of where they are going to take place.
Instead of the optional third Hutt faction, this Profession would fill in at that capacity. It would make the player who takes up Crime Lord a faction unto themselves, yet not exclude members of the GCW. It would be in addition to it, kind of like a sub faction.
Member recruitment would be akin to joining a GCW faction now. A set minimum amount of faction to join, and then they could promote themselves through the ranks to get better privelages and options through the syndicate.
The Crime Lord Prerequisites:
Unlike Smugglers, Crime Lords are more into the business management end of criminal activity, instead of the more violent nature of it. Do not mistake them for being unprotected however through their use of hired hands.
The Crime Lord would require Underworld 4 and Profiteer 4 from the Smuggler Skill tree that I have proposed (Underworld and Spices if you want to think of it normally), and Business 4 from the Artisan skill tree. This also Naturally includes Pistol and Unarmed 4 as they are the Smuggler prerequisites as well.
Thats a total of 121 skillpoints used in the prerequisite. The same amount used by players who are Master Smugglers. This leaves 129 skillpoints for progression into mastering crime lord and other professions. You could potentially even be a master smuggler/Master Crime lord and still have 37 skill points remaining. For those who would want to be both. They could also obtain Master Crime Lord and Master Merchant with 3 skill points remaining.
The Crime Lord Skill Tree
1-A
Novice Crime Lord
Title Given: Novice Crime Lord
Required XP: Merchant XP. After all, you are a business man now!
Skill Points: 6
Place: Casino (See: 2-A)
Crime Lord: Create Criminal Syndicate (See: 2-B)
Crime Lord: Place Mission Terminal
Crime Lord: Peace Offering
Spy Network: Summon Spy (See: 2-C)
Bodyguard: Hire Bodyguard (Brawler) (See: 2-D)
Syndicate Missions: Delivery (See: 2-E)
Syndicate Perk: Clothing (See: 2-F)
Landing Clearance: ? (See: 2-G)
+1 Active Bodyguard
+1 Stored Bodyguard
+1 Corrupted Vendor
+5 Resilience (See: 2-H)
+10 Bodyguard Maximum Level.
+20 Influence. (See: 2-I)
Schematic:
Syndicate Kit
1-B
Hired Help
Required XP: Smuggling (See: 2-J)
Level 1:
Skill Points: 5
Bodyguard: Marksman
+1 Bodyguard Maximum Level.
+5 Resilience
Level 2:
Skill Points: 4
Bodyguard: Basic Combat Conditioning
+2 Bodyguard Maximum Level.
+5 Resilience
Level 3:
Skill Points: 3
Bodyguard: Weapon Specialisation
+3 Bodyguard Maximum Level.
+10 Resilience
Level 4:
Title Given: Mobster
Skill Points: 2
Bodyguard: Improved Combat Conditioning
+1 Stored Bodyguard
+4 Bodyguard Maximum Level.
+10 Resilience
1-C
Spy Network
Required XP: Syndicate (See: 2-K)
Level 1:
Skill Points: 5
Syndicate Missions: Destroy
Spy Network: Infiltrator
+1 Bodyguard Maximum Level.
Level 2:
Skill Points: 4
Syndicate Missions: Smuggler
Spy Network: Detailed Information
+2 Bodyguard Maximum Level.
Level 3:
Skill Points: 3
Syndicate Missions: Increased Payout
Spy Network: Offworld Connections
+3 Bodyguard Maximum Level.
Level 4:
Title Given: Information Broker
Skill Points: 2
Syndicate Missions: Increased Mission Difficulty
Spy Network: Cost Reduction
+4 Bodyguard Maximum Level.
1-D
Criminal Genious
Required XP: Syndicate
Level 1:
Skill Points: 5
Crime Lord: Syndicate War
Syndicate Perk: Vehicle
+1 Bodyguard Maximum Level.
Level 2:
Skill Points: 4
Syndicate Perk: Furniture
+2 Bodyguard Maximum Level.
Level 3:
Skill Points: 3
Syndicate Perk: Defensive Structures
+3 Bodyguard Maximum Level.
Level 4:
Title Given: Conspirator
Skill Points: 2
Crime Lord: Place Bounty
Syndicate Perk: Weapons
+4 Bodyguard Maximum Level.
1-E
Business Opportunities
Required XP: Syndicate
Level 1:
Skill Points: 5
Hired Protection: Medical Center. (See: 2-L)
Landing Clearance: ?
+1 Bodyguard Maximum Level.
+1 Corrupted Vendor
Level 2:
Skill Points: 4
Hired Protection: Cantina.
Landing Clearance: ?
+1 Corrupted Vendor
+2 Bodyguard Maximum Level.
Level 3:
Skill Points: 3
Hired Protection: Home.
Landing Clearance: ?
+1 Corrupted Vendor
+3 Bodyguard Maximum Level.
Level 4:
Title Given: Racketeer
Skill Points: 2
Hired Protection: Cloning Center.
Landing Clearance: ?
+1 Corrupted Vendor
+4 Bodyguard Maximum Level.
1-F
Master Crime Lord
Title Given: Criminal Mastermind
Skill Points: 1
Place: Criminal Stronghold
Bodyguard: Elite Combat Training
Syndicate Missions: Increased Returns
Spy Network: Saboteur
Syndicate Perk: Armor
Hired Protection: City
Landing Clearance: ?
+1 Stored Bodyguard
+1 Corrupted Vendor
+10 Resilience
+20 Bodyguard Maximum Level.
+20 Influence.
Message Edited by Smuggler_Caylin on 03-15-2004 09:22 PM
One of the Four Horsemen of the Smuggler Apocalypse! 
Bring me the head of Alfredo Garcia!
Depending on how powerful you were you could put Bounties on Players. There would have to be some limits however, for which I propose:
Faction Points
At Master Crime Lord (you might want to make the title "Criminal Mastermind", it scans better), you get your own flavour of Faction Points. You can only place Bounty Hunter missions on people who have wronged you, i.e. have negative Faction for you.
Maybe too powerful, but fun anyway
That prevents just random player bounties from being brought into the picture.Oy! Devs! Do it!
It might be better to have the Faction thing progress with one tree now that I come to think about it - you start off weak, and get more and more Faction abilities as you go up the skill set.
They could even do an Advanced analogue from the Politician tree (Statesman?) that could either be our nemesis, or our respectable front, with their own Faction and policies.... ooo, the possibilities
Well ideally our operations will center from our casino Which we place in Player Cities
So yah, involving politicians would be awesome but how to do it...
Smuggler_Caylin wrote:Honestly, this is the idea I've been having in mind for a long...long time while I was working on my revamp. Maybe you can see why I don't want to split our skills into the SE, but rather make a new profession that can add to the content of the world in general.
Sure I can, and I like this - a lot. My concern is just that you can't sell short those who were promised something from the initial game. Fair is fair, there was no promise of Space Ships in the initial game, but there was promise of Smuggling, and anyone who has just the initial game deserves every penny of ground based Smuggling, and then some. Ships and such are further Options for the advanced Space based Smuggler, and the systems you propose for the smuggler revamp can be quite nicely adapted for that.
Anyway Caylin, maybe we should take the comments on our disagreements to PMs, yeah, might make the board a bit quieter for those who don't really need to hear us debate
I personally *love* this advanced profession idea, and in the hands of the right player it would add a fantastic depth to the game.
Further things to consider: Rank acheivement in the Crime Lords organization, perks to be gained thereby (could thugs be included as perks the way Stormtroopers/AT-STs are for imps?) - of course means having the crime faction lower and different trees allowing different things within the faction structure - in fact the entire Skill tree could be made out as the progression of new faction perks and enhancements for members of the faction. This would provide incentive for the members of the faction to do well, as the faction leaders XP could then be based on the ammount of faction points the members of the faction gather
Example: The Crime Lord Misos has a small faction of 4 people, not including himdelf, and a vendetta going against the Cathil faction. As Misos thugs kill off Cathil minions and disrupt their operations, Misos gains Crime Lord XP (representing the fact that his skill have improved enough to allow his faction dominance), and can hand out more Perks and better incentives to his Thugs.
That would work beautifully to represent increasing faction power - of course you would have to have some penalty if your faction went into decline, but that is par for the course.
What about Faction Outposts? Have you considered the implications of those. Perhaps they should be exclusively for the Criminal Masterminds tho...