Smuggler Archive

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SBRD0C wrote:

Yes, well. If I remember right Waarangel has a history and a knack for doing that.

In the Early days, always used to post Eliquent and long winded posts insisting it was possible to slice above 25% all the time. Confused alot of newbies, and kept that particular argument going for a very very long time, costing us te sanity of at least to Correspondants...

(at least I think that was Waarangel, if I am wrong, my apologies)

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For any smuggler revamp to work there needs to be some changes to the core game as it is.

In red are my reasoning for this and how it would help the smuggler revamp

• Removal of the travel option from the jump to lightspeed terminal. Make people have to travel into space to get from A to B.


• If all the smugglers are getting is watered down delivery missions, then lets string the delivery out. If its a matter of taking X from A-B, then as it stands, travel to starport where your ship is stored, open up travel and complete misson in 1 minute.


• Around the entrance of starports in Imperial controlled cities there is a walk thorough scanner that scans each player as he walks through for illegal goods. If the scanner is triggered you will not be allowed to take off from that starport, you will be given a Rebel combatant tef and a group of Stormtroopers will be sent to your location.


• Lets have some penalty for carrying contraband, whats the point of trying to smuggle anything if the penalty your going to get is a small, insignificant fine. Death, cloning and decay is a penalty, 450 credits isn't. Also a smuggler could use his slicing abilities to avoid the scanner going off.


• If the city is under rebel control and the scanners are triggered, the local authorities will dispatch some officers to your location and you will not be allowed to take off from that starport.


• Again, coronet and naboo police don't do anything but walk around the city looking gormless. Lets make them useful.


• Bring back ten minute starport waits for people using public transport and remove the ability to travel to Dant, Endor and Dath. If people don't have Jump to lightspeed then they will have to barter passage to these planets.


• For some reason 10 minute starport waits were taken away making many starports redundant and empty. Some of the funniest times in SWG came about from waiting 10 minutes for a shuttle. God forbid in a multi-player online game you are forced to interact with other people. This would also be another ideal time for one of those contraband scans to take place.


• On approach to a starport, your vessel will be scanned for contraband, if the scan is failed, then the local authorities will be notified, ships will be dispatched to your location and you will not be cleared for landing.


• If smuggler missions are going to be introduced, then there are going to have to be higher security and more scans. If normal players are going to swan around carrying contraband and getting away with it scot free, then why bother smuggling. If people are forced to go into space to travel, this would be another ideal time to have a scan.


• If the Scan is passed you will be cleared for landing but the starport will tell you which city you will be cleared forlanding on.


• To me this is a must for two reasons

1. Reduce the lag in over populated cities and force people to go to less populated cities that they probably haven't been to since launch


2. A perfect opportunity for a smuggler to use his fast talking skills to talk his way into landing where the smuggler wants to land.

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Hasun wrote:

Removal of the travel option from the jump to lightspeed terminal. Make people have to travel into space to get from A to B.

If all the smugglers are getting is watered down delivery missions, then lets string the delivery out. If its a matter of taking X from A-B, then as it stands, travel to starport where your ship is stored, open up travel and complete misson in 1 minute.

I'm not a big fan of this, would really make it just an annoyance to travel, but I would live with it if it was implemented. If they wanted to automate it to show the scenery of launch-hs-station convo-land, that would be ok, as long as it didn't add too much time to travel.

Around the entrance of starports in Imperial controlled cities there is a walk thorough scanner that scans each player as he walks through for illegal goods. If the scanner is triggered you will not be allowed to take off from that starport, you will be given a Rebel combatant tef and a group of Stormtroopers will be sent to your location.

Lets have some penalty for carrying contraband, whats the point of trying to smuggle anything if the penalty your going to get is a small, insignificant fine. Death, cloning and decay is a penalty, 450 credits isn't. Also a smuggler could use his slicing abilities to avoid the scanner going off.

I don't really know about the scanners at each port, I think it would tend to lessen the demand for contraband, meaning less work for us. Perhaps a 5 minute wait timer, not complete denial of travel, would be good (and more likely implemented). We definately need more scans and harsher penalties for contraband, or rather, the general public does, I know I can smuggle my goods through.

Bring back ten minute starport waits for people using public transport and remove the ability to travel to Dant, Endor and Dath. If people don't have Jump to lightspeed then they will have to barter passage to these planets.

For some reason 10 minute starport waits were taken away making many starports redundant and empty. Some of the funniest times in SWG came about from waiting 10 minutes for a shuttle. God forbid in a multi-player online game you are forced to interact with other people. This would also be another ideal time for one of those contraband scans to take place.

10 minutes is too long. Everyone would complain too much and it would be taken away. 2-5 minutes may be a possibility though. I know it's how it used to be (was at 5 when I started), but it will not return to 10 minutes.
Removing travel to Dant. etc, won't happen either. It's been so long I don't remember, must you still do it in legs? If so, the increased scans may be a decent motivator to make players find direct transport. If not, reimplement this restriction. Obviously increased penalties would be needed.

On approach to a starport, your vessel will be scanned for contraband, if the scan is failed, then the local authorities will be notified, ships will be dispatched to your location and you will not be cleared for landing.

If smuggler missions are going to be introduced, then there are going to have to be higher security and more scans. If normal players are going to swan around carrying contraband and getting away with it scot free, then why bother smuggling. If people are forced to go into space to travel, this would be another ideal time to have a scan.

Eh, not important to me, but what about those who use public transport? How would they be affected? If you try to do it when they land, it will end up being double scans for us, which really isn't fair either.

If the Scan is passed you will be cleared for landing but the starport will tell you which city you will be cleared for landing on.

To me this is a must for two reasons

1. Reduce the lag in over populated cities and force people to go to less populated cities that they probably haven't been to since launch
2. A perfect opportunity for a smuggler to use his fast talking skills to talk his way into landing where the smuggler wants to land.

This is friggin awesome. I love the idea of being told where we have to land, we should still be given the 'land' menu, but give it say a 50% chance of clearance given to land where we choose. Maybe give Smugglers an increasing chance as we level, say an extra 5% at novice, 5% per delinquency tier, plus 10-15% at master, making an 85-90% chance at master.

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Bug fixes. Heh! Smuggling. Heh! A Jedi craves not these things.

My SWG Observations

If they stopped the expansions for one year and gave quality revamps to the professions that need it most, many people would resubscribe.
With all the resubs, and the new players, there would then be plenty of money to hire enough people to do 2-4 quality revamps per year plus 1-2 larger expansions per year and/or 2-4 smaller expansions per year, and not give the BigWigs a pay cut. (Possibly even an increase)

Here's one more:

6. Space missions. We have faction controlled planets. Imagine lauching from Imperial controlled Theed do so some space stuff as a rebel. When you come back to the station, the station denies you access, and actually sends imperial fighters to attack you. They wouldn't give xp or faction, or people would farm them. Instead, you need to call in a smuggler, who can 'smuggle' you past the station with forged IDs or what have you. Gives us one more use in space.

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WesBelden wrote:
Just a heads up that I posted the thread last night before going to bed. 40+ views and one reply from a corre offering his support, but that's it so far..

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Uhhh, that means that 39 times it was viewed, people thought to themselves "Who cares, this doesn't deserve a response."

That's hardly encouraging.

Okay, I'v been playing for about a year now and this is the first time I've bothered to post in the forums. I'm sure I'm not saying anything that hasn't been said a hundred times on other threads, but I figure I might as well throw in my opinion.

I think a lot of the smuggler changes as described in this thread don't really work because the current solutions are overcomplicating things. Writing tons of new content for smugglers in the way of a lot of really complex missions would be like designing an entire new game. I mean, great for us, but probably not the devs idea of a good time. I think the best solution for everyone would be to set us up so that we the players can generate more of our own content by expanding the sevice role fo the smuggler. Slicing is a good example, though I think in it's current form it's a bit overcomplex and kinda makes me feel like a crafter. Faction brokering is alright, though it's not really worth the effort. Selling spice would definitley be interesting, even if it will lead some smugglers to stand outside the starport and spam--personally, if you need to buy spice from me, you can approach me and ask. I'll be in the cantina with my smuggler tag up. Only real problem is they need to make spice worth the effort to buy.

So, we can do a handfulof pretty cool underworld services, but what we can't do is smuggle. Well, smuggling is a service too. Crack down on the transport of contraband, and expand the definition of contraband. The questions mentioned he possibility of restricting the transport of certain resources or items, which I think would be fantastic. So someone on Mustafar or Kashyyyk just got ahold of something valuable, but maybe there's an embargo on the planet. Now, to get it home, they need to find a smuggler to carry it for them (at a price that compensates them for their troubles and the risks involved... even smugglers get caught sometimes). This could even tie into the Galactic Civil War by restricting transport of some goods from Imperial-controlled planets to Rebel-controlled ones and vice-versa (does the empire really want people shipping needed supplies and high-end weapons to a known rebel stronghold?). I wouldn't think this would be all that hard to implement. Add contraband searches at the starports, and make it so that somebody who is caught trying to transport contraband is blocked from travelling and maybe gets more than a 500 credit slap on the wrist (if you're trying to bring supplies to the enemy faction, you must by a sympathizer, right? Sounds like a good way to lost your cargo or your life...). So, make it so that everyone grouped with a smuggler gets their bonuses to search evasion. You want to make sure your cargo gets across safely, you hire a smuggler to group with you, launch into space(nousing the travel button for this...)on his ship, and bring you safely to your destination (and you the customer never even have to let the contraband leave your inventory). Of course, things won't always go perfectly smoothly...

See, if we had a system like this in place, our content would come from interaction with other players with only very basic involvement needed fromNPCs (by way of the contraband searches, ideally expanded into space as well). Sure, add smuggling missions from NPCs, but if we have rich smuggling content from a system like this one, the npcmission content doesn't really need to be much more than modified courier missions. By all means, make underworld faction points mean something (whether by way of a general underworld faction or opposing Hutt and Black Sun factions, but give us perks for our faction points like the rebs and imps get). There areplenty of other things I'd like to see (personally, I think that anyone who gets caught carrying contraband should gain visibility and eventually end up on the terminals for illegal activity, but I doubt that will happen), but a smuggling system like this would be enough to keep us busy for a long time without the devs really needing to do much of anythingpast the initial implementation. Really, what we want is a system in place that works the first time, not a partial system with the promise of possible expanded content in the future, bacause let's face it, the future has a way of turning into the very distant future.

Okay, long first post, but I've had way too much time to think about this stuff.