Smuggler Archive
Thread: FD/Evasion/DNA Death Sample 2.2 updated version!!
- FD shouldn't be skill modded in just the DF tree. That way, it takes even more away from Jedi trying to dabble, while still providing a decent base for Novices to attempt in PvE. Let's look at it this way: if the skill was just in DF, a Jedi could use just 20 Skill points to be really good at FD, while if the skill were spread out even more, they would spend those 20 SP on the DF tree and only have a 45-50% chance of success--not very good odds for the work involved.
- Final Strike should end combat, allowing a Smuggler to pull a vehicle. I do like your idea of pulling while in combat though. Also, I think the delay on attacking should be longer, 30 seconds. If you're escaping, escape. Basically it should give you enough time to pull a vehicle, hop on and get the hell away before that BH catches you.
All in all, I think you have a valid option here.
My biggest concern right now is that people forget how much we relied on FD as Novices while PvEing. We shouldn't take that away in any sense from Novices, but I completely agree it should be modified so that it has a lower chance of success at lower levels.
Axob, I know you think FD has no place in PvP; I do as well, but if it's going to be used, I think that we may as well make it work both ways.
I am going to be honest Yimaz. I really didn't read all of your suggestions here. I know I look like a dumb ass admiting that, but I assumed that this would be the typical /checkpulse idea with % modifiers. I really like these ideas alot; they are genuinely cool. (Now that I have read it)
I have added some comments on tweaks to these skills. Check it.
yimaz wrote:
I hate these threads as much as you all do, I ask that you please read over it before you one star me.
For The Bounty Hunters
Master Bounty Hunter Pulse Check:
"2 in the head to make sure you mark is dead" Bounty Hunters now have a skill where they can check the pulse of any player who FD's on them. This skill is granted at Bounty Hunter Investigation 2, and worksbest at Master Bounty Hunter. If pulse check fails the BH will see a message on screen that says "It would seem this player is dead". The concept is that a newer BH might not yet be smart enough to put two in the head, he checks the pulse thinks the smuggler is dead and moves on. Even still at investigation 2 it does have a vary good chance of working but muchmuchbetter at master (say 50%chance at invest 2 and up to 95%chance of success at master).
What happens if the Pulse Check is successful? Does the BH get the deathblow? I know you introduce an active counter to Check Pulse later on as another skill, but I don't really see where you address the outcome of a successful CP (Check Pulse).
For the Smugglers
Feign Death
Nowin Dirty Fighting 1,FD would have % mods on it and the higher you go in the profession (dirty fighting line)the better it works with Master Smuggler having the skill work the best (success as it is now at master). FD would also be on a timer similar to FOW (a tka skill) in that the skill could only be used one time every 15min.A player who successfully FD's will now also beunattackable.
15 minutes is a little short. I think an hour is best. If it were 15 minutes odds are that it would be used against the same enemy. Who would fall for that twice?
Master Smuggler Final Strike
Master Smugglers now have a Final Strike skill that is used when a Bounty Hunter comes over to check his/her pulse. When a smuggler is FD and a BH comes over to check his/her pulse a message will flash on the smugglers screen "A BH is checking your pulse, what do you want to do?" If you do nothing it is a very, verygood likely hood that you will be killed. If you use the Final Strike skill and it fails you die. Final Strike works as a punch or pistol shot to the BH's neck incaping him and giving the smuggler a chance to escape. There is a penalty for using this skill however and that is a 15secattack delay. The smuggler now has a choice, run and live or try and get a DB in after the delay andbefore the BH can get back up. (remember incap time will soon be much less then it is now).
So by your design, it is extremely foolish to FD in front of a MBH, even as a Master Smuggler. What a Master Smuggler WILL have is a means to protect themselves should they run into one. This is a good idea here. It makes FD an active and vibrant skill for the Master Smuggler.
The instant incap to the BH seems like a little much though. No skill should be able to take a player from full health to incap in one blow. If the move were a KD/15 second pin on the BH, this skill would be much more balanced. I think this pin should break on further damage to the BH, thus making this skill purely evasive.
I still can escape the coolness of this move if it had some teeth like you are suggesting though.
FD and FD Strike need to be last resort skills and fairly unaffective when3 or more players are involved. With that said a Smuggler needs other means of escape.
Smuggler Evasion Skills
Underworld 1, thesmuggler now gains a vehiclecall during combat skill, this is a risk because vehicles are easy to destroy but with timing a smart smuggler could pull a healthy vehicle and flee before anyone could kill the vehicle or the smuggler.
Underworld 2 grants a /masktracking droid skill, this skill masks a smuggler from tracking droids for 15min and can only be used once an hour. If a smuggler is being tracked by a BH a message will come up on the smugglers screen when the BH is close "your are being tracked by a BH" the logic being some underworld buddy of the smugglers would in fact let him know is was marked for death. The smuggler would use this skill and drop off the tracking droids search screen. BH's would receive a message saying "Your make has been lost from your droids search". This skill as a 50-50 chance of working. with a 75-25 chance at Underworld 3.
This is a good skill no doubt. I think completely disabling the droids is a bad idea. A better idea would be to scramble these droids' signals. A BH might know the general quadrant of a planet a smuggler is in. This way, a BH might actually have to look with their own eyes for awhile.
Another problem with this skill is that once a smuggler knows they are being hunted, they can just go hide in a house or just jump into space. Actually, this is a big problem.
I have a great solution. Let this skill be a passive skill that occurs without a smuggler knowing it. A smuggler would always hide their biosignature as much as they possibly can. They would have a proximity droid transmission scrambler cliped to their belts. Any tracking droid within their general area will have their transmissions altered. The result is that a BH's droids will always provide a waypoint, but those waypoints will be always at a random place no more than a certain radius around a smuggler's position. The higher a smuggler goes up the Underworld tree, the greater the radius of potential scattering.
This will ensure that Smugglers will not, indeed, be an easy hunt. Smugglers have a whole other dimension of making their missions challenging for BH's, even though they cannot fight as well as a Jedi... they can still save face techonologically to save their bacon.
Underworld 4 grants Smugglers a /maskfaction skill. This skill masks a smuggler who is covert from NPC's and a Smuggler who is Overt drom opposing overt factions. Again it is a skill that lasts only 15min and can only be used once an hour. In regards to Overt players, while the smuggler would appear covert an enemycould still lock target and fire on said smuggler and visa-vera. This means any smart smuggler would need to hide his/her profession title to ovoid suspicion. again 50-50 chance of it working with 75-50 at master smuggler.
Wow, another really damn cool skill. I think this skill needs to not work while in combat. It could be used as an inbalancing easy out. Can you imagine fighting another smuggler, only to have them activate this skill to immediately break combat?
It would be best to let this be used when a smuggler thinks it would be a wise time to avoid any unpleasant confrontations.
At master a Smuggler would be able to group with a Jedi or Faction player and use his /mask skills to help those players as well. Same rules would apply as masking only yourself.
Q&A
"What is the point of all of this if the smugglers never make it onto the BH terminals"
The CU is going to be designed to give individual professions a unique roll in large battles, with that said lets take just one scenario:
Large scale battle Reb's vs Imps, you have some smugglers, some BH's some rangers some TKA's, etc (you get the idea)...The reb's are down, while its been a tuff fight and lots of wounds on both sides all the rebels are down and appear dead. 3 BH's go and check the pulse of the4 Smugglers who seem to be dead. The first smuggler is killed, the BH cought the FD trick. The next 3 smugglers pull FD Strike and it works! Blaster fire rains down on them from the other imperials, they are weak and cant stay to fight. They call rides leave the BH's alone and try to make an escape. Two Smugglers lose their rides and are killed, one Smuggler escapes.
"Any BH who cant see that someone is faking his death is stupid we are paid killers"
I agree 100% with this which is why even at invest 2pulse checkhas a good chance at working but over all it should be a matter of training. A better trained Smuggler should be able to out smart a BHwho is not as welltrained in seeing past this dirty little smuggler trickand the same is true in reverse; a master killer would for sure see a less skilled smuggler was fakingdeath and try to kill him. First Strike gives Smugglers an choice, stay in FD and hope the BH cant see your faking at (and probably die) or try Final Strike and hope for the best. FD is now no longer a skill people use to escape a DB because over all if you don't use Final Stike your chances of living past pulse check are slim to none.
I thought Check Pulse was 95% effective as a MBH, regardless of a smuggler's ability to succeed in FD. At any measure, this system is still cool.
"How does this affect Jedi"
FD is for the most part not very reliable at dirty fighting 1 for this skill to work and work well you must be higher in the ranks of smuggler, this in turn requires much more skill points, making the skill over all worthless to anyone other then a high lvl smugglers. Lets say a Jedi does have FD 1 and it does happen to work, by defult a BH has a much, much, much better chance at breaking it with just invest 2 and as master or a high lvl BH the chance of pulse check ever failing against anyone with FD 1 is near impossible again make FD useless to Jedi.
Also think about Jedi who pick up the Underworld trees of smuggler in order to scramble the BH droids and mask their overt status. Should high level Jedi who are always perma overt be allowed to mask their overt status? Of course I personally do not want Jedi to be able to scrable droid signals, but if they invest the skillpoints in Underworld... more power to them.
Added some ideas!
Ternque01 wrote:
yimaz wrote:
I hate these threads as much as you all do, I ask that you please read over it before you one star me.
For the Smugglers
Feign Death
Nowin Dirty Fighting 1,FD would have % mods on it and the higher you go in the profession (dirty fighting line)the better it works with Master Smuggler having the skill work the best (success as it is now at master). FD would also be on a timer similar to FOW (a tka skill) in that the skill could only be used one time every 15min.A player who successfully FD's will now also beunattackable.
15 minutes is a little short. I think an hour is best. If it were 15 minutes odds are that it would be used against the same enemy. Who would fall for that twice?
Actually, would it be too much to say you couldn't use it again against the same BH in the same day?
Master Smuggler Final Strike
Master Smugglers now have a Final Strike skill that is used when a Bounty Hunter comes over to check his/her pulse. When a smuggler is FD and a BH comes over to check his/her pulse a message will flash on the smugglers screen "A BH is checking your pulse, what do you want to do?" If you do nothing it is a very, verygood likely hood that you will be killed. If you use the Final Strike skill and it fails you die. Final Strike works as a punch or pistol shot to the BH's neck incaping him and giving the smuggler a chance to escape. There is a penalty for using this skill however and that is a 15secattack delay. The smuggler now has a choice, run and live or try and get a DB in after the delay andbefore the BH can get back up. (remember incap time will soon be much less then it is now).
So by your design, it is extremely foolish to FD in front of a MBH, even as a Master Smuggler. What a Master Smuggler WILL have is a means to protect themselves should they run into one. This is a good idea here. It makes FD an active and vibrant skill for the Master Smuggler.
The instant incap to the BH seems like a little much though. No skill should be able to take a player from full health to incap in one blow. If the move were a KD/15 second pin on the BH, this skill would be much more balanced. I think this pin should break on further damage to the BH, thus making this skill purely evasive.
Actually, what about making it so the BH and Smuggler are locked out of combat for 30 seconds? BH gets pinned down as if incapped (butwith bars remaining where they were before the Final Strike, so no damage dealt)for 15/30 seconds, and then is allowed to chase the Smuggler.
I still can escape the coolness of this move if it had some teeth like you are suggesting though.
FD and FD Strike need to be last resort skills and fairly unaffective when3 or more players are involved. With that said a Smuggler needs other means of escape.
MISTagent01 wrote:
Yim-
I think you're on the right track; however, I'd like to make a few suggestions (as per my post over on the BH boards, which you read and I thank you for reading!)
- FD shouldn't be skill modded in just the DF tree. That way, it takes even more away from Jedi trying to dabble, while still providing a decent base for Novices to attempt in PvE. Let's look at it this way: if the skill was just in DF, a Jedi could use just 20 Skill points to be really good at FD, while if the skill were spread out even more, they would spend those 20 SP on the DF tree and only have a 45-50% chance of success--not very good odds for the work involved.
- Final Strike should end combat, allowing a Smuggler to pull a vehicle. I do like your idea of pulling while in combat though. Also, I think the delay on attacking should be longer, 30 seconds. If you're escaping, escape. Basically it should give you enough time to pull a vehicle, hop on and get the hell away before that BH catches you. - valid points and easy to slip into or ajust in my system idea, Incap if FD Strike works might be to harsh, more of an escape plan (like Ax was talking about) and less of a chance to kill the BH.
All in all, I think you have a valid option here. -
My biggest concern right now is that people forget how much we relied on FD as Novices while PvEing. We shouldn't take that away in any sense from Novices, but I completely agree it should be modified so that it has a lower chance of success at lower levels. - this is a good point but with vichical combat call at underworld one maybe that would add the help a noob needs?
Axob, I know you think FD has no place in PvP; I do as well, but if it's going to be used, I think that we may as well make it work both ways. - this is my whole point. It is in combat and atm it sucks. The skill could be so much more fun and fair with a true ending to the fight (i.e. flight or death) with little changing on the corrent way it is run for PVE.
Ternque01 wrote:
I am going to be honest Yimaz. I really didn't read all of your suggestions here. I know I look like a dumb ass admiting that, but I assumed that this would be the typical /checkpulse idea with % modifiers. I really like these ideas alot; they are genuinely cool. (Now that I have read it)
I have added some comments on tweaks to these skills. Check it.
yimaz wrote:
*pulls hair out and falls down screaming*
Killin me Ax Killin me! I'm glad you read the whole thing and when i have a sec i will run threw you and veela's ideas (working atm will go thrw it in like 15min). My thread is not carved in stone I want you guys to help make it a better out-line, So next time read the whole thing AX.
No need tohammer me, I made myself vulnerable opening up to you like that admitting what I had done. At the very least, I HAVE read its entirety, and have digested every idea. Me admitting that I hadn't read it was a humble way of giving you an edge on the criticisms I launched earlier at your post. No need to smash me when you already have me by the root 
I have to go to a meeting in 15 minutes anyways. I want to see what comes up with these ideas when I come back!
I think these ideas are awesome and should be included in our profession. This is a cool and fairly complete system for smugglers to have the tools they need to survive, without causing inbalance to the game and bounty missions.
Kudos!!!
Ternque01 wrote:
Well your Final Strike idea would be a melee strike... would give those who want to justify our unarmed 4 prerequisite something to chew on.
I'm kinda shaky on the idea of locking the smuggler and BH out of combat with eachother for 30 seconds. That is a long time, but hell, whatever works to make it a balanced/viable escape move.
still have not gotten tolook at your posts yet but on this one note, i would say still a 15sec delay on the BH because it would talk 15 sec's to call your ride to escape.
Ax Im just teasing ya Im not hammering ya and dont make yourself vulnerable. I would want to hug ya and buy you flowers and stuff.
Ternque01 wrote:
yimaz wrote:
*pulls hair out and falls down screaming*
Killin me Ax Killin me! I'm glad you read the whole thing and when i have a sec i will run threw you and veela's ideas (working atm will go thrw it in like 15min). My thread is not carved in stone I want you guys to help make it a better out-line, So next time read the whole thing AX.
No need tohammer me, I made myself vulnerable opening up to you like that admitting what I had done. At the very least, I HAVE read its entirety, and have digested every idea. Me admitting that I hadn't read it was a humble way of giving you an edge on the criticisms I launched earlier at your post. No need to smash me when you already have me by the root
I have to go to a meeting in 15 minutes anyways. I want to see what comes up with these ideas when I come back!
I think these ideas are awesome and should be included in our profession. This is a cool and fairly complete system for smugglers to have the tools they need to survive, without causing inbalance to the game and bounty missions.
Kudos!!!
SpinningCloud wrote:
I'm a little unclear on when Smugglers would use this.
You're supposing that Smugglers will actually have SMUGGLING content and hence be on the BH terms? In that case the idea is great.
But it's kind of like putting the cart before the horse as far as I'm concerned.
If you think this is a useful tactic in a battlefield situation then I object...but then I object to BHs and Smugglers running around in a battlefield amoung the professional soldiers also. I have ALWAYS said that each profession should have advantages in various situations...not just skill advantages. BHs and Smugglers should have a decided disadvantage in a battlefield situation as they don't have the military training a commando or squad leader would have. Those two should excel in battlefield conditions but be at a disadvantage in one on one combat.
I'm not sure FD has any place on a battlefield but I do like it as a way of avoiding a BH. I've always thought FD against meat-eating predators was rather rediculous though I can see it working against a non-carnivoir protecting it's lair. It should definitley have it's effectiveness dependent upon the condition under which it is used.