Smuggler Archive
Thread: CURB questions just for curiosity sake.
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Arcan
Sun Jan 16, 2005 10:06 pm
#14
Just on Question 10, Smugglers should not really have a terminal, Smuggling is illegal after all.
An NPC "Fixer" or other sort of contact person would be more appropiate for Smuggler.
2 Cents.
MISTagent01
Mon Jan 17, 2005 12:22 am
#15
fishbrains wrote:
DrevenStrobe wrote:
Geevo wrote:
I enjoy reading...but can't comment.
Ditto
mhmmmm
I'm still bitter at Caylin for not picking me. 
I hate you all. 
SlicerHerod
Mon Jan 17, 2005 1:26 am
#16
First of all, in response to question 1:
We would all say, Ubese, because he was a bounty hunter, and thats pretty close. Next, i would think padded armor, but really, padded armor seems like it is a better compliment to the Teras Kasi profession. What i think is that the smugglers should get is armored clothing, or at least the option to enhance, or 'slice' an outfit of thier choosing. What makes Han Solo so special is that he has a fantastic outfit that fits his nature perfectly. Rather than clone the smugglers into all looking the same, this allows them a degree of personalization.
Question 2
The better damage types for the smugglers would need to represent thier attitude to the galaxy. Heat, energy, and kinetic are the best representative damage types in my eye. However, for the weapon certification,let us examine Gallandro, the best quick-shot in the galaxy. While he was finally taken out by an automated turret, his skill with the draw was unmatched. Let our weapon specification represent a tribute as an extremely fast, and accurate light pistol. Let the pistol not be uber powerful, but exert a certian air that shows that it is truly a smuggler, with intense practice, that can put 10 shots per second into the same location on a target. Perhaps it is merely a skill that we ask for, that way we, as smugglers can choose our own signature pistol, but represent our master status as a quick draw.
The better damage types for the smugglers would need to represent thier attitude to the galaxy. Heat, energy, and kinetic are the best representative damage types in my eye. However, for the weapon certification,let us examine Gallandro, the best quick-shot in the galaxy. While he was finally taken out by an automated turret, his skill with the draw was unmatched. Let our weapon specification represent a tribute as an extremely fast, and accurate light pistol. Let the pistol not be uber powerful, but exert a certian air that shows that it is truly a smuggler, with intense practice, that can put 10 shots per second into the same location on a target. Perhaps it is merely a skill that we ask for, that way we, as smugglers can choose our own signature pistol, but represent our master status as a quick draw.
Question 3:
I think that our prerequisites are fine as they are now. Perhaps underworld however can be changed to a new form of xp, where we have to talk to jawas, tusekens, and other NPCs and help solve thier problems, this way it reflects a underworld line of skill that no one else could match, rather than having pistols represent the Underworld tree.
Question 4:
Let slicing refelct this method. We get points by our skill in slicing. Say someone with slicing one gets 20 pts, Slicing 2 gets 25 pts, slicing 3 gets 35 pts, slicing 4 gets 50 pts, and matster will bring your total slicing pts to 50. What then follows is that when you select an item to slice, you are randomly awarded a number of slicing points, from the base of 2 skills back (ie slicing one is 0 -25 pts, master is 35 - 50 pts.) What then follows is the option of emphasis. With a pistol in the slicing table, we have 2 sliders to increase / decrease with the number of slicing points..So we can choose to emphasize on damage, or speed as we choose.. This would be similar to the HAM bar sliders, where we can say if randomly awarded 50 pts to slice a pistol, 15 on speed and 35 on damage, resulting in a nicely enhanced pistol. This would be good since it shows a skill in the slicing, with a slight bit of randomness according to the nature of the quality of wiring in the item, (represented by the random slicing pts awarded for the task) The slicing ranges are generally pretty fair, but what should really change are the base stats for weapons. Its not reasonable that a t21 be near as fast as a pistol, so this is a matter of rebalancing items, not the % slice.
Question 5:
Spices should represent similar stats as food, just not as strong...The reason most people use muon gold is for the increased HAM stats, however if we could increase resiliance to pain, stronger melee hits, increased accuracy (similar to the drugs in Metal Gear Solid 2's relaxant for sniping). This way, we gain a larger market for our drugs. Of course, these would ALL be illegal and result in huge fines if scanned for contraband and caught.
Question 6:
Crate size should stay pretty much the same, possibly more AUKS and WUKS in a crate perhaps though.
Question 7:
Terminals should be similar to a bank. What we might be able to do however is to divert payment, as in a 5% -%50stolen percentage of another player's reward. We can claim a terminal, much like signing up for bank terminal, and perhaps every 20 min or so, try and hack into another players ongoing mission and funnel a small reward back to the smuggler if successful. If unsuccessful, the player that was being hacked instantly gets a static wp to where the hack was located, and a TEF agaisnt the smuggler. This way, we can show that someone who wants to emphasize a role player slicer can flex their muscles as a successful hacker.
Question 8:
Again, see question 3. Jawas should be part of an underworld quest where communication is vital to gain underworld points. Perhaps similar to the jabba missions, smuggling xp is gained by taking missions from seedy character in cantinas, jawas, tuskens, etc. As missions are run to wps, then later in the tree off planet. TEFs are gained by scans or hostile NPCs planeted in the path of the smuggler. Many threads have been started on this topic, and most of them are dead on... Smuggling XP is vital and NEEDS to be included in this game. The underworld tree is the perfect spot and the NPC communication is begging for these missions.
Question 9:
Smugglers can buy faction from either side, however, smugglers buying from the opposite faction are void from discounts and may incur a penalty or must BRIBE the opposing faction in order to use their services. It can still be slow, needs to be a usefull skill. The bribe is representative of the standing of the players faction status. A rebel with an high faction standing needs a huge bribe, in order to pursuade the imp faction seller to sell to them, while a neutral smuggler only gets the penalty of no discounts, just a straight trade of faction.
Question 10:
Again, slicers are the hackers, and rather than get our own terminal, missions are taken from NPCs, perhaps similar to BH fashion of the informants, but located in cantina's. A player contacts a NPC informant for their smuggling missions. The terminals should be the areas where slicers operate out of to steal credits, or maybe even an accomplished slicer can steal the whole mission itself, but when doing so, incurrs the TEF automatically.
Anyways, thats my take on the subject, good post ana-mo-cara!
TomoRainer
Mon Jan 17, 2005 1:47 am
#18
Just preface everything with "hypothetically speaking." I'm sure that isn't against any NDA.
1FORCE1
Mon Jan 17, 2005 1:15 pm
#19
Question 1 what armor do you think the smuggler should get, and why.
I agree with those that mentioned modified clothing. I have a full set of composite as do most of us and I just hate using it. I almost never wear it unless I absolutely have to. Along the same lines perhaps we use the sockets available in the clothing to add armor segments, a padded mesh of sorts that is not as strong as any metal armor but gives us enough protection to not need to wear a metal armor. Either armorsmith or tailors can make the padded segments as far as I am concerned (basically whichever profession is in more need of it)
Question 2 weapons cert. From what I have heard some weapons may be gone moved, and some new ones added. This question is if smuggler were to get a weapon cert what kind of pistol should it be. Damage type, Heat acid electric cold kinetic blast. Should the weapon be fast but weak, or slow but powerful. Which would be most of use to you.
Personally I always thought that the damage type that a gun does should be determined by the way the WS crafts the gun and what energy core he decided to put in a gun. But something like that is not going to happen so I would have to say a blast or energy would be most fitting, but I think cold damage would be an interesting twist. As for the gun it is really hard to say anything but the DL44 but something different might help players like myself from cloning Han too much. However, we seriously need to have a new cert for master. As for speed vs damage if I had to go hard in one direction I would lean towards speed, but I really think it has to do more damage than any marksman gun as well
Question 3 Skill point requirements. We have seen that BH requirements were lessened, and supposedly that was part of the CURB. If the skillpoint use were the same would you want to keep the unarmed or would you like it to be another line maybe in another base profession. What do you think would be the ideal prereq for novice smuggler.
Personally I don't really think unarmed has much to do with Smuggler, it is not as if Han did a who lot in the way of Martial Arts. However, looking at the available pre-reqs there are not a lot ofoptions. Now I know prior to launch Engineering 4 was a pre-req, which is not a bad option but it is already saturated with all of the crafting professions. One odd-ball idea I had was Business 4, because in theory being a good businessman would make you better equipped to deal with the underworld elements. Though what you get from business 1-4 really has no more to do with our profession than unarmed. Thus you are really only trading one point sink for another. However, I personally could find a little more use in being able to drop a vendor than I do having unarmed spin attack.
Question 4. Slicing havent heard much about the slices changeing, but its reasonable to assume that if the weapons get overhauled the alteration of weapons will be changed aswell. Do you think sliceing will or should get locked in stat to remove randomness? Do you think sliceing should have a chance of destroying a weapon? Do you think sliceing should be weaker or stronger. Weaker if your in favor of slices getting less ranges makeing all slices meaningful. Stronger you would like sliceing to be even more essential. Do you think sliceing should be more a skill based endeavour like crafting. So that a smugglers resources, and knowledge are more important, or is the way of randomness the best system.
I personally think that the slice should be based off the skill level of the smuggler and the quality of the tools. I also think that we should be able to choose our slice at least at master, but this has obviously been said a million times. It is difficult to comment on the percentages until we see how the CU pans out.
I do not think slicing should have a chance to destroy the weapon. Imagine how pissed your customer would be if they handed you a 500k credit krayt gun, only for you to destroy it due to a random roll of the die. Not to mention this opens the door for a smuggler to start steeling weapons by saying they broke. I just think all around this is not a very good idea.
Question 5. Spices we have heard everything on this from A to B. Buffs will still remain king but weaker. Spices will last longer then buffs and so on. So here are some pertinent questions. Should smugglers get even more spices to craft. Why or why not. If spices get a serious boost. What would be a good length of time for the effects to last. Same as now or much longer. Why would your duration be the best. Should spices be like other crafted items that are not generic the better the resource the better the spice? Downer should a spice downer be less severe in time or damage done. Shoule a downer be based on a ratio to the upper.
I am all for more spices but I think that we need to acquire them and not craft them. I also think that spices should be used by chefs and doctors. Hence, we smuggle the spices and then the chefs and docs mix the spices with their food/medicine when crafting to offer increased effects. Thus it shifts us from being common drug pushers to smugglers of elicit spices. This leans back to an earlier thread that I started entitled "A rogue's reflection" in which I proposed removing the spice branch all together and replacing it with a smuggler branch. However, back to the point if we got to simply smuggle spices rather than craft them then I also think that there should be a greater variety of spices.Keep in mind we there are about 15 game now. The spices just need a greater variety in their effects. Afterall if every spice just boosts stats then you obviously only sell the ones that give the greatest boost. However, if spices offered different effects such as greater accuracy, etc.Then you actually give theplayers a reason to want to use the different spices.
Question 6. If the CURB reduces player strength across the board. Plus smugglers get a better boost to evadeing scans. Should the crate size for smugglers be increase on knives spice, and clamps.
I think the knives are fine in crates of 25 but I would not mind seeing larger crate sizes of WUKs AUKs and Clamps.Also I think they need to rework the FANs. I don't think any new smugglers even use them, considering how cheap a crate of clamps are. Perhaps a small change in roles, make the FAN tell you exactly which wire to cut and make clamps be used to help you choose your slice. Either that or have a minimum skill to be able to use clamps, thus you can't use it until you can craft it.
Question 7. Sliceing terminals is very underutilized in the game. If the devs improved sliceing terminals which would be more important. Saying 25% as a locked number. Increaseing mission difficulty. Plus allowing a smuggler to slice for truely hard game. Say drawing krayt dragon missions for a group of 15 players on tattooine.
I think we need to be able to slice more terminals, one option I proposed earler was to slice the slot machines etc at the casinos, it would give you a slight increase in odds if you are sucessful but could cause you to get tefed to the casino if you do it too often. When you slice a mission terminal it needs to remember the slice when you refresh the pages, considering I almost never slice a mission because you have to refresh the term so many times usually to get a mission you like. It would also be nice to be able to slice in more difficult missions. I mean a solo smuggler on tatooine can't get missions much better than a womp rat, not that starter planets offer very good missions anyway. However, I hate that it seems if you are going to do missions Dant is the only place to go. I do like the idea of a smuggler being able to slice a group mission. Also to add a little balance if the smuggler slices a group mission, that is the only mission the group can have but have the payout make it worthwhile to a group, so they are more inclined to take such a mission.
Question 8. Talking to jawas while cool is less then enjoyable. Which would be better. Getting the ability to talk to more npcs. Tuskens, or even semi intelligent creatures. To draw missions no other players could get to. More options when talking to npcs. Such as in KOTOR. Allowing a smuggler to open more options when talking to npcs. To either get a better reward, or to access critical info that other players might not be able to get.
This is an excerpt from an earlier post of mine but this is still basically the way I would like to see it.
Persuasion: With each tier of Underworld acquired, a smuggler gets better at communicating with the unsavory folks of the galaxy. As they increase in this skill the smuggler becomes better at negotiating their reward for a mission, and better at convincing a contact to use you as his smuggler. The smuggler will have the ability to try and persuade any NPC they talk to, except for pre-scripted quest npcs.
Each point of persuasion equates to a percentage point so if you have novice smuggler you get a 5% chance of persuading your contact, and at master you have a 65% chance. The persuasion of a contact can only be tried once per mission (or once every 5 minutes). So if you fail the persuasion check, you will not be able to try it again until you run his mission or wait 5 minutes. This is similar to the concept of slicing terminals for added payouts, but would also have additional uses. One additional use would be if you fail a mission, you will need to return to your contact and try to convince him that it was not your fault. More on Persuasion to be mention below as it relates to other smuggler skills.
Connections: With each tier of connections you can talk to and take missions from higher level criminals. In essence as you get better known in the underworld more people want you to work for them. You figure Jabba would not talk to some novice smuggler if he had a critical mission. He is going to call on someone with a good reputation, which has been around for a while.
(Contacts) As a smuggler you first need to build a name and gather contacts. These contacts are going to be your life blood, in other words you can’t smuggle goods if you don’t know where or how to get them. So first and foremost you have to make some contacts. You would need to travel to an NPC city and start asking around. Check the back alleys, back rooms, etc until you find a smuggler contact. Contacts will be of the following levels and are a direct reflection of your underworld level from novice to master smuggler. Hoodlum (Novice), Brigand (UW1), Marauder (UW2), Outlaw (UW3), Racketeer (UW4), and Crime Lord (MS). The titles need work but are good enough for the example. A master can take missions from any level contact but a novice would only be able to take missions from the hoodlums.
There are also two different types of contacts. There are clients and there are suppliers. The clients have missions for you and in essence are there to help you find various suppliers. The client will generally give you a mission to go get x units of elicit item y from a certain supplier.
Now once you locate a supplier you will also have to do a set of missions for him before he will accept you as one of his smugglers. In essence there would be 20-30 suppliers scattered on the various planets and even a couple at some of the space stations. Each supplier carries a different set of elicit goods. Some of the higher level suppliers would be located in more dangerous locations. As you unlock additional suppliers by doing their set of quests, you will have access to additional goods. Suppliers would be much more difficult to identify because they would look like any other NPC and have no title over their heads. Thus the only real way to find a supplier is to do several client missions. Finally several clients will have the same supplier so not every client mission is going to lead you to a new supplier.
Question 9. Faction point tradeing can be slow and tedious. Which would be better. Smuggler can buy as many faction points as they want as long as they are in the faction they are buying points from. Smuggler can buy faction items to give directly to another player, but not be able to use them themselves. The system is great the way it is and should never be touched.
No comment never do it. and to be honest I think it has nothing to really do with smuggler
Question 10. Almost every profession gets a terminal for their professions. Rebel, Imperial, artisan, entertainer, explorer, mission, Bounty. Which would be better.
I do not think we should get a terminal, I think all missions and dealings should run through NPCs Please refer back to question 8
Message Edited by 1FORCE1 on 01-17-2005 03:16 AM
ana-mo-cara
Mon Jan 17, 2005 3:02 pm
#20
Question if you run it through an npc are you okay with loseing the choices that terminals give. Such as multiple directions differing degree of difficulty, and drawing more then one mission? I suppose it sounds good roleplay wise but is it good mechanics. Roleplay goes only so far. I remember when the bh npc outside of the mos eisley spaceport was driveing me nuts. The same gibberish over and over. Wouldnt we smugglers become a joke. UHOH smuggler comeing in switch to group chat. Otherwise we will not be able to talk while he chooses his mission.
In this game in general npcs are just annoying. I do not want a npc filling up a valuable chat que with the same redundant thing over and over again. That space is reserved for tells and actually hearing what players are selling. Second I want to chose where I am missioning too. The north or mos eisley has some pretty twisted dens and npcs. While to the south its a little lighter on the aggro.
Another thing I dislike about the npcs. Is these are genuine lag generators in the game. I am all for getting rid of the spynet, farmers, technicians. I just have to wonder which is more important more npcs for styleing, or less npcs to reduce lag. One last thing why would you put the smuggler npc in a cantina which is lag city anyways. I cannot see why lagging yourself for roleplay is good. Plus talk about x factor ambushes or tefs. A cantina is a throbbing vulnerability.
DrevenStrobe
Tue Jan 18, 2005 1:41 am
#21
MISTagent01 wrote:
fishbrains wrote:
DrevenStrobe wrote:
Geevo wrote:
I enjoy reading...but can't comment.
Ditto
mhmmmm
I'm still bitter at Caylin for not picking me.
I hate you all.
Awww...we still love you though...
......
yimaz
Tue Jan 18, 2005 1:54 am
#22
DrevenStrobe wrote:
MISTagent01 wrote:
fishbrains wrote:
DrevenStrobe wrote:
Geevo wrote:
I enjoy reading...but can't comment.
Ditto
mhmmmm
I'm still bitter at Caylin for not picking me.
I hate you all.
Awww...we still love you though...
I was so close to getting in I could smell it....still can. Oh wait no that's just me, damn I need a bath.
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