Smuggler Archive

As far as the potentail for smuggler to run into space, hide in a house or log out jedi's can and do do that now, it is unavoidable and therfore should no be considered a problem if this systemis usedfor Smugglers.

Message Edited by yimaz on 02-07-2005 12:22 AM

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yimaz wrote:

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Ternque01 wrote:

You guys don't get it, and I'm not being mean.

You cannot give a smuggler prior warning. All smugglers would run into a house or jump into space. This directly breaks the mission. No bounty missions would ever come to completion. This is critical and an unavoidable factor that must be accommodated for. BH's have to go undetected until they decide to strike, otherwise there would NEVER be a first strike. I cannot overstate the importance of not alerting the prey. - dude I agree with you, have you read any of my last posts? Well, your original ideas still call for alerting the pray. You don't HAVE to change it, but whatever.

The idea of letting the smuggler know is not a bad idea in real life because BH's can break down doors and follow a mark anywhere. This is not so in SWG. There are private houses and JTL that make a target invincible. There are impenatrable walls and limitations that make no common sense in this game. - see above

You say that /masktrackingdroid will be a skill that is manually activated by the smuggler after they discover a BH. By this design, the skill would be near pointless. Let me explain. - when the BH SEE'S the smuggler in other words when he is in range, no message, I said that like 5 posts ago.

Let's say a BH uses his/her droids to track a mark to a small town on Naboo. The smuggler's location at this point is well known. The BH pulls out his explosive droid and lethal mind-fire pistol. The smuggler's buffs could very well be worn off or not there in the first place. The BH sets his droid on the smuggler, who cannot outrun it, and detonates it. A handful of shots later, or even without due to a strong detonation droid, the smuggler is incapped and the DB is administered. - that is one situation and whats wrong with that? Here is another.

BH tracks smuggler finds smuggler smuggler see's BH kills droid as it closes in because they have week HAM. BH opens fire smuggler calls his bike and hits /masktraking. Now the BH's tacking will be scrambled for 15min, sending him to the wrong locations. Smuggler jumps on his bike and leaves. You cannot see the tracking droids. How can a smuggler detect when a BH is onto them? BH appear as anonymous to their marks. Even if a smuggler could pick out a BH in a crowd of people, the BH still has visual contact with the smuggler, and ain't NO droid scrambling skill going to save the smuggler's ass. In order for the droid tracking to do a damn bit of good to the smuggler, it has to be BEFORE the BH has visual confirmation of their target. Of course, your skill could be used after the smuggler first gets away...

You guys must be aware that in most cases, a smuggler would die nearly instantaneously with no chance for /masktrackingdroid to even get the chance to be used. BH's are lethal people, and finding an unaware and unbuffed smuggler is ALOT easier than finding a Jedi that vulnerable. - ok first off smugglers need a second profession because we are not a combat class so it goes with out saying you will have a fighting chance. 2nd lets say it is someone who only has smuggler. The BH finds him and attacks, the Smuggler hits FD (the reason we have the skill in the first place) the BH now has to /check pules to try and break it. Smuggler uses FD last strike. The BH is "stunned" and unable to attack for 10sec. The smuggler get up calls bike, scrables bio sig and leaves. You point out the worse case situations and fail to take into account the whole reason we have FD. Good point, this would be the only situation where the /masktrackerdroid skill would be useful. But once a smuggler goes far enough out of range from the BH to drop the combat window (and cause mission failure for the BH under my plan) the mission would be over anyways (roleplayed as the smuggler getting away), making the /masktrackingdriod skill equally unuseful. If you want the mission to continue even after a smuggler escapes, that would be your design decision.

If you change /masktrackingdroid to work at all times, you will add a level of difficulty not present in Jedi missions. We cannot fight as well, but we better be damn sure to be harder to find, and alot more slippery at killing once we are found. Just think of it! A BH WILL have to ask and physically look around for their smuggler mark. This is a WHOLE ass-ton more immersive than just following a damn droid's waypoints around all of the time, plus it will give the smuggler that little bit of protection that we are wanting. - your talking about changing the whole BH system for smugglers and it wont happen. Ask anyone, the dev's work with in the frame work they have on any addtions to anything that is already in game. What I am talking about is the exact same skill you are asking for, but I am proposing that it work at all times for a smuggler, thereby making it harder to initially find a smuggler. Time frames don't have jack to do with anything. Smugglers will be much easier prey then Jedi, I think that this difference in challenge needs to be made up for, and I think making smugglers a little harder to initially find is the perfect way to make hunting a smuggler a real challenge.

I cannot understate how important not alerting a mark is, and I can't help but notice that /masktrackingdroid will never get put to use, save for the rarest of cases. - I dont think a mark should be alerted I've stated that a few times in the last few post, its only when the BH is in range and starts attacking (just like the Jedi system)then the smuggler has the tools to deal with the BH in FD, FD Last Strike, /Masktracking /call vehic. Or he stays and fight and if the loses then he FD's, FD Last Strike, /Mask...etc.... Very well yimaz, this is your design. I am just making a suggestion or two.

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Message Edited by yimaz on 02-06-2005 11:44 PM

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Ternque01 wrote:..........

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I'm trying to balance both a Smuggler and BH's chance at success for this and understand that a stand alone (profession wise) Smuggler would not stand a chance but again most Smuggers do in fact have a combat profession in thier temp making this a moot point. With that said the BH needs to be able to find the Smugger and some sort of resolution should be reached. I need more detail on your idea, I like it in concept but it would make the smuggler too hard to find and thats not good. Give us more details....Oh and for the record you and I see eye to eye on some issues and not at all on others, while this makes for good strong debate please understand I respect you and your idea's, truly.

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yimaz wrote:

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Daturaze wrote:

Yo Yimaz,

/MASKDROID and Notification of a BH

Agree with the idea that the Smuggler should not get prior notification that the BH is tracking them. The only time a Smuggler should specifically know a BH is targetting them - is when they're waking up in a cloning centre. With that said, I think there is a way around that. The Smuggler always has an active passive /maskdroid skill going. If the passive mod fails and the Smuggler is detected I think a system much like the "old man" should be in place - as you're walking around you see a tracking droid fly around in your general area. Once you see that tracking droid you can hit an "active" /maskdroid command to try and fool it and get the heck out of there. - not to poo-poo on this but no one can see tracking droids andnevercould see them. That's OK - BH's can't check pulses and never could either

I'm not sure if the dev's could even write that type of code and it would be a mammoth undertaking to make all tracking droids viewableto all players. If this concept was allready in game I would say sure why notafter all the ideadoes makes sense but no one can view tracking droids and I cant see the Dev's putting in the time needed for it. Granted - but again, I think of the old man - a piece of code designed to approach and interact with a specific player. I've seen the old man plenty of times at shuttleports and talking to other players so I don't think it's a game breaker to have a tracking droid quickly zip appear in an areaand then disappear

PULSE CHECK

I have a handicap and can not make leaps of faith - Nuff said

I'm wide open to idea's and have already made changes to the original out-line but remember any changes to any system in-game needs to stay with in the realm of what is do-able to ask the Dev's to change the whole system just to add us to the terminals will never happen, we have to work with what is already in place. Dude - the devs can't fix the autopull issue - and you want to implement a brand new bounty system??? Which one of us is dealing with the "Doable" ???

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Daturaze wrote:

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yimaz wrote:

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Daturaze wrote:

Yo Yimaz,

/MASKDROID and Notification of a BH

Agree with the idea that the Smuggler should not get prior notification that the BH is tracking them. The only time a Smuggler should specifically know a BH is targetting them - is when they're waking up in a cloning centre. With that said, I think there is a way around that. The Smuggler always has an active passive /maskdroid skill going. If the passive mod fails and the Smuggler is detected I think a system much like the "old man" should be in place - as you're walking around you see a tracking droid fly around in your general area. Once you see that tracking droid you can hit an "active" /maskdroid command to try and fool it and get the heck out of there. - not to poo-poo on this but no one can see tracking droids andnevercould see them. That's OK - BH's can't check pulses and never could either - dat you know as well as I its one thing to write code for a new skill it's another to write code from the ground up that is not in the game.

I'm not sure if the dev's could even write that type of code and it would be a mammoth undertaking to make all tracking droids viewableto all players. If this concept was allready in game I would say sure why notafter all the ideadoes makes sense but no one can view tracking droids and I cant see the Dev's putting in the time needed for it. Granted - but again, I think of the old man - a piece of code designed to approach and interact with a specific player. I've seen the old man plenty of times at shuttleports and talking to other players so I don't think it's a game breaker to have a tracking droid quickly zip appear in an areaand then disappear - ok in that respect (old man is in-game) I can see the idea, hmmmm so you see the droid, /masktracking and take off, since the skill only jams for 15min then the BH has a shot at getting to you, if you dont see the droid the BH has a shot at getting to you before /mask. If this is where your going I like it. Is that where your going with this?

PULSE CHECK

I have a handicap and can not make leaps of faith - Nuff said

I'm wide open to idea's and have already made changes to the original out-line but remember any changes to any system in-game needs to stay with in the realm of what is do-able to ask the Dev's to change the whole system just to add us to the terminals will never happen, we have to work with what is already in place. Dude - the devs can't fix the autopull issue - and you want to implement a brand new bounty system??? Which one of us is dealing with the "Doable" ??? - no the idea is based off the system that is in place now, no changes to the BH system just changes to BH and Smuggler in the way of skills (not a tuff thingto do)so that if and when we are added it if balanced. Your droid idea while good is trying to reinvent to wheel, not the addition of new skills to an already existing system.

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Cheers
Dat

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First of all the collecting of the money during a player mission needs to be changed. If you kill your player-mark you have to go to either the person who hired you (Bib Fortuna as example)or a spynet-guy if the person wants to "stay anonym" or give a waypoint for the meeting.

• You take a mission


• Track your mark down


• Kill/capture it (I would love to do some life captures)


• Go to yourcontact and collect your money.

• The BH dominates the fight and incaps the Smuggler, well maybe. Did the Smuggler feign? The BHdoesn't know yet.


• The BH wants to apply his deathblow, the Smuggler can try and use /lastditch (or final shot(?)). Using it out of surprise at point blank. /lastditch could be even more powerfull in this case. Very Dirty Fighting.


• Or the Smuggler chooses to gamble and play the "I am dead"-game.


• The BH applied his deathblow and now does his final check (I for one would call it some sort of witness check, instead of a pulsecheck). If the BHs roll is successfull, he applies the real deathblow by default. For shure this time. If not or the first deathblow was already successfullhe gets the "This one is dead."-message


• The BH goes to his contact to collect his money

• The BH get paid for succesfully killing the mark


• Thecontact tells you that the mark is still alive, mission fails. This can result in loosing some faction, a mark on the BHs own head, etc. Depending whom the BH works for.


• Thecontact got fooled by a very succesfull feign death from the Smuggler, the BH get paid. It is like the first, even the BH don't know for shure if he really killed the Smuggler (he is the only one who knows).

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yimaz wrote:

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Daturaze wrote:

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yimaz wrote:

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Daturaze wrote:

Yo Yimaz,

/MASKDROID and Notification of a BH

Agree with the idea that the Smuggler should not get prior notification that the BH is tracking them. The only time a Smuggler should specifically know a BH is targetting them - is when they're waking up in a cloning centre. With that said, I think there is a way around that. The Smuggler always has an active passive /maskdroid skill going. If the passive mod fails and the Smuggler is detected I think a system much like the "old man" should be in place - as you're walking around you see a tracking droid fly around in your general area. Once you see that tracking droid you can hit an "active" /maskdroid command to try and fool it and get the heck out of there. - not to poo-poo on this but no one can see tracking droids andnevercould see them. That's OK - BH's can't check pulses and never could either - dat you know as well as I its one thing to write code for a new skill it's another to write code from the ground up that is not in the game. I know no such thing - if admitting to something means I can't argue against it - then where's the fun in that????

Granted - but again, I think of the old man - a piece of code designed to approach and interact with a specific player. I've seen the old man plenty of times at shuttleports and talking to other players so I don't think it's a game breaker to have a tracking droid quickly zip appear in an areaand then disappear - ok in that respect (old man is in-game) I can see the idea, hmmmm so you see the droid, /masktracking and take off, since the skill only jams for 15min then the BH has a shot at getting to you, if you dont see the droid the BH has a shot at getting to you before /mask. If this is where your going I like it. Is that where your going with this? That's exactly where I'm going with it. If you're crafting some Clamps and have all the crafting windows up it'll be easy to miss. Plus, again, if there's other smuggler's in the area you'll see the droids, and you won't know if it's for you or not and will have to make the choice whether you want to use the skill or not.

PULSE CHECK

I'm wide open to idea's and have already made changes to the original out-line but remember any changes to any system in-game needs to stay with in the realm of what is do-able to ask the Dev's to change the whole system just to add us to the terminals will never happen, we have to work with what is already in place. Dude - the devs can't fix the autopull issue - and you want to implement a brand new bounty system??? Which one of us is dealing with the "Doable" ??? - no the idea is based off the system that is in place now, no changes to the BH system just changes to BH and Smuggler in the way of skills (not a tuff thingto do)so that if and when we are added it if balanced. Your droid idea while good is trying to reinvent to wheel, not the addition of new skills to an already existing system. Again - BAH! With Major publishes now planned for every 2 weeks instead of 6 the ability is there to make changes such as this - so I reject your argument - and FURTHERMORE - your mother smells of elderberries!! <this all sounds better if you can imagine this text said in a French accent>

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Cheers
Dat

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yimaz wrote:

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Ternque01 wrote:..........

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Tern it's really not about MY idea, I've already made changes based on what we have all been talking about. With that said, I'm open to your idea of it being a rotating scan but here is my problem:

When would it be activated? The /masktrackingdroid would always be on.

How would a BH ever be able to find a Smuggler? If BH's are never able to pinpoint a smuggler exactly with their droids, they DO have the general area that a smuggler is in. Ifa BH seesa waypoint 100m outside of Mos Eisely, common sense points the smuggler's true location. Couple this with the fact that MBH's get their droid waypoints updated every few seconds - a good BH would find the general center of the waypoint scramblings and easily determine the smuggler's location. Better yet, once a BH has the general location of a smuggler, they just have to search with their eyes or ask around.

What are the rotating scramble's time limits, how would it work? There would be no time limit with my scrambling version. All BH droids would be scrambled at all times, the degree of scrambling, i.e. the radius, would be determined by the smuggler's scrambling skill.

I must say that a BH looking for a scrambled smuggler location won't really have too hard of a time finding their quarry - this is because they recieve multiple, updated waypoints that they can use to judge the real location of the smuggler. It is balanced, and I think that it allows a smuggler to physically see BH's poke into buildings or asking around for them, thereby allowing a smart smuggler to evade or prepull a bike.

I'm trying to balance both a Smuggler and BH's chance at success for this and understand that a stand alone (profession wise) Smuggler would not stand a chance but again most Smuggers do in fact have a combat profession in thier temp making this a moot point. With that said the BH needs to be able to find the Smugger and some sort of resolution should be reached. I need more detail on your idea, I like it in concept but it would make the smuggler too hard to find and thats not good. It is not too hard to find a smuggler with a scattering resolution of 500 meters. It is easy to physically scan an area or ask around. It is not too hard on the BH. Give us more details....Oh and for the record you and I see eye to eye on some issues and not at all on others, while this makes for good strong debate please understand I respect you and your idea's, truly.

BH droids right now will tell you the location of a pimple on a Jedi's body down to the millimeter, leading the BH directly to their mark. If you can scramble a BH's signal from the get go, they might have to scan a 200 meter radius patch of land before they establish visual contact with a smuggler mark. The BH recieves one scrambled waypoint, does a 200 meter circle about it, and BAM!, finds the smuggler. Pretty easy if you ask me.

If the scrambling radius is bumped up to 700 meters, this makes for a more challenging investigation for someone with investigation III, whose droids will only update waypoints every 3-4 minutes or so. For a MBH, their droids update every few seconds (not sure of the exact number, but it is much faster). For a MBH tracking a smuggler who is able to scramble up to a 700 meter radius, the MBH just has to open his/her worldmap, watch the random waypoints flash new locations, deduce the probable real location, then drive around that location searching for a visual on the smuggler. It is more challenging, but it is FAR, FAR from impossible or inbalancing. In truth, it will give a much greater advantage to MBHs than players with just Inv. III.

In this system, the scrambling is always on, and the BH has a little more trouble finding a smuggler than finding a Jedi.

One factor that WILL cause BH's trouble would be tracking a smuggler who is "on the move". By this system, it will be a very big challenge to guestimate a smuggler's location if the seed position that is scattered is moving. This will produce a jig-jagged "line" along the smuggler's real path, and a BH would have problems tracking the smuggler because it would be very difficult to use the jig-jagged pattern to estimate the actual line of travel.

I am telling you yimaz, if you make /masktrackingdroid a skill that is manually activated it will be of little use because 1) most smugglers will die when the BH tracks exactly to their first location and 2) if a smuggler causes BH mission failure by "escaping", the mission will end as soon as the smuggler drives far enough away to cause the combat window to close (assuming that an "escape" ending is granted to smugglers to bring finality to the bounty encounter). What would be the point of an escaped smuggler scrambling the signal if the mission has already failed for the BH?

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Daturaze wrote:

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yimaz wrote:

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Daturaze wrote:

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yimaz wrote:

I know no such thing - if admitting to something means I can't argue against it - then where's the fun in that???? /argee

That's exactly where I'm going with it. If you're crafting some Clamps and have all the crafting windows up it'll be easy to miss. Plus, again, if there's other smuggler's in the area you'll see the droids, and you won't know if it's for you or not and will have to make the choice whether you want to use the skill or not. - its a good idea just dont know if the dev's would go for it but I do like it/shrug

Again - BAH! With Major publishes now planned for every 2 weeks instead of 6 the ability is there to make changes such as this - so I reject your argument - and FURTHERMORE - your mother smells of elderberries!! - I fart in your general direction, now go away before I taunt you a 2nd time you english canivit!

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Ternque01 wrote:

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yimaz wrote:

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Ternque01 wrote:..........

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Tern it's really not about MY idea, I've already made changes based on what we have all been talking about. With that said, I'm open to your idea of it being a rotating scan but here is my problem:

When would it be activated? The /masktrackingdroid would always be on.

How would a BH ever be able to find a Smuggler? If BH's are never able to pinpoint a smuggler exactly with their droids, they DO have the general area that a smuggler is in. Ifa BH seesa waypoint 100m outside of Mos Eisely, common sense points the smuggler's true location. Couple this with the fact that MBH's get their droid waypoints updated every few seconds - a good BH would find the general center of the waypoint scramblings and easily determine the smuggler's location. Better yet, once a BH has the general location of a smuggler, they just have to search with their eyes or ask around.

What are the rotating scramble's time limits, how would it work? There would be no time limit with my scrambling version. All BH droids would be scrambled at all times, the degree of scrambling, i.e. the radius, would be determined by the smuggler's scrambling skill.

I must say that a BH looking for a scrambled smuggler location won't really have too hard of a time finding their quarry - this is because they recieve multiple, updated waypoints that they can use to judge the real location of the smuggler. It is balanced, and I think that it allows a smuggler to physically see BH's poke into buildings or asking around for them, thereby allowing a smart smuggler to evade or prepull a bike.

I'm trying to balance both a Smuggler and BH's chance at success for this and understand that a stand alone (profession wise) Smuggler would not stand a chance but again most Smuggers do in fact have a combat profession in thier temp making this a moot point. With that said the BH needs to be able to find the Smugger and some sort of resolution should be reached. I need more detail on your idea, I like it in concept but it would make the smuggler too hard to find and thats not good. It is not too hard to find a smuggler with a scattering resolution of 500 meters. It is easy to physically scan an area or ask around. It is not too hard on the BH. Give us more details....Oh and for the record you and I see eye to eye on some issues and not at all on others, while this makes for good strong debate please understand I respect you and your idea's, truly.

BH droids right now will tell you the location of a pimple on a Jedi's body down to the millimeter, leading the BH directly to their mark. If you can scramble a BH's signal from the get go, they might have to scan a 200 meter radius patch of land before they establish visual contact with a smuggler mark. The BH recieves one scrambled waypoint, does a 200 meter circle about it, and BAM!, finds the smuggler. Pretty easy if you ask me.

If the scrambling radius is bumped up to 700 meters, this makes for a more challenging investigation for someone with investigation III, whose droids will only update waypoints every 3-4 minutes or so. For a MBH, their droids update every few seconds (not sure of the exact number, but it is much faster). For a MBH tracking a smuggler who is able to scramble up to a 700 meter radius, the MBH just has to open his/her worldmap, watch the random waypoints flash new locations, deduce the probable real location, then drive around that location searching for a visual on the smuggler. It is more challenging, but it is FAR, FAR from impossible or inbalancing. In truth, it will give a much greater advantage to MBHs than players with just Inv. III.

In this system, the scrambling is always on, and the BH has a little more trouble finding a smuggler than finding a Jedi.

One factor that WILL cause BH's trouble would be tracking a smuggler who is "on the move". By this system, it will be a very big challenge to guestimate a smuggler's location if the seed position that is scattered is moving. This will produce a jig-jagged "line" along the smuggler's real path, and a BH would have problems tracking the smuggler because it would be very difficult to use the jig-jagged pattern to estimate the actual line of travel.

I am telling you yimaz, if you make /masktrackingdroid a skill that is manually activated it will be of little use because 1) most smugglers will die when the BH tracks exactly to their first location and 2) if a smuggler causes BH mission failure by "escaping", the mission will end as soon as the smuggler drives far enough away to cause the combat window to close (assuming that an "escape" ending is granted to smugglers to bring finality to the bounty encounter). What would be the point of an escaped smuggler scrambling the signal if the mission has already failed for the BH?

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Ok you sold me, I like it I will rework the main post later and fix it. Nice work Ax