Smuggler Archive

I'm sure something like this must have been posted here in regards to the smugler revamp but I thought I'd post this anyway. I was inspired to come up with a way of improving feign death after seeing how many complaints about it there are on the BH boards. In my opinion this would make feign death (and some other abilities) much more effective and sensible.


I wrote this over dinner so I expect there are many spelling and grammatical errors lurking in this. Currently this is only posted here but depending on how it goes down I will repost in other relevant forums.

Well I’m not one for fancy introductions lets get straight to the point. FD (Feign Death) isn’t working in the way many feel it should. Some people would say it’s being exploited by jedi, others would argue the other way. Personally, I’m of the view that it is available to them, like anybody else so they are entitled to use it but I feel the way FD works needs a serious revamp.

Now I don’t pretend to know exactly how FD works as things stand, I’m guessing that as there is a skill mod involved, unless that skillmod is broken, that FD has a chance to fail. I also believe that if it fails you can use it again. Please correct me if I’m wrong in saying this.

Taking the assumptions I have made and what I have heard other’s say into account I have come up with the following proposal. I’m sorry if this has been suggested before but I have no recollection of it.

Now my idea is that FD could only be used once in any given fight. When used the user would collapse to the floor in an attempt to play dead. If the attempt succeeded the player would be presumed dead and the opposing player would no longer be able to attack. If the attempt failed the player would be attackable again a few seconds after the attempt, still in their state of being collapsed on the floor with similar defensive penalties to a KD.

The chance of success or failure would be determined by 2 skillmods and a random roll by both players. The skill mods would be Feign_death and awareness, both currently ingame. The formula would be as follows:

Feign_death skillmod + roll versus awareness skillmod + roll – (0.5*distance)

The roll would have possible values of 1 – 100 with an equal chance of getting every value.

If both feign_death has a skillmod of 100 at master smuggler with awareness being 100 at MBH the chance of FD succeeding would be 0.5 when both players are master and were 0m apart. The reason for distance to be taken into account was that its obviously easier to notice something when you are 5m away then if you were 30m away.

Now this is the fairest system I can think of for the FD system but I also think a similar system could be put in place for other similar skills.

You could have awareness vs. the cover of a rifleman (if cover makes a rifleman invisible to radar as I think it should)

You could have awareness vs. the camouflage of a ranger with camo kits making a player invisible to the radar.

Now with the last two suggestions I feel that a roll should be made every 3s because as the situation changes you might notice the player. I also feel that the quality of the camo kit that is applied should be taken into consideration with the following amendment to the formula when a camo kit is concerned.

Conceal_skillmod + camo_kit_quality + roll versus awareness skillmod + roll – (0.5*distance)

The value of the conceal skillmod at master ranger would be 50 with camo kit quality capped at 55 with the experimental quality as OQ. This would mean that with a perfect camo kit used by a master ranger the ranger would have a probability slightly more than 0.5 of successfully going unnoticed when up against a player with 100 awareness. When a ranger applies a camo kit to another player the chance of success would be significantly lower as they would have a conceal_skillmod of 0 (unless a ranger applies a camo kit to another ranger) The quality of the kit and rolls would function like they do for a master ranger.

What if a player uses multiple skills I hear you scream? Well, FD would be a standalone skill roll where conceal and cover have no effect. If however, a player used his cover skill whilst wearing a camo kit the formula would work as follows:

Cover_skillmod + conceal_skillmod + camo_kit_quality + roll versus awareness skillmod + roll – (0.5*distance)

A camo kit applied to a player without a conceal_skillmod would work as above.

When any of the above skills are used against a member of a group the user must beat the total awareness score of all members in the group otherwise the user would fail against the entire group. The roll would only be made against group members in the immediate area (within 65m of the user)

Now I will outline where, in my opinion, skill mods should be granted.

Smuggler

Dirty Fighting 1 + 15 feign death, +15 awareness
Dirty Fighting 2 + 15 feign death, +15 awareness
Dirty Fighting 3 + 20 feign death, +20 awareness
Dirty Fighting 4 + 20 feign death, +20 awareness
Master + 30, +30 awareness

Total + 100 Feign Death, +100 Awareness

Bounty Hunter

Novice - + 10 awareness
Investigation 1 - + 10 awareness
Investigation 2 - + 15 awareness
Investigation 3 - + 15 awareness
Investigation 4 - +20 awareness
Master - + 30 awareness

Total +100 Awareness

Ranger

Novice + 10 Awareness
Bioscience 1 + 10 awareness
Bioscience 2 + 15 awareness
Bioscience 3 + 15 awareness
Bioscience 4 + 20 awareness

Wayfaring 1 + 5 conceal
Wayfaring 2 + 10 conceal
Wayfaring 3 + 10 conceal
Wayfaring 4 + 10 conceal

Master + 30 awareness and + 15 conceal

Total +100 awareness and +50 conceal

Rifleman (as current)

Concealment Tactics 1 + 20 cover
Concealment Tactics 2 + 20 cover
Concealment Tactics 3 + 20 cover
Concealment Tactics 4 +20 cover

Total +80 cover

Jedi

Jedi and force sensitive players would gain awareness mods in various trees eventually granting a much higher awareness skill mod than a normal player. I don’t really know enough about the jedi skill trees to form an opinion about where they should be granted but I feel that the maximum total skill mod for a jedi should be about 200 where it is restricted either by a hardcap or just by skill point allocation.

Medic - It has been suggested that medics should gain a /checkpulse skill. I feel this should give the user a second roll against the smuggler's FD. They would get an awareness roll vs. then a /checkpulsevs. if the /checkpulse is used.

feign_death_skillmod + roll vs. checkpulse_skillmode + roll

Novice - + 10 checkpulse
Diagnostics 1 - + 10 checkpulse
Diagnostics 2 - + 15 checkpulse
Diagnostics 3 - + 15 checkpulse
Diagnostics 4 - +20 checkpulse
Master - + 30 checkpulse

Total +100 checkpulse

Personally I think that the awareness skillmods of ranger and Bh should not stack because an MBH ranger 4xxx would have an awareness of 170 which imo is far too high even when you consider the skill points used to do so.

I can’t think of any other proffesions that should be granted any awareness skill mods although I have one last thing to add about cover and conceal. Even though when used against a player without any awareness they would be extremely effective and highly unlikely to fail the user would become visible to radar again as soon as they entered combat.

I urge you to make your comments whether they be positive or negative but please try to be constructive instead of just flaming me. The allocation of skillmods in the different skillboxes is just my personal opinion and not really the point of the thread. If this were to be implemented the system would need to be tested to ensure the skillmods were allocated correctly.

Message Edited by Combat_Medic_to_be on 01-04-2005 02:30 PM

Message Edited by Combat_Medic_to_be on 01-05-2005 08:17 AM

Message Edited by Combat_Medic_to_be on 01-05-2005 08:18 AM

I think that's a very good idea as well. There definitely should be some way in that FD is scaled up in usefulness as the Smuggler goes up in skill boxes.
Being able to feign death I think is one of the fun benefits to being a Smuggler, in addition to being rather useful for surviving situations, but it's should definitely ramp more--in general the game functions that the more points you invest in skills, you get better abilities for it, and FD kinda breaks that.

I like being a Smuggler, but even myself I see no real point to taking the rest of the dirty fighting tree, if being a master isn't in your game plan.

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Ternque01 wrote:

Very nice idea. I haven't double checked your math, but needless to say I believe that FD should be the absolute last resort a player takes in a fight.

In order to ensure this, FD must be extremely unreliable to succeed, and it must warrant horrible consequences if failed.

In PvP, FD is a lame way to break combat. There are many other (better) skills that could be used in the first place. If FD is to be a part of PvP, it must rarely work. How many times would the playerbase tolerate their gameplay being broken by it? Bounty Hunters don't seem to pleased, I am not too pleased.

Put it on a timer to prevent it being spammed or just institute a horrible consequence given it's failure. For instance, a smuggler will not know if his/her FD has been successful until their enemy walks up to them lying there, gives them a look over, then continues on their way. A smuggler should actually go incapacitated if he/she fails and not be allowed to stand until the incap timer wears off (90 seconds or so). Their enemy would also see them in the incap state and finish them off, just like the person who plays dead at the feet of their enemy inspecting them.

FD is breaking player bounties. If the math in your system allows for a smuggler to succeed even a fair amount of times that they attempt FD, I cannot support it. It is destroying the player bounty system.

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Well said mate. All too often of late, I see it as a first action taken by various prof's that are using the ability to dabble in our proffesion just to either nag or just give up after making the choice to either play a PvP initiated proffesion or allowing themselves to be attacked overt or tef'd. Feign should be an absolute last resort, and I rarely use it unless it is imperative that I survive or I know I am not cloned and carrying (smuggling) someone else's gear that could decay if I get tripple incap griefed.

I agree 100% that it is really acting as a detriment to player bounties as well, and should have some form of failure albeit at master smuggler it should not be a drastic chance for this failure as we have perfected the art at that time.

Thanks for the positive input guys. A couple of suggestions from the BH boards (one from Ternque01 ) are to include awareness for smuggler which makes complete sense. Imo this should be thrown in with FD so that as you learn more about how to sucessfully FD you also learn how to notice a bad attempt.

Another nice suggestion was /checkpulse to be added to the medic skilltree. Now I wouldn't like this skill to simply tell you whether they have FD'd or not but maybe give a second roll. You get your awareness roll then you get a /checkpulse roll if you use check pulse. Ths skill mods for /checkpulse would cap at 100 at master medic so essentially it would give the user and second chance to notice an FD.

When I suggested a 50/50 chance of success of a master smuggler and somebody with max awareness it was just what I thought was most fair although I can see why it being say 25% might make more sense. I think that would have to adjusted in testing if it were ever to get that far, its more the principle that I'm trying to suggest.

As far as penalty is concerned I like the idea of the user not knowing if they had failed or not. I think if you are given the same penalties as KD when FDing and then essentially giving your oponent a chance to prepare themselves for combat to resume. FD should have quite a high HAM cost and HAM should not regen during FD. I think if those were the conditions then 50/50 chance of success would be fair. Updating now and thanks for the 5*

Hehe. Not bad.

Its essentially that rough draft I kept proposing, only showing more of the math that would be behind the scenes, and adding more professions that could detect it to the mix.

Five stars!

Thanks. I cant think of any more proffesions that could get thrown into the mix really. Hopefulyl they could implement the ranger conceal thing cause atm its basically useless.