Smuggler Archive

So many things could be done to help smugglers, I know, and so many suggestions have been made. I even know that the things posted in here probably rarely get more than a passing glance by anyone that can really change anything (no offense to Caylin), but stick with me for a second.

I've been off and on with the game for a bit, and in my time away I've played other games obviously. One of the latest ones was something called Anarchy Online, and in it I played a class called a Fixer. Has some similarities to what a smuggler is often seen as, but it's really more of a slicer, so I thought it might be fun. On an interesting side note, this class is considered broken by many people, or at least rather gimped at high levels. Can I pick losers or what?

So more on to the point. When I first heard galaxies would have slicing in it, I was thrilled. I think I had just recently read the Heir to the Empire trilogy at the time, and there was a slicer in it named Ghent (I think) who was pretty cool. Also slicers in the Han Solo trilogy, etc. So I had this image in my head of all these cool things a slicer would be, maybe even disabling turrets or something, or reprogramming them. So of course I'm a bit disappointed when I find out slicers are tacked on with smugglers, and even worse that all we really slice are weapons and armor.

So here's the actual meat if you don't want to read the rest: In Anarchy Online, Fixers (and some other classes) have the ability to transport themselves and teammates to a place called the grid in order to move around faster. Basically brings them from the middle of the wilderness to a tiny area where they can portal over to any city that has a grid terminal. So my basic thought about bringing something similar here is to allow smugglers to slice into the satellite network which controls the droid operated shuttles. We could do this from outside some dungeon, or after helping a bounty hunter friend kill a mark in the middle of nowhere. In a few seconds (around the same timeframe as the bounty hunter droids from orbit, maybe more), a shuttle is 'hijacked' and lands near us and allows us to board (maybe still deducting some amount from our bank). After we board, one of two things could happen:

1) We appear at the nearest shuttleport. This is the simple method. The way it is explained is that we hijacked a shuttle on the way to that shuttleport, and the droid just thought it was making another stop. We (and possibly our group) simply disappear from where we were just at and show up at the shuttleport like we normally would if catching a shuttle from a normal ticket droid.

2) We appear on an orbiting space station. Sort of like the starting station, we show up in space. From here we can get another shuttle planetside, perhaps grab a shuttle off planet. This could also be a place to charter a pilot, perhaps to the smugglers' run, since only smugglers or their groups would be able to get to this platform in the first place. The theory here is that we sliced into the platform's computer and had it send down a shuttle to pick us up. I thought this would be hard to do until I thought about the beginning character station. That is instanced for each new character, so it shouldn't be too hard to make one new area for each planet, not even instanced this time.

I'd say Master Smuggler would be a good place for this, and I'd definitely say some hardware should be required, but nothing with uses, just something a bit difficult to get put together. Probably Droid Engineer, since there'd probably be a droid brain would be inside helping out with some number prediction.

So just my thoughts. Sure, we have vehicles now to speed up travel a bit, but after hunting nightsisters or something, I'm usually tired when I head to bed (why else would I be heading to bed?). So mindlessly watching my ugly lizard fly back to starport to log is annoying, as would be flying back when I next log back in. A bit of quick transit would be a very nice thing.

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Noone loves you, go away

I like it. Just wish this sort of good idea got put in occasionally.

Colonel Eanow Wo'Tah- Valcyn Server
Alliance Ace pilot/Swordsman/Master of almost mastering professions then dropping them
Almost mastered Pikeman/Ranger/Commando/Fencer

all interesting ideas.

I was just reading another thread about smuggler droids. What if smugglers could have droids wich acted as mobile starship terminals (thus able to launch their own ships from any location)

Seems rather smuggler-ish to me

Korin Sterling - Master Smuggler / Master Musician - Ashla's Wing Part: [1][2]

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Lando did have a little device that could call his ship to him, totally forgetting what it's called, though. Easy to move that idea into a droid.

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Noone loves you, go away