Smuggler Archive

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JeedaiMaster wrote:

OK, I came up with potential fixes for both slicing and spices the other night when I was driving to pick up my wife from a long night at work.

I will discuss the slicing fix first (but the spices one is better so DO read on…).For slicing I have wrestled over the eternal debate, should smugglers gain the ability to pick their slice at some high level of training?I always felt that the answer was NO because it would put the novice slicers totally out of business.Then I had a novel idea…

What if a person who had mastered the slicing line had the ability to check off a “75% chance” box, and then had a 75% chance to determine their slice.HOWEVER by checking this box, their slicing effectiveness would be reduced (say -5 off their slicing %). Master smugglers could also check off a “100% chance” box and be guaranteed to slice the desired attribute.HOWEVER in choosing the 100% chance box, there would be a fairly stiff penalty to the slicing effectiveness (say -10 to the slicing %).This way people could have some, or complete, say in what got sliced.However a “random” slice would have the best absolute number, keeping them a viable option

Alright, now onto the spices fix.This is a bit more involved, and thus probably something for the large smuggler revamp (with an agreed upon date of late 2015 I believe):

Three of the large issues I have heard about spices (and the smuggler profession for #3) are:

1)Spices are not on par with food and doctor buffs

2)Some people believe that spices should not be crafted, but somehow acquired

3)Smugglers need to have smuggler missions

This all began to come together for me:

I think we need to completely remove the spices tree and replace it with a tree very similar to the bounty hunter investigation tree.We need a tree for smuggling missions (with increases to allow more difficult missions as we climb the tree, and hopefully some abilities to help us complete the more difficult missions – maybe feign death would belong here now).

These missions would involve transporting spices.We would pick up a crate of spices from a NPC and have to deliver them to another NPC (possibly having to get by imps and/or other aggressive in the process).Once we get the spices, we can either:

1)deliver them as we are supposed to and get a cash payout and smuggling mission exp or

2)keep the for ourselves

If we keep the spices we would have a bounty placed on our heads (a la Han Solo), bit to keep the spices.Since spices are NOT crafted anymore, this is the only way to obtain spices for game use.Spices will become a rare and expensive commodity, as they should be!Since it will be so dangerous to keep spices, they should be powerful (aka food and buffs).The higher the level of the mission, the better the spice “cargo” should be, but the more exp and cash for the mission too.

This sounds like so much fun, I would be a bit sad that I had gotten to climb this tree (seeing that I am already a master smuggler).

Hope this at least gets a discussion going

-Ooboo Chicha of Kauri

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You mean, they're concentrating so hard on slicing the right bit, that maybe the eventual slice isn't so good? That makes sense...kinda...

Why not put that tree in Underworld? It'd fit, and that tree is kind of empty right now...

You could go a stage further, and add a whole black market underground thing where you can buy all sorts of rare stuff off a "Black Market". This works best if...

...the items on the black market were bought using Smuggler XP (Hear me out...it could work). You'd introduce Smuggling missions, of the sort you mentioned. Each time you complete a mission successfully, you gain some of this XP. Its more like FP than XP...the more smuggling runs you successfully complete, the more "well known" you become. You can use this XP in two ways. You can either use it to climb up the Smuggler (currently underworld) tree, or you can use it to buy Black Market things. These work like buying things with Faction Points, only you spend XP. As you get more Smuggler tree levels, you gain access to better-paid missions, and better perks. These "perks" could include all kinds of stuff. You'd use it to buy spice. Not all spice is "crafted" - some of it is mined on Kessel. You'd get that among the availiable things. Its a halucenagenic (I know I can't spell...). I dunno how they'd fit that into the game, but it should be there. You'd get stuff like Alderaanian Brandy (an expensive form of super-effective uber-Brandy). You might get other collectables such as Clone Trooper armour, schematics for rare types of ships, weapons, rare loot stuff, and such like. This would be obtained through the new contacts that your "Underworld" skills give you. You'd also be able to buy and sell faction just like you can already. You might be able to convert Smuggler XP straight into Faction, so you can use your "contacts" to apply pressure, and bring the price down. You'd also be able to get your hands on "illegal" upgrades for ships and vehicles to sell on people, based on stolen Imperial prototypes, and such like. And the same tree would give you your bonuses to evading Imp patrols. We already have that, really - we're supposed to be able to talk ourselves out of trouble. It'd just be a case of adapting it to JTL.

I agree that spice should go. In its place, I'd recommend an Unarmed Tree. We all want one. We spent ages on the Unarmed grind. We deserve some form of extra skill sets. What I'd suggest is that, rather than Dirty Fighting being a Pistol tree, we make that the Unarmed one, and create a new tree with some of the Pistol stuff in. Low Blow and Feign Death seem, to me, more like Unarmed abilities, if anything. I reckon a Smuggler should have some sort of "Under-table Shot". It'd be like Conceal Shot, only with a pistol. You'd only get one go at it, but it'd maybe put a bleed on the target (you shot them in the stomach), and make them unable to attack for 10 seconds or so. By that time, you'd have got your blaster ready, and be firing of a shot every second. I'd also like to see, at Novice and Master, some Smuggler weapons. How about an "Electro-knuckler"? Its like a Vibro, only rather than vibrating, it "zaps" the target, doing Kinetic, with Stun as a secondary damage type. Also, a dual-pistol (at Master, or DF Pistol IV) would be good. "Dual Pistol Shot" would basically double your rate of fire - you'd fire your left pistol, then the right, so you get two shots off each second. The damage wouldn't be incredibly high, but the damage it kicked out would make up for that. All normal specials and attacks would have you firing the weapons together. It'd be an animation difference more than anything - the two weapons would act as if they were one, merely snapping off two separate attacks with Dual Pistol Shot, rather than two at once. It'd take a lot of animation work, but it'd be fun. Maybe you could offer the same certification and proficiency at Master Pistoleer as well, with stackable bonuses, so any Smuggler/Pistoleers are even better than a Smuggler/other or Pistoleer/other?

Sorry about the colours. I got bored.