Smuggler Archive

Message Edited by HOTDOG on 01-17-2005 05:42 AM

Message Edited by HOTDOG on 01-17-2005 02:54 PM

F*cking brilliant.

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HOTDOG wrote:

A rich and robust spice system starts in the greenest fields of Columbia- just kidding

Let's start with my philosophy on spices as they are now-

The great debate in the community is whether we should craft them or not- with a majority leaning towards NOT. I lean slightly the other way and I will tell you why-

1. I don't like giving up an ability. I don't care what it is- 'cause the bottom line is, that takes content away from those who wish to play that type of smuggler...which leads me to:

2. It adds variety to what types of smuggler's are out there. Hell, I don't even like to craft spice! But I don't wanna take away from Yimaz who's a spice craftin' fool (just kidding- Yimaz is not that foolish).Lets get one thing straight,Im very foolish!

3. Crafting (druglord) type smuggler's and Smuggling (Han Solo) type smuggler'sCAN co-exist without one wiping out the other so we should work towards that goal.

That said let's talk about HOW we do that-

We're gonna be discussing some stuff that this forum has touched on before in greenmarine's contrabrand post and other FABULOUS ideas that other smugglers have posted- including Caylin, Electromad, Vampirerobot, Yimaz and my damn self so if you wanna refresh yourselves you can go to this thread: http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=smuggler&message.id=130148

got it? good....

To get that rich and robust taste out of spices we need to fight for a few things:

1. The spice line needs to become the "Smuggling" line.

You can get smuggling XP from crafting spice or smuggling it because bottom line is if your doing one- you are most likely gonna have to deal with the other. Sure you could sit and grind spice and go up the tree (should take longer) or you can run smuggling missions to get that XP. That's up to you how you do it. Chances are you are going to mix it up, doing a little of this and that as you feel and that is what a proffession should be like. Not a grind. - nice

2. Spices have to be made super illegal contrabrand.

Carrying a crate or more worth of ANY spice has to result in scans, drop-ins, attacks and confiscation.

Meaning, if you have a crate of spice you can expect:

to be scanned in starports (Imps would get it fromFed Dub,Corsecs and the like)-

to be stopped and scanned in space.

to be approached by security squads in cities.

to have all types of visits from security types and thugs you have bad faction with while you are in the wild and in space.

to have all the spice you are carrying be confiscated if you fail the scan.

to be attacked/hunted by NPCs (thugs, Imps, security types)if you have earnedenough Infamy and a BH if you have earned enoughvisibility (see those threads I talked about).

*and yes- if you and 5 of your friends are tooling around in your multiplayer ship and each of you has 3 vials of Muon on you- Expect to get a visit from an Imperial ship or some thugs that don't like you trafficing stuff through their area.

I think this works better with spices than slices because it's a lot harder to lose that legendary weapon you got sliced than a crate of spice.

Also, this would lead to people ORDERING spice from you because who wants to pay 70k for a crate or two of spice only to have it confiscated.

This means the player base is saying-

"Hey Axob- I need you to deliver a crate of spice to my house between tonight and this weekend. I will bank tip you 70k once I get it and here is 10k to keep you honest. Good luck."

That my friends...IS SMUGGLING. For the player base eeeeveen! - nicer

3. Spices have to be super powerful.

This could be plausible because they should be stronger thanBuffs (after the CU) in that they would boost one of the HAM bars AND give you an attribute as well- kind of like combining buffs and foods.

The way I see it- If the new buffs add max 1000 points to your attributes for 2 hrs. Spices should be able to add another 1000-1500 for an extra 30min-1hr depending on the grade of the spice.

Downtimes would also depend on the grade- if you have thrusterhead that's good for 1000 pts for 30 minutes the downtime might be only a minute long but one that's 1500 points for 1 hr will have a 3 minute downtime. - sweet

Also you should be able to pop a spice during a downtime but only get a percentage of it's benefits and the downtime from this spice would be considerably longer and/or black bar that particular HAM bar until you are dead (kinda like ODing) - super sweet

4. Spices and Sliced weapons HAVE to be removed from ALL VENDORS!!!....except these...

A Smuggler with Slicing 4 and Business 3 should be able to put up a special vendor for sliced weapons

A Smuggler withSmuggling 4 and Business 3 should be able to put up a special vendor for spices

A smuggler with Underworld 4 and Business 3 should be able to put up a special gambling table/vendor

A Master Smuggler with4 and Business 3 should be able to put up a casino

These vendors should only be able to be placed in Casinos, Cantinas, and Private buildings with the vendor ownerAND the owner of the building earning Infamy and/or Visibility (as the situation fits) which each sell of an item.

This would force a lot of hand to hand selling (and therefore smuggling) WITHOUT impacting the sales of weapons/spices too much. - good idea but let me ask would you require Business as a skill and if so would you want to remove either pistol or melee from what we need to be a smuggler? This would hurt the triple masters....

5. An equal number of spices (or their components) should be have to be smuggled.

This is self explanatory.Spices inSmuggling I and SmugglingII maybe totally craftable. Spices in III and IV would have components that you have tosmuggle and then craft as well asa spice that is smuggled completely.The master slot would have once spice that is completely crafted and one that is completely smuggled (and hard to do at that).

Again, you can go up this tree however you want- but chances are if you are crafting spice you're gonna have to smuggle it and if you are smuggling spice you're gonna have to craft some at some point as well.

I think this is fairAND givesusdiveristy as a proffession ANDremoves the grind-- /argee

6. Spices have to be divided into two categories: Theones that cause Infamy and the ones that cause visibility.

There was aLOT of debate on this but I think spices that aid in things that are used in PvPshould cause visibility and those that are justHAM enhancers would not.

Example:

Thrusterhead would cause you to earn Infamy for selling it and carrying it.

Glitterstim would give Jedi more force power andcause you (the smuggler)to have infamy AND visibility for selling/carrying it.

You would earn infamy for selling/carrying Muon Goldbut you would earn Infamy AND visibility for a spice that helped you to gain extra faction points for running missions.

...get it?

7. Experimentation would have to count in crafting spices. -/agree

Nothing that powerful should just be slapped together. Plus that just makes the game more of a challenge and therefore that much harder to put down.

There you have it7 steps toa taste spiceline.A lot of this has been mentioned but here it is again- looking for a dev that is paying attention.

I also think some NPC cities should be declared strict PvP- (THENyou would have cities thatpeople would REALLY considered dangerous) just like in space but that's me.

*Edit: added the line about space.

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HOTDOG wrote:

This would force a lot of hand to hand selling (and therefore smuggling) WITHOUT impacting the sales of weapons/spices too much.

yimaz wrote:

- good idea but let me ask would you require Business as a skill and if so would you want to remove either pistol or melee from what we need to be a smuggler? This would hurt the triple masters....

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The way I see it- it's no different from the way it is for smugglers now-

There are no changes to the prereq's for Smuggler and you would need business 3 to put down a vendor anyway-

The difference is for those who AREN'T smugglers.

Meaning you couldn't place a vendor and put sliced items on it if you didn't have slicing IV.

In other words you couldn't sell contrabrand without being a smuggler.

Also you couldn't sell spices on a sliced weaponvendor.

thanks for the kudos- I was way into your post as well. I just wish we had a DEVs point a view.

Nice option to the craft or buy debate, good job Tevin!

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HOTDOG wrote:

I just wish we had a DEVs point a view.

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/thumbsup

rockin' post, sir!

1 word...


W O W

Wes Belden wrote:

Great post

Thanks!

We may have a tough time (infact it's possible it'll be a straight up "no") convincing the devs spices that are crafted and spices that are smuggled from NPCs must have the same value (e.g. the two in the masters box), but other than that it's another great set of ideas

I wouldn't mind if crafted and smuggled didn't have the same value- Maybe one could have the option of refining a smuggled spice as has been mentioned by a couple of people.

Personally, I think the more important aspect is that we would be smuggling.

If you are a smuggler who wants to compete in the spice market you SHOULD have to craft it. If you just want to smuggle and get paid- who cares what you are smuggling? As long as you get PAID (and XP) for doing it.

I think the hard sell on this would be: The player base being open for earning Visibility.

That would be a huge step.

I guess you could tweak it so that you would have to be a smuggler to earn Visibility for certain spices but I could see that causing a problem much bigger than just saying everyone who is caught with glitterstim is going to earn (X) amount of Infamy and Visibility.

Namely bickering over "what's so special about being a smuggler that they get the extra content (bounties) and my profession doesn't)

A solution to the problem of people being put in the position of having a BH come after them is to have a window that warns a person who is about to use the spice or put it in his/her inventory.

You know, "If you are scanned with this spice in your inventory you will earn visibility which might result in a BH coming after you"

There were other solutions mentioned in greenmarine's thread as well- I just hope it's considered seriously. I mean, PvP is an end game for SWG and if you don't believe that, you need to have a look at the FRS system.

Also one may not put contrabrand in droids- I should add that to the contrabrand list! damn!-

I should also put in something about the strength of Imps, Fed Dubs, Corsecs, etc. being amped....

Anyway...

One could argue that the player-base won't like to have their spice confiscated but I disagree.

Spices aren't even thought of right now (unless it's Muon). That SUCKS but it is also to our advantage because they can be revamped and no one will care because they don't use them now. It will be like a whole new entity.

Stronger spices that can be confiscated beat out spices that suck any day.

One last thing Wes-

I also can hear an outcry from all the weaponsmiths and armorsmiths. At the outset. This plan strips them of a great deal of business (i.e. sliced merchandise).

But I would be quick to remind them that there is nothing preventing them from allowing a smuggler to set up a vendor in their home (of course at the risk of gaining Infamy) or working out a deal with a smuggler who has a vendor in a cantina or casino.

In fact I am of the opinion that it gives the whole slicing industry that lil' bit of edge that it needs. All of a sudden- there is something shady about selling sliced material.

ChaoticPlague wrote:

Very well put! You have made me think about spices again. Fantastic ideas!

Thanks CP- When I was running through it I was getting excited about spices myself- AND WE DIDN'T EVEN DISCUSS WHAT ATTRIBUTES SPICE WOULD HAVE!

The next thing I will write will be a "in the life of a smuggler after the perfect revamp"- taking a cue from Yimaz's post. I'm a busy man so don't hold your breath for it.

Ternque01 wrote:

Wow, this is a very very good post. I like the idea about confiscating spice if you have a crate or more of it on you, and how it encourages players to buy in bulk, but carry in small amounts. You might be on to something with having a player EXTREMELY hastled for carrying a crate. WOW!

Thanks AXOB!- You hit it RIGHT on the head. We have to control how people see/carry/use spice.

Now is the perfect time because people rarely carry spice at all.

When they do- it's Muon (MAYBE pixie) and they do it by the crate. More often they pack several crates at a time and that is just WRONG.

I don't think the playerbase would have a problem with only being able to carry 3 vials of Muon and 2 vials of Pixie and a dose of Glitterstim.

I DO think they might get upset at losing a crate of each though but not enough to quit playing SWG. I think it would upset them just enough to hire one of us to deliver (read smuggle) some for them. They will be so powerful- no one is going to go without them but losing a crate or three everytime you go to Coronet would suck.

This is sticky quality. Please Wes, can you include this in the smuggler's important links?

Nice job HOTDOG.




Thanks again, kid! Remember- selling spice ain't like dustin' crops, boy!

Message Edited by HOTDOG on 01-17-2005 08:58 PM