Smuggler Archive

Keep in mind implementing the "taking on" of skills from another profession will likely be teh cause of MANY bugs and annoyances to some people. Don't get me wrong I like the sounds of this but I don't see it happening without alot of development time.

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Alistaire wrote:

...will likely be the cause of MANY bugs and annoyances to some people....

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Hehe, no doubt. But I would think this would be relatively easy to do. You just "turn on" the profession (as though it had been trained) when it is learned, and "turn off" as soon as the time is up. The problem would be in flagging it as a temporary skill so players could not learn "post-requisits" (like higher level skills in the profession).

Learning skills seems to be a very clean part of the game - as soon as you learn it you get all the appropriate skills & abilities. As soon as you "unlearn" it, those go away immediatly.

this would be exploitable to the extreme. there is a reason for the skill point cap and only 5-10 more skill points would change the flow of character balance.

Exploitable how? We're talking about NOVICE skill level ONLY for a limited amount of time with no advancement opportunities. Plus the training requirement will mean additional expense.

The biggest "exploit" I can see is allowing an Expert Underworld person the ability to learn Novice TKA to level up to TKA. That would probably take about 3 hours and cost 15,000 credits to learn. Compare that to the abilities other professions have with expert-level skill in one tree. Perhaps the "Last Ditch" shot, or the ability to make the 2nd most powerful weapons in the game... I am only talking about novice level skills, just to give a slight advantage.

If you think that novice skill DOES unbalance the profession too much, you can increase the cost.. Perhaps Master Smugglers must first buy a "card" (like a union card) from an exisitng master at a cost of 25,000 credits before training someone in that skill. Too cheap? How about 100,000 credits (to encourage them to Charge for training)... The costs would make this less-exploitable.

That said, I really don't think the novice skills to most classes are all that unbalancing. So you have a novice weaponsmith grinding WUKs for an hour... is that going to unbalance the game? I doubt it.

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GalinHawk wrote:

That said, I really don't think the novice skills to most classes are all that unbalancing. So you have a novice weaponsmith grinding WUKs for an hour... is that going to unbalance the game? I doubt it.

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dealing with just this for exsample. this game is built on a core value of inter-profession dependablity. with skill you can make your smuggler completely independent.

you don't just crank out WUKs for an hour, you would make 1000 unit schematics and use em till your hearts content. cutting out hte weaponsmith interaction. Same with armor smith.

Need to heal? little novice entertainer will take your BF off in a few minutes. and since you have an hour novice entertainer buff slowness would not hinder ya.

Novice medic, expensive for a reason you can use up to stim b's with only novice if i am not mistaken. so now you can have all combat skills and still have medic as well.

novice merchant=2 vendors

novice CH = level 12 pets

novice architect and you can whip up your own house.

the list goes on..this would make your smuggler independent of any outside needs. that isaginstthe intention of the game design.

Good points KAV. I actually would not worry about the novice Merchant (a merchant or two up for 1 hour isn't going to do that much, and at a cost of 10,000 credits per hour, not many smugglers would be interested in that...). Same with the ability to use level 12 pets for 1 hour...

But the scematic thing is definetly an issue. My way around that: No schematics (and no research) can be done using temporary classes. That leaves the option open to grinding through things, but at a cost of 5,000 credits per hour (as I suggested)plus the cost of the materials, it may be cheaper & easier to buy them externally.

But you're right, it does decrease the interdependence.

Another idea I had was being able to use other professions' master titles. i.e. have a smuggler walking around with a "master bounty hunter" title (of course with none of the abilities). That would be harmless, and would go more towards a role-playing idea of the smuggler as a "covert opperative".