Smuggling

Being one of the core professions in the Star Wars fantasy, we must augment the profession in SWG to allow Smugglers to actually partake in the Star Wars Underworld. To this end, we are implementing a new set of re-playable smuggling missions that can be completed for Underworld themed rewards.

Three types of missions are proposed. Delivery missions, slicing/hacking missions and extortion missions. Each mission type will have one or more possible conflict events during the course of the mission. Failure will be easier or harder depending on the level of the mission so as to present the player with an appropriate amount of risk vs. the reward given at the end of the mission.

The difficulty of mission that can be taken will depend on the level of Underworld standing that the player has achieved through completing successful missions. Higher Underworld standing will grant access to higher level missions. Higher level missions have more difficult encounters and more constraints (timers, inability to use public transportation, possibility of ending up on player bounty boards, etc).

In addition to mission changes, some system updates are proposed to increase the ambient feeling of Smugglers and the goods they produce:


Spice crafting will be removed from the smuggling skill tree. Smugglers were revamped to be a complete combat profession during CU, which means removing the spice crafting doesn't invalidate any of their skill lines. Spice crafting XP was also removed with CU. Spices will now be granted as rewards during smuggling missions.


Spices & Sliced Weapons will no longer be tradable on the bazaar or vendors. Players must seek out smuggler characters if they wish to obtain contraband items.


Group Sizes

As part of the Combat Upgrade, group sizes were reduced from 20 to 8 so that content could be more balanced. There are, however, times in Star Wars Galaxies when players need to group into sizes larger than 8. Presented here is an early concept of how groups larger than 8 can be integrated into the game.

To do this, we must satisfy two primary requirements:

Requirement 1: Add a global large group (more than 8) chat feature to maintain social dynamics.

Chat room functionality already exists in the game so we could potentially add the following chat room command: /chatroom invitegroup [room] (If you don't invite a Group Leader, you get a nice message saying "Please invite the leader of that group). This command would invite the player and everyone in the player's group to a chat room. This is a lot friendlier than having to invite each group member separately.

Requirement 2: Allow more than just the 8 people of a group to enter a multiplayer ship.

To accomplish this, we could possibly remove all grouping requirements when launching into space via a multiplayer ship. Instead of only allowing group members to be invited, any player that is in the same room as the pilot would be listed in the invitation list.

Ships like the Sorosuub Luxury yacht would now be able to hold larger groups for social gatherings (IE parties). Ships like the YT-1300, which are more combat oriented, would still require that a passenger be in the same group as the pilot to enter a station or manage a turret. However, they would still be able to have non-grouped members roaming the corridors.


To tie the passengers together, we could automatically create a new chat tab that would add all of that ship's passengers to the chat.
A command that would allow the owner of the ship to kick player's from the ship would also need to be added.
A list interface allowing the player to select all invitees from the people in the room around them might also be needed.
This would have to be limited to 30 or fewer players.

funny that Ranger gets a massive overhual list and Smuggler get bullet points.

That's kinda the difference between "Concept" and "Development" .

Smuggling will be worthless in the game until they introduce a contraband system and truly illegal items that carry consequences for carrying.