Just a few ideas for tweaking Tracking, spawned by the Unite thread in the General section:
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Make it cost a reasonable fee to request a hunting companion. 1-2000 seems a bit low, 10000 is pretty rough, so I suggest 5000 for now. Ecology users have to expend a lot of power and energy to get their familiars, so seems only fair that us trackers have a similar requirement for our companions.
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Coupled with the cost of requesting a companion, maybe a short downtime between the death of your old one and the ability to get another. For an animal companion that you share that kind of bond with, I would think that you need to take a bit of time to come to grips with its death. For this, perhaps an hour, two at most.
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At the moment, stink traps seem to be the only way to force someone to stink bad enough so you can track them. Lisaera pointed out that the skunk totem could also be used, but as Terenas said, Ebon/Serenguard who take hunting and have a use for the skunk totem have to actually give up totems in the first place
One other method would be SepticWound, assuming the target doesn't cure it before they um, soil themselves. This is both restricted to BMs and PBs, and is not reliable enough to count on. Only other option is to track them after you know that they've been hunting Gorgogs
.
Anyway, it's kind of funny that, under the current method, the dog seeks out someone who smells like a mixture of sulfur and weed. Which everybody who goes through a stink trap will smell like.
How about a skill that allows you to secretly, or openly, acquire some personal affect of the person. Like cutting off a lock of hair or something. This gives you an item which lasts for, say, an IG year, and which you have to have in your inventory to have the dog track them. Makes more sense to have something that belongs to the person for the dog to scent, and I believe this is how it's usually done in manhunts/rescue searches.
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Have a delay between sending the dog to find an item/mob/player and when it actually arrives. Also, have a message on the dog's end when uniting with it, so that the people in the location know to expect someone (though generally, if a dog from an enemy organisation shows up, people will probably be expecting trouble, or else the dog will be killed on the spot).
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That's all I remember from when I was on the bus, for now. Comments, additions?
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Make it cost a reasonable fee to request a hunting companion. 1-2000 seems a bit low, 10000 is pretty rough, so I suggest 5000 for now. Ecology users have to expend a lot of power and energy to get their familiars, so seems only fair that us trackers have a similar requirement for our companions.
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Coupled with the cost of requesting a companion, maybe a short downtime between the death of your old one and the ability to get another. For an animal companion that you share that kind of bond with, I would think that you need to take a bit of time to come to grips with its death. For this, perhaps an hour, two at most.
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At the moment, stink traps seem to be the only way to force someone to stink bad enough so you can track them. Lisaera pointed out that the skunk totem could also be used, but as Terenas said, Ebon/Serenguard who take hunting and have a use for the skunk totem have to actually give up totems in the first place
One other method would be SepticWound, assuming the target doesn't cure it before they um, soil themselves. This is both restricted to BMs and PBs, and is not reliable enough to count on. Only other option is to track them after you know that they've been hunting Gorgogs
.Anyway, it's kind of funny that, under the current method, the dog seeks out someone who smells like a mixture of sulfur and weed. Which everybody who goes through a stink trap will smell like.
How about a skill that allows you to secretly, or openly, acquire some personal affect of the person. Like cutting off a lock of hair or something. This gives you an item which lasts for, say, an IG year, and which you have to have in your inventory to have the dog track them. Makes more sense to have something that belongs to the person for the dog to scent, and I believe this is how it's usually done in manhunts/rescue searches.
-----------------------------------
Have a delay between sending the dog to find an item/mob/player and when it actually arrives. Also, have a message on the dog's end when uniting with it, so that the people in the location know to expect someone (though generally, if a dog from an enemy organisation shows up, people will probably be expecting trouble, or else the dog will be killed on the spot).
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That's all I remember from when I was on the bus, for now. Comments, additions?
Well, so would any dog. It may be some incentive to actually look after it. Instead of continuously sending it after Alger like I did 
But yeah, 5k might be a bit too much. 2500 instead, then.
But yeah, 5k might be a bit too much. 2500 instead, then.
I like Gregori's idea of using someone's body part to track them. Makes sense too for times like if your opponent gets away after a bit of a scuffle, but they leave bits behind - you can get the dog to track them down. Plus, it reduces the amount of reworking/addition needed.
As for the cost of requesting a dog, I wasn't aware that it died that easily. And Alger, you did kill my dog
If that's the case, then scrap the adoption cost, but still have the mourning period?
As for the cost of requesting a dog, I wasn't aware that it died that easily. And Alger, you did kill my dog
If that's the case, then scrap the adoption cost, but still have the mourning period?
Shame about the scalp/ear owner thing, obviously would need to be fixed before they consider this kind of idea.
QUOTE(Alger @ Sep 7 2005, 08:40 PM)
They could be more like falcons, have to raise/train for a couple of rl days, feed, in-general take care of them. It would make having them and losing them more meaningful. But they would also need to be as tanky as flacons were and run around or retreat when near death.
I like this idea and would have suggested it, but I seemed to recall some sort of stigma around those things from Achaea. I didn't want a shower of hatred, you know?
If we train them, then an alternative to having the companion die, and I only suggest this because I forked over 1000 gold to name my dog and Alger keeled him the next day, is that you have a dog, and you have it for life - i.e. it doesn't die (or maybe it has the normal canine lifespan, which at least gives me some time to write off the 1000 gold I spent on naming it). But when it's ABOUT to die, it runs off into the wild or something for a few IG days. Then it comes limping back, with some deductions from the training that it had, representing it spending a week licking its wounds, taking some damage to its confidence, etc.
Maybe?
Really nice idea about using ears, scalps and bodyparts to track! Much more workable than skunk spray and stinktrap. 
QUOTE(Shinza @ Sep 7 2005, 01:08 AM)
Shame about the scalp/ear owner thing, obviously would need to be fixed before they consider this kind of idea.
I like this idea and would have suggested it, but I seemed to recall some sort of stigma around those things from Achaea. I didn't want a shower of hatred, you know?
If we train them, then an alternative to having the companion die, and I only suggest this because I forked over 1000 gold to name my dog and Alger keeled him the next day, is that you have a dog, and you have it for life - i.e. it doesn't die (or maybe it has the normal canine lifespan, which at least gives me some time to write off the 1000 gold I spent on naming it). But when it's ABOUT to die, it runs off into the wild or something for a few IG days. Then it comes limping back, with some deductions from the training that it had, representing it spending a week licking its wounds, taking some damage to its confidence, etc.
Maybe?
I like this idea and would have suggested it, but I seemed to recall some sort of stigma around those things from Achaea. I didn't want a shower of hatred, you know?
If we train them, then an alternative to having the companion die, and I only suggest this because I forked over 1000 gold to name my dog and Alger keeled him the next day, is that you have a dog, and you have it for life - i.e. it doesn't die (or maybe it has the normal canine lifespan, which at least gives me some time to write off the 1000 gold I spent on naming it). But when it's ABOUT to die, it runs off into the wild or something for a few IG days. Then it comes limping back, with some deductions from the training that it had, representing it spending a week licking its wounds, taking some damage to its confidence, etc.
Maybe?
181444
Well I think the problem with that is the only way to stop a tracker from just coming and uniting to his dog/wolf at you is to kill it before they can, if the dog/wolf were as tanky as falcons on achaea (which I believe on average had 10000-13000 health..) it would be a good luck scenario trying to kill it before they unite
