Auxiliary Repair Duty.

[Nikolaz]

So, this is very much self serving. But as it stands, the nerfed rewards for completing Auxiliary Duties gives *Spoiler* for sharing, which compared to the supplies you use fighting the often numerous threats often around these *spoilers* gives you about a 10% return rate for one of the players. That player would be in school of engineering whereas the ones mostly using the supplies would be in the school of war.

I suggest an xp reward of the same value as the current gold reward to all people in the vicinity of the *spoiler* when its *spoilered* and that the gold reward is upped to one third its original state so that it leaves something for sharing.

I'm not a DM, and I'll not pretend to know the complex calculations around the wealth of the Auxiliary. But we risk our life and limbs down there, the other day I had to defend a Consul from 8 strong golems and spend a good 4-500 golds in supplies (Those Golems hit hard) and I've been paid 0 gold by the Reformed Order for my services.

I suppose I could file an IC complaint but I'm afraid Operative Miller would see me fried.

Even consideration of this suggestion would be appreciated.

[Mortui]

Having played an Auxiliary both when the rewards were astronomical and after they were reduced, I can agree with Nikolaz.

They were too high before but now they are just too low to be worth bothering, unless the character stealths about which is hardly any fun.
1/3rd of the original reward would certainly be nice.
If not that, perhaps allowing the rewards from fixing the problems to stack, instead of say fixing 10 and getting the rewards of 1.

HOWEVER, if you are spending 500 gold fighting animatrons, you are certainly doing something wrong.

[Howlando]

Back in my day PCs would wade their way through the doom of EFU areas like the Bowels and come away with nothing but some svirfneblin grey dye and a beetle belly with single use cure/moderate wounds, and they would be grateful.

The auxiliary duties thing, which has been heavily over-used in the past, is not well designed and is not intended to be a viable channel for earning wealth or advancement. Rather than increase its rewards (which would just lead to farming again), I'd be much more inclined to hear suggestions for fresh content for these groups.

There are many ways to earn GP and XP in EFU and faction/association PCs should be asking not what their faction/association can do for them, but what they can do for their faction/association....

Also note that when I hear cries of poverty, my first reaction is to check EFUSL and see just how rich the character is... for every multiple of thousand GP on hand and in the bank, I deduct a sympathy point.

[CondorHero]

What about allowing engineering invested character to "salvage" the corpses of animatrons, like characters with wilderness survival to skin animals/beasts. And get special scrap parts to turn into an NPC for reward/xp/gold .  Turn in 10 scrap parts at a time and you can get a choice of blur, potion or a stat enhancement potion? Could be cool and get more auxiliary down in the machine.

[tala_kai]

I don't support this suggestion. I remember at the start of the chapter the rewards for doing the Auxiliary Duties were on an absurd level. I remember I accompanied auxiliaries more than once and there wasn't a single spawn around, which made the work being: Going to the machine, doing what is required, going back to Upper and receiving a reward (and a large one).

Unlike the watchers' and society's bounties, there's no need to look in all of the server, rather, there's a very specific location to this, which makes it much easier.

HOWEVER, the nature of this quest allows you to take with you others, not from the auxiliary. You have a golden opportunity to include others on those jobs, allowing them to do other things than the scripted quests, and even showing them the machine and the nature of the auxiliary and maybe they'll join as well. It doesn't have to be "auxiliary only". Every spot on the server can be dangerous to a solo/duo PCs. More people = more fun.


Also, if you feel poor, I can PM you the gold stats of my PC so you'll feel better about your gold

[Nikolaz]

I think this was blown out of proportion. As for advice on additional content, well. I think the whole digging idea in the *spoiler* area was great. Perhaps if some more digging areas further behind the locked *spoiler* which is currently empty could be made? The items dug up could be things from the svirfneblin who used to live down there, flavor items. Perhaps even a chance to dig up Baublium?

As it is we are all still going into the machine. But there is a lack of incentive to do so, I thought an increase in the gold reward from the 30 gold might serve as such.

Clearly though it's just met with hostility. I wasn't around for when it was farmed I just looked at it as it was now and thought 30 gold that the engineers aren't even sharing was a bit paltry for facing down rather strong enemies.

As for Talas comment about soloing. I've yet to do the Machine in a group of less than 3, and it commonly reaches 5. Auxiliary can manage larger groupings on their own.

By now I regret making the thread ofcourse. I should have known that this was a done issue.

[Howlando]

My tone was not intended to be overtly hostile but rather more giving-you-a-hard-time teasing/joking you around. SC has the right of it, though, the whole system probably should just be removed.

[Nikolaz]

I think I'd approve of its removal actually. As it stands, well. Let's just say I went down there once with a group and I'd never seen it done before, and when the point wasn't easily found it almost looked as if it was advocated that we just leave it be. Likely due to the very low OOC reward for the relatively high OOC effort. It's also boring compared to what else you can do down there, and there is plenty to do.

I'd advocate more random explorable be made down there perhaps. Also that they can be made -even deeper- in. As it stands the deepest areas are somewhat barren, but the Auxiliary is a growing entity and it would be exciting of those areas got more attention. And I think they would get more attention if they were less barren.

I was a bit hostile in my last post myself, I apologize for that. I'd excuse it with having skipped both breakfast and lunch but, that'd just be silly. Sometimes you just see hostility where it Isn't.

[Random_White_Guy]

While I don't want to lump on matters OOCly it's entirely possible to ask for research funds, operational expendatures, and otherwise from the Spellguard. Either PCs or NPCs can be approach about appropriating funds for official misisons.

Budgetary concerns do come up and if you're ordered on some grand pacification campaign of an army of wererats it's not beyond the realm of the feasible to say "Sure. But we'll need X sum for resources else we'll find ourselves crippled. Success is assured.".

I say toss the system and leave the IC repairs available as a means for Engineers to have something to do, organize patrols around, and similar.

[The Samophlange]

I would like to see some manner of replacement, myself. It is no so much that I believe that the Auxiliary need a monetary reward, but I believe that some perceived benefit or group task to do as an Auxiliary would help very much with getting people interested and excited to join it. Many of the other factions, Sanctuary or not, either come with a strong goal/activity or special privileges to help guide their players to activity. The Auxiliary get a very neat roleplaying tie to the Spellguard, but when the Spellguard are not around it seems that many of them struggle with what to do with themselves.

I'm not saying they need a special quest, or a big sack of gold to compensate them. But, something they could do as Auxiliary together that felt worthwhile would, I think, help a lot with this issue. Maybe turn the current 'repairs' thing into a proper quest you can do once per reset, and they can lead patrols of Aux and citizens into the machine to help fix problems. I liked the idea somebody else posed of turning in parts. Maybe mirror it somewhat to the mycopolis jellies exchange, and have auxiliary be able to turn in certain parts that are otherwise garbage for minor potions and items thematically used to help in the Machine. This would also benefit the Scrappers as well, and could make trading these parts worth something.

I think the Auxiliary are a very cool faction, but to a lot of players it seems like the other institutions of Sanctuary offer a great deal more for admission, whether in concept or activity. I'd love for there to be something to get people really excited to make and roleplay an auxiliary, really.

[Paha]

I will feel quite desperate if we have to guide players by the hand with everything and make personalized faction only tasks and quests and things to do mechanically, and they cannot chase for anything on their own. Wow. Did I just describe world of warcraft?

[Ebok]

I just lost my entire post, which was much better worded. I'm going to be really terse

Fix the 1/reset gathering points, turn them into a sometimes on / sometimes off; a search check; explores.

Create two gathering quests that can be achieved by groups in upper and lower.
First the School of War / Bitter Chosen Hunter offering a gathering quest for chosen tails: with the rewards chosen from a list that's both helpful but themed differently. Two collection points means possible competition.
Second the School of Engineering / Scrappers offering a gathering quest for random spawning points of repair within the machine (find a place, scrap it for something or fix it for a point), and those points app up to cool flavorful things (made persistent across resets maybe not).

Add some meaningful way of searching for Baublium into the middle levels. Either a 3-7 quest, more (lengthy) explorables, or really just more machine to dig through that's longer and harder to reach.

I think that's more then enough to make it a really actively traveled place.

[Zango_Unchained]

Gathering system for the Auxiliary and Engineers which is based on points rather then gold.

Kudos to Ebok for inspiration.

School of War:

Gritty chosen hunter Auxiliary offers chosen bounties for large amounts of points while killing normal chosen just gives a handful, heroes are worth more.

Same goes for animatrons but they do not have a bounty system for the school of war.

The points go to an upgraded Auxiliary shop, that the huntsman has which is filled with tools to kill Animatrons and Chosen, as well as Silverdust potions and sparks of revelation. These can only be bought with points.


School of Engineering:

Beep-boop machine teller kind've deal who tells when high priority animatrons enter his sensor range. This then turns into a machine bounty which the engineers but go out and find the animatron in to the machine and drag its body back for points mausoleum style.

They also get points for bringing in rubble from the rubble piles and killing chosen but not from animatrons.

They get an upgraded Auxiliary shop, that the robot has which contains deep gnome items such as coffee and disrupters along with engineering tools such as outfits and kits that while they reduce combat use aid in engineering/research. Lore sets/Engineering sets. These can only be bought with points.

This system is meant to replace the current system of go out and repair this problem with more of a go out and kill this threat or recover this animatron. This is to allow more group work rather then a solo Infantryman/Engineer waltz into the machine to fix a problem and instead takes a small group of them 2-3 to see objectives done. With no matter what is being done, all party members are being rewarded.

Infantryman: "I need to kill a red blooded chosen and find this Rghagular the gear cruncher who was tinkering with the water filtration"

Engineer: "Thats great I'll help, perhaps after you can aid me in securing a high risk animatron our sensors picked up in sector five."

+1 teamwork, -1 solo exploration for gold.

[Ebok]

I have the admit, over the past few months of playing in the watch. The Auxiliary felt rather redundant to me. I commented a few times that the watch should just subsume the auxiliary and have Sergeants/Inspectors/Engineers. Especially considering how closely bound the two are due to the Directives written in as Law.

Shadow Charlatan's comment would actually fix all of that, and add a sweet layer of upper conflict that's really hard to propagate at this moment in time. Dunno, it's already IG so it might be suggested that any change in this way would also have to be IG, but that seems unlikely. Both considering the Directors reliance on the spellguard and the commanders ability to veto it. Change in this instance might need to be orcastrated--but honestly? The potentials here are amazing.

When we first started up EFUR, we had a couple of blanant spellguard propagandists preaching the religious of the machine. That--Was just damned cool. This suggest would bring a lot more of that to life.

[PanamaLane]

Some perspective from a former Auxiliary...

I completely abused the repair system and made gold hand over fist, often making 1k in a matter of 30mins. Granted, I wasn't doing -spoiler- to make even more, but still there was plenty to be had. If this has been toned down that is a good thing. However it exists now (haven't been around to know), I'm sure you can still make gold and XP from multiple sources (parts, repairs, baublium) just from simple patrols. Ultimately though, the real reward is leading groups into dangerous areas of the machine, showing new PC's what's up and expounding your ideologies along the way.

I always viewed the Auxiliary as a kind of SS, and I played my character (when she was loyal) in that manner. In her mind they were the elite and devoted, whereas the watchers were the rift raft and incompetent. It created a lot of conflict with the watchers, directors, and Upper in general and I think was quite positive in that way. If you want more power, claim to have it, get in people's faces about it, threaten them PUSH FOR IT.

I think Howland's comment harkening to JFK is the real deal. Ask not what your faction can do for you, but what you can do for your faction. If you want to change the attitude, perception, rewards or whatever for the Auxiliary...do it with your character. One loud, motivated PC can make all the difference in the world. If you just want cool faction loot and gold, I think you are missing the point a little.