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GSF Discussion: Itemization


EricMusco

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Hey folks,

 

This week, we are creating three separate forum threads for GSF discussion. You can head to this thread to get links to each of them.

 

In this thread, let's focus on itemization. For a long time we have made it a point to keep Galactic Starfighter as a separate progression from the rest of SWTOR. Command XP has helped a great deal by giving GSF players a method of progressing their characters while playing Starfighter, beyond the XP you already receive.

 

One thing we are considering is adding more ways for GSF players to enhance their "ground game" characters. This would most likely be through a vendor where you could purchase items. What do you think of this idea? What types of things would you want to see on the vendor?

 

Be as specific as possible! Let us know your thoughts.

 

-eric

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I'd say crafting mats & some new decorations are the most obvious things which come to mind.

Maybe if you are not going with legacy hangar, place some legacy bound requisition grants to vendor.

Also rank 6 companion gifts as there's a deficit of them at the moment (mainly because they cost 250k)

Edited by GeorgeWhite
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Disclaimer: I am a player that was excited and tried GSF at launch, but quickly stopped playing it. I'm not sure if that means my feedback is more or less important.

 

Since this is about itemization, I did feel that playing GSF meant my entire character was "on pause" as I was only progressing GSF on that character only, and that impacted nothing else. It didn't feel woven into the game. Ultimately, I would only go back to GSF if I thought I was going to be rewarded for it in the ground game. Also, don't just make the relationship one way. Allow GSF to progress the ground game, but allow the ground game to progress GSF.

 

Here is what I would be interested in:

Ground Game Perks from GSF

  • New ground game companions acquired via GSF
  • New armor sets. Pilot themed, but they need to be cool. I'm not asking for "generic frigate pilot clothes", but "what would the hero of tython wear as a fighter pilot?" clothes
  • Legacy off hands. Weapons for sure, but please, off hands
  • Decorations. We need a ton of these, and I mainly play the game for strongholds these days anyways.
  • Put up some dye scheamtics for crafters. Since few people play GSF, let a GSF crafter corner the market on some dyes. If people don't like it, play GSF.
  • You know those planet quick travel abilities we can buy in the legacy window per character? Why not sell some variation of that here? Perhaps an unlock to discount planet to planet travel, or something new related to planet hopping travel that would be a GSF perk. Perhaps something similar to the guildship orbital support that could be sold/acquired via playing GSF that impacts the ground game.
     

 

GSF Perks from Ground Game

  • I would like to be able to progress GSF, even if slowly, via playing the ground game. Meaning, I can get a ship upgrade or two from playing the ground game after doing some dailies or heroics, as opposed to getting owned as a noob in GSF for dozens of matches against pros before I can get one upgrade for my ship.

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It would be very cool that once you master a certain model of ship you can then display that ship in your stronghold. Be able to do that on the Large site hook NOT just the centerpiece.

 

Definitely this ...

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I think GSF should earn Valor. It is a form of PvP and would allow those of us who love GSF, but not Arenas to gain Valor. I'm not suggesting the payout be anywhere close, just that some valor be rewarded.
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Many of us have long felt (and I made a point of calling it out at Community Cantinas too) that rewards for GSF are badly needed, even just cosmetic ones (though I hesitate to say "just" since we know that cosmetic rewards are huge motivators). GSF has been far too isolated from the rest of the game, and any possible integration would be very welcome!

 

I previously made a post suggesting that GSF be permitted to work toward earning reputation with the Republic Hyperspace Armada/Imperial First Mobile Fleet faction, and to add more reward items to that associated vendor. I really feel this would be a good way to tie two aspects of the game together in a way that would reward fans of both GSF and Space Missions, and improved rewards for that faction could give players who've never tried either game mode more reason to do so.

 

While that thread got a little derailed (as threads in the forum often do), I know that from my discussion with other GSFers over the years (like many, I've been flying since early access for GSF launched) we would all like to see more rewards to buy with our Fleet Comms! (For most of us, we are sitting at that 10,000 comms cap with nothing to buy!) Decos seem to be the most common suggestion (I linked to some suggestions in my above linked post), but more pilot-themed gear wouldn't go amiss.

 

As others have said, I think the most exciting reward would be ship decos that could match the customization for the ships in your hangar, but I imagine that might be rather difficult to execute. There are plenty of other deco options to be had, though.

 

I have to echo some of Crubel's excellent suggestions here too:

 

  • New ground game companions acquired via GSF
  • New armor sets. Pilot themed, but they need to be cool. I'm not asking for "generic frigate pilot clothes", but "what would the hero of tython wear as a fighter pilot?" clothes
  • Legacy off hands. Weapons for sure, but please, off hands
  • Decorations. We need a ton of these, and I mainly play the game for strongholds these days anyways.
  • Put up some dye scheamtics for crafters. Since few people play GSF, let a GSF crafter corner the market on some dyes. If people don't like it, play GSF.

 

All of these are truly excellent suggestions. Both factions already have a set of NPCs who were introduced as your default crew members when you start GSF, and who feature briefly in the intro to the Kuat Drive Yards FP. Being able to acquire these companions would be a wonderful perk, for both companion collectors and RPers, and of course for GSFers to finally be able to fly their GSF colors as it were.

 

Legacy off-hands would also be a nice way to give people two options (this new GSF one added to the Gree event) for acquiring these items. More choice! More incentive!

 

Dye modules also incentivize both crafters and RPers, and everyone wants customization options. I would suggest you look at more colors in the vein of the Olive/Tan and Uniform Blue modules that got released with the last pack, because these were excellent, less-saturated colors that convey the feel of the "used future" Star Wars look for our battle-worn spacers. Though it certainly wouldn't hurt to make one of these a Black + Whatever color as well, since those modules are already in high demand. I'd kill for a Black + Olive/Khaki/Uniform Blue type variant.

Edited by JediBoadicea
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Be as specific as possible?

 

I want my ships, as I have them set up in game, to appear in my strongholds. Probably not feasible, but that would be a great item.

I want my GSF themed stronghold to be a place where a GSFer would consider going, for some reason. Right now, the GSF flight deck is where to go if you want to see other pilots some of the time. Obviously, a mission console that delivered the GSF daily and weekly (but not the other PvP missions) would be a huge deal, but I think you hate that for some reason I don't care about.

Anyway, my point is, my stronghold should reflect all my GSFing. I can't even get most of the GSF-specific decorations easily, and there's no GSF-specific decoration for the majority of the GSF ships.

 

Further, it would be nice to get a few more GSF-themed gear pieces than currently available, for characters.

 

But are we talking about ACTUAL GEAR? Right now, I get raid gear from GSFing. That's a wild and crazy gift that I would have never asked for, and it has increased activity and interest (previously, the reward allocation was pretty punishing: playing GSF was time spent NOT progressing your ground game character, and all other activities WERE). As long as CXP and components are in game, I don't think any GSFer has a reason to complain about gearing their ground game character.

 

But hey, if you want fleet tokens, or requisition, to turn into stuff too, I wouldn't be sad. A gold-mastered ship (as opposed to a silver-mastered cartel ship) with all component slots maxed being used to buy something ground-game relevant would probably be just fine.

 

I'm just kinda puzzled that you are thinking about adding actual gear to this game mode, given that it already makes gear. But maybe it is making gear too slowly for some players? I feel you have done REALLY well with GSF rewards, with huge amounts of meaningful ship upgrades delivered quickly, CXP crates raining, etc. Maybe someone can yell at me if I'm missing something.

 

But cosmetic gear and items, GSF is really hurting on, relatively.

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A good start might be to have a GSF reputation for each faction. Maybe a companion acquired through & whose influence increases with GSF gameplay like M1-4X & Major Pierce does with ground PvP.

 

Ranked GSF that would allow us to buy Unassembled Gear Pieces, GSF themed armor, weapons, decorations, tunings, color crystals, pets that unlock in collections. Different variations of all these things could be sold at the GSF rep vendor as well.

 

A GSF leaderboard showing the top in all the categories that are already tracked in game.

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I would say definitely add reputation like the hyperspace rail-runner ship missions on your class ships. The reputation to get that is slow and a pain to grab, so adding GSF missions to drop rep tokens for it would be wonderful.

 

Also I would add a vendor to add on legacy armor/weapons that are pilot related for fleet coms to spend on them, and also have GSF games give fleet coms like WZ's used to give coms. This would help players who want to do the rail space missions on your ship the ability to grab some of the grade 7 parts with fleet coms.

 

The vendor should also have paints, paint jobs, engines, etc for pilots and maybe companion skins for droids like HK-51/HK-55 and T7 that are starfighter themed.

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In this thread, let's focus on itemization. For a long time we have made it a point to keep Galactic Starfighter as a separate progression from the rest of SWTOR. Command XP has helped a great deal by giving GSF players a method of progressing their characters while playing Starfighter, beyond the XP you already receive.

 

One thing we are considering is adding more ways for GSF players to enhance their "ground game" characters. This would most likely be through a vendor where you could purchase items. What do you think of this idea? What types of things would you want to see on the vendor?

 

The BIG wins for itemization I see that are dramatically needed:

  1. CXP Booster is not active count down when you start GSF (Since you don't get anything until the end)
  2. Add CHANCE cube to the Weekly Mission reward. Was great for "First conquest" but mostly poor RNG items.
  3. Allow unlock Ships Account wide (Legacy) with Credits / Coins.
  4. Allow unlock Colors via MANY options (Credits, Coins, Account Wide, Vendor, etc).
  5. FIX the Vote Kick Option. WAY too many times someone is just nose picking for free UC's while other players try to win the match and leave pissed off after losing. Right now they just fire a few shots and back to reset vote kick. If you bring it up in match that person is alerted or someone try's to cover for them.
  6. DECO's - many more GSF type Deco's are needed.
  7. Fix the "Not contributing" for Bombers - They have a job to maintain and in death matchs they tend to get more of those pop up's. Maybe tweak the timer for those when fielded (Since they are SLOW moving to start with).
  8. Fleet Commendations Vendor (FCV) need a BUMP in count for flying. Vendor needs more items as well.
  9. FCV sells ALL items for Fleet Commendations (Both Weapon/Engine Colors, Ship Patterns, etc.) for GSF
  10. FCV sells Ship Requisitions and Fleet Requisitions for Fleet Commendations
  11. Would suggest more UC's but that would just encourage more people going AFK just to get UC's - Beef up Weekly?
  12. More legacy wide unlocking (Ships/etc) available options would get more people playing on new characters.

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Hey folks,

 

This week, we are creating three separate forum threads for GSF discussion. You can head to this thread to get links to each of them.

 

In this thread, let's focus on itemization. For a long time we have made it a point to keep Galactic Starfighter as a separate progression from the rest of SWTOR. Command XP has helped a great deal by giving GSF players a method of progressing their characters while playing Starfighter, beyond the XP you already receive.

 

One thing we are considering is adding more ways for GSF players to enhance their "ground game" characters. This would most likely be through a vendor where you could purchase items. What do you think of this idea? What types of things would you want to see on the vendor?

 

Be as specific as possible! Let us know your thoughts.

 

-eric

 

You already made the step of having Fleet Comms be rewards for the daily and weekly. I would concur with other posters that they should also drop the reputation tokens for the on-rails space mission reputation track. But even if you decide not to do that, add more stronghold decorations, naval uniforms, pilot flight suits, paint jobs, color kits, gas canisters, engine reactants, etc. that can be purchased for fleet comms. Add mounts that look like our ships ... we know you've already done it for the Republic type 2 scout in cartel market versions. Add weapon tunings that can only be purchased with fleet comms.

There are a number of flashpoints that are conquest objectives when "Clash in Hyperspace," the GSF-themed conquest, is active: KDY/False Emperor/Battle of Ilum/Black Talon/Essless. Have bound-legacy boxes that can drop in these flashpoints as loot that have fleet coms or ship req, perhaps. Include other space-themed flashpoints in that list as well, like Red Reaper and Mandalorian Raiders (I excluded Boarding Party because its faction specific.)

Lastly, have a bound-to-legacy box, or pair of boxes, that cost x or y ship requisition to purchase, and once opened, contain a major/minor ship req grant, depending on the price of the box purchased. This would enable players to send over spare requisition to their alts. I realize that a player could purchase the box on a toon, and send the box to another alt that had more ships unlocked, and therefore multiply the amount of requisition. If you are worried about the exploitative nature of that, then make the boxes grant fleet req instead of ship req, and problem solved.

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Unrelated, but a post in a different thread mentioned this, and I think it is better here:

 

We should be able to get in our ships and hang out. Like, fly around the space station, rush past each other in space, all while waiting for GSF queues. This mode could be a shared space, and you could have some respawning targets far off the space station. Basically, a free flight with no consequence.

 

Want awesomer? Make an interface that lets us fly to another planet with our ships, and hang out there instead. It wouldn't have to actually BE the planet, or anything, and there wouldn't have to be a bunch of stuff to do there. But right now the only way to EVER fly one of YOUR OWN ships is to actually be in the game, against other players. You can fly a premade ship that doesn't have whatever you were trying to get used to in a reasonably barebones practice place, but that's not good enough. I don't even know what color Drako's ship is off the top of my head.

 

 

This is effectively a "new game mode", but it is a REALLY SIMPLE ONE. Anyway, would be cool, and lend permanence to the ships in the way you'd expect an MMO to kinda have.

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Star Wars Galaxies did it best. "Space" was it's own thing, but it tied into the ground in many ways. You had themepark missions on the ground used to unlock ships. Crafting wise, you had people who were shipwrights that could craft ships and ship parts. And then there was a whole other side to crafting all the parts and min-maxing your ship based on the Weight vs. stats dynamic.

 

And then right before the game ended, they released Space GCW to tie into the ground based Galactic Civil War, which was also amazing. Tie space into the Sith vs Republic thing somehow, that would be amazing.

 

Also, you had the ability to just hop into your ship and fly around the galaxy whenver you want. Travel planet to planet via hyperspace and then land at a spaceport.

 

And lastly but definitely not least, POB ships!!!! Get into a gunship with 7 of your friends and have one co-piloting, 4 shooting cannons, and 2 helping out. Super fun times!!!!!!!!

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We should be able to get in our ships and hang out. Like, fly around the space station, rush past each other in space, all while waiting for GSF queues. This mode could be a shared space, and you could have some respawning targets far off the space station. Basically, a free flight with no consequence.

 

Want awesomer? Make an interface that lets us fly to another planet with our ships, and hang out there instead. It wouldn't have to actually BE the planet, or anything, and there wouldn't have to be a bunch of stuff to do there

 

I loved that part of Jump to Lightspeed in SWG. I could launch my ship, fly in hyperspace to my intended destination planet, and then land. It was nicely immersive and easily bypassed if you didn't want the experience. I even utilized it in several pvp events I hosted back in the day.

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So what if at this Vendor you could spend Requisition on Ship parts that weren't bound to your character. This way you could give them or sell them to other players. This would give you a way to gear your alts as well as give other players an alternate way to purchase upgrades for their ships.

 

For example say I have my Blackbolt on Imperial side, what if through a vendor I could purchase a "Rocket Pods" component for I don't know 3000 Blackbolt Requisition. I now have this item I can mail it to other players or put it on the GTN. You could also have different Items for say the first Upgrade of Rocket pods which might look like "Rocket Pods - Ignore armor upgrade".

 

If you really wanted to get crazy maybe for a ton of requisition you could buy an entire mastered ship if you just happened to have that Lying around.

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I liked the fact you put fleet comms as a reward. But after awhile it felt like I was getting loads of these but all the stuff was old and outdated why bother spending on. If not a new shop then let us convert comms and req to things like Unassemble components and command tokens

 

Many of us have long felt (and I made a point of calling it out at Community Cantinas too) that rewards for GSF are badly needed, even just cosmetic ones (though I hesitate to say "just" since we know that cosmetic rewards are huge motivators). GSF has been far too isolated from the rest of the game, and any possible integration would be very welcome!

 

I previously made a post suggesting that GSF be permitted to work toward earning reputation with the Republic Hyperspace Armada/Imperial First Mobile Fleet faction, and to add more reward items to that associated vendor. I really feel this would be a good way to tie two aspects of the game together in a way that would reward fans of both GSF and Space Missions, and improved rewards for that faction could give players who've never tried either game mode more reason to do so.

 

While that thread got a little derailed (as threads in the forum often do), I know that from my discussion with other GSFers over the years (like many, I've been flying since early access for GSF launched) we would all like to see more rewards to buy with our Fleet Comms! (For most of us, we are sitting at that 10,000 comms cap with nothing to buy!) Decos seem to be the most common suggestion (I linked to some suggestions in my above linked post), but more pilot-themed gear wouldn't go amiss.

 

As others have said, I think the most exciting reward would be ship decos that could match the customization for the ships in your hangar, but I imagine that might be rather difficult to execute. There are plenty of other deco options to be had, though.

 

I have to echo some of Crubel's excellent suggestions here too:

 

 

 

All of these are truly excellent suggestions. Both factions already have a set of NPCs who were introduced as your default crew members when you start GSF, and who feature briefly in the intro to the Kuat Drive Yards FP. Being able to acquire these companions would be a wonderful perk, for both companion collectors and RPers, and of course for GSFers to finally be able to fly their GSF colors as it were.

 

Legacy off-hands would also be a nice way to give people two options (this new GSF one added to the Gree event) for acquiring these items. More choice! More incentive!

 

Dye modules also incentivize both crafters and RPers, and everyone wants customization options. I would suggest you look at more colors in the vein of the Olive/Tan and Uniform Blue modules that got released with the last pack, because these were excellent, less-saturated colors that convey the feel of the "used future" Star Wars look for our battle-worn spacers. Though it certainly wouldn't hurt to make one of these a Black + Whatever color as well, since those modules are already in high demand. I'd kill for a Black + Olive/Khaki/Uniform Blue type variant.

 

Agreeing with this

 

Especially on the companions portion of this. I would say adding the stock GSF crew as winnable companions for the Republic Hyperspace Armada/Imperial First Mobile/GSF Fleet Faction Reputation would be a Major Prize.

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My beef about turning ship requisition into an item that sells for credits (or credits in ANY fashion) is that it will encourage botting. It's very hard to report and remove someone from GSF, and every time someone has gotten banned for it it is because they did it for awhile and eventually the GMs took action. Given that a gold farmer's accounts aren't meant to last, we would have all those Qwsgldfghh guys queuing into GSF to try to farm requisition. They'd have a script that takes them to a node, and leaving that script on all day would make a non-zero amount of requisition, leading to a non-zero amount of credits. The farmers would destroy GSF and the deletion of their auto-generated free accounts would take a lot of GM time, and they'd just make more.

 

 

If that could be aggressively and really solved, I would love the idea of turning ship req into saleable items. Or any other thing at all, lol.

Edited by Verain
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I have two main suggestions for potential GSF itemization/vendor items (and one half-suggestion that goes with the first).

 

[1] I would love to see a GSF vendor selling 1:1 scale decorations of the various starfighter models for either faction, like the models we see lining the hangars on the fleets, just in decoration form. These would obviously be something perhaps high-tiered/expensive, but I figure that if we've seen full-size sandcrawlers and the like become decorations already, that it wouldn't be too far of a stretch, scale-wise.

 

[1.5] On the above note, and this is taking it a step further, but it would be pretty awesome for GSF players to potentially acquire a 1:1 scale decoration of their own customized ship that they use in GSF. Granted, this is a project that would go above just making some new items, but it would be a pretty cool sight to, say, see your GSF ship sitting at your stronghold's landing pad, or to see your guild's flagship hangar filled with your guild members' respective GSF ships.

 

[2] My last suggestion would be to eventually see more cosmetic pilot outfits for either faction that focused on specific pilot suits for their correlating starfighter types, like:

  • Imperial Scout Pilot Suit
  • Imperial Bomber Pilot Suit
  • Republic Gunship Pilot Suit
  • etc.

Perhaps primarily using a certain ship and achieving a GSF goal with it unlocks the ability to purchase the corresponding pilot outfit from the vendor. Or, if not, just having the vendor sell them for credits/points would still be great without needing to have some system for unlocking them for purchase.

 

These are just a few ideas I had for GSF itemization in a cosmetic sense that could make for more tangible "ground game" rewards, some of them more directly reflecting a player's GSF experience and involvement.

Edited by Vyrann
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I think this is vital.

 

Fleet and Ship requisition needs to be as viable as any other method of enhancing the 'end' or ground game experience. If I'm a fully competent PvPer and do both ground and space PvP I should be able to gear up regardless of which pops. If I'm the rarest of rare player who experience all aspects of the game I shouldn't have different currencies for different aspects. Maxed out my ships no problem I'll use the fleet rep for something else. Equally on the flip side, I'm a ground PvPer I fancy a go at GSF it shouldn't be a separate experience that I have to start regrinding currency in. Equally given the forced PvP element of GSF it would be great if people could do other content to get their ships geared up to put them in a position they may last a little longer. Skills going to show through but at least your not in a one shot ship if you don't want to be.

 

I don't believe the development team has to time or the resources to 'fix' GSF, making it so it can be enjoyed and is rewarding as part of the complete experience and not a subset of the PvP experience is the cheapest and easiest method to make it more inclusive and more possible to get into.

 

Just to be clear this is not suggesting that selling some decorations form PvP would do this. The only people that would appeal to are people desperate to decorate their house that overcome their aversion to being ganked in GSF and having their team hate them for taking up a slot with an awful ship unable to do anything expect lose the match just so the can decorate an instanced building. Thats got to be a very small sub set of people.

Edited by Costello
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I'm really pleased with the loot GSF is handing out right now. I have an Alt that has gotten to command level 220 or so just grinding the master all imperial ships achievement (not quite done, not sure if I'll hit 300 before I finish) and tier 3 gear from GSF and enough whatsits to upgrade a chunk of that to tier 4? Well clearly the Imperial Navy is spending credits hand over fist if they can toss out that sort of gear to pilots (or is the quartermaster only doing that because they don't want a Sith on the Dark Council to think ill of them).;)

 

Anyhow, as someone who didn't need to be bribed to play GSF I am quite thrilled to be receiving the level of loot bribery needed to bring in swarms of people who do require loot bribery to play GSF.

 

Mostly I'd like cosmetic items related to GSF. I like that sort of stuff, and I've gone to greater than normal lengths (I'm normally a CM and GTN tightwad, but I've got all the Republic Strike pets, I got the Corellian Spark mount, etc.) to get those items. I think that some CM, especially CM direct buy, options would be nice, but it would also nice to have some that are rewarded for various goals in GSF play. I don't know that I'd kill for that sort of thing, but I'd definitely take a Strike into a nest of Bombers with just RFLs for it.:D

 

Ultimately though, as long as the gearing reward is competitive in some respects with ground PvP and easier Ops, that is to say, enough to keep the GSF queues reasonably well populated, then I'm quite satisfied with the rewards.

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I love this idea of full sized fighter ships as decorations. Maybe it doesn't have to be expensive though, especially if they lock it behind something similar to a valor wall. Some expense is expected, but it doesn't need to be 5 Dark Projects and 5 million creds or whatever. Edited by DarthVandalism
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