Artisan Archive
Thread: Binary Load Lifters
I was thinking something along these same lines, except my idea was to limit the BLL to carrying stacks of resources. Maybe limit it to resources and crates, with an expanded capacity? With all the named resources crafters need, they have to have 2 or 3 houses just to hold them all...
Lasume wrote:
Well i just thought of something that might balance out letting the BLL store more items (30 say)- would it be possible to let it store crates only- this seems to me in keeping with the flavour of the BLL and would be really useful to crafters. Stops people storing suits of composite/ blocks of resources in it etc.
Don't know if this would help database overhead or not... just a thought.
Lasume Okarr MDE,MA Gunfighter Extrordinaire
not giving the droids any inherent qualities makes all droids other than the R-series droids (that have the most modules) effectively useless from a utility perspective. if droids have no inherent qualities there is no gameplay reason to craft anything other than the droid that has the most module slots. At every branch of the blueprints tree, the R-series droids at that level have the most slots. there has to be something more than just the number of slots that determines the usefulnessof the droid if you want a system that has as many chassis as this one has. it just doesn't make any sense otherwise. i'm not saying you are wrong that the devs thought that just having a completely generic set of module slots and no inherent qualities was a good idea, but I am saying that if the devs believed that they weren't thinking clearly.
with the current system there is no gameplay reason to ever craft the following droids: LE, Surgical, Protocol, and BLL. For all eight varieties of each of these droids the number of modules available is so low that if just doesn't make sense to ever make a utility droid out of any of them. this is why increasing the BLL module cap isn't a good idea to me. it addresses the issues with the BLL, but it ignores the fact that all 8 of these droids have the same problem. there is no way to fix the problem with all8 of them by changing the number of module slots. there needs to be some chassis specific feature that each non-R-series droid has in addition to its module slots or else none of them has any reason to exist in this game. it doesn't have to be large. just something small that makes it so that each has some specific thing that it is better at than the others. e.g., a slightly higher medical rating cap for the surgical droid, make the LE repair droid better at repair, a higher item storage cap for the BLL, etc.
Naufragus wrote:
it would be interesting to ask the devs what purpose they saw for certain droids.. IE why are they in the game.
Now that would be an interesting question to have answered.
/getpopcorn
well the point is not to make crafting a pain...
in reality this would really help crafters and miners as they would no longer have to do harvestor runs which every one hates.
Naufragus wrote:
well the point is not to make crafting a pain...
in reality this would really help crafters and miners as they would no longer have to do harvestor runs which every one hates.
the BLLs would do all the grunt work.
What struck me as unreasonable in your proposal is that you claimed we would not be able to move resources or crates without a BLL. That would be horrible.
If you aren't trying to make things a pain, what did you mean then when you said that we would no longer be able to carry 20 crates or a million resources?
As far as harvesters go, what I want is for the developers to give me the ability to check on them remotely via a special module that is installed on my droid. I've said this many times.
I don't mind at all having to go out there and pick stuff up when I need it. What I hate, is having to drive out and check on them all the time to make sure the resource it is harvesting hasn't dried up. If I didn't have to do that all the time, harvester runs would be considerably less frequent and wouldn't really be a pain at all.
HabeasCorpus wrote:
one of the selling points of the surgical, LE, and Protocol units is that they can talk, which a R series can't do. Granted, that's small fluff, but you get the picture.
- training takes longer because you have to use a multiple click interface to "converse" with the droid in order to train it.
- some commands can't be trained because the converse interface is bugged
- you can't name the droid because the converse interface is bugged.
the droid never actually talks. the little menus that pop up while training don't really count. that's not talking, its navigating a menu.
Malitevv wrote:
i agree it would be nice if it had more storage, but 50 is a lot. with 5 droids in the data pad that means some people could have 250 item storage in their droids.
It would be neat to load up your house(s) and move to another planet in one trip. 
Message Edited by Pallida on 03-12-2004 03:36 PM
Naufragus wrote:
i have a proposal for merchants that also involves DEs and BLLs...
the basica premise is to not make crafting and trade and what not so damn easy...
whre BLLs fit in is this way...
Crates and Resource stacks should be raised to 10 INV (or higher)....basically we cant just run around anymore with 20 crates and a million units of steel..
We have to have BLLs to do that....
BLL's will have to move the resources from the harvestors to your house for transfer to the floor or your crafting station or directly to factories or the starport DEPOT...[there isnt a depot yet but there should be one for the and DLLs will have to load the cargo transports.]
Factory crates would be handled the same way.
Not only would this give the Bll's and YOU a purpose, it would slow down crafting so there isn t he over production there is now, help create local ecomomies and creat real trade routes for merchants.
Ohhh....Naufragus is really thinking along the right lines here.
I posted it in one of the (many!) "What do you want..." threads in different forms, but this is the type of unique use that would make a BLL not a frustration but invaluable.
Make it so it ONLY holds factory crates, but a ton of them - say, 40. 40 is a nice number because it's one run of a 1000 schematic (that has 25 units/crate).
I'll tell you, the absoulte worst thing about crafting in general (as anyone who does volume will tell you) is crate managment. Once you get past a certain point, it's no longer fun to artfully stack your crates in a spare house - it's drop and load backpacks, with small houses absolutely empty except for a couple of backpacks on the wall.
I understand the game concerns with limiting inventory, but is it heping the overall game for most of us to have several empty buildings existing in the game just to drop backpacks in? Or for us to "exploit" the input hoppers of our factories or stockrooms of vendors just to function?
Honestly, I would be a much happier crafter in general if it wasn't for all the micro-managment crates require. Just moving them is a very time consuming process, drag one, by one, by one. It can be argued that this is the point - it keeps people playing longer; that's simply not true. This isn't an hourly-paid game, they want long-term month to month retention - and making filling up a factory, and managing it's output in such a clumsy way is a mind-numbbing chore, not a way to keep me playing.
If I could cart a BLL up to a factory, unload it at once, and just take them to another factory or bank-like recepticle, I'd be ONE HAPPY CAMPER.
You could balancethe benefit of additional item storage by not allowing you to withdraw single crates - you have to dump it all at once.
This would be a god-send for any crafter that has to deal with sub-components on a regular basis. Master Artisan parts anyone?
Audio
Message Edited by AudioOrgana on 03-12-2004 03:49 PM