Bio Engineer Archive

Necroz Darksoul

VLord of Darkness and Slave of WykydV

Decay is the key. It's been spouted by the DE community since beta I believe, yet the devs have said little more than a cursory "we'll look into it", which of course means nothing to the DE community as all of their little enhancements to us just make us run out of credits faster than anyone else.

That leads into the second major issue, we have to compete with Weaponsmiths, Armorsmiths, and now Shipwrights for some of our important resources, and often have to pay their prices without anything near their income. If a DE doesn't have about 20+ lots available, then they effectively can't run an affordable business.

Because of the requirements put on the DE community and the profession, your standard DE has a character skill sheet that looks like this:

Master Artisan

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Master Droid Engineer

Master Merchant

This is to be able to be self reliant, and to run at a more efficient rate. It would be nice to see the devs do some positive changes for us instead of something that just ruins our business.

• Kleston - Gorath


• Kre'Ivo - Scylla


• Jerard - Bloodfin

If it moves, shoot it. If it shoots back, duck. If you can't duck, pray. If praying doesn't work, you're dead.

OK, just to jump on the bandwagon

1. Decay - for exactly the same reasons as listed earlier. We need repeat customers, I use a program to analyse all my save mails which then tracks who bought what, where etc. I have very few repeat customers for droids, if they come back, they come back for batteries and repair kits.

2. Colours - thanks very much for making colours last 2000 calls. This has completely destroyed my sales of customisation kits. No-one buys them now, knowing their droid will nto change colour for months.

3. Maintenance Modules - let them add power and maintenance, and fix the bugs. These would then become almost essential to all players who mine. This has the potential to be a great addition to the Droid Eng's repetoire, but at the moment, it takes me so long to explain the bugs to customers, I just don't sell them.

4. I personally don;t want a DH profession, I think DE's should be able to call more droids however.

5. Naming of all droids, exactly as listed before.

6. I personally don't see a need for new chassis/modules until the issue abotu Decay and the Bugs with the existing modules are fixed. Fix it first, then expand it.

7. Different Chassis shoudl have restrictions. How can an MSE hold 10 items? its the size of a shoe box! Why would you put a Medical module in a BLL? Make the chassis a bit more selective, so that it encourages differentiation of products for the DE's and users.

8. Experimentation - please let us use this on subcomponents or remove it. It is an annoyance that good sub-components made no difference to a finished product.

9. Variety of sub-components/Master Artisan - We HAVE to be Master Artisan to compete as a DE, there is no way around it. Also we have a silly number of sub-components required to make droids, which inevitably means we need to do factory runs of all sub-components otherwise we would spend our entire lives just making 10 droids. This then leads to using Vendors for storage, there is no other way.

Lastly

10. Necessity - I think most people want droids, it is very Star Warsy, but, excl BH, no-one Needs droids. Make them essential to a Master of his profession, let them work as mobile low volume factories. Make them able to slice for a Smuggler (without the need for Molecular Clamps), Ents and Medics get good stuff already from Droids, but make the Combat ones a bit harder, and make them more effective for Master Combat people, for example, as a crafter my Combat Droid would just shoot and hunt, but if a Master Combat Profession ordered it, he could program it to target just the head, or to attack and fade away pulling creatures for you etc etc.

Thanks for droppping by Tiggs, DE's love their profession as a whole. That's why we do it. Help us make it better.

Drawde Kraken
Smuggler<

Hi Tiggs, thx for stopping by.

Our single most pressing issue is this Tiggs.

In a player economy, ifa profession isto be an active member,it must have a product that allows it's crafters to be on the same level as other crafters profit wise. Now DE is not unique in this, Tailors come to mind as well. You CAN make money as a DE, but the problem is not as much money as everybody else. This causes a type of inflation that everyday DE's fall farther and farther behind.

You can't simply lower the amount of money being made elsewhere, because that money is made and would actually increase in value. DE's MUST have a product that is NEEDED, as well as a renewable market.

Without this, DE's will always be delegated to a "cool" profession, helpfull maybe but never a strong member of the community.

Drashk has an excellent post going on how to improve our profession, I suspect you have looked at it already. I am a strong advocate of making our "Needed and renewable" market in Space. The ground game is set, customers are dug in there with droids, it will take a lot more work and sweeping changes then it would to give us a STRONG foothold in space. JTL is new, change there will go over better.

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Droid Vendor at Resurection near Theed on Naboo -5757 6222. Both carry a wide variety of maxed Droids, I also carry every type of Droid and Droid supply.

*Straker Atrella: Dark Jedi * Atrella's Wench: Master Droid Engineer / Artisan / Scout / Merchant * Dark Vortex: Ranger / Rifleman * Havana:Musician / Dancer / Image Design * Enigmatica : Doctor / Swordsman* CrazyEyes: Role playing BH.

I feel fencer is one of the most viable professions in game. There is room for improvement:

1) Damage Type, limiting us to kinetic and stun takes away certain mobs that we can not attack (100% resist to both). My personal feeling is that every profession should have access to all damage types, this is a technically advanced society, surely if they can make a blast hammer, they can make a 1-h version. The difference in professions are defined by their attacks and their defenses, not sure why damage type seems to be an issue.

2) Damage Output, we are at a disadvantage (with kill stealing, viability in groups, PvP, etc) due to our low damage output (solved if we simply have some alternatives for AP=1).

3) Armor Piercing, we do not have a viable armor piercing weapon (vibroblade being kinetic and low damage compared to a comparable curved sword {the swordsman version of this has AP=2, surely we can have AP=1}, gaffi, or stun is inferior. Only advantage to the vibroblade is the speed when leveling in the brawler tree.).

4) /melee1hSpinAttack2 and /meleeBlindAttack2 both are area attacks with similar damage and the blind state landing on a successful hit. Since we can area dizzy, I think the spin attack 2 should be either an area posture down, area stun, or more damage. Any of the three would be viable options to differentiate it from the blind 2 special.

5) I think our toughness modifier should be brought up to line with TKA. In fact, I think all the melee toughness mods should be identical in all melee classes. With armor the way it is, and the mitigations, and secondary defenses, I think the toughness mod makes the role of fencer slightly inferior to a TKA as a tank especially against higher end mobs (point is, if they both have similar other defenses, and for this role as tank, they should have the same toughness).

6) A unique novice andmaster fencer weapon. Many elite professions get additional (typically superior weapons) weapons in their elite trees, fencers seem to be one of the few who do not (add in Smuggler and Squad Leader). If a new weapon with improved AP, damage type is introduced, it should go here.

I agree with the fact that we have no major damage output. But i have gotten use to the fact that I am a support character. The defence of fencer is no doubt incredible, I find myself alive even in the worst possibly situation. I don't PvP, but I believe a variety of DOT & damage weapons would make fencer more appealing besides the obvious defence stacking benefits. Let's face it a vibroblade w/ap1 just isn't enough in PvP to really dent someone w/comp armor. That's my biggest beef the lack of good weapons, Pikemen get electric lances, poison, etc...Swordmen get an Ap2 weapon, blast & mind hits and TK gets speed & melee toughness. We get dodge altough very nice, still don't have the offence of the other three melee clases.

Just /mho

Demitri Traties
-Dark Jedi Padawan
-Padawan of None
-Lover of His Kil-Heart
-Historian of The Troll Order

Commando Issues to me:

I see commando as one of the most Star Warsy professions in the game (a character based on warfare, pure goal is to go on a battlefield and kill rebels), but I also see it as one of the worst implemented.

1. Grenades, great idea, poor implementation. Cost too much to create (would of been great if commandoes required some artisan and could craft them themselves). The AoE, delay, damage, HAM cost kills the weilder almost as quickly as the target.

2. Consumable weapons (heavy weapons), another great idea, and again would be nice if commandoes could craft them themselves (require items from weaponsmiths to keep them involved). The damage and AP is great, the accuracy is terrible. With current electronics, I would think the commando could be much more accurate than any other profession. But I would also expect a minimum range. Perhaps 45m. Heavy weapons should be long range, not point blank (maybe extend the range also to 70m).

3. Launcher pistol, I love it, especially with master pistoleer. Would be nice to have AP=1.

4. Flame Thrower and Acid Rifle, improve speed. Make them identical (only difference is the damage type) and in the same tree.

5. Add a new tree for crafting. This tree will allow building structures on the ground (turrets, walls, and the consumables). I would also suggest adding in the ability to call in reinforcements (like AT-AT, or Tie Bombers) but think that may be better reserved for squad leaders.

6. Make the Beam Rifle available at Novice commando, and let it use the Rifleman tree. Thus a master commando could, master pistoleer, TKA or rifleman and have the ability to be varied yet functional. Maybe even add a commando carbine as well, to make use of that tree also.

Note: I am a fan of commandoes crafting their own consumables as I see them being the demolition specialists. In Beat I know this was an original plan, I am guessing it was moved to weaponsmith to allow the weaponsmith to ahve business. But they can still eb included by supplying the parts to assemble them.

Well I've been a DE since beta. Droids, in my opinion, are starwars. The movies started with a pair of droids and will end with the same pair of droids.

If I had a week, I couldn't list all the problems with the profession currently. The main issue is that we are treated like red headed step children. (Man that saying is really showing my age).

Problem 1 is just the bugs in the profession. ie the item storage module with the sugical droid. The problems with the structure maintenace module. The barker module, (worthless since the droid can end up auto storing)

Problem 2 Droid are practicalyworthless for 90% of the professions out there. The only exception being the Bounty hunter and the medic. Maybe there will be more short term intrest with JTL but I'm not betting on it.

Problem 3 The fact that droids last forever, there is nothing that would require a person to buy another droid. With the exception being seeker and probe droids.

Problem 4 Survey droids, had very limited use and with the addtion of JTL, will be even more useless. Allow them to return the resource stats at least and remove the survey tool use requirment.

Problem 5 Broken Promises. We were told that with the droid invasion would come usefull combat droids and more chassis. Where are they? Yes the current existing combat droid were improved, but having one still will do you no good in trying to run the melee accuracy mission. Mine died in less that 10 seconds.

There are more but I'll stick to the top 5 for now.

I am the main character for Eyl, used the wrong account to post my thoughts.

Eyl above is my alternative charater, so that post is in essense mine. One additional thought:

I hate dots. If dots are to continue, they should be strictly player crafted as a poison or disease (in the form as a limited use power-up), and only for specific types of weapons (based on delivery type). DOTs are primarily the role of Combat Medics for poison and disease, Comandoes and Bounty hunters (although I would prefer a BH do it using a flame thrower, not an energy based weapon, and heat is energy) and all other professions do the bleeds. I see no reason to even have DOT weapons in game. That said, fencers are at a disadvantage based on the looted dot weapons and the favorite at the moment fire damage.

mmm much thought...and probably much verbage bear with me

Alot of posts here that have pertinant requests so I'll go through my thoughts a bit from theirs.

1. Combat droids: While it would be nice to have more powerful combat droids I can honestly say that my CombatPro (probots) and Commando R3 units can stand toe to toe with any non CH pet just the other day my personal R3 (with some strategy) took out a pack of tuskans camping my factories...and my DE has 0 combat skills.

2. Naming: It's something I get from a lot of customers. The names will not allow for numbers to be used (which is silly for a droid) and you cant name the humanoid droids at all.

3. Chasis: Well, I do my best to use all the chasis available I try to sell model versions of all the different droids to make them interesting. I dont think we need new chasis but I do think some of the chasis are far less usefull than they can or should be.

4. Modules: I think alot of the modules we have since the droid revamp have greatly improved the demand for droids. What I'm lacking with alot of the newer modules is the ability to use them myself? Without explicit instructions many customers get frustrated when I cannot fully explain how a harvest module works for example if I cannot use or test the module myself.

5. Ratings: many of the module experimentation ratings are non sensical for their abilities and does not provide for an effective explaination of the droids capabilities when still in deed form. For example if I make a combatpro droid with 5 100 rated combat modules what is the droids attack power? speed? well I don't know until it is placed in a data pad.

6. Redeeding: After being placed in a data pad droids cannot be put up for sale on a vendor This would inhibit any form of upgrade or trade in policy a DE could impliment as well as an ease of repair.

7. Reliance on Master Artisan: Well My DE is a master artisan and maybe that makes me biased but I honestly dont see this as a problem and believe that other professions have the same issue. Weaponsmith and Armorsmith both have a reliance on master artisan and I'm sure chef and arch do as well. DE on the other hand is one of the few elite professions that can sell back needed components to the master artisan (droid storage units) that the artisan needs as a component.

8. Batteries/Decay: Battery usage needs to be improved it is still a bit too much....yeah yeah I know alot of DEs are thinking this is the one disposable sale we have... Well think of it this way the value of the product to the customer is paramount. If the customer does not think the end product is worth it then what will happen is rather than buying more they will buy less. What happend before non CH pets were nerfed? everyone had pets and prior to that CH was the flavor of the month because they could have 3 pets out! It did indeed make them too powerful but now where is the need for a non ch pet? How many non CHs do you see having their pet tank for them...given the buff factor and the weakness of the pets now there is really no use or need for them. So when you ask for things like decay be very careful what you ask for as it could quickly backfire.

Finally,I would like to see an ability to customize droids and then recustomize them for the customer. ie replace modules and repair chasis. Make the modules a bit more versitile for customers without certain skills for example the need for novice scout to use the harvest module when the harvest module reduces the harvest ability of the scout makes it useless. A harvest module should be able to be used by everyone regardless of skill set and then the demand will increase 10 fold. Same with a merchant module. Survey droids should show stats that would make them infinatly more useful as the cost and time consumed by the droid now is saved by flying out and opening a survey tool.JTL will provied a boost but again the astromech is only usable on3 ships total? Make it so the LE repair droid can be used on multipassanger ships in a copilot capacity or something.In my opinion DE right now does not need anything major just tweeked a bit here and there. Sure some of my thoughts are a bit off the wall but not too far I don't think. This is a good solid profession that just needs a little kick. If something like decay is implimented to increase the need for replacements then it must be offset by an increase in versitility. If a droid is to decay like armor it has to be as valuable as armor. combat droids with a bit more ham and armor rating would increase the need for the droid and its decay would increase demand.