Bio Engineer Archive

These are the thoughts of someone stupid enough to have a BE on 2 diferent servers!

We all recognize that BE is, to put it mildly, sub-optimal. I have given this some consideration and would like to put forth the following suggestions for the players to tear apart (but, hopefully, the devs to at least consider.) In each case I attempt to address any balance issues involved.

1. We need bio-harvetsers.




1. Why?




1. Searching lairs for eggs (or NPC drops for milk)whose attributes change as a resource and, therefore, cannot be acquired in sufficient quantity to produce product without a totally unrealistic effort being put in to obtain them? This was an interesting concept but it doesn't work in the game.


2. Bio-engineers use the same combat-type resources as armorsmiths to obtain our raw materials. More people buy armor--> armorsmiths have more $$$ --> armorsmiths offer more $$$ for creature resources --> bio-engineer gets left out in the cold.


3. Bio-engineered material is supposed to be used as a sub-component of other things but the effect of item 1.1.2 is that the bio-engineer material (when it can be produced at all) is so expensive that the resulting material is un-sellable.


2. How (so as not to affect balance)?




1. Most harvesters require maintenance (cash) and power to operate. Bio-harvesters should require maintenance (cash), power, and traps (different traps depending on what creature material/type is being harvested) - this provides thos individuals who pursue the trapping line of scout with income.


2. Make certain types of material spawn infrequently for the harvesters but still show up for hand-harvesting (and let people know what these are.)


2. Revamp the entire BE skill tree. Cloning (combine clone engineering and dna sampling - BE clone crafting XP) / Wearable tissues (and let us make tissues for armorsmiths at lvl 4 and master -BE wearable crafting XP) / Medical tissues (pet stims, etc - BE medical crafting XP) / Engineering techniques (unchanged - general BE crafting - like general combat XP)




1. Why?




1. Cloning - Personally, I would say get rid of cloning altogether. The focus of cloning was primarily for player mounts but that time has past (as has been noted in other posts on this forum.) So I would get rid of cloning altogether...but that would make peoples heads explode! So instead, confine cloning to a single branch. Make the improvements that you have been talking about but delays, and bugs, will effect us less when cloning is 1/3 of our profession rather than 70% (given the problems with tissues.)


2. Wearable tissues - the idea is great (and I know lots of tailors who want this stuff so, if you implement bio-harvesters we can fulfill their wishes and...woohoo! an economy.)


3. Medical tissues - pet stims. Pet enhancements (I know they've been asked for.) Sub-components for doctor items.


4. Techniques - I got nothing here.


2. How (so as not to affect balance)?




1. Quite frankly, anything you do to fix BE will affect the balance of the game since we currently have such a small impact on it. I would like to see pet stims be required for pets (since they won't work on people why do people stims work on pets?)


2. But what about pet enhancements? People complain now because pets are over-powered. Answer: enhancements do permenant damage! This has two beneficial effects:




1. Limit people abusing pet enhancements and


2. Make people buy more pets (and if cloning is fixed giving an economy for BE pets.)


3. Allow BEs to combine (and improve) organic materials




1. What?




1. I have 20 different containers of nabooian carnivore meat...a BEcombines them to produce 1 engineered type of nabooian carnivore meat (even better if planet has no effect.)


2. I have 100K units of domesticated wheat but the attributes I care about are low...a BE raises specific attributes on a material.


2. Why? Honestly, if you cannot see the benefit of this then nothing I can say will convince you.


3. How (so as not to affect balance)?




1. When combining organic substances, 2 things occur




1. The attributes are averaged and


2. Some material is lost (probably more material the higher the attributes.)


3. Hey! there has to be a cost to this.


2. When raising stats




1. Some material is lost (I would put a cap on how far you can go per shot but allow multiple improvements and make material loss dependent on percent improvment)


2. Example: I have 100K units with a 500 attribute that I need raised to 900+. A master BE begins refining it.




1. Run 1 - stats to 600 (a 20% improvement) quantity to 80K (a 20% reduction)


2. Run 2 - stats to 720 (a 30% improvement) quantity to 56K


3. Run 3 - stats to 804 (a 30% improvement) quantity to 39.2K


4. Run 4 - stats to 862, quantity to 27.4K


5. Run 5 - stats to 903, quantity to 19.2K


6. I hope the devs decide to do this but not be quite so draconian with the quantity reductions but still...there has to be a price.


4. Lastly, lay off the devs! I don't work for SOE, nor do I know anyone who does, but I am a software engineer and sometimes things happen. You are always under a tremendous amount of pressure and few people appreciate what you do until something goes wrong.

Those are some great ideas, Gibblet. I'm not sure I like the different kinds of BE xp (how would you get General BE xp?), but in general, I think you're on the right track. The traps idea for the farms is very cool.

Maybe in addition to armorsmith tissues, we could craft weaponsmith tissues or DE droid add-ons (maybe a flesh-like tissue to make cyborgs!).

Well, I have to say that, as a personal preference, I would like to see all BE XP be the same (since I hate DNA sampling), but the general BE XP would be granted in the same manner as general weapon XP (every other type of BE XP grants some percentage of itself as general XP - I don't know what this percentage is.)

Good ideas, though nothing that I haven't seen here several times before. But that's okay, you never know when the devs might actually be listening...