Bounty Hunter Archive

Aye SanRa, I'm a DE myself. I'm surprised these flames didn't begin before the patch, to be honest, but the only way to fix it is to work together. We each have very valid points (if we can get ourselves to see them), and it does seem like we can come up with a solution that works for everyone.

The increased uses would be perfect I think, since it wouldn't increase the resource cost; the base cost of the item, regarding the resources used, would be the same, but Bounty Hunters could get quite a bit more out of them for the price they have to pay.

Let's give it a day or so and see where our mutual communities stand. I think interdependance is a good thing, as long as it's done right. We're going in the right direction but it definately needs tweaking to make it better for the Bounty Hunters, I'll wholeheartedly agree with that.

I don't think I like being TOTALLY dependent on anyone either. The big problem was that DEs really had almost nothing going for them, this was the "bone" that SOE decided to throw them. I do think that if the Droid Vendors were put back in they wouldn't be able to "undercut" the PC droid makers out there like they were doing. I heard a good analogy like this....If we were able to take on PC bounties, and someone was able to get one of us to do it for a miniumun of around 10k (VERY cheap when you consider traveling time, no way to track right now, etc...) OR they could choose to go toa vendor and pay 2k to have an NPC BH go out and do it instead. Why would they pay us? Why would we want them to? THIS situation is a little different though, as either way we are still losing money. I totally agree that DEs should be able to make a living, I just don't think that we should be the sole profession buying from them(and therefore their only source of profits). Right now we kinda are

The terminals are hard to find and offen times out of the way, id pay a DE 2 or 3 times what a terminal charges if it saved me time or trips which end up costing more n e way.

Well Varv, I can see the irritation in having to rely on someone else, that's your opinion and that's okay.

But assuming the Devs believe that interdependance is their goal, a solution to the current dilema must be found, and the "multiple uses for the droids" idea is looking to be the best.

*Shrug* Who says you have to rely on them? Do novice BH missions to the cap, train 1 & 2, join a faction, kill faction mobs, convert faction exp to BH exp. *warning, it is NOT a 1:1 conversion*. You can make inv 4 without ever using a droid. Faction exp is soooo much easier to get than BH exp. I don't loose money traveling, I don't loose money on useless droids and I can take about 20 of them in an hour... Do I feel like I am being a real BH? No, not really, but until SoE gives me the proper tools to do my job with a profit for me, I will not play the game thier way.

Sumadi Darkbringer

Bounty Hunter of Redemption

Ensuring a better Empire, one bounty at a time...

I do not believe that Bounty Hunters are at the mercy of Droid Engineers. Rather both professions are at the mercy of SOE and whatever scheme they come up with.

My opinion of the whole DE class is that it should provide useful droids to every professions. Currently, after patch, BHs must rely on DEs to obtain their seeker droids and that is fine, it fits with how I perceive the DE class. But this clash between BHs and DEsentirely rests on SOEs shoulders. They are the ones that designed the recipe for making these droids, and making them such that they require a lot of resources (and some rare ones from what I'm reading) and SOE is also the one making BH missions costly to the bounty hunters (I'm not there yet, so I'm basing this on what I've read). Launching flames at DEs because they sell their wares at a seemingly reasonable price, given the amount of skills and resources needed, brings nothing constructive. SOE has to provide a solution, even if it may simply be that BH missions are working as intending ie BHs are supposed to pay in order to complete their missions, which also includes the cost of droids purchased from DEs.

Droid engineers need to be able to make stackable or reusable droids so I can buy them by the factory crate.

They need to have VERY simple material requirements. Like 50 units metal, 50 units mineral, 50 units chemical. Otherwise one could end up unable to purchase droids for lack of materials. I don't know if this is how they are implemented or not.

Droids need their own category on the bazaar so I can buy these at once without having to run about to a DE's house.

I dont' mind the idea of having to buy droids from DE's. Actually I kind of like the idea of say a 30k credit probot and a 50k credit advanced probot that can do interplantary searches repeatedly (at various speeds and wear out eventually etc...), and can be called in town. Seeker droids well... anything they do that is better than carrying around 10 of the little unstackable buggers so I can actually find my target would be good.

I don't mind turfing the droid terminals but please make these droids multi-use. They already eat up inventory space but with the high demand is going to drive the price skywards. I could live with the usual failure rate of a droid being eaten by a space slug or hit by a comet now and again but if there's a successfull find the item should return to my datapad (not inventory, lets be consistent here) and available for another use.

I saw a bh droid vendor outside the bank in Tyrena on the wall farhest from the star port.

Multiple Uses woild be wonderful....

I wanted to lay out the numbers for those who dont really know what it takes to make these droids...

Seeker Droid

1. Requires 30 units of Ferrous Metal
2. Requires 70 units of Chemical
3. Requires 1 Electronics Memory Module
4. Requires 1 Electronics GP Module
5. Requires 1 Electronics GP Module

That equates to

70 Chemical
30 Ferrous Metal
28 Metal
19 Polymer
9 Copper
8 Inert Gas
8 Low Grade Ore

Or 172 materials total.

The average cost of materials on Corbantis (maybee not all servers) is about 4 for 1 meaning it would cost us 688 credits to make each Seeker Droid.

Basically that breaks down to us needing just over 3 uses per Seeker to sell them at a comparable price to the old 200cr ones the vendors used to have. I would be happy to sell them at 200cr per use provided we could also increase uses with experimantation... perhapse 10 use max.

For those curious here is the Arakyd Probe Droid Breakdown.

1. Requires 30 units of Copper
2. Requires 20 units of Inert Gas
3. Requires 25 units of Siliclastic Ore
4. Requires 1 Electronics GP Module
5. Requires 1 Electronics Memory Module
6. Requires 1 Electronics GP Module
7. Requires 1 Electronics GP Module

42 Copper
38 Metal
31 Inert Gas
26 Polymer
25 Siliclastic Ore
11 Low Grade Ore

Or 173 materials total.

Ironically these take only 1 more material unit and would cost us on average 692 credits to make.

I believe these were selling for 1000cr which is a small markup for us. If these could also have multiple uses, say starting at 1 and ranging to 5 we could keep the price stable at 1000cr or maybee 1200 for the 5 use droids.

Anyway thats my 2cr worth....

--Dolomite

oops yes Extrusive ore is used for Arakyd not silacastic which sells for 5 or 6 to 1 usually and would bump the cost from 688 to around 788.

--Dolomite

Tankus

Great post listing the reqs for the droids... It is nice to actually see what is required on paper.

The removal of the droid terminals is a terrible idea because it just makes 2 already very serious problems with bounty hunter missions even worse:

1) That the missions were already too long and tedious. The Investigation 1+ missions were already nightmares of wasted time (read one of the other many posts about this if you aren't familiar with all of the steps involved - too many for me to evenwant to list) that commonly can take 2 hours or more per mission. Now whenever I want to complete one I will have to track down a droid engineer (assuming there is even one online/available), hope he or she either has some droids to sell or is willing to make some, travel to his/her person or shop to buy them (possibly waiting for them to be made), then travel back to a place to launch one of the droids then starport. If I can't find a droid engineer that night (or maybe the only ones I can find are busy doing something else) I guess I just won't be able to run any missions or advance as a bounty hunter. Considering the hundreds upon hundreds of Investigation 1+ missions any bounty hunter has to run to reach Master, I can't imagine this would be an uncommon occurrence.

2) Investigation 1+ missions were often money sinks even before the droid vendor removal.The average payout is somewhere around 6-8k, but you might have to travel clear across the current galaxy and have travel expenses alone that exceed your mission payout (the last mission I did started on Naboo and my target was on Yavin 4 - 700 credits to get from Naboo to Corellia, then a 6600 credit round trip from Yavin 4). Then add in droid expenses even when the terminals were still around - we'll say an average of 2 interplanetary droids at 1k each (since they can and do fail often and you might have to use up to 4 or 5 for a single mission) and 10 seeker droids at 200 credits each (which can and do fail even more often and if your target is one of the indecisive ones that changes direction a lot and you're on a planet without many cities you might use 20+). So it's wasn't uncommon to spend over 10k on mission before the vendor removal. Now we are supposedly going to have to buy droids from DEs. The one DE I've talked to about how much she would charge for bounty hunter droids said she would charge 3k per seeker droid at her usual mark-up for materials. These were the ones that were 200 credits from the vendors. I'm sure some of you have found better deals than this, but once DEs realize that every bounty hunter needs these droids to advance in their class and that DEs are the only source for the droids, I wouldn't be surprised if your better deals vanished.

I know I won't run a single Investigation mission until this is fixed back, and will probably end up surrendering the Investigation line if this continues as is (if I even keep playing the game - it's becoming less fun with every "improvement"). In the longterm, this change is just likely to create more bounty hunter hybrids who only have the pistol and/or carbine line then put the rest of their skill points into Pistoleer or Creature Handler or the like.