Development Cycle Archive
Thread: Publish 8: Droids Rebuilt Feedback
Helgarm
Fri Apr 30, 2004 12:26 am
#144
Kevm wrote:
Droids are supposed to help people in their daily lives, notrun their life for them.
And an autoharvest function would indeed assist in the daily lives of the scout/ranger. It's not like he's asking the droid to track, killAND harvest for him now is it?
If the droid does harvest more than it's master then fine, though some feedback thus far appears to suggest otherwise. And in any case, it had better harvest considerably more (and I mean actually harvest, not theoretically harvest) to compensate for the cost of the droid, plus cost of power to keep it running, plus cost of repairs to make owning the thing in the first place worthwhile. Wouldn't you agree? Otherwise the scout/ranger might as well save some cash and carry on with the good old manual harvesting. Which I think is the crux of the point that tntkiller was making, which you clearly failedto notice.
Sure, the droid can harvest while the master fights, sure you can hotkey a macro to make the harvest command a single keypress. But how much time is actually gained here, and does that justify the expenditure previously mentioned?
The point is simply this: as you say, a droid is supposed to make the life of it's master easier. Considerably easier I would say, otherwise it becomes no more than a rather expensive, andultimately pointless, gimmick. Now, as a master ranger myself, I don't want a toy, I want a tool that is going to enhance my profession to a worthwhile degree. After all, it's not like you're in any danger of making rangers/scouts too powerful by giving them an autoharvesting droid now are you? 
All this droid mod appears to do is simply cut down on the amount of radial dial clicking that harvesting entails. Well, I can, as I have mentioned, make a macro to do this. And that costs me nothing.
Helgarm.
zimmerer23
Fri Apr 30, 2004 6:34 am
#145
why do i need novice scout that my droid can harvest meat? why do i need a harvest droid when i have a scout prof?
Wouldn´t it be better u don´t need novice scout to let ur droid harvest meat,hide,bone? I don´t have any Skill points left for novice scout but i need meat to make medicine....
majorslappy
Fri Apr 30, 2004 7:13 am
#146
It's been said a lot, but it needs to be said a lot more. Interplanetary survey droids need to have their functionality improved. Simply returning a list of available resources is not sufficient. Perhaps, in the first pass, it would return a list, but then in a second pass (and using up a second survey tool), it should be able to be focused by the player on a specific resource to find it's stats.
dezi
Fri Apr 30, 2004 10:33 am
#147
RE: Exploding Droid Units
Please, please, please add an area KD to these units. To me, it would only make sense considering they are bombs. Its pretty cool to send one off with the chase command, and watch it pull up alongside a group of stormies, then set it to detonate and watch the fun. But honestly, aside from some mild amusement, the price and the level of damage it does (@500hp, no AP) makes it sort of useless. I cant see myself paying 10k a pop for droids that just do a bit of blast damage, but have no real practical use in a combat situation.
Now if there were an area KD added to the blast radius, they could actually be of some use, and would be a hell of a lot more fun, not to mention more realistic. I dont have that much experience with bombs myself, but from what i see on TV when a bomb goes off, it seems to knock people over (usually with a slow motion sequence, but i wont get into that now). I just feel if the blast also did a knockdown, i think these droids could be used in more imaginative ways, and also be of some use in combat. Dunno, just my 2 cents.
David665
Fri Apr 30, 2004 12:18 pm
#148
Why do level 10 "combat" droids still suck? I have level 10 animalpets get put down by kreetles for Christ's sake.
sweatyclimber
Sat May 01, 2004 11:37 am
#149
on the entertainer droids...
I think they are a nice addition to the game, good job. I would however like them to be tweaked a bit. It would be nice for the solo muscian if we had a droid that could do multiple effects and play multiple parts of a song while dishing out stim packs. Essentially I would like to see the modules condensed in the entertainer set. First we cant even hold all the effects in one droid, and then while we can "record music" we can only record one other part which seems pointless to me. On a scale I would say while im excited about them, implementation gets 6 out of 10. Lastly it would be nice to record on a droid for a non-ent to listen to it. Not for buffs or healing, just because some like the music enough that they would buy a pre recorded song...
Naquiel
Sat May 01, 2004 12:17 pm
#150
I found a bug, or i think that it is. Why cant we /target droids outside of cities? Im able to /target inside cities and almost any area that will let me call my droid out of the data pad instantly, but it will not let me do /target out in the field.
Naquiel
Sat May 01, 2004 12:22 pm
#151
To add to what i said, i have one of the new mouse droids that go BOOM.
R0Man
Sat May 01, 2004 1:52 pm
#152
Interplanetary survey SUXXXXX! Lol droid ask you about minerals names but no STATS!!!! SUXXXXX!!!
BTW. Lets rename Pub 8 to DROID FALL: OOps SOE did it again.
Neatos
Sat May 01, 2004 3:36 pm
#153
With his last patch, ALL instances of LOOSE DEBRIS can no longer be opened.
Examples: the lost city on Talus had 3 piles of loose debris that always a few units of a mineral or ore, maybe a clothing attachment, etc, and some credits. Now you just get the credits, but you cannot "OPEN" the piles anymore.
Another example: the gungard training grounds on Naboo has debris piles that can no longer be opened.
One last thing -- five months ago when I left the game, harvester animations were broken. They are still broken.
Examples: the lost city on Talus had 3 piles of loose debris that always a few units of a mineral or ore, maybe a clothing attachment, etc, and some credits. Now you just get the credits, but you cannot "OPEN" the piles anymore.
Another example: the gungard training grounds on Naboo has debris piles that can no longer be opened.
One last thing -- five months ago when I left the game, harvester animations were broken. They are still broken.
Zip_Moonblast
Sat May 01, 2004 6:03 pm
#154
Barker Droid: For Yoda's sake, please make these either ignorable or, better yet,targetable. This is Good Intention #77896321, now being laid in place on the road to H**L.
Harvester Droid: Harvesting creature corpses became one of the things I got very quick and efficient at, very early on in the game. I don't have room on my combat hotbar to put a command macro for the droid. I don't have time during combat to activate the droid's radial menu several times for different corpses. After combat, I can do the harvesting quicker myself. Give this thing the ability to harvest a resource type of my choice fromALL nearby corpses (say 64m radius) when given ONE command, and I might buy one.
Survey Droid: This is usable only by novice Artisans because...???? Oh yes, smugglers, medics, doctors, and bio-engineers aren't actually crafters. Given that the only real use of the droid is to detect resource shifts, leaving resource stats and actual sampling safely in the domain of players with real sampling skills, I can't see any reason why letting non-artisan crafters use it would step on any artisan toes.
What should have been included:
Player Vendor Survey Droid: Send it around the planet to each of the player vendors listed on the planetary map underneath a given item category (weapons, deeds, etc.). It returns you an email listing which vendors actually have any items in stock! Now that's a droid I'd pay credits for. Lots and lots of credits.
KapowBzapp
Sun May 02, 2004 10:45 am
#155
To give the devs some kudos, I'm absolutely loving the harvester droid.
It's very much designed for the ranged hunter, especially riflemen; I doubt a meleer would need it. But it's a huge relief not to have to get up and run from corpse to corpse harvesting. Now the droid does it while I'm still shooting things. We'd been asking for something exactly like this.
You do need to figure out how to use it. Calling out the 'follow target' command before killing a target gets the droid in position to harvest right away and stops it from coming back to you each time. I've aliased /tellpets to follow, wait, and harvest so that it's all hotkeyed and doesn't spam the spacial chat.
In a group it's rather funny to see our droids all hovering around each beast we're shooting.
And to those who want the harvest droid to work for non-scouts, that's fine with me as long as I can buy a droid that makes chef food, BE goods, armor, and doctor buffs just as well as a player can.
It's very much designed for the ranged hunter, especially riflemen; I doubt a meleer would need it. But it's a huge relief not to have to get up and run from corpse to corpse harvesting. Now the droid does it while I'm still shooting things. We'd been asking for something exactly like this.
You do need to figure out how to use it. Calling out the 'follow target' command before killing a target gets the droid in position to harvest right away and stops it from coming back to you each time. I've aliased /tellpets to follow, wait, and harvest so that it's all hotkeyed and doesn't spam the spacial chat.
In a group it's rather funny to see our droids all hovering around each beast we're shooting.
And to those who want the harvest droid to work for non-scouts, that's fine with me as long as I can buy a droid that makes chef food, BE goods, armor, and doctor buffs just as well as a player can.
CavemanJack
Sun May 02, 2004 2:18 pm
#156
Thunderheart wrote:
Publish 8, Droids Rebuilt, brings to the galaxy 10 new droid modules so that Droid Engineers can create all sorts of new droids for all sorts of players and professions. There is even a new "survey droid" which can blast off to other planets in the galaxy to determine whether or not an off-planet survey is warranted. There are entertainer droid modules, merchant modules, scout modules and even modules for droids to be able to help repair other droids.
In addition to all the modules, droid pet enhancements have been made so that droid customization is easier and more effective, some radial menu changes and droid battery upgrades. Please post your experiences, your feedback and your opinions about these changes.
Profession: Droid Engineer
Added an Interplanetary Survey Droid - This droid is capable of using survey tools and traveling to other planets to report on the resources present on that planet.
I'm pretty disappointed in these survey droids. Gotta buy'em, give'em a tool, then wait a long time for a list of resources. Lame... could go to the planet personally in less time and, in most cases, cheaper, to open a survey tool and get the same information. Only thing they're good for, in my opinion, is to check if a certain resource you're mining has shifted... and that can be done cheaper and quicker by going to the planet in person.
Needs improvement... like reduce the time it takes to get the report to 5 minutes, and once you have the report you can have the droid sample 3-5 resources (dependent on droid quality maybe?) and send you the stats of the resources you wanted sampled. Let the sample/stats report take up to an hour to get back to you.