Development Cycle Archive
Thread: Publish 8: Droids Rebuilt Feedback
Voradorish
Sun May 02, 2004 2:40 pm
#157
CavemanJack wrote:
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.
That my friend is a very good idea i would love to see in the game. Overall i'm fairly happy with the new patch although some annoying things have turned up (vehicle not repairing) but maybe just maybe we are going in the right direction
drupps
Sun May 02, 2004 4:38 pm
#158
The only thing I don't like about the new droids is that you can't ignore a Ad barker droid now. Before we could at least ignore the people, now we have to see all the droids yelling.
Feareredden
Sun May 02, 2004 9:55 pm
#159
My two creds:
Survey Droids: A waste of time and creds atm. They would be useful IF they functioned as actual NPCs and could be ordered to sample specific resources identified to determine stats and report same. If they returned no result, should be ordered to move and resample. Should be random possibility of droid triggering aggro and destruction if moved. But such droids should be maintainable if not destroyed from one owner login to the next. In any case, report times should be not over 3 minutes per resource ordered sampled.
Harvester Droids: Nice idea, decent implementation. Droids should be relatively difficult to aggro--maybe they should be rated at same camouflage rating as their owner.
StimDispenser Droids: Correct decision to bar these from dispensing StimBs--would really unbalance things and make Medic nearly useless. But should be allowed to dispense A+ stims (a rare-ish item) and absolutely must be stockable with far more StimA's than can be currently. These droids will not save you in heavy battle. But they should be useful in rest and recovery over the course of 10+ missions, especially since only Medic4's can restock these droids. Should be able to carry over 1000 StimAs and that, of course, means FOR GOD'S SAKE let them be stocked by crates and not individual stims!
Bey
Tue May 04, 2004 4:21 am
#160
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.
Spiffy. Shame it reports no stats, making it pretty much useless as we still need to travel to get those...or visit swgcraft.com. If it could actually use the survey tool and take a sample and report the stats, it would have a use.
Jego_Yann
Tue May 04, 2004 5:37 am
#161
Definately the harvesting droids have some serious convinience issues. I love the idea, but they don't really offer much help. Five major problems with them...
* They don't give any harvesting bonus' - I've tested it with identical mobs and the droid harvests about 5% less than I can. I would suggest either increasing it's harvesting level or have it havest as another source (both player and droid can harvest from the same corpse) give it like 50% of what the master can harvest so it's not too over the top.
* They only harvest your targeted corpse - This can be a problem, as when fighting a mob you don't really have time to spin the camera round trying to target it and yell it's command. (macroed or not) The harvesting macros kind of kill the point of the command. Suggestion: Like it's been said many a time before, auto harvest of corpses in a 64m radius or so.
* It's a bigger coward than Scooby Doo - This has only been said by one person, but it's also a result of the regularly mentioned aggro problem. I was using my droid to harvest from Enraged Rancors on Dath last night, the bloody thing kept running away every 10 seconds! SERIOUSLY It was a major pain in the arse having to create a macro for 'follow me' and use it about 20 times in one fight. Not sure how to get around it, maybe the sharing of mask scent idea. I kind of worked my way round it tho by using the 'stay' command to keep it at a distance, but that complicates things if you start to give chase to a fleeing mob.
* It's slower than an X-34 - As everyone has allready pointed out, but I didn't really find this as much of an issue because I don't use a speeder when hunting. Still when shooting up and down hills it kind of gets left behind a bit. Maybe some increase on droid speed in general may be in order. :/
* Non-scouts can't use it - This doesn't effect me at all, but I see the point. The droid should be able to harvest about half the level of a novice scout at least if you don't have it, this'll give non-scouts a chance to get hold of at least some harvestables. This also kind of ties in with the first point I made, they need to make the droid as a sperate harvesting unit alltogether.
I really hope they do something about this because the idea of the droid is a real help us Rangers/Scouts
***btw: If anyone is looking for a decent master DE, email a guy called kelan. He makes on custom orders and is really good, his house is based on naboo outside theed.
WaiVren
Tue May 04, 2004 6:19 am
#162
Vehicles:
So the exploit for repair was removed, but the maintenace bug still exists. Repaired the bike, stored it, traveled to another location by shuttle, pulled the bike and had a huge maintenance hit within a minute. Yes, there is a potential workaround, but this needs to be fixed.
Also, as mentioned by another poster auto-store is still a problem.
Inventory:
I am now seeing more frequent problems with inventory items going *poof* when equipped on my character in a house and then moving outside. This has happened twice to me after the publish and to a friend pre-publish 8. The equipped items disappear from inventory and from your view of your avatar, but other players still see the items. This has happened with my pack full of meds/buffs and required a server reset to return. I'm missing several articles of clothing that have not returned after 72 hours. I can't wait for this to happen with a truly valuable item (like 100K of meds/buffs in a pack).
leeds
Tue May 04, 2004 10:29 am
#163
Ok i'm being dense here. How do you get the structure maint modules to actually work. I have made several bots with these modules in them and just can't figure out how to get it to go out and make payments. I have tries looking in several places on what i need to do, like the official online manuals, but just can't seem to find it. Could someone who has gotten this module to work drop me a note on what i need to do?
leeds
Tue May 04, 2004 10:47 am
#164
zimmerer23 wrote: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....
Ok i have seen several messages on this and my thought is this. They don't want to deprive scouts of a source of income. If you want the harvesting ability then buy it. However once a droid has this module you'd think it could go out and do sometype of harvesting. However unles the de that made the droid has scout he has no real ideal how to program it. Harvesting is a complicated task, espically when compared to combat.
Now i'm going to cover my self here a bit. I have stated in the past that a de should be able to use any dorid he makes. Since combat is mostly math this works. However with skills like harvesting and the entertainer modules this argument falls apart. Des should be able to have all the options of their droids avaiable to them but have most of them just for show. Certain things should work for us, like combat, but most are just usless without the compaion skills.
Starphire
Wed May 05, 2004 9:39 am
#165
I luv the scout droids, FIX THE FREAKIN maintance droids please, they worked one day then ya'll broke them. NOT impressive.
The stim a ones are neat and also the entertainer ones are awsume!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!1 I made a 109 scout one and it RULES!!!!!!
Swampduke
Wed May 05, 2004 10:07 am
#166
Jego_Yann wrote:Definately the harvesting droids have some serious convinience issues. I love the idea, but they don't really offer much help. Five major problems with them...
* They don't give any harvesting bonus' - I've tested it with identical mobs and the droid harvests about 5% less than I can. I would suggest either increasing it's harvesting level or have it havest as another source (both player and droid can harvest from the same corpse) give it like 50% of what the master can harvest so it's not too over the top.* They only harvest your targeted corpse - This can be a problem, as when fighting a mob you don't really have time to spin the camera round trying to target it and yell it's command. (macroed or not) The harvesting macros kind of kill the point of the command. Suggestion: Like it's been said many a time before, auto harvest of corpses in a 64m radius or so.* It's a bigger coward than Scooby Doo - This has only been said by one person, but it's also a result of the regularly mentioned aggro problem. I was using my droid to harvest from Enraged Rancors on Dath last night, the bloody thing kept running away every 10 seconds! SERIOUSLY It was a major pain in the arse having to create a macro for 'follow me' and use it about 20 times in one fight. Not sure how to get around it, maybe the sharing of mask scent idea. I kind of worked my way round it tho by using the 'stay' command to keep it at a distance, but that complicates things if you start to give chase to a fleeing mob.* It's slower than an X-34 - As everyone has allready pointed out, but I didn't really find this as much of an issue because I don't use a speeder when hunting. Still when shooting up and down hills it kind of gets left behind a bit. Maybe some increase on droid speed in general may be in order. :/* Non-scouts can't use it - This doesn't effect me at all, but I see the point. The droid should be able to harvest about half the level of a novice scout at least if you don't have it, this'll give non-scouts a chance to get hold of at least some harvestables. This also kind of ties in with the first point I made, they need to make the droid as a sperate harvesting unit alltogether.I really hope they do something about this because the idea of the droid is a real help us Rangers/Scouts***btw: If anyone is looking for a decent master DE, email a guy called kelan. He makes on custom orders and is really good, his house is based on naboo outside theed.
i tried 2 different droids for harvesting.
first a R2 with trapping and harvesting module.
this little bugger gets all the aggro once it fires a trap before i shoot and once it's got the critter on his back it 'runs' off like hell.
second is a probot unit with harvesting and med module. altough it doesn't fire traps it gets some aggro from time to time as well. but instead of hoovering off it fights the critter making it even worse in regard of droid repairpacks.
the harvesting issue could be dealed with using a macro.
/ui action cycleTargetPrev;
/tellpet *harvest command*;
/pause .5;
/ui action cycleTargetNext;
works fine for me - even in fight.
as for the speed i think probots are a bit faster than grounded droids.
might be 'cause there's less friction
MickeyMtp
Wed May 05, 2004 4:07 pm
#167
When the published was announced, I felt very glad of all the new features which will be add. And especially the survey droid... I'm a master architect and thus, I need a lot of resources (quantities and types). So, wait for the publish to go live.... server down for half a day... When it goes up, I launched my swg with only one goal, immediatly buy a survey droid! Fine, i wander a lot around planets to find a DE that has crafted it and have some in stock. I managed to find one... First suprise... The droid is different from other and actually has charges... The ones available in the vendor where 10 charges and give their results in 33mn... Ok, 33mn to get waypoint of the best concentration of a given resource in a planet seems fine to me... Indeed, in would take me a lot more than 33mn so survey the whole planet... So I bought 10 droids at 7k each... I went out of the shop and launched the droid... I was excited... I can use it to detect all type of mineral or all type of flora and so on... So great! 33mn to have the waypoints of the best concentration of each minerals on a given planet is so great and makes the job of architect a lot more pleasant...
33mn later... You have new mail! Great !! my droids finished his work... i check the mail and... ALL I CAN GET IS THE TYPE OF AVAILABLE RESOURCES ON THE PLANET ! Morever, my survey tool disappeared ! So what is the use of a droid that takes 30mn to give me a data which i can have in at most 10mn by going myself on the planet and activate my survey tool !!!!! No sample, no waypoints... USELESS !!! So I spent 70k for crappy droids, that can't even be used as a pet :/ Thx SOE...
33mn later... You have new mail! Great !! my droids finished his work... i check the mail and... ALL I CAN GET IS THE TYPE OF AVAILABLE RESOURCES ON THE PLANET ! Morever, my survey tool disappeared ! So what is the use of a droid that takes 30mn to give me a data which i can have in at most 10mn by going myself on the planet and activate my survey tool !!!!! No sample, no waypoints... USELESS !!! So I spent 70k for crappy droids, that can't even be used as a pet :/ Thx SOE...
Swampduke
Wed May 05, 2004 7:38 pm
#168
MickeyMtp wrote:
When the published was announced, I felt very glad of all the new features which will be add. And especially the survey droid... I'm a master architect and thus, I need a lot of resources (quantities and types). So, wait for the publish to go live.... server down for half a day... When it goes up, I launched my swg with only one goal, immediatly buy a survey droid! Fine, i wander a lot around planets to find a DE that has crafted it and have some in stock. I managed to find one... First suprise... The droid is different from other and actually has charges... The ones available in the vendor where 10 charges and give their results in 33mn... Ok, 33mn to get waypoint of the best concentration of a given resource in a planet seems fine to me... Indeed, in would take me a lot more than 33mn so survey the whole planet... So I bought 10 droids at 7k each... I went out of the shop and launched the droid... I was excited... I can use it to detect all type of mineral or all type of flora and so on... So great! 33mn to have the waypoints of the best concentration of each minerals on a given planet is so great and makes the job of architect a lot more pleasant...
33mn later... You have new mail! Great !! my droids finished his work... i check the mail and... ALL I CAN GET IS THE TYPE OF AVAILABLE RESOURCES ON THE PLANET ! Morever, my survey tool disappeared ! So what is the use of a droid that takes 30mn to give me a data which i can have in at most 10mn by going myself on the planet and activate my survey tool !!!!! No sample, no waypoints... USELESS !!! So I spent 70k for crappy droids, that can't even be used as a pet :/ Thx SOE...
buying just one and see how it works would have been a smart move though
browse through the pages of this thread and you'll get a hint or two on the use of the survey droid.
cherlo
Thu May 06, 2004 11:34 am
#169
Of course thisll get lost in the noise..
Color customization still resets after storing the droid. Am I doing something wrong? Why would you add functionality to alloweveryone to change the colors if they still reset after you store the droid?
The complaints I've read about the harvesting droid tell me that we assumed it would alleviate the creature resource deficit, which it doesn't. I see this as the biggest problem in the game economy. You can fix this in several ways:
-Decrease the amounts of creature resources required in schematics
-Increase the amount that can be harvested by scouts
-Provide a creature resource harvestor (A friend said to me, "I'm gonna be a scout so I can use those traps to collect meat", I said "that make perfect sense but thats not how it works")
The maintenence droid seemed promising until I learned it only deposits credits and power (Am I correct?). That's not really an issue. Harvestors want a way to remotelycheck their harvestors, meaning they want to see mainly if the thing is still running. That's it. Im told that harvestor's status aren't actually updated until they are accessed my an admin, so that's why we cant get remote notification of a harvestor stopping. A maint droid could have got around this design by updating the status and reporting it.
Cherlo
Flurry Galaxy