Development Cycle Archive
Thread: IT 7-1: Droid & Droid Engineer Enhancements
JavelinCatcher wrote:
If a Storage module is installed on a 2-1B surgical droid, it STILL cannot be accessed.
And I'm sure it cannot be named as well.
It's too bad that instead of ripping out the inherent abilities of Probots and giving them back to us in pieces, that the "Droid Invasion" could actually have done something useful, like fix these bugs that have been driving everyone nuts for months.
I don't know about you, but I would have much prefered fixes to the huge list of Droid bugs instead of this...whatever it is.
Audio
Droid Engineer Issues Addressed:
· Droid HAM Experimentation to make droids more powerful has been implemented
· Display for power meter
· Droid Customization Kit
- kit useable by anyone
- customization lasts longer
· Customized appearances for Droid Deeds so that Droid Engineers can display the models they sell.
right there *points up*...seems exparmention for droid ham is still comming...so the ham on the droids you make now may change...
vonbloodworth wrote:
Publish 8: Droids Rebuilt
Droid Engineer Issues Addressed:
· Droid HAM Experimentation to make droids more powerful has been implemented
· Display for power meter
· Droid Customization Kit
- kit useable by anyone
- customization lasts longer
· Customized appearances for Droid Deeds so that Droid Engineers can display the models they sell.
right there *points up*...seems exparmention for droid ham is still comming...so the ham on the droids you make now may change...
/sigh
That has alreadybeen implementedfor Probots.
I am 99.9% sure that even though it is not specified in that specificpost, that we were told this was for the droids that HAM experimentation don't work on - i.e. everything but Probots. I'll go hunt around the "Help me understand why you changed your mind" threads by TH, I'm almost positive this was mentioned.
Probots were rebalanced a patch or two ago to CL-10 - that's the maxium they are going to give us. We have been told as such. Adding more HAM to the current Probot would make it better than CL-10.
This is because most of our droids have HAM in the double digits, R3's have around 300 though. Those are what experimentation will "work" on in terms of HAM.
Audio
Check this thread :
http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=Developers&message.id=22719&highlight=droid+ham+experiment#M22719
TH writes : "All droids can be modified for combat, though humanoid Droids and Astromechs will be added at (or around, maybe a little more than) CL 10."
The latter half of this statement ("maybe a little more than") seems to be negated by more recent comments regarding the hard-cap of CL-10. This is what is being "added" - more HAM for those bots where it is so pathetically low.
Would I like Probots to get better HAM? Sure, but I'd be willing to bet an awful lot of credits that it isn't gonna happen.
Audio
Jenden wrote:
Ok, I've noticed a couple things. First of all, combat modules don't seem to be stacking, and experimentation doesn't seem to be doing much for them. I made an advancedDZ70 with 2 combat modules (could only experiment them up to 22 module rating each due to low skills) and a regular DZ70 with one combat module (got a crit fail on experimentation, wound up with a 13 on the module rating). The only difference between the 2 droids (other than that I had put armor on one) was a 1 point increase in damage (the advanced with 2 higher quality modules was 1 point of damage higher). the damage repair kits worked great, batteries did seem to last considerably longer, didn't notice anything with the bleeds/poisons/etc, and the ranged attack option worked great.
Also, experimentation on the combat modules was screwed up. I'd experiment and get a success, yet the module rating would go down, sometimes I'd fail and it would go up. I know this has been happening with some of our other stuff on live too.
Before Everyone starts to get too angry about the combat modules let's get a Devresponse on the above issue to see if it is a problem with the modules stacking. If the modules are working as intended, then get angry, otherwise, keep cool until we find out
*Prepares to get angry*
You just know we are going to get the shaft...yet again.
With this and the new experimentation/crafting changes, NOTHING is going to be as good as we can already make, and thats just plain sad.
Progressive degradation of our products is not in the general player's interest, nevermind what it does to DE.
I really think a /sigh is in order.
Droid Evasion..there is nothing positive or constructive I can find to say about it. I wish there was.
Cut and pasted from the 27ths Issue thread
I was able to check out some of the Droid Engineer features for about 2 hours, before my video card dumped me out again. Here is a list of the items that I found
- Droid Armor is still not stacking
- The armor rating does not appear to be working. Light and Medium is not showing up in the Examine window. Only the percentage is being displayed, and is still active. This effects Droids in the datapad (pre-patch), droids from deed (pre-patch) and post patch droids.
- An Adv. DZ70 with 2 Combat modules rated at 89% Effective Experimenation produce a Damage, To Hit, and Speed rating almost the same as a standard Pre-patch Adv DZ70. The Combat Modules do not appear to have increased the combat effectiveness of any droid that they are installed into.
- Built an Adv R3 with 2 Combat Module Clusters with a Combat rating of 295 each, or a total of 590. The Adv R3 was 20 / 46 / 20 , on the three experimenation values, when finished. The Adv R3 had a max damage of 52.
- The pre-patch Probot and DZ70 that I had in my datapad did not display combat damage, after the publish.
My casual observation is that Droid Armor is borked and that the combat damage for all combat capable droids is the same as it was, when the damage was listed in the datapad still - 2 publishes back. I did not see an increase in any of the combat damages from previous versions of the droid. If the combat values are as intended, the combat module requirements might want to be reconsidered. The requirement for a Droid Brain for each and every module is a bit excessive, IMHO.
AudioOrgana wrote:
It's too bad that instead of ripping out the inherent abilities of Probots and giving them back to us in pieces, that the "Droid Invasion" could actually have done something useful, like fix these bugs that have been driving everyone nuts for months.
progman63 wrote:
AudioOrgana wrote:
It's too bad that instead of ripping out the inherent abilities of Probots and giving them back to us in pieces, that the "Droid Invasion" could actually have done something useful, like fix these bugs that have been driving everyone nuts for months.
Well, I believe that I read that putting these combat modules in will be the basis forfuture combat droids.
So they're laying the groundwork now for future additions to DE.
I won't argue about WHEN these future additions are coming.
We all know how pointless THAT would be.
Right, but laying the ground work for Droid Handler isn't a "Droid Invasion"...especially since it will be absolutely transparent to everyone but the 1% or so of us who are DE's.
I just really hope they don't actually name the publish that. Seriously - with the reports we are getting, absolutely nothing is changing for the end-user except for Droid Stims and now their R3 unit can do a whopping 50ish dmg, as Drashk pointed out above, *IF* you sacrifice all other features (i.e. use six combat modules and no service modules).
Seriously - these "theme" publishes are a nice idea and all, but if people log in and see "Droid Invasion" in the launchpad, get in-game and bug their local DE about all the new combat droids...they are going to be SORELY disapointed.
Misinformation is everywhere - people in game seem to think Droidekas are coming with the next publish, everyone I meet says, "Whoa, WTG! DE's get their due next publish! Excited???"
I'm just afriad it's going to become one big joke.
Audio
Don't be afraid Audio..just accept it. It is a big Joke
In some bitterly sadistic way, what we all hoped would be an improvement is turning out to be a dose of 'discipline' for us unruly DE's
As things stand, apart from the healing capabilities, we are being well and truly shafted, because we are not now able even to replicate the abilities of the Pub6 Probot. The Experimentation/crafting changes have seen to that.
Not only that, but we now have to increase all prices to cover the huge increase in construction complexity. As if the market wasn't hard enough already.
I also have customers eagerly awaiting these new droids, but they laugh when I tell them the R3 is combat capable, especially when I tell them what it will now cost.
Thunderheart, do you honestly in your heart believe this is the loving we deserve? I doubt personally that you understand what your team has done here, but believe me, it is BAD. Frankly I'd rather be left as we were.
vonbloodworth wrote:
hay guys...this is only part one of 2...the droids you are woking on now are lvl 10 and below...utility is this one..8 is your combat droids.
I'm afraid you have this backwards, vonbloodworth. It's a common misconception.
This *IS* the combat droid invasion. The next patch is for utility droids. Check out TH's In Development thread, it outlines this all.
Audio
well you cant make anything usefull...and we cant hit it even if it was...