Doctor Archive
Thread: Zarlor do you have any info on these new healing droids?
I am pretty much against giving droids the ability to do anything that a player class can, and has been doing fairly well already 
No reason to give it since folks don't seem to have a really hard time finding a medic, since many just heal folks for free while XP grinding through the profession. Yes, yes I know that this whole medical/healing bot thing has potential, and that aspects of it ie, healing incapped players, will be of someadvantage but honestly I think we are all doing just fine without bringing in "healing" droids. Just off the top of my head, imagine what the next big PvP is going to look like in Theed, or Anchorhead. Instead of pets everyone is going to have a medical droid following them so that if they go down incapped they can be brought back before they are DB'd. Sure other players are going to need stims packs and maybe wound packs to refill their droids, which many docs will be happy to provide, but this will only further degradedoctors from being a uniqueprofession to one a hybrid artisan profession ie, even more selling and less in the field healing.
Now all of this is some what speculative yet from what I have read so far I am a little surprised. Let us say that these droids will "help" doctors, or medics heal other players - thus "saving" the doctors mind pool. Honestly we don't need any help. Most of the time we are tending wounds in town ie, med center or by the shuttle port or in a camp and by the time we go on a hunt we are already regenerated. I haven't"run out of mind pool"- while healing woundssince I was a medic. I do run out of mind pool while enhancing people, due to the sheer volume of requests oncedoctors start buffing in a player dense area. I also doubt thatthese droidswill be restricted to doctor and/or medics - SOE just wouldn'tdo that - it is like a scout needing a "creature harvesting droid" - sure it would be handy but it seems like a waste of coding to me. If one is to bring such thing in ie, healing droids it will be avaliable to all playersor the requirements will be obscenely low like "need novice medic" to use (ie, stim B's).
Anyhow some of you may think that this is a fine- and I am sure it will help SOMEONE - but COME ONE anytime something encroches on our profession we should beconcerned. Yes there are arguments as to why a healing droidwould be useful but if they allow thisthen why not a:
1) scout droid that harvests automatically (we could give up our scouting skills)
2) slicer droid that slices terminals and containers (no more need for smugglers, and there would be no risk ofthe droidkeeping that skill enhancement that was in the container)
3) artisan droids that automatically sample while the player is running arouund (dont have to stop and pull out the surveyor anymore while in the field)
4) bounty hunter droid that will also apply first aid in addition to what they do now (they would love that one)
5) entertainment droid on whichwe couldgambleon or use to watch the evening news while kicking back atthe camp drinking a Jawa Beer (entertainers would freak on that one, we could tell them "But it ONLY heals mind wounds... you are still needed for BF healing)
At the moment we have a pretty good thing going hereI honestly DO NOT see any reason to jerk around with the territory of any of the professions to make DE's more useful. Why not add some combat droids or bring in some sort of droid decay - whatever - but ANY time a move is made to give one group the ability (ANY ability), by purchasing it with credits, to do something that another profession has to buy with points or is the general domain of another profession I have a problem with that. We should all look at it this way - Why open the door to allowing ANY encrochment - actual and/or percieved - on our profession if the present system seems to be working just fine as it is.
Anyhow as a doctor I do not see this as doing us much good in the long term. Yes it mayhave it's benefits short termbenefits ie, maybe it will spare our mind pool a bit or heal us from incap, butI honestly do not see the long term benefits for us - I really don't.
Peace
Very interesting idea. I, for one, would love the idea of being able to store some of my meds somewhere other than my inventory and still be able to use them (I think I counted 20 different kinds of packs/stims I carry around!).
I don't like the idea of giving everyone the ability to heal as well as a medic ... maybe limiting the heal, or making the delay long .. something so that people aren't tempted to replace medics with droids.
I do have to admit ... there's no AI substitute for a good healer in a big fight. There's the whole balance of who should be healed that no AI should be able to accomodate.
AyaOnane wrote:Very interesting idea. I, for one, would love the idea of being able to store some of my meds somewhere other than my inventory and still be able to use them (I think I counted 20 different kinds of packs/stims I carry around!).
I don't like the idea of giving everyone the ability to heal as well as a medic ... maybe limiting the heal, or making the delay long .. something so that people aren't tempted to replace medics with droids.
I do have to admit ... there's no AI substitute for a good healer in a big fight. There's the whole balance of who should be healed that no AI should be able to accomodate.
Right, and thats why the droid would have no healing AI and would ONLY be useable by medics (preferably with 2+ boxes into crafting) and doctors. No other classes would be able to use them at all and medics/doctors would only be able to own one at a time. Further, keeping the certs in the crafting branch would help prevent dabblers from using them.
The Droids being able to heal on their own wasn't an idea cooked up by droid engineers to screw you out of your profession. The SURGICAL DROID in the Star Wars Universe is just that. A droid that heals on its own. The droids are already in the game. As I said before, though, I don't think that these can be used effectively to replace human medics. The nightmare scenario you presented with them being used to great effect in PVP suggests that a Novice Marksman couldn't incap one with one shot.
The droids you guys are asking for are called FX-7 medical assistant droids, and I want very much to be able to supply such a droid to the medics. There are some very good ideas presented here, by the way, that perhaps the Doctor Correspondent can discuss with the Droid Engineer Correspondent. I will take some of these ideas there myself.
I am not just asking to be a viable class, although that would help a ton. I am asking for this game to live up to its namesake. And the best way for that is to provide the GENERAL POPULATION with useful droids. Droids being the key word here, because they are an important part of the Star Wars Universe. If you are a character of any kind, why would you want a droid? Right now medics and crafters are the only ones who can answer that question, and its apparent here that some of you don't care for droids as it is.
Please keep an open mind. Think of ways that would make us both benefit, because your firm position against any droid that can do something that someone with a novice box can do frankly hurts. Read our boards before painting us as usurpers. We have spent countless hours coming up with good ideas on our forums for droids, and at no time was our position to hurt another class. We want only to provide droids for all classes, and keep that in line with the mythos that this game is based on.
SinjenRandall wrote:
...that medics can cover the need of 100% of the population 100% of the time....
......We want only to provide droids for all classes, and keep that in line with the mythos that this game is based on.
It is pretty hard to keep strictly to the mythos and make a playable game.
There is no question what droids can do in SW Universe.
They can easily make droid that you just type in resource type and it will go and find best planet and give you cordinate.
They can easily make a droid that is mobile factory where you just put the resource and out pop a cloth, weapon or armor.
I am sure they can easily make a droid that can harvest meat, bone and hide from corpse. Probably all three and much more efficient than any human.
Question is not if any droid a possible, but more of should they exist in this game.
Doctors have already made huge sacrifices in terms of sharing our ability for sake of the game.
Any novice medic can use Stim-B as well as Wound-B, and master medic can use Stim-E all in the name of reducing the downtime and more enjoyable gaming experience.
Usually there is point where people start to say enough is enough.
I have a question for DEs. Why are they proposing the change do that DE can have more droid out than rest of us? Master Armorsmith can't weare two set of armor. Master Weaponsmith can't duel wield. As far as I know, DE are crafters of Droids, not master droid controllers.
There have LOT of changes proposed for DE, to get more people to play them, but there are LOT of issues with proposed boost that many people are over looking and letting it slide because we feel DE deserve them. But we aren't known to roll over when someone try to kick out food bowl neither.
heh, when I read the topic of this post, I thought you guys were talking about AFK entertainers 
I play as a doc on one character, and I think lowered mind costs, healing incaps and ability to call anywhere would be great changes for medical droids. I'm not as sold on the idea of giving them stims though.
SinjenRandall wrote:
[snip]
The droids you guys are asking for are called FX-7 medical assistant droids, and I want very much to be able to supply such a droid to the medics. There are some very good ideas presented here, by the way, that perhaps the Doctor Correspondent can discuss with the Droid Engineer Correspondent. I will take some of these ideas there myself.
There's a reason I asked for feedback on this up above there, you know.
This would be kind of like having dancing driods, any with enough credits can avoid cantina's and medic centers.
Also I do not agree to allow these driods to use whatever packs we can, even if we are the only people who can use this, this would make us extremely power if we didn't have to use mind power to do stuff. Think about it, if we got to use it for enhancers and cures, CM's surely would get them for poisons and stuff. Now basically, we'd have CM driods poisoning areas and Doctor driods cure everyone and nobodies mind bars dropping.
Anyway, I think these driods need to be carefully implanted so they don't undermind our professions.
Kuurus- Master doc, CM
Hey - just thought of another.
How about a droid that creates other droids - well maybe not the advanced ones we would want to save thosethose for the DE's, wouldn't want them to think that someone was trying to sneak into their profession.
*sarcasm start* IT IS THE SW universe after all - I remember watching that one SW movie - you know - the one where Anikan is a young Jedi.. the one where he kills all the Sandpeople.. ya that one.. In that one droids were building droids (like 20mins of it).. in fact saw a heck of lot more of that in that one movie than "healing droids" throughout the entire series. *sarcasm end*
Anyhow.. sorry.. like I said earlier I have a problem with any droid being given the ability to do anything that a player can even if it is as seemingly benign as being able to use a stim A or B on incap (IF these droids do not do that - then I have nothing to worry about.. just want to make my position clear and have other docs think about this). I like some of the thoughts on storage space and maybe enhancing mind regeneration - only problemthe mind regeneration MAY present is that fact any andall rifleman will want one in the field, unless they do balance it out with a decent "need" 2-3 levels of doc crafting or something to use.
Happy thoughts
The only new droid I want is one that will simply store my stimpacks/woundpacks, etc and which allows me to still use them through the droid at my own discretion. The only AI I want that droid to have is Call, Store, and Follow. That's it.
Sistere wrote:
It is in Zalors post "Automatically stim incapped players" on this thread.
Right well, I did see that, but I didn't take it as some groundswell support for it. If it were on the TC, I'd be a bit nervous. Right now it's just one of many many ideas, and effectively probably one of the worst to me (sorry Z =P).
If there is anything we can all agree on, can it be that we don't want auto-stimming droids? Especially if they were useable by non-medics (or even just novice medic dabblers). I just want my medical storage droid thingy, complete with full UI menu detailing how many stim charges, wound pack types (and charges) etc are left from what you've placed on the bot. Hey I can dream, can't I?