Doctor Archive
Thread: Droid issues: Has charging them become a problem for anyone?
The datapad charging does appear to be correct. My surgical droid which I only bring out on occasions for relatively short periods of time (it has my private crafting station, and occasionally sees service when I heal wounds in the field) almost never needed charged. My probot on the other hand (which I use for wound healing in the field) would need charged fairly regulary. With all the issues of pets getting stuck in the terrain or server boundaries he would get stored and re-called often.
After the patch where datapad charging was removed, they both seem to need charged a lot more often. Not really a major issue but as a Doctor/Combat Medic I'm already carrying almost 20 types of meds/poisons around I don't really have the space to store batteries as well.
I'm just floating this topic as an addition to the droid problems alreadyy outlined in Zarlors list. If nothing can we find out if this is an intended change, or a new bug. It was not listed in any official update list that I have noticed.
I have been noticing the same thing with my R2 droid. He goes through batteries like Talusian water now. I don't believe that he is recharging while in my datapad anylonger. Like others, I have had to resort to buying a crate of batteries (I actually bought two, because I've found that they're hard to find on Valcyn) so that I can keep the little guy going.
He did not go through batteries like this before the last big patch.
We've had no official word on it, but I'm pretty sure the not chargin while stored thing is intended.
As for the recharge problems... Even a crate of batteries doesn't really cut it. 20 minutes (assuming it really is that long, of course) is just way too short a time for a droid used constantly for both healing and crafting. I saw a guy put 5 charge batteries up on the bazaar on Eclipse in Dearic (not a well populated town, here) for 2k each. Not crate, mined you, that's for just 1 5-charge battery. 5 Charges is not, but not really worth 2k for such a low resource, low-skill item. So now we are stuck with not only having to constantly recharge the darned droids all throughout our playing time, but we are also stuck with paying outrageous prices? Even if we did get a decent price, we'd still be getting gouged just for constant use. It seems like I use more batteries than I do stims, now. 
Im glad they took out the ability to recharge a droid in the datapad (I dont turn off my flashlight and expect it to recharge).
However maybe a solution would be an item that can be placed in your datapad that allows you to charge all droids stored in your datapad. This would give one more thing for the droid engineers to build and would provide a decent solution. Also perhaps the item needs a bit of juice every 2 weeks or so and you have to find a droid engineer to "charge" it for you. Sort of like how a generator needs gasoline in order to provide power, this "generator" would require juice from the droid engineer to recharge droids. If someone does not use the droid enough to have to pay the charging fee, they can just resort to batteries.
Also the droids run out of battery a bit too quickly. I think 3 or 4 hours is a fair amount of time to need recharging.
Im glad they took out the ability to recharge a droid in the datapad (I dont turn off my flashlight and expect it to recharge).
However maybe a solution would be an item that can be placed in your datapad that allows you to charge all droids stored in your datapad. This would give one more thing for the droid engineers to build and would provide a decent solution. Also perhaps the item needs a bit of juice every 2 weeks or so and you have to find a droid engineer to "charge" it for you. Sort of like how a generator needs gasoline in order to provide power, this "generator" would require juice from the droid engineer to recharge droids. If someone does not use the droid enough to have to pay the charging fee, they can just resort to batteries.
Also the droids run out of battery a bit too quickly. I think 3 or 4 hours is a fair amount of time to need recharging.
"Im glad they took out the ability to recharge a droid in the datapad (I dont turn off my flashlight and expect it to recharge). "
Why? What part of lugging some item around to periodically use a radial menu to add a ridiculously short charge to a mouse droid just so you can do what you'vespent 49 skill points on are you glad about? I don't recharge my FWG every 20 minutes, and that thing would be using a hell of a lot more energy than some stupid mouse droid. The recharge issue is just another pos routine that should have been cut out in beta. Its busy work for no point, and makes zero sense within the construct of the game.
What is the Droids Discharge rate?
A) Is it a constant value?
B) Does the value increase or decrease based on how the droid is used (Crafting module, Repair module, Combat, etc)?
What charge is supplied by a single battery use?
A) The droid always seems willing to accept new batteries, whether it complains of low battery or not. Can I over fill him to exceed the approximate 20 minute lifespan?
B) Are all batteries equal? I don't know what can be experimented on so will all batteries provide the same amount of charge.
What is the amount of charge the droid ~should~ get?
A) Should the droid charge to a specific level, or should it not charge at all? Either answer is fine, it just would be nice to know these thing before they are changed.
It seems to me that most people here (in the doctor profession/forums) are pretty tolerant to the Dev's making mistakes. All we ask is a little information, like if you are going to change something, like the timer on revives, if you tell when the change takes place we'll accept it maybe not happily but with a minimum of yelling and screaming. I can't understand why SOE and the devs have such terrible feedback to the users. Its kinda like they are thinking that if they don't say anything about the stealth change we won't notice.
I like this idea. How about an item that you can put power into, much like harvesters and factories? You would have to buy power every so often, but as long as you deposited power into it, it would recharge your droids. This would give another reason for people to buy the vast amounts of power for sale on the bazaars, and give DE's another craftable item to sell to people. I would buy one, definitely! And the power to put into it!
PSKstang wrote:
Im glad they took out the ability to recharge a droid in the datapad (I dont turn off my flashlight and expect it to recharge).
However maybe a solution would be an item that can be placed in your datapad that allows you to charge all droids stored in your datapad. This would give one more thing for the droid engineers to build and would provide a decent solution. Also perhaps the item needs a bit of juice every 2 weeks or so and you have to find a droid engineer to "charge" it for you. Sort of like how a generator needs gasoline in order to provide power, this "generator" would require juice from the droid engineer to recharge droids. If someone does not use the droid enough to have to pay the charging fee, they can just resort to batteries.
I consider this a stealth nerf as it wasn't in the release notes. The bad part is 20 minutes is WAY too short for such a highly advanced piece of equipment.
There is a droid called an EG-6 Power Droid that can recharge other droids. There are a few problems withthis solutionhowever. One is since you can only call one droid at a time you can't recharge your own droid. Second is the darn thing needs recharging itself.
This is probably going to annoy people.. but my Adv.R2 *never* needed charging or droid batteries... he ran forever.
But since last patch (or maybe a hotfix one night) he now goes through batteries like... well, Talusian water. I had to buy a crate for the first time ever... and even so I've had to recharge him twice.
Stealth nerf or bug? Whatever it is, it runs out of power constantly now.