Droid Engineer Archive
Thread: Player Cities Droid buildings (Your ideas here)
Hey all. The Player City designer mentioned how they are considering all types of different player buildings in the future. My question to you all is what Droid Engineering type structure would you like to see? Now, I know we have bugs and other issues but this is not our DEV who is working on this -- so take it easy 
This is just an idea thread. I will post the ideas here when the time comes. Here is my idea:
A Droid bath house.
Oil pits that you pay a fee to a droid attendant and your droid gets "dipped" which heals his Black AND white ham bars, maybe a pit which temporarily increases his HAM (like spice but much longer, and for when we have other combat droids) and maybe a fusion charging station that charegs a droid and lasts 10 times longer than a droid battery. If we could charge for these services that would be cool.
What are your ideas?
OK, first thing is that needs to have a quick change is that the player city Shuttleport and Starport schematics that the architect has today do not require a Protocol Droid as a component. Now, AFAIK, nobody has managed to build one and deploy it on TC yet. But, if they do and the thing magically acquires a protocol droid, I'd be really pissed about it. There's the first issue for you Sin. Get the devs to change the schematics to require a protocol droid as part of the schematic - probably the base protocol droid, not the advanced version. There's no need for modules here.
After that, optional slots for power droids, BLLs, repair and hospital and some form of astromech on the buildings (as appropriate to type). For each droid supplied, use it to cut the maintenance rate by some factor (say 5% per droid). For example, a med center will have 4 optional surgical droid slots. The hospital starts with a base effectiveness - say 80% of the regular city med center. For each med droid added, increase the effectiveness of the hospital by 10%. Give it 2 R2 slots. For each R2 slot, decrease the maintenance rate by 10%. This idea can be expanded to other building types with the appropriate type of droid.
Following on the idea of certs - give the politician extra droid slots. These would be non-callable slots, but when filled, help reduce the maintenance cost of the city. Since the politician can leavy taxes to pay for the city, one way of being really popular is to purchase a number of droids (equivalent to their politician cert level) that help reduce the cost of maintaining the city, and thus taxes levied. For each droid purchased and allocated to those cert slots, reduce the maintenance of all city buildings by 5%. At master Politician, that could reduce running costs by 30% (for example). Considering the maintenance costs of a large city, that can be a significant saving. So, outlaying 300K for 6 BLLs may end up saving huge amounts of money, lower taxes in the long run and thus more popular politician.
Droid Workshop.
A workshop is the home of a professional. It's where they do their day to day business. To many it is like a second home. They feel comfortable there. Everything is in its right place, parts are easy to come by, so they feel relaxed. Because they are feeling so comfortable, they get an extra +10 bonus to experimentation when in the workshop. This will stack with othe player city bonuses, so that if the DE is in their workshop, which is located in the industrial segment of town, they will get a +35 bonus.
Naturally, this concept to be extended to all of the crafting classes to have their own specific workshops. eg tailors could get more colour options in their workshop etc.
An Advanced Droid Factory. Able to make larger scale droids that take more precision. Shield generator droids, artillery droids, heavy duty droids of that sort.
In the future the factory could be used to make droid fighters for assisting fighter pilots. And also could make automated laser towers (Should be droid item because it needs sensors, actuators ect..)
Droids that do maintainence on cities cutting some costs. They would have to be supplied with lots of energy or raw materials.
Graushwein
A droid Torture Chamber, complete with an EV-9D9 taskmistress and an 8D8 torturing droid! Squeals of pain from our worthess droids could be enjoyed with a beverage as we watch them burned, electrocuted, crushed, stretched, and dismantled. Once placed in this building, your droid would be returned to you in a cube form, which you could then feed to your creature mount for +1 speed for 60 seconds.
Or how about fantasy theatre, where our droids can be outfitted with costumes or paint jobs, and act outscenes from the movie. There, in fantasy theatre, they can pretend to be useful participants of the Star Wars Universe, just like thier heroes R2-D2 or C3-PO. Slicing a terminal? Translating languages? Attaching a cybernetic prosthetic onto a severed limb? Fighting? Only in fantasy theatre! Or you can just dress up your Protocol droid with a dual-bun hairdo just like Princess Leia!
As a special DE only building, you could have the "Critical Failure Funhouse". This is a lovely building where, after grinding out a lot of master artisan components, you are simply presented with a monitor-burning strobe light that pierces your real-life brain.
Ok. I feel better. I am dreadfully sorry. I am not really trying to hijack your thread, just relieving some stress.
So a real idea: Hmm... how about a droid assembly line? Instead of having to do the factory produced multiples like for the advanced droid brain, or the R3's dual brains, you insert the GP modules and Memory modules at one end, even though they aren't of the same serial number,it makes them identical.
I don't know. I liked your first idea.
One idea I have that isn't just DE related is the idea of a Scrapyard type shop. Remember in Episode 4, where C3PO and R2-D2 find themselves in a place where droids are being scrapped for parts? Perhaps a place like this could be implemented in player cities, but not just for Droids. Basically, it would disassemble player-made items (Droids, Weapons, Armor, Clothes) and produce very generic materials of medium quality that could then be used for other things. Obviously, balance is an issue, so the materials could be of a smaller amount, or poor quality, or something like that.
Another idea would be some sort of Advanced Power Plant. (Since it is built by Architects, I don't think they'd mind). The power plant would be a large building itself, and in the middle have it contain a rather large reactor. To run, it would require various things from Player Crafter Professions....for instance, a Droid Engineer would need to open the "Operation Hopper" and put one R2 Unit and two LE Repair Droids from his datapad into the Hopper. After that, the building would spawn (you guessed it) an R2 unit and two Repair Droids which would wander around the building and do pre-recorded "maintenance" on the building. That part is just for show; adding the three droids increases the efficiency of the Power Plant by a percentage (depending on the quality of the droids, actually). If the city is under attack, these droids could be killed, and thus damage the efficiency of the Plant. There are other things that other Professions can do as well....perhaps something the Merchant can do to lower the costs, etc. In any case, what the plant does is offer power to the nearby Turrets and perhaps something else.
Another idea is that of a Droid Control Center. (This is kind of hoping that, later on, we get better combat droids). The Combat Center is like a tower, and at the top of that tower is the electronics room. The room itself has one Hopper panel, and a number of Control panels (the number depends on the level of this Center). At the Hopper, a Droid Engineer is allowed to place, from his Datapad, different Combat Droids. The hopper is divided into subsections equal to the number of Control Panels that the center has, and each subsection equals a "platoon" of one General and up to three Soldiers. You can put droids into each slot, but the droids placed into a subsection's Soldier slot must be of a lower quality level than the droid placed into that subsection's General slot. Now, say a Droid Engineer spends a lot of money to fill up three Platoons, each with an Advanced Battle Droid general, and two regular Battle Droid soldiers for each one. Now is when the usefullness of the Center comes into play...
Each Control Panel allows the user to control a platoon. Basically, a player goes up to the control panel, brings up the radial menu, and selects "Control Platoon." They are then switched to the view of the General Droid (as if the player were that actual droid), and they may then go around as that Droid, with the Soldier Droids following behind like faction pets (the Soldier droids respond to the commands that they were programmed with). When a player first chooses to control a Platoon, they begin in the Center's storage area, where all Droids are stored when not being controlled. During control, the player's actual character is still left behind standing at the Control room, entirely open to attack from the enemy if that enemy should make their way up to that room. If the player chooses to leave control of the droids while they're out in the field, then all of the droids will turn around and automatically run back to the Storage Room where they'll be stored. The Platoons can also go only a certain distance from the Center, since the range of control isn't infinate. As the centers get more advanced, the range which platoons can go increases, as does the amount of droids allowed in each platoon and the maximum number of platoons available.
Now, what does this do? Well, this allows people to take an active role in combat without directly risking themselves. With a Droid Engineer keeping the Hopper filled up with full platoons, an Architect could use the Control Panel to act as a Platoon and keep the peace in the city. When the Droids are killed, they are perma-killed also, so the Droid Engineer may need to make more droids if the player town is under particular attack. Also, controlling a platoon is not necessarily overbalancing since the actual character himself/herself cannot contribute to the battle at the time of controlling (IE, this isn't a matter of a Pistoleer shooting while sending in his Rancors or Probots. If the Pistoleer is controlling a platoon, then they are vulnerable while they stand comatose in the Control Room.)
So, those're my ideas.
A proper shuttleport should need a protocol droid at a minimum, and astromechs should increase the efficiency/decrease maintenance. Others have already put that forth and done it well. My only concern is that the droids be upgradeable modules rather than fixed, built-in features of the structure.
The ability to upgrade a structure by adding a droid to it really intrigues me. Imagine being able to add a set number of 'house droids' to your home, Droids NOT restricted to your datapad, and which are essentially world-persistent NPCs. Limit the number of droids by some kind of 'level' and we could have two MSEs, an astromech and a protocol, perhaps, in a medium house, while a PA hall might allow for quite a few more.
ditto on the shuttleport requiringa droid chassis.
droids affecting city hall maintaince and being organic to the city hall not a player.
Here's an idea on the "static Droid" thing....
Perhaps have every building have the potential to have droids in it that do pre-set things. When you apply the droid you made to the structure, then that pre-made droid will appear as a signal that it is doing its job. As the visual droid is kind of a set one, it won't have the custom color of the droids that you put in there. However, the effectiveness of the droid attachments do depend on the effectiveness and quality level of the droids that you use.
For instance, a small House has room for an MSE and an R5 unit. When you put these droids in there, then these NPC droids will appear in your house and move around in kind of a random/set course, to show they're there and taking effect. The effects, again, are based on the stats of the droids you put in.
A police station:
This is where the mayor or the leader of the militia (sp) can manage " NPC police droids" that randomly wander the city and attack anybody on the /ban list
A droid repair station:
This is where repair droids repair droids, ATST's, vechicles, and other mechanical entites.
Nostradamus Smyth