Droid Engineer Archive
Thread: Legitimacy of a CL10 Combat Droid
duncje wrote:
The most useful droids a DE can make currently are medical droids (useable by all Medics, Doctors), crafting droids (used as mobile personal crafting stations, useable by any crafting profession), and item storage droids (useable by anybody), or a combination of any of those. The CL10 droids really are justa bonus, because they can act as a shell to put those modules in.
Say you have a CL10 Probot, with 820 HAM, Medium Armor with 40% resists, 110 medical rating, and 10 item storage. The combat part really is just a bonus, because this droid would allow a medic to heal wounds at 110% of normal, and hold 10 itemsexempt from death decay or Imperial scans.
So really, the "target market" for our most useful droidsis anybody who wants to hold 10 additional, decay-free items, or anymedic profession, or any crafting profession. This game doesn't have to revolve around combat, although it does seem thatway sometimes.
Of course all this goes out the window with Publish 7, but currently this isn't a bad deal.
That actually explains quite a bit duncje, I appreciate it.
I suppose I'm just a little bitter from not making any money compared to other crafting professions. A buddy of mine recently mastered Armorsmith and built and sold a suit of padded armor for 500k his first day- made a profit of nearly 400k on it., and of course it takes me a week or more to bring in that kind of money - meanwhile I go to the same amount of trouble, compile more components, and make a 1/4 of what he makes.
My major beef with the DE profession is one of economics: the most expensive, top of the line R3 Med. unit runs 40k on my server (Bloodfin). Of course once you sell to that customer, you'll never see them again as they're set for life with that droid - no repeat business.
Storing items to protect from decay and contraband searches is now a joke - decay has been cut way down, and the Imperial Crackdown is such a joke that I have yet to see anyone taken by Stormtroopers for contraband. All that ever happens is a bunch of imperials corpses strewn about the cantina.
Thus, we are left with a market of doctors and crafters (suppose you could include BHs, who will pay no more than 3k for a crate of probes) - all of which will be one time customers at a measly 40k-ish a pop. Meanwhile armorsmiths and weaponsmiths are making a ridiculous profit, since their products are constantly in demand and selling for 10x what any droid I can make will sell for.
Aside from Boba Fett and stormtroopers, I don't recall alot of armor in the movies - yet in this game the armorsmiths are some of the wealthiest people in the game.
The real shame is the potential and importance this profession has to the Star Wars universe...
Jnath wrote:
I agree that the game doesnt revolve around combat, im a DE after all. Why then does the focus of the so called "droid invasion" seem to be on combat. The above arguements about a CL10 droid is valid, they simply arent powerful enough for those that can afford them. IMO the droid invasion should be focusing on more/improved utility droids and let the BEs and CHs have their tanks.
I'm not trying to argue that DE isn't broken, and that we're rolling in money, because both of those statements are false. DE has been broken from day one, there's not much of a market for our droids, and as was stated earlier, if you sell one all-in-one R3 to a customer, they never have to come back. I was really just trying to argue the fact that the CL 10 droid isn't our most marketable item, nor should it be really.
The "Droid Invasion" is a joke. I'm thinking this more and more as this goes forward, and as the reports come in from Test. It never should have been about CL10 droids, it should have been focused on adding utility, and the need for repeat business.
I'll be a former DE if this goes live in anything close to it's current state.
Agreed. The most galling aspect of the focus of Publish 7 is that it appears to indicate that the DEVs are completley out of touch - like they're not playing the same game the rest of us are.
I have great respect for the development team, and applaud them for creating one of the most memorable, engaging game experiences I've ever had. On the other hand, a problem such as we are experience strikes me as remarkably out of touch on the DEVs part. Given the complexity of this game, the sheer number of socio-economic factors to consider, and the fallout of every new or altered feature, I certainly cut the DEVs are huge amount of slack - I honestly believe they're trying their best. I also hold no grudge for their attempts thus far - most have been relatively well thought out, and any negative effects were probably unforseeable until it was too late.
That said, Publish 6 and 7 seem to be heading downhill. The joke that is the "Imperial Crackdown" should never have happened - anyone who's seen a TKM in action should know that introducing a few Stormtroopers into Cantinas is going to result in nothing but alot of Imperial corpses and faction points for the Rebels. An utter farce as far as a "Crackdown" is concerned, and one that could have been easily avoided. If I were on the DEV team, I'd be embarassed to even have that "feature" advertised on the main page.
It appears we are headed that way again with Publish 7. We again have DEVs introducing and focusing God only knows how much time and effort on CL10 droids - droids which anyone with an ounce of ingame experience could tell you are going to be so insignificant as to not matter. Maybe some DE's will make some money the first few days of the Publish strictly on the novelty factor, but we'll be right back where we are now in no time. All that time and energy the DEVs have expended on a feature that will turn out to be as laughable as an attempted "Imperial Crackdown."
It's sad that there is so much potential and great ideas swarming around regarding the DE profession, yet going unheeded because it seems the DEVs aren't playing the same game the rest of us are. It they were, a fiasco like the "Imperial Crackdown" would never have happened.
Currently my probot can do about 70 dmg per sec.
With these new combat clusters in a new probot maxed out...i'm still only able to do 70 dmg?
Huh? so in essence i have to use 5 combat modules to get the same droid as I already have?
Surely that can't be right.
Has anyone on TC built a probot yet with 5 combat modules and can confirm the amount of damage it can do and at what speed.
Tal-N wrote:
You folks are appearing to forget that you're allowed a combat droid and a pet active at the same time. Thats an accumilative total of CL20 in terms of firepower and will be quite a help against tougher enemies. Ultimately look at it like this, you'll be causing damage to a mob. The droid will be blasting away every 2 seconds giving you an added 150 points of damage which can really mount up since they'll be ignoring it to focus on you. Useless is such a strong word when the fact is it's additional firepower no matter how you look at it. Is it significant firepower? No, thats what the Droid Commander profession will be for.
Tal-N:
The problem with this whole thing is we already have a perfectly capable CL10 Droid. They are making this same CL10 Droid much harder to make, and dumping its utility in the process. It will be harder to craft something that isn't as good as something we currently have. This makes no sense.
Tal-N wrote:
You folks are appearing to forget that you're allowed a combat droid and a pet active at the same time. Thats an accumilative total of CL20 in terms of firepower and will be quite a help against tougher enemies. Ultimately look at it like this, you'll be causing damage to a mob. The droid will be blasting away every 2 seconds giving you an added 150 points of damage which can really mount up since they'll be ignoring it to focus on you. Useless is such a strong word when the fact is it's additional firepower no matter how you look at it. Is it significant firepower? No, thats what the Droid Commander profession will be for.
I suppose I could agree that "useless" may be too strong a word. 1 Extra point of damage is 1 extra point you don't have, true. However, is the price of the CL10 combat droid worth that extra damage? Especially when there are many other more efficient ways to rack up damage?
I could even concede my previous point - however, the real problem is that even if the CL10 droid is "mildly useful" rather than "useless," it's still NOT worthy of being the focus of a Publish when there are vastly more important and crucial issues and factors to address than having a floating chunk of metal contribute a couple extra damage points to the battle.
The focus is all wrong...
The problem with this whole thing is we already have a perfectly capable CL10 Droid. They are making this same CL10 Droid much harder to make, and dumping its utility in the process. It will be harder to craft something that isn't as good as something we currently have. This makes no sense.
Do youeat a cake when it's still a collection of ingredients in a bowl? Do you understand a story from the first 3 pages you read? Do you say you have heard a song when you listen to onlythe first demo tape sent to the producers? Do you say if a film is good or bad based entirely on the script you read?
Put simply you lot are overreacting, not only have these things only just gone onto the TestCentre but it's also only the foundation for the rest of the system as it's built up into something which will greatly benefit the game. You lot wanted attention now, you didn't want to wait. You now have what you asked for, you're seeing the combat droid and utility droid system being built up step by step now rather than waiting and waiting with silence only to finally be handed it all in a lump 2 months from now. Yes it's harder to craft, but then again recall that because of the repair kits you're going to see less customers coming back to you for droids. So you're not going to be making them as often, I won't pretend to actually be a droid engineer and I'm looking at this from the outside but from what I can see you need to be more reasonable here.
First we have this foundation, yes you have a decent CL10 combat droid in the form of a probot but now you can have more variety. After this you'll have those utility modules and some new chassies. After that you have the ability to play around with loads of battle droids which is going to be alot of fun to make if they give you alot of control over what goes into them. In the end folks all of the complexity is needed to allow you guys more flexability over what the droids do, no doubt that will be become evident later on.