Droid Engineer Archive

• 80/100 Vitality= - 10% HAM and Damage


• 60/100 Vitality= - 30% HAM and Damage


• 40/100 Vitality = - 50% HAM and Damage


• 20/100 Vitality = - 70% HAM and Damage


• 00/100 Vitality = Droid Disabled (same as Low Power status until fixed)

• Power= How many points can be restored at a time.2 to 10 points of Vitality


• Success Rate = How likely the Kit will repairthe number of Vitality points it is rated for. Failure of this roll would result in the loss of X Vitality points, based ona percentage of the Power.


• Charges = Number of times that a Restoration Kit can be used. 10 to40 uses.

Advanced parts would also be taken into consideration when crafting the Kit and couldhave a schematic that looks as follows -

• 1 Diagnostic Circuit


• 1 Capacitor Discharge Unit


• 1 Unit Delivery Cartridge


• 1 Redundant Power Supply


• 1 Repair Unit Casing


• 20 Units Metal


• 15 Units Lowe Grade Ore


• 15 Units Chemical

Experimental Charges: OQ 66% UT 33%
Experimental Effectiveness:
Power OQ 66% Con 33%
Success RateOQ 33% Mal 66%

Droid Reconditioning

Once a droid's Vitalty drops to 0/0 the droid is considered destroyed. As long as the droid as 1 point of restorable Vitality (IE 0/1) the droid has a possiblity of being Reconditioned by a Droid Engineer. A Novice DE would needto use aReconditioning Tool, a limited schematic that can be aquired from certain Junk Dealers, to completely restore a Droid to full Vitality. Using this skill on a damaged droid is not 100% fail safe and is based upon the Droid Customization skill and the amount of Vitality damage. For each 5 points of Vitality damage the success roll is lowered by 1%, for a total of 19%. If the skill roll is failed, the droid is reduced to 0/0 Vitality, reguardless of what the Vitality was previously.

Droid Batteries

The use of a standard droid battery, craftable by an Artisan, slowly drains away at the Vitality of a droid. Standard batteries drain Vitality at a rate of 1 point per 10 charges. This would equate to approximately 1000 hours of constant droid usage, or just over 6 hours of droid usage a day for 150 days. This will createa rather slow, yet steady, rate of droid turn over.

Droid Power Generator

This alternative Novice DE crafted item offers a droid owner the choice of a longer battery charge, at the expense of a faster decay rate. The DPG would charge a droid for up to 10 hours at a time, at the cost of 1 Vitality point per charge. The use of DPGs to recharge a droid would result in 500 to 1000 hours of constant hours of droid usage, depending on the quality of the DPG being used. The DPG would have 2 experimenation fields, Power and Charges,and would have the following schematic-

• 
  
  Power = 500 to 1000% charge. (5 to 10 hours)


• 
  
  Charges = 10 to 100 charges.

• 
  
  1 Power Core Unit


• 
  
  1 Micro Sensor Suite


• 
  
  1 Redundant Power Supply


• 
  
  1 Capacitor Discharge Unit


• 
  
  25Units Copper


• 
  
  25Units Radioactive Power


• 
  
  25Units Chemical


• 
  
  25Units Steel

Experimental Charges: OQ 33% UT 33% Mal 33%
Experimental Power: Con 100%

Power Droid

To make Power Droids more useful, they would gain the same function as a Droid Power Generator, without the negative drawback of Vitality loss. The Power Droid would be able to power other droids, without fear of causing the other droid to loss any Vitality. To balance out this bonus, Power Droids would need to be recharged like any other droid and would decay in the same manner. The Power Droid can recharge up to 5 other droids, before it needs to be recharged.

Auto-Recharge Module

The Auto-Recharge Module would allow a droid owner to stack X number of batteries into a droid, so that it could auto-recharge itself when ever it becomes low on power. The number of batteries would be dependent on experimentation. Batteries used by this module would be counted towards Vitality decay.

• 
  
  40 units ofAluminum


• 
  
  20 units of Inert Gas


• 
  
  50 units of Steel

Experimental Durability: OQ 50% Con 50%
Experimental Effectiveness:
Battery Storage OQ 50% Con 50% (5 to 20 Batteries)

Comments?

*EDIT * Added updated change later on this page.

Message Edited by Drashk on 06-30-2004 06:47 PM

Message Edited by Gavvot on 06-30-2004 04:28 PM

Something that I feel needs to be pointed out, that I forgot to do so in the original post. Everything that is suggested here needs to effect not only our current market, but the higher level droid market that we will see after JTL, since a decay system should be added at that time.

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Gavvot wrote:
The design of the Droid Power Generator doesn't sound right.
Having more than 10 charges or 1 charge for each and crates of them will greatly reduce repeat business.
Beside, with those component, the batteries will probably cost more than the droid at least on my server. (An R3 with 6 modules cost less than a power core).
The DPG wouldn't be a crate item. It would be like many of the Architect crafter parts that produce individually. Either Power Cores are extremely overpriced, or R3 units are being sold for less then they are worth crafting. A Power Core requires 2434 resources to build, without any resource requirements. They are purposefully designed to be difficult to build, hence the benefits and why they are part of and advanced profession. The DPG is designed to appeal to those that are willing to pay for premium services in trade for convience. Keep in mind that many people use more than one droid and that the DPG would really appeal the most to the DC.

Droid Decay
The reduction of HAM doesn't realy make sence. The only affected droids will be combat droid, wich is a very small part of our products and will loose vitality faster than all the others due to combat anyway.
The HAM reduction makes sense if we think of higher end combat droids, but that is why I also suggested the power loss. The reduction in recharge ability would be a better idea, since it would directly lead to the droids decay. (IE a droid with 60/100 Vitality would only recharge to 70% of a full charge.) The table is only a suggestion and could be adjusted to promote a faster rate of decay.

The Droid Restoration Kit doesn't sound right either.
With 1 vitality lost per 10 hours, or 5 hours depending of the modules, the time required to reach 0 is pretty high (we're talking months, even for hardcore gamers), much higher than reaching 0 with a CH pet for a CH.
So, vitality shouldn't be replenished.
We have to think about the droid buyer. If a system isn't put into place to replenish the Vitality damage, more people will shune away from the use of our current combat droids. When the combat rebalance hits Live, pets and droids are supposed have more a value to everyone. If Droids simply decay without the ability to restore them, many people will once again move towards the use of a non-CH pet. A way to adjust the loss of Vitality would be to change the loss per charge. The DPGs could be changed to 3 points per charge and batteries could be changed to 1 point per 3 charges. Its much more aggresive and would reduce the time to about 250 hours, if recharged time was reduced with Vitality loss and the droid was never repaired.

And again, whatever new source of power that goes to droids should stay in the artisan skill-tree.
The only Droid related item artisan have are droid batteries, as opposed to any other crafting profession(even merchant) where you can do some of the stuff as an artisan, for droid it is'nt the case.
The DPG is made to be an advanced item, simply be its schematic. Artisan already completely controls the production of a droid, so to say that a battery is the only droidrelated item in artisan isn't completely correct. Without Artisan,majority of our droids could not even be crafted.If the DPG was an Artisan item, it would have to be a MA schematic, due to the complexity of the item.

EDIT : also, I think there are alot of good thing in this proposal, but it look really too complex. If we want to have a chance to have decay before JTL, we should try to keep it as simple as possible with the only objectif to have a decay system and reduce the need of recharging droids.

We won't see a decay system, even a really simple one, before JTL. There just isn't enough production time for the DEVs to work with, since a good chunk of time is being devoted to other projects at the moment.

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OckVofad wrote:

A pretty good proposal. However, i do agree with Gavvot on the restoration and the recon kit. You are creating too many opportunities for the droid to be restored back to full vitality which defeats the purpose of the decay system.

Nokits just let the droid Die!!! I would like the repeat business and dont need another item to crank out of my factory (I'm lazy like that).

There has to be some way for the Vitality to be restored, as I stated earlier, or we are shooting our selves in the foot. The Reconditioning kit and skill could be removed from the proposal, but I thought that it would be nice to add a DE specific skill and maybe even a DE specific quest. (Junk Dealer quests)

I DO like the power generator idea. But like Gavvot said it should be made by a master artisan otherwise they will fight hard against it (and the droid decay system). Have you read through their forums? Its a cesspool of threads about nerfing other professions to benefit their own.

I think that DE is the one profession that Artisans have sympathy for. The Correspondent for the profession is a fellow DE and knows how many interdependences a DE has on MA. The Generator isn't made to replace battery usage. It is intended to give everyone an alternivate means of recharging thier droid at a hefty price. This doesn't mean that the DPG can't be added to MA, but I would have to lean towards Novice DE instead.

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Jenden wrote:

I like the idea of it, though like the others have said, I'm thinking the decay would be way too slow. A lot of people don't have their droids out all that long, so it would take forever for these droids to decay. Speed up the decay a little and make sure they don't hold a charge as long as they decay (giving it something of an exponential decay) and it should work out right though.

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Yes I think Drashk's idea was not to harm our business. Droids are still not mandatory. I can be succesful in any profession without a droid. Granted droids make things easier. And I don't see anyone but doctors in real need of a droid, they just need it for the 10% bonus buff. That being said only a few poeple would month after month spend the 60k on a Creature Harvesting droid (pricing from my galaxy, more important my price).

I know what you are going to say, but people spend Millions on Weapons and Armor every month. My response to that would be how do you expect a Pistoleer to fight without a gun. It is also easier to justify spending 500k on the full suit of comp. I think the way Drashk has it it is fine for both us and the Consumer.

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X Machine'Zed X
Obsidian Dagger Squadron

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MachineZed wrote:
Yes I think Drashk's idea was not to harm our business. Droids are still not mandatory. I can be succesful in any profession without a droid. Granted droids make things easier. And I don't see anyone but doctors in real need of a droid, they just need it for the 10% bonus buff. That being said only a few poeple would month after month spend the 60k on a Creature Harvesting droid (pricing from my galaxy, more important my price).

I know what you are going to say, but people spend Millions on Weapons and Armor every month. My response to that would be how do you expect a Pistoleer to fight without a gun. It is also easier to justify spending 500k on the full suit of comp. I think the way Drashk has it it is fine for both us and the Consumer.

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Herbsman wrote:

Is the current decay system not enough? I admit, I'm not a droid engineer. But since I've played for about 6 months plus a 6 month downtime, and in that time I think I've bought at least 20 droids, not including seekers and arakyds. It seems to me that the only thing gained by adding a more "effective" decay system is that people will stop using droids because they drain too much cash out of their pockets. I'm fine with the way things are as far as decay goes.

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There isn't a decay system in place, with the exception of Combat capable droids. The Vitality system currently only effects droids that are used in combat and take damage. A droid used by a Medic or Entertainer that nevers sees combat will never decay, unless the system changes. Majority of all droids sold are to Medics and crafters, so once a person has a droid with all of the modules that they need, they no longer need to buy any other droid. The biggest reason for droid turn over in the last few months has been the addition of new modules and functions, otherwise droid sales are rather dependent on player turn over and up until recently the Jedi grind.

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MachineZed wrote:

Yes I think Drashk's idea was not to harm our business. Droids are still not mandatory. I can be succesful in any profession without a droid. Granted droids make things easier. And I don't see anyone but doctors in real need of a droid, they just need it for the 10% bonus buff. That being said only a few poeple would month after month spend the 60k on a Creature Harvesting droid (pricing from my galaxy, more important my price).

I know what you are going to say, but people spend Millions on Weapons and Armor every month. My response to that would be how do you expect a Pistoleer to fight without a gun. It is also easier to justify spending 500k on the full suit of comp. I think the way Drashk has it it is fine for both us and the Consumer.

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