Droid Engineer Archive

This list is updatedas needed (daily doesn't work anymore since changes aren't as often anymore)and is meant to supplement the work done by the current correspondant and provide an idea of where this profession currently stands. Please read it over and provide any information you have regarding any of these issues, or any new issues you may have discovered.

I am a Master Droid Engineer on Bloodfin (Lime Akob). I also participated in the beta as a DE and bring a lot of knowledge of the profession from those days. However, I am one person and need your help to make sure that we've got all the real bugs nailed down, so we don't have DEVs chasing issues that don't exist due to confusion on our part.

Thanks to our correspondant for all the work done so far. Try not to makethe correspondants' lives difficult bybadgeringthemfor answers that they may not have. They're still only players like the rest of us. Players who have volunteered to organize and prioritize this information and present it to the DEVs. I'm sure any discussions between the correspondant and the DEVs will be shared with us regardless of how insignificant it may be.

We now have a voice, and the DEVs are listening to that voice. Hopefully I'll be able to start removing items from this list instead of just adding new ones.

Many, many, many thanks and respect to all those who have contributed. My personal thanks to Tyim for starting this thread during beta and for starting it up again now that we're live. Also, thanks to the devs who have worked like fiends only to be ranted at and badgered. Special thanks to any dev that cares to respond to this post.

1.Recent updates
2.Bugs still in evidence
3.Uncertainties
4.Wishlist

1. Recent updates
A.Added new bug regarding experimental values being 0%.
B.Removed bug regarding droids being put into data modules.
C.Removed uncertainty regarding the lack of XP when crafting the R2 chassis.
D.Removed perma-death rant. Replaced with vitality pack rant.
E.Added uncertainty regarding droid armor rating.

2. Bugs still in evidence
A.Droids are not giving any UXP
B.Droid names use the standard name filter.This may beby design, butwe're calling it a bug because droids should use a modified name filter that allows for numbers in the name. Yes, Artoo-Deetoo works fine, but I've seen NPC droids wandering around with REAL droid names. So we should be allowed to do the same.
C.Information in the datapad no longer lists the commands programmed for the droid (new droids only). Give them back! I've heard a report that this has changed. Can anyone confirm?
D.Droids with no attack capabilities none the less have attack speeds and damage base modifiers in the datapad.
E.Experimentation on droid parts has no noticeable effect on final droid (experimentation seems to alter the part quality, but no end effect is observed). Resources also fall into this area since resource properties influence the experimental property values. There is no point to experiment either on droid components or the final product. The droids seem to all function about the same.
F. The advanced droidchassisschematics allow for colour. However, the final droid loses this colour. This is an improvement, but the bug remains. Droids themselves are stilluncolourable (they tell us they removed this from thepatch since it was not complete).
G. Droids often stop following without reason. This is a generic pet problem as it happens to all pets, not just droids.Pets seem toget stuck on invisible zone boundries.Walking up to about 10-20m from thepet and re-issuing a 'follow' command fixes it.
H.Storage Module 2s coming out as Data Module 2s during the assembly stage. What you seem to get at the end is a Data Module 2. This is only a NAME problem. The module is said to function as it should - Storage Module 2.
I. Droids dragged from the datapad to the secure trade window are invisible. Secure trade itself DOES work, but until we can see the droid in the trade window, this is a bug. If it does not exist for bazaars and vendors as well, then this should also be implemented for them as well. Secure trade is important when you're selling something like a droid.
J. Droid repair kits are fubar. With the droid out in the world, or in your datapad, you always seem to get the error message 'You don't have anything in need of repair (make sure your weapons are unequiped)'... Yes, this was a DROID repair kit. Kind of makes the"Pets don't heal when you store them" update really hard on us when we can't repair our droids.
K.Multiple crafting stations in a single droid breaks the modules in the droid. Only one of the modules seems to work when this happens.
L.Droid deeds shouldn't be tossed into the misc area of the bazaar. They're deed versions of entities. Give droids a proper home so that people can actually find them with ease.
M.Cluster modules not only fit into cluster module sockets, they fit into service module sockets.This allows cluster modules to fit into cluster modules ad infinitum. Thishas the added effect thatcluster module slots are nowpointless and allows any number of modules to be placed in any droid. Clusters should only fit in cluster sockets. Otherwise you're further exploiting the idea that the droid frame used is irrelevant.
N.Skills for the Droid Engineer don't reach +100 at Master. Droid Assembly and Droid Experimentation only go as high as +55. Droid Customization (currently useless) goes to +64. Other engineering professions get skill adds like assembly/customization/experimentation at novice. Droid Engineers get squat.
O.Repairmodules do not functionat all when placed in an LE Repair droid or Power droid.
P.Medical modulesaffect the effectiveness of stimpacks. Reports say that a stimpack is more effective when a medical module-equipped droid is nowhere to be seen (unless it contains a level 6 module).
Q.Droids and components have been changed so that some of the experimental values have been removed from the schematics. However, these values remain during crafting and experimentation. As such, they are always 0%.

3. Uncertainties
A.Is your droid supposed to travel with you when you take a shuttle? It doesn’t, it stays behind. Sometimes it even goes red and attacks the poor people at the starport where you left it.
B.Patrol point list is not saved between store and call, is this by design?
C. Some droids, when given a repair module, gain a 'repair other droid' option in the program menu. Some, when out, add a 'repair' option in the radial menu of OTHER droids. I can only assume that both are possible. 'Converse' droids do not have a programmable 'repair' command, but usually allow the repair option to appear in nearby droids (I've never seen this myself). Seems a little inconsistent. Also, the power droids and repair droids with a repair module do not grant the 'repair' option in other droids.
D. Power droids (possibly also LE repair droidsand Surgical droids... mixed reports on this) are the onlydroid with a non-modular function. Repair droids have had their repair systems removed and changed into a module. R droids have had their crafting functions removed and changed into modules. Power droids remain as an inherent function. Can we get some consistency here? Which droids have inherent abilities, and can we get some kind of visual information on this? Descriptive text in the schematics would be nice.
E. Some of the advanced droids are using 'Converse' instead of 'Program' for programming. Nobody seems to know how to name these droids.
F.Protocol droids and Binary Load Lifters seem rather useless.Protocol droidsdon't help with languages, since everyone who cares about languages already knows all the languages. BLLs don't lift any loads.Neither of these droids have room for any modules. So, from what I'm hearing, they're just a nice droid to look at. Anyone find a good use for either of these?
G.Can friends of the droid use the droid's modules? Or just the owner? (Note that you can use crafting modules by being near ANY droid with one, regardless of your relationship with the owner)
H.The only difference betweenmedical module 1 and medical module 6 from what I read is the boost it gives to medial skills. Some people believe that it should also restrict which medic skills you should be able to use.(I've moved this back to uncertainties since'something' supposed to be 'fixed' in medical modules... but I don't know what it is)
I.Item storage modules do not seem to be working with some converse type droids. The option to use item storage is not available in the radial menu. I have one report that they work with the basic LE Repair droid, and several stating that they do not work with Surgical droids. Anyone care to test all the converse droids (both regular and adv models) and give feedback as to which ones work and which do not?
J.Many of the 'level' based service modules stack. However, there arecaps in place which make stacking kind of pointless with thehigher level modules. Also,by stacking lower modules, you can achieve the same effect as a higher level module, reducing the point of using a higher level module. This is further enchanced by the cluster module bug. Also, when crafting the droid, the stacking results show values which do not take the cap into consideration. So a droid while being crafted can show a storage value of 15, but the final storage when the droid is tamed is capped at 10.
K.Nobody seems to know if the armorrating is working properly. Is Medium armor on droids acting as Medium armor should?

4.Wishlist
A.Advanced droid engineers should be able to call more then one pet at a time. I think this was the original intent as otherwise the formation commands would be rather useless.
B.Give us information on droid power levels in the examine window and/or in the datapad. Also,since droid batteries repair mind,how about using mind as the droid's power level indicator? The action pool would also work.
C.Examining droid should give thesame data as in the datapad (for the owner).
D.We really want certain droids to only be able to take certain types of modules. There have been a number of really good posts on this topic, and due to space constraints, I'll leave it at that.
E.Take another look atthe “only able to callpets in city or camp” thing. I understand the logic and personally have no problems with it. However, many disagree with it and I think it would work better if it was that you can only call a droid when not in combat, or acertain distance from a battlefield.
F.Consider droids that can survey and report back on a particular resource. Perhaps even a high-end versionwith the ability to go toother planetsto determine which resources are available.
G. Consider droids that can help maintain installations. Senda droid out to pay mantenance. Send a droid out to collect resources. Send a droid out to deliver power. There are many ways to implement this as a viable system.
H. Consider droids that can act as standalone vendors in cities, and/or droids that can act as Barkers. Perhaps even let droids deliver goods to a customer in another city or on another planet.
I. Droids to remember if they were stored or called over a logout. Running around in the middle of nowhere and logging out causes your droid to hide back in the datapad. This means having to go back to town or putting down a camp in order to recall your droid. This is undesireable.
J. Now that perma death has been removed and replaced with the pet 'vitality' system, I have to say kudos for the change. However, it doesn't make sense to give vitality packs to droids. Perhaps a DE equivalent could be used? Same deal, just a different name, and craftable by DEs?
K. There have been several complaints regarding the 5 droid in the datapad limit. While there are some compelling arguments AGAINST this wishlist item, it would be nice to at least have this limit reviewed.
L.Give us Droidekais and other combat droids.
M. Create aslicing module. This module would allow smugglers to get a boost to their slicing ability. We're not interested in putting anyone out of a job here. R2 could slice terminals in the movies, why not our droids?
N.Allow us to drop batteries into the droid's inventoryand have itrecharge itself as needed until the batteries run out.
O.Create an entertainment module akin to the existing medical module to allow entertainers to work ouside of camps, cantinas and hotels. This module would be also level 1-6 with each level giving a little extra boost to the entertainer's skill.
P.Saw a request for a training droid as seen in the movies that 'harasses' its target, pulling aggro. Thisidea is intended togive a little variety to the Novice DE's life. Could also be used as a consumable for training the combat classes.
Q.Let usname our droids through the datapad controller. Droids shouldn't need to be 'taught' a name like pets do. The name is programmed into the droid separate from the other commands.
R.Add the creator to the droid view information, not just theowner. When you look at a pistol, you seewho made it. When you look at a droiddeed, you see who made it. When you look at a droid, you SHOULD see who made it.
S.Allow droids to be re-deeded forease of transfer. Since we can only have 5 droids in the datapad, it makes it really tough forDE's to take old droids astrade-ins for upgrades (like a car). We either have to immediately re-sell the droid or delete it. Would make more sense to re-deed the droid so that itcould be sold to another customer as a 'used droid'.
T.We're tired of losing our droids due to accidental 'release' or 'transfer' commands. Give us a confirmation request to help reduce owner stupidity (I can say that because I've done it).
U.Droid "macros" came up last post. Let us create macro-like droid programs to have a droid execute a series of commands. Not sure how this would be implemented, but it is an idea.
V.Here are some ideas that people have for Protocol Droids. Allow them to have a custom converse menu, programmed by the owner so that the droid can act like a walking FAQ. Turn them into magic 8 balls. Language translator (for non-pc languages?)
W.Make the droid deeds show pictures of the droid itself rather than a silly deed icon.
X.Enough with the 'tame' thing... let us 'activate' or simply 'use' the deeds to first create our droids.

I see that the old problem with the R3 droids requiring a part that needed to be manufactured ina factory but there was a factory bug... Or something... Anyway, I see that it isn't listed. Has the problem been fixed? I want a pet R3 ^_^

Factories seem to be working fine, at least for MA and DE components, I've made hundreds of components for droids in the last week, never had to redeed the factory, or stop the schematic short, even taking items from factory crates has been working, I made a run of 94 Micro Sensor Suites using factory crates of components and it made all 94 of them just fine (why 94? Because I'd used 5 GP modules from one crate and couldn't be bothered to wait another 4-5 hours for another run of 100 to finish), I also made a run using just a single factory crate and that worked fine too.

I just hope that the few remaining factory bugs (if they're still around now) don't end up breaking them again.

I've been selling R3's for a while on Bloodfin, so i would guess it's fixed.

Yes, R3s can be made. That's a rather old bug that was corrected ages ago.

Are these following bugs fixed? I haven't made any droids in a while

1) All droid armor is AR0, it blocks damage based only on theresists. This makes it pointless to install anything more than level 3 armor in your droid, since it has 40% resists and the resists on the higher levels of armor are also 40%.

2) Droid armor will randomly loose some of its resists. Often crossing the server boundary and calling the droid again will fix this, at least temporarily. Thevery similar problem exists with personal shield generators (PSGs) btw, so it seems like a more generic problem with certain types of armor.

3) The DZ70 has only 40 HAM, but its aggressive with combat abilities - this MUST be a bug.

Also,Isuggest afew tweaksto the list:

"O.Repairmodules do not functionat all when placed in an LE Repair droid or Power droid."

We should somehowreinforce the point that this makes the LE Repair droidunable to repair anything, since repair modules don't work, and it has no native repair ability. A repair droid that can't repair - this is a perfect example of how bugged our profession really is.

"4.Wishlist
A.Advanced droid engineers should be able to call more then one pet at a time. I think this was the original intent as otherwise the formation commands would be rather useless."

Another reason for this wishlist item is that we can't use our droids with repair modules, or our power droids to repair and recharge our own droids. Since we can only have one droid out a time, we have to transfer the droid to another person before we can call another droid to repair or recharge it.

Also, maybe we should re-arrange the list with the more important bugs at the top. I'm sure the devs only spend like 5 secondsscanning this list, and if the second item down on the list isa minor problem with the name filter, the dev's brain may think "bah, these DEs have only minor problems" and ignore the rest of the list. Problems like the repair modules andmultiple crafting modules belong at the top of the list. Stuff like droid coloringand names belongs near the bottom.

Thanks for all the suggestions Daive. I'll be sure to work on a number of them for the next thread. As for ordering, I've been just adding the new ones to the bottom of the list. This way, they're kind of ordered by age. Gives us an idea of how long an issue has been on the list. And while I understand your reasoning behind ordingthem according to importance, I think it is going to cause people to debate which issues aremore important than others, and that's not what I'm aiming for. Besides, they'd be listed according to what *I* think is important. I'd rather have people comment on the bugs themselves, getting issues clarified and new issues brought to light and not have them lost in posts not intended for this thread.

Thanks so much guys & gals!^_^

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Gorantoth wrote:

T.We're tired of losing our droids due to accidental 'release' or 'transfer' commands. Give us a confirmation request to help reduce owner stupidity (I can say that because I've done it).

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Haven't been around much lately due to travel, but last time checked I thought this had been addressed, at least on non-converse type droids. Didn't they replace one of the commands with the Store command, making it so you have to actually "Destroy" the droid control in the datapad to delete the droid?

As far as I know, all they did was remove the 'store' command from the radial menu so that it was only on the datapad device. However, due to complaints, it was restored to the radial menu.

Ah, no wait... I see what you mean. Yes, 'Release' has been removed from the program menu and replaced with 'Store'. Thanks for catching that one.

Ok i have a few suggestions...Not sure if they have been touched upon or not.

Surgical droids: This should give any player some minor medical skills. I mean it has been programmed to do medical things, and it shouldnt only benefit medics. The effectiveness can be determined by the lvl of the medical module.

I had a bunch of other ideas a few days ago...but my old age has caused me to forget such things...

Surgical droids: This should give any player some minor medical skills.

This one has come up several times. Not going to fly as if that happens, the medics will all scream because they'll be cheapened as a profession. Similar feedback was received from Smugglers when we were talking about slicing modules. Modules should enhance existing abilities of a profession, not replace them. This way, DEs sell droids without causing any other profession any grief. Win win.

I read the bug list...

What about the deed not showing exactly what is in a droid that you make (IE: armor and crafting stations)?