Droid Engineer Archive
Thread: Utility module concept: Installation Service Calculator module
I just wanted to get this on 'paper' while it was in my head (and let you all kick it around).
A 'calculator'.
How many times have you sat and had to run numbers (on paper) to get the right amount of money or energy to power your installations for X amount of time?? If you're like me, a lot.
That being said, I think the following might be useful and possible:
A Installation Service Calculator module:
The basic premise here is that the installed module would give a radial menu, available at ANY time (whether you have installations dropped or not).
There would be various selections for the different types of installations (houses, harvesters, etc.) that one could select.
Then, you'd also be able to input specific numbers (BER, energy, maintenance monies, etc.). This would be a tailored calculator that would basically be in-game to allow one to more easily figure whatever kind of number crunching they want when getting ready to do installation 'runs'.
I don't have details or anything on this yet. Just wanted to throw it out and see if it 'sticks' at all.
/bow
Respectfully,
Yea, I thought of that too. It seemed to make more sense to have more than just standard calculator functionality and actually build something very close to what's in place on SWGCraft (but have it right there, in-game, at your disposal).
demosthenes810 wrote:
Eh, its a thought...honestly, there should just be a /calculator around for players to use generally though.
I envision a pull-down menu for "Installation Type" and numeric entries for some of the items listed above. The calculator might then list:
- Power / Maint. needed for: 1 hour, 12 hours, 1 day, etc., etc.
- You could enter how long you want to run the installation (or maintain) and it would tell you the power/maint. needed, given the numbers you'd plugged in.
Just a quick thought...that's all.
/bow
Respectfully,
It's a good idea, I just don't know how marketable it would be.
I'm not sure if players would be willing to spend 10's of K's of credits for a droid with a module that is semi-obsolete after using it once on each type of harvester.
I usually just throw some power/maint in my harvesters and check em (since the status display seemingly is working) and if it's not enough I'll just throw a little more in.
duncje wrote:
It's a good idea, I just don't know how marketable it would be.
I'm not sure if players would be willing to spend 10's of K's of credits for a droid with a module that is semi-obsolete after using it once on each type of harvester.
I usually just throw some power/maint in my harvesters and check em (since the status display seemingly is working) and if it's not enough I'll just throw a little more in.
Coming up with marketable modules that follow the constraints we've been given (easy to code, no "free checkers") is a daunting task. I haven't been able to come up with anything, and I've been thinking about it.
yea, but if nothing else it is a stepping stone. It puts in some of the code that would be needed later on to have real harvester interface.
I just keep my harvestors at 15k power/maint when i drop them.
What I REALLY want....
Add to our crafting droid storage, so we can put the resources/components in the droids, make a schematic, put it in the droid, and then press a button, be asked for a quantity and have those resources moved to the factory. Like you have a crate of 67k ore, and you have a schematic with 13 ore and you want 200 of them, then 2600 is moved into the factory.
I spend more time hunting through my inventory, using my calc to figure out how much of each resource i need to make a run, it drives me nuts.
That's what I was thinking, but more along the lines of telling the droid what manufacturing schematic you wish to use, and how many you wish to make. It could then give you the exact resource counts for the run, along with total time. Possibly power requirements, too.
Heck, with the advanced droid brians needed to make the higher level droids it shouldn't even need to be a module. 
- examine the structure (to ask your droid how far along your factory has gotten, for example)
- access the administrator list (so you can tell your droid to give your buddy (who just begged you for 10k of steel) administrator rights to your harvester).
- access the operate machinerydialog (but with the "open hopper" button disabled) so you can check to see if the thing is still harvesting, and so you can, if the resource it is harvesting has run out, switch it to a different resource without having to be there.
- access the status dialog so you can see how much power and maintenance it has left.
- access the "pay mainentanance" dialog so you can add maintenance to the harvester if needed. with this one, they could even charge the user the same 5% transfer fee that you get charged for a bank tip if you deposit maintenance via the droid. :-) they like money sinks don't they?
but you won't have access to the "deposit power" dialog or the "open hopper" dialog, or any other dialog box that allows you to tranfer items from yourinventory into the building/harvester or from the building/harvester into your inventory. that would require that you actually be at the location.
this for me would be a great boon and I think every hard-core crafter would want such a thing. it is different than the harvester/mainenance droids that I usually see proposed.
sorry for adding a different proposal in here.
as for the calculator. i don't like the idea actually. It's fairly easy as it stands to just look at the status window and make a rough guesstimate of how much power/maintenance you need to add without having to really calculate anything. there is no real need for the numbers to be exact and hence there is no real need for a calculator in my opinion. as long as you are accurate to within +/-500 on the amount that you need to add everything is fine. and you can easily get that level of accuracy without calculating anything if you just add the amounts you need in increments of 1000. I'm certain that if in a specific situation, I ended up needing5850 power, I could easly "add 1000and then hit refresh on the status window" 6 times in a row faster than it would take me to pull out the droid, open up the interface, and entry the numbers.
maybe people would use it. TK421 would apparently. But I don't know anybody in game who would need such a thing.
duncje wrote:
It's a good idea, I just don't know how marketable it would be.
I'm not sure if players would be willing to spend 10's of K's of credits for a droid with a module that is semi-obsolete after using it once on each type of harvester.
I usually just throw some power/maint in my harvesters and check em (since the status display seemingly is working) and if it's not enough I'll just throw a little more in.
Coming up with marketable modules that follow the constraints we've been given (easy to code, no "free checkers") is a daunting task. I haven't been able to come up with anything, and I've been thinking about it.
yeah...i just deposit about 25K credits and 25K power everytime i place them and just go check them about every 4 days
This seems like a utility module with extremely limited utility .... which apparently makes it an ideal candidate for a future Publish.
As someone who makes the near-daily run out to harvesters for power/maintenance updates, this would be of very little use to me. I'd still have to remember which harvesters were 9-extraction vs. 10-extraction, etc. ... I just make sure that there's at least 3 days' worth of power & maintenance in any harvester I check, and try to check back before 3 days are up.
duncje wrote:
It's a good idea, I just don't know how marketable it would be.
I'm not sure if players would be willing to spend 10's of K's of credits for a droid with a module that is semi-obsolete after using it once on each type of harvester.
I usually just throw some power/maint in my harvesters and check em (since the status display seemingly is working) and if it's not enough I'll just throw a little more in.
Agreed.
Making this a droid feature would be wasting development time on something players would actually use.
/calculator should just be added to the game; if not, it's still easier for me to alt-tab and use my system calculator (with more features to boot) than to call a droid. This will be even more true once it takes 30-seconds to call a pet. And in windowed mode (ctrl-enter) you can even do calculations over the screen.
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