Droid Engineer Archive
Thread: What if....Droid Experimentation worked
I've been a Master DE for about a week now, and have a couple of skill-enhancements that offer a bonus to Droid Experimentation and such. How many other DEs have been able to produce an Advanced Probot with 824 HAM and 56-58 damage. I've been able to produce one so far and I am going to try to produce another such 'Amazing' result. Ok, so this isn't much of a break through, or improvement, but it has started me thinking about the subject of this thread.
All DE and many droid enthusiast would love to see the return of the, now, mythical pre-nerf probot. What I would like to see instead is the fixing of the experimentation system. I try to make the best parts that I can for each of my droids and have at best gotten a mechanical rating of 5. Well, all of those 5's eventually add up and produce the above mentioned 'UBER' Probot. What will happen if our experimentation started creating parts rated at 10, 15, or even goodness forbid 20. We would end up with a Probot that could actually dish out, as well as take, damage like the Probots of old.
Most of the posts that I have read deal with wanting new droids, which I am all for, but I think the issue starts a little more 'basic' than that. Since it is becoming painfully obvious that DEs are taking a back burner compared to a lot of the combat professions, for good or bad, I think we should start letting our voices be heard in regards to fixing something as basic as Droid Experimentation, instead of focusing on something that would take a lot more time to fix, or re-write.
Just think, with experimentation fixed, novice DEs could actually have a combat droid that they could sell to the 'younger' adventures. What 'new' character could turn down a DZ70 that is being offered for 3.5k and has 305 HAM and does 40-60 damage, has extra storage and a medical module installed? Of course I just made up these numbers, but imagine the possibilities of being able to experiment using the best materials and being able to produce an Adv Probot that can do its owner proud and stand steel to claw with a Creature Handlers pet of the same level.
I say we quit whinnying and hoping to the future for some patch that will give us Droidekas and start making it known that we want experimentation fixed instead. I don't know about you, but if I could offer that R2 unit in blue, I would sale about 2 more a day.......
I'd like to say that I agree with this post. I think that somehow, between crying nerf and asking for add-on's, we've forgotten the things that we alread have that are not working properly. Experimentation as it stands does very little. Experimentation is one of the things that really sets one droid appart from another simialr model. It is based on finding good resources, having good crafting stations, and the patience and skill to pull it off. A lot of work can go into these droids. But right now, they are 5-10 HAM in difference. This is not good, especially for all that work. Compare this with WS who make better than average weapons. It would defeintely make droid crafting much more interesting.
Dremon Ulthe,
Master Artisan, Shadowfire
I have made a 822 HAM 52-62 damage Probot when not even master, have yet to make one as good even as a master, go figure.
But what they really need to do is make it actually work. 0% qual on a probot =500 HAM 10-20 damage, 100% qual = 5000 HAM 100-200 damage. Thats what I would like to see. And give us the points that every other crafting class gets to experiment with. We may not be able to make 5000 HAM probots, but it would be nice is we could make them in the 3-4k HAM range with damage in the 150 range. That way we could compete with CHs. And there would be less of a demand to add new battle droids, and they could actually spend some time designing them and getting it right the 1st time.
The amount of experimentation blocks is correct, compared to the other Elite crafting classes, if I have heard correctly. What is not working is the actual ability to experiment effectively. Take a look at any of the other 'tool' crafting Elite professions, such as Armorsmiths or Weaponsmiths. When they experiment, their creations improve by a noticeable percentage when an Amazing success result is achieved. A Droid Engineer can get 2 Amazing successes on an Advanced Probot and still ended up with a HAM of maybe 825 and max damage of 59 (highest that I have personally crafted).
Something that was pointed out to me after this post was created, was that even if an Adv Probot has a HAM of 824 in the datapad, it still only has a HAM of the base 820 when a mouse over is done of its on screen HAM bar. Does this mean that the Probot only does 50 damage, regardless of results received during experimentation. If this is the case, then that would mean that there is possible a Minimum/Maximum cap in place on all droids and droid parts that has been created to limit the functionality of each droid. By this I am of the mind that experimentation is far worse than was though and the only reason that the droids function at all is due to a 'set' value. Try crafting a few Droid Repair Modules and experimenting on them. The value never changes regardless of effect, that I am aware of. The only Modules that seem to effected by experimentation are the crafting modules, but this is a most difficult hypothesis to prove.
On a side note, I believe that the Cluster Module is currently working the way that it does, as a sort of balance for the current state non-specific droid types. The clustering allows a creative Droid Engineer, the chance to actually make a few credits by selling a droid or two that someone can find a use for. I also believe that stacking of modules was intended to allow all Droid Engineers the chance to make a better droid, even at less than Master status. I have heard comments that droids with this stacking will become useless on the day that the stacking is removed, but I don't agree because of the previous track record of droid functionality. Did pre-nerf Probots lose their HAM and attack damage? When droid within droid nesting was patched, did any of the droids that were nested just simply disappear? Did the item storage on droids crafted before the current 10 item limit change? (I'm not 100% sure on this answer since it was capped before I had a couple of droids with storage for myself.) You decided for yourself on this one.
I also believe that having more than one crafting station on a droid was intentionally not meant to work. We all know, I hope, that when you try to use a droid with a crafting station near another crafting station of any type, the droid crafting station will stop functioning. If you could put more than one Crafting station in a droid, then someone out there would end up clustering them all together and selling them on a MSE just to under cut the rest of the DE market.
All of the above that has been written is nothing more than hypothesis and conjecture on my part, since we have yet to have a correspondent or developer deny or confirm any of this -- to my knowledge--, but I've had chance to chat with a few in the profession and most of the parts that I have brought up are generally agreed with. And as I spoke of in the first post in this thread, to ask for something more than what we have now, such as more droids, is foolish unless the current issue of non-functional Experimentation is taken care of foremost.
I decided to take refinement 1 to see if I could get any difference in that percentage but to my disappointment I'm still getting about the same failure rate when I try to experiment. It makes it pointless for my to experiment because more times than not I end up with a crappier number(whatever it means) than if I just skipped experimenting.
Quality experimentations should effect HAM (currently they don’t)
Efficiency experimentations should effect ho hit and damage (currently they affect HAM in a range of 10 points)
Individual modules should maintain their modifiers after the final build. A well crafted weapons crafting module should have visible and decent crafting modifiers (nothing like a well crafted station, of course).
Armor resists should be based one the quality and effectiveness of the armor module. Quality to represent the durability of the armor (plates should need replacing), and effectiveness to represent the resists. Armor level will be based on The schematic used, and caps will be in place so a crappy lvl 2 module is always better than the best lvl 1 module (so players can easily decide which is better at a glance).
Modules should include a HAM boosting module and a damage boosting module.
With just this SMALL list of changes, there would be a lot more variety in our combat probots and other potential future droids.
My question is how far up the refinement line do you have to be not to get a >50% failure rate on experimenting.
I decided to take refinement 1 to see if I could get any difference in that percentage but to my disappointment I'm still getting about the same failure rate when I try to experiment. It makes it pointless for my to experiment because more times than not I end up with a crappier number(whatever it means) than if I just skipped experimenting.
Failures has more to do with the crafting station you are working on (NEVER use a droid... who knows what their modifiers are), and the malebility ratings of the materials being used.
Just dont bother experimenting till your a master DE. It does not matter until that level.
Drashk, Im a master DE and a master Weaponsmith, and no, DEs do not get the experiment points of other high level crafters. As a Master WS i get 10 count em 10 experiment points, as a DE I get 5, yep that's right 1/2 the experiment points of a WS.
Now seeing that experimentation for DEs will afect your final prduct by 2-3% anyway, its no big deal at the moment. But its just another symptom of how poorly thought out and implimented DEs were right from the start. And the only patches we have seen, have either made our prducts even worse, or were patches to fix things for DEs that prevoius patches broke.
How long do we have to wait for REPAIR DROIDS TO ACTUALLY BE ABLE TO REPAIR!!!!!! Its things like this that have the DE community feeling like SOE is not even aware of our existence.
marsx wrote:Failures has more to do with the crafting station you are working on (NEVER use a droid... who knows what their modifiers are), and the malebility ratings of the materials being used.
I forget the numbers of my instruments but my crafting tools are the best a master artisan can make and the crafting station, while not the absolute best is around 15? if I recall correctly and I still get >50% failure rate percentage. I see NO difference in the failure rate percentage when I use my droid crafting station. And if I create any artisan product with as many experimentation points as I'm allowed I get about a 5% failure rate. I can't remember what my failure rate was when I started artisan but something doesn't seem right here.
I'm yet to become a DE, I figure if I take my time with it, (a little grinding here and there) by the time I start being able to make something SOE might get around to fixing it too.
From what I've seen so far in crafting is that experimentation is everything. If thats not even working with DE's then whats the friggin point? Seriously I don't think you could get a more gimped class if you cut off our feet.
Either the devs are hard at work tryin to create new functions for DE's (I wonder who'll get to build vehicles and ships??) or they're pretending we don't exist.
Well i just found a huge problem. Extrusive Ore is nowhere to be found. I asked a few other DEs and they told me it was taken off the server. If this is the case, PLEASE put it back, we cant build any droids other then MSE and DZ70's without it. This leaves the DE class with no income. I cant speak for all servers, Im on Flurry. If this is like this on other servers its a big problem. If its a flurry only problem, then we would like it to be fixed. I understand the need to rotate in and out resources. But taking a resource that is specifically asked for in a recipie is a way to get people very upset. Please either put the resource back, or change the Schematic to just require low grade ore.
Diji Spiritstalker
Droid Engineer, Bio Engineer, and Merchant of Mos Entha