Droid Engineer Archive
Thread: Stationary Droids A Nice Addition (I think)
Here's a little something I've been thinking of lately that would make a GREAT addition to droid-engineering without handing out "extra checkers"; - Stationary Droids
Currently we only have droids that follow us around or decorative chassis which we can rename and drop in houses.
How about useful dropable droids, stationary ones?
I know this is possible, just look at the crafting stations made by architects. Dropable items can be given "skills" without the "skills" being used elsewhere (i.e. from within the backback, dropable in the wild and so on)
-Keep in mind that all of these droids in this proposal are STATIONARY and thus not movable nor tamable.
And I think all of them should require quite a lot of sub-components from other professions and/or a lot of specific resources to be crafted.
So here's what I had in mind. Maybe a little something to think about for Pub8 considering that the pub is still under developmet?
¤ Medical Droid: This droid would be able to raise the self-heal rate of people near it by a little (1.5x the standard rate or something) and/or have a max medical capability of 125. It would only be dropable in player city hospitals and player houses. No other houses (Including cantinas, cloning facilities, city halls and such).
The cylindrical FX-7 would be a great appearance for this one considering that it's an existing droid from the movies that is in fact a medi-droid.
The bonus? To lower the downtime for players, something much sought after.
¤ The Waiter Droid: This droid have a storage compartment that is openable by ANYONE. The droid would be awsome to have in any shop/cantina/house where you want to give the visitors a little something as a gift. Drop the items in there (limit of 25-50?) and let your visitors take whatever they want.
The Astromech serving droid would work wonders as this droid and that graphic is in the game already.
The bonus? A great way of giving people free items such as drinks in a cantina or small trinkets in shops without the usage of a trade window. Would also help trading between Neutral/Factioned players without the use of the bazaar or vendor.
¤ The Crafting Tool Droid: A droid that actually work like a crafting tool. Instead of using a tool from your inventory you use this droid from it's usage menu on the floor. This one might have a limit of 20-25 in effectivity compared to the 15 point limit on tools. Maybe a small percentage improvement to experimentation?
What droid would look nice as this one? Well, there're a load of the droid out there that would work. Take a pick.
The Bonus? A little something for the elite crafters out there without removing the usage of crafting tools, city specializations or skill tapes.
¤ Structure Overview Droid: This droid would be directly linked to all of a players structures. The player would add his/her name to the droid and the droid can only overview one persons structures and one person alone. Once the player name is added it's permanently linked to that person.
This way the player could overview his/hers structures from a distance to see if they're paid and powered up.
It would NOT be possible to pay the structures from this droid, just get a small report on their current status.
(i.e. Paid=Yes/No + amount, Power=Yes/No + amount, Activated=Yes/No)
How about a protocol or a "bug" droid for this one?
The Bonus? Once again, lessen the down-time to give more room for "funner" things in life/game.
¤ Ambient City Droid: This isn't really a "stationary" droid per se, but something that could be implemented to make player cities more alive. As you all know droids roam every large city in this game. Why couldn't player cities have the same? This little bugger would be a non-functional, moving droid that patrols around town much like the current NPC-droids.
The Bonus? Adding some life and star-warsyness to player cities at the cost of one city decor slot. Most Cities are very "dead" currently due to that nothing moves around. One or two trainers can be spotted, but that's it.
I'll add more suggestions as they pop up. But I for one thinks this would be a great addition and something people all over would benefit from without removing any professions functionality.
Message Edited by Pooka on 03-28-2004 12:23 PM
Message Edited by Pooka on 03-29-2004 12:10 PM
72views and ratings... but no replies?
Come on people... you must think something about this? Right?
Yes, this was talked about way back when Sintrosi was around. It's still a great idea.
Some people would pay good money just to have a static droid wandering around their house even if it didn't have any added benefit, and other uses (say, 5% reduction in structure maintainance when you have a house-droid) would make it a very marketable item.
Unfortunately, we haven't heard anything about this in quite awhile - it would be nice to know if it's even technologically possible at this point.
Audio
very cool idea... but like most good ideas it will probally get ignored... 
it would most likely fall into the architect or a cross profession (architech & DE) product...
e.g. The crafting tool droid would be an add on module to the personal crafting station.
Yes Audio, stationary droid were mensioned during Sintrosis reign. I was there too...
As for your comment on if it's techonogically possible - It has to be. At least most of the above things are. Medic bonus we know already exist in several ways such as droids and city specialization. Both has a radius where they are applicable.
And the structure overview thing should be possible too. One of the reasons to this is because every structure a person owns is linked to their name (that's why people that get forced to change name lost their structure because they're no longer the owner of it), and all structures obviously are existant even if no one is close to them so somewhere their data are stored along with the name.
House droids to lower maintenace... if so only by 2% would be SO GREAT.
RebelsHand - I agree, some of the stationary droidswill most likelybe cross-profession items and I actually think that they SHOULD. And hey, lets not get this ignored shall we? Keep on posting new ideas on stationary droids and HOW they can be implemented.
Arnwald - Too much development you say? Actually no, copy code from here - put it there - piece it together from here, there and everywhere - voila! stationary medical assistant droid! Most above examplesshould in fact be easy copy and paste developments.
Great ideas are always great, no matter how old they might be.
This is a great idea! Thank you for reviving it.
Deidre
Just a few comments I like to add.
People tend to say that it'll take too much development, aren't the developers developing DE as we speak? Both actively for Pub7 and "conceptally" for Pub8?
This would in fact just be another line to add in their protocol.
And as far as I can tell these suggestions of mine could actually be implemented in mobile droids aswell without the "extra checker"-thing. That equals one less thing to develop.
We all know that the MAIN thing that make people twitch and get bored in SWG currently is the down-time. I'm not saying we should remove down-time, that has to be in there somewhere. I'm just saying that some of above ideas would help us decrease it by a little and with that let us focus on other things.
Message Edited by Aeneus on 03-12-2004 08:28 PM
Pooka wrote:
Arnwald - Too much development you say? Actually no, copy code from here - put it there - piece it together from here, there and everywhere - voila! stationary medical assistant droid! Most above examplesshould in fact be easy copy and paste developments.
I hope it is as easy as this but I don't think so. I wish it is, oh well... hope is with us!
Anyway good ideas 
Aeneus wrote:
[...] on a serious note.... I do like some of your ideas
Pooka wrote:
Aeneus wrote:
[...] on a serious note.... I do like some of your ideas
Maybe you got some ideas of your own to add?
Honestly no, any idea I gave right now would be regergitated ideas... and it would be written in a very sarcastic manner- not to mention it would be very painful to read...
Vendor Droid works just like a regular vendor but you can place the dang thing in a city (but alas they are going with barker droids so thisvendor could be considered useful- so it wont be implemented)