Droid Engineer Archive
Thread: Am I, the Only One, that still Wants Combat Droids ?
Haruspex77 wrote:
Mastering multiple professions was part of the design. It is certainly not a bug that a Master of both TKA and Rifleman can hit a mob (or player) at a distance, and if it doesn't drop put the rifle away and finish it.
There is a bug thatwhere some combinations got overlaping defensive mods and became invulnerable which is fixed with a cap on TC, I suspect that some of the combinations that add together a little too well will get nerfed as well as the combat balance progresses.
But that doesn't change the design that players were given enough skillpoints to master multiple professions and were expected to find ways to make them work better than having just one. Learning another profession to get some skill mods that help in your primary is part of the design. Scout skills give you an advantage when kiting, by design. Medic skills give you an advantage in all combat since you can heal yourself, by design,
Crafting skills don't give any advantage in combat right now. There is no particular reason why they shouldn't, except nothing of that sort has been released yet. Droids would be a good fix to that gap. It won't diminish the crafters, but it will compensate for the combat penalty they suffer today.
There is a reason why crafting skills don't give any combat advantages, its the same reason that rifleman doesn't give you any advantages in pistols or BH doesn't give you any advantages in medic, because they are two completely seperate things. Crafting in no way or shape implies combat. There is such a thing as balance, and this means that any one profession only gives bonuses in its area of expertise. A crafters area of expertise is crafting, a combat profession's area of expertise is killing eachother, you can be the best droid engineer, architect, weaponsmith, or whatever other character you want on the server, but it means you can only master 1 and a half combat professions as well... I'm sorry if you don't think thats enough, but thats the way the game is set up. They aren't changing the skillpoint cap or the foundation of the game anytime soon (and be thankful, otherwise things would probably shut down for a couple months to get it all changed), so live with it.
Yes, I know I'm repeating the same thing over and over, but it just doesn't seem to be getting through.
Jenden wrote:
[snip]rifleman doesn't give you any advantages in pistols or BH doesn't give you any advantages in medic,
Are we playing the same game? My alt has rifle and pistol skills and gets a lot out of the combination, a powerfull longshot with a close range weapon for when it doesn't oneshot them. Each gives an advantage to the other. BH skills would be wonderful for that poor medic now, he constantly gets flagged and then killed off quickly, it would be nice if he could defend himself now after ill-advised healing. But he will soon become quite powerful in combat, so its not a long term problem.
All combat skills support each other to some extent. The skillpoint system is to keep players from getting too many of those"checkers" and using the interaction to dominate the game -- especially by making the quests and mobs trivial. The only exception to that skillpoint logic is those few professions that are now completely without any combat benefit, they are the ones that should get the use of droids to compensate.
Jenden wrote:
There's a difference between skills complementing eachother and skills giving benefits to one another. The skills I listed complement eachother, just as DE complements just about any other profession. It can earn you a good reputation on the server, earn you money, and help you form contacts with other crafters. All these things complement just about any other profession, in the same way that the other rifleman/pistoleer medic/BH complement eachother, it provides more diversity.
DE does not, in fact, complement any combat profession, unless you want to count the way tieing flys relates to fishing. It does give you something to do when you aren't fighting, but that doesn't really count as a "complement" in any meaningful sense.
I picked the rifle/pistol example for its extreme lack of contraversy, but even that is a lot stronger that the kinds of irrelevancies you mention. Earn money? Any half way decent combat professional can earn lotsmore per hour than the average droid engineer, even if he doesn't have harvesters running while hedoes missions.
The rifle/pistol combination lets you run missions you couldn't do with just one of those. What does DE add to anything you might do in combat -- nothing. At least the combat ability helps as a DE, if you encounter spawn when you go out of your house. No crafting adds anything to any combat, because a non-crafter can buy anything the crafter can make they find of use. Finding those rare circumstances where crafting in the fieldhas some combat valueis a real exercise in imagination, in practice it never happens.
There are lots of cross benefits between combat capabilities. I have heard of some, and know there are more that are supposed to work and are not bugs.While I am not clear on just why pistoleer's want Swordsman skills, the benefits between smuggler and pistoleer are very clear, and obviously intended as evidenced by the common experience. I know some of these are at least controversial, but these kinds of interactions are all over the place now. Some are a matter of battle mechanics, some are skill mods you get in one profession that are of value in another.
Medic is certainly valuable in combat to stim yourself and friends during the battle, as well as dragging incaped players out of harm's way and (at high Doclevels) resurecting them. CM of course has powerfull weapons as well. Scout has direct benefits against creatures, and"terrain negotiation"for kiting, and those get better in Ranger.
As a result, a single combat mastery only leaves you mid-level, and no Master crafter is going to be playing the same game as a character who avoided wasting skillpoints in areas useless to combat.Despite some claims, there should be content they cannot access and groups where they are not welcome. If decent combat droidsbecome available as a result of those skillpoints, they will be able to play the same game. How well depends on how good those droids are.
Gee, I didn't think I was asking, the answer is clear: The skillpoints you put into any crafting profession do nothing for combat and therefore your ability to access any combat related content.
Jenden wrote:
You keep asking what DE can help you with for combat, my question is what does DE have to do with combat? Why should it help you with combat? Its a simple choice, if you enjoy building droids then be a DE, if you want to go out and shoot stuff, be a combat profession, if you want to do something inbetween, do something inbetween. If you want to do everything, start up a character on another server or live on test center (get 3 characters there, that should be enough to keep you happy). You have quite a few options. Anyone who wants to be a DE in order to make droids for others has exactly one option, be a DE. As I've said before, the devs are not going to change the foundation of the game, so what you are asking for is essentailly to destroy someone elses profession for one you prefer. If you want to ask for that go ahead, but don't say it won't be hurting anyone. If you think the devs can/will change the game so fundamentally, go for it, but not on these forums.
Some, as 'DE' 'Role's, want to use droids. In our cartoon lives. For Utility, and 'Adventure'.
I saw DE, as making myself custom tweeked, droids of all sorts. To Use.
Any 'DE's Feel that way ?
If this means for our combat worthyness, that we need to buy a seperate 'DC' skill. Then it would still be my path.
But, it is better tucked in to the skills I have. It does not imbalance the 'checker count'. and would allow me further option to be a well rounded char.
It would not limits the 'pure crafter's ability to be a fuller profession, in that 'bent'. The droid using DEs will spend thier auxilliry skillpoints in skills supportive of thier interest. They, will tend not to, have the Biz skills, the supportive other craft skills.
You pure crafters might end up with better biz if you let the wierd DEs go and hunt.
A character with master <insert favorite non-hybrid combat profession here> can easily be usefull in a group. Yes, you may not be able to solo as well as someone with TKA/pistoleer or whatever combo, but they can't build droids. You are getting some benefit from you're skillpoints, you get the ability to create droids.
Ok, I'm done with this, I know they're not going to be changing the core of the game anytime soon, so have fun with you're dreams.
BoberFett wrote:
How about just getting rid of professions completely?
Let everybody use every weapon with perfect accuracy and do anything they want, we can all use CL150 [snip rant]
Absurd? Yes, but so is your idea that crafters should somehow be granted combat abilites. What part of "Crafting is as much a part of the game as combat" do you not understand?
Apparently you do not understand why unlimited combat capability is absurd: because it would require much harder to defeat NPCs if there was going to be any non-trivial content for groups of maxed out combat characters. There has to be a limit to total combat effectivness that any character has, and any increase has serious consequences.
Crafting, and the playereconomy it is part of is indeed part of the game, but it is parallel to, not an extention of, combat as you seem to suggest. In some sense they are two different games played on the same platform. The economy game can be played by combat characters as well, and I would suggest that they have some advantages because of their professions (in safe travel, dropped items,and inability of mobs to block harvesters). In compensation they havefew disadvantages that require only a few skillpoints to overcome. Bus 3 does everything important but merchant tents and global ads for one location.
Crafters, however, are shut out of much of the quest, hunting, dungeon, and PvP content without massive investments in skillpoints. They can be carried by friends, but that is like a rich character funding a newbie except the newbie can never progress without dropping crafting. Adding combat ability via droids to their abilities doesn't take anything away from anyone else, and doesn't force harder NPCs. It simply opens more of the game to those characters.
If you don't care about the rest of the content, there would be nothing to force you to buy a droid and go out of your house. I am sure that there are some who like sitting and clicking between visits from customers. They would be unaffected, but those of us who want more from the game could have it.
Haruspex77 wrote:
those of us who want more from the game could have it.
I saw DE, as making myself (and others) custom tweeked, droids of all sorts. To Use.
Any 'DE's Feel that way ?