Droid Engineer Archive
Thread: Droid Engineer Issues Designer responses
Ok, I had to throw my two cents in so this is not really anything new here but oh well, here goes.
First thing is I can understand the dev's asking us for ideas of future things to add in that will be helpful. Great. But, lets work on what we have already, and balance that out before we go off looking for new things to add. Why? So we don't lose track of something that needs attention. Now there is nothing wrong with discussing future plans now, but we need the devs to keep these two VERY different subjects apart. At the moment, we are not a very viable proffesion. We cannot make a single item that could be sold for 100k or more. As a crafter, seeing the weaponsmith make a gun that sells for 100k makes me a little disenchanted with the proffesion i chose.
Will I leave? No, I like droids. I've liked droids since the beginning of A New Hope. The first two characters we are really introduced to in the movie saga are the loveable C3-PO and R2. Droids played a major role in the galaxy in the movies, then in the books, and then in the role playing game (order subject to be wrong, im bad with timelines). They are here to stay (well not here but SWG wont stay if droids dont stay).
We have enough droids available for us to craft at the moment however they are not very useful. This should be the first and foremost attention given to the DE proffesion. I was talking to a fellow DE last night and he told me a good story of actually selling a Load Lifter to someone for 60k. At first I was shocked, thinking that this last patch actually gave the load lifter a purpose. I was saddened when he informed me it was the price the guy offered to pay and that he didnt really care that it didnt do anything just wanted it cause it looked cool. That is something that does not help us because we cannot base our livelyhood off of basically ripping someone off. (Not saying my friend actually ripped this guy off cause the guy made the offer but still...).
Modules need to not only work, but there needs to be a more explicitive system so that we DE's can know what we are building and why. At the moment, the only real way to find out what something is if you dont already know or know someone who does, is build it and try it out. That is similar to me saying Thomas Edison just built the lightbulb and said "Hrmm, I wonder what this does?" I understand this is just a light issue but wanted to bring it up yet again.
One point i want to comment on is about experimentation. I am not sure what the problem is exactly as I havent really discussed it much with others, I just see the concensus that it doesnt work properly. From personal experience, I have assumed that this meant that the experimentation skill tree under DE doesnt actually give you the experimentation points you should as i only have the last 2 skills of this tree left to make master DE and only get 1 experimentation point when i am crafting. Am I correct in thinking that this is the problem that people are talking about with experimentation? If so, then that definitely needs to be fixed asap as it was not fixed in this last patch. If the problem everyone refers to is with the actual usefullness of a finely crafted (and experimented) droid, then I really dont know as I only have 1 point to experiment with and wouldnt expect that to be that huge of a difference in quality post production.
All in all though, I have to say that I was HIGHLY saddened with this big patch and what it did to our beloved proffesion. First we get a hot fix that kills our one bot that was making us any money while leaving the big ugly creatures who lag us to hell and back in cities with all their HIGH ham that was said to be "not fair" for the droids. (explain how this is not fair for droids but fair for creatures?) Then with this patch you make the droids die and not living breathing animals? http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=deathHas to be alive to die! I am positive some dev had to have said this in atleast one meeting before the patch was rolled out. HAS TO BE...
Ok, sorry. cutting it short here, quitting time and ride is waiting. Summary, Fix PERMA DEATH then work on the rest of our bugs before you add anything else!
The offical responce was really lacking. Has this guy or even 3P0 bothered to look at the many lists of suggested changes???
He answers a question with a question....what sorta BS is that.
1. Kill perm death or add some sort of /salvage command to allow us to recoup something from the dead scrap pile.
2. Combat Droid Variation:
Just take an afternoon of from fixing minor issues and read the forums looking for one of the 100 solutions we offered up. Anything has to be better than that crap that you passed thru as a FIX on the last MAJOR patch.
If you really want to help us Q, here are some ideas I compiled from some DE and some I got myself. Please dear god use them.
http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=Development&message.id=285983&highlight=#M285983
Q-3PO wrote: 1) Droid Uniqueness and Usefulness – There are currently no inherent functions built into a droid. Add features and functions to different droids to make them each more distinct from each other.
We’ve made some changes as of the last patch, and have many more in the works. We like some of the ones you suggested in the email. What types of droids would you like to see in addition, and what functions would they have?
Ideas could include:
- Survey module: Increases range of surveying while this droid is about.
- Harvesting module: Gives a bonus to creature harvesting in range of the droid.
- SamplingModule: Increases yield of samplingwhile in range of the droid. Perhaps this could be split into a Core Drilling module (bonus to mineral sampling), Horticulture Module (bonus to flora sampling), and aPurification Module (bonus to chemical sampling)
- Bioscan module: Gives a bonus to Foraging.
- Radar Module: Increasesthe range at which creatures, structures etcare visible on radar.
- Creature Tracking module: Can be used to locate concentrations of a particular type of creature, within a rangebased onthe module level.
- Subsonicsmodule: This module gives off sounds which are sooting to creatures, helping MaskScent and genetic sampling.
- Structure Disassembly droid/module: Used to reduce the cost ofreturning buildings to deeds.
- Creature Repair module: there are already droid repair and surgical modules, why not this too?
- Courier droids: Put some items in a droid, andenter a user name (on the same planet). The droidtravels to that user's location, and that user canretrieve thoseitemsfrom it. A great boon to business-oriented crafters.
- Bacta Tank droid:A droid which could revive a recently deceased character.
- ItemRetrieval droid: retrieves items from your corpse, with varying success rate based onlevel of module. (20/40/60/80/100)
Q-3PO wrote: 4) Variation in Combat Droids – Combat Droids are too similar, and could use more variation.
We agree. What kind of Combat Droids would you like to see?
Well, the obvious choices are:
- Ranged combat droidswith a variety of differentdamage types or ranges.
- Melee combat droids with emphasis on damage
- Melee combat droids with an emphasis on soaking damage, ie with an armor bonus and perhaps a taunt ability.
That wouldn't necessarily require you to add a bunch of different droid types. For example, you could add:
- a set of optional components, made byweaponsmiths, which seta combat droid's damage type.
- A Viewfinder or Scope module which increased droid range.
- A Strength module, which increased daamge for a combat droid
- A Taunt module
Some additional choices might include:
- A module which adds a Take Cover-like ability, so you can make a sniper-type droid
- A module which adds a Feign Death-type ability, to save your droid in case of trouble.
However, before goign too far down this path, there is a big problem to resolve.
It seems to me that, as things stand, droids can only be so useful in combat without unbalancing the game, because all characters are equally good at using droids in combat. I think the only way to fix that is to makea profession or skill that makes you better at handling droids. Then droids could have a "level" like Creatures do, and people would only be able to play combat droids up toa certainlevel.
This has some nice effects. First of all, droids in the game right now just aren't very menacing, which doesn't fit welel with the genre. In Empire Strikes Back, a Probot is a force to be reckoned with; in Phantom Menace, two Battledroids are enough to scare off two Jedi. In SWG,droids can't be morethan anice add-on.A system like the one I describewould alow you to fix that.
Second, you could use the same mechanism to allow people to operate more than one droid at atime. You could allow each normalcharacter to have 15 points worth of droids in play at once, andour hypothetical new/modified skillwould increase this number. Combat droids would start at 15 and go up. Noncombat droids would allcosta fixed 15. Thus, a trained droid operator could use a repair droid on his own droids.
There are a number of options for how you'd add this skill onto the game:
- You could scatter the modidifers throughout the exisitng Droid Engineer profession.
- You could performareshuffle of the Droid Engineer profession. Merge the effects of the existing three lines into two (adjusting skill and XP costs appropriately),add a new Droid Use XP type, and add the new Droid Operation line based on this type.
- You could revampand generalize the Bounty Hunter Investigation line to be a Droid Operation line.
- You could add aDroid Operator profession. (I believe this to be the best option, but it would also be the most work.) I think that would look something like:
Prereqs: Engineering 4, Ranged Combat Support 4
Skill lines:
- Droid Efficiency (improves effectiveness of noncombat droids)
- Droid Maintenance (adds Toughness to Droids,bonus toDroid Repair, at Advanced level allows the recovery of incapacitated droids via a high-HAM-costRecover Droid ability.)
- Droid Combat (Gives +attack and +damage to droids)
- Droid Command (increases the number of droids you can have in play at once).
This is nice because it allows a noncombatant to just take the Droid Efficiency and Droid Command lines, while a pure combatant could skip the Droid Efficiency line.
AudioOrgana wrote:
Um, I don't know about you - but I haven't seen any "progress" - just things that worked broken, then fixed - that's not progress.
And perma-death was was huge step back and crippled many of our sales.
So, all I've seen is one step forward, and three steps back.
That's not progress.
Audio
I should have made myself clearer. a dev acknowledgeing that we have a big problem is progress. the last patch sucked. im not disagreeing with that.
Just came up with a little idea that might solve 2 problems at once, that or i'm an idiot.... so suggesting it anyways....
Ok, we all know perma-death is horrible, so lets take the idea of DE's repairing an incapped droid.
Put a "Droid Repair" or "Droid Recovery" skill into the Droid Refinment skill column, that way this column would be a little more worth it and maybe would get some people to balance out their progression up the class.
Make it like slicing.... the higher we get in it the better our chances of success.... 25%, 50%, 75%, 99%, 100%(at Master). The Call out the droids "corpse", we use /droidrepair or whatever on it, and then it determines chance of sucess.... if it fails... well it fails... and maybe they'll buy another one(if our droid become worth buying) if it works, hey! we havea happy customer, and this also provides us with a function possibly in the field.
I'm sure everyone has figured that the reason droids have permadeath is to get rid of the old Probot right? 
And yeahI thought that was very weird about the dark troopers noticably being nothing like droids in the game. What's also funny though is dark trooper don't even look taht much like their human counterparts... look at the sketch on the last page of the starwars data base, that will show you what dark trooper really look like. (first picture in there of the gattling gun packing droid is actually a unique mark3.) Though this maybe not be major but it's so annoying to look at then when the game does follow the set storylines.
PS I like the post about having the Rebels and Imperials look to us when they get handed a schmatic for a droid
C-type wrote:
I dont get why the devs argument about the probots that newbies from day one can get a probot and that it would be to powerfull for them.
I know exactly where this is coming from. See, before SWG, SOEworked ona little game called Everquest....
One of the worst problems Everquest has is "twinking", where an established character gives a bunch of high-end equipment to a new character. Because a high-end character can make money more quickly than a low-end character, the low-end character can climb in levels much faster than he/she should. SOE are clearly going out of their way to prevent twinking in SWG. For example, that's one of the reasons they decided to go with only one character slot.
A non-dying 3k HAM probot is definitely something twinkable, it's a huge advantage for a newbie. Sure, the newbie doesnt get XP for the damage the probot does, but the newbie can now plough through difficult destroy missions with ease, or can just stand and unload their gun into whatever the probot is tanking, getting XP much faster than if they, say, had to worry about a creaturehitting them back. Not to mention the accelerated rate at which they can gather scouting XP and harvested resources.
It seems to me that if your goal is to limit twinking, and still not have droids be a total joke, you really need to have certs (or a point system like Creature Handlers do, as I suggested above). Unfortunately, the devs seemto be going for the "droids are a total joke" option right now.
I've got a great Idea for the Loadlifters,
1) uber storage for when you move your house or guild/PA
2) retraeving resources from your mines and putting them into your house
3) mount weapons on the things (mini AT-ST's)
Astromech droids
1) when the vehicels patch is released make a socket for them for bonuses for ;speed, manuver, auto-pilot, auto repair, and navigation.
2) when the Space expantion comes out have them give bonuses to the ships
3) let them maintain your house and harvesters (i.e. maintanace) like if you have an R2 unit making the rounds the rate of degridation on the harvester goes down which reduces the cost of maintanace
Power droids
1) let them make power to maintain the harvesters too, at the very least allow us to set them to rn power form our power generators to the harvesters when they get low.
Mouse droids
1) let them be our little delivery droids, like if some one comissioned me to make something for them, I go make it then send the other player a /tell, he/she replys with grid location, I give it to the droid then goes to the other player the exchange is made (for the set amount) then the droid brings the credits back to yur house
2) let us put boms on them then send them to the target (with in range) to blowup, one sot but still fun and useful
tred wells
1) this might be in there already but let them be our in camp repair/craftingstations
2) andan advanced model would be a assembly line for scematic runs of like 15 units or less. like if a group knows they'll need a certan power-ups
Probedroids
these things have becomealmost useless I've lost 2 to perma-death
new droids
protocal droids, Ep 1 &2 battle droids,faction spesific droids like dark troopers, I suggest that the Dev's just go to the book store and pick up "the essential guide to droids" and use as meany as posible.
Droid scematics
this is kinda for all artisan types: Scematics that you can onlyget from missions or off of courpses
Someone tell me why there are pistols out there that do more damage than my probot built at almost Master DE?
Even better is these things are weaker than most combat humans. This is nuts. The amount of crap it takes to make a high level droid and all they are good for are their looks. But this Probot thing is insane. The damage is no better than a CDEF, and its all we can sell to make the credits to run our harves.