With the upcoming droid publishes, there is a lot to talk about and I know everyone is curious about how this is all going to shakeout.fficeffice" />

Where we were

Back in November, when the high level discussions about the future of SWG’s development were taking place, the development team was hard at work with player cities and vehicles. JustG, Shug, Blair, Runesabre, Q-3PO and many others worked to create a new vision and a new direction for SWG in 2004. The core of that change was to create a theme for each publish as well as establish a sustainable development/service environment. The first few steps in the thematic direction included the Imperial Crackdown and the Droid Invasion. The team was excited because there were a bunch of combat droids that the art team had produced, and everyone wanted to get them in the game.

The Droid Invasion would have two primary stages. The first stage was to add combat functionality to the existing set of droids. This would create the underlying foundation for all future combat droid functionality. The second stage would be to put as many combat droids out while making the most out of the available development time.

Typically, design drives the majority of the schedule. Art and some programming tasks fall out of the overall design direction as part of integrating a design feature. The developers start adding the art assets into the game by connecting to movement systems, animation logic systems, combat systems, crafting systems, low level program functions and many more. Now, under-the-hood, droids are droids. The crafting, the modules, and all of the programmed and scripted elements are all intertwined. As such, the effort to give combat functionality to the existing set of droids was more to get things ready for a measured, consistent droid invasion than it was to give combat functionality specifically to humanoid droids and astromechs (In the end, the combat functionality the Publish 7 droids will have is very much in line with the context of droids in the galaxy at that time. They have a bit of utility and helpfulness, but not the big powerful (and illegal) combat droids).

Moving into December/January, I posted a development thread about the possibility of a new Droid Handler profession (over the course of that discussion, the name “Droid Commander” came up and stuck because it sounds neat. ) During that process, the Droid Engineers had communicated to me that they preferred to remain a crafting profession. In doing so, the developers turned to their alternative solution of creating a type of mini-profession as opposed to adding a droid handler tree or certifications to the existing Droid Engineer profession, and the Droid Commander was born. This new profession would basically work like a Creature Handler, but would handle droids…and thus began the big debate.

I read the threads and counted up all of the opinions and 2/3’s of the community basically said, “we want additional functionality in the existing droids” or “we want utility droids”. We did too, but basically there was enough time to do either utility droids or add the combat droid profession, but not both and that created a really difficult choice. So we’ve all read the threads, the forums, had meetings and strongly debated the issues internally. We’ve talked about all the possibilities and what we can do in the amount of time we have.

There are lots of pros and cons here. On one hand, the Droid Commander was very flashy and exciting and would add a lot of combat droids into the game. The DE economic need would be answered by droid commanders buying their droids and low level players would also have a need for regular droids with combat abilities (the existing droids that are slated to get combat module functionality in Publish 7). It wouldn’t address the DE problems directly, but it would provide alternative solutions. The downside is that it would add another profession into the game and the DE’s are left without the utility droids that they have been patient in requesting. There are a great many permutations of the debate, but that generally represents the two sides. (There is the third angle of doing both by adding in the combat droids with the certification, but that’s a lot messier than it seems. I’ll try to explain it in a post this week or next, but I want to keep it out of this post so as not to further confuse the issue).

In short, the development team was strongly divided but all angles were considered. The direction we are going is the DE requests about the utility droids, and we are committed to that path. So for Publish 8, we are going with addressing the existing droid functionalities and creating as many interesting Utility Droid Modules as possible. Another aspect to consider is that there will be a solid foundation combat droid in the game in a future publish.

Where we are going

Here is a recap of the Droids and Droid Engineer changes made in publish 6 along with our direction for Publish 7 and Publish 8:

Publish 6

· Probot HAM was adjusted, making it a low-to-medium level combat droid

· The DZ70 droid was increased from level 1 to level 6, making it a more effective low levelcombat droid.

· Module Clusters were fixed to prevent cluster nesting, making different types of droid chassis have a real relevance to the Droid Frames.

· Repaired the instance of multiple crafting stations in a single droid negating the crafting

modules in the droid causing only one of the modules to work in that case. Now all different types of crafting modules will function properly instead of over-riding each other.

· Advanced Binary Load Lifters now have generic module capabilities

· The Examine window for droids will now reflect proper attributes if a droid has combat abilities

and will not display combat attributes if they do not have combat capabilities.

· Item Storage Module 2 and Data Storage Module 2 reflect the correct item name

· Protocol Droids have a service module

· Droid storage compartments are now using droid experimentation rather than artisan.

· Droid customization tool now gives droid crafting experience points instead of general

experience points

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