Droid Engineer Archive
Thread: DE's I need two things from you please
Well, not that I expect you to read this, TH, being 9 pages in, but here goes:
I agree that Sintrosi has accurately summed up the concerns regarding this profession.
I think the DE "plan" that was presented is little more than the results of a quick brainstorming session. It isn't a "plan" at all. I'm also not on board with many of the items suggested.
I don't think that DEs need droids that only they can control. That doesn't help us in business, and it doesn't seem to follow logically. There is no skill involved in using droids. They simply obey commands.
I think combat droids should be available to anyone. However, I also think that combat droids should be there to be a part of a battle strategy, not the strategy itself.
I think it is a good idea to give MSE droids some extra functionality, but rather than bombs. I would like to see them as messengers or delivery droids. Basically, give them an item (i see themas being able to carry one and only one item)and have them deliver it to another player. I see this as a one time use item - the MSE would poof after delivery.
I would like to see the droids move away from being "skins" that can hold any module. Right now, there is no reason to make more than one type of droid body. Or, if the present system still stands, I would like it if certain types of droids received a bonus when they have certain modules installed. For example, aSurgical Droid should get a bonus to medical when there is a medical module installed.
I'd like to see a small amount of UXP from someone programming a droid that I made.
I'd like experimentation and resource quality to mean something in crafting droids. I want to see my experimentation affecting the droid's psychology and physical stats.
I'd like droids with personality chips to be chattier. Make a reason to have a chip installed. That would add to the "fun factor" tenfold for me.
Sorry but I don't agree with most of this..........
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Combat droids. We want to add Droid Modules that will convert many droids and give them combat abilities. ONLY Droid Engineers will be able to make and use these modules. Setting expectations, these changes involve a lot of people and its not something that’s going to happen fast.
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I don't want any of the existing droids changed to take combat modules, that's just plain stupid. Simply improve the Probot combat ability and give us some decent droids like IG Assassin and Droidekas!!!
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Droid engineers should be able to take out more than one droid at a time, but only one combat droid. The big challenge is integrating multi-droid controls. It’s too early to tell what the impact is going to be.
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Yes we should be able to take out more than one droid at a time, but if CH's can bring out more than 1 combat pet, why can't DE's??
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Increase Repair Droid functionality. What is planned is to Make Repair Droids work similarly to current pet healing standards. One of the ways we would make Droids more star warsy is to give the Repair Droids expendable droid items to charge up.
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What??? repair mods DO work, the only thing that doesn't is the LE Repair Droid, which should have the repair ability inherent, but doesn't!!! for gods sake do not make expendable repair items, droid batteries are enough hassle to deal with!!!, and pls for pity's sake, increase the time batteries last for!! Repair mods dont work in converse droids....that's their only problem...
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There is a perception that Power droids do not work. To address this, we could give Power Droids the ability to add power to a harvester and attach directly to the facility. Functionally, maintenance fees would go up a bit, but they would not require power. The Power Droid WOULD degrade over time and would have to be replaced.
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Power droids work fine!!, I use them to charge other people droids all the time, there is no need to change this droid as it works fine, if DE's had the ability to call more than one droid it would work even better, coz you could rechargeyour other droid without getting batteries out!!.........again Increase battery life so our EG-6's last longer..
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I'm an old school Master DE, and this is my take on what should be changed/fixed.........
MSE = Remove the ability to insert General Socket Clusters thus preventing overpowerd MSE's. (Certification for All)
DZ-70 = Give the droid inherant ability to track npc's or to track a players location.
(Certification for All)
Surgical Droid = Give the droid the inherent ability to slowly heal group members wounds and/or to heal group members from incap if it has stims stored....
(Certification for Medic/Doctor proffesions)
LE Repair Droid = Give droid the inherent ability to repair droids, like the functionality of a repair module.
(Certification for DE)
Binary Load Lifters = Give the droid the inherent ability to hold 200 items.
(Certification for All)
Protocol Droid = Fix customisation so colors work, give the droid ability to accept custom text strings from owners so that when another player converses with the droid, the droid will reply with the programmed text string.
(Certification for All)
Probot = Increase HAM, Increase Damage
(Certification for DE, Combat proffesions, and maybe a weak version of the probot for non combat proffesions)
Seekers = Fine as they are
EG6 = Fix color customisation so colors store when re-called
(Certification for DE, Artisan (if they gonna power harvestors etc))
R2 = Fix color customisation so colors store when re-called. (Add functionality for Space Expansion)
(Certification for All)
R3 = Give inherant ability as a weapon/droid crafting station.
(Certification for Artisan)
R4 = Give inherant ability as a food/chemical crafting station
(Certification for Artisan)
WED = Give inherant ability as a structure/furniture crafting station
(Certification for Artisan)
And before you do any of the above..................Give us some new COMBAT DROIDS................All this talk about balancing CH, why not balance DE with CH, even if that's not possible at least give us some Droidekas or something..........DE is getting old, and fast.......we don't just need fixes, we need somthing cool and special like combat droids.
Thanks for listening =)
Thunderheart wrote:
There was enough resistence to the rough plan to warrant reassessing things and thats what Im doing.
Thanks guys, looks like we are gonna have to wait even longer... sigh.
-Azerin Dangerflirt
Colonel, Imperial Army
You reduce half of the CH Call Level of 70 (or 60) to 35 and let them have 1-2 pets out at once. Bam. Your fixed. Now just think of skins for your droids and start typing up your new schematics.
I would imagine that when the buffalo is empty, it's time to get another beer. *wink*
Karae Harper Ranger/Gunfighter TOG
Valcyn
Thunderheart wrote:
1. I need to know if you agree or disagree with Sintrosi's Plan
2. I need to know if you agree or disagree with the rough DE plan in general
Also, please post the changes you would make to the DE plan. Thanks
1) I generally agree with Sintrosi, but am not sure what her plan is.
2) I agree with the DE plan presented last week, with these caveats:
a. We need our bugs fixed first. The ones on Gorantoth's List and the mundane ones.
b. We need specialization. The Combat droids should be the only droids which accept 'combat modules'. The Repair Droids should be the only droids which accept repair modules. Surgical Droids should be the only droids which accept medical modules. Their functions need to be kept in line with the Star Wars Universe as much as possible. When the Space Expansion comes out, the Astromechanics have a place on the ships.
WHATEVER YOU DO NOMORE MASTER ARTISAN PARTS.
IT will be nice if you cut down on the need of master artisan parts in items we already have.
limit certain modules to certain frames, DONOT let lvl 6 stuff go into a mse droid.
THis is all been said before, i agree with the others, please read the forums.
I still like my binary lifter droid idea, get rid oflosing moneyin moving harvestors or structures. If you have one you do not lose money.
Lari-Ko Master Droid Eng (retired)
Tempest
Some very simple things quickly.
Raise probots to prenerf, Still less then ch pets.
Vehicles that are in developement. GIVE DE one. we have been the step children, throw us a bone. And i dont mean co dependant. Swoop bikes should be de and de alone.
Please work on fixing the bugs.
Your plan some decent thoughts, IE power droids etc. I do not want to be a mechanical ch though.
Future:
Improved combat droids for all to use. Cert people based on weapon exp. DE should have top certification for anything they make, but others could be certified to use lvls of droid based on a first line combat master cert.
There are some really good posts on ideas etc i would be happy to compile and pm you if you like to shorten, but they are already there.
Concensus, seriously people are getting tired of haveing to play the forumns rather then the game. There is a HUGE concensus already in teh forumns as to what people would like. If you do nothing more then read the sticky parts at top i fell you would have a very good feel for what everyone would like.
Then develop a plan of action.
We know it will take time, but man can you at least give us a decent plan based of sin and 100's of other posts over the last 3 months.
I think if you give us a viable plan of action you will as holo always puts so nicely thank us for our patience.
And frankly drop the ch attention. My God since day one they have been the unnamed gods of ose and frankly i dont care one way or another if they are TOTALLY overpowered. Let them be untell we get at min our bugs fixed.
Thanks
The things I would most like to see is...
1. More combat droids, ie. more actual droids like IG assassin, Droideka, Battledroids
2. No exploding MSE droids... that is (insert random negative descriptive here)
3. Droid engineers should be able to have multiple droids out. Actually, anyone should be able to have droids around doing what they do (protocol, repair, power, maintenance, etc.). Droids should be world persistent.
-DD
Boy TH welcome to "The other side of the fence". I'm sure you have your hands full and it makes me glad to see of all people they hired you for this position "Fire em up!" 
. That aside I'm afraid that of all the professions you just may have picked Pandora's Box with this one. 
So lets get started.
1) Combat Droids
I would really like to see this handled as follows, allow us to craft and sell these droids. Have them level limited or certs needed depending on the combat level of the droid. Allow us to craft certain combat droids for ourselves that only we as de's can use and they must be better quality then whats available to non de's (let's not remake the novice ch nor the two tree ch mistakes with this). Also as a DE I would like to bring out multiple droids at once (after all I'm a DE and should be able to control them). I dont see these droids so much as modules to add to droids we have but more as new droids to create ( you allready have the art assets for some). moduels are nice to beef some up but are not the cure all.
2) Multiple Droids Out
Where do I even begin with this, I touched on it some in combat droids, and only one combat droid out for a master is...well just plan silly, I'm a master de and should be able to control more then one combat type. On others I think its also silly for me to have to wonder around Coronet or other cities in search of someone to heal my droid (black bars , I only wish we could actually heal our droids) if were allowed to pull multiple droids we can then repair our own. (Something like a mechanic being able to fix his own car)
3) Huh ?
Seems the post went all over the place onceit got onto repair droids so I'll sum up here and add a few things.
I would really like to see power droids work in the way you mentioned, tho in order for them to sell they must be able to do two things. First the rate they power the harvs need to be equal or better then if a PC put power in him/herself. Secondly, the PC should be able to program which of his/her harvs they want powered , drop the droid in the city closest to the harv and allow the power droid to make its way to the harv attaching it self.
BLL's these should be made to work in a simular fashion as the power droids, only to be able to retrieve resources. These things take tons of materials to build and have no use other then being eye candy, also I can see a combat version of the BLL as one of their uses.
Modules , we could use a slice module for our r2's to better help slicers, entertainment modules for entertainers. The list could really go on but I'm a bit pressed for time this morning. Have a great day!
Sorry but that is just a stupid idea, very very stupid.
It's just like saying that we should certify pets/combat-droid to high-level combat classes because a pet can simply replace a player-fighter.
Surgical droids are NOT a bad thing, they are a good good thing that needs to be implemented.
You can have pets to fight for you, then you should be able to have pets that heal.
Sure, they will most likely not be as good as a player, but who cares if they are?
Thunderheart wrote:
Hey there night owls
Ill be the first one to tell you that I am not a crafter. I'm sitting here reading your pains, your desires and your angst, but the commentary for what you want seems very individualized andvery limited in what you want. You'vedone a fantastic job of telling me what you dont want, but only a few put effort inwhat they DO want and it left me withoutthe impression of a central direction that will suit most of your purposes.
We're a bunch of individuals, each with our own ideas. Anyone who centralized our ideas would not be representing each of us. Game development is not a democracy. The designers need to look at as many ideas as they can, and then implement those ideas which are in line with theirOWN vision. To do otherwise would probably distort the game well outside of a Star Wars template.
This doesn't mean that there aren't good ideas on this board. Sintrosi hascompiled threads to which many of us have contributed, on several occasions. Though I can't give you a link right now, there's probably one stickied at the top of this forum.
My favorite idea, which I would like to know is at least heard, is the idea of a droid delivery mission. Give the droid a bunch of waypoints, and let him deliver stuff for you. Kinda like this:
1. Goto Waypoint 1
2. Allow Item Storage Bob
3. Wait 600 seconds.
4. Goto Waypoint 2
5. Allow Item Storage Gerald
6. Wait 600 seconds.
7. Goto Waypoint Home.
ok, TH, this coming from an old beta DE and borderline crack addict player now
what the DE profession needs:
more combat droids- different models plus make it so other droids can be "modified" to become combat droids, think of the droid in the darth maul book shadow hunter(i think) that was owned by the information broker, nothing about that droid was normal, it looked like a protocol droid, but it packed one hell of a punch.
yes certs for certain droid types of higher power are needed, but i dont even know how to implement it
droids should be usuable by anyone, theyre droids, theyre programmed to obey, not taught like creatures, granted there should be some DE specific droids though, just to perk up there profession. i like the one guys idea of giving master medic a cert for a droid that auto heals people, that seems reasonable.
erm what next, going into making droids more usable and specific, say give master combat classes the ability to hand their droids a weapon related to their mastered weapon profession, i.e a pistoleer gives his droid a fwg5, a rifleman hands his droid a laser carbine etc, this adds alot of functionality but kinda keeps the droids in check because only masters of combat professions can do it.
and of course add more things to the r-units, like maybe give them a permanent slicing tool, or numerous people suggested that a smuggler be able to use it as a mobile shop for spices(which would make more sense than having a fixed loc to go buy, this stuffs illegal afterall) something like that.