Droid Engineer Archive

---

Star_Ranger wrote:

I only see THREE real options to this discussion:

Stong Droids: Requiring a separate profession and in line with CH's (very limited market).

Moderate Droids: upto CL 25 or such available to Crafters who dabble into a DE tree (medium market).

Weak Droids: upto CL 12 or so available to all experienced players (large market).

This is the only three options I can think of that will retain balance. Personally I like the moderate choice; crafters need an option in defenseother than picking up a gun. Perhaps even require master artisian to further compensate for this DE ability (giving this advantage to dedicated crafters).

---

---

GamerProX wrote:

Why not all three? The Devs said were gonna get [Light,Medium, and Heavy] Combat droids. The heavies go to Droid Handler who is skilled inusing droids for combat. Light and Med im guessing go to everyone.

---

for the same reason BE's cannot use Rancors.

---

SioBabble wrote:

---

Marc_Deltram wrote:

And I will also restate what Droid_Engineer_Rho and others have said in that we'd also be happy if we had other non-combat droids to build and sell. There are SOOOOOOOO many possibilities here that you could make a HUGE number of us REALLY happy REALLY quickly by giving us some new NON-COMBAT options. Clearly the whole combat thing is just not going to be resolved quickly. So bail on that entirely and focus on the non-combat options. Make us happy that way. We'll love you again. Promise!

---

Marc,

I'm not a DE, I'm a CH. But I can tell you, the problem with droids is insoluable, and you've touched on why.

Non-combat droids right now are useful for two things, and two things only:

1. Mobile crafting stations

2. Mobile medical facilities.

To make them more useful would threaten the only content this game has, the skill grind, especially for any profession that has any crafting in it.

Droids should be useful for surveying, sampling, transporting harvested or mined resources, carrying around things like panels used in house contstruction, etc.

They can't do those things, because the players must do them, or part of the only content we've got, the profession grind, will be vacated.

We cannot have that in this game. The devs have nothing but the profession grind and the GCW to offer as content, and the GCW is meaningless because neither side can win it. The devs have an insoluable probleme here. The GCW is stuck in the middle...we didnt' start it, and we can't end it. Players cannot have decisive roles in it,thus making it very unsatisfying, even to the Quake PvP crowd. You can't string a series of battles won into a victory in the GCW.

So too the problem with droids, For them to have a usefull role in the game, they'd coopt too many time sinks that the devs are counting on to keep the crafters busy. These apply to those who are master crafters as much as those who are working their way up. Gotta make those runs to the heavy mining installations or wind generators. It's the only content they've got, and they're sticking to it.

---

I think that pretty much sums up the whole SWG problem. Droids should be doing all the repetative and meaningless time sink tasks. In fact, a lot of the gripes players have would be put to rest if they would allow droids to do some of non-value added tasks. Droids should check and empty harvesters. Droids should do surveying for resources. Droids should help locate and track creatures. Any task that requires a player to do a repeative action and yields little to no experiance, should have a droid capable of doing the same task.

I have WASTED HOURS upon HOURS of time surveying and looking for certian creatures while an artisian and/or creature handler looking for resources or a certian creature. This is no where near my idea of fun.

Grinding out professions DOES NOT EQUAL CONTENT.

---

Kav wrote:

for the same reason BE's cannot use Rancors.

---

BE is a crafting class, if they could use the rancors they make without the need to spend skill points for it, why would you be a CH?

Same for DE, if you can make and use the Heavies, why would you be anything else in the game?

I could just grab DE, an elite combat class, and call it at a day.

Look, you gotta give and take, you cant just keep taking. If you want to build *and* use the combat droid, then either you gotta drop Master Merchant, or Artisan I would say.

---

Thunderheart wrote:

The Cert system will not work. With a cert system, all the combat in the game would have to get harder and people without a Droid Cert would have a tougher game to play.

---

I have 6 more pages to read, and i dont know if i have the time.. But Id like to add this..

1) Its completely Technically possible to have a Droid Usage across professions. There's plenty of examples, say Pistol Accuracy. Its in Marksman, and in Pistoleer, and i believe Bounty Hunter (but not sure). So the certification is possible.

2) What is not possible is that bottom line the Devs dont want ANYONE to have greater than CL 10 droids unless its DE or a new DH. Otherwise, it invalidates all the creature pets, because no one is going to use a CL 10 pet when they can use their CL 25 droid. Its a design flaw in the game. So we're stuck.

I would love to see Drashk's plan. But I think the dev's have walked us into a box that makes that impossible.

The entire x-server galaxy has been asking for Droidekas. We now know the answer is you will never get them without dropping skills for a new profession.

So lets just forget all new combat droids, since they'll never be better than the probot, and move on to other cool functionality droids as outlined in our sticky.

Master Artisan is needed to build most droids, you can't drop it and consider yourself an effective Droid Engineer.

Equinoux Inuyasha

Master Artisan and Master Droid Engineer - Gorath

Combat droids is one thing, but in this stage in the SW storyline, droids were used mainly as utility machines. Droids are swiss army knives. I would MUCH rather the DE profession focus on that aspect of droids and not just combat droids. There are many good ideas people have braught up as to new module ideas. Are the devs considering adding non-combat modules for droids? If this whold droid invasion program is only about combat droids, I will be dissapointed.

                          .=+.             ------------------
                  \`--._,'.::.`._.--'/   _/ May the CU       \
Acktu - Sunrunner   .  ` __::__ '  .   _/ \ be with you      /
Beta 3, JTL,          -:.`'..`'.:-         ------------------
ROTW & TOW Beta tester  \ `--' /
                          `--'

---

GamerProX wrote:

---

Kav wrote:

for the same reason BE's cannot use Rancors.

---

BE is a crafting class, if they could use the rancors they make without the need to spend skill points for it, why would you be a CH?

Same for DE, if you can make and use the Heavies, why would you be anything else in the game?

I could just grab DE, an elite combat class, and call it at a day.

Look, you gotta give and take, you cant just keep taking. If you want to build *and* use the combat droid, then either you gotta drop Master Merchant, or Artisan I would say.

---

my mistake i read DE in your post not DH.

I still do not see enough reason to make a DH. What would the 4 trees even be? he only needs 1. You can't make a whole new class just to support 1 new thing. What skill mods would a DH have aside from "Max Droid Level"

Unless you plan on taking away the ability to "tame" and train droids from everyone else in the game. but then you have just made a CH with diffrent skins who is Slaved to DE's for pets...

I just have trouble seeing the point in all that development Just for Heavy droids.

---

Equinoux_Inuyasha wrote:

Master Artisan is needed to build most droids, you can't drop it and consider yourself an effective Droid Engineer.

---

Please Note:

As a Master Weaponsmith I cannot use, (read: I do not have certification), for all the advance weapons I can make.

I would expect Master DE's to be in a similar situation with the advance droids, (combat or otherwise), that they make.

With that said, I am fully against the DH idea, whilst supporting some level of certification foradvance droid usage, a la weapon certification.....

I look forward to the Dev's explanation of why a Cert system for advance droids is not going to work, with much anticipation.

---

Spiglord wrote:

Please Note:

As a Master Weaponsmith I cannot use, (read: I do not have certification), for all the advance weapons I can make.

I would expect Master DE's to be in a similar situation with the advance droids, (combat or otherwise), that they make.

With that said, I am fully against the DH idea, whilst supporting some level of certification foradvance droid usage, a la weapon certification.....

I look forward to the Dev's explanation of why a Cert system for advance droids is not going to work, with much anticipation.

---

I'm with you against DE's not being able to use combat droids, but I can explain right now why the cert system will not work.

Certing combat droids (assuming they are noticeably better than probots, otherwise whats the point) means characters are potentially more powerful. Now, in order to stop characters from rolling right through everything in the game (more so than they do now) the environment must become more difficulty. A more difficult environment means that in order for a character to work in the areas they are supposed to be able to work in they will require a combat droid (since that was factored in to the environment difficulty). I'm all for more droids all over the place, but you can't force a character who did not choose a pet profession to use a pet. They could have taken the same response to the non-CH pets, just increase the environmental difficulty, but they didn't for a reason. Unless you are a pet proffession, pets are supposed to be of little value to you (as far as combat is concerned, utility droids are a whole different issue).

Well, if they are going to force something on us, I definately do not want a DE only droid. That invites every uber L$$T dude into the profession and that's something we definately do not need. We are borked enough without have Grandmaster -XxBobxX- making droids and giving out bum info to the entire server.

If they doforce this heavy droid thing on us, it has to be a specialized tree branching off engineering with another complete skill tree to advance up to master level. And these new heavy droids need to be locatedway up the DE skill tree, or maybe requiring mutilpe trees at lvl 4 to be able to build one. We don't need dabblers again.

I personally just want something more effective than a probot for Master level players of any elite class. Something around CL 15-17 or something. A mini Droideka....I don't care just something better and new to make.