Droid Engineer Archive
Thread: Instead of Certs: Droid Attunement
"Consider this. Who would you want 'programming' a combat droid, a scientist/crafter with no combat experience or a soldier who was been through many wars?"
This is how it works, building AI forArmy training software... a soldier tells the programmer "if I shoot here, the enemy would usually flee that way" "if the wind blow east, I'll aim west" then the answer is tada! the programmer programs the AI, I'm a droid engineer, I don't even have a novice marksman. but I'll do this.
1, go within 64M. 2, /prone 3, /attack. 4, random /special move3 to 5 attacks. 5, If target range is less than 10M /stand.
now go finda master combat class and see if he/she's got anything to add to my droid combat script. a droid/animal pet/faction pet are all NPCs, no matter what you do they will behave like NPCs (except pets stay on target when told, NPC might change target if someone does nastier things to it), Master whoever programs it ain't gonna make a difference, and I'm not going to pretend it's gonna be different. Cert system, fine. Droid handler, I quit. The thing is, there is a reason regular folks can't tame hostile animals, but there's no reason a person with average IQ can't program droids, see how folks in the movie make droids do things? they talk to the droid in basic, that is it. How did Luke make R2D2 play that hologram of Leia asking for help? By telling R2D2 to play it, he didn't go type c:/>play leia.mpg. Who made the most deadly droid (HRD) in startwars? a rogue droid engineer, alone.
=> Without spending combat experience to attune a droid, you can have it do everything except the attack command (someone else also came up with this part of the idea).
=> If a droid attacks a target while not attuned (because a mob attacked its owner and it is defending him) then the target is worth ZERO experience of any kind to the droid's owner. This is to prevent using the droid to tank mobs while training up combat skills. It will still work fine as a guard to prevent getting killed at your harvester.
I like that change to my idea and it makes sense. Defense by a Droid alone garners Zero combat XP for the owner other that whatever damage the owner himself applied, if the owner could not cause the droid to attack due to the owners lack of combat XP.
That will be fun to program lol.
"=> Without spending combat experience to attune a droid, you can have it do everything except the attack command (someone else also came up with this part of the idea)."
this will only result in one more useless droid , the probot.
"=> If a droid attacks a target while not attuned (because a mob attacked its owner and it is defending him) then the target is worth ZERO experience of any kind to the droid's owner. This is to prevent using the droid to tank mobs while training up combat skills. It will still work fine as a guard to prevent getting killed at your harvester. "
no that's not how it works, have you ever try to go get to a harvester with more than 1 hostile around it? in your setup, the combat droid ONLY defends me, ok. so I ran to the harvester, 2 attacks me, combat droid gets on MOB A and proceed to attack it, now let's assume the combat droid draw MOB A away from me, what about MOB B? C? D? E? etc.? with old probot I can send it in first, get the attention of all hostile mobs then I can run in and do a quick run.
Balance? no, we need to be fixed before we need to be balanced. everyone can use CH15 animal pets, and what do we have? probots. now some of you are going to say probots have armor and do tank better than most CH15 pets... not really, animal pets can be healed, droids can't. with a bag of good stim Bs a beared jax can tank better than your med armor 40% probots. Balancefor this profession starts with bringing the old probot back and make droid repair tool fix HAM white bars. not cert system to hurt the already dying market, not "attune" to make more druids models useless, not "droid handler" to screw up all the existing DEs especially masters. Balance for DE means giving us the same number of experimentation points as other crafter classes, means if I want to spend all my experimentation points in improving probot HAM, I'll get improvements that's going to matter, not from 810 HAM to 816
How do you justify the nerf of probot? balance? because newbies can own one and make exp fast? what about now? they can own something like what probots used to be that can be healed, dirt cheap, takes one tame command to make?
Real life situation or in the Startwars universe, droids are for anyone that can afford it.
They need to nerf the pvp faction pets too for the same reasons.
Bury your head in the sand if you want, but the devs have stated that some sort of limitation is comming. Would you rather it be one the community hashes out or one the developers impose on us?
pet nerf is not coming, it won't happen. SOE does not have the guts toanger 40% of their player population, however DEs.. 3% and decresing? is acceptable. Here's the situation for DEs since day 1, this profession was working at 80% when it retailed, then it got nerfed to 20%. Now They are saying "spend more points I'll make it back to 80%", you are fine with that, I am not... but since you pre-assume that my head is in the sand, there's no point for me to continue trying, but here's an idea, see which's better.
The cert system, based on skill points spent. There are CL, let's make a DL for droid level. it's going to work similiar to CL system but this is for everyone.
DL ={(skill point spent in basic profession-15)*0.5)}+{(skill spent in elite profession-6)*1.2}
Basically that means for each point you spend in basic profession you get 0.5 DL point, the 15 point you spend to learn novice don't count. each skill point you spend in elite profession, you get 1.2 DL points, the 6 points you spend from getting novice elite profession don't count. That way, a player has tospend at least 15+32 skill points before he/she can control a probot (that's 810HAM 50dmg, no way to heal it) 32 points in basic profession is 2 trees mastered, that does qualify for a measy probot imo. I'll pretend that I trust holo in this post and yes there are newcombat droids coming, the new combat droids can have DL up to 70 or 80.
the movie Starwars' technology is a fictional extension what we currently have, and basically what you are suggesting does not make sense. You put a MS-DOS disk into the drive and type copy a: b:, does it start duplicate A: to B: or you have to tell it "cluster 1 here to cluster 1 there" throughout the process? I think it starts duplicate on it's own, and you buy a combat droid does it come with all the preset combat AI or you have to program it one by one?
Do you have to know all the language in order to use a Protocol droid?
Do you have to know how to slice terminals in order for your Astromech droids to slice terminals?
Do you have to be a surgeon to make your Surgical droid to put on artificial arms?
Do you have to be a mechanic to make your LE repair to repair?
Do you have to have super-human strength to make BLL to lift weight?
Droids, are made to do things that we don't want to or don't know how to. they are loaded with programmed AI written by people who know how. And, they are for everyone. Your "You have to know how to do something before your droid is able to do something" does not make sense.
I am a DE and will not drop the profession, i have invested too much into it!! The best way that the "droid certs" should be handled is by spending Combat Exp for your next droid! I, as a pistol specialist, have no use for combat exp...but i do have use for good protection! I am not a novice by any means! I may hafe devoted my skill points to droids but I have been in many battles, including Dark Jedi's! I am not saying that i was worth a flip in those battles but never the less...I was in them. If I choose to purchase a droid & use my combat exp to get said droid, then I have earned it!! A noob would not have the combat exp to use it, no matter what he does! To avoid the chance of a person transfering a battle droid to a noob... issues would need to be confronted!
Remove the transfer command from these droids. this will ensure that the droid can me given or sold to an individule. However...do give the droids (all droids for that matter) the abillity to redeed. this will allow a player that has advanced to a beter droid the ability to sell the one he is done with! how to ensure that the new owner is certed to use it?? Well, that would be taken into affect when you try to tame the droid. ( i feel there should be a cert for pets like this as well). Durring the taming process, it would tell you do/don't have a certification for this droid...and so on! Cert training? well that should fall on the DE's them selves..."You now qualify for Combat Droid Certification 2- Medium Defence units, See you nearest Droid Engineer for training" or something like that!! This could be a skill mod, much like spoken languages, they cost nothing to learn but are needed if you are to survive in the Galaxy! There should be a max level of droid that can be used by say a novice marksman like me! A novice BH or CH would get a better droid than i could due to the profession. with each advance in there skill..they get an aditional cert for a more advanced droid! I would not be able to use say a droideka without advancing into pistoleer...but still not be able to use an advanced droideka without getting trained in expert pistol marksman and getting a better droid at master pistoleer!
Right now, more pressing issues need to be addressed! FIXING WHAT IS BROKEN!! As DE's, we have been tossed by the wayside for pets, armor, weapons and even clothes!! As a Former Bio-engineer, I have the upmost respect for the other professions...all have there own issues to contend with...but add them all up and its still only half of a DE's problems! It is getting harder and harder to get new customers due to the fact that the players are catching on that the lil' buggers work only half the time! We need a return business like weapons and armor!! DE's should be the only ones to be able to repair a droid! We should also be able to build bots that have different ham's and damage! Let me explain.
I am not a Master DE yet, but my bots are just as good! They shouldn't be..but they are! I can make the basic probot with level3 armor...or an R2 with level 4 modules. i have no experimentation tree yet! I sit down with a Master DE, we both make a basic probot with level 3 armor. The MDE makes his bao and all components with the BEST materials in the galaxy and I make mine with the worst. He/She experiments with great success on all components and final droid, I fail the experiments on all components and final assimbly ( i am used to that with my one point to use..lol). My probot still comes out with 810 HAM and 50-50 Damage...the Master DE's bot comes out with 810HAM and 50-50 Damage! this is not fair to them at all!! A master has put in the time and effort..thay should be able to make better bots than me, more effectife medical, armor, more storage and so on! Each module having a base and max level but still! Like the medical modules...level 4 is 85..well that should be the max with the base bing 65 or 75...better recourses, more experimentation= better modules, just like weapons and armor! I never knew the stats on the pre-nerf probots but the ones we have now need to be better!!! AS a BE...I made Non-Ch pets that had 150-160 damage with 2500 HAM...that again is without the experimentation tree. Probots shoud do the same. I have a Kalmurra (that i made) and a Peko Peko that i traded for (CH tamed in German..go figure..lol). The Kalmurra can whip a probot that I made... a friend and i tested it!! Pet Vitality pax should not Work for bots..thats a BE thing..droid vitality should fall on DEs! I can not give a flu shot to my P4 box to keep it grom getting Klez!! Use some sorta common sence!!
Another option I have considered is a Droid Weapon module instead of just battle droids. This will allow almost any droid to be battle worthy to some extent and add alot of variety into the game. For example..and R2, R3, DZ70 (pothetic as they are), probots and binary load lifters (KOOL) have the option for a weapon module or advanced weapon module depending on the droid. Each module doing so much damage and experimenting on them raises or loweres that depending on success or failure. I mean, Come ON...what good does it do to command a R2 to guard..what is gunna do...beep an Evil Settler to DEATH if it gets too close!!
I will leave it at this for now! I know it has been long winded but its stuff i felt I needed to say!