Droid Engineer Archive

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StarRider99 wrote:
Well - I'd also like to see DEs participation in the engineering of larger combat chassis as well - call them Bolos (Keith Laumers series), AT-ST, AT-AT or whatever. The DE is the closest thing in game to an computer/electronics specialist - and I'd like to see that talent combined with other professions to enable manufacture of war machines...not just combat droids. Make the resource requirements high, along with the requirement for tons of electronics in each module....but make it a machine that instills fear, shakes the ground, and it too expensive for one player (city town or planet asset) to operate. Include items like active cooling vs energy wpns, reactive armor and active protection systems against KE weapons, primary, secondary and tertiary weapon systems, hover tanks, crawlers, the works. Im sure your imaginations are all as good as mine.

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Since Droids have vitality, creating a system for droid leveling might not be that benefical. Once a droid losses a certain amount of Vitality, it begins to lose HAM and damage. Not many would want to spend time leveling up their droid, if it will lose that bonus the next time it is incapped.

I wasn't quite talking about leveling a droid. I was thinking more like it could tell what level its operator is. Lets say I can pull level20 missions off the mission terminals with myblaster equipped. What is to say my Probot and I could pull level 40 if his vitality is 100% when grouped and I am equipped with my blaster. Then lets say I unequip my blaster now I get the basic level 1 missions unarmed. But grouped with my probot I can now get level 2. It can read my combat skills just like the mission terminals. It could also work if it lost vitality it would loose some of its damage and HAM

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X Machine'Zed X
Obsidian Dagger Squadron

Some Conceptual things I would like to see for this profession.

Drask hinted at this, but I just want to make some specific suggestions.My hopeis togive each chassisa specialty, yet allow the flexible modularity that already exists. Here are my suggestions that mostly come from past threads:

MSE Mouse: Higher Data Capacity, like 200. (Not that data moduleis terribly useful atm, but in theory that's what these guys are for.)

DZ70 Tracker: Fastest (they "track", right?), and therefore very useful for taunting and kiting enemies, or following people. If a DZ70 could keep up with alandspeeder that would make it really useful as a bodyguard for artisans checking harvesters. Or if they add scout-boosting droid modules, this would have the best scout functionality.

WED Treadwell: Low-cost crafting droid,improved crafting station bonus.

R-Series: Versatility. With the most module space, they are the droids that can do everything. No specialbonuses but maybe boost the advanced R4 to 4 modules and the advanced R5 to 3 modules so that they have better versatility than other droids in their resource class.

LE Repair Droid: Best repair functionality, perhaps ability to repair white-bar damage on droids.

2-1B Surgical Droid: Best medical functionality, perhaps 120% or limit all others to 100%, or give the surgical the ability to use stims.

Probot: Best combat potential (? pending new droid types...)

BLL: Best cargo capacity, maybe 20 items instead of 10.

Protocol: Er, uh, if they add entertainer modules, the protocol might be best with those.

Y'know... It's really lame that our"master" droid types (BLL and Protocol) are among the least useful. Whatever else happens, that should be rectified.

As for the "looks like a deed" issue, Bio-Engineer crafted creatures look like creatures but act like deeds. Droids could be the same. If they can't or won't do that, then I'd at least like to see chassis/furniture droids for every model, so that we can all finish our display rooms!

Some issues that may seem minor but would be very helpful in my opinion.

1. Let a customer SEE customization and approve before committing the changes to their droid (like hairdos and such).

2. Let the chasis color on advanced droids BE the FINISHED color of the droid. This would greatly enhance the ability to change colors later or enhance colors. An example is the dark hued probot. Imagine what you could do if it started out white instead of black because that was the chasis color.

3. Make sure the builders name appears in the droid information.

4. Make sure ALL droids have at least one function that will make them desirable to others in the game, even if only a massive storage capability in the BLL like 6 level 6 storage units giving it a 60 storage.

5. Make the size of the basic chasis the limit on the functionality of the droid as far as storage capacity so an MSE can store a max of 1 and a BLL a max of 60, based on the storage units applied. Droid storage is very desirable with the current insurance rules.

6. For combat, make a droid that can heal enough to overcome an incap. Make this a command based upon an installed module. (must be given prior to combat, like an enhanced guard)

7. For combat, make a droid that will defend you if you are incapped and try to prevent a DB if possible. Make this a command based upon an installed module. (must be given prior to combat like an enhanced guard)

8 Create a TACTICAL module that will allow complex commands to be entered to give droids missions, the higher the level of unit, the more commands that can be entered and followed based upon the situation. The tactical unit would be for combat commands, but similar units could be made for CRAFTING, SURVEYING, HARVESTING, ENTERTAINING, etc.

These seem trivial next to some ideas but i feel they would give droids a boost and make them more a part of SWG that everyone would want.

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Wekai wrote:

Some thoughts from a DE wanna-be...

I'm not sure that an intense focus on only combat droids is a great idea, for the same reason that I'm not sure that creature handling, while sometimes fun,is very good for the game.If you accept Koster's credo that no tamable should take the place of another player or group member, you can't really justify having a super-powerful combat droid without a large investment of skill points. This means that combat droids will either be somewhat weak (and therefore unpopular) or that only DEs or a new "droid handler" class will be able to use them. Either way it's a loss for those who see the DE as a crafter first. They won't sell, and another **edit** class isn't a very attractive addition to the game (for me).

Droids have been referred to as the "swiss army knife" of SWG, and I'd like to see them moving in that direction with a larger array of usable modules. Instead of doing your work for you, they should improve your ability to do what you do best, what you've spent your valuable skill points on. I've seen a ton of cool ideas on slicing, surveying, entertaining, and such.

In combat, they could help you heal faster, heal more damage, aim better, or distract a target without necessarily tanking - maybe they could zip around pestering your target with strobes or low-damage zaps to cause dizzy, stun, or intimidate - just confusing a charging mob for just a few seconds isn't balance-changing, but it could be very effective and useful. Consider Luke's training drone cutting loose on you while you're trying to attack something else...

I guess what I'm saying is that combat droids won't be a big splash for me and I don't think they'll improve things in the long run. Not everyone wants to have pets to do the fighting for them. On the other hand, the opportunity to have a set of droids where eachone improves the different things I do in-game would make merun for my nearest DE shop.

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Drashk I agree with your vision on the direction on droids, I have one thing to ask, could you please put your thoughts in about this post? I agree 100% with what Wekai is saying here. This is important because the Devs have already nerfed the probot for "balance issues" conflicting with the creature handler profession. That means that when the new combat droids are implemented, they are not going to be as powerfull as creatures in the game. Some people think that is wrong, but it is just the facts. If the only thing our combat droids do is deal out damage, they wont be as necessary in the game because creatures can do it better! So combat droids should ASSIST their owners in combat ie. in the quoted post above, make you more accurate, do stun or blind, or other secondary rolls that complement any profession that has one.

Actually, this is what I feel they should do, this is, on and individualistic scale in the starwars world (not getting into specifics of the book or movie as you stated in your thread starter) what they do.

If we insist on haveing droids that perform primary combat duties, I feel that we will always be a little disapointed with them because they will be watered down for "balance". Proposeing our combat droids in the manner of performing a secondary role will give our droids special advantages for owning one and it wont conflict with what the Devs are trying to achieve with the game and therfore we have a waayy better chance of getting what we want. Also I am not saying that Droids should not fight at all, they should have blasters and the like, but they need something else that gives you an added advantage for owning one.

The second thing I wanted to say was what someone else posted on here also about each elite profession being able to control a special type of droid that gives him/her specific bonuses to his or her profession. The example used was a master SL would get bonuses to leadership for using his special droid. I saw a post once about the master de geting an omni droid.

Thank you for your time.

/bow

Hi guys.

I'm just going to throw my 2 creds in the ring here.

Effectively the limiting factor of our droids has always been their limited usefullness. They may be great help to crafters, and medics, but not so great to everyone else. So, I absolutely agree with previous posts on increasing the usefullness of droids for each and every profession. If nothing else a single module for each profession would help us immensely. Obviously there have been a plethora of suggestions elsewhere on ideas for new modules and ways they could improve or give bonuses so I'm going to skip all that. The simple answer is: If there is a skill in this game useable by a player, there should be a module of some kind that will give a bonus to that skill.The bonus does not have to be extreme to be effective. 10%, 15%, whatever. I would in fact argue for a cap of no more than 20% bonus from a master DE heavily experimented module.

On thesubject of combat:
I'm again going to echo something someone else said: A droid does not have to actively deal damage to be effective in combat. Following the module theory above, if a combat module installed in a power droid simply added to your min/max damage rating of a blaster that would be enough to be considered useful. If a DZ70 could fly up and apply blind or dizzy effects, that again would absolutely be effective. Here's where it's tricky. As has been said, droids evolving, being jury-rigged and alterations to programmingprovide for an infinite number of ideas and combinations for a droid to be effective. Clearly there has to be a line drawn in the sand so that the Dev's have a framework to operate in. To that end, I'm going to support the idea that a combat module / combat abilities of a given droid should make sense for the chasis involved. My only point here is that we should not rule out any abilities of non-humanoid droids. Merely limit those abilities to ones that make sense.

Thanks!

As a new up and coming Droid Engineer I would love to have a training drone that would hoover next to me while hunting, and assist me if I get attacked by anyone.

I would also love to see a ep1 pod race repair droids in-game too. As said above a droid that slices or helps slicing would be great, and new modules for droids like deflection shield or droids that improve your skills etc.

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Leadhead101 wrote:

I saw a post once about the master de geting an omni droid.

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Ya, I really liked that one too. Wonder what ever happend to the guy that posted about it.Hehe

Actually, if you take a look at the Ideas Link stickied to the top of the page you'll find the link to the Omni Droid Idea.I'd link it here, but I'm about linked out right now. I've spent the last 12 hours catching up on some reading in the Correspondents Forums. straightening up some of the stickies here, posting commentshereand thereand I'm still in the process of pulling info from various places.

Personally, I would like to see stronger combat droids in next months patch and the following patches. I think that the only way to add such droids would be through some kind of level system, similar to the CH system, but spread across all of the professions. Something like; someone with X combat profession and someone with A, B, & C crafting professions would gain the ablity to call the same strength combat droid. I'm not going to comments on DEs and DE ability on this thread, since it is intended to focus specificly on droids themselves. Don't worry, I plan on posting a seperate discussion thread on that later in the week, or day - depends on how lucid I still am after I'm done with the other items I want to finish up.

As to Modules that add benefits to all professions....

Each time that I look at a different feature in concept, I try to think about how it would fit into the game and whatkind of balancing issues might arise. I like having different modules give different professions a boost to their skill; however,some kind of balance needs to be found so that one issue isn't traded for another.

Hope that quinches your request.

Anything that resembles the west end games RP implimentation of droids will get a thumbs up from me

I think one of the single easiest (at least in principle) ways of implimenting the kind of droid engineering I'd like to see is that certain modules can only be installed in certain chassis by default (so no 10 item module in an MSE) and certain chassis either have modules capability built into the chassis or some modules are mandatory (WED, LE and R-series all having repair modules for example, surgicals have med, MSE's get data)

When certain levels of DE skill are reached the ability to add non-standard modules to a chassis (which will obviously be dictated by chassis type) is 'unlocked' (i.e. the modules appear in the filtered view and can be selected) however the chance of failure is increased when adding these modules (because youre jury rigging)

DE's should be able to 'open' an existing droid in a crafting tool in order to modify its current module loadout, even if permitted module changes are being made the chances of failure should be increased from that of a fresh build - and thus the ability to enhance and upgrade droids is created (and repeat business)

While I accept some peoples distain for 'R2's with blasters' my view is that, unfortunately, this is far more in keeping with the time period than your own personal Droideka, its also more 'covert' than your 3PO walking around with a blaster which Mr Stormtrooper over there will probably notice and decide that theres an illegal droid on the lose (and subsequently try to take it to bits without the appropriate tools) - yes this applies to imp factioned characters as well. However this spills over into whatever the devs plan to do with 'Imperial Crackdown'

The background fluff on power droids is that there are intended to recharge speeder sized units (there was a bigger power droid for charging spacecraft) and I think the devs missed a HUGE opportunity here to give the droid some value (could have been used instead of decay, and garages could instead charge the player to recharge the vehicle) - there is still hope that they could be 'bound' to harvesters though in lieu of providing power. I'm wary of how this would be implimented though (I remember hearing about the droid decaying, and since we have no way to repair them I would not be happy about this).

I also believe the devs missed an opporunity to allow repair droids to repair vehicles, as even with a power requirment instead of decay, vehicles would still need to track damage taken from combat and the player could use a garage or repair droid to fix this (but again I'd be wary of how the devs implimented the 'downstream' penalty to the repair droid and its owner - as they would want to keep a sink in somewhere)

Droids need some decay (and not this vitality rubbish) and DE's need the ability to repair them.At one point I have suggested that individual components of the droid have separate decay values - thus the quality of those components would then be a factor, and the previously mentioned ability to re-open a droid would allow for decayed components to be replaced (or instead you could just use a repair tool at the loss of max condition of that component, without the need to 'open' the droid and the increased failure chances a module replace would bring)