Droid Engineer Archive
Thread: Legitimacy of a CL10 Combat Droid
Tal-N wrote:
The problem with this whole thing is we already have a perfectly capable CL10 Droid. They are making this same CL10 Droid much harder to make, and dumping its utility in the process. It will be harder to craft something that isn't as good as something we currently have. This makes no sense.
Do youeat a cake when it's still a collection of ingredients in a bowl? Do you understand a story from the first 3 pages you read? Do you say you have heard a song when you listen to onlythe first demo tape sent to the producers? Do you say if a film is good or bad based entirely on the script you read?
Do you pretend to be knowledgable about a profession that you admittedly "won't pretend to actually be"?
Put simply you lot are overreacting, not only have these things only just gone onto the TestCentre but it's also only the foundation for the rest of the system as it's built up into something which will greatly benefit the game.
This has yet to be seen, as we have no idea of what lies down the road, we are not overreacting, simply reacting to the changes as they exist now. We haven't been told these are changes to better things down the road, or even that we're getting anything down the road, except for the minor utility modules we've been told will be in Publish 8. If we were told specifically what these changes were the groundwork for, most of us would probably understand. But, chances are, the Devs don't even know what's "down the road" for the DE profession..
You lot wanted attention now, you didn't want to wait.
We've wanted attention since launch, we've been waiting since launch. We've been broken since launch. No, we're not the only profession that has issues, but we've been misinterpreted at every step of the way, and more than likely, we are being misinterpreted now.
You now have what you asked for, you're seeing the combat droid and utility droid system being built up step by step now rather than waiting and waiting with silence only to finally be handed it all in a lump 2 months from now.
There's a huge problem here. The Devs have no clue, even to this day, what direction they want DE to go. They have no sense of where DE should fit in the "big picture". So even if we did wait 2 months, we'd probably be worse off, because we couldn't point out their wrongdoings in the meantime.
Yes it's harder to craft, but then again recall that because of the repair kits you're going to see less customers coming back to you for droids. So you're not going to be making them as often, I won't pretend to actually be a droid engineer and I'm looking at this from the outside but from what I can see you need to be more reasonable here.
We have no repeat business now, much less after this patch. Once you have a Probot, or an all-in-one crafting droid, there's no need to buy a new one. We don't make them very often now, because there's no need for a droid, the way there are needs for other crafting professions' wares.
First we have this foundation, yes you have a decent CL10 combat droid in the form of a probot but now you can have more variety.
More variety how? The current Publish on Test actually decreases variety. It makes it harder to craft droids, so most DE's will craft the less extensive droids, to save time and resources. Droids need more inherent functions to be more varied, not plug-and-play modules that you can stick in any droid.
After this you'll have those utility modules and some new chassies. After that you have the ability to play around with loads of battle droids which is going to be alot of fun to make if they give you alot of control over what goes into them. In the end folks all of the complexity is needed to allow you guys more flexability over what the droids do, no doubt that will be become evident later on.
"Loads of battle droids." ROFL. There won't be loads of battle droids in this game for a long while, if ever at all. If they ever put the DC profession in this game it will be quite a ways down the road, as Runesabre has said he'd much rather see the current professions fixed before adding anything else. Even if this is the framework for something greater later on, what's the point in makingthis profession half-assed in the meantime?
Eutock wrote:
Unless they're adding something I haven't seen, it seems like they're going through a whole lot of development effort for experimenting on combat modules with the only benefit being no better than CL10. It made sense when they where going to use that as a launch pad for higher-level droids (via the DH), but I question how much sense it makes now.
I'm sorry to say, but if someone is looking for a CL10 pet, it sounds like they'll be better off just getting a carrion spat or kaadu, no experimentation or assembly required.
/sign
Combat modules are a bust. Would have been cool for CL10+ combat droids but not helpful otherwise.
- Damage Healing Stims
- Wound Healing Packs
Here are the things that are different:
- BE pets do more damage
- Droid pets get medium armor, 40% resists almost across the board, and immunities to certain attacks
- BE pets get much higher HAM
- Droid pets are stuck at 810 HAM
- BE pets get combat abilities
- Droid pets get crafting abilities(!???)
The purpose of a CL rating is to weigh pets vs mobs vs other players in combat since it is meaningless to compare an MSE droid with a Level 6 Medical chip to an R3 advanced with the same chip. Right now, droids fall behind CL10 BE pets. Sure, the armor and resists and immunities are nice, but that is balanced with the low HAM on the CL10 labeled droid. Then BE pets get things like knockdown or posture changes or poisons/diseases...droids allow you to craft dresses in the wild.
I understand that the combat module is a good way to start off change to allow the building of bigger and badder droids, but come on...CL10 is not what the probot is. Either it needs to be improved somehow or other CL10 pets need to be nerfed.With them saying that the probot HAM was balanced already and I dont think that they will up resistances or armor rating or immunities any higher, DE's are looking at either getting more DPS or configurable combat abilities to install to our droids.
I am not even considering the fact that the R3 advanced unit holds more combat modules yet have nearly a third of the HAM as the probot...it should be in no way considered a CL10 droid because of the HAM.
Mathe wrote:
I suppose I'm just a little bitter from not making any money compared to other crafting professions. A buddy of mine recently mastered Armorsmith and built and sold a suit of padded armor for 500k his first day- made a profit of nearly 400k on it., and of course it takes me a week or more to bring in that kind of money - meanwhile I go to the same amount of trouble, compile more components, and make a 1/4 of what he makes.
My major beef with the DE profession is one of economics: the most expensive, top of the line R3 Med. unit runs 40k on my server (Bloodfin). Of course once you sell to that customer, you'll never see them again as they're set for life with that droid - no repeat business.
Storing items to protect from decay and contraband searches is now a joke - decay has been cut way down, and the Imperial Crackdown is such a joke that I have yet to see anyone taken by Stormtroopers for contraband. All that ever happens is a bunch of imperials corpses strewn about the cantina.
Thus, we are left with a market of doctors and crafters (suppose you could include BHs, who will pay no more than 3k for a crate of probes) - all of which will be one time customers at a measly 40k-ish a pop. Meanwhile armorsmiths and weaponsmiths are making a ridiculous profit, since their products are constantly in demand and selling for 10x what any droid I can make will sell for.
Aside from Boba Fett and stormtroopers, I don't recall alot of armor in the movies - yet in this game the armorsmiths are some of the wealthiest people in the game.
The real shame is the potential and importance this profession has to the Star Wars universe...
You have, indeed, described a core problem with the profession, and one that none of the current dev activity shows any sign of addressing. Pub 7 will let you craft and sell repair kits, but good luck on the profit from that covering the rent on your house and vendor. That market will be dominated bya fewDE's with fusions and heavies to feed their factories at a fraction of your cost.
Introducing a Droid Commander profession (which I think they dropped), or letting DE's use their own droids isn't going to help significantly. A few extra sales is all. How many folks are going to move their skillpoints into DC? And DE's will be able to make their own (perhaps with a little extra skillpoint investment in some proposals).
Significant droids will never be sold to masters of combat professions (who could afford them) because they would become too powerful for the content in the game. TH has written about that at length.
The only way there will be a real market is if the droid usage capability is given to the characters that have used up their skillpoints without getting any combat capability for them -- Artisan based elite professions. They have no existing combat abilities to leverage with the droids, so even very powerfull ones would not be unbalancing.
They often have plenty of money, and could support high prices for those droids. They often buy them even now, because they are among the few that have a viable use for them.
I think it is the best (and possibly only) way to make a viable market for droids.
Tal-N wrote:
The problem with this whole thing is we already have a perfectly capable CL10 Droid. They are making this same CL10 Droid much harder to make, and dumping its utility in the process. It will be harder to craft something that isn't as good as something we currently have. This makes no sense.
Do youeat a cake when it's still a collection of ingredients in a bowl? Do you understand a story from the first 3 pages you read? Do you say you have heard a song when you listen to onlythe first demo tape sent to the producers? Do you say if a film is good or bad based entirely on the script you read?
Put simply you lot are overreacting, not only have these things only just gone onto the TestCentre but it's also only the foundation for the rest of the system as it's built up into something which will greatly benefit the game. You lot wanted attention now, you didn't want to wait. You now have what you asked for, you're seeing the combat droid and utility droid system being built up step by step now rather than waiting and waiting with silence only to finally be handed it all in a lump 2 months from now. Yes it's harder to craft, but then again recall that because of the repair kits you're going to see less customers coming back to you for droids. So you're not going to be making them as often, I won't pretend to actually be a droid engineer and I'm looking at this from the outside but from what I can see you need to be more reasonable here.
First we have this foundation, yes you have a decent CL10 combat droid in the form of a probot but now you can have more variety. After this you'll have those utility modules and some new chassies. After that you have the ability to play around with loads of battle droids which is going to be alot of fun to make if they give you alot of control over what goes into them. In the end folks all of the complexity is needed to allow you guys more flexability over what the droids do, no doubt that will be become evident later on.
I have a strict policy against name-calling on the boards but, man, do posts like this make me want to reconsider.
I don't think this guy understands that we'll have the same shabby droids but they will cost more to make and be more complex. If you take into account the crafting nerf, those droids will be shabbier.
Tal-N is a Master Bio-Engineer, no wonder he doesn't want a viable combat droid. Anyone that can make a 5-9K HAM non-CH pet that has special attacks wouldn't welcome the competition. They have a market for both the newbie beginner and the veteran CH combat player, not to mention the chefs, tailors and whatever else they may be able to provide. We have a slim window of opportunity to sellcombat droids to people before thedroid becomes obsolete to them.
Sodan-droiddreamer wrote:
I have a strict policy against name-calling on the boards but, man, do posts like this make me want to reconsider.
I don't think this guy understands that we'll have the same shabby droids but they will cost more to make and be more complex. If you take into account the crafting nerf, those droids will be shabbier.
Wow! This is very sad. I recently created a new character on Ahazi because I was starting to get bored with my MBH on Flurry. I wanted to try something completely different and thought "Droid Engineer" - that sounds very interesting. I always liked the droids in the movies, and mabe by the time I master it, they'll have some kind of kickass Droidekas or IG Assassin Droids.
I figured I'd combine it with scout and rifleman so I could tank with a droid I made with my own two hands and take my obstacles down sniper fashion. Plus, I could make a bunch of money selling probots, seekers, crafting, medical, and the new combat droids after release 7 (though I did choke when I saw CL10, as a master bounty hunter, that's like tanking with a chuba, butI figured I was just missing something).
I just got to Rifle 3 and Engineering 3 and read the post on the grinding DE macro and was really excited.
Then I read this post 
I guess I should just master another crafting skill to make a ton of money and then switch to DE much later, just for grins. It's a shame they made it so poorly next to everything else in the game. My bubble has been disintegrated!
Yauco
Wanabie Droid Engineer - Ahazi - Now in Profession Limbo
Tal-N, I think you are misinformed. This is the problem. Droids do not need to be replaced now, with what's currently on live. There is no permadeath, and a droid will heal in your datapad (slowly, but it will heal). Wounds can be repaired by another with a repair droid. So, we won't be able to charge much more than we are currently, for something not very many people want. If people don't want a 820 HAM combat droid now, they won't want one after the patch, even with droid repair packs.
Tal-N wrote:
>snip<
Complexity on the droids doesn't matter and means you can charge more, that is a good thing as you won't be selling many now since they'll be repaired rather than replaced.
Long time ago, in a beta far far away... if you weren't a CH you didn't get pets. The fact here is folks that a non-ch pet or a droid isn't SUPPOSED to be combat effective by much. They're designed to help only with low end mobs not the big tough things. If you want a true battle droid it'll be when you take skills from the upcoming Droid Commander profession. Welcome to the world of non-ch pets, BE have been in it for ages. They're not all that tough by design.
Long time ago, in a beta far far away... if you weren't a CH you didn't get pets. The fact here is folks that a non-ch pet or a droid isn't SUPPOSED to be combat effective by much. They're designed to help only with low end mobs not the big tough things. If you want a true battle droid it'll be when you take skills from the upcoming Droid Commander profession. Welcome to the world of non-ch pets, BE have been in it for ages. They're not all that tough by design.
Mathe wrote:
>>
Sure they probably won't be of any help to masters of any combat profession, or even somebody half way up an elite combat skill tree, but they are a great deal of help if you're just at novice of an elite combat profession or lower.
>>
You hit the nail on the head. If your target market for your most useful droid is novice combat professions, how much money are you going to make there? For starters, the novice combat profs. usually don't have the credits lying around to buy something like a probot - and even if they did they'd be much better off to invest in a better weapon or better armor or even spice. The probot won't speed the levelling process up and it'll just serve to suck some newbie's credits away.
What you end up with is a novelty item - the people that can afford them don't need them, the people whom it would legitmately serve don't have the cash or would be better off spending it elsewhere.
The most useful droids a DE can make currently are medical droids (useable by all Medics, Doctors), crafting droids (used as mobile personal crafting stations, useable by any crafting profession), and item storage droids (useable by anybody), or a combination of any of those. The CL10 droids really are justa bonus, because they can act as a shell to put those modules in.
Say you have a CL10 Probot, with 820 HAM, Medium Armor with 40% resists, 110 medical rating, and 10 item storage. The combat part really is just a bonus, because this droid would allow a medic to heal wounds at 110% of normal, and hold 10 itemsexempt from death decay or Imperial scans.
So really, the "target market" for our most useful droidsis anybody who wants to hold 10 additional, decay-free items, or anymedic profession, or any crafting profession. This game doesn't have to revolve around combat, although it does seem thatway sometimes.
Of course all this goes out the window with Publish 7, but currently this isn't a bad deal.
If people don't want a 820 HAM combat droid now, they won't want one after the patch, even with droid repair packs.
People on the whole are dumb, if they did the math they'd realise that a probot is actually equal in terms of combat potential to the best validnon-ch pet. Work out the effective HAM yourself ((820+50%)+50%)+40% then muliply by 3 for each pool and you'll see it comes to around 7200 which is almost identical to a non-ch pet made by a bio-engineer.
Message Edited by Tal-N on 03-02-2004 02:46 PM