Droid Engineer Archive
Thread: Harvesting Droids?
DataOutlaw wrote:
One of my Guildies mastered DE recently and I had them craft me a custom droid for me. Let me tell you, this thing made my life as a Bio-Engineer waaaaay easier. I had them make me an Advanced R3 with 4 harvesting modules, a medic module, and a food chem crafting station. Sampling DNA has never been easier. If I get aggro I send my pets in to kill the thing while I safely shoot at it from 50m. When it dies, I send the droid in to harvest meatwhile I go on to the next target for sampling DNA. Whne I have enough DNA for a combine, my private crafting station is standing right beside me. When I need to heal someones wounds while passing through a startport, my droid is right there for that as well. Has anyone ever done a survey of each class to see what "All Purpose" droid would be the most usefull for each profession? My guild is trying to decide what droids we should be manufacturing to sell on a regular basis.
I am suprised that, as a BE, you didn't insist on 10 item storage in it. Storage was a big problem as a BE because of the unstackable samples. All 5 of a BE's droids should have storage IMHO.
For a Doc droid I have:
- A 10 item storage
- 1 combat module
- medical module
- 1 Stimpack dispenser
- 1Harvesting module
- 1 trap module
Very useful for meat harvesting (can only have Novice Scout anyway due to skillpoints), and general utility. The trap module has proven to be a waste so far, I haven't even tried it. But I had hoped to be able to load traps in it that I couldn't make or throw as a novice, and still don't know if it will work. The stimpack dispenser is doubtful as well, but is nice for groups andsmall self heals when prone. The medical isn't usually needed in hunting situations either. I would probably recommend:
- A 10 item storage
- 1 combat module
- 4Harvesting module
For anyone hunting (unless harvest skills are higher than 4 modules support). Perhapsa stimpack dispenser if you don't have medic (have someone else load it for you).
Kalaf wrote:
Ok I picked one up. Had the cash am already in the Ranger tree. But How do I tell it what targets to harvest?It asks for a command and I have no clue what commands it uses. Silly me I expected Harvest Target or Harvest Last kill to be a Trainable Order in the Commands list like store and attack ect...
Any help wouldbe most welcome..
Hi Kalaf,
I have a harveting droid - so this is what I did to get going.
1) Call the droid from your datapad
2) Click on droid and using the radial menu select "Set harvest command" or something like that from the bottommost option on the radial. The droid will then come up with a ? over it's head. I used h - so in spatial I said H. The droid then learns this as the harvest command.
3) From the same section on the radial menu you can select what is called the "Harvest interest" - dependant on what u want be it Meat, Hide or Bones - you can also select Random - but I never use that.
4) Another item in the radial menu lets you program your droid for other functions such as group, store etc. I NEVER group my droid as it becomes a target for the creatures, and the droids have a tendancy to leg it to what they consider a safe distance 
5) When you have killed a creature and u have your droid out, select the corpse, and in spatial type H - and wait for him to start trundling towards the creature before telling him a new corpse to harvest. You call also use the silent /tellpet H in a macro or in the CLI - but this doesn't seem to always work for me so I have a macro like this....
/say H;
/pause 1;
/say H;
the pause is there because sometimes the first command is not reacted upon.
Sorry if the descriptions of the radial items are a little off - but this is from memory as I am at work.
Have fun.
If I remember right, the formula is:
(100 + your creature harvesting skill + droid rating) / 100 * base amount of creature for that location
A big advantage is that you can send in the droid to harvest, while you can start taking down the next target. If you do it on pretty easy targets, though, the droid will slow you down, because you take them out faster than it can harvest.
Dylanging wrote:
I read in the Rifleman FAQ that one of the disadvantages to the rifleman/ranger template is that you have to run up to harvest the creatures. Do any of you guys use harvesting droids, and if you do how well do they work. Do they harvest as much as you would if you ran up there yourself? Do they add to your harvesting amount i.e. i harvest 40 units of hide, but when my droid does it i harvest 50? Do the droids harvests automatically or do you have to order them.
I assume you meant that it was in the Template FAQ and not the Rifle FAQ. As I don't remember mentioning Rangers at all in the Rifle FAQ.
That being said, the droids are not automatic. You have to program for what you want it to harvest (bone, hide, meat). Then you have to command it to get the resource. As you can't cycle corpses the best thing I've found is to send it right after killing something (since it's still targeted). Once it starts to move towards the target I cycle to the next target.
A harvestor droid can harvest more than the player. I'm not sure how the droid mods works in conjunction with the players. If it adds to the players harvest mod or supplants it. Someone else may be able to answer that or the DE or Ranger boards would likely know that answer.
Message Edited by ForceFielding on 01-26-2005 01:23 AM