Droid Engineer Archive
Thread: Fellow DE's: Forming a unified discussion on Combat Droids
I'd be pretty happy if they simply made the number of droids you can call reflect the number of actual Master titles you have(baseline 1), plusan extra pair for a Droid Engineer. What this does is serve as a major deterrent to the optimax dabblers who are so omnipresent in PvP these days without getting unreasonable about drawing class distinction lines. It'd even be absolutely trivial to implement - just add a modifier called Droids. So each Master Box would have Droids +1,Droid Engineer Novice would be Droids +2. And any place a person has a Droids 0 rating, they get treated as if they had Droids = 1.
Therefore, a Master Droid Engineer/Master Artisan/Master Etc. could have out5droids. A newbie Novice Marksman could have out 1 droid. A Master Bounty Hunter could get 3 droids out at once. A MSword/MCarb/MBrawl could have out 3 as well. Basically, if you follow the guidelines that we all started with, and 3.5 masteries per person, you get a basic standing.
Of course, the devscould decide to restrict the extra droid to only elite and hybrid professions. In that case, the most a Master Bounty Hunter could get out is one. A Commando could get out two, but only if they were highly specialized. And most combat characters that focus could only get out two as well. The PvP dabblers now could only get out a single droid, most likely...
And then you can take out other professions selectively as well, to reduce their access. Think a MCH doesn't need an extra droid, simply remove the Droids modifier from the Master box. Etc...
I'm a vet from the SW RPG and I think they way droids were implimented there was perfect, as such I'm basically echoing that implimentation in SWG
The empire wants to control everything, and personal combat droids are just not something the empire will put up with, all other things aside the empire should not and would not stand by while joe public walked around with armour plated killing machines
As such 'security' droids shoot to stun (assuming the target is a sentient being), military droids (such as the Droideka and the battle droid) will shoot to kill but they are only available to the military (hence the name) and civilians owning them tends to reward a caught owner with to education in the joys of mining spice atthe Kessel resort... Assasin droids are just plain illegal (however that hasnt stopped them being made/used)
This would lead to existing civilian droids being modified for combat usage, since the droid was not designed for this not only is this a challenge for the DE doing the physical modification (oh and highly illegal to boot) the chassis also isnt the best suited to the rigors of combat (make of that what you will).
Beyond that all 'non-combat' droids (and I'll come back to this is a minute) have life preservation (in terms of sentient beings) in their programing by default, in order to turn your 3PO into a killing machine this programing must be changed (again highly illegal and not the easiest thing to do)
So what we arrive at here is something that relies heavily on the skill of the DE being able to modify the chassis to hold weaponry and the programing to kill sentient beings and hope you dont mess it up....(but if all you want to do is use a droid to kill critters you can buy and off the shelf droids - they are usually called 'vermin control units' or similar). This also give us droids that pass a cursory inspection so we dont have to make your droid kill on sight to the authorities (but leave room for the imps to discover the modifications and fry your butt), create a real 'backyard mechanic' feel to the DE and the modifications to the droids, and leave the system pretty open for what kinds of modifications can be made.
The downside to this is that this means you wont get your Droideka or battle droids (although you could theoritically have one that has been modified to be passive....), however I dont have a gret deal of sympathy for this, this isnt Episodes 1/2 and having just come out of 'pet wars' with creature handlers, I hate to end up in 'droid wars' where every mand and his brother has a battle droid - for me modified stock droids and hidden weapons are much more in keping with the current timeframe
This is from a customer not a DE
Half Joking
Can we get a mouse Droid with a Bazzoka - "say Hello to my little friend" 
The problem I see is making droids useful without setting the "Nerf IT" crowd Free.
If you make a Droid with combat skills 1/10 of the AT-ST in its glory days the Nerf bat will swing.
They have nerfed the only Robot with fighting skills the AT-ST to death..using that model
The combat Bots will
1. Be resticted to PVE
2. Be hard to heal
3. Be expensive
4. Be almost useless
Wish you luck on getting past this argument...glad I dont have to find a work around.
I don't think there will be a problem. As long as EVERYONE has the possibility of owning one as long as they fill the requisit skill slots to own one. If it takes an elite master class to own an advanced combat droid, well anyone can get an elite profession title. No need for the nerf crowd to scream if they are too lazy to master an elite skill. The AT-ST was nerfed because they were too powerful. No one should be able to solo a krayt, itis also an Imperial only item. The new droids will be able to be bought by the entire population.
lowarzek wrote:
This is from a customer not a DE
The problem I see is making droids useful without setting the "Nerf IT" crowd Free.
If you make a Droid with combat skills 1/10 of the AT-ST in its glory days the Nerf bat will swing.
They have nerfed the only Robot with fighting skills the AT-ST to death..using that model
I'm pretty sure the devs could give a crap about what the Droid Engineer population wants. I mean, if they were so concerned for our feelings, they would have acted a long, long time ago...
They have a plan, they'll implement it, and nothing we say is going to have any impact on it until after the majority of it is in the game. So it's really rather pointless to talk about unified positions to give to the devs until later...
They have a plan, they'll implement it, and nothing we say is going to have any impact on it until after the majority of it is in the game. So it's really rather pointless to talk about unified positions to give to the devs until later..."
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So when the Dev'sgive uswith exploding MSE droids that do 20 damage and 45 HAM Prissy Protocol droids armed with CDEF weapons, I'm sure you won't voice your complaints whatsoever? Are you just going to throw up your hands and say, "I was powerless... it was written in the stars that these were the droids we're going to receive!".
What if the Dev's comeback and say, "Aren't these droids what you wanted? Nobody really came forward and said that these droids aren't acceptable... where was your correspondent? Oh yeah, he's resigning... oh well, tough luck DE's... you have no voice!! We'll get back to fixing your Prissy Protocol War Machines after the great Chef Nerf of Q1 2005!"
If you're resigned to whatever fate the Dev's have in store for us and wish to kneel before Zod, by all means do so. But those of us who care to improve our profession will continue to try to express our hopes, desires, andconcernsto the Dev's.
I am not a DE. I like the idea of the class, the idea of droids, though, and want to see it a more useful and interesting class than it is now.
What I'd like to see:
Bug fixes! The bugs alone made a discussion with a DE (Hi, Kaput!) about what droids are useful for rather painful.
DE's can make mentality modules. Let those determine the capability and inclination for combat, or lack of such, in their droids. The prissy module... probably not. Psychotic? Oh yes. Make these also influence the modules installable. (If I understand correctly it only is used on the protocol droid - use it, or versions of it, on all droids.).
45 ham droids ... well, they could wield weapons but it would be very, very symbolic. It would have little bearing on combat capability, adding them or not without other changes would be not a big deal either way, except for esthetically. There is some basis in the movies for extremely minor combat capabilities on a R2, and for a protocol droid to wield a weapon, so it could be added for completeness' sake, but neither scenes are good arguments for them as EFFECTIVE combatants.
The use of modules a bit more in line with the chassises of the droids. (Surgical droids more suited for medical modules, for instance. Higher class droids would either have more functionality or specialized functionality... but not enforced to such a degree that you won't get surprises. (Surgicalinterrogation droids? Great!).
I do not think any of the current droid chassi would be good candidates for anything nearingmedium combat droids, with the exception of the probot and possibly the BLL.
From the current rebalancing of CH's and faction pets, it is somewhat apparent that there will not be strong combat droids that will be generally available for non-DE's. Perhaps stronger than a CH's, perhaps not (Right now the limit is at CL10 for both.). I don't really want that to change. That is not because I want DE's to be 'machine CH's' but because a pet inflation is not a good thing.
I am not sure I want DE's to be machine CH's but I want sttrong combat droids in the gameand I think that is the only way to get them unless they had to beexcrutiatingly weak. CH pets are the ultimate tanks, I'd guess droids would be stronger offensively but weaker defensively. They might not be quite as immortal as flesh pets are as well.
Oh well, just my opinions, and probably a bit wider points than the thread is intended for. Bear with me.(Or have a beer!)
I do not want to be a robotic CH! Droids are supposed to be useful in other ways, we gave them a million ideas which I bet they haven't loked at including but not limited to:
Protocal Droids translating stuff.
Cantina module.
Open locked/passworded door module.
Slicing module.
Now we will just be CHs with hopper costs. I find this just stupid. I'm fine with combat droids but NOT AS OUR MAIN PURPOSE AS DROID ENGINEERS! We should be making things that are useful, not things that walk around with blasters duct-taped to thier domes!
I think this thread just became null and bunk. see link below
http://starwarsgalaxies.station.sony.com/content.jsp?page=In%20Concept
Arcid wrote:
This thread is not null and void. We all know about that page, what we're tryin to do here is to get a single, unified ideal to put acoss to the Devs
You can't get a single, unified ideal becasue everyone has different ideas about what should and should not be aloud.
My opinion is that COMBAT droids should kill.
NON-combat droids should do what they're designed to do.
Some big ugly combat hulk shouldn't be healing people.
And non-combat droids such as Astromechs, Surgicals, or Treadwells should not be running around with blasters.
The way they designed the whole droid system was lazy and the result of impending deadlines.
This is just getting too friggin STUPID.
Let's give guns to creatures! Hey! Some of them have appendages!
There's no reason they couldn't be trained to pull the trigger!
We could put big battle platforms on the larger ones!
We could turn this into 'Attack of the Dinosaurs'!
Wouldn't that be COOOOL!!!
Well, expecting them to give a crap aboutour preferencesnow, after 6 months, is a little naive. Just like the Pikeman profession, the devs implement what they originally wanted to, and nothing else. No matter the complaining, no matter how many great ideas are put forth, this is always the case.
Any similarity between our posting and their actions is purely coincedental.