Droid Engineer Archive
Thread: #1 Droid Enginer Issue: No Droid Decay = Minimal Return Business
First,
-Artisan is a basic profession, they have enough stuff with repair tools and batteries and such to make repeat business.
-Tailors can make really good money just selling the parts to armorsmiths to make for composite armor. While clothes are not great repeat business either, they also don't take all that much to make.
-Architects, could probably use some love as well. Yet it's very rare to actually find a well stocked vendor, they do sell a lot of stuff. They use a lot of resources though.
-of coruse we know the other crafting proffessions get a lot more repeat business.
Of course im biased, but I think with a work/resource perspective DE's get hit the worst from the fact that we don't get repeat business.
I think the best way to add Droid Degradation would be something like this.
Get rid of Droid Batteries.
Make each Droid have a Battery power of say 100,000 (maybe more maybe less.) When that power is used up, the Droid is dead, NOTHING (med, crafting, storage) on it will function.
Combat Droids will use power faster then others, which is fine. So now that Doc at coronet may need to buy a droid every couple of weeks, which is fine, because he is making millions using it.
People who use Combat droids may end up breaking even since they don't need to buy batteries anymore. It will hit the people who use the droids without power the most. The key to this is it puts the money in the DE's pocket, not the person that can make batteries.
And it's basically what we'll get from the JTL as I understood.
You'll need a droid in the ship, and the droid can be destroyed.
That's what I heard, don't quote me on that.
I never saw anything about it being destroyed, but I do recall there being a question of if any Astromech woudl work. They have not yet said specifically if the droid resides in the owners datapad, if its used in the crafting of the ship (like shuttleports), or even if there are any modules needed to interact with the ship.
Personally, I think it will be stupid. I cant see them making any droid useful in a ship. It will likely be that all you need to do is pull out a droid on the ship and it will act as a passive "powerup" to the ship.
/shrug
Malitevv wrote:
Whatever the system is it will not have the desired impact on the profession unless the inconvenience it imposes on the customers is very minor.
But in all truth, I'm a little confused about the idea that our profession is hurt so badly by this issue. It theoretically follows that we should get no repeat sales if droids do not decay, but in practice it doesn't work out that way. In my experience, as players change professions and try new things they return to me for repeat sales on utility droids. There are enough modules available now that there isn't enough room in any single player's data pad to hold one of every kind of high end droid, which means they occassionally have to delete one to make room for another when they want to try something new. It's not an explicit decay mechanism and it is not ideal, but we do get repeat sales because of this. I'm not saying this is ideal, but anyone who claims there are zero repeat sales is overstating the facts.
Emphasis for my agreement.
I have found that I have repeat customers - not only those who use consumables (hi BH's! Thanks!) but ones who use droids now tactically.
People I tend to refer to as "my combat monster customers".
Mainly, they use different combat/stim/autoheal droids for raids on the DWB and the corvette. (don't know but I believe that they are trying to ready droids inside the bunker, or see if they can follow)
They've done tests on the Corvette with tanks, autoheal combats, and such. I've helped one group (my PA combat guys) on throwing some ideas together, but I also get some odd requests from the public too so I think others are doing this.
One was a guy wanting crates of heavy R3 Combat droids. CRATES. (my R3 combat droids are running about oh, 80k or so)
But then again, I could just have a lot of very weird customers. All I know is I see a lot of the same names buying combat droids, harvest droids, and they come back when I have better ratings available and they upgrade.And I have definitely heard, "Hey, I need to replace this droid - its' vitality is low."
If we could tie in Vitality to combat in a bit more visible manner (and have our restoration kits act as vitality packs) as Condition is on armor and weapons, then I think we'll be doing rather well vis-a-vis decay. The Combat Rebalance seems to be making droids a hugely viable and needed component to combat. We may actually not need decay of non combat models.
Message Edited by Malitevv on 06-08-2004 03:48 AM
I agree that droids shouldn't decay as fast as weapons/armor, but the 'hassle' factor isn't a consideration. Virtually everything else has some kind of decay or maintenance involved, players are no stranger to that.
Ideally individual modules would wear out and a DE could swap in new ones, restoring the functionality. Having a specific building for this task that could do it automatically would be pretty cool too.
Javac wrote:
I agree that droids shouldn't decay as fast as weapons/armor, but the 'hassle' factor isn't a consideration. Virtually everything else has some kind of decay or maintenance involved, players are no stranger to that.
Big difference : Virtually everything else is more usefull to the player than the droid.
We are toy makers. Nothing else.
Gavvot wrote:
Javac wrote:
I agree that droids shouldn't decay as fast as weapons/armor, but the 'hassle' factor isn't a consideration. Virtually everything else has some kind of decay or maintenance involved, players are no stranger to that.
Big difference : Virtually everything else is more usefull to the player than the droid.
We are toy makers. Nothing else.
Depends on the module, a smart scout/ranger knows the true value of a good harvest droid. Docs would be in a pinch without 110 Medical droids. Also, the combat reballance may bring the usefullness of droids up a notch, as a LE Tank droid is dang good little tanker. My friends use theirs right now to save on the cost of armor, why burn up that good comp armor when the droid can take the beating instead. Storage, Crafting, Combat, etc. Lot of good modules in there, folks just need to get accustomed to using them effeciently.
Right now players have it good, even the devs stated we would have it so. People fight sloppy and wastefull, because they can easily afford to. Got a feeling that will change.
Other droids, that are just toys, need to be fixed.
Malitevv wrote:
Straker_Atrella wrote:
Make each Droid have a Battery power of say 100,000 (maybe more maybe less.) When that power is used up, the Droid is dead, NOTHING (med, crafting, storage) on it will function.
.....So now that Doc at coronet may need to buy a droid every couple of weeks, which is fine, because he is making millions using it.
It's fine for the Doc because he needs the droid. But for most players who don't need the droids to play, if they have to replace their droid every couple of weeks, it means they won't bother to buy them at all.
I'm not against the idea of droid decay. But we can't ignore the annoyance factor. If the decay system for an itemputs a significant break in a owner's enjoyment of the game by requiring the owner tospend timeshopping to replace some item thathe/she doesn't really need, he/she will decideto play without that item.
Regarding your proposal, if droids become unusable after a couple of weeks have passed, doctors will be the only ones who continue to buy them because they are the only ones who get enough benefit from the droid for the inconvenience to be worth their time. There will be exceptions, but that is the what will happen for the most part.
The bottom line is that nobody wants toreplace, retrain, and renametheirdroids everycouple of weeks and if they don't have to, they won't. Which means, if that is the only way for them to continue owning droids, most players will decide not to own them.
Whatever the system is it will not have the desired impact on the profession unless the inconvenience it imposes on the customers is very minor.
But in all truth, I'm a little confused about the idea that our profession is hurt so badly by this issue. It theoretically follows that we should get no repeat sales if droids do not decay, but in practice it doesn't work out that way. In my experience, as players change professions and try new things they return to me for repeat sales on utility droids. There are enough modules available now that there isn't enough room in any single player's data pad to hold one of every kind of high end droid, which means they occassionally have to delete one to make room for another when they want to try something new. It's not an explicit decay mechanism and it is not ideal, but we do get repeat sales because of this. I'm not saying this is ideal, but anyone who claims there are zero repeat sales is overstating the facts.
I disagree 100% and here is why. MORE people would use droids, not less. The biggest annoyance factor with droids in a fight are batteries. If you are in a fight, you can't re-charge your droid. Meaning if you are using a Harvesting, Combat, Tank, Stimpack, whatever, and it runs out of power, he wont help you the rest of the fight.
A100,000 charge battery then dead droid would remove this annoyance. You would pull your droid and count on it. I think that one of the top reasons that people don't use combat droids is simply because batteries are a pain. Heck 100,000 charge would probably be too much, if youfigurethat is 250 batteries with 4 charges. 200 a charge (standerd rate) would mean your getting 50,000 in battery value alone.
I think MORE people would use them.
Straker