Droid Engineer Archive
Thread: Combat Droids Made Easy. For your consideration Thunderheart
I do have one comment and one question. First the comment: Maybe you did not intend this, but it looks as though the self-destruct module would have levels? I'm a little unclear as to the reasoning behind that, as I see it more along the lines of the current repair module. My question is: You duplicated 'Combat Armor Module'... so what cool thing did we miss out on? :-)
I think this kind of versatility is what we need.
Although for self-destruct modules, do you intend to cause the droid to perma-die? Otherwise how does one expect a droid that's blown itself up to come back to life?
Because of all the new modules, there'll have to be a lot of sockets for them. In the high end droids, we're probably talking about more than 4 unless you want to group them in combat clusters.
I don't mean to mischaracterize the idea though. I think it's great and I hope it catches Thunderheart's attention. He should really ask for a yes/no vote onthe list of ideas he's collected if he's uncertain about what most people want.
TH,
Can we get an acknowledge in this post?
Maybe Sintrosi will float it when she gets back.
LancerDL wrote:
I think this kind of versatility is what we need.
Although for self-destruct modules, do you intend to cause the droid to perma-die? Otherwise how does one expect a droid that's blown itself up to come back to life?
Because of all the new modules, there'll have to be a lot of sockets for them. In the high end droids, we're probably talking about more than 4 unless you want to group them in combat clusters.
I don't mean to mischaracterize the idea though. I think it's great and I hope it catches Thunderheart's attention. He should really ask for a yes/no vote onthe list of ideas he's collected if he's uncertain about what most people want.
Just leave the General Module Socket Cluster "exploit" in the game, and R2's can carry 9 sockets... As Fastgun mentioned (and I concur,) we don't want droids to have a lot of sockets in them... Armor 6, Health 6, Action 6, Mind 6 and you have a "tank droid"... Do you want a droid that can have more than 4 sockets? With more than 4, you could start throwing speed, melee damage, etc, etc in there...You'll start getting the min-maxers out to make the best of the best, and we'll wind up getting the whole tree rewritten again, a-la Creature Handlers.
Au-Ru Blasterkin - Master Droid Engineer of Intrepid
The basic idea is that the Droid Chassis is nothing more than aform that holds modules. By itself it has no HAM. The droid Chassis alone is just a decoration. Everything that makes the droid functional is a seperate module.
Having said that, the quality of the workmanship on the Chassis, and the quality of materials used will have an impact on how many slots are available for modules. This makes the chassis vital because it's quality will determine how many much can be put in. Without at least a health/action/mind module of 1 the droid has no ham. So at the very least, all operational combatdroids would have to have 3 points from their chassis value spent on hams. This gets them a basic level 1 module for health, action and mind.
The speed of the droid is it's combat speed. A factor that can very quickly change a droids damage output. What the top speed would be, will have to be figured out by the Devs.
The self destruct module is of course a last ditch AE explosion that permanently destroys the droid. How damaging and effective this would be is up to the Devs to set. Thunder heart mentioned that this was already being considered for MSE droids. Making them cheap rolling bombs. The self destruct module would be scalable damage mutch like any other damage module. The devs needto figure out what the absolute top range ofdamage a self destruct module can do, call that a well made level 6 module, then scale down to level 1.
Here is an example of a combat droid.
Youget an order for a combat droid from a Tera Kasi Master. The TKA tells you that regardless of the situation he always ends up being the tank. "What I need, he says, is somthing that does alot of damage quickly because I always end up agroing the Mob, and tank pets and droids never work out for me."
You ask him what types of opponents he faces mainly. He tells you it's usually the 4 legged kind, he doesn't pvp very much. You get a feel for how much money he wants to spend then you go to work. You choose a Droideka Mark III frame. Its a middle of the road droid skin that doesn't take alot of advanced materials and can be made reasonably cheap. You combine the resources and get lucky on crafting, not a masterpiece but definantly within the top 90 %. You tell the TKA that his droid will be a little more expensive than orignally anticipated but he will definantly get his moneys worth. He agrees with the higher price and you get back to work.
The Droideka Mark III Frame you made has a module value of 18 pretty high for a Mark III.You have heard of somelucky crafter getting as high as 23 on a Mark III, but he was using materials with rare quality, and had a real lucky day. Knowing that the TKA is mainly concerned with damage output and will be doing the tanking himself you decide to go full out and make a level 6 ranged attack module, and a level 5 speed module. You would like to give him a level 6, speed module, but the resources for the level 6 are pretty rare, and no one has seen Tassalin Steel for months. You make both modules and get decent middle of the road results. Now what next?
11 of the 18 points have been spent, 7 points left for Armor and Hams. Hmmm. You get the feeling that the TK Master is a pretty frugal player, and probally wants his droid to last a long time. You cant envision him destroying his droid in dramatic displays, with a self destruct module. So you throw that idea out. You decide to concentrate on Armor and Hams with the rest of the points. Keep it simple and basic. Now you know that armor will halve damage, and a level 3 armor module will give the droid medium armor with some resists. You decide that this is probally more important than high hams for this particular player because he will probally be tanking most of the time, so the droid should only be getting hit occasionally, but when it does get hit, ouch! TK masters are not known to hunt durni's after all. So you make a level 3 armor module, and you happen to have some high quality materials. After combining it all..Bam! Critical Failure! You curse for a few seconds and try again, and out comes a masterpiece.The level 3 armor module is nothing compared to a level 6 but **edit**! it's about the best level 3 you have ever seen.
4 points left. enough for two, level 1 HAM modules and one level 2. Hmm. Well he is going to be fighting alot of 4 legged creatures, and they tend to hit the health the hardest. So you decide to make the health module level 2 leaving action and mind a scary low level 1. Oh well, you can't have everything.
When it's all over what you have made is a hard hitting ranged attack droid which can stand 2 or 3 hits from a melee attacker only. The droid would be terrible for Pvp, and against Npc shooters, but it does a **edit** goodjob standing off at a distance and adding damage to someone who is tanking. Exactly what this particular customer needs.
Fastgun
**Sigh** I wish there was an edit button. Sorry for the spelling.
Fastgun
This is an excellent idea, in that it adds versatility to combat droids. There would need to indeed be several "Combat Droid" chasis' so that there is variety in appearance as well. However, I think one thing should be added...
I think some sort of Cert system must be added to at least keep the bigger droids out of younger hands. It's the way of things that people will always want the best, but to keep the smaller droids (IE, chasis's that can't hold as many modules) in demand we must limit the larger droids to only experienced players. I know there's been several ideas on this, but I think the best one would be to simply put in the droid certs in all the skill trees at certain levels. For instance, getting the fourth tier of any Basic profession opens up our medium level droids, getting the second box in any Elite profession opens up the high level droids, and getting Master in any Elite profession opens up the best combat droid models.
After that's done, the droids will be kept out of newbie hands. Then, just fix the General Socket Cluster issue of "stacking" modules, and you should be set.
I myself would love to see a system like that. Very good work!
I would like restriction on droids and what modules they can have. And they will definitely have to fix the general cluster module bug before doing that.
Hell, it could be like mechwarrior, where you put the weapons and armor on the mech depending on the chassis ... sweet! of course, that's not SW but hey, if there are CHs why can't there be Mechs 
Great Idea!
It helps for the "tinkering" with droids, would make it fun to craft them.
Seems like this was well thought out, and deserves at least a look by the devs.
crap someone beat me to this..
Kudos, thank you that I didnt have to type this, my version was much longer to say the basically the same thing. Great job Fastgun
/bump
this needs to be considered, thought over and then implamented... period.. this simple sytem not only works, but its an advantage to the devs to use it.
next is certs... who can use what.
simple short version,
1) you mastered nothing.. great enjoy the probots..
2) you mastered a starting profession, great.. enjoy the new level of combat droids
3) you mastered a eliete profession,great welcome to the big new droids,,
simply limit it by the number of slots each level can use.
witht he new one pet out change.... even a MCH could buy and use one of the best combat droids.. but .. then why would he or she bother to be a MCH...
Gveedo