Droid Engineer Archive
Thread: TH: Lets start fresh here.
As you don't understand DEs, and stated that you're going to be playing TC on the weekend, here's a suggestion. Make a new character there so that you are annonymous and the target DE does not know it is you. Wander up to a DE and ask to buy a droid from them. Watch for the chat that you get in return. This should give you a really good idea, and an introduction to how droids work etc. Almost every DE I know has to repeat this fairly often. Typically the second statement I get from a potential customer is "Hi, I don't know anything about droids, what can they do". To which there's a fairly standard set of replies. Come, be one of those ignorant customers, as I think it will be very enlightening to you.
For this mule character, I suggest you pick up a combo of medic and artisan. Next, head to where there are some injured players and start healing them (with some of the stimpacks you've just created using the new crafting station). Do this for about half an hour non-stop.
Now, take your crafting droid and sit next to a collection of public crafting stations - like the collection outside coronet starport. Attempt to create more stimpacks.
This simple hour of testing will highlight the vast majority of our basic functionality issues. If you want to understand our issues, you're going to have to deal with us directly in an in-game environment. Without this, you will never fully understand the problems we have. FWIW, this goes for any profession (go out, eat a heap of food, take some spice and then wait for 15min to see the problems chefs have).
A
Well, JediYak's guide (stickied at the top of this forum) is an excellent way to start understanding droid engineering. This stuff is also maintained at http://www.crossler.com/swg/
That will give you SOME idea of what it's like to build droids, but I don't know if you can ever get a real gut feeling for the profession without doing it yourself. Since none of us needs to wait for you to become a DE, and you don't craft ANYWAY, I recommend you start by becoming a potential customer. Create some characters, find some Droid Engineers, and chat us up! Be covert, don't be silly and name your character LightningLung, giving yourself away, and I'll bet you learn a lot.
Start from the customer's point of view, because to many of us, that's what is most important. We are crafters and merchants with defective product, out of our direct control, so most of us get pretty good at explaining limitations and such.
I think that if you started out JUST by taking that perspective, we'd make a lot of progress. You could see why you DON'T want to spend the credits, and then we can target some discussions here at making those reasons go away!
I do invite you to visit my shop, incognito or not, I'm generally happy to chat up a potential customer, even when they don't wind up purchasing anything.
Thunderheart wrote:
Help us to help you to help us. :-)
Im really trying here, but theres a lot of "static".
Im sitting here readin gthrough things right now.
Can anyone point me to a good guide? Thanks
Yak's guide, stickied above, will tell you all about droids as they are today.
Goratoth's Issues thread, stickied above, will give you our perceived bugs, wishlists, issues and gripes.
There is also an FAQ up there.
They've been there for a while. You could spend a lot of time reading them.
TH: not that I do not think we can present ourselfs correctly to you but I great place to look is Yaks Guide and Sins state of the profession post. After that if you are not clear on what you think we want then just wait for Sin to get back and clear it up for you. Not that I want to wait anymore then the next guy but I would hate for a change to be made and there be even more problems.
/Netchan
From what I read by the way we are a crafter profession but we do not have any items to see to the other professions. We want droids that a BH wants we want droids that a dancer wants we want droids that a medic wants. We also do not want 1 droid that can do everything. A droid should have a use for example the medical droid just for medical use.
Besides this is would be nice to have something that can protect us in the field like the CH do but special to DE.
/Netchan..
BlueMorgoth-
His droid won't last that long. Remind him to blow wads of creds on batteries or this test will last maybe 10 minutes.
Thunderheart, I'll GIVE you a droid if you come to Kauri, if that's what it takes for you to understand the frustration. It would be well worth the loss of those materials and that profit if it would help out the profession.
Thunderheart wrote:
I have read the threads and I am re-reading them, but if you read through each and every post as I have been doing, the opinions diverge. Im trying to find the consense on those issues and most importantly, Im not a droid engineer. Much of the discussion is "insider talk" and I have to understand the basics as much as anything else.
Thunderheart, what you're trying to do is something I've been doing since launch. I've been reading just about every single post in this forum and trying to put together the big picture as to what DEs want. Sure, there is some discussion as to what is and isn't a problem, but you're going to get that a lot since there's no DE handbook given to us by the Devs as to how this profession was designed to function. As such, we're all groping around in the dark, guessing as to what is and isn't right.
My centralized issues thread is an ongoing attempt to do exactly what you're doing here. Figure out what the profession is saying as a whole and present it to the Devs in one place. If you want to know what's wrong with this profession, start there. If you want to know what people are asking for and have been asking for since launch, start there. Once you've covered those issues, then look for more. People have been discussing the issues in that thread for a long, long time.
In another thread, you asked about what modules we would like. You will find a number of ideas listed in the wishlist section of the thread. They include such things as an entertainment module, to allow entertainers to function outside of cantinas and camps much like the medical module does for medics. How about a slicing module to increase the effectiveness of smugglers. Perhaps even give them a little more control over what attribute of armor or weapon that gets sliced. There's also an entry for a survey module that helps crafters find better resources faster. Ideally, one module specific toeach profession in order to enhance that professionwould really help to give this professiona boost in terms of playability.
His droid won't last that long. Remind him to blow wads of creds on batteries or this test will last maybe 10 minutes.
Actually, that's specifically why I didn't say it. Self-discovery is a good thing. I wanted to get that *ding* lightglobe moment when he's healing a player's wounds and suddenly starts getting the "You must be in a hospital..." message, and then have to go back to the DE with the "my droid's broke, what's wrong?" question. Now, you've ruined the surprise
TH: Would a second droid profession be out of the question?
The DEs don't seem to want to be a combat class so why not have a droid controller profession who is basically the equivilent of a CH execpt with droids. This would make a DE the BE of this new DC class.
Droids would remain a utility for everyone who is a non-DC class just like non-CH pets (except creature pets are only combat). Droids in general would be equal or slightly less powerful than CH pets in combat with the major differences being damage types (maybe even multiple types) and the versatiltiy of a droid (ie more armor or more weapons). For the most part everyone can have combat droids but are limited to one (with exceptions)where the DC would have access to more powerful droids and can call multiple droids.
End result is the DEs gain a new market with high demand for their products and would remain a crafting class. This will allow the addition of combat droids and the freedom from having to be a combat class so the crafting/utility of the DE class can be fleshed out.
You use your computer, right? So do I. I'm a programmer, and quite proficient at doing interesting things with my computers (droids), maybe you are, too. But even if you're simpley an end-user, with a bit of instruction you can make use of the vast majority of software (modules) that is available. Some of this software you have no real use for, either because it does not interest you or because it applies to a specific job you don't need to do. Whether it be running spreadsheets, email, or playing SWG, virtually everyone gets the benefit of using their machines.
Thunderheart wrote:
Can anyone point me to a good guide? Thanks
Here you go TH:
http://www.crossler.com/swg/