Droid Engineer Archive
Thread: DE's I need two things from you please
1. Agree with Sintrosi
2. Not too happy with Dev "plan", but...
You have a lot of work to do here and all of it will take a lot of time, so...Please unerf the probot Now so we have something to work with over the next 6 months while waiting for all the goodness of the "plan".
If the probot had the attack of a Wrix, an ordinary level 13 Wrix, it would be more useful to customers (and me).
Oh yeah one more thing ...
Multiple Droids out for DE's:
I like this idea. To expand on it though I think anyone should be able to have their crafting / medical droid out with a combat droid. Just not 2 combat droids. If we had some sort of classification of what frames were combat and what were service that would help. Then this whole "No pets out while on your mount" would only effect those who want their attacker out. Not their lowly crafter droid out (got to have some companionship on the long walks through the desert, and my mount cant talk 
-K
1. i agree 100% with sin's plan.
2. i'd rather u fix all the current bugs first before u even start on any of that.
Thunderheart wrote:1. I need to know if you agree or disagree with Sintrosi's Plan
2. I need to know if you agree or disagree with the rough DE plan in general
Also, please post the changes you would make to the DE plan. Thanks
I usually try not to be overly critical of the devs because I know they work hard, but come on Thunderheart. There are literally hundreds of posts by all of us on these very issues. Read the thread that the plan was posted in, most of the feedback went in there. Also, read the thread with "concerns" over the plan. Some more feedback went in there. Asking us to spend our time re-constructing the sum total of what's already been posted is....redundant at best.
1. I think he may have understated the situation out of politeness.....
2. The plan: I'm glad something's being done, and there's some good stuff there. Is it the best of all possible worlds? No, but I can live with it.
The two things I want most for droids aren't in the plan:
A) The ability to copy a waypoint to be a patrol point, and thus send a droid somewhere
B) The addition of the harvester's "Admin menu" to a droid's radial menu, so that more than one person can control a droid and access it's storage module
The ability to use droids in a non-combat role would be greatly magnified if these two features were implemented.
Honestly - I'm not that hard-wired to have a big combat droid. I'm doing my part to create 'player created content' by hiring gun-slingers to act as my bodyguards in-game, and I think that's a good thing. I want to use droids to take care of mundane tasks, like they should be used.
On the other hand, having a droideka follow me around and make sure the Desert Demon's don't slay me while checking the harvesters would be nice. If the probots were un-nerfed for DE's that would suffice though.
I think you'd solve 99% of the DE problem if you added Droidekas and made them useful.
Thunderheart,
First off glad to have you aboard, as Im sure you already know Sintrosi is a great source of DE information and concerns dont overlook that ..(Im sure you're not going to just had to let my thoughts be known). Here are my thoughts for what they are worth....
1.) Sintrosi's state of profession .... I agree. She's done a fantastic job in summing up the issues with DE's and capturing the overall sentiment. We've not only been ignored, we've also been kicked while we were down, and then left for dead. Given the nature of SWG (um star wars) I find this surprising, but such is life...
2.) the DE "plan". Its been mentioned before, its not much of a plan. As far as where the DEVs see DE's in the universe and what role they'd like them to play its obvious they havent yet figured that out. Some DE's have been hoping there was a secret master plan in which all would be made better, just the DEV's hadn't had time to implement it yet. Neither here nor there lets continue.
We've got great representation and for the most part a very dedicated and pationate group of players who encompass the DE profession. So Im sure something good has to come of all this.
My thoughts on the Plan:
DE only combat droids:
Well, first off I dont agree. I think DE only droids, Yes definetly. What we mostly fear as DE's is getting to our harvestors without being beating into submission. I personally dont care to fight the fierce dragons of Tatooine (heck I wouldnt even shoot at the krettles so long as they'd let me be). What I'd like to see is perhaps a defensive droid for the DE's. Like a crafters protection droid. Perhaps it has no offensive capabilities, but can create a false image of the DE so that creatures follow it instead of the DE. Or perhaps its got a shield which allows the DE to burstrun away from dangerous situations (of course this would have to fail should the DE try to fight back). I do like the DE's having some "protection" I don't like to think of us as a mechanical CH class.
Combat droids:
I do think we need more combat droids. I do like the idea of modules (gives us the ability to tweak our combat droids to do different types of damage ... should be integrated with weapon smiths perhaps). I DONT like the idea of any droid being able to hold them. I think we should have crafting droid frames, medical droid frames, and combat frames. There should be a few frames which fit each classification (so perhaps the R series and the treadwell are crafters, the surgical and some new droid frames are med only and the probot and some IG-88's or something are considered combat). This way each frame type would have a specific use. WE could sell combat droids, and not have to worry about customers wanting everything and the kitchen sink in it. NO MORE PROBOT MED DROIDS. I'd hate to see the "uber death dealing MSE, with death ray, crafting station, and med capabilities ...no no no ).
BUGS:
Sintrosi has said it, other DE's have said it ... Fix our bugs we'd be a much happier bunch( um yes even happier than if we can craft the super blow-em up MSE's of doom). Its also an easy thing to fix (not code wise but in identifying the issues) Gorantoth has done a FANTASTIC job of making sure our specific bugs are catalogued. If its a problem, he's logged it. So start there and work your way down.
Power droids:
Harvestor functionality. YES YES YES. I think this is a fantastic idea. For those saying it shouldn't take the large pain in the butt expensive power cores ....try to make one then tell me its not worth the price. Also keep in mind the Architects will be losing business, they will not be selling as many power harvestors. Their new source of income on this will be power cores, suck it up and price your power droids accordingly.
Medical droids:
Though I'd love to have a droid medic follow me around, I dont know how good an idea this is. It could be a good seller, and a great droid companion it just needs to be VERY carefully thought out so as not to step on the medic toes. We dont want to alienate a profession just to make ours a bit more viable.
MSE Bombs:
Eh, take it or leave it. Its a function, one which will allow the lower level DE's to have a purpose (specifically at the first box) but I think there are much better ideas. I liked the MSE which delivered stuff for you to customers and then dissapeared alot better than the blowing up MSE's but what ever.
Repair Droids:
Ok, I like this one. Bring the LE repair droids back into the fold. But my question is why stop there (or more importantly why start there). At least LE's can have modules and have SOME purpose. What in gods name do we use BLL's or Protocol droids for? Perhaps we should be coming up with some worth while ideas for the chasis we currently only sell as furniture at best.
I think thats it for me .... if I think of more I'll be sure and contribute.
Thanks again Sintrosi and Thunderheart ....
-Kralis
Master DE Bloodfin
i'll be happy as long as you devs fix the glitches in the DE profession. Before adding things like combat droids and things like that.
Because of the state of the MasterDroid Engineer - I have kept only blueprints and production, surrendered the remaining.
Having a "poll" about what some people want is absurd because it's making this profession worse.
I don't see what everyone is complaining about. You don't see the Cooks or Dress Makers screaming "I WANT to have a fighting shirt that adds 50% melee bonus to me!" or "DEVS Please make foods where they will chase down an enemy and blow them to pieces".
This profession does what it is supposed to do, make droids. If you want to fight become a fighter. I personally would like to see a more marketable approach to our droids. Make furniture if you have to, if that is what sells. I would like to see more droid consumables, adding an additional optional slot to the Large house schematic for a type of droid, this will allow the droid give the owner a break on the maintainence costs, like a weaponsmiths enhancement, call it the Architect Enhancement.
Also make the DE a vehicle specific class, just like the CH is a creature mount class. The DE should be responsible for making all of the higher end electronic equipment used by all of the other artisans. Is seems like the Engineering tree of Artisan just falls off the face of the galaxy, the only logical place for engineering is the droid engineer.
I agree with plans that want to make the artisan profession a workable class. I just don't see any major plans to make the DE a better playing class exciting or helping out. Making a class more powerful in combat is not allways the answer, providing a schematic to insure that the object will sell for 100k is the answer.
So in short, look on ways to market the proffession, and provide some products that everyone will want to buy at a high price. Architects have housing, Weaponsmiths have the obvious so why can't an engineer have a nich.
My 2 creds.
1) I agree with Sintrosi's State of the Profession post, if that's what you are talking about. Please make an effort to be more specific in the future - it would have been simple for you to link to the exact thread you were talking about.
2) I cannot agree with "the Plan" simply because it isn't a plan. It's a vague outline of possibilities and nothing more. I'm a game developer myself, and were I to present "the Plan" to my superiors as an actual work product I would be laughed at and told to go back and do it right.
Thunderheart, I understand the position you are in and the difficulties you most likely have (because I have been in similar positions in the past). You're going to have to be more concrete and specific with your statements even if that means saying "I cannot offer you any more information at this time because the development team has not made any decisions." As you have seen from "the Plan" we are not satisfied with having the results of a brainstorming session labeled as our plan for the future.
For me, the most important thing for you to remember is that the Droid Engineer profession is a crafting profession. We are crafters first and foremost. In that vein, also remember that this is Star Wars. Droids are everywhere and do just about everything. ANYONE should be able to use a droid to do utility work. ANYONE should be able to use a droid to defend themselves.
Many people want to see the Droideka added as a craftable droid. I really don't care whether or not it is added, but I do care whether or not you make drastic alterations to this profession in order to put it in. If you cannot come up with a way for Droid Engineer to remain a crafting profession first and foremost, then DO NOT add the Droideka or any other Combat Droid.
Personally, the obvious answer is to make "Combat Droid Handling" a part of the Squad Leader profession. Allow anyone to use one Combat droid for defense (it can learn "guard" but not "attack"), but only allow a Squad Leader to command more than one Combat droid (if desired) or use a Combat droid to attack.
The best thing you could do for us is to get Gorantoth's list of issues resolved. Make our profession work first, and ONLY THEN worry about adding to it. But when you do turn to adding additional content to the profession, add more utility before you add combat capability.