Droid Engineer Archive
Thread: Droid Focus (Interplanetary Survey): Information, discussion and bug-reporting (04/23/04)
Just adding to the chorus...
The best versions of this droid really, REALLY need to report stats or it is going to be stillborn. Whether that is accomplished via Level 1 - Level 3 Surveying modules or just by experimentation doesn't matter, but I seriously doubt that anyone is going to want this droid based on what we know.
1) It is single use. For a disposable item, single use is excessively annoying. It needs charges in order to be disposable or the effort (and inventory space) required to use them will be unacceptable.
2) It is going to be expensive. Vertex Crystalline Gemstone has spawned a grand total of 3 times on Ahazi according to SWGCraft, and one of those was only a single planet. Worse, Droid Engineers are going to have to compete with Armorsmiths to obtain it which will further increase the cost. I'm looking at about 3k each for these droids - and I'm normally one of the most inexpensive Droid Engineers on Ahazi - and at that price no one is going to use them unless they perform an incredibly useful task.
Which brings us to a speculative point:
3) Just a list of resources is not terribly useful. There are far too many easier, cheaper, and faster ways to get information that simple. For a single use, expensive, and time consuming (15-minute delay) device these are going to need to report full stats on every resource of the appropriate type. Sub-divide the resources by category (metal vs low grade ore, for example) if necessary, but report the stats.
Personally, I would rather ensure that the droid's ability is useful than reduce its cost or give it charges. A 10-charge droid that costs 100 credits to make still won't sell if it doesn't serve a useful purpose. A single-use droid that costs 10k will sell if it is useful enough.
Lonkley wrote:
TheRealTK421 wrote:
Since I have yet to see the email reporting work at all yet, they may well be trying to discern what exactly to put in it (and how) to make it "useful"...and still balanced.
umm, wait, so you dont know what is supposed to be returned...? you made it sound awfully definitive at the top of the post. I thought you had been given specs by TH on how it was planned to work.
EnigmaBSc wrote:
I don'tbelieve it would be unbalancing for the droid to report full stats on the resources. Anyone with Novice Artisan can do this already, it just takes a little time. The resources and stats are not generally treated as valuable commodities by artisans - witness swgcraft.com. It's the waypoints to high concentrationsthat are the valuable part of surveying.
If the droid doesn't report resource stats then it is worthless for the planet you are already on. You can get the same information just by opening a survey tool and it takes twenty minutes and a survey droid and survey tool less to do so. There is some advantage to being able to see what resources are on other planets, but I'm not convinced it will really outweigh the cost of the droid - certainly not when the same information is available on a website for free.
Allowing the droid to give full resource stats would not be granting free checkers and would not be stepping on people's toes (I can't speak for everybody of course - there's always at least one dissenting voice
) because the information is already available, albeit out of the game. On the other hand, if it reported stats, the five minutes it would save mewhen I log in and notice that a number of resources have shifted would make this droid valuable, saleable and a great addition to any DE's vendor.
EngimaBSc
I dont understand why people keep saying they can get the same info from SWGCraft or other webpages. They can if someone have added the info, but that is a big IF. I dont use SWGCraft or any other webpage to look for resources very often. I did it recently and was given wrong information, outdated information.
The survey droid allows you to get the iformation ingame, get the correct information and the up to date information. No webpage that provides resource information about what resource to find where in SWG can give you that information. Unless SOE makes such a webpage and have the information be automatically added when a shift occurs.
I know many wishes this droid to do all for them, but it wont. It will allow you to stay at your 'home' planet and still gather information about what resources are available at the other 9, all within 30 minutes or so. At a fraction of the cost it will take you to buy a ticket to each of the planets and open the survey tool.
Many resources needed by the various crafting profession are specific. I see them as the biggest buyer of these droids. They need specific resource and they need it with the best possible stats they can find.
Using a webpage to guide you is a risk as the information may not be up to date. Going to each planet and check will be time consuming and costly. Fire off a bunch of droids will be fast and relativly cheap. And you are free to do whatever you wish while you wait for the emails to come back with your information.
Then you see if it is worth heading to another location as the resource you need are found there and then you can survey for the best concentration you can plant a harvester on.
The survey droid may or may not return the stats of the various information. To soon to tell at this point.
And if it dont then that is another module we can hope to get in the future and that will allow us to make another item to sell.
All I hope is that we never see a droid or module that find us the highest waypoint. Some work should be involved.
Whats next? A droid module that builds the droids for you?
Kaldeth wrote:
The survey droid allows you to get the iformation ingame, get the correct information and the up to date information. No webpage that provides resource information about what resource to find where in SWG can give you that information. Unless SOE makes such a webpage and have the information be automatically added when a shift occurs.
- they don't know it requires the the user have survey tools in his posession.
- they know it requires survey tools but don't know that it requires those tools to be in the primary inventory.
I dread even more that a significant percentage of our potential customers will buy one once, get frustrated because they can't get it to work and then never buy another one again.
Kollos wrote:
The best versions of this droid really, REALLY need to report stats or it is going to be stillborn. Whether that is accomplished via Level 1 - Level 3 Surveying modules or just by experimentation doesn't matter, but I seriously doubt that anyone is going to want this droid based on what we know.
Malitevv wrote:
people in this thread are all saying it contains only a list of resources. but now that I've read the other threads on the topic, I'm not so sure that is accurate...
The truth is right now we don't know what it contains (or more accurate, it contains nothing right now). TK has mentioned some things, but I don't know whether this is his opinion or fact from the devs.
I have to agree with most everyone here....
A list of resources does me no good without at least SOME information on the stats. Be it a rating system, a different color, bolded or whatever, I would be ticked to still have to travel all the way to Endor from Tat just to end up finding a 20% concentration of something with a OQ of 45. Being a doctor and artisan, I need very specific resources that can be challenging to find in decent quality....I would rather travel around and enjoy the scenery than just have a droid tell me -- yeah it's there but I won't tell you if it's worth getting.
Just my opinion, I could be wrong
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Keniki Akamai - Master Doctor/Novice Artisan
I too agree that it should not consume a survey tool. The Droid schematic includes 4 pieces of components (EMM& GP) that could very well be used to duplicate the survey tool....(sarcasm) which as you all know is just a little lump of mineral that miracuously can be transformed into a piece of complex circuitry....(/sarcasm) ala the Speeders.
I have a question tho. Can you send out 10 droids at once? Or do you have to wait 15 minutes before sending the next droid? Is the resulting email "subject" customized by listing the planet and type of resources surveyed?
VWBugKing wrote:
If you guys think your customers are going to have problems with this, then just package them together. I plan on have crates of 25 of these selling. I will include 25 Survey Tools for Free. One package for each type of Survey Tool and place both the Droids and Tools in a Travel Pack. If you dont want to do that, then sell Survey Tools on your vendor, and have an advertisement saying that if you buy a Survey droid, you get a Survey tool for free. Bank tip them back when you see they bought both. Survey tools are not expensive, especially when you can use grind materials for them. Maybe 100 credits per Tool. Not a big deal, and you customers will enjoy the fact that you are going out of the way to make thier lives easier.
Iwas goingto do that. But then I realized that if I package all the parts in a back pack what is going to happen? customers are going to use the droid from inside the back pack and its not going to work for them because the components that the droid requires have to be in the primary inventory for the droid to function. and if it works the way batteries do, there will be no meaningful system message explaining the problem. the customer will then become confused unless they have experience with the games idiosyncracies.
so only experienced players will figure out what to do at that point.
anything that adds to the steps and increases the potential for confusion in the customer base is a bad thing in my opinion. especially in a case like this were there is no need for the confusion.
For me, the bottom line is this: the game has a poor interface for automatically pulling required items out of the players inventory when an action on a separate item requires the consumption of another inventory item (because of the whole "must be in the primary inventory" issue). Therefore, designing a new system (in this case the survey droid)that unnecessarily uses this interface is simply unwise for a software development point of view. New systems should be designed to avoid known problems in the game rather than the other way around.
The survey tools, if they are required, should be in the schematic. The droid is still useful if they aren't in the schematic, but the implementation will be sub-par, in my opinion.