Droid Engineer Archive
Thread: Droid Decay system, detailed description.
Straker_Atrella
Wed Jul 28, 2004 4:27 am
#27
True, the better animations should be saved for when the droid starts to die.
Yea 50% of people having a Power Droid is probably optomistic. Yet, I know a ton of people who don't have all 5 droid slots filled up. Even with me giving them free to our guild, people still wont use droids, so they have free slots. Now this isn't exactly an argument FOR power droids I guess, I'm just saying that a lot of people "I" know have room in their datapad.
I guess we disagree on the "master" thing. I do think that Master stuff should be better and more sought after. Masters should make the best stuff.
Batleh
Wed Jul 28, 2004 9:39 pm
#28
Straker_Atrella wrote:I guess we disagree on the "master" thing. I do think that Master stuff should be better and more sought after. Masters should make the best stuff.
Well, this is totally off topic, but I think that masters should make the best stuff, and the higher end stuff, but they shouldn't monopolize the market place. We seriously need to re-work the experiment point system so that masters aren't the only ones with sellable items. The point of working on skills is to get good at what you know so you can move on to the next thing. In the "real" world, you're advanced for being good at what you're currently doing. I wouldn't expect someone to come up to me and say "Yes! yes! you've made a bunch of worthless crummy items! good! now! here's a harder thing to work on!" You practice on something get good at it, start making good product, then you advance to the next thing, which is not how things work in SWG.
Gron_DM
Sun Nov 14, 2004 11:53 pm
#29
yeah i was reading this and was wondering why the original posts were talking about 1 hour 
hehe there isnt much that can be used to draw vitality..i think batts is good just need to make crafting modules and all others use power as well so ppl will have to recharge they're droid. If someone recharges a droid once a day it get about 5 vital point hits..if you start from 1000vital that is 200 days. Seems kinda slow imho. maybe scale down vital totals or scale up the vital hit?
hehe there isnt much that can be used to draw vitality..i think batts is good just need to make crafting modules and all others use power as well so ppl will have to recharge they're droid. If someone recharges a droid once a day it get about 5 vital point hits..if you start from 1000vital that is 200 days. Seems kinda slow imho. maybe scale down vital totals or scale up the vital hit?
Straker_Atrella
Mon Nov 15, 2004 5:07 am
#30
Yea the numbers are flexible. The key is for us to find a system that we like, then decide how fast or slow we think the decay should be, then slide those numbers into the system.
Gron_DM
Mon Nov 15, 2004 7:40 pm
#31
well how many outlets are there for decay and which type would be the least iritating to customers and easiest to code for devs?
Youve got the classics: Droid is damaged/incapped
But we need something for those no-com's bots. We can make decay on a per usage basis, so if a crafter used its module then it takes a decay hit something like 1 vit point per 10 uses. i think batts is easier then having to code in decay for each modulebased on its usage. and customers then wont feel pressured to use a droid less.
Straker_Atrella
Mon Nov 15, 2004 9:12 pm
#32
That's why I like this idea. You totally remove the need for batteries except on an emergency basis. The customers get less annoyance of batteries.
Yet at the same time, even non-combat droids will decay, simply because as they are out, they are losing power.
Gron_DM
Mon Nov 15, 2004 10:07 pm
#33
hehe kinda like how leaving your speeder out is a big money sink (unless you got the flash speeder 
)
)
Gron_DM
Mon Nov 15, 2004 10:18 pm
#34
duh! reading my last post why not use speeder style decay on droids? have em lose 1 point of vitality on calling or storing and 1 pt vital on each hour out. I figure if a person uses a droid daily 4 call/stores a day 4 hours that is 8 vital points out of 1000 it would take 3 to 4 months for a person to use up that droid...you could always boost the vital hits if that is to long i think 3 months is right on.
Drashk
Mon Nov 15, 2004 10:43 pm
#35
This sort of system is what I am currently working on. Hopefully, I'll have the Chassis Experimentation doc out later tonight or tomorrow and the Decay system idea out later in the week, that builds upon the chassis idea.
Gron_DM wrote:
duh! reading my last post why not use speeder style decay on droids? have em lose 1 point of vitality on calling or storing and 1 pt vital on each hour out. I figure if a person uses a droid daily 4 call/stores a day 4 hours that is 8 vital points out of 1000 it would take 3 to 4 months for a person to use up that droid...you could always boost the vital hits if that is to long i think 3 months is right on.
Straker_Atrella
Tue Nov 16, 2004 6:14 am
#37
If you can actually Repair the vitality, like you can now with pet vit packs. Ideally we would use Droid Repair kits, then the vit loss would have to be a lot higher.
Figure people can repair a droid 4-5 times probably.
Straker_Atrella
Thu Feb 17, 2005 12:30 pm
#38
This is a pretty old thread, it's my vision of a good decay system, even though it is old, it still applies.
If you notice, Decay is fairly slow, Droids get worse as they decay, and the droid is never totally destroyed, those who are "attached" to their droid can get it reworked.
jefmes
Thu Feb 17, 2005 9:01 pm
#39
OckVofad wrote:
The battery decay system is what a majority of DEs want for a decay system (See poll).
The people whoneed droids (Doctors, Crafters, People who want extra storage without lots etc) will continue to buy them even if they have to replace them every 3-4 months. I disagree that the "sky will fall" ifthe decay system is changed.
We finally have droids that people NEED (Andthey will need them even more after JTL). People have no problem replacing armor and weapons. I dont think they will havea problemreplacing a droid.
Entertainers are not an example of someone who needs a droid. The current Ent modules are an enhancement not a necessity. If we had a module that allowed you to buff outside a cantina I'd bet you would be willing to replace that droid.
The power core idea is a good one IF we could get the devs togo along with the extended use. I would say lets submit it as an alternate proposal.
As TK has mentioned this is not going to happen anytime soon so no need to get heated over it.
I must've missed that poll, because I really don't like the idea. No more abstract, non-sensical systems please! Tie the decay to activities of the droid. If it can't be done on a component by component basis (maybe too much tracking per droid, i.e. extra server loads = bad), then go with a general wear and tear stat on the droid that causes a component to fail that must be replaced by a DE, with (as proposed my Jenden) an expensive reconstruction kit to rebuild it to near perfect (but never completely perfect? Not sure on that...) level of performance.
Basically it just doesn't make sense to me to have decay tied to battery and power usage. I'd think it just as easy to add a "durability" pool stat and scratch a couple ticks off of it every time it's used or performs an action, something to that effect. Then again, I guess that brings us back to the old usage decay vs. time-based decay systems 