Droid Engineer Archive
Thread: Preparing for the next issue.
We need everything made or used to degrade and eventually permadie or disappear. (Boy am I going to get flamed on this one). It's the only way, in the long run, to guarantee repeat business. Not just on droids, have it happen to creatures, weapons, armor, clothes, structures, everything. If your creature or droid doesn't ever permanently die, why would you ever buy another one? Because it matches your outfit? It would also help novice and mid level crafters, both in elite professions and in artisan, have a market. (Need to replace that medical bot, too short on cash to afford the really good one made by the master DE, well joe-bob the novice DE is selling one, not as good, but you'll still be able to heal in the field.) Unless your duping resources somehow, you'll quickly run out of materials to keep everyone equipped with high end gear and still be able to build the low end stuff.
I don't recall hearing any chef's yelling about no repeat business. That's because they're stuff is consumable. If the other professions stuff isn't consumable, even if it takes a while, then people won't come back. (Notice even your major appliances eventually break down and need to get replaced? Your car too? They're consumable.) If they weren't the only reason you'd get a new car would be vanity, not a reliable enough trait to base a business on when your product is large, expensive, and complex.
Yeah, customization and experimentation for DE will have to go along with this in the long run (sort of pointless though to worry about experimentation before you can sell anything worth experimenting on). Combat droids in the short run just to keep DE afloat, and create something of a usefull market until the necessary fixes come through.
But all the colors of the rainbow, being able to modify everything about the droid, and making it useful for combat won't do more than prolong the agony if something isn't done to stimulate repeat business.
Heck if droid colorization alone worked de would get a lot of business cause the default colors on droids at least most of them suck pretty badly. People love my blood red probe droid chasis and I get asked all the time if I can make one they can use with that color.
Gah so much that is either broken or just working so poorly I get frustrated. Like why to this date does putting two crafting stations in one droid still break both. There would be a good market for food/chem, tailoring, generic bots. Also the infinit loop on the cluster mods needs to be fixed. I cannot imagine why this was not taken care of immediatly as this is a huge screwup for their database.
Kaid
How about giving usmini-factory modules (equipment/food chem).
1. Almost all the code to do this is in the game now
2. Limit 1 crate per run
3. Limit item complexity to 18 or 19
If they implement this we would have a use for:
1. Data storage modules
2. Item storage modules
oh and make the exp point actually do something in all parts...
Another possibility is to make it so that more parts are required from DE's to help other classes, and vice versa. I would like to see more things like "droid compartments" and "power cores" for other classes. I would like to have to buy a blaster barrel from a lowbie weaponsmith to make a probot. I would like to sell a manipulator arm set for someone to make a weapon factory, and 5 from a factory crate for someone to make any other kind of factory. I'd like to have to buy a reinforced fiber panel from a tailor to make level 3 and 4 droid armor plates, and factory-made bio controllers for a surgical bot.
Great idea. But, the other classes should need ALOT MORE from other (us)proffesions too.
I still believe that fixing what is currently broken is more important than adding in more content. I'd rather have a working profession than new droids. Addin new combat droids will be great.... for a while, until everybody has one. And then we are right back where we started.
Return business is a big issue with not only the DE's, but other classes as well (Architect, for example). After you buy the droids you need, why would you ever come back? Somebody above argued for eventual permadeath and I have to agree. Otherwise, the market IS going to dry up.
The second big issue is experimentation. This is BIG! Why would I hunt/buy high quality resources when I can use ore with OQ of -56 and still make exactly the same droid? What distinguishes the MDE from the Novice DE? This could be a great way of re-introducing the pre-nerf probot (Which I do not know if we even need; the armor makes it a great tank, but that's another topic). Experimentation is what makes our droids unique.
On a side note, I'd like to see that the LE-Repair Droid star repairing. This is the ONLY droid that can't, which is ludicrous. Also, the fact that the surgical droid does not include the Lvl 6 Medical module (was it originally supposed to?). Finally, the fact that we have droids that do nothing (BLL and Protocol Droid). I know this last one if a hard tough issue (coming up with ideas and coding them), but I'd like to see if they have a future or not.
I agree 100% with Snowdog.
Experimentation is important, but they have to overhaul the whole system. Another very important problem for us is the 'one droid to do it all' thing. In order to both see more variety, to have more market, and to help lower level droid makers from their worse enemy... the higher level droid makers, I think they should put restrictions on what modules different droids can have. Maybe a mouse droid can only have level 1 components, only surgical droids can have the highest medical modules, etc.
as a novice DE i am sticking with it, though i'm only working on my exp slowly. I think that droid usefullness could be fixed in an alternative way, instead of permdeath or such, make modules attachable after crafting and give them a charge. So a probot would need a combat module and has 1k charges once its used up it would need a new one, this would help keep the DE line in business, and it wouldn't take away from the other proffesions.
I thinks that probots should not be mega suped up, they should only be on par with a non CH creature. and then have the new combat droids DE only, this would make us more in line to the CH proffesion.
just my 2 cents
I can't remember if I've put this one down before or not, and I'm too lazy to go back and read through all of the posts, but I think that there is one item, in regards to experiemtation, that if fixed would breath some life back into a bit of our profession, not to mention boost sales.Here is my suggestion.......
Fixing experimentation on Droid Crafting stations and a rating system that is on par with Private crafting stations. Of course this would mean the need for this information to show up on the deed as well as in the datapad. If experimention worked on droid crafting stations and had the same rating system as the private crafting stations, crafting droids wouldn't just be a 'one time purchase'. I started to think about this one, after having produced 39.63 private crafting stations. The sales of these stations, which are some of the best rated on Shadowfire due to the resources, have been pretty good. I've even had a lot of return business from people who bought the last set of Crafting stations that I could make. So, what if the crafting stations on a droid were rated in the same way and we could experiment on them and produce a rating that was on par to an Architects build. I don't know how many times that I have been asked about the rating on a droid station. Fixing something as simple as this, would bring back any crafter who wants the very best in crafting ratings.
What I suggest, would be a changing of the way that crafting station modules are made. Why not make them more similar in build to an Architects design. If you want a better rated crafting station, it will take 2 Micro Sensors and 2 control units, just like the Architect build. Instead of adding the Droid storage compartment, why not use the droid item storage module as the input hopper? How about using that 'uselss' data module in conjuntion with the crafting station and instead of the schematic going to your datapad, it goes to the droids data storage instead. However, the only way to make the added features work together and increase the overall crafting station rating, you must embed all three modules, the crafting station, the data storage module, and the item storage module. into a Cluster Module. By doing this, experimentation on Cluster Modules would actually have an effect on the final module build and it would limit the ability to put high end crafting modules on lower end chassis. (Which would mean that being able to put a Cluster module in a non-cluster socket would have to be fixed as well.)
while I am not a smuggler, I think it would be great if a droid module for slicing, no real ideas how too implement, was added.
I would really like ta have more than one droid out. It would be great to survey and craft in a campsite while the probedroid ran a patrol route around me.
As a weaponsmith, I think it would be nice to have a little interdependence concerning combat droid weapons. I firmly beleive that you should be able to add any kind of cdef weapon yourselves, but having the option to buy a gun from a weaponsmith for you to install would be interesting. I don't think that any one but a DE should be able to install a gun on droids, though.
Last, but MOST important, I can't wait to see what kind of fixes are made to the droids that do absolutely nothing. especially the Binary Loadlifter... that doesn't....
I have to say that the "next" issue i'd like to see addressed is droid customization. This would create a sales boom for us poor Droid Engineers and add more flavor to the SWG world. People will buy droids just becausethey look neat even if they don't provide any additional functionality.
As far as the droids that do nothing, well at least the protocol droid anyway. Of course it does nothing, it's just that the requirements are too high to make it. Let's look at the example we have from the movies. A 9 year old slave child made one in his spare time, in between working in the shop, making a pod-racer, helping around the house, the occasional race, and whatever form of education he managed to get along the way. So chances are he made it out of junk, as he's not likely to have much in the way of money or access to high quality resources, and used second hand tools.
This says one of two things, either protocol droids shouldn't be as difficult and expensive to make as they are, or their's something wrong with every DE out there that they have to master their profession in order to build the same droid a 9 year old hobbyist makes in his limited spare time.
Just some food for though.. 