Droid Engineer Archive
Thread: Droid Engineers calling multiple droids to rehash an old debate
"Repairing, maintaining, and powering a Droid? When was the last time you repaired a droid and it REALLY needed it. Ohh I may muck around fixing peoples droids once in a while, but without decay, they hardly need it. Maintaining a droid? How do you do that? The last time I checked droids didn'r wear out. Powering a Droid. Yep we do that. So does anybody else with batteries or a power Droid. I sell probably 3 power droids a day. Everybody does that, nothing special about that."
This addition would be at the same time, or after, the addition of droid decay and ability to replace existing modules. Therefore the maintaining and repairing refers directly to those functions.
"From a non-emotional, game balanced, point of view, can you name one reason that Droid Engineers would be justified the ability to call more then one droid at a time?"
1) Toprevent a Droid Engineer having to store and call droids constantly to flick between functions requred as a droid engineer. One example is having to store a crafting droid to call a power droid
2) In the example above, to allow Droid Engineer to power his own droids without the need of a droid battery
Those are the two easy ones. I could also go further by defining other requirements of DE
"I'm going to call you out on 'If that's all you personaly wish to do then thats your choice, but don't limit the rest of the DE community because you can't see beyound crafting.' That is a trumph card that has been played too many times in the past. Droid Engineer is already a very unique profession. We have more abilities then most professions will ever see. Droid Engineer is already has a well defined role as being a crafting profession, just like Architects, Weaponsmiths, Armorsmiths, and Tailors. You may feel that Droid Engineers should be something more then the support role we are in, however that is simply not how the profession was designed."
And here in lies the problem. We are placed in the crafting group but get left out in the cold in every aspect.
How many crafting professions require a Master Artisan component from a crate in nearly every component/final item?
How many crafting professions are limited to only owning 5 of their own product?
How many crafting professions create items that don't decay?
The list of "How many crafting professions" goes on and on describing abilities, functions and bonuses all the crafting professions get EXCEPT for Droid Engineer.
You can't justify a reason for Droid Engineer not getting an ability with the reasoning "no other crafting profession has this" because every other crafting profession has a whole handful of things we DO NOT get.
"No singleprofession can have it all. The Droid Commander profession will be added at some point. Being able to call more then one droid at a time, and being able to store a greater number of droids, will more then likely fit into the realm of Droid Commander. Whether you like the Droid Commander profession or not is not the case here. The Droid Commander profession is the answer to having high level combat droids, with a skill point price tag."
I dissagree. Droid Commander is about commanding droids in combat, its not about the ability to store more droids or call more droids. We are talking utility functions here, not combat. We've already descussed that a droid with a combat ability would left out from this.
"I want to repeat once again, that I am not trying to tear the idea down, but rather I'm trying to point out the flaws in how the debate is going about. This is how I see certain 'Tyrant' responding to this thread, only with a lot more words then he would normally use. If it was him speaking, the one word that I can see him using would be"
You can poke holes and think up flaws in every idea, you will never be able to avoid that. Our role is to way those flaws against others and decide as a community whether those flaws are small enough to push the idea. The problem is, however, that over the past 12 months the Droid Engineer has become defeatest. We've gotten into our heads that someone is going to say "NO" to everything and thus we have stopped trying. We have stopped pushing the ideas and thinking up new ones. We look at everything, shrug and say "It's not going to work". If that is how its going to be from now on, then so be it.
However, I for one will continue to try and change this attitude and I would like to hope others around here will stand with me and help too. Drashk, I agree that at times the correspondant needs to kick everyone back to the point of reality, but it is also your job to help encourage the community. You can do that by helping descussions and giving ideas instead of always posting negatives. This is just a descussion, its not a wish list or a "lets get the devs to do it now". Don't dismiss everything so easily, roll with it, help it grow, improve it. Thats how things will get improved and eventualy added, not keeping this "TH will say no" to everything attitude.
Vampiric_Hoshi wrote:You are wrong my friend. Armoursmiths, Tailors and Weaponsmiths get a bonus for repairing the corresponding item. I.E. Armoursmiths get a +100 repair bonus for repairing armour. Ask a master of any of these 3 to check his/her mods in the skills window and they will find the repair mod sitting in there.
Im a master weaponsmith and total I have +5 to weapon repair. I only get this mod due to being a Mon Cal character.
that aside, I would like to say this is a pretty heated discussion. I dont outwardly have a side to sway to being the information given is both inciteful and from a well-respected point of view. However I will say this.
I would, like everyone else, love to be able to hold more than 5 droids and be able to call out more than 1 however this is not the case. There are still certain aspects of the Droid Engineer community that I would prefer to see come to fruition over this particular even.
To iterate slightly on one side of the bar, though is this. If a Droid Engineer was allowed to have more than 5 droids in his or her datapad, or have 2 or more droids out at a time, this would do multiple things. First, any droid engineer capable of storing more than 5 droid would be able to have all his or her droids with 10 slot item storage, meaning more items to carry. Why should a droid engineer get this bonus when other characters could use that added space as well? You could argue that we require a lot of factory made components and I would agree with you, however other professions do too (I know as a weaponsmith, I need crates of blaster handles, projection feed mechs, barrels for 2 types of guns, rifle barrels as well, stocks, scopes and all other sorts of crates components. And thats just the ranged weapon side of things)
Having multiple droids out is another thing I could sway against. We dont need power droids for anything droid related. They just power up droids. I feel a power droid should have the option to charge the droids in our datapad, however. All the other aspects can be added to different droids and combined, taking away the need for multiple droids. In fact, the only thing I need more droids for as a droid engineer is more storage. All my droids are R2-R3 series droids with crafting, storage and merchant abilities. I have 1 full combat droid and thats all I carry.
Now on the flip side of the bar, having multiple droids out at once would benefit advertising. Being able to call another droid across the planet while your first droid advertises in the starport would be handy as well. being able to walk with my combat droid, for instance, and my crafter out at the same time would help. My crafter would assist my rolls and building while my combat droid patrols and protects me. I could go anywhere and do anything to do this.
So yea, this is my opinion, but you dont have to take my word for it.
Vampiric_Hoshi wrote:
"Repairing, maintaining, and powering a Droid? When was the last time you repaired a droid and it REALLY needed it. Ohh I may muck around fixing peoples droids once in a while, but without decay, they hardly need it. Maintaining a droid? How do you do that? The last time I checked droids didn'r wear out. Powering a Droid. Yep we do that. So does anybody else with batteries or a power Droid. I sell probably 3 power droids a day. Everybody does that, nothing special about that."
This addition would be at the same time, or after, the addition of droid decay and ability to replace existing modules. Therefore the maintaining and repairing refers directly to those functions.
So your suggesting that not only do we get to call extra droids, we get Decay and module swap at the same time? Don't you think that is a little much? The other crafting professions would be up in arms, and rightly so.
"From a non-emotional, game balanced, point of view, can you name one reason that Droid Engineers would be justified the ability to call more then one droid at a time?"
1) Toprevent a Droid Engineer having to store and call droids constantly to flick between functions requred as a droid engineer. One example is having to store a crafting droid to call a power droid
My "helper droid" has all the crafting modules I need, plus the repair module. Thing I can't do is recharge with it. That's what Betteries are for. If the ONLY way to recharge other droids was a power droid, that would be one thing, but Batteries are extremely easy to get.
2) In the example above, to allow Droid Engineer to power his own droids without the need of a droid battery
Why? That's what batteries are for.
Those are the two easy ones. I could also go further by defining other requirements of DE
"I'm going to call you out on 'If that's all you personaly wish to do then thats your choice, but don't limit the rest of the DE community because you can't see beyound crafting.' That is a trumph card that has been played too many times in the past. Droid Engineer is already a very unique profession. We have more abilities then most professions will ever see. Droid Engineer is already has a well defined role as being a crafting profession, just like Architects, Weaponsmiths, Armorsmiths, and Tailors. You may feel that Droid Engineers should be something more then the support role we are in, however that is simply not how the profession was designed."
And here in lies the problem. We are placed in the crafting group but get left out in the cold in every aspect.
How many crafting professions require a Master Artisan component from a crate in nearly every component/final item?
Archs and Weaponsmiths are also very MA part heavy.
How many crafting professions are limited to only owning 5 of their own product?
Again, owning and calling are two different things. Droids called and Droids in your datapad are 2 different arguments.
How many crafting professions create items that don't decay?
Three. Architect, Droid Engineer, and Tailor.
The list of "How many crafting professions" goes on and on describing abilities, functions and bonuses all the crafting professions get EXCEPT for Droid Engineer.
You can't justify a reason for Droid Engineer not getting an ability with the reasoning "no other crafting profession has this" because every other crafting profession has a whole handful of things we DO NOT get.
Not really, fix Droid Decay, fix us only being able to store a couple of droids and DE is well balanced with the other crafting classes. As already shown with the "repair" arguement, there is little outside of crafting that other proffessions get at all.
"No singleprofession can have it all. The Droid Commander profession will be added at some point. Being able to call more then one droid at a time, and being able to store a greater number of droids, will more then likely fit into the realm of Droid Commander. Whether you like the Droid Commander profession or not is not the case here. The Droid Commander profession is the answer to having high level combat droids, with a skill point price tag."
I dissagree. Droid Commander is about commanding droids in combat, its not about the ability to store more droids or call more droids. We are talking utility functions here, not combat. We've already descussed that a droid with a combat ability would left out from this.
A creature handler can call a Mount, plus a Utility Droid at the same time. Neither are used for combat. DC's will be able to call extra droids, whether they fight with them, ot not is up to them. I expect many DE's will dabble, at least getting novice.
"I want to repeat once again, that I am not trying to tear the idea down, but rather I'm trying to point out the flaws in how the debate is going about. This is how I see certain 'Tyrant' responding to this thread, only with a lot more words then he would normally use. If it was him speaking, the one word that I can see him using would be"
You can poke holes and think up flaws in every idea, you will never be able to avoid that. Our role is to way those flaws against others and decide as a community whether those flaws are small enough to push the idea. The problem is, however, that over the past 12 months the Droid Engineer has become defeatest. We've gotten into our heads that someone is going to say "NO" to everything and thus we have stopped trying. We have stopped pushing the ideas and thinking up new ones. We look at everything, shrug and say "It's not going to work". If that is how its going to be from now on, then so be it.
It's Drashks JOB to find flaws. To poke holes, and point out what the devs and other classes will say. It's silly for us to push hard on an idea that will just get slammed and knocked down. Talking about it here is one thing, taking it farther with flaws is another.
However, I for one will continue to try and change this attitude and I would like to hope others around here will stand with me and help too. Drashk, I agree that at times the correspondant needs to kick everyone back to the point of reality, but it is also your job to help encourage the community. You can do that by helping descussions and giving ideas instead of always posting negatives. This is just a descussion, its not a wish list or a "lets get the devs to do it now". Don't dismiss everything so easily, roll with it, help it grow, improve it. Thats how things will get improved and eventualy added, not keeping this "TH will say no" to everything attitude.
Drashk does a lot more then just post negatives, that was wrong to say that. He helps a lot of people, plus gives many great ideas. I have been involved in many discussions with him, ironically against him more then with him. Every single time, his point was valid.
Again, giving how the devs will probably respond is his job.
Straker_Atrella wrote:
Vampiric_Hoshi wrote:
"I want to repeat once again, that I am not trying to tear the idea down, but rather I'm trying to point out the flaws in how the debate is going about. This is how I see certain 'Tyrant' responding to this thread, only with a lot more words then he would normally use. If it was him speaking, the one word that I can see him using would be"
You can poke holes and think up flaws in every idea, you will never be able to avoid that. Our role is to way those flaws against others and decide as a community whether those flaws are small enough to push the idea. The problem is, however, that over the past 12 months the Droid Engineer has become defeatest. We've gotten into our heads that someone is going to say "NO" to everything and thus we have stopped trying. We have stopped pushing the ideas and thinking up new ones. We look at everything, shrug and say "It's not going to work".
Take a look at my post history. I think you missed a few of the idea threads that I have posted on a pretty constant basis. Its been about 3 months since the last idea thread that I posted, but a lot of that is due to such things as Beta Testing andPublish 10 testing. I see a number of idea threads posted in the first few pages of this forum. Were you get the idea that Droid Engineers suffer from a defeatest attitude is beyond me.
Drashk, I agree that at times the correspondant needs to kick everyone back to the point of reality, but it is also your job to help encourage the community. You can do that by helping descussions and giving ideas instead of always posting negatives. This is just a descussion, its not a wish list or a "lets get the devs to do it now". Don't dismiss everything so easily, roll with it, help it grow, improve it. Thats how things will get improved and eventualy added, not keeping this "TH will say no" to everything attitude.
I have no arguements or comments that can be made that would help to strengthen this discussion, when trying to follow my own criteria. I can not find a way to justify why Droid Engineers should be given the ability to call more then one droid, when all other professions have just as much of a right to do so.
I could easily base my arguements off of the same comments that have already been made in this thread, butI wouldn't be adding anything new to the discussion.
Trust me, TH is the least of our worries on trying to put together a valid reason for why Droid Engineers should be given the ability to call more then one droid, while other professions can not.
If calling multiple Droids is ever going to be implemented, it needs to be available to EVERYBODY, in some form like the "binding" Droids to your House idea. I support that because it gives it to everybody.
/points to nose
This would be the 'correct' route to go, to push for this idea.
Take a look at my post history. I think you missed a few of the idea threads that I have posted on a pretty constant basis. Its been about 3 months since the last idea thread that I posted, but a lot of that is due to such things as Beta Testing andPublish 10 testing. I see a number of idea threads posted in the first few pages of this forum. Were you get the idea that Droid Engineers suffer from a defeatest attitude is beyond me.
Yep I usualy read through your ideas and yeah it has been a while! Where do I get the idea from? I get the idea from the fact that EVERY idea posted on this forum gets atleast 40% of replies that are basicaly saying "A dev will say no, why even bother talking about it?" which is effectively what several of you have said to this. Not saying its a good or bad idea, just suggesting that a negative reply is NOT going to help, especialy from the correspondant. You have a role to try where possible NOT to put your personal opinion on something but to try and sit back and help descussion. Just saying "I can't think of a reason why it would work therefore a red name will say no" is not helping the profession OR the descussion at hand. Sorry mate, I'm not bashing you or sparking an argument I just don't believe that was the right thing to say considering this is ONLY a descussion and NOT an attempt to get the devs to do something.
I have no arguements or comments that can be made that would help to strengthen this discussion, when trying to follow my own criteria. I can not find a way to justify why Droid Engineers should be given the ability to call more then one droid, when all other professions have just as much of a right to do so.
In that one sentence, you have just mentioned something that you COULD have said to help the descussion, instead of just throwing it in the bin. Yep, why should this be to Droid Engineers only? You bring up the point that maybe these features should be given to others too. That is a descussion idea, not a negative. That is what we should be talking about, not any of this.
I could easily base my arguements off of the same comments that have already been made in this thread, butI wouldn't be adding anything new to the discussion.
A descussion isn't always about "new thoughts". Its about re-hashing existing ones to improve upon and better. But if you have nothing to add then its better to simply add nothing than to add negatives which will kill the flow of the descussion and take it away from its original subject which, as it would seem, has happened here.
Trust me, TH is the least of our worries on trying to put together a valid reason for why Droid Engineers should be given the ability to call more then one droid, while other professions can not.
Then descuss ways of how ALL professions could get this, instead of dismissing the idea for that reason. This is what I am talking about. THIS is a defeatest attitude. Stop looking at reasons why we can't and think of reasons how we can. If you can't think of any, then just don't say anything.
And now for Straker...
So your suggesting that not only do we get to call extra droids, we get Decay and module swap at the same time? Don't you think that is a little much? The other crafting professions would be up in arms, and rightly so.
Re-read the line you are replying too and you will see the words "at the same time, or after".
My "helper droid" has all the crafting modules I need, plus the repair module. Thing I can't do is recharge with it. That's what Betteries are for. If the ONLY way to recharge other droids was a power droid, that would be one thing, but Batteries are extremely easy to get.Yep batteries ARE extremly easy to get, but thats yet another issue with DE in that something DE should be making and selling is craftable by just about everyone and thus limiting our use even further. I'm sure weaponsmiths feel the same away about weapon mods. However, just because its possible to hold all crafting modules needed plus a repair module in one droid doesn't make that a reason NOT to be able to call multiple droids. See, this is where choice comes in. At present we are basicaly limited to 3 models of droids or even 1 if you require 6 modules and that represents an unfair situation.
Why? That's what batteries are for.
Because batteries take up inventory space, something as a DE you should be very concerned with. For every battery in your inventory you could hold an extra chunk of a resource type or have a spare slot ready for one of the hundreds of components you may need to craft. As a DE, I would like to see Power Droids and maybe some kind of architect power terminal effectively replace the battery which in all fairness is quite rediculous. Did you ever see R2 having to swap a duracell? Nope, the only time you see him "power up" is when Luke plugs him into a power generator. Why droids were using batteries in the first place baffles me.
Archs and Weaponsmiths are also very MA part heavy.
Not in the same respect as Droid Engineer. As a Droid Engineer you should know that nearly every component and sub-component that goes into making a droid requires ATLEAST 1 GP module, Memory Moduleand/or Control Unit. No other profession in the game has such a high inter-dependancy. That was even an issue brought up by TH back in january but it never got addressed.
Again, owning and calling are two different things. Droids called and Droids in your datapad are 2 different arguments.
Two arguments, yes, but they are both inter-linked and therefore will both constantly come up in both arguments. But thats not the point of whatI was getting at, I was showing how many things DE DO NOT get compared to other crafting professions to try and stop people thinking "other crafters dont get it so why should we" which, again, is difeatest. We arn't architects or weaponsmiths and they arnt droid engineers. We except they have things we don't and they except we have things THEY don't.
Three. Architect, Droid Engineer, and Tailor.
Architect create buildings that suffer maintenance decay as well as lights that decay, tailors create clothing that decays through death decay. So no, still only Droid Engineer.
Not really, fix Droid Decay, fix us only being able to store a couple of droids and DE is well balanced with the other crafting classes. As already shown with the "repair" arguement, there is little outside of crafting that other proffessions get at all.
Stop right here with the "balanced with other crafting professions" because THIS is the center-point of your problems. No one crafting profession is alike and should not be compared to each other and as such will never be "balanced". Atleast one of the crafting profs will always having something that atleast one of the others will want. Thats how it is in this game and this idea is just one more of those things if its not intraduced throughout all professions or atleast all crafting professions.
A creature handler can call a Mount, plus a Utility Droid at the same time. Neither are used for combat. DC's will be able to call extra droids, whether they fight with them, ot not is up to them. I expect many DE's will dabble, at least getting novice.
But thats the point isn't it. You are now saying if DE want to do functions that many of us believe we should be able to do, we have to waste even MORE skill points and become even MORE inter-dependant on another profession. We already require Master Artisan, why should we require even more? What justifies us having to spend even more skill points just so we can call two utility droids at the same time? See, you can give the "what justifies" argument against this idea, but it also works for it too.
It's Drashks JOB to find flaws. To poke holes, and point out what the devs and other classes will say. It's silly for us to push hard on an idea that will just get slammed and knocked down. Talking about it here is one thing, taking it farther with flaws is another.
No, its Drashk's job to act as a representative between this community and the development team. Its not his role to pick apart ideas andpost negative responses in a descussion. This is just a descussion, its not pushing forward an idea. The idea is that by the time the descussion has ended all the flaws would have been worked out. By just posting "a red name will say no" its just killing the descussion and not allowing it to continue because he personaly has no taste for it. That is not a correspondant job.
Drashk does a lot more then just post negatives, that was wrong to say that. He helps a lot of people, plus gives many great ideas. I have been involved in many discussions with him, ironically against him more then with him. Every single time, his point was valid.
Again, giving how the devs will probably respond is his job.
Yep he does do a lot more then just post negatives, I didn't say otherwise. What I WAS saying however is that now he is once again the correspondant he has got to try and AVOID posting negatives because he effectively has the power to end debates and in doing so is ending it because he personaly feels it wont work.
Again, the role of correspondant is to act as a midiam between the devs and us, its not to kill descussions or post negatively in one. I would say its actually quit the opposite .. to try and encourage debate and descussion.
Now, we have all said what we wanted to say so unless you have something further to add to the descussion that is now, by all accounts, dead I suggest not replying at all before this just turns into a 3-way flame.
I just wanted to clarify a couple things....
So your suggesting that not only do we get to call extra droids, we get Decay and module swap at the same time? Don't you think that is a little much? The other crafting professions would be up in arms, and rightly so.
Re-read the line you are replying too and you will see the words "at the same time, or after".
To be honest I still get things like the following said to me, "They [the dev's] spent 2 whole publishes on you guys and you still arn't 'fixed'. Why did they bother at all when they could have spent that time on ground combat or fixing the GCW?" If we got any more "serious development time"beforesome of the other professions *cough* Smuggler*cough* ...I can see a lot of people seriously upset. The limiting factor here is time, and from a development standpoint, we probably won't see anything past a "top 5" fixed in the near future *if* they do a "correspondant publish" -fixing the correspondants top 5 - like they talked about several months ago.
Archs and Weaponsmiths are also very MA part heavy.
Not in the same respect as Droid Engineer. As a Droid Engineer you should know that nearly every component and sub-component that goes into making a droid requires ATLEAST 1 GP module, Memory Moduleand/or Control Unit. No other profession in the game has such a high inter-dependancy. That was even an issue brought up by TH back in january but it never got addressed.
The topic of Master Artisan part usage comes up every now and again. We talked to TH about this and as people have said, theywould ratherincrease other profession interdependacies rather than decrease ours. Second, I would not consider Weaponsmith "MA part heavy" ...it's like 6 weapons MAX with only I think 3 of them as a required component, the others are "optional". Architect however, I can make a decent argument for. Power Cores. Most of the high tier structures require power cores and sometimes identical power cores. Power cores are pretty resource intensive including needing Power Conditioners and Energy Distributors.Architect has 31 schematics that require Power Cores. It's not our 46...but it's pretty close.
Three. Architect, Droid Engineer, and Tailor.
Architect create buildings that suffer maintenance decay as well as lights that decay, tailors create clothing that decays through death decay. So no, still only Droid Engineer.
1) Architect: First, You're grasping for straws if you say their products suffer "decay" I'm sorry. Second, lights don't actually decay. Lights will keep on shining as if they are new even if their timer reaches 0. So no, they don't decay either.
2) Tailor: If a clothing item reaches 0 condition, it does not "unequip" itself and can be "equiped" if "unequiped" previously, nor do you loose any "stat bonuses" gained from them if they are equiped.(BE or otherwise) while the condition is 0. How can you call this decay if it does not function properly? This would be like saying: Weapons decay if their condition reaches 0, but you can still use it for its full damage range and not need to replace the weapon.
You have to think about it from the perspective of the entire game being affected beyond our profession in this case. This is the perspective where Drashk is comming from.