Droid Engineer Archive
Thread: Droids: Where we were and where we’re going.
I'm sorry if this has already been asked but when is publish 8 due?
I know the date may change as it goes along but an estimate would do for now.
Thanks for all the good work I just know that all will become clear in publish 8.
Thunderheart wrote:
Ultimately, this is the problem. Slicing droids and any kind of droid module that augments a player's innate skills isn't going to happen. Its basically "free" skills and abilities and I can't sell that unless we also agree to lower everyones innate skills to balance it out...and I can't see everyone saying, "lets nerf everyone so we can have cooler droids".
Can I say SEAs, Item Drops with Stats, and BE clothing?
Thunderheart wrote:
The other thing is that harvest maintenance, surveying and another class of abilities isn't a viable alternative because of the technological limitation. However this DE effort has let the devs lay the groundwork to add more modules in the future.
This was a strong start and like everything else, it will continue to develop.
On maintainance...
I call BS, or at least unintentional BS here. Since persistant world items (such as harvesters) don't exist until there is someone there to see them, they use a formula. When a player spawns the item, they calculate how long since their last update, and derive the current status.
Using harvesters as an example, any programmer could write a small DOS based utility where a user inputs BER, conc, maint consumption rate, and sets the power and maint pool levels. This utility program then could tell you how much power, maint, and mineral you have. The only variable is time (and whether or not the mineral still exists). You could run this utility completely independant of SWG. As long as the resource still exists, you could tell at any time how your structure is doing.
You're telling us that you can't have a droid take a command and then check this formula same as if a player physically walks out there? You don't have to actually spawn the buildings or even the droid. Just update the formula... ???
Granted there might be more to it, but it seems like you should be able to do this. At least have the droid tell you what the current stats are of your machine (based on the formula above).
No, the devs do not post in the Droid forums anymore. They have better things to do, apparently.
Most of the community was nice and positive after the Publish 7 and 8 "plan" was released, and many chimed in with positive contributions and suggestions. We also had many questions about further details of this Droid Invasion plan.
Then, Thunderheart went on vacation, nobody did his job while we was gone for 2 weeks. Upon his return he made very few comments and answered none of the questions. His comments indicated to the DE forum community that - well, read them for yourself. Things started downhill about the end of last month.
Wednesday 3/3 saw a few comments from red-named folk, and they have completely dried up since then.
Apparently two things are true:
1. All of the developer's attention is NOT focused on the DE profession and droids within SWG.
2. There are some very irritated paying customers who have not gotten what they desired from the SOE team in charge of this game.
lund0529 wrote:
Another thought that just came back to me... there was a period of time in beta where you could "tip" maintenance toa harvester or building. It was a bug, but it shows that the system could be used to do this.
Basically, I tip my harvester. The tip goes into "escrow" as we all now see on our bank tips. When it spawns, the tip is delivered to maintainance. Whether I tip directly or via a droid ability, it should still be able to be done.
I never crafted in beta, but Ill ask about this.
ErantiaPrym wrote:
Acceptable Utility Droid Summary
================================
Thats an interesting list. Ill share it with the team.
/cheer
And luckily the devs noticed too, way to go. Keep ideas like that coming.
Covert Detector Module: The covert detector module would allow a droid to detect and disable a covert detector in an area.
Good god. I read the first part and nearly had a heart attack. Had visions of Imps draggin MSE sniffers along everywhere they went and hacking people down. Glad I didn't die before I read the rest of it. That's a good idea. I hate detectors. Forced PvP is the devil.
DEs, you have a customer for this type, at least. Now if you can just get me one that can keep up with my swoopbike, I'm set.
Thunderheart,
You've previously stated that much of the work for CL 10+ combat droids has already been done. There are currently two proposals of the DE boards for implementation of at least some of these new Droids.
Please be sure to read the proposals fully and to see what the Developers think about them.
Sodans Hybrid Proposal: http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=droid_engineer&message.id=69111
Dakers Mini-Profession Proposal: http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=droid_engineer&message.id=69594