Droid Engineer Archive

---

Kaldeth wrote:

Whats next? A droid module that builds the droids for you?

---

Um, actually that exists and is called a crafting module...

I was very excited when I saw my first post about this droid. Wow, they actually made a droid to help with surveying? Wow. After reading about them in this thread, I am still marginally on the optimistic side, although my enthusiasm has been damped a little.

It would be ok with me if all I got back were a list of resource names. I'd use one every once in a while, when I needed a specific resource. Making it a charged object would not cause me to use it more often.

Better if that list included what type of resource it was. This is the level of information just openinga survey tool gives, and would seem an appropriate level of information for the droid to be able to report. I'd use one per planet every few weeks. Making it a charged objectmightincrease that to once a week.

Best if it listed resource stats. My harvesting business would become easier/ less time cosumingto run because I could concentrate on harvesting only the good stuff, and I could then afford to keep current with bi-weekly checks on where I should be harvesting. I'd use onefor each type of resource (mineral, chem, gas)on each planet everyfour days or so. Making it a charged object might increase this to every other day.

Having it return a waypoint? Believe it or not, I don't think this would be good. I'd likelyarrive atthat waypoint only to find that every other artisan in the galaxy had beat me there and set up a harvester, and there was no room for mine.... Massive lag, etc... No thanks.

Understand, I know about swgcraft.com... but have only visited there twice. Once to look around and once to try and find a specific resource. I failed to find it. Maybe it didn't exist at the time, I don't know, but I couldn't find it on the swgcraft website. Lucky for me it spawned a few days later, and I noticed right away because I was surveying for something else. I find the information on swgcraft to be not all that useful. The reason? Because you have to leave the game, even if only by alt-tabbing, to get it. Having a droid that could tell me what planet I should go to to harvest that all important vertex crystal, or whatever i'm looking for at the moment, would be invaluable.

---

Stormkraken wrote:

I am an full time harvester and in order for this to be useful I need to be able to send out probes to all the planets at the SAME TIME. I am not going to wait 15 minutes before I can send out anothe probe. So in order to survey all 10 planets (Dant, Yavin, Endor, Dath, Lok, Cor, Naboo, Tat, Rori, Talus), I would have to wait up to one and half hour (I can manually survey the tri-loop) daily.

---

---

JansosHosphe wrote:

Having it return a waypoint? Believe it or not, I don't think this would be good. I'd likelyarrive atthat waypoint only to find that every other artisan in the galaxy had beat me there and set up a harvester, and there was no room for mine.... Massive lag, etc... No thanks.

---

Economically and timewise, these will make sense to most crafters. I myself keep my workshop on Talus, and myshop on Corellia.To go 5 planets to comfirm all the resources currently spawned, it costs me 30k cash and about 90 mins round trip.

Considering the rarity of the resources you're looking at now spending quite a bit more than 30k cash for the 4 droids you're going to need. If Vertex keeps spawning as little as it has been it will probably cost you upwards of 30k PER droid which means now you're going to be spending 120k every 4 days instead of 30k.

Ok - my .02

These absolute need to return stats. Knowing what's on a planet is one thing, knowing what's worth your time to hunt down is entirely another - and finding decent concentrations of them is really the key to successful surveying.

The actual harvesting of resources is the surveyors bread and butter - this will simply make it a more efficient process, which IMHO is not a bad thing.

swgcraft is an incredibly valuable resource on servers where folks take the time to keep the lists somewhat current. I survey for Radiant a LOT. I don't harvest as a rule - I don't even survey for strong concentrations - I just try to grab the stats to list to help those that DO. This isn't an incredibly fun part of my day - but I think it's useful, and if kept up - takes maybe 5 min of my morning routine.

Some time ago I suggested having a messageboard type system IN GAME that could be used in conjunction with survey missions and surveyors. Something basically along the lines of swgcraft - but IN GAME - where the stats only showed up if a surveyor actually turned in a sample of the resource, but would show shifts. Obviously that would compete with these droids on shifts - but still could be done for stats IF the droids don't return them. Personally - I'd rather the droids returned them. A message board system could also be a mechanism for surveyors to sell waypoints thru. Perhaps the NPC/system could buy them - and sell them at a significant markup to potential customers (thereby also having a time saving goldsink added).

I'm of two minds about whether the survey tool should be added to the droid. Personally - I think a droid should have enough 'charges' to add several tools to it so you could either use it a few times on one resource, or a one-shot deal returning multiple resource listings with multiple tools. I just don't see how one type, one planet and no stats is all that useful.

There is one point that seems to have been ignored for the most part here, and that is the fact that you can only survey for one type of resource. Meaning that if you want to search on allnineplanets that you are not standing onfor one particular type of mineral, and one particular type of gas (eg. when this goes live we're all gonna be scouting for Vertex Gemstone, and Tolium reactive gas) which means you would need18 of these bots + survey tools. If you go to the planet yourself you can survey for all types of resource 'til you are blue in the face (unless your character is already blue of course)

Unfortunately, I doubt the devs will implement full stats reporting but the actual type (gibiilob - vertex gemstone etc.) is an absolute must. If the resource is very rare then often the stats are irrelevant. Whenever extrusive ore spawns, I go find a good concentration right away regardless of the stats 'cos I will still need it, and as long as the majority of the other resources I use such as copper and steel have good stats it doesn't make too much difference.

Just like with the structure maintenance tool, I doubt there are any plans to include the full functionality ... The thing to remeber here is that this game is paid for by monthly subscriptions, which means ... the longer it takes you to do something, the longer you will play the game, and the longer you play, the more you pay and SOE gets happy (well as happy as a big bloated corporation can ever be) Apart from in game issues such as 'certs, skills and professions, the 'balancing' issue is likey to be most concerned with time vs fun. If nothing is fun, then obviously no one will pay to use the service. On the other hand if everything is too easy and quick to achieve, everyone would have mastered Jedi within a month, got bored and cancelled their subscription. Either way SOE would not meet their all important market growth targets - and that would never do

Anyway, I do have a few suggestions to put to you all ...

Firstly I agree that considering these are disposable, one use bots they should not have rare materials in their composition. 3k doesn't seem a lot for the effort, but is an awful lot for the info.

How about they make the droids capable of surveying multiple planets, say 3-5 (perhaps experimentation could affect this), and then have some sort of cumalative delay depending on how many, and how far the planets arebefore you get the email. Pretty much the same idea as the structure bot taking longer to maintain several structures far away. This way, customers get more value for their credits, but there is still a balance, plus it still gets consumed so we still get return business. For me this would be fine, I could send off say 4 bots (2 for mineral, 2 for gas) and send them off to 5 planets each and thenwhile Iwait for 1-2 hours to get the email I can go get my butt kicked on the corvette again

With the survey tools I agree that they should make this part of the crafting process, the method seems straight forward, but as others explained, there are still issues such as factory crates. It would be far more straight forward to include the tool in the craft then we could sell a crate of survey droids with no messing around with extras etc.

I also liked the suggestion about a second droid which you could send to gather specific stats on one resource. This would be good for business, yet not too unbalancing - you still need to survey all the found resources to get the full picture and you'd still need to go to that planet to find the highest concentration.

A tool that just hands you a complete matrix of every stat of all resources found would make this far too easy and quick for SOEs liking so I think we can all forget about that, handy as it would have been However I think there are several viable, and acceptable compromises so all other suggestions should be brought forward.

Super - you are probably right in the dev's thinking - the fact that that thinking is WRONG, well - that's why we have to live with things that we do.

I DESPISE irritating timesinks. Making me WASTE time is not the way to keep me happy and playing. That bespeaks volumns about lack of confidence in game design and implementation. Devs make players WASTE time when there isn't enough that they enjoy to keep them busy. This is always a problem with a MMO - but I really wish they could lose that mindset. SWG did this with factories and harvestors - otherwise everyone would be out surveying by hand and creating by hand. Personally - I think that would have been better for the economy, but it does show they realize that some folks don't think that part 'is fun'.

Returning a full list of names, types and stats would get rid of the irritating WASTE of time - so folks that go after the resources can get down to the real part of their job - going out and FINDING them.

I have read over most of this thread and agree that at a minimum we have to have the name and type of resouce. I also agree that the tool should be part of the crafting process.

And as for showing the material qualities, for the cost of crafting these, it should be included. If the crafting costs were lowered then I could see just providing the functionality they are offerring.

However, a suggesting is to add three new droids, that work along the lines of the bounty hunter driod. One is the general one that they are offering and would be certed at Novice Artisan (that is where you get the ability to survey after all), The next would allow you to specify a named resource and would return the stats for that resource (certed at survey 3). And last but not least would be a droid that you specified the named resource and a concentration amount. You would then be returned a single waypoint with that exact concentration. This later droid would be certed at Master Artisan and would be very expensive.

The last two droids would be very expensive to find resource points since they would be destroyed for each use, but I think you would see them used for high demand resources.

Too bad on such a wonderful idea this droid was from the start.

See what resources that are available?

I can do that more easily with swgcraft.com or other fansites

I can't see this being a seller at all to be honest, I sure wouldn't buy one.
And as far as I can tell, all other crafters that I know of that dig for resources wouldn't bother if you only get an "Availability list" sent to you.

TK, put it to the devs this way: without stats, the 'coolness' factor of this droid is dramatically reduced.

You have 2 alternatives.

1. A droid that will tell you that "there is aluminum on Talus ..."

2. A droid that will tell you there is "really crappy aluminum on Talus, don't waste a trip boss ..."

Is there any question about which one is considered cool and useful? None whatsoever.