Droid Engineer Archive
Thread: Preparing for the next issue.
experimentation
customerzation
naming speaking droids
taking release command of conversational droid radial dial.
heal white damage
My Number one is to have probots un-nerfed or other fighting droids added, throug a cert' program or something
"My Mouse can beat up your mouse."I would like to add my two cents.....
I wanted to become a DE b/c i saw the movies and saw lots of cool droids running around killing and shooting things. Almost no where did i see people with big pets attacking things (there are several exceptions) with that being said i got the artisan points and became a DE only to find out i could only make crappy MSE droids that did ABSOLUTLY NOTHING!!!! when you bring one out it has the commands to get in formations but you can't have out more than one. soooo i was thinking why can't you have a droid thathas a slot that you can put a weapon in. obviously you can only have certian guns for certian droids (think implementing something like weapon certification for droids, an mse can only have a cdef pistol or carbine an ADV can have something more advanced and so on). then allow to have out multiple droids and assign points for each one, allowing up to a certian number of max points. ex. Maybe give 10 points and a mse =1 point. How cool would it be if you could have even 5-6 little mse's with pistols on them surrounding you. of cource you would need higher level droids to do real damage but i think for fun purposes it would be cool. Another thing we should be able to make are the droikas and the Roger Roger bots, those were really cool too. also as said before robots should be able to heal all on their own, not just allow you to heal wounds away from hospitals but actually heal damage with out a medic. Also any other droid that has an actuall purpose should be implemented (there are plenty of good ideas in this board). as for experementation and color LISTEN PEOPLE WE DON'T HAVE ANY REAL DROIDS TO MAKE AS OF YET!!!! lets not put the wagon infront of the horse. what difference is it going to make if i can experiment a 10% better droid if the original is already worthless??? NONE. Color would be nice but i colorfull worthless droid is still a worthless droid that just looks pretty and last i checked pretty things don't kill mountain squills, or even rill's. fix the real problems and then worry about the details
p'mp steven Corbantis sever Tatooine
ps i had to give up DE to become a CH (which i don't want to be) just so that i could have something to protect me when i go to my harvesters so plz add something that has remote battle capastiy and then maybe me and alot of others can join back to this noble profession thank you
My personal opinion as a pretty new Droid Engineer is that decay of droids over time would be very useful and probably is the best thing that could happen to us. Making droids desirable and making the specialization of each droid useful would, of course, be wonderful but if they're not leaving the economy we're not getting return business.
Granted, this is something of a departure from the movies as R2 and C-3PO have been around for a generation, but it would be a good thing for the economy if we got to rebuild a burned out droid if nothing else -- suddenly put the droid's brain, if any, in the character's inventory and maybe some of the other components... everything else gets rebuilt. How many chassis has R2 gone through by the end of RotJ, anyway?
Secondly, making droids useful for their specialized tasks would be great! The only downside is that removing the ability for, for example, non surgical droids to use medical units limits the viability of the lower level medical modules. Even so, the droid's purpose is something that does need to have some impact.
My vote for the next "issue(s)" - And can we have all this before next week ...
1) Better Combat Droids - Am I missing something here. You all want Experimentation fixed before decent combat droids?Or is it just that you are willing to settle for anything because you don't think we will get better combat droids for along time to come?
2) Droid Healing - The ability to heal the white bar would make the new combat droids more useful.
3) More usefulness - Droids currently have the following usefulness: Act as patrolling Billboards, Store 10 items, Store schematics , Repair other droids, act as crafting stations and enhance medicine effectiveness in the field. DidI miss any other uses? Oh ya the chasis can be used as furniture. There havebeen lots of post with some very good suggestions for more useable modules. Also there is a whole other thread devoted to this so I wont go into what specifically here. To have a game that has interstellar space travel but the droids can't even maintain harvesters or deliver things ... seems strange.
4) Droid Degradation -We need a systemwhere the droids wear out after a certain time ... Much like weapons and armor do. When my scout blasterwears downIcanrepair it with a weapon repair tool. Sometimes the repair works succesfully sometimes with acost to its base sometimes the weapon is destroyed. Whatever happens Ieventuallyneed to buy another one. We need this same concept for droids. It seems the game designer for droids did not talk to the game designer for weapons or armor... did they?
5) More useful Droid Statistics - This maybe what people are really expecting witha fix to experimentation. If my Scout blaster wears out I get to choose wether I buy a new one with the same min/max damage and speed or do I upgrade. Then I need to decide wether to get it sliced. ThenI need to decidewhat powerups I might need. With better droid stats,experimentation and special resources may actualy have some empact on the value or usefulness of the droid. You could have specific Stats for specific modules. Hell you could get modules sliced or the droid itself sliced. Oh wow while your at it you could have power ups for modules or for the droid itself. Wow ... what a concept. This would allow for more "segmentation" in the market place. This means we could build droids for all levels of budgets and all levels of players. Just like weaponsmiths and armorsmiths do.
6)Experimentation - If we actually have more statistics for modules or droids, then giving us more than 5 experimentation points at master DE might be of value.
7) Droid Customization - Well this would help the droid chasisas furniture or billboards market I guess.
Ithoe Evi - Master Droid Engineer - EviTEK Droids - Intrepid Galaxy
biwan: The shop is just across the big bridge outta Theed on Naboo. 
I like grandiose plans for DE and combat droids and all that too, but let's be realistic here. We'll be lucky to get any kind of attention from the developers. I'm thinking being able to colorize droids will be the easiest thing to fix. It's a small, but significant step forward. Anything more is going to require a huge effort on behalf of the developers.
Having blue R2s and red R5s running around in the world will do a lot toward making this game begin to resemble the Star Wars that we all came to know and love.
I have a modification to the ideas floating around about restricting functionality to specific droids. Most of the posts that I am seeing state that a droid, let's say, the surgical droid, should be able to accept only med modules. My idea is in between the current state and this suggested state. In the previous example, a surgical droid should be the only droid capable of taking the level 4, 5, and 6 med modules, and the same surgical droid should be able to accept only level 1, 2, and 3 repair, and crafting modules. The "r" series droids should be able to accept levels 2 through 5 of all modules(jack-of-all-trades-master-of-none concept), because these little droids could do almost anyhting, and all the crafting stations. The repair droid would have levels 4, 5, and 6 of the repair module, and levels 1, 2, and 3 of all the others. All the level one modules would be for the MSE droid (A mini "r" series droid, but weaker). this system would reflect the ability of a DE to put any type of module into any droid, but the high level modules would only be able to be put into the specific droid meant for it.
Sorry if this idea has been posted somewhere else.
A lot of people saying there should be restrictions on which modules should go into which droids.... It kind of makes sense, I mean why spend a lot of money on one droid if you can find another for 1/3 the cost that does exactly the same thing due to the modules used in it?
Personally, however, I think it would be too difficult to segregate which droids get to use which modules and what level of module. I always imagined the surgical droid was inherently capable of healing, or at the least boosting the owner's healing skill. Then when I started up in DE I found out that it could just have well been an R4 to do the same thing. I would suggest making the droid TYPE have a specific BONUS to a skill, but go ahead and allow whichever module you want to use. Of course, a droid without a med module will not be able to help your healing, but a surgical droid with a med module would provide a better bonus than an R4 with a med module. Also, to solve the issue with little mouse droids running around with high level modules, they could have a negative factor, well, not negative, but below 1.0, reducing the effectiveness of the modules so if someone wanted a portable crafting station they would prefer a higher level droid to achieve the higher level bonus.
Well, just some on the spur thinking. What do I know, I only just started crafting droids 
I think we definitly need to have the DEVs' look at functionality. If functionalities are not fixed and actually usefull in the game, what are we experimenting on and what are we experimenting for.
I would look into functionalities and then i would look in customization. Then i would look in to experimentation.
-=U=-
My #1 issue is droid usefulness, as posted previously by many DEs. Designing a droid with a function name, but no functionality to live up to that name is senseless. Lack of differentiation means no niche, which means no competition.
I guess I'm utilitarian by nature, and color has no useful property to me as a DE or player. Droid customization is a waste of my time.
I realize that this issue was already included in the previous list by our honorable correspondent; however, I don't trust the devs to actually fix the issue. In order for me to generate feedback for the next list, I require that the previous list be addressed. Instinct tells me that this issue will wind up on the next five to ten lists.
Experimentation is important. But the lack of droid UXP is, to me, at least as important if not moreso. I love building and marketing droids, but I do not love grinding.
Most of us have not ground (grinded?) our way to Master just yet, and the implementation of droid UXP would be a big help. I know this is really part of a bigger issue to the devs than just the DE class (the lack of UXP for all items that currently don't decay), but it's probably worth prioritizing as a profession issue anyway.
Vuran Orou'tey
Novice Droid Engineer, Tarquinas
I posted an idea I thought was a good one. We should be able to manufacture surveillance droids which can be remote-controlled. A user who has such a droid can sit or kneel, and use the control tool in the datapad to take on the droid's fov and motion controls, for a form of telepresence.
My belief is that when remote-controlling your droid you should be able to set patrol waypoints and then tell it to go on patrol. Then you could set the droid on autonomous mode and go about your business. Maybe the droid could be isntructed to notify you if it saw certain things...
The droid should have NO radar, and it should be factioned identically to it's owner. There should be no indication as to whether the FOV of such a droid is being actively monitored, which could add some real spice to GCW infiltration missions. Imagine having to time the patrols of the surveillance droid fleet in order to avoid the eyes.