Droid Engineer Archive

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TribbleMaster wrote:
Ok, so what about people that despise armor, how do you balance that? How do you balance people with uber krayt enhanced ranged weapons? You don't. Some people find better equipement and use it.

In an effort to be creative and suggest one simple solution - how's this... Controlling a droid in a combat situation requires time and concentration and therefore that impairs of the player controlling the droid. Bigger the droid, more impairment. Maybe the player's speed is slower, maybe they hit for less. Combine that with some sort of droid counter measures and maybe the net result is that using a droid against a particular opponent is actually a hinderence.

I'm willing to come up with ideas, but I'm one person and I can't design this in a vaccuum. How about some input rather than tearing down the foundation of something that *CAN* work.

We're giving up before we've begun.

Mobreen.

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The main difference between the droid cert system and armor/krayt weapons is droids have nothing to do with the profession. A krayt laser rifle is still a laser rifle, if you chose to be a rifleman and don't want to use rifles, you chose the wrong profession. Armor has a penalty for using it, encumberance. I did suggest this idea at one point, but after thinking about it more I realized that the combat droids we'd be talking for this are CL20 or so, plus fairly heavy encumberances (mostly mind). Another primary difference with armor is armor doesn't have a play-style. You can wear it, or you don't, it doesn't change the way you play the game (it may change some of your decisions but it is in effect the same combat). Pets, on the other hand, are a completely different play-style. Nowhere in the concept of a fencer does someone think of him as sitting back and yelling at a droid to attack.

Armor has a play style - wear it or don't sure, but which armor you choose and how you use your specials are both important factors.

My vision of combat in the Star Wars universe doesn't have people coming up and stabbing me with a stone knife, sword, pike or anything else, especially when I have a blaster, rifle, carbine or flamethrower in my hands. Who's to say that a rifleman with a combat droid of some level is "wrong"?

Which makes less sense, my view of combat droids fighting under the direction of combat experts OR a martial artist kicking the stuffing out of AT-STs?

You still didn't add anything to the idea of combat droids being accessible to general the population of SWG. If my idea doesn't work to your sastisfaction, what would? Barring, or course, DH.

Mobreen

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Jenden wrote:

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TribbleMaster wrote:
Ok, so what about people that despise armor, how do you balance that? How do you balance people with uber krayt enhanced ranged weapons? You don't. Some people find better equipement and use it.

In an effort to be creative and suggest one simple solution - how's this... Controlling a droid in a combat situation requires time and concentration and therefore that impairs of the player controlling the droid. Bigger the droid, more impairment. Maybe the player's speed is slower, maybe they hit for less. Combine that with some sort of droid counter measures and maybe the net result is that using a droid against a particular opponent is actually a hinderence.

I'm willing to come up with ideas, but I'm one person and I can't design this in a vaccuum. How about some input rather than tearing down the foundation of something that *CAN* work.

We're giving up before we've begun.

Mobreen.

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The main difference between the droid cert system and armor/krayt weapons is droids have nothing to do with the profession. A krayt laser rifle is still a laser rifle, if you chose to be a rifleman and don't want to use rifles, you chose the wrong profession. Armor has a penalty for using it, encumberance. I did suggest this idea at one point, but after thinking about it more I realized that the combat droids we'd be talking for this are CL20 or so, plus fairly heavy encumberances (mostly mind). Another primary difference with armor is armor doesn't have a play-style. You can wear it, or you don't, it doesn't change the way you play the game (it may change some of your decisions but it is in effect the same combat). Pets, on the other hand, are a completely different play-style. Nowhere in the concept of a fencer does someone think of him as sitting back and yelling at a droid to attack.

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TribbleMaster wrote:
Armor has a play style - wear it or don't sure, but which armor you choose and how you use your specials are both important factors.

My vision of combat in the Star Wars universe doesn't have people coming up and stabbing me with a stone knife, sword, pike or anything else, especially when I have a blaster, rifle, carbine or flamethrower in my hands. Who's to say that a rifleman with a combat droid of some level is "wrong"?

Which makes less sense, my view of combat droids fighting under the direction of combat experts OR a martial artist kicking the stuffing out of AT-STs?

You still didn't add anything to the idea of combat droids being accessible to general the population of SWG. If my idea doesn't work to your sastisfaction, what would? Barring, or course, DH.

Mobreen

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"What absolutely does not make sense is to proceed on designing this new skill tree and the new droids when the DE's current in game function is so horribly broken!"

I'm new to the profession, but I completely agree with this statement. I gather that the main opposition toa DH profession is that it limits the market, but this would be less of an issue if there were good non-combat droids that were useful to existing professions. I would also expect that droids would wear down over time like any other machine and it would take some DE skill to repair them. My point is that if there were other revenue streams available, then the opposition to a DH profession might decrease somewhat.

This is coming from someone that might use a combat droid and not someone that would make them. Attacks 1 and 2 are somewhat useful, but unless your making the droids do more dmg than a char does with a high end gun and a master level skill I don't see enough bonus to lose vitality for 1 attack. Your talking about an extra 500-1000 dmgand you incap your droid. I would much rather keep my droid active and shooting for 250-500 every 2 seconds or so. The numbers are made up but I can't see the dmg going much higher than a CH unless the HAMs are a lot lower.

Maybe instead of 1 attack, make it all attacks within 60 second or something. Then the 5 points in loss might actually be worth it. Same thing with level 3, level 1 and 2 could stay about the same and maybe even take the time down a bit. I would much rather have a bonus to normally use the commands rather than just let it sit there fireing at a normal pace.

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Drashk wrote:

*Sets Correspondents hat down gently on top of his monitor.*

1. Droid Certs for all Professions


2. Turn DE into a full fledged combat profession


3. Create a Droid Handler Profession

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See, this thread actually highlights to me something that I've been thinking about this fury so far anyhow. To paraphrase:

It's not that the Droid Handler is a bad idea, given high level droids that the devs want to put in the game, that pisses off the Droid Engineers. It's the lack of any publicized future improvements for the Droid Engineer profession *outside* of combat droids. Most of the objections I see complain that there's no way that this makes us money, and that it limits our sales. They're not actually objecting to the idea of combat droids, just the marketability.

But gutting the idea of combat droids in your anger doesn't do a **edit** thing to help Droid Engineers - it just keeps us all down. We're objecting to the idea of having a target audience in the future where none presently exists by telling the devs we don't want to have any future audience? That's illogical...

If the devs had made the announcement of Droid Handler accompanied by a list of corrections they'll be making on the utility side of things, this anger wouldn't be happening. If there was any sign that ANYTHING was happening to the profession besides this, the anger wouldn't be a big deal. But it's the absence that breeds the fury.

I think most Droid Engineers would have no objection to combat droids of any level, so long as that wasn't all we were given after the history of shafting. But it appears so far that the favors stop there, and that's a problem. Even for me, and since before release my one objective was to make combat droids and use them.

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Drashk wrote:

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Xader_Vartec wrote:

DrashK,

Are you not limiting your droid market with the DH profession?

Don't get me wrong. Some market compared to 0 market is a good improvement. But wouldn't USEFUL utility droids for each profession provide a larger market with much more potential down the road for the DE profession?

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I'd rather have Utility droids any day, but the Combat droid issue has become center stage for some reason. This post is geared at trying to get people to look at the issue from many different points of view. There currently is a decent droid market, for those that know how to sale their droids. Any additional droids that can be sold will only increase this market. I was trying to get the point across that adding combat droids to only the DE profession will not increase the sales market and will in all likelyhood will instead case the market to shrink even further. I'm just trying help more people understand this and help them to see past the shiny new combat droids.

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Thank you for your response D. It was an honest question. I wasn't being sarcastic.

I personally feel that making Utility droids truely functional is just too much development work for the short time they want to get the DE profession better. I understand this and feel that it is probably the reason why the focus is on combat droids.