Droid Engineer Archive

---

LeBob wrote:

if the droid has multiple modules, can it have multiple messages / multiple waypoints?

if so, can the droid run multiple spamtisements at one time?

---

You know...these are both awesome questions.

I haven't actually tested this but I'd have to think the answer would be no. I don't see them letting us stack these since it could get out of control.


For now (until I hear otherwise), you're safest to assume that only one of these will work in a droid at a time.


/bow

Respectfully,

Advertising 4 to use this now?!? Ridiculous. If I am the only one who thinks that will totally kill our market for this module, fine, but I don't think I am.

The added requirement will not cut down on overall spam, just the relatively quiet andshort range/say spam from our droids. People willnever buy our Barker droid, just continueusing /yell every 10 seconds. The argument that led to this change in the first place was spurious at best. Popping out a /say every 60 seconds was more than adequate. I must be some kind of idiot-savant, if I can build droids andspeeders, or snipe a Peko-Peko Albatross, yet not be able to operate a tape recorder installed into a Droid I built!!! I defy anyone who is in favor of this added requirement to go to Coronet on Bloodfin any evening, and tell me how our droids would make that horror show any worse.

I dropped Ranged Support 4 because I was 1 Skill point shy of being able to get Novice Merchant, and now it seems my sacrifice was in vain. I was stupid enough to begin to anticipate this patch with some excitement, and now at the current count I can use 2 of the new things myself.

---

Naufragus wrote:

better yet.....

the merchant droids SHOULD have gotten the holograms the dancers got and project a little ad...it could be as simple as a picture of a gun if you where selling guns

maybe as you moved up the skill tree you could get animations or more elaborate holograms....

little holo billboards

this is much more clever and less intrusive than spam....

---

That would be an awesome effect. 100% less irritating than spam.

Deidre

I'm uncertain as to the effectiveness of this module. It seems to simply replace the standard starport spammers with a module that has less range, cannot bespammed as often, limits the length of the message, requires a skill that autospamming doesn't, and will only work for 60 minutes, as opposed to autospammers who hang around from server reset to server reset.

I'm not trying to naysay simply for the sake of naysaying but under the current structures the barking module seems to be much less effective than a simple spambot. I like the concept, I just think the execution is flawed.

A couple of suggestions that may make the module more desirable (unfortunately they are more than small tweaks in many cases):

1) Make autospamming much less effective. Give people a 'bank' of shouts/yells such as 10. For most people this should be more than enough for anything they will need. Have the shouts/tells regenerate at the rate of 1 every 6 minutes. It will totally kill shouted spamming (spoken spam will still work)but will allow for Yells when neccessary.

2) Increase the time the droid can run on a charge. Perhaps it can search its inventory and use any batteries inside when it hits low power before shutting off. Since a droid could easily hold 40 charges in 10 batteries this would be more than enough (and you could have even more charges if it was able to pull a battery from a crate). Have the droid respawn after a server reset and it now has an advantage, albeit small, over autospammers.

These first two are pretty critical, as I see it. While they don't require the exact solutions I am proposing they need to be addressed in some way. Otherwise the droids are just far less effective autospammers. Once the playing field is somewhat leveled the next suggestions would give the droid a leg up.

3) Allow droids to have better names. Really, this needs to be fixed anyway, but it is more important in the case of merchant droids. Tallin Industries Salesdroid is going to be a lot easier on the eyes than TallinIndustriesSalesdroid.

4) Give the droid the ability to give out more than a single waypoint. Allow customers to select any waypoint stored in a droids Data module (Of course this requires Data Modules to store waypoints once more).

5) Allow a droid to patrol based on waypoints stored in the Data Module, rather than the current limited system of setting patrol points. (See 4)

6) Increase the ability for a customer and droid to interact. This is the only advantage the droid currently has and it is terribly limited. Make it so that merchants can write a simple branching tree with a few commands. The droid can be programmed with a statement that it makes when Conversation is selected from its radial. The statement can have up to 3 optional responses the player can select, each of which trigger another statement, also with up to three optional responses. At this point the droids have a definite advantage over the spambots and there won't be a need to cram as much information as possible into the 'spam' statement the droid makes every 60 seconds. For extra effectiveness give the ability for a response to trigger an email to the customer (so a pricelist can be sent) or to send the droid to a waypoint (so it can lead the client and then return)

7) Allow the gap between messages to be increased. Some merchants might actually want to set the message to go off less often to avoid irritating people with spam.

These are just a couple of ideas. Like I said, I like the concept, I just think the proposed execution in the current environment is going to produce something that is relatively pointless.

---

TheRealTK421 wrote:

---

LeBob wrote:

if the droid has multiple modules, can it have multiple messages / multiple waypoints?

if so, can the droid run multiple spamtisements at one time?

---

You know...these are both awesome questions.

I haven't actually tested this but I'd have to think the answer would be no. I don't see them letting us stack these since it could get out of control.


For now (until I hear otherwise), you're safest to assume that only one of these will work in a droid at a time.


/bow

Respectfully,

---

I approve of the Ad-4 requirement, the description of that box at release claimed an "npc barker in cities" which was never implemented, and has been empty (except for a trivial discount) since. The 30 to 60 second nerf concerns me, since if you miss someone running through an area, he may never know the droid existed. Oh well, it encourages using BLLs for the purpose.

The biggest single failure is that there is no place for "additional information" that is not barked. This was claimed in the original description of the feature, but now there is no room to put a price list or description of an event. The bark is a lousy place to put that kind of information, unless the zone is really quiet, because it rolls off the screen too fast. It is really too small for the purpose as well.

Currently, I would give the feature a D+. If they putimplement the promised additional information, they would have a passable feature. I posted before what they needed for an A.