Droid Engineer Archive

Ok,
we have some very lively discussion going on here, and I applaud everyone who spoke (typed) their minds here. I seem to be getting a sense that there are a few people here that do not see what my original proposal brings to droid functionality, so I will attempt to explain, and please note that I am taking some heat (agreeably few flames) from both the DE community and the Smuggler community.
I really liked the idea that one poster mentioned, that the special "sliced item storage module" would be contraband itself, but would only count as one item, thereby reducing the likleyhood of detection. This would work equally well for Smugglers, as it would add to the smuggling capability of any user equally. This module could be a sliced regular item storage module, it could even halve the storage capacity of the unit, and would be permanent in the droid. I personally feel that this "sliced item storage module" should be sliced while the droid is live, that is after the droid has been fully completed, and "trained", This would remove the question of "is this an exploit" as it would add permenent function to droids where it is significantly lacking. Perhaps these secret compartments could only be accessed when the droid has sufficiant charge in its battery, but I digress.
I am now off to the Smuggler board to read what has been written there, and make a similar final appeal to the community for support of this idea.

I really don't see what exactly the smugglers are concerned about here. Do you honestly think someone is going to be paying you guys to "smuggle" spice or sliced armor/weapons somewhere? How exactly was this going to work? Are you going to hold some guys armor until he needs it? "Excuse me Mr. Rancor, please don't attack me yet. I need to call my smuggler to bring me my armor." Even if that were to work, I would be better off paying a high ranking Imp officer. He is guaranteed to get it through, you guys just get a chance roll.

Let's face it, this was an added feature that was stuck in at the last minute to throw you guys a bone. It's really more for show than anything else. As TK has been saying, we can't help you here. Even if we could, I'm not really sure we would be thrilled to cry for another in a long list of nerfs for the DE profession. Take it back to the smugglers forum or PM a dev. We have enough problems of our own. There's nothing to see here.....move along.

You can come here with all the well-thought out arguments for your position that storage compartments are an exploit that you want. it doesn't matter one bit what you say here, we can't do anything for you. take it to the core systems forum, or talk to your dev and spokesman if it's a game-breaking issue for you.

I'm not going to stop making or selling droids with item storage. I don't sell them to smuggle (in fact, I haven't sold any in weeks, everyone's into me for medbots). simply because the method in which droid storage is handled and the datapad is handled has allowed for this situation to arise is no reason to launch a holy crusade to get DE even more "fixed" than we already are, thank you for your concern.

This situation exists. nothing will be done about it anytime soon. count on that.

you might not like it, but it's not our fault and there's nothing we can do about it.

Myself? I keep batteries in my droids. *low power*

Reposted herefromanother thread, as it seems fitting:

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GnomeAd wrote:

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novakaine wrote:

But leaving them in will guarantee that smugglers, will never be able to smuggle.

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That's crap. I'm sorry that the devs pathetic attempt to let you guys "smuggle" doesn't meet with your expectations. As I posted earlier, think about the situation. Really think about it. What and how often are you going to be "smuggling". Are people today carting mass amounts of spice from planet to planet? Enough to make a living doing it? Why would anyone want to move that much spice from one planet to another? Wouldn't it be easier and cheaper to just have it made locally? Why would anyone pay you to smuggle to avoid the scans anyway? The offending items don't get confiscated. The worst that could happen is that you get a short trip to the cloning center. Heck, in most cases, it's probably closer to where you were taking it anyway.

Don't blame the DEs for the devs failures. Don't come whining to us. We have enough on our plate, we don't need to listen to you guys whining as well. We do it good enough on our own.

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I understand that you probably don't spend a great deal of time in the smugglers forum. We don't just want to smuggle spice, we want there to be a wide variety of things to smuggle; controlled resources, illegal pets, illegal weapons etc... Try to look past the crackdown, sure its a joke now, but the seeds of the smugglers future are planted in it. What kind of smuggling system can ever be put in place as long as there are these loopholes that eliminate the need for smugglers. If the devs have changed their vision for smuggler, than please change my professional title to dope dealer...becase that and slicing weapons is the only thing that defines our profession. Not very StarWarsy is it. Please try to be objective and step out of your DE shoes for a second and really think about it. Thats all I ask.

I'm not sure what all the fuss is about here. Let's assume for a moment that the Imperial crackdown was implemented correctly, and NPC Imps are all over the major cities searching players for sliced items. If this were true, hiding sliced items inside droids to avoid detection benefits both smugglers and droid engineers. Demand for both sliced items and item-storage droids would remain high. This assumes of course that there would be a signifcant penalty for posession of sliced items.

The real problem here is that there's still no true "smuggling" going on in this game. I think the implementation of real smuggling is going to require a radical shift in thinking on the part of the devs. The current implementation seems to be a half-hearted attempt to continually imposeSOE's failing forced-grouping concept.

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Droid_Engineer_Rho wrote:
My personal belief is that this is a question which requires multiple answers.

My gut feeling is that what we need is to differentiate droid function based on chassis. A Binary Load Lifter should probably have a large item capacity but be fully open to scanning, whereas a higher-end astromech might have a lower capacity (it IS smaller after all) for items, but be able to shield them from scans quite effectively.

In other words, we need more data attached to the droids, including different max capabilities for each module type, and different levels of shielding against scans.

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I like this idea, makes a lot of sense. One would expect a high-end astromech to be able to conceal items, whereas a BLL would be much more open to discovery. Unfortunately this assumes a level of design complexity that is unlikely to be implemented.

TK-535 asks, "What's that load lifter carrying?"

"Uh, nothing, just some dental hygene biscuits for my rancor."

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novakaine wrote:

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GnomeAd wrote:

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novakaine wrote:

But leaving them in will guarantee that smugglers, will never be able to smuggle.

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That's crap. I'm sorry that the devs pathetic attempt to let you guys "smuggle" doesn't meet with your expectations. As I posted earlier, think about the situation. Really think about it. What and how often are you going to be "smuggling". Are people today carting mass amounts of spice from planet to planet? Enough to make a living doing it? Why would anyone want to move that much spice from one planet to another? Wouldn't it be easier and cheaper to just have it made locally? Why would anyone pay you to smuggle to avoid the scans anyway? The offending items don't get confiscated. The worst that could happen is that you get a short trip to the cloning center. Heck, in most cases, it's probably closer to where you were taking it anyway.

Don't blame the DEs for the devs failures. Don't come whining to us. We have enough on our plate, we don't need to listen to you guys whining as well. We do it good enough on our own.

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I understand that you probably don't spend a great deal of time in the smugglers forum. We don't just want to smuggle spice, we want there to be a wide variety of things to smuggle; controlled resources, illegal pets, illegal weapons etc... Try to look past the crackdown, sure its a joke now, but the seeds of the smugglers future are planted in it. What kind of smuggling system can ever be put in place as long as there are these loopholes that eliminate the need for smugglers. If the devs have changed their vision for smuggler, than please change my professional title to dope dealer...becase that and slicing weapons is the only thing that defines our profession. Not very StarWarsy is it. Please try to be objective and step out of your DE shoes for a second and really think about it. Thats all I ask.

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GnomeAd,

If you go back and reread my post you will see that I agree with alot of what you said. We dont want to smuggle just spice. Imagine if certain resources were controlled or restricted. We would be able to smuggle that, but as long as there are ways to smuggle without a smuggler it will never happen. Let me ask you. How in the future will we be able to smuggle that is not compromised by unscanable droid modules. If you think you have a solution I would love to hear it. But as far as I know there is nothing you can't put in a storage droid.

What I'm saying is that you have to stop thinking in terms of "scanning". That's a concept that won't ever be part of smuggling. Due to the mechanics and economics of SWG, smuggling in terms of moving common things from one planet or area to another will never be able to happen. Why wouldI pay someone to move something when I can just get it manufactured there in the first place? No one would.

In order for smuggling to work in this game, we need to start thinking of something else. What if the only people who could have a certain items in their inventory were smugglers? You need some Lokian Fibreplast? Can't go there and pick it up, you need to get a smuggler to go get it and put it in your factory for you. Need a new type of blaster barrel? Better get a smuggler to haul it for you, since you can't pick it up. These are the things that smugglers will be able to do in SWG. We need items that ONLY smugglers can carry. That avoids the whole "scanning" and droid/bank issues.

Thank you Gnome,

Thats exactly what im looking for. Ideas. Honestly it never occured to me that scanning was a key bit that could be changed. We take things for granted sometimes. I didnt come here calling for nerfs, I was just fishing for responses from you guys as droids that can smuggle were a threat. Thanks for keeping it civil and not turning it into a flame war.

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Virtanis wrote:

Question for the old, old, old timers..... Wasn't Item Storage capped at 20 items at one time?

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I think it was even higher than 20, I remember my level 1's stored 20. They did this because at the time items weren't kept when you stored the droid. I think this was on purpose, allowing droids to be a temporary storage place, but when they saw that this wasn't getting anyone anything and in reality just pissing people off they changed them.

My personal belief is that this is a question which requires multiple answers.

My gut feeling is that what we need is to differentiate droid function based on chassis. A Binary Load Lifter should probably have a large item capacity but be fully open to scanning, whereas a higher-end astromech might have a lower capacity (it IS smaller after all) for items, but be able to shield them from scans quite effectively.

In other words, we need more data attached to the droids, including different max capabilities for each module type, and different levels of shielding against scans.