Droid Engineer Archive

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TheRealTK421 wrote:

Item module decay will be tough. We can't (and shouldn't) grief players by keeping them from their stuff.

Not sure yet what the right answer is on that.


/bow

Respectfully,

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Also a good point. Either system Tho a Nerf souldn't be more of a "grief" on the player.. if nothing else the decay should be user friendly IE easy to see/understand. Could be added to the ham bar. (something I wish would have happened with Battery life.)Like a yellow bar for power.

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Avair wrote:

"Your droid refuses to respond and will need to be repaired by a Droid Engineer."

Don't gate customers with the need for me to be online

I'm busy, and so are my customers. I don't want any additional things added that require me to be online to serve them. I would rather sell them a tool they could use to fix stuff themselves. The Reconstruction Kits are a perfect example of this. They don't sell a non-DE can't use them. This not fun for customers would have limited time online and don't want to spend it running around trying to find a DE just so they can fix their droid so they can get back to what they find fun (whether that be killing Gnorts or dancing in the cantina).

Droids are side kicks, not consumables

Many of my customers have had a droid I made them almost a year ago. Human nature is to get attached to our sidekicks. It is not fun to have to buy a new droid, which does the same thing as the old one. I would rather see a robust upgrade, 'modding' or repair system enhancement that would let customer's customize or upgrade their droid (with the associated consumable sales). This may seem a fine hair to split, but modules breaking or wearing out seems fair more fun than needing to buy whole droids. Think of the proposed way star ships are going to work, with an initial ship purchase that is non-destructable, but repeat sales on parts.

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Well, I wouldn't have a big issue with selling them the repair-kit/consumables as long as there is the understanding that they can't repair the droid nearly as well as I can. Sure, they could try on their own, but they will likely fail and break the droid even further (vit is less than when they started). If you want your weapon/armor fixed, you go see a WS/AS, because they're MUCH more likely not to trash the item in the process.

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Batleh wrote:

Well, I wouldn't have a big issue with selling them the repair-kit/consumables as long as there is the understanding that they can't repair the droid nearly as well as I can. Sure, they could try on their own, but they will likely fail and break the droid even further (vit is less than when they started). If you want your weapon/armor fixed, you go see a WS/AS, because they're MUCH more likely not to trash the item in the process.

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I understand that is how it works now for WS/AS, but I'm not sure I like it all that much for droids. With a few exceptions (that amazing Krayt Scatter Pistol) people aren't going to be as attached to their weapons as they are to their droids. Because of game mechanic limitations, there is no way for me to 'drop off' a droid to get it repaired by a qualified and trusted DE, so fixing a droidrequires 1) both me and my customer to be online 2) Expending both our time to meet up and do the repair3) A repair tool of some sort which only a DE can make.

I think the first tworequirementare largely pointless and not fun. If I have to make the kit and sell it anyway, why force the customer to come back to me just use it. This is why power droids are essentially pointless when a portable version (the battery) exists and can be easily used by the customer. How much fun would it be to come back to the DE every time you needed to recharge your droid?

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Avair wrote:

I understand that is how it works now for WS/AS, but I'm not sure I like it all that much for droids. With a few exceptions (that amazing Krayt Scatter Pistol) people aren't going to be as attached to their weapons as they are to their droids. Because of game mechanic limitations, there is no way for me to 'drop off' a droid to get it repaired by a qualified and trusted DE, so fixing a droid requires 1) both me and my customer to be online 2) Expending both our time to meet up and do the repair 3) A repair tool of some sort which only a DE can make.

I think the first two requirement are largely pointless and not fun. If I have to make the kit and sell it anyway, why force the customer to come back to me just use it. This is why power droids are essentially pointless when a portable version (the battery) exists and can be easily used by the customer. How much fun would it be to come back to the DE every time you needed to recharge your droid?

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Well, first off I find the "must come back to me" argument somewhat lacking. This should be setup so that just about ANY DE can repair the droid. And you're right, we can't "drop the thing off" to be fixed, so you don't necessarily need to worry what's going to happen to your droid if you don't take it to your specific trusted DE. Finding a DE who's willing to do repairs shouldn't be a huge stretch. If your customer wants you and only you to work on their droid, that's theirchoice, but it shouldn't be considered a limiting factor in a game system.

Also, remember that we're not talking about needing a DE repair every time the droid takes a vit hit. If it gets beat up enough, a module might break, and the droid will need a DE repair. You want your consumable to sell and I see the reasoning for it. Maybe along with this we might get droid vit packs (maybe not, pet vit packs work on droids too I believe) and these will be the customer usable item to try and fix the vit so it doesn't cause a module break. However, if the customer doesn't use vit paks, doesn't keep the droid powered, and/or the thing gets DB'd to heck, then yes, I think that's plenty of reason for them to have to find a DE to fix their poor droid.

Basically, I see things like this:

Causes a Vit Hit:

Out of Power Usage
Incap (don't remember if this currently causes a vit hit or not)
Death Blow

Causes a module "Break":

Vit < some % of total vit, perhaps based on number of modules, making more complex droids more likely to break faster.

Way to "Avoid" the break:

Keep the Droid Powered
Use Vitality Packs

Way to fix a "broken module"

Find a DE, pull out droid, DE does /debugdroid (or whatever), drops in replacement modules, and the droid is back upto 100% Vit.

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Batleh wrote:

Basically, I see things like this:

Causes a Vit Hit:

Out of Power Usage
Incap (don't remember if this currently causes a vit hit or not)
Death Blow

Causes a module "Break":

Vit < some % of total vit, perhaps based on number of modules, making more complex droids more likely to break faster.

Way to "Avoid" the break:

Keep the Droid Powered
Use Vitality Packs

Way to fix a "broken module"

Find a DE, pull out droid, DE does /debugdroid (or whatever), drops in replacement modules, and the droid is back upto 100% Vit.

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I agree with this short version of the way our decay system might look...


A couple of items, though:

• Where's the "benefit" to the owner? We'll have a much easier time selling this if there's carrot to the system, instead of just a stick.
  
  


• Where would a droid accumulate HAM wounds? We can get damage (combat only) but where do utility droids take both HAM damage and wounds? (Should it be a timer...or...???)

/bow

Respectfully,

There are two major problems that I can see with linking a decay system to module decay.

1. Droids that were made prior to the Cluster Module fix. There are still tons of droids running around that have X number of modules installed, where they should only have Y modules installed. How would these droids be handled, since there are MSE out there that have Item Storage, Data Storage, Medical Storage, Crafting Station(s), and aRepair module. Many of these would have multiple modules stacked, to acheive the max rating.


2. Droids that are made using module stacking. Does the system recognize that more than one module can be used to produce the same effect as a Level 6 module. Will stacking cause a problem in a droid, if the module decays.

I honestly don't see using module decay as an option here, since it could lead to a lot more problems in the long run. (Even more development time then the originally proposed system.)

As for the benefit to the consumer?

When/if a Decay system is introduced, the battery time could be increased to 90-120 minutes for all droids. If each droid lasted longer, regardless of modules installed, most customers would be really happy and would be willing to take the trade off.

The major difference between the Droid Decay system and the decay system for Weapons/Armor is that there is little to no risk involved in repairing your droid. Unlike repairing Weapons/Armor, your droid does not run the risk of instantly decaying. The only risk that you droid would ever face, is during Reconditioning, but this could be removed, to show that Droids can keep on functioning with proper maintanence.

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Drashk wrote:

There are two major problems that I can see with linking a decay system to module decay.

1. Droids that were made prior to the Cluster Module fix. There are still tons of droids running around that have X number of modules installed, where they should only have Y modules installed. How would these droids be handled, since there are MSE out there that have Item Storage, Data Storage, Medical Storage, Crafting Station(s), and a Repair module. Many of these would have multiple modules stacked, to acheive the max rating.
2. Droids that are made using module stacking. Does the system recognize that more than one module can be used to produce the same effect as a Level 6 module. Will stacking cause a problem in a droid, if the module decays.

I honestly don't see using module decay as an option here, since it could lead to a lot more problems in the long run. (Even more development time then the originally proposed system.)

As for the benefit to the consumer?

When/if a Decay system is introduced, the battery time could be increased to 90-120 minutes for all droids. If each droid lasted longer, regardless of modules installed, most customers would be really happy and would be willing to take the trade off.

The major difference between the Droid Decay system and the decay system for Weapons/Armor is that there is little to no risk involved in repairing your droid. Unlike repairing Weapons/Armor, your droid does not run the risk of instantly decaying. The only risk that you droid would ever face, is during Reconditioning, but this could be removed, to show that Droids can keep on functioning with proper maintanence.

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The cluster stack trick was a bug, and DE's using it were exploiting the bug to their benefit. Call me harsh, but I don't think we should worry about bugged/exploited droids when designing how droids "should" work going forward. (and I don't want to get started on the whole "no dev actually said the word exploit so it's perfectly legal" argument).

However, clusters are something that needs to be thought about, and how those are handled is really going to be a programming and balance issue. Do we just replace one module, or do we have to replace the cluster? I'm in favor of being able to replace the module itself.

As for the "upgradeable droids" ideas, well, this wouldn't be the first time they've mucked with droid layouts and abilities. Older droids could go through an exchange converter like they've done many times for pets, or in the worst case, we just say sorry, you can't upgrade old droids.

Based on what we've seen from the lightsaber conversions, it seems to me that they've got some ability to figure out what was originally used to make a crafted item and 'de-construct' it. Now granted, I know that this is potentially more work tha just saying you can't upgrade them, but we've seen evidence of this ability, we might as well ask for it. Worst that can happen (from an asking standpoint) is they tell us no.

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Straker_Atrella wrote:

Yea Drashk hit my concerns about module decay. How would it work if 2 out of 6 Harvesting mods stopped working? 1 out of 2 Armor mods?

Currently I don't think the system even knows or cares where the rating came from.

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Well, in a lot of these cases, reasonable assumptions can be made about the impact of 1 or more stacked modules going away. I think it would be perfectly reasonable to assume that if 2 of the 6 harvesting modules went down, then the droid would loose 1/3 of it's harvest bonus. If a droid has 2 trap modules, and 1 dies, then the droid can only use half of it's trap capacity. If a droid has 5 combat modules, and one dies, it's combat raiting drops by 1/5. The system would simplify things and just average the bonus across the modules of the stackable type and then assume that some % of it's ability is missing. The end user isn't necessarily going to know or care that one of the modules was a +12 and the other was a +8, they just know that the droid's bonus is +20, so I don't think they would be totally surprised that if one of those 2 modules died, the bonus dropped to +10.

For the "Level" modules the system could just assume for old droids that 2 identical modules of some minimum value were used in the construction of the droid. In the case of armor, if 2 armors were stacked to get you to 20% resists, the game could assume that the droid was built with 2 level 4 armor modules. If one goes away, treat the droid as if it only has a single level 4 module installed. Going forward, specific module values for the ranked modules would likely be tracked under the covers, so if you built a droid with a level 5 and a level 2, when one failed, it would know which, and adjust the abilities accordingly.

/sign

The DEV's need to be told that no further changes to DE is acceptable until this droid decay system or some variation of it is implemented. IMO, this should come before ANY droid changes to support JTL. In my book, its priority #1 and everything else needs to go on hold until its done.

In JTL, rumors has it that droids will learn to do ship management/repair over time and improve how good they are at it. So if/when Droid Decay is implemented and it becomes necessary for players to replace JTL astromech droids they use with their ships, its going to be painful for them to lose a droid that's become skilled over time. Such droid personalities are programming after all. With the decay system and option should also be added to download a droids personality and commands to a data disk. A new droid chassis could then be purchased and the personality and commands uploaded into it. To keep such droid personalities unique, downloading a droids personality also erases the personality from the droid itself. This keeps the droid personality unique in that it can only exist in one droid or on one data disk at any given time. The data disk also can not be copied and is itself erased during the upload procedure.

I do think tho, that such data disk should be storable in data storage modules AND sellable on vendors. So if someone wanted to go into the business of raising/training skilled astromech droid personalities, it would be possible to do so. Since they are unique can't be mass produced, each personality disk would probably be quite pricey. Not necessarily a bad thing tho considering it would probably involve weeks of game time to raise/train one such droid personality. No resources required beyond what it takes to make a data disk but is quite time intensive projects.