Droid Engineer Archive
Thread: Droid Engineer Issues Designer responses
Time for me to be a bit bitter and cynical, but that could also be called realistic.
Everyone wants Droidekas. *I* want Droidekas.We want them with the powerful quick-firing blasters with deflector shields, and they'd better have that sound effect, in my opinion.
After the Probot issue, do you really think we'll get them in a form even HALF that perceived level of power, no matter what the elite-elite profession or certs needed? We'd probably get them with dlefector shields that couldn't stop a dirty look, and a HAM that make Probots look like a level 65 warrior in EQ with maxed AA's...
No matter how powerful the Rancor that the CH in our group has, I'd be very surprised (and happy) if they gave us a Droideka as displayed in the movie. And even if they did, someone would use it to solo something they shouldn't, and they'd be changed in the next patch. 
how to fix combat droids.....
1.
you start off with the dz70 standard droid that has no armor and 1 laser at novice Droid engineer. At blueprints 1 you get the advanced which has 2 slots on it for 1 laser and 1 armor module. Then at construction 1 you get the ability to swap laser/armor modules. At blueprints 2 you get probot standard with 1 laser and 1 defense modul. At blueprints 3 you get the advanced probot with 2 defense and 2 armor modules. At Construction 3 you get the ability to swap lasers/defense on advanced probots. At blueprints 4 you can make droidekas with 2 laser and 2 defense modules. At Master Droid engineer you can make Advanced Droidekas which take 2 droideka clusters. Droideka clusters are also made as a master DE that hold 3 laser or defense modules each. This basically gives 3 major types with extreme ability customization.
2.
Modules - yes a droid engineer should be able to swap modules on existing droids. It is a MODULE after all and thus being modular should not be hard wired in on custruction...think removable hard drives.
3.
protocal droids and BLL should be there to take care of all of your harvesting needs.
Probots - show status of all active harvesters (power credits resources)
Advanced probots - should be able to put power money in extractors
BLL should be able to carry a heavy load
Advanced BLLs should be able to empty all extractors.
Being a simple sort of person ... I could settle for working armour and the ability to put any player crafted weapon onto a droid frame.
MooftNavi wrote:
come on guys quit bichin. progress is progress, no matter how little. If you dont expect it to get better, then quit the profession. and if you quit the profession, please stop posting your negative comments. constructive criticism is fine and expected, but negative comments with no point help no one.
Um, I don't know about you - but I haven't seen any "progress" - just things that worked broken, then fixed - that's not progress.
And perma-death was was huge step back and crippled many of our sales.
So, all I've seen is one step forward, and three steps back.
That's not progress.
Audio
Mooftnavi you dont understand. We pay 15 dollars for an online game a month. There has been 3 phases of BETA testing. This game has been the least supported game by its makers. No other online game in history has been this bad at not giving customer service. I like this game a whole lot, but I dont under stand why these classes arent fixed when there were 3 parts to BETA. I understand that most games on release are unstable at first and get better later, but im starting to have my doubts. I hope they fix our profession as well as others due to the sake of this game being a great idea.
I know no one reads the responces when they are back here, but what the heck.
Aside from all the messed up crap that needs to be fixed, here is what I would like to see.
1: Something extremely hard to build but freakin impressive! I mean I saw some Master Ranger's camp and we don't have anything nearly as cool as that. Or all the great architect stuff PA Halls, big houses etc etc. How about something absolutely immense like a Walker.*
2: Combining us, Weaponsmith and Armorcrafters and creating huge Battle Armor like in the original Starship Troopers book or any of the scillions of anime movies.*
3: A complete resetting of all languages back to whatever you started with, and make them extremley difficult and slowto learn. Even cap them so you CANNOT learn them all. Then the protocol droid might actually have use.
* I don't have a clue how you'd handle the balance issues, but I am sure it could be done.
Ok, here goes nothing. This should be long and packed with useful information.
Utility Droid situation we currently have the following utility droids and I have made suggestions of things droids can do to play a more unique role.
1) Protocal Droids - right now they seam to be good looks and 2 modules, 1 personality, and 1 defense. They should also get back alot of their old stature or anouning guests and hopefully more "Protocal" or Edicit type roles. I think I have Doctors buying these for looks to use for Chem crafting and Medical modules.
2) Binary Load lifter - right now they don't seam to do anything important. Hopefully we can get higher lifting capabilities on these so we can carry around more than the measly 10 I get from my R3 with LVL4 Item Storage. Hopefully these load lifter will be able to move houses soon. Which means they should have around 100 to 250 storage in them. This should come with a cost, but right now you can store in datapad and move on. Sticking 5 of these in the datapad would give you way to much space. Maybe making this a unique item where you can only have one in your datapad.
3) LE Repair Droid - seams to be just a shell of a droid with 3 modules, 1 personality, and 1 defense. Nothing important about these at the moment since you can put the repair module in any droid and command it to repair. I would love to see these droids repair both wounds and life of other droids automatically if they are in the group. Maybe even making this the only droid that can have a repair module in it (optional of course). This would be a nice addition to anyones home after that.
4) Power Droid - the only droid with real capabilities that no other droid has. Can recharge other droids and has 1 module slot to boot. I always suggest people use the repair module in these so that they can do everything about repairing from one droid. No change really needed on this one.
5) Surgical Droid - just another shell of a droid with 3 modules, 1 personality, and 1 defense. You can go two ways with this droid. 1 is to make this droid the only one that can hold Med 4 or higher modules. This way it is unique and required for anyone wanting a Med 6 module. Also having it heal automatically would be nice. I am sure they wont heal as fast. Now to keep everyone going out and purchasing these and suffing them full of other modules you should limit these on the modules it can use. Like no Crafting stations, or maybe no Crafting stations other than Chem/Food one. I just hate to make life worse on those poor Doctors on my server.
6) R2, R3, R4, and R5 - are the staple utility droid. They should be able to do almost everything, but some people find it too easy to purchase a mouse droid over one of these. People need a reason to purchase these. I think limiting Data Modules to R units is the best thing we can do to increase the marketplace. With the number of Creature Handlers we have this will increase or business greatly. Also making higher lvl parts only available in theR units. Crafting Stations are a good thing to limit to R units. Lastly these droids should be the only ones to get the "Hot Swappable" capability giving it another reason to purchase over anything else. I will address "Hot Swappable" later on in my book i'm writing.
7) Treadwill - just a shell with 2 modules and 1 defense. Have no reason why someone should ever purchase one of these. I think Luke was thinking twice after his broke on him.
8) Mouse - great starter droid with 2 modules and 1 defense. But it should be limited to starter droid. Cheap price lowgrade parts.
Now we get on to Combat Droids.
1) Probot - Should have more variety if this is going to be the only High end droid. The adv units should not be able to use the normal modules, but only combat modules like shield generators and weapon amplifyers.
2) DZ70 - Should never be used. This is a peice of junk droid. Someone through this in because they saw that there was only one combat droid and tried to a pease the droid engineers with this.
Pritty much we definately need more combat droids and way cooler looking ones. I don't care if they dont come standard. Maybe an Elite/Elite profession or a mission to find out how to build the newer droids, but something.We see Creature Handlers able to use Frenzied Grauls that had way more power than Probots ever did. This is still true since they get two pets at a time. Lets make a high lvl Combat droid that can take on a two Frenzied Grauls at the same time. Make that Combat Droid DE only just to give us thanks for sticking this out. Everything else can use an Adv Probot with Combat Modules. Lvl 1 - 6 Laser Booster and Lvl 1 - 6 shield Generators.
Hot Swapable should be closely defined. I understand that all droids are not alike and should not be a like, but buyers do get frustrated having to purchase a new droid when they want a part upgraded. So this is the limitations I think should go onto Hot Swapable.
1) If the slot is empty you can put any module into it. So if someone purchased a droid with a free module slot then we can fill it later on. This only works in module slots not in clusters or in slots in clusters.
2) Make it so we can upgrade units. Change like parts with upgraded like parts. (IE. upgrade that Med 2 module with a Med 6 module) This will not give the user the ability to change the droid but to be able to keep up with the Jones.
3) Make it so we can upgrade the armor. Let us pull the armor panels off and upgrade them.
4) Personality chips should be self changing. Users should be able to get all the personality chips and change them out. This will let the users play with the personality alittle and give them a unit that they will be happy with for the rest of their lives.
Now there shoulda reason to swap modules also. How about implimenting the ability for droids to malfunction? Modules that might break. This could start to become droid repair instead of building new droids all the time. Replacing broken modules and armor. Ok well this might be too far, but this is the idea we had behind hot-swapable. I think the Dev's might have miss understood. Q, if you want to understand what Hot-Swapable means go into your server room and ask one of the Techs. They know.
Use experience is a very interesting issue. I feal as though grinding wasvery tedious and expensive, but now that I am working on my Creature Handling I say making Master Droid was way easier. All I had to do as Droid engineer is to make sure I had enough supplies and craft. In 4 hours I could take one line from bottom to top crafting. Now that there is the option that does not require us to make the item then I think I could do it faster because half my time was usually deleting the items from my bag. Now if you can't sell items and make money to keep harvesters up and or buy resources then power crafting becomes impossible. If they fix the usefulness of the droids and add the Combat droids we need then we should see more money and the ability to power craft once again.
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Personally I think the devs are doing a good job trying to deal with every aspect of the game. I do wish that SOE did not release this game at the half built state that it was in, but I also understand the presures that Sony was under to make a profit the Month the game went live. This information is the first portion of reviving the dead Droid Engineer class. What the Devs do with it now is the important part.
Regards,
Sirwalter (AKA. Tzsu Umali - Corbantis)
1. Binary Load Lifters- they should have a function of going between harvesters and your house, retrieving the resources from the harvestor, and depositing them at your house. I'm sure this idea can be fleshed out a little more with some creativity.
2. Make modules hot-swappable by DEs. All of them, the function modules, crafting stations, and armor. Especially if our droids are gonna die on incappacitation.
Rugoe has the same idea as I had, I wonder how many other do, about the droid perma-death drop some components that need to be repair and reinstalled, and maybe the main chassis the still contains the colours and memory sometimes? that way the owner can take the corpse back to their favourite droid engineer, the higher the level of droid engineer the more likely they can make it just like the original or even better.
but first all the components must be repaired in a droid repair tool, but you would need to keep the component seperate to the new ones the DE may be making.
Droid that are assembly line proccessed I don't believe need this facility as they are all the same anyway, but things like Protocol Droid need it how many times does C3PO get repaired, and It'd be cool to see them with different coloured arms and legs where the replacement they got wasn't the same.
