Droid Engineer Archive

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ArdenStarmariner wrote:
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.

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Nice idea. TK, you may want to look at that.

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Batleh wrote:

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.

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Yes but I know some unknowing DEs that tried to stack more than on level 6 module in a single droid. Now that R3 with 10 storage spaces were made with 6 Level 6 Item storage (they were trying to max the item storage, 60 items) One of them breaks would it reduce it by 1 or 2 storage spaces. Or by 10, because the Level 6 Item Storage broke. Same with the armor that 20% resisted droid was made with 2 Level 6 Droid Armor pieces. When 1 breaks does it act like a level 4 broke or a level 6.

Or one that actually makes sense. A Experimented level 3 module and a Level 4 module are combined to make a level 6 which one breaks?

There are some more possiblities that I can think of for the module breaking, that would make it much more difficult to program.

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X Machine'Zed X
Obsidian Dagger Squadron

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Straker_Atrella wrote:

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ArdenStarmariner wrote:
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.

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Nice idea. TK, you may want to look at that.

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ArdenStarmariner wrote:

It's a change that's already in the works for JTL per one of the DEV quotes. The astromech droids "learn" how to become more effective at ship system tuning and repair. Apparently, the DEV's are implementing a mechanism where the astromech droid skill up or are upgraded somehow.

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It's all based vs. one's 'Droid Programming' skill level, I believe.

What I'm not sure about is whether the 'program's will be removable/tranferrable items of any kind (I suspect not).


/bow

Respectfully,

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TheRealTK421 wrote:

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Straker_Atrella wrote:

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ArdenStarmariner wrote:
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.

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Nice idea. TK, you may want to look at that.

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I agree. It'd also be nice to see personality 'quirks' so that droids take on more of a unique life to them.

This is, I suspect, no small change. The basic issue of making droid AI better and/or making droids seem more 'alive' is a fundamental thing that I'm sure all DEs and most players want (since it's a lot more Star Warsy).

I'll make sure to not the idea above.


/bow

Respectfully,

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All droids lose 10% (of the total 100%) of their battery life when they are called. Easliy recharged when needed, but it does cause some decay over time under your plan...

What do you think?

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OrionsByte wrote:

Here's the problem I see with this: way back in the day, if a customer wanted their droid chassis customized (colored) they had to seek out a DE and have them do it. We hated that - it was irritating to be bothered to paint someone's droid on a regular basis. Our customers hated that - it was irritating to have to find a DE somewhere just to get that red sheen back on their droid (or to keep it from randomly changing colors ). The thing about chassis customization is that's it's basically optional. Yet now we're moving towards a decay solution that puts us right back where we were before - except customers would have to find a DE to get their droid up and running again - they wouldn't have a choice. We'd probably end up spending more time repairing droids than building new ones. Not an entirely bad situation for us, but in the end it's still an inconvenience to the customer, which would likely result in a drop in droid sales.

And, as several people have stated, there's no realbenefit to the user. I'm not going to back any proposal that makes the game more fun for me at the cost of making it more frustrating to the other 95% of the population.

In order to circumvent these two issues, I'd like to offer the following two suggestions:

• Introduce a "super battery" that would provide a much longer charge at a cost of a vitality hit.




• Essentially, this battery could be experimented for charge time and vitality cost. Thus you could have a battery that lasts 5 hours but causes a 25% vitality hit, or you could have a battery that lasts 2 hours that causes a 5% vitality hit (these numbers are just for example, and would have to be adjusted).


• The benefit to the customer is that they can use their droids for longer periods of time if they don't mind the decay. Using regular batteries would still cause no decay.


• The benefit to DEs isthat we'd have a new item to sell, and one that I think would probably sell very well. It also introduces some decay that could be taken care of with my next proposal:


• Introduce chassis-specific non-DE reconstruction kits




• If a droid has less than 10% vitality, it would cease to function and would need to be repaired. However, as I said before forcing someone to find a DE to do this would be irritating to our customers.


• Instead, I propose that we make kits that contain all the basic components (not modules) for a certain chassis type, that we can sell to customers or place on vendors, that would allow customers to completely restore their droid's vitality.


• The kits would contain all the parts necessary to build an advanced chassis (or advanced droid for the ones that don't have chassis). Essentially this could be accomplished by building an adv. chassis or adv. droid and using it as a component in the kit (that way we dont' have to have 80 billion droid repair kit schematics).


• The benefit to the customer is that they don't have to seek out a DE to get their droid back up and running. The more expensive droids will cost more to repair, but the customer always has the option of using normal droid batteries to avoid the decay.


• The benefit to DEs is a renewable market. In addition to the "super batteries", we could also stock repair kits for specific droids, that would probably cost as much as a chassis. It gives us our decay system without completely inconveniencing the player.

I think these two ideas, in and of themselves or in some combination with the system that Batleh outlined, would be a good compromise between us and our customers. Plus, it's all done with minimal coding changes to the current system and just the addition of a couple new components.

One final note before I go back to work...

I think we have to be careful that any system we put in place doesn't cater only to Master DEs. For instance, it makes perfect sense to be able to experiment on a droid's vitality, but linking any system other than decay to that vitality would effectively put novice DEs out of business, and I'd really like to avoid that if possible.

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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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Here's the problem I see with this: way back in the day, if a customer wanted their droid chassis customized (colored) they had to seek out a DE and have them do it. We hated that - it was irritating to be bothered to paint someone's droid on a regular basis. Our customers hated that - it was irritating to have to find a DE somewhere just to get that red sheen back on their droid (or to keep it from randomly changing colors ). The thing about chassis customization is that's it's basically optional. Yet now we're moving towards a decay solution that puts us right back where we were before - except customers would have to find a DE to get their droid up and running again - they wouldn't have a choice. We'd probably end up spending more time repairing droids than building new ones. Not an entirely bad situation for us, but in the end it's still an inconvenience to the customer, which would likely result in a drop in droid sales.

• Introduce a "super battery" that would provide a much longer charge at a cost of a vitality hit.




• Essentially, this battery could be experimented for charge time and vitality cost. Thus you could have a battery that lasts 5 hours but causes a 25% vitality hit, or you could have a battery that lasts 2 hours that causes a 5% vitality hit (these numbers are just for example, and would have to be adjusted).


• The benefit to the customer is that they can use their droids for longer periods of time if they don't mind the decay. Using regular batteries would still cause no decay.


• The benefit to DEs isthat we'd have a new item to sell, and one that I think would probably sell very well. It also introduces some decay that could be taken care of with my next proposal:


• Introduce chassis-specific non-DE reconstruction kits




• If a droid has less than 10% vitality, it would cease to function and would need to be repaired. However, as I said before forcing someone to find a DE to do this would be irritating to our customers.


• Instead, I propose that we make kits that contain all the basic components (not modules) for a certain chassis type, that we can sell to customers or place on vendors, that would allow customers to completely restore their droid's vitality.


• The kits would contain all the parts necessary to build an advanced chassis (or advanced droid for the ones that don't have chassis). Essentially this could be accomplished by building an adv. chassis or adv. droid and using it as a component in the kit (that way we dont' have to have 80 billion droid repair kit schematics).


• The benefit to the customer is that they don't have to seek out a DE to get their droid back up and running. The more expensive droids will cost more to repair, but the customer always has the option of using normal droid batteries to avoid the decay.


• The benefit to DEs is a renewable market. In addition to the "super batteries", we could also stock repair kits for specific droids, that would probably cost as much as a chassis. It gives us our decay system without completely inconveniencing the player.

I think these two ideas, in and of themselves or in some combination with the system that Batleh outlined, would be a good compromise between us and our customers. Plus, it's all done with minimal coding changes to the current system and just the addition of a couple new components.

One final note before I go back to work...

I think we have to be careful that any system we put in place doesn't cater only to Master DEs. For instance, it makes perfect sense to be able to experiment on a droid's vitality, but linking any system other than decay to that vitality would effectively put novice DEs out of business, and I'd really like to avoid that if possible.