Droid Engineer Archive
Thread: Droids and macros
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Jeryld
Sat Sep 18, 2004 5:52 pm
#1
Apologies for re-posting this - originally I posted this to the "Binding droids to your house" thread, but it seems to of got buried there, so I decided to post it as a new thread.
As I'm sure anyone who has grinded a craft out knows 
, SWG has a fairly powerful-ish macro system, that allows you to automate those boring, repetitive tasks that we as players have to go through again and again. It occured to me the other day, that that is one of the main tasks of droids - to do the repetitive boring stuff that people don't want to do. So why not merge the two, andenquire of the devs whether it would be feasible to implement the macro system for droids (with a few tweaks)?
, SWG has a fairly powerful-ish macro system, that allows you to automate those boring, repetitive tasks that we as players have to go through again and again. It occured to me the other day, that that is one of the main tasks of droids - to do the repetitive boring stuff that people don't want to do. So why not merge the two, andenquire of the devs whether it would be feasible to implement the macro system for droids (with a few tweaks)?I beleive this would add tremendous value to droids and have a positive impact on the game as a whole, not just to the DE profession. It would make droids actually become droid-ish, and not just walking crafting stations (one of my main disappointments with droids as they stand), and potentially add a whole new atmosphere to the game. Let me give you an example so you can see where I'm coming from...
(Please note - this is just an example to give you an idea of the kind of thing I'm thinking about...please don't take this examlpe too literally)
So you're after a specific mineral - you know it's out there, but you need to go and do some surveying to find a decent mining site for it. Or do you? Why not send your trusty droid out instead while you do something more interesting? So you pull out your Adv Treadwell model droid, fitted with an item storage and a data storage module, you stick the relevant surveying tool into it's and you program it up to go out there and earn it's keep while you put your feet up...the macro might look something like this:
/goto 1234 -4321;
'this would have to be a new macro command, "goto (waypoint)"
/survey option03 addpercentage;
'this would require some changes to the survey command, allowing it to take a parameter to identify which resource to survey. Also, the "addpercentage" parameter would include the % of the resource in the name of the waypoint.
/storedata waypoint;
'again, a new command - it would store the active waypoint into the data module
/goto 2234 -4321;
'goto a new waypoint 1km away
...
/return
'new command again - this would instruct the droid to return to it's owner.
...so after a while, your droid comes back - with a data storage device full of waypoints, each with the % of the resource you told your droid to look for in the title.
Here's another example - something a bit simpler, that wouldn't require quite as many new macro commands as the example above...
You're a doctor out hunting with a group, and everything is going really well, the xp is rolling in, there's just one problem - you're running out of stims. Hmmm damn, you're gonna have to hold the group up for a few mins next time you camp, so you can make a load of stims...hang on a sec, why don't you pull your droid out and set it up with a macro to make some stims while you carry on fighting?
By the time the stims you have left run out, your droid should of made a few new packs...so you pull your droid out, give him your crafting tool, macro him up and away you go...the only difference between the macro the droid would use and the one you would use normally to grind out crafting would bethe requirement to enable the selection of resources to be fully automated within the macro.
I can think of plenty of other aplications were macros on droids would be incredibly useful - here's an off the wall one, how about crafters using macros to write "user giudes" for their wares? So someone buys a droid off of you - they've never used one before, so they have loads of questions - all you have to do is send them a series of pre-prepared macros that explain how to use the droid's various functions. I'm thinking of something like this...
E-mail to client
Congratulations on your new purchase! Please find attached a copy of the user guide for your new droid. It should cover most of the questions you have - just load the attached macros onto the droid, and say "User Guide" to it. If you have any questions not covered in the guide, please feel to mail me....
Cheers
Attached: Macro: User Guide, Macro: Item Storage, Macro
ata Storage, Macro: Medical Module
ata Storage, Macro: Medical ModuleThe customer loads the macros onto the droid - each macro is activated by the owner saying the name of the macro, much in the same way that droids / pets are already comanded. So he says "User Guide" and the User Guide Macro runs...
Good day to you master. I am a Surgical droid, fitted with the following modules:
Item Storage
Data Storage
Medical Module
If you wish to find out more about these modules, simply say the name of the module you are interested in.
When the owner says Medical Module, the droid will go into a spiel about that module
Apologies for the length of this post - I'm afraid I got a bit carried away. This is an idea that really speaks to me - macros would allow droids to become what they were always meant to be - truely useful, possibly even indespensible, and not just walking crafting stations. It would add so much not just to the feel of droids, but to the game as a whole.
I realise that this could require a lot of work - then again, as a macro system is already in place, maybe it wouldn't take that much effort after all. Either way, it's something I feel would add to the game, and I'd love to know what you all think out there. If there's enough interest, I'll try and come up with a proper proposal and ask non-de's what they think of it - I feel this could be something of value to practically anyone, regardless of profession.
Cheers
Jjiaah
Sun Sep 19, 2004 1:36 am
#2
Jeryld wrote:
So you're after a specific mineral - you know it's out there, but you need to go and do some surveying to find a decent mining site for it. Or do you? Why not send your trusty droid out instead while you do something more interesting? So you pull out your Adv Treadwell model droid, fitted with an item storage and a data storage module, you stick the relevant surveying tool into it's and you program it up to go out there and earn it's keep while you put your feet up...the macro might look something like this:
/goto 1234 -4321;
'this would have to be a new macro command, "goto (waypoint)"
/survey option03 addpercentage;
'this would require some changes to the survey command, allowing it to take a parameter to identify which resource to survey. Also, the "addpercentage" parameter would include the % of the resource in the name of the waypoint.
/storedata waypoint;
'again, a new command - it would store the active waypoint into the data module
/goto 2234 -4321;
'goto a new waypoint 1km away
...
/return
'new command again - this would instruct the droid to return to it's owner.
...so after a while, your droid comes back - with a data storage device full of waypoints, each with the % of the resource you told your droid to look for in the title.
Great idea! As I dig up my own resources whenever possible to avoid paying 10cpu for something rare, this would save me tons of footwork. I'd still have to go out and drop my harvs, and there's nothing saying that it would even be a suitable spot... but I'd know in advance it's worth going there. In addition, the droid isn't tracking down the highest %, just giving a report on what %'s are where you told it to go. You may still have to go out an finish the surveying yourself.
Saves *some* time, useful, gives droids more value and demand, plus wouldn't unbalance things in the slightest. Most of us have gotten to the point where we can intuitively determine when a resource is going to cap (notreally accurate, but you get a feel for it) anyways.
Here's another example - something a bit simpler, that wouldn't require quite as many new macro commands as the example above...
You're a doctor out hunting with a group, and everything is going really well, the xp is rolling in, there's just one problem - you're running out of stims. Hmmm damn, you're gonna have to hold the group up for a few mins next time you camp, so you can make a load of stims...hang on a sec, why don't you pull your droid out and set it up with a macro to make some stims while you carry on fighting?
By the time the stims you have left run out, your droid should of made a few new packs...so you pull your droid out, give him your crafting tool, macro him up and away you go...the only difference between the macro the droid would use and the one you would use normally to grind out crafting would bethe requirement to enable the selection of resources to be fully automated within the macro.
Having droids make something... sortof a Factory Module for droids? I can see this as a special type of droid, or a module that comes in 3 parts (or simply taking a whole socket cluster). An R3 with an Equipment Factory Mod, Item 6 (required for input/output hopper), Data Storage 6 (required for the schematic), and a Droid Crafting station (required in the droid to make the schematic, only usable in the droid) would be VERY useful to me out and about. But it shouldn't be quite as fast as a real factory, and the item limit on the schematic should be limited to 25 - 50 or so. I can see how a Doc / CM out in the field would be VERY interested in such a droid. Plus with the setup I outlined he'd have to put away his Doc Mod droid, forcing him to choose which to do. Can't get the benifits of both, which always appeals to the Devs.
I can think of plenty of other aplications were macros on droids would be incredibly useful - here's an off the wall one, how about crafters using macros to write "user giudes" for their wares? So someone buys a droid off of you - they've never used one before, so they have loads of questions - all you have to do is send them a series of pre-prepared macros that explain how to use the droid's various functions. I'm thinking of something like this...
E-mail to client
Congratulations on your new purchase! Please find attached a copy of the user guide for your new droid. It should cover most of the questions you have - just load the attached macros onto the droid, and say "User Guide" to it. If you have any questions not covered in the guide, please feel to mail me....
Cheers
Attached: Macro: User Guide, Macro: Item Storage, Macro
The customer loads the macros onto the droid - each macro is activated by the owner saying the name of the macro, much in the same way that droids / pets are already comanded. So he says "User Guide" and the User Guide Macro runs...
Good day to you master. I am a Surgical droid, fitted with the following modules:
Item Storage
Data Storage
Medical Module
If you wish to find out more about these modules, simply say the name of the module you are interested in.
When the owner says Medical Module, the droid will go into a spiel about that module
Sounds like something they'd rather include in the Holocron read-me's unfortunately. While that would be useful and helpful, just sounds like it would be too much trouble to implement. However, It would be a nice addition to add to a droid for the FIRST time it is called only. That system is already inplace ala Green Can newbie droids. A simple alteration of the text and selections, plus a small modification to the coding... attach that to a droid deed and bingo. The option for US to modify the text would be nice, but I'd settle for just standard text to teach the new user how to run their droids.
Apologies for the length of this post - I'm afraid I got a bit carried away. This is an idea that really speaks to me - macros would allow droids to become what they were always meant to be - truely useful, possibly even indespensible, and not just walking crafting stations. It would add so much not just to the feel of droids, but to the game as a whole.
I realise that this could require a lot of work - then again, as a macro system is already in place, maybe it wouldn't take that much effort after all. Either way, it's something I feel would add to the game, and I'd love to know what you all think out there. If there's enough interest, I'll try and come up with a proper proposal and ask non-de's what they think of it - I feel this could be something of value to practically anyone, regardless of profession.
Cheers
Jeryld
Sun Sep 19, 2004 3:51 am
#3
Regarding the "droid crafting" macro, I agree there should be advantages / disadvantages to using droids in this way. A disadvantage could be that droids can't experiment, so the quality of droid - created parts would be below those of hand-crafted / factory created parts.To have the droid take longercrafting sounds good too.The obvious advantage is the mobility it gives you - and allows you to carry on with what you're doing. Maybe another advantage could be that componets crafted by a droid in one sitting have the same serial number?
That would really give professions like medics that need identical components for their medsthe abilityto be self-sufficient in the field, at the cost of item quality. Whether this is going a step too far, I don't know. The degradation in quality would be a significant disadvantage, so I wouldn't expect droids to really ever compete with factories - but droid crafting would add great versitility, and give people more options when they are out hunting.
However, I don't want to go too far into the individual ideas in my original post - I was trying to use them to illustrate how powerful, useful and fun a droid macro system could be.The possibilities would be limited only by the creativity of players (and I guess by the commands the devs chose to implement). It would allow players to addgame content, like User guides for items or other things, exposed toother players through droids. Let me explain this a bit further, as I may of not been that clear before.
Let's forget the droid bit for a sec - lets say youwere tired of answering the same question over and over again about your products, and you wanted tocreate a "User Guide" - say for a small house. You could do this by creating a series of macros. The first one would be "User Guide" and would look something like this...
Macro1 - "User Guide"
Thank you for shopping with us! Are there any questions you have about your purchase? People often have questions about the following features of small houses:
Lots Usage - Privacy - Maintenance
So you would create this macro in the normal way, drag it to your toolbar, and whenever you pressed it your character would say what was written in the macro. When you use it on a customer, they are usually going to ask you for more info on one of the items you listed, i.e. Maintenance, Lots Usage or Privacy. So you create another macro for each of these. Let's take "Lots Usage" -
Macro2 - "Lots Usage"
The lot usage offor mostsmall houses is 2 lots. However, this being a small Naboo round house, it only takes up 1 slot - thus freeing up that extra lot for one of your factories, harvestors, or whatever you want.
You drag this macro into your toolbar too, and whenever you run the "User Guide" macro and a customer asks about lots usage, you then click on the "Lots Usage" macro.
Now to be honest, this macro isn't terribly impressive - it's probably easier to just type in each time the answer to customers questions. However....what if the customer could run these macros on their droid? You mail the macros to the customer, and suddenly they have an interactive guide to the product they've bought, available whenever they need the info. How would this work?
Macros would be a new type of data object, storable in a data storage module. They would be run whenever the owner of the droid (or any "friend" of the droid) says the name of the macro within earshot. So in the previous example, once the customer had loaded the macros up on there droid after purchasing their new house, they say "User Guide" - the user guide macro runs on their droid, and it says
Thank you for shopping with us! Are there any questions you have about your purchase? People often have questions about the following features of small houses:
Lots Usage - Privacy - Maintenance
So the customer than says "Lots Usage" - and again, the droid runs the "Lots Usage" macro:
The lot usage offor mostsmall houses is 2 lots. However, this being a small Naboo round house, it only takes up 1 slot - thus freeing up that extra lot for one of your factories, harvestors, or whatever you want.
I hope that explains a bit more clearly where I was coming from on the "User Guide" front. The guide could be anything - how about an interactive Corvette guide? Have a bunch of macros called "Stage 1" to "Stage x", each detailing the next step in the mission. How useful would that be to people who have never run it before? Or a hunting guide for beginners? Just create a bunch of macros named after different creatures on Tattoine - player loadsthem up on their droid, and comes across a creature. The player isn't sure whether the creatures are social, if they deathblow etc - so he simply says the creatures name - and his droid runs a macro of the same name, giving all the relevant details on the creature.
Maybe I'm a bit too enthusiastic about this, but I can see a scenario where droid macrosare worth in-game credits - and if players would be willing to pay for certain macros, that surely gives an indication of how useful they would be. Lol the more I think about this, the more enthusiastic I become
Cheers
Message Edited by Jeryld on 09-19-2004 03:56 AM
Straker_Atrella
Mon Sep 20, 2004 4:24 am
#5
I honestly think they are great ideas, great for the customers, great for DE's, and great for the Star Warsy feeling.
Star Wars = Droids, there are tons and tons of things that a droid should be able to do to help you. From the begining, Droids should have been a much more central part of the game. They could have been true sidekicks.
The problem is that for them to do all of this now, would probably take a couple of months of nothing but droids. With the CB, JTL, GCW, plus all the other profession revamps they keep talking about, this becomes very unlikely.
Droids really could be so much more then they are. Maybe someday they will be.
Jeryld
Mon Sep 20, 2004 5:08 am
#6
Thanks for the feedback...yeah, there are a fair few other things that the devs have got on their plate before I'd expect them to re-visit droids again...like the combat balance, smuggler revamp, scouts and rangers could use a bit of attention among others, after all that it'll probably be time to re-visit JTL and fix issues with that
You never know, there is already a macro system in place. So maybe it wouldn't take all that much to tack it onto droids, and get a basic system off the ground.
But either way, I just wanted to see what peoples' feelings were about this...if it's an idea that has legs, and enough people feel it's worth while, then maybe it's worth writing up as a proper proposal and shuffling itinto the "DE Vision" document.
Cheers
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