Droid Engineer Archive

So, Master BH is boring as all heck. I have nothing to do all day, and I want to run my own business.

I hear DE is getting a big fix in January, which made me gain some interest (Holocron also said master DE, but I'm not going for Jedi. If I go DE, it's to stay for awhile, until I get bored, I guess).

So, you current DE's - is it worth it (or will it be worth it once they fix you up a bit in January)?

I've got harvesters suckin up grinding steel as we speak, and will put up some fiberplast harvesters in a few days.

I'm sort of at a crossroads - go Weaponsmith or DE. WS would be fun, too, but there's a LOT of competition there. Though my guild needs a WS now that ours retired. We already have a master DE...

Well it depends what you want really...

Want to be dead poor? Become a DE!

Want to be filthy rich? become a WS!

I am a MDE and have been MDE for nearly a month i make my money minning. selling droids on the side..

Hey bacon,

Your story sounds very familiar. I was well on my way to MBH (2/4/4/4). But upon doing the investigation line I decided that it was realy not my cup of tea. Plus as you stated once you master it what to do? So I dumped BH and picked up DE. So far I am crafting thru to blueprints II. I have made some droid upgrade kits I think they are called, which allowed me to change the color of the 2 droids I currently own. Pretty cool.

There are many posts here about next months update. I think allot of it is guesswork but TH has been here posting to the DE community putting out some info. Check them out see if the profession and the changes comming intrest ya. I look forward to the future because I have a feeling DE is going to be comming up in the future. But hey I am an optimist.

I'm a BH as well, and I was looking into DE a while back and realized how lame the devs made droids and droid engineers...I've posted a few posts defending the DE and trying to convince SOE that Star Wars actually had more droids than creatures as characters.

So, I get my first holo ever...What does it say? DE

The Mulder side of me wants to believe that some guy in a black suit in SOE HQ said "This one is too vocal about our droid folly, we will break his spirit", but of course that isn't true.

Before I got this holo I really hoped that for everyone's enjoyment (DE and non-DE alike) that they would seriously make DE a priority...Now, I really really hope they fix DE.

Good luck to both of us, and all the old-school DE's on our impending future.

Same story as mine. Was a MBH and this and that on Chilastra, but I got bored from it all. I don't see any point in combat what so ever on this game other then getting money to circulate. Much like you I just wanted to run my own business.

So I came to Starsider! Friend asked me to come play there and so I took the oppurtunity to start a new character as a crafter, nothing but. It's fun! Really is. Only bad part is the grind. Takes so long. I'm going tailor/weaponsmith, and tailor isn't too bad, but WS... -_-

Okay, here's some thoughts if you're going DE....

First of all, don't depend on those fixes in January. We have no idea if anything will really come, and if so whether it'll help the profession or not. We've been waiting since release for some help, and haven't received a whole heck of a lot. So take the profession as it is now, and accept any changes as a nice boon.

Second, as a Bounty Hunter I feel I might correct a common misunderstanding that they (and combat professions) seem to be having. For combat professions, they gain skills through missions....they run back and forth, they lose time, but they gain skill and money. Then one day, the change to the BH Droids came, and Droid Engineers simply couldn't produce the droids for the same costs that Bounty Hunters were used to, and they learned that they were *gasp* actually losing money by doing the Investigation Missions instead of gaining money! Okay, well, if this thought horrifies you, then you may not be ready for the world of crafting. I say this because all of our skills are generally made by losing money. You are going to spend a buttload of credits to get your steel and fiberplast, whether you harvest it yourself or buy it directly. And then you're going to BURN those resources in large quantities, and at the end of the day, all you'll have to show for it is a new skill box or two. That's it. You're not gonna make money by grinding up the profession. Combat professions pampered you in this respect because you got used to being rewarded with small amounts of credits by grinding upwards......well, it doesn't work that way at all in the crafting sector. Many of us had to run combat missions just to fund our early crafting....later on we sold half our resources and burned away the other half. That's how it works.

Third.....grinding. This is another one that is a little different. There are two types of grinding, and I'm not going to debate which is worse.....Combat Grinding consists of running missions back and forth, over and over and over. You spend a ton of time doing essentially the same thing, and at the end of the day you have some credits and some skill experience to show for it. Crafting Grinding consists of click-click-click-click-click for days or weeks. At the end of the day, all you have to show for it is experience. You don't gain any money (in fact you lose it), you didn't get to move much (you were stuck inside all day), and your fingers hurt from repetative clicking. That's the life of a crafting when they're grinding up their skills.

Now, once you get near Master and can make the better things, then your life will change a little. As a DE, when I hit 3/3/0/3 I began focusing on the business side, and that was a bit better. You meet new people, you custom-build their droids, you answer the same questions over and over ad nauseum, and you generally make a name for yourself. You can even turn a little bit of a profit too.....a little, but it adds up over time. Then, by doing business, you'll see the experience slowly coming in over time, but you won't really mind because the experience is extra anyways, you can allready produce the best that Droid Engineering can do so the extra boxes up to master are more like a side benefit now.

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SigmaTech wrote:

You can even turn a little bit of a profit too.....a little, but it adds up over time. Then, by doing business, you'll see the experience slowly coming in over time, but you won't really mind because the experience is extra anyways, you can allready produce the best that Droid Engineering can do so the extra boxes up to master are more like a side benefit now.

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This is one of the DE's biggest gripes. He is right, there is no reason to master the profession unless you want to make the nifty BLL load lifters that do absolutely nothing, or make the Advanced R3, which holds one more module than the Advanced R2. On top of this, there is no reason to make the advanced series of droids anyway because you can exploit the module socket cluster and cram everything into any old droid anyway.

We are seriously broke. I make good money making droids and master artisan items (vehicles and powerups), but that still is not an excuse for the goofy way they programmed the DE profession. Do I regret mastering DE? Nah, because this is the only profession I really wanted to even do. I like making them even if they are broke, but one day I am sure I will throw in the towel unless everything is fixed. I hate seeing novice make the same things I can with a lot less grinding pain. I never knew about the exploits because I was too busy grinding after launch to read the boards as I was carpel tunnelling my way up the DE trees. Hence, I sold very few droids to start. Not much market for an R5 with a 45% medical module or item storage that holds 2 or 3 items.

Will we really be fixed? Who knows, the devs don't seem to listen so I am thinking no.