Droid Engineer Archive

I like the idea, but I think it is missing a sacrifice on the part of the player that is using the droid. As you move up the DCE tree, the Devs are asking that something is sacrificed. Obviously, money is cheap. Skill points are not. Maybe a compromise would be a License to use a higher tiered droid. How about 5kcredits a day to own a License to operate a CL10-CL20 droid? And then maybe 5k credits more every 10 creature levels? These licenses can maybe be purchasable only by the Droid Engineer trainer.

The main point is that SOE is asking that a sacrifice must be made by the player to use these higher end droids.

---

DigitalOne wrote:

The big problem with droids is their role in combat, and the reason I am writing thisis to analyze the previous solutions, and introduce a new compromise proposal. The two primary solutions are the introduction of the Droid Handler profession, which in my opinion sounds like a stupid idea, and reeks of Half-ass. Elite combat class certifications are by far more promising. They make combat droids available to the general public, where they fit and are desired. Droids play a significant role in the films, and of those roles combat is one of them, its imperative that this is reflected in this game. Although the big fear is droids turning into the new Pokemon, which is the negative extreme.

Elite combat profession certifications can work, but not in there current form, but it appears the devs have already closed there eyes and ears to any incarnation of this concept. The reason why? Well it goes as following. If you were to plant a certification in the Master tier of all the combat professions, and hybrid combat professions, you would get the following. Tons of people using droids, this is what we want right? No to this extent, Droids help you fight, Fighters fight, the better the droid they better they fight, the better the the fighters droid the more they can kill. Droids make Fighters better, obvious, all combat class masters will want one, soon you wont see one without one, which means you'll be seeing droids everywhere, like in the CH days but more so.

The trick is to introduce combat droids in a way that keeps them available, yet not common, and refrain from making them a prevalent feature or "mandatory requirement" that things like these have a tendency of becoming.

Easy anwser: Restrict droids to one profession. This however is the wrong anwser.

So heres what we do: the apparent beauty of the Droid Handler concept is the idea od working for power, instead of buying power. Elite profession certifications require that effort, but make the product to openly available.

So the trick is to combine effort and exclusivity. So how about this, we essentially take the skill tree out of the droid handler. Introduce Droid use experience, similar to Combat experience, every time you use a droid in combat you gain experience. At certain Plateaus, say 50,000 DCE (Droid Combat Experience) you gain the certificationfor more powerful droids. and at 100,000 even more, and so on. Maybe you have to talk to a trainer or something to get these certifications acknowledged. The beauty of this system is that it dosen't require skill points after all its not a profession, its supplementary.This will introduce useful combat droids into the public without flooding the market or creating a new profession. Anyone who wants to use a droid, can, under the same conditions they can attain power in anything else. Droids, especially the best droids, are still elusive, but rest assured people will eventually gain rank and use them. This allows everyone to use a combat droid, even droid engineers.

Can this work? Droid Combat Experience is awarded in the same fashion Combat experience is earned, altough the numbers have yet to be worked out. Introducing a new experience category is not to difficult, its been done before, the trick is to acknowledge plateu certifications, a system can be worked out for this, but its imperative that this dosen't take up profession points. The supplementary nature of this is paramount. Perhaps a trainer or something can be introduced to make this process work. But all in all it sounds feasible, and not nearly as difficult as creating a whole new profession sounds.

Now, just how powerful do we want our droids? Do we a droid that can go toe to toe against a Kimogila? This is where we have to decide and make compromises. I recommend limiting droids at Creature level 50. This keeps creature handlers the Masters of pets, since they have to spend so much time and skill points on their profession, they should retain the advantage. CL 50 droids are nothing to skoff at, their still some pretty nifty droids.

I recommend a Tier system, which is a combination of the Creature level system, and a plateued experience system which makes it easier to dole out certifications. Assuming droids go up to CL-50, there should be 5 Tiers each 10 Creature levels better than the last. Starting with CL-10 droids which are available to everyone is Tier 1, Tier 2 are CL-20 pets, etc. The logic behind this is based on the experience system in practice. Each level in a columb in a profession skill tree is basically a plateau, untill you gain enough experience and decide to train in the next higher. This concept basically subtracts the Profession from this equation and the need to require skill points.

They key is to keep droids exclusive and powerful, yet available to everyone, it may take more compromise, but the droid engineer is deserving of something like this. 8 months of suffering should be considered our compromise.

If the Devs say no to this, its official, they hate us. To me, im no programer, but i know this solution addresses both our and the developers concerns effectively, and in a package that appears feasible and pleases us both.

Please let me know what you all think.

---

The primary issue of balance is being ignored though. The only underlying balancefeature available to the devs is skill points, as that is the only finite resource in the game. Money is virtually infinite, xp is virtually infinite. Many, many people have tens of millions of credits - heck, I have 4 million and I am as lazy as heck most of the time. XP is easy to get, even in large quantities, even something like combat xp you can rack up 10s of thousands of points in a few hours at master elite profession levels. Therefore, in order to allow droids that are more powerful that what the devs have considered is ok for all (i.e. CL10 - well, ok CL13), that capability has to cost us something from a finite supply, and the only thing available is skill points. By removing that requirement, you make players 'overpowered' compared to the environment (well, even more overpowered than they are atm) AND you make them overpowered compared to any equally 'skilled' (in terms of professions) character, thus making there use mandatory in PvP just to keep a level playing field.

Your question on how powerful do we want droids is interesting (and by we I mean the whole playerbase, not just DEs) and I think central to the way the system is eventually implemented. From a pure player point of view I would love to see any driod commander style profession work up to a single player being able to control an entire squad of relatively low powered droids. So, we could end up with a master droid commander running around with 5 or 6 level 15-20 battle droids (which would roughly equal a single CL70 CH pet with some tweaking of the numbers). This would be much more keeping the feeling of droids working using numbers rather than individual power to be effective, and keep the DC from being a cookie-cutter CH copy with metallic skins.