Droid Engineer Archive
Thread: I like my combat R3 buddy, now I have to find a job for him.
- Hostile Harvester Distraction. In the event of angry MOBs at or near your harvester, having the droid called out (which can be easily done now) can provide a distraction if you need to run away. Could be useful in situations where there is the potential to get knocked down, hence thrown off your vehicle.
- Sentry. If you need to be in a certain location which may spawn enemies, the droid can guard you, assuming the hostiles are low level.
- Ranged Support for Melee. The ranged mode of the droid could be nice to have if you are melee fighting, sort of acting as a combat release value for ranged attacks that would otherwise hit you. This scenario could be used against a variety of difficulty levels, with the intent being that the droid buys you some time damage-wise.
- Because using a droid makes more sense in a Star Wars game than any equivalent creature pet!
Trying to think of other concrete ideas!
They're some decent ideas Eutock. I think the 'Hostile Harvester Distraction' one is good since people who need to be checking harvesters are often artisans without much ability in combat, so the extra protection would be helpful. The other day I got my R3 to duel one of my friends pets (which had a red con to me), and it lasted quite a while, and did about 1/4 damage to each of the creatures HAM pools. I was fairly impressed with that, and they should be a decent distraction if you just want to check some of your harvesters.
I'm not very creative sometimes, otherwise I'd post some other ideas 
. But I guess most ideas would just involve the droid beingused like'tank'/distraction, or just giving support
Just out of curiousity, was that one of my R3 droids you were talking about at the start of your post? The other day I noticed you purchased an R3 droid from my vendor, and I was wondering why, since at the time I didn't know (or I had forgotten ) that you had retired from DE. Then I open this thread as I know your name from Radiant, and find you talking about a 'nice R3 combat droid' you bought the other day 
Anyway, overall I'm actually not that disappointed with the droids (I was at first though),but maybe that's because I've barely used droids in the past, and haven't used my CL10 pets for a while, so I don't have much to compare them too . Droids can be improved, don't get me wrong, but the current droids don't seem horrible for low-level pets (although I wonder what they'll be like when the armor bug gets fixed so their armor is 20% instead of 40% 
)
I'm kinda going off topic, so I'll end here
Message Edited by CM_Mephiston on 03-21-2004 07:05 AM
Another job could be to harvest low level stuf. Paralopes for wooly hide or herb meat for example. You take one, droid takes another. I know, why bother. Just go do some huf duns. But, hey, looking for ideas.
Only problem is they're expensive to make. So the target audience for these droids (new chars) can't afford them.
I see using my R3 as a ranged dot for pulling and adding a bit of damage. For those of you who can root, just put R3 into ranged attack mode and let his shoot his shocker at the mob from afar
Message Edited by Pallida on 03-22-2004 02:51 PM
Madri wrote:
I read about "Espionage R-2's" in some SW novels. Why not combat ones. I like 'em.
My own feelings are sort of along similar lines. When everyone was complaining about being able to put combat modules into R type units I pretty much felt 'Why not? If a DE wants to gut out an R unit and fill it with guns why shouldn't they be able to?'. I didn't really raise the point since it seemed a pretty unpopular view and nothing good would come of it.
However, my feeling was that an R unit with combat modules should still be less effective than a similarly equipped Probot. To my mind a fully loaded R3 should lose nearly every time to a fully loaded Probot. As everyone says, they are not intended to be combat droids. While I can certainly justify sticking guns in them it seems to me that the frame should make them inherently worse combatants, which is exactly what we do not see going on. Sure, they do less damage but they also have a lot more HAM and from everything I am hearing a loaded R3 will beat a loaded Probot the majority of the time.
As a mid-level CH, my new R3droid is a multi-role combat machine. I aquired some new droidstims and have no issue at all throwing him into the fray at point blank range. I've discovered that ranged accuracy tends to be pretty marginal, so if he's in a role where he has to work for a living, then I keep him in melee mode.
Role one, is to keep him at range as additional damage on target. This is more for the higher level animals that can cause lot of damage that I prefer to tank myself (I never go unbuffed).
Role two is as a tank right alongside my other creature pets. I watched him this weekend take a beating from a Danteri Battlelord and got a good look at the serious beating he can take a stay alive while I am spraying autofire into the attacker. May not be AR1, but 40% resists give him LOTS of capacity to take punishment. Certainly more than enough for me to kill whatever it is (most of the time).
Role 3 is as a bodyguard when I am not buffed. My stats are 400/400/1100, so when I am not enhanced, I don't last very long, so having him around and able to handle the pounding while I alternate repairing him and launching basic attacks makes for a lot fewer trips to the cloner.
Role 4 is just as an RP companion that doesn't feel out of place in Star Wars. I'm moreof a fighter type, and now I feel like I have a droid that has a real use for the way I play the game, but without looking as out of place as a probot.