Droid Engineer Archive

Introduction to Version 2

This manual is intended as a manual for Droid Owners. It is not intended as a full DE guide - there are some great guides on the SOE boards. However, this post should cover most everything you need to know about owning a droid.

This post incorporates the things that were pointed out that were incorrect or unclear in verion 1.

Training Droids

So, you got this new droid deed. What to do?

Well first, you have to tame it from your backpack. Use the radial menu, and select tame. This will bring the droid out for the first time. After this, the droid will be stored in your data pad, not your pack.

Now, you want it to do tricks Well, here is how you teach it.

Use the radial menu to select Program.

Select the skill you want to program. The droid will respond with a ?

Type the following

/say name command

Where name is the optional name you want to give it, and command is the command you want to bind to what you are training. For example, lets say you have you have a droid that you want to name Snoopy, and you want to train it to follow. You might then select the Follow option from the programming list, then type:

Snoopy follow

Note that naming a droid is optional - you can leave out the name in all the training steps. Also, note that names and commands are case sensitive (hence, FOLLOW would not work). Also, the same name filter is on for droids, so no numbers or special characters are allowed. Fianally, human form droids (3P0's and surgicals) do not accept names at all.

When the droid accepts the training, he will respond with a !

Once you train about 5 commands, the droid will take on the name you are using to train him. Also, note that you must use the phrases to train him in public chat (don't try to give your droid a direct tell).

If you change a droid's name, make sure to retrain all the commands that had the name bound to it.

Once you have trained a command, you can use it again by saying, for example, "snoopy follow"

The most important commands to train are, group, follow, stay, befriend, patrol, set patrol point, delete patrol point. In the case of the probot, you of course want to train the attack and guard command command. Do NOT train delete... there is not point... that sets the droid free, and you will never control him again. I list group first, because if you are solo hunting, and group with your droid, you will get the exp bonus for fellows without having to share exp with the droid. So, I really think that those that don't yet have droids need one.

Note that it is worthless to train the formation skills for a droid. It appears that they intended to allow for multiple droids at one point, but no longer do so. Hence, it is hard to make one droid fall into a droid formation (see also power droids... how can a pwer droid power another droid when you can only have one out at once?)

Types of Droids

At this point in time, there are three basic types of droids:

- Battle Droids
- Bounty Hunter Droids
- General Function Droids

Battle Droids have inherrent combat abilities (attack). Defense in all droids is based upon the armor modules placed in the droid. In addition, extra functionality can be added to these droids by adding functional modules.

Bounty Hunter droids are special use droids used in the investigation line of the bounty hunter line, and will not be covered in detail here. These are the Seeker and Probe droids (note: not probots). In general, though, seeker droids are used to find a target on the planet you are on (investigation 1 and 2), and probe droids are used to find marks on other planets (investigation 3 and 4). Both seeker and probe droids have multiple charges.

General function droids are the non-combat droids. There is no inherrent functionality in these droids. They can have armor added for defense.

All non-inherrent functionality is determined completely by the modules that are mounted in the droid. These modules currently allow medics to heal outside the cantina, crafters to craft as though the droid were a personal crafting station, repair of other droids, and item and data storage.

Droid Chasis

The following droid chasis are available:

MSE & MSE Advanced - These are the little beeping shoeboxes on wheels. The MSE has a single module slot, the MSE advanced has two sockets. There is an exploit that allows stacking of modules to make these little buggers as good as an advanced R3. I won't use that exploit, so don't ask.

DZ-70 & DZ-70 ADV - Little silver spheres with legs that float around. They are somewhat like Darth Maul's seekers in Episode I (though, what Darth Maul actually had was seeker droids). As combat droids, they are capable of attack. They do 20-30 damage, have 45 HAM and have a spot for armor and a module. As can be seen, these things are fairly useless.

R5, R4, R3, R2 & ADV models - These are the famous R-series droids from the movies. The better the model, the better the droid. See below for a description of the modules.

Probot & ADV - The battle droids. For the first month of the game, they were uber, now they have been nerfed. They can still be used in combat; opinions differ on how usefull they are. They can hold armor; the basic probot has one slot, the advanced has two for utility modules.

The Surgical Droid & ADV - One would think that this droid would have inherrent healing abilities, but it does not. The most comon configuration is to place a food/chem station and a L6 healing module in it. Item and data storage do not work in this droid. It can also take a personality chip to make it talk. Currently, only the sarcastic and worshipful personality chips work reliably.

LE repair droid - Does not repair. It is just another chasis at this point.

Protocol Droid - A very cool looking 3P0 type droid. However, he cannot hold any modules, so functionally wise, he is of no use.

Binary Load Lifter - The huge, lumbering fork-lifter looking droids. They cannot do much but look cool.

Treadwell Droid - Another chasis that can hold a single module.

Chasis Module Capacity

Assuming that the exploit of stacking clusters in non-cluster module slots, the various chasis can hold the following number of modules:

One module:

MSE
DZ70
Power
ADV Power
R5
R4
Treadwell

Two modules:

ADV MSE
ADV DZ70
ADV R5
ADV Treadwell (WED)
LE Repair
Surgical
Probot
ADV Protocol

Thre Modules:

ADV R4
ADV LE Repair
ADV Surgical
R2
R3

Five Modules:

ADV R2

Six Modules:

ADV R3

Droid Repair

Droid repair has been reworked lately. Droid damage heals slowly over time. Droids with repair modules can heal another droid's wounds, but not their own.

At one point in time, there was a Droid Repair Kit. This is not currently in the game.

Droid vitality loss, which occurs when a droid is DB'ed, cannot be healed. Eventually, a droid will be worn down to the point that you will need to buy a replacement.

Note: As AT-ST's are not crafted droids, they cannot be repaired with the Droid Repair module.

Med Droid Notes

Droids with medical modules allow healers to heal outside of a medical center. In addition, Medical Droids with the advanced med mods (L6 or dual L4's) give a bonus to healing. Note that a medical droid with less than a L5 medical module will impair healing - but will allow healing outside the medical center. The higher the level of module, the better the healing. There is a cap of 110% efficiency (meaning that the healer gets a 10% bonus over his normal capabilities.

Med droids do not work in the Cantina, to prevent entertainer/healers from being able to heal everything in the cantina.

If your med droid stops allowing you to heal, give it a command. If it responds with "low power" you will need to feed it more batteries.

The droid must be fairly close to you for it to allow you to heal.

One tactic for using a med droid: you can tell him to STAY at some point, then advance to attack... This way, your droid will still allow you to heal, but will not get into the fray.

Probot Notes

Probots are combat droids. However, they are not the droids that they once were. They start out with 810-820 HAM (this can be experimented up a bit, but the experimentation does not reflect in the actual HAM bars), 52-56 damage. Damage to a probot heals slowly over time, wounds can be healed by another droid with a droid repair module. Note that this means that you can't repair your own droid.

However, I do not beleive they are worthless. No, they are not like a creature handler's rancor, but if used with some wisdom, they can give you that edge in combat. Just don't expect them to do it all for you - that will get them dead.

The trick is to let them attack, but make sure you are drawing the fire yourself. They do 52-56 points of damage, and with maxed out (medium) L6 armor, they have 40% resists to everything.

A good tactic for a probot is to put it into the GUARD mode either on yourself, or on your CH pet.

Crafting Stations

Basically, they are used as a mobile crafting station.

Some droids can hold both a med module, and a mobile crafting station.

A well made droid crafting station appears to be as good as a high level crafting station made by an architect. However, there is no proof - just the general feeling on the DE boards. The actual relation between the droid crafting station numbers, the overall droid quality, and an architect station is unknown.

Just as there are four types of architect crafting stations, there are four types of droid crafting stations. Only one crafting station can be placed in a given droid. The following are available:

Clothing Crafting Station
Food/Chemical Crafting Station (this is the one that medics need)
Weapon/Droid/General Crafting Station
Structure Crafting Station

Personality Chips

These modules only work in the humanform droids (surgical, 3P0), and allow the droid to talk to you.

The following types are available: stupid, sarcastic, slang, prissy, worshipful and geeky. Each one has different, random responses and phrases that the droid can say.

They are "ear candy" - pretty cool, but have no bearing on how the droid actually works.

Storage of Data and Items in Droids

This has been fixed up a fair bit. A droid can hold up to 10 items, and lots of schematics, depending on whether or not the droid has the correct item and data modules. The higher the level of the storage module, the more the droid can hold.

Droid Power

Droids require power. There are two sources of power: batteries, and power droid.

When a Droid is low on power, it will say, "*low power*" and will not function properly.

To use a battery, have a battery, out of the crate, in your primary inventory. Select the radial menu, and click on RECHARGE. This will draw a single charge out of the droid battery (note that a droid battery can have more than one charge).

Droid charge does not appear to stack. So, if you dump 20 batteries into a droid at once, it will not make that power last any longer than if you had just dumped one charge into the droid.

A power droid can be used to power one other droid at a time - hence, if you own a power droid, you can only power someone else's droid, as you can only have one droid out at a time.

Power droids can power multiple other droids before needing a recharge of their own.

Different droids pull power at different speeds. Probots appear to eat power faster than R-series droids, for example.

Droid Custimization

Droid custimization refers to the droid's paint job. When you see that message, "Your droids custimization has faded..." it refers to the droids paint job, not how well it operates.

A droid will have the default colors when it is made if it is not an R-series droid, and will have random colors every time it is pulled out if it is an R-unit.

A DE can use a droid colorization kit to paint droids. This colorization will last for 20 callings of the droid, then the droid will revert to default/random.

Note that an advanced chasis can be colored upon crafting, and if this chasis is dropped as furniture, it will retain the colors assigned when it was crafted. However, if this chasis has been used in a fully functional droid, it will not stick, and the droid will have to have the droid custimization kit used on it by a DE to get the desired colors.

now what they need to do is put this in the in-game help system.... so you can tell players where to look for infoin-game.

excellent guide, btw.

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Malitevv wrote:

now what they need to do is put this in the in-game help system.... so you can tell players where to look for infoin-game.

excellent guide, btw.

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great post, but i have a question as a recent novice de. I made an adv mse droid to give to a friend, he tamed and named it, now how exactly do I customize it with color with my kit?. I keep getting the "you must have permission message". He traded it back to me and i tried again and it still did nothing, What am I doing wrong? There were no de's to ask in game so I really hope someone can enlighten me.

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CaptainNeedy wrote:

great post, but i have a question as a recent novice de. I made an adv mse droid to give to a friend, he tamed and named it, now how exactly do I customize it with color with my kit?. I keep getting the "you must have permission message". He traded it back to me and i tried again and it still did nothing, What am I doing wrong? There were no de's to ask in game so I really hope someone can enlighten me.

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get him to /consent you.

Then, use the droid custimization kit.

Many thanks for the great work again, this could really be a friday feature.

And now some simple questions

What happens to the items in my droids storage, if Ior my droid is db'd ? Are they effected if I am db'd while the droid is in my datapad ? Can someone please fill the last column in this table ?

owner deathblowed droid deathblowed droid in datapad items
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

yes (after droid) yes n/a ???
yes (before droid) yes n/a ???
yes no yes ???
yes no no ???
no yes n/a ???

??? should be one out of {decayed,destroyed,uneffected}

I am considering to "protect" some high insurance low value items like 13.41 crafting devices by storing them in my droid and don't like to learn that the hard way

Bruchpilot -

That is a really good question, and I don't have enough information to fill in the entire column.

What I have heard, though, is that in many cases the items are not affected at all. I don't fight enough to have the answers - but I'll be asking my customers more for sure

I am going to repost your question as a main topic.

Burchpilot:

I reposted your question here:

http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=droid_engineer&message.id=44542

as this is information that I would like to add to the next revision of this manual.

Kav provided the following partial response:

i know if I am deathblowed the items in my droid do not decay, never had him deathblowed though as he is a LE repair. We smugglers are bugged in that our slicing tools (which have no condition) think they can be insured and decay, so we keep em in droids to not have to worry bout it.