Droid Engineer Archive
Thread: Some suggestions to increase the usefulness of droids (long, worth it)
Okay given that its basically pointless to throw around ideas when what the class already doesnt have doesnt work properly. However, I couldnt help myself.
Droids should have the capacity to hold modules that grant skill modifiers to their owners while in a given proximity. I cant for the life of me figure why a peice of tape is supposed to help me perform better but it would make perfect sense if droids helped you to perform certain tasks, perhaps even ones that you cannot perform without them.
The surgical droid grants medicine use. Having it around allows even those not trained in the medical arts use advanced medicines.
The protocol droid grants language comprehension/speech. This is pointless I know but if languages actually meant something, then this would be a very useful droid.
Other skills: R2D2 obviously knows some slicing. The way this would work in the game is that his presence would allow non-smugglers to slice by granting a skill modifier high enough to let the character qualify for the option as if he actually had the skill box. There are a large number of skills that a droid could aid in. Cooking, Management, Harvesting, Surveying, Experimentation, Crafting of all kinds, etc. The worst case scenario is that some smugglers or medics or whetever might be miffed if their skills can be done without them, but a droid would never be as good as a master professional and especially not as good as a master professional with the appropriate droid. One can even expect that a raiding party going after a faction base might have to resort to an R4 unit to flip that last remaining terminal (as in New Hope and Empire, where R2 saves the day by slicing doors.) If this were implemented then almost every character would want a droid to aid them in non-combat activities that they either want to be better at or want to be good enough to "get by" without going out to find a PC of the appropriate class.
Greetings! I have a few (hopefully) constructive suggestions to offer vis a vis the utter uselessness of droids. This will be cross-posted to theSWG discussionboard as well. If you like these suggestions, please /bump this post here and post your actual comments in that thread, since it seems the devs take more notice of that board.
Let's think for a minute about what droids were really used for in the Star Wars universe. Most droids in SW fall into one of two categories: Maintenance and combat.
Maintenance droids do the "drudge work" that humans don't want to be bothered with/can't do. Examples of this include the MSE-6 droid keeping the Death Star clean, R2D2 fixing basically every computer in the universe, C3P0/R2D2 being purchased to work on moisture vaporators, etc. In other words, they lessen the amount of work humans are required to do.
Combat droids, um, fight. Examples of this include the probot destroyed on Hoth by Han/Chewie, the Trade Federation troopers/super troopers, and Trade Federation droidekas. Each and every one of these droids was quite deadly, especially the droidekas, who made *JEDI* retreat from them in Episode I.
Contrast the use of droids in the SW universe to the use of droids in SWG. Droids serve almost no useful purpose whatsoever. Combat droids (make that combat DROID) is limited to the probot, who is almost unforgivably weak. My BABY GREATER WOMP RAT does more ranged damage than my probot, and doesn't require a recharge. What? The? F? Maintenance droids... well, let's just say there really aren't any. There is really not much use to own a droid besides a few specialized situations (crafting droid, medical droid). In the SW universe, droids are humanity's constant companions. In SWG, cowardly gurrecks and rock beetles are humanity's constant companions.
There's a reason for this, that like everything else in an MMOG boils down to numbers. Cowardly gurrecks and rock beetles are far, far superior to the best-made probot in terms of both tanking and damage output. Maintenance droids do basically nothing. An entire class is based around building these things, and the things themselves are about as useful as a third nipple.
I'm a creature handler. My friend is a droid engineer. He has basically abandoned his profession and is no longer bothering to craft because his droids cannot compete in any way with the lowliest of my pets. This is ridiculous. A robot, made of armored metal, carrying laser weaponry, is no match for a flying, foot-long bug? Hold the phone, something's wrong here. Which would you fear more, a domesticated cow or a Terminator? Well, in SWG, the domesticated cow (tamed humbaba or falumpaset) is going to DESTROY the Terminator (probot). This situation is ridiculous.
How to fix it? First of all, we need to get the Trade Federation back into the mix. We have seen in Episode I and II the huge numbers of combat droids built by the Trade Federation. These droids should be craftable by droid engineers. They should not count against the number ofdroids you can store; rather they should be counted as faction pets. This would limit the number of droid soldiers deployed by any one player and give thespineless, fence-sitting neutrals in the galactic civil war the enjoyment of having a bunch of babbling NPCs running around behind them. All of these droids should suffer vitalityloss thatcan ONLY be repaired by a droid engineer, to give the poor, maligneddroid engineers something to make them feel like, well, droid engineers.The armor rating/damage output of these droids would have to be carefully looked at to insure that they are not too strong, but I'm not into maths, so someone else (preferably someone who gets paid to to do this, unlike me) can handle that.
The regular Trade Federation trooper should have stats and, possibly,damage roughly in line with the most commonly-used non-CH pets such as cowardly gurrecks and rock beetles. Damage is a thorny issue, it maybe necessary to lower it significantly, as people could have 3 of these out (450-480 dmg if in line with cowardly gurreck). This may be a bit high, I dunno, that's what thedevs get paid for. IMO there should be a melee droid and a ranged droid, to allow those who want/need to use their droid pet as a tank to do so. This droid should be relatively cheap to construct and sell, but should suffer a great deal of vitality loss on incapacitation, as they look relatively flimsy compared to the armored hulks the next two droids are. This will keep the market for these droid troopers healthy and give droid engineers a quick source of revenue.
The Trade Federation super troopers should be quite a bit more powerful than the regular trooper, perhaps 2-2.5x as much HAM (6400-8000 HAM). Note that this STILL makes them weaker than a storm commando, which any Imperial player can spend about 1 hour doing faction missions and be able to afford. The super trooper's damage should possibly be a bit higher than your average stormtrooper's, dependent on the materials he's made of. Super troopers should not be a quick and easy build for droid engineers, and should be quite expensive and probably require specific and relatively rare resources. They should also be much more durable than your averagetrooper, but also more expensive to repair. Again, there should be amelee and ranged version of this droid, with customizable weapon type.
Droidekas. Ah, droidekas. I love them. They look incredibly cool, and should be quite deadly. I have a lot of ideas about droidekas. This droid could easily become a serious imbalance, so the maths on this would have to be looked at quite carefully. Of course, our game has seen novice CH running around with 3 rancors, and we*are* in open beta, so...
Droidekas in the movies were gifted with personal shields,which is a thorny issue inSWG.Shields could easily be implemented, perhaps requiring the assistance of an armorsmith to create, and made touse some (quite significant)amount of the droid's power supply to help negate damage. Droidekas could then be almost split into "offensive" and "defensive" droidekas. Offensive droidekas would use their power supply mostly to do large amounts of damage with their installed weapons (lightning cannons?
), and taking damage as normal.Defensive droidekas would do minimal damage to keep the drain on theirpower supply low while their shields were eating up theirbattery.
Alternatively, droidekas could simply bemade a "mini-ATST", with AR3 to signify the damage-reduction of their shields andsome percentage (half?) of the ATST's HAM.Remember, these things are powerful enough they made *JEDI* run away. They should indeed be fearsome IMO, and your average non-commando character should stand basically no chance against one unsupported.
Because of their power, droidekas should be flat-out hard to manufacture, requiring several rare resources and a serious time investment on the part of thedroid engineer to build. They should be very, very, very expensive to purchase due to their great power and rarity, and they should come with a serious drawback in the form of extreme power consumption, eating up afull droid battery every half-hour or so. I don't really know how the recharge droidcurrently in-game works,if you have to fillitup with batteries or what, but ifitis an unlimited source of powerit would remove this disadvantage and therefore shouldprobably be nerfed, at least in regards todroidekas.
Maintenance droids are a different subject, and my suggestions on this matter will probably cause the development team to simultaneously have heart attacks and brain aneurysms. Since maintenance droids in the SW universe help remove drudge work from humans, so should they in SWG. This means they will help REMOVE SOMETIME SINKS.
I will now pause to allow the medical examiner to remove the corpses.
Now that that's over, let me explain a bit more, using my favorite in-game droid, the CL-8 binary load lifter. Currently, this droid has one function: Do nothing. No, wait, that's zero functions. Isn't it? Regardless, this droid is the most useless of the bunch. He can be built and then... sit, I suppose. How could we make this droid, built to carry heavy loads back and forth, useful?
How about making him emptyyour harvesters and bring them back to a central location? How about that? With this change, this droid now does what he is supposed to. He carriesheavy loads back and forth between two points, and he removes some serious drudge work from the backs of human beings. THIS IS WHAT DROIDS ARE SUPPOSED TO DO, PERIOD. Howto implement this? Allow the droid's owner to link the CL-8 toone or moreharvester(s) on the same planet. Once this is done, the CL-8 droid basically becomes that harvester's hopper. Once per 24-hour period, the owner can open his droid up and extract the resources the droid's linked harvester(s) pulled out of the ground/air in that sameperiod. Perhaps the time period could be extended or shortened depending on the number of linked harvesters. Crafters, can I hear you say HELL YEAH?!? How would you like to have a droid that actually doeswhat a droid is supposed to do and leaves you more time to concentrate on your chosen profession, which was not, so far as I know, "harvester runner-to-and-checker?"
Since it seems like everything in SWG is destined to wear out,give theCL-8 some form of decay, so thata market for them develops and grows. The crafter is still required to go actually place the harvester,and possibly evenreturning from time to time to pay maintenance and deposit power (although there is absolutely no reason not to allow the CL-8 or another droid to do this as well besides the fact that it is one of the dev's beloved time sinks), but the real drudge work of runningX hundred or thousand meters to grab the stuff you need to dowhat you really want to do is totally removed.
Of course, this gets rid of a major time sink in crafting, so there is NO WAY this idea willever see the light of day, but it would make the lives of crafters so, so muchmore enjoyable.
What about other maintenance droids? Let them serve their purpose as well! If you have an MSE-6 droid in your house, it should lower your maintenance costs per day, as the droid willroll around cleaning up and dusting,etc. Whenvehicles/ships come out,R5-4-2 droids should reducethe cost of maintenance on said machines depending on the droid's quality.Medical and surgical droids should provide a boost toany and all healing done in their vicinity. Do you think that surgical droid just stands there while you're incorrectly applying a stimpack? It'sDESIGNED to healliving things, it shoulddo what it'sdesigned to do! What about LE repair droids? Having one of these out when you repair a weapon etc. should give you a boost to your repair abilities, causing less durability loss and a better outcome.I hope everyone can see what I'm getting at.
And who says maintenance droids can't help in combat? Why not introduce a new type of module for R5-4-2 droids, a "targeting package," that increases your chance to-hit from long range when you have the droid out in combat? What about a "minor healing" package that lets your R-5-4-2 hit you with a weak stimpack A every 10 or 15 seconds when you're in combat and hurt? What about a "suicide bomber" MSE-6 that you pack full of C4 and send screaming into a camp full of rebels to blow them to bits!
OK, that last one's a bit farfetched, I admit. But right now droids are just sad. The future of robotics is NOT rolling datapads that do basically nothing. The power of droids lies in their versatility, something that is quite sorely lacking in SWG. All the suggestions above would change that, and I feel give droids a much more robust and respectable role in SWG. Snipers would have their sneaky little R2 units with a targeting module and an onboard rifle rack. Brawlers would have a little cone-headed R5 droid following them around with a "spice-injection" module to juice them up for their fights, and a stimpack jabber to lightly heal them while they were getting eaten by, eh, basically everything. Doctors would have their "nurses," medical droids built and experimented on to help them get the most out of their healing supplies. Et cetera.
The simple fact is, a universe without droids is not Star Wars. A universe where everyone is toting around a gigantic cat or beetle is not either. The current design of SWG simply forces this onto players if they want to be successful. I believe the suggestions I've made above would change things much for the better. They would return droids to their rightful place as humanity's best friends and helpers, remove much of the "zoo" we see in the galaxy today, return the handling of creatures to those who truly love and care for them, and in general just make the **edit** game better.
The author invites all comments and constructive criticisms! Flames and personal insults will be ignored. Thanks for reading!
Gallatin, who digs robots almost as much as creatures