Droid Engineer Archive

When you think off, or see, a binery load lifter what does it remind you off? What is the first use of it that pops into your head?

Well, the first thing it makes ME think off is the lifter Riply uses in Aliens ... and from looks of this droid that is basicaly what it does... quite probably used in factories and hangars and used to shift large cargo containers around places.

So, keeping this in mind, how can SWG make use of it? Well, what is the most used non-combat profession? The Artisan. What is the mosed used artisan building? The factory. What does the factory produce? Crates... by definition of factory crates, they should be large bulky objects. Especialy if the crate is carrying a large amount of bulky items.

So, why not create a NEW type of crate and call it a "cargo canister". Certain factory-produced items can *ONLY* be produced by factories and *ONLY* get stored in these canisters (for instance, a 100 power generators for a PA hall / power droid). These cargo canisters CAN NOT be stored in a player's inventory as they are too large to carry. Instead, you can drop them into the Binary Load Lifter's hopper ... and hence, the load lifter's use is born.

This creates two new revenues for the DE... 1) We finaly get a non-combat / crafting station droid that certain people may be interested in. 2) The load lifter is clearly the only thing in SWG that will be able to carry these special canisters, and thus finaly gives the DE something only OUR droids can do.

Artisans may complain about this, but in reality its no different to an artisan needing a personal crafting station for items that are over 20 in difficulty ... or an artisan needing a crafting station to craft ... or a harvester .. or a factory.... atleast a binary load lifter doesn't take up any lots.

It's about time droids started doing what they are actually supposed to do, instead of being all-purpose walking talking modules.

Like the idea,.an where it's headed. Not all droids need ta be Robocops. As a miner, I'd love ta have a droid with me that surveys and digs and stores rocks. Maybe not survey, per say, as in make the skill useless,..but maybe supplement it bonus wise. Heck,..maybe even take the sampling a step further and make resources 'refinable'( ala Eve ONline) and only droids fitted with refining modules can do it. So certain craftables may need the regular raw resources and others may need refined stuff.
When vehicles and ships come out they should allow slots to shove a droid in there too. and the droid grants commands or bonuses to the vehicle. And have the little suckers targetable too so they can be damaged as well during fights.
anyways,.back ta work fer me,..
peace

I see R2 units as necessity for some vehicles. Not to mention droids did most of the repair on crafts.

I love the idea, but it sounds more like a use for storage modules, wouldnt make sense for an mse droid to be carrying huge crates around, so how could they make it different than the storage module?

Awesome Idea, you get my vote!

I had an idea similar to some of these that I posted about a week ago...I think it would make a REALLY cool addition. Quote:

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Oh another great idea for droid functions... Give the lifter droids surveying and sampling functions. Make it so that yousurvey a resource yourself to set the applicable resource. You wouldthen hit some command in the droid's radial, after whichthe droid would then walk to the highest concentration of the material (note: I am talking about the absolute highest, not just the one on the radar). The droid would basically continuously survey and change direction to face the new highest concentration and would stop when it go to the absolute highest. After following the droid to the highest concentration, the droid would also have a command tosample just like artisans can. This allows double sampling (the player and the bot), and could be used to avoid the ramifications of sampling radioactive materials.

Before I get flamed for this, it also would not be able to be done by AFK players...the droid would eventually run out of batteries, so the player would need to be there to "feed the meter." Also, non-artisans would get no use out of this droid as they cannot survey to set the initial resource.

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Imagine being to auto-follow your droid to a high resource concentration and have it help you survey... I think that would be an exciting addition to the game.