Droid Engineer Archive
Thread: A Droid Cert System That Works
Droid Certs will work, and here is how ...
Combat Droids:
Assume there are 4 levels of Combat Droids... Light, Medium, Heavy and Jugernaut.
For every existing Elite Profession, place the Certs for each Combat Droid type in the existing skill tree.
However, the Cert is NOT automatic. When you complete a skillbox that includes a Combat Droid Cert, it provides the OPTION to gain the Cert. If you excersize that option, it costs skill points. You can't excersize an option for a higher level Combat Droid unless you've exercised the options for the lower level ones first.
Again, exercising the option to gain the Combat Droid cert costs skill points significant enough that a player could not become a Master Pistoleer, Master Combat Medic, AND Jugernaut Droid Certified.
Such options should have no bearing on the mastering of the profession as it exists, so that if no Combat Droid Certs are exercised, the player can still master the profession without penalty.
How To Implement:
Simply take the currently planned DH skill tree, add up how many points a player would minimally spend to attain a Light Combat Droid Certification, then apply that total point value to Light Droid Certs and insert them across the board within the existing skill trees. A Light Droid Cert might even work in the masteries of the starting professions, like Master Marksman and Master Brawler. Remember, they don't automatically receive the Cert when they hit Master Marksman, but only gain the option to spend the skill point total associated with with Light Droid Certification.
Simply repeat this process for Medium, Heavy and Jugernaut Droid Certifications, bearing in mind that a player will not gain the option to excersize the Heavy Droid Cert until they have excersized the Light and Medium Droid Certs first.
The total points spent to gain all 4 Combat Droid Certs should probably total in somewhere around 65 spent points to maintain balance and prevent uber-templates of duo-masteries plus droid certs.
Utility Droids:
The Certs for Utility Droids would be gained automatically within the existing professions. Each Utility Droid Type within a given profession should match the profession in which it is gained. For instance, a Utility Droid that seeks out the highest concentration of a given resource on a single planet would be a Cert gained automatically by Crafter Professions, somewhere fairly high in the Elite Crafting skilltree ... perhaps even at Master level only.
Certs for Utility Droids should not cost addtional skill points in thefashion that Certs for Combat Droids above would since Utility Droids have little or no impact on combat balance.
They're just cool tools.
Why This In Lieu Of A Droid Handler Tree:
1) It is elegant.
2) It infringes less on a players planned professions.
3) It is manageable and alterable over time.
4) It is fun.
5) It makes more sense, since controlling a programmed droid is far different, and should be far easier, than controlling a wild beast, hence not requiring a seperate grind through a seperate skill tree.
6) It is flexible, and allows for doing fun things like making a difference between ranged attack, and melee attack, combat droids. These differing types can be added over time to fit the profession in which their certs are gained. For instance, a melee profession would benefit from having a ranged attack type of combat droid, and conversely, a ranged profession would benefit from having a melee attack type of combat droid. Recall these benefits all come at a significant skill point cost.
7) It places wonderful treats of utility droids within the existing professions that could, and should be able to, use them.
8) It creates natural market demands across the board for all players for the products of DE's.
9) It is a smarter system rather than the"Here's a new skill tree to grind" system currently being considered.
Lodacai
Rather than a "Droid Cert" program, why not a "Droid Module Cert" program? Basic chassis droids would be usable by anyone and everyone.
Crafting Station Module certifications fall under the Artisan skilltree (or appropriate elite tree)
Medical Module certifications fall under the Medic skill tree (or higher elite tree)
Armor Module certifications fall under the Brawler skill tree
Weapon Platform Modules (new module type) certifications fall under the Marksman skill tree
Entertainment Modules (new module type) certifications fall under the Entertainer skill tree
All-Terrain & Sensor (new module type, Terrain Negotiation & Tracking bonuses) certifications fall under the Scout or Ranger trees
Data & Storage modules will not need certifications, being freebies for anyone.
Tusken, you're saying the same thing I propose, only you are identifying those professions to which the certs would apply. There is little or no difference between calling it a module cert, or a droid cert.
So, it's not "rather than", but simply a further explanation of "how to implement". 
Lodacai
I think that would be an interesting twist, and it actually falls very much in line with other droid capabilities. If you're not a crafter, you can go ahead and HAVE a droid with a crafting station, but that particular module is doing you little good.
I want to see good ideas keep flowing, it's obvious that the more stuff that gets put out there, the more ideas will be generated within the rest of the community, and maybe we'll actually make some progress here.
Actually Cedig, that would fall right in line with what Rho was saying. Let everyone use the minimalist version without getting much, if any, use from the installed modules.
I was toying with the idea of granting a module cert to DEs for every module they can craft, effectively hybridizing them into the new "Droid Handler" profession. But I saw in one Thunderheart's post that there might be concern about someone with optimized certstoting around an uber droid. Well, ideally, if anyone got to have an uber droid, it would be the engineer/handler. By default, they wouldget the most "uber" (and versatile)droids in the game.
I do think that spreading the certifications around would stem the flow of too many powerful characters running around with the uber droids. Bounty Hunters spring to mind for someone who would get all the Marksman and Scout module certs but, even they couldn't run around with heavy armed & armored droidekas if the Armor module cert was high enough on the brawler tree, say Armor level 3 at Master Brawler. Commandos might come close, though, but if done right the ultimate movement/arms/armor combo should be a bit out of thier reach. Those who prefer to master the basic professions could afford to master more of the non-elite professions to maximize their module use, and still make a nicely rounded non-elite character that is worth something.
I definately agree, Tusken, with limiting the number and types of combat droids that can be called at any one time. Similar to CH limitations, if a player is Jugernaut Certified, perhaps they can call one Jugernaut ... or 1 Heavy 1 Medium and 1 Light ... or 2 Medium combat droids at a given time. Someone that is Heavy Certified might be able to call 1 Heavy ... or 1 Medium and 1 Light ... or 3 Lights.
Whatevercombo's aremade available, they do need their limitations similar to total CL controllable at a given time. Hard to guess what those combinations would be without knowing the relative CL's of the droids they are planning to implement.
Lodacai
Lodacai wrote:
Droid Certs will work, and here is how ...
Combat Droids:
Assume there are 4 levels of Combat Droids... Light, Medium, Heavy and Jugernaut.
For every existing Elite Profession, place the Certs for each Combat Droid type in the existing skill tree.
However, the Cert is NOT automatic. When you complete a skillbox that includes a Combat Droid Cert, it provides the OPTION to gain the Cert. If you excersize that option, it costs skill points. You can't excersize an option for a higher level Combat Droid unless you've exercised the options for the lower level ones first.
Its a really well presented proposal, but it doesnt address basic player behaviors and the overall combat balance.
If you give players the option to have powerful combat droids, most players will take them becausemost players want to have an advantage in combat.
When the majority of players aquire these droids (because they will - - most everyone wants to do better in combat),all player ability will rise, which means the entire creature and NPC system has to be dramtically increased to account for all of the extra player power.
What would ensue is a month or two of all players walking through all missions and mobs with little or no resistance (because of the advantage and making the game world a "battle bots" place) followed by a big nerf (which we know everyone loves) and then we are back to having what should be powerful combat droids nerfed into submission orthe game would have to be completely re-balanced withhigher MOB combat numbers, which makes the game world extremely hostile.
Whenever you consider adding this much power to a game world, you have to consider how the whole environment will be effected.
Someone else posted something I thought was a rather nice fix for this:
If controlling powerful droids necessitated that the user was wielding not a weapon, but a droid control device of some sort, this problem would be VASTLY reduced.
Is there an unwritten rule that every class must have four trees? Could there aa 'mini class' that has as a requirement an elite class then just one branch that costs skill points and each class allows control of a certain type of bot?
That way different bots for crafters, medics, combat, etc? I would love to have a bot that gave me a couple of more experimentation points.