Droid Engineer Archive
Thread: Why does the limit on combat droids have to involve skill points?
Sorry guys...hit the button too fast:
Experience and skill points are not the only limiting factors in the world... Implementing the droid certification idea COULD be a great opportunity to add some really neat content to the game.
Example: Implement a plan with certifications in various professions to allow the use of better droids. For the sake of argument, lets say any player who has 3 professions mastered at the same time gets a CL25 combat droid, and a player who masters an elite profession gets a CL15 combat droid. These people have to spend skill points to get these droids, and the plan ensures that no player is going to get a droid that unbalances their combat ability (ex: a CL25 droid doing 50-100 damage every couple of seconds is not going to significantly unbalance a TKA/Pistoleer/Smuggler who can do well over 1000 damage per second).
Ok, so there is an argument that this alone is a little unbalancing...is skill points the only solution?
What if instead of skill point limits, you used content limits? Example: Although certain professions allow you to use certain droids, combat droids cannot be simply made. Instead they require 2 components that you cannot make or harvest.
The first component would be droid schematics. Since the empire destroyed the droid armies, parts and plans for combat droids are not easily available. What if you had to do a series of tasks for Nym to get a one-use schematic for a combat droid, which you then have to take to a DE to have them make?
The second component would be a droid license. There could be 2 or more "technology officers" placed in the capitol (or other towns) on each planet. In order to get a droid license you have to do various tasks for the officer, and then pay a filing fee to obtain the license. To keep people from farming these, the licenses need to be no-drop and need to be used in the taming process to activate a combat droid you buy. These are good for only one use, and if you tame a droid with it the license disappears and you have to get a new one to tame another combat droid.
The point of this process would be to fashion a series of hoops that both add fun and depth to the combat droid process, while at the same time both (1) limiting combat droids to those who "earn" them; and (2) preserve DEs ability to sell their services to everyone and have a better market (as they have been asking for). If you were to also make combat droids permadeath again (like they should be) this would be a SERIOUS limit on combat droids that allow DEs to sell their services without implementing DE-only droids that ruin the DE profession (through the influx of CH wanna-bees).
I think the best short answer is....
I just does.
The Devs have made our bed, now we have to lay in it (even though it seems silly).
It's a balance thing, I guess, though I have yet to hear the Devs themselves talk about why they built a system that would so limit future changes based on such conditions.
Let us not forget, they are supposed to be working on the SE right now. If we want to see them delay that for another 18 months or so (which may well happen anyway), then we could probably have a lot of the changes we want (in November).
Respectfully,