CUEmu - Thread Posts

KardenTyrell

Thu Mar 04, 2004 5:16 pm

I get ideas....and I have to vent them

That the droids are able to manage harvesters is something I think lots of people would like added. I had an idea....to possibly make this work.

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Say you have a binairy loadlifter, and you have 10 harvesters around wich you like checking up on, you can connect all droids to a linking terminal you have at house

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*new schematics*

Droid Linking system

Droid Supply Station(an addition you can setup against your house, at the entrance. It will have two hoppers, Powersupply dump source, and a resource dumpsource)

Harvester Engineering modules

Droid Accu's

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You load up your droids with power reserves and money you think will be required to manage the maintenance and power. You have to load up the droid with a maximum of 20 waypoints, so it can walk from your house in straigh lines following the waypoints untill it reaches the range of the harvester. You are allowed to send out quite a number of droids for this kind of work. When the droid reaches the harvester..you will get a mail sent that its arrived at its coordinates. (in case the droid is stuck, at the Droid linking system, you can use the command /find droid, and the waypoint of the droid will be given to you, when in a possible case its gotten stuck on some object)

From the droid linkingconsole, at home, you will be able to select a droid and see if its reached the harvester yet...if it has..you can manage the harvester console the same way you would if you stood next to it, power supplys and money for maintenance come directly from the droid, resources in the hopper gets unloaded in the droids cargohold.If you are all satisfied with the changes, you give the droid the command "return" , and it will follow the waypoints exactly the same way back, to your Droid supply station, it will automaticly unload all resources collected.

You can do this once.....and these sequences are programmed into the droids memory, you will now be able to give the droid a daily task to walk to the harvesters, via the waypoints (wich are permanently stored in its memory unless your alter it) and automaticly unload the hopper into his cargohold. Additionally you can set at what numbers, the droid will automaticly refill power and money for maintenance. Example

- number at wich droid resupplies power: |||||||||||||-----2000 Refill with: |||||||||||||||||-----5000

- number at wich droid resupplies money: ||||||--- 1700Refill with: ||||||||||||||-----4000

Notifyby holonet whenharvester has stopped extracting [ ] off [ x ] on

When the droids get back to the Supply station, their cargo holds automaticly empty there...powersupply and money reserves are automaticly refilled supplied before. Offcourse the droids will need power to work...so you can craft a droid accu, wich has a much larger lifespand then normal batteries. When the droid loses power, and stops.....you get a mail with something like "You've lost contact without "insert name of droid", this is his last known location: Waypoint "insert coordinates here"

Droid Harvester runs only work on the planet where you have a house on, so planets in the deep wilds still require manual harvester runs

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pwew....idea is vented......what do you think?

- "TK-231 reporting in" -
[|Arresting hawtpants members for a living|]

JavelinCatcher

Thu Mar 04, 2004 5:21 pm

#2

I remember us asking about his back in October. I believe the comment made was that harvesters don't update their maintenance and quantities till you actually see them load on your screen when you approach them. Hence the problem of implementing this feature.

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KzinKiller

Thu Mar 04, 2004 5:24 pm

#3

Probably the #1 most-requested, most-repeated concept for adding real utility droids.

Unfortunately, TH and RuneS keep telling us its technically too difficult.

Who knows what they mean by that ... I suspect they mean that having the droid physically move to the harvester location would require spawning the harvesters when the droid approaches ... which means the harvesters spawn even though you're somewhere else, like your house.

This is a problem because now the server must simultaneously spawn your house, with everything in it, and the harvesters, and the droid. In the current system, the server doesn't spawn the harvesters until you get to their location, saving database space. When it does, you're probably not near your house and it doesn't have to spawn the house at the same time, saving database space.

It very probably all goes back to the Little Database That Couldn't .... it is the foundation upon which the entire game is built, the source of 90% of the most crippling, maddening bugs that we have encountered since before the very first Melon Nerf, and the excuse for being unable to innovate very aggressively in the game as it stands today.

Yes, I still want the harvester-maintenance droid ... hundreds, probably thousands of us still want them after requesting this exact idea for 3/4 of a year .... and it looks like we can wait until the 2nd Death Star is built, but we're not gonna see 'em.

*
The significant problems we face cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them
Albert Einstein

CU-1 ... CU-2 ... CUL8R

KardenTyrell

Thu Mar 04, 2004 5:28 pm

#4

Theres got to be a way around it.

How about when you are at the console...and the droid reaches the harvester, your select the droid and the view gets transported to the camera viewpoint of the droid, forcing the server to spawn the harvester. However this would require somekind of backway to transfer your singal there....when it comes to automaticly refilling harvesters

- "TK-231 reporting in" -
[|Arresting hawtpants members for a living|]

KardenTyrell

Thu Mar 04, 2004 5:35 pm

#5

hmmm about automatic refillings....they would have to make the droids wait the harvester , and when your view gets transported there..you click a simple oke thats everything is in order. You should be able to specify wich time of the day a droid will go to the harvester...and how long it takes him...this way you can time the moment all of them have reached the harvesters.....then one by one..at the console....your view gets transport to the droids viewpoint (with nifty extra graphics), press the All is okebutton..and it continiues its programming..and walks back to the supply station

- "TK-231 reporting in" -
[|Arresting hawtpants members for a living|]

Thrush

Thu Mar 04, 2004 7:36 pm

#6

This idea has been talked to death, and seems to be falling on deaf (DEV)ears. I'd like to throw in my two cents, which is quite a bit different from the original posters. No disrespect is intended.

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I hear a lot of people talk about using droids to maintain their harvesters. I'm a MDE and a hard core miner with every available lot constantly working to harvest materials for sale or for my personal use. I have no idea why anyone needs a droid to do this. It's kinda silly really. Drop the harvester. Put in enough power and money to keep the thing active for 5-10 days, or shorter if that's your gig, and walk away. Send yourself an email about when to check it next, if your memory is lacking.

Maintenance is too simple to require a droid to do that work.

However. If I could build a droid that would increase the extraction rate of one of my harvesters by 1-3 points I would be very pleased. I think these would sell pretty good too.

--A person can only have out one droid at a time. This wont be overused.

--A droid requires a LOT of materials, and expertise to create. It adding a bonus to an existing harvester's extraction rate is hardly game breaking.

--The Mining Module 1 could be a Novice DE schematic... or it could be in the tree with the Armor modules to make it more attractive. Stage the availability of the Mining Module 2 with the Architect's ability to create a medium harvester. And the Mining Module 3 with the architect creating the Large Harvesters.

--There could be a Farming Module too.

--The addition of a Droid to a Harvester could up it's power consumption by 5-15Cr per hour, and thus provide a money sink.

Droids are built to work, right? So let them do manual labor, it doesn't getmuch more manual than mining and farming.

Thanks foryour time.

--Thrush--

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Who me? I just fly the ship.

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Thread: Workable solution to let droids manage your harvesters?