Droid Engineer Archive

Ok, as a BE (started a second character with DE) I can tell you that you do NOT want a single profession be able to use your combat droids. It is a horrible thing to have to rely on only one profession to buy your products. So get that out of your heads right now.

Soyou are asking how can DEs be able to make new combat droids (ones that are remotely as cool as the ones in the first 2 movies) and not have things so that just anyone can use them...Simple. It is time the devs introduce a new group of skills. The generic skill group would not require any kind of novice profession but would have various branches. What do I mean by this? Here is an example of how I picture it working:

<b>Generic Skill Set:</b>

Vehicle Branch:

ground vehicle -> flight vehicle -> space travel vehicle -> combat vehicle

Creature Mounts Branch:

standard mount -> battle mount

Droid Handler Branch:

basic combat droid -> intermediate combat droid -> 2 droids at one time -> advance combat droid

Now keep in mind that the idea is that ANY one can get these skills. In real life I am programmer. I am not a race car driver. And I certainly do not need to be one in order to drive my car to work. There should be a group of skill branches that are available to everyone that do NOT require that you pick up a whole profession to use. However, I do have to say that depending on which skills we are talking about here the price per skill box should be very different. I mean being able to use a ground vehicle should be a very cheap skill to pick up. While the next skill (air vehicle) should be reltively expensive. And even the basic combat droid skill (first in its branch) should be more expensive then ground vehicles. Basically it just comes down to the fact that there are some skills that should be in the game that should not require an entirely ne profession. Keep in mind that my above vision of this miscellaneous skill group is a very rough draft but perhaps you get my meaning.

I think your idea is generally a good idea. I remember suggesting somethng similair while thinking about languages a while ago. In fact, you should add a language branch to that. Like basically everyone can speak one language(maybe 2 if you want to be nice) Then +1 language for the first tier, +1 again for the second, etc.

However, I don't agree on a high price. I think each tier box should cost only 1 or maybe 2 skill points per box depending on how high the box is. The reason? The "generic skills" tree are skills available to all, but you still want to restrict access somewhat. They should be easy to pick up but draw points away from the professions you actually want to spend points on.

The second thing I disagree with is your choice of abilities. Normal vehicles and mounts should be available to everyone just like I think basic utility droids should be available to every player of SWG. Combat vehicles and mounts should either a) have a profession attached to it; b) Have a cert system or; c) be included in the scheme you're suggesting.

As to what goes where...I'm sure there'll be a ton of discussion about this.

For the cert system I expressed an idea that I think is fair and reasonable here:

http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=droid_engineer&message.id=21735

Raleran

I think you have a point with this. It makes sense that it would take some kind of skill to be able to drive a car and even to operate advanced droids.

I have another idea for the BE profession. Perhaps you could manufacture "nano-bots" that would work like vitality packs for creatures. When a droid gets beaten up dump some nano bots on it and watch them start fixing what is broken.

- Vermilion