Droid Engineer Archive
Thread: It’s the Operating Cost!!! Post DE Plan Thought
To heal wounds it takes one click to feed the pet with the cheapest food you can find, wounds fixed. To heal mind, one “trick” and mind wounds and damage fixed. To heal damage one click on a stim, wounds get healed. Using pet stims with regular stims you can heal almost twice as fast and I’ve been in a group of three people that can heal 10k of damage in about 34 seconds.
None of this is even possible with droids now, and it appears that the battle readiness process is first going to require having two droids out (which only DE’s will be able to do) and then require the droids to be feed consumables. If the devs feel that we should always have to put gas in car to keep it running, why do they not feel that we should have to continually feed the horse to keep it from dieing? And if Devs feel that you shouldn’t need to travel with a veterinarian to heal pets, why do they feel you should need to always have a mechanic? And no comment is needed on what’s more difficult to fix between a complex biological entity and a machine.
Droids live in a galaxy with pets so every potential customer has a choice between them. As I read the proposed DE changes I see nothing that makes droids better than even a cowardly gurreck, which also requires no skill points. And I don’t see a 100 to 200k combat droid that is on par with grand sludge panther.
Why was the more powerful steam engine replaced by the diesel? Why is the Concorde no longer flying while the much slower jumbo jets fill the skies? It’s Operating cost and I don’t see anything in the proposed DE plan that puts droids on par with creatures in terms of user interface, time, and actual in game costs. So, will droids perform better than pets? No. Will droids be easier to use then pets? No. Should anyone be scratching their head wondering why the galaxy is full of pets and not droids? No. Will the devs be scratching their heads wondering why the galaxy is still full of pets after these changes?
I completely agree... I dont see the benefit of owning a droid over creature pets and I am a DE. With the upcoming pet changes people will have the choice of one pet whether it be a creature, droid, or faction pet. Currently the only people who "need" us are medics so that they can craft and heal in the field. When it comes down to a choice people are going to choose creature or faction pets over droid petsbecause they perform better in combat, do not require a battery every 5 minutes, and can be healed instaneously.
DEVs the only thing that is going to give the DEs a boost is the Droideka. It is already in game. It won't be hard to implement.
It really appears that the systems in SWG or designed in vacuum and no thought is given to how each one will interact with the others. And no matter how many bugs are fixed in our profession it isn’t going to matter if at the end of the day no one wants to by our product.
Let's not all loose sight of one important factor.
Advanced Probot is CL 16.
Anyone taking bets that only a DE will be able to use one AT ALL?
Vorgus on Bria
Of course, there's another facet to that issue as well.
A pet is very usefull because you can heal it's damage on the fly. Having that second droid out, and trying to have it heal the first, will eventually result in the AI targeting the healer droid and killing it in one shot before targetting the Probot and taking it out rapidly.
People don't take Non-CH pets for Damage output, they take them for Damage Absorbtion and do the killing themselves. Probots, with or without repair droids, can't absorb damage like Non-CH pets have been able to, due entirely to the Stims.