Droid Engineer Archive
Thread: You guys are totally missing the point
Fellow DE's,
After reading several of these post, over the past few weeks, I have come to the conclusion that we as a profession donot understand the basics of business.We don't need new and better droids, they would be nice and would bring some balance to this game known as "Pet Wars: Galaxies". I digress.
My Point is simple, the most successful artisan professions right now are Weapons, Armor and Bio-Eng clothing tailors. All these profession have one thing in common. Product differentiation. If you invest your time and money to get the best resources, and skill tapes to increase experimentation, you can get fantastic products. Then someone can slice those products for greater differentiation. I have seen Malls packed with players trying to get a Krayt pistol, composite armor, or +21 medical use shirt.
What do the DE's get? Same product, no matter the resources, no matter the skill. Oh I know I can get that advanced probot up 823 HAM but still gets called at 820. Level 6 med is level 6 med.
If you wanna see a scramble DEV's, patch the Adv. Probot to allow higher experimentation and quality of goods. What non-CH is gonna pass up on a 1200 HAM Adv. Probot, with Krayt adv. composite armor plating, giving it 60% resists in kenetic and energy. What DE is not gonna run to get the best resources to make them.
This could be the most profitable, exciting, and entertaining profession in the game if we had this one modification.
Anyway,
Esraug
Master Droid Engineer
Smuggletrain LTD
-394, -5165 Talus, Eclipse
Following this logic, we as DEs need to have droids that do something that no other profession can do. What that is, is anyones guess. Making any type of combat droid would be worthless because CHs get thier creatures from the wild and any CL 10 or less would be use full to any non-CH. All we would be doing is trading a flesh and blood pet for a nuts and bolts pet. The only thing this change is going to do is make low level pets accessable to all.
We need to not only ask for combat pets, but I would like to see some droids do things that not just mimic other classes, because that will just cause more heartache in a all ready busted class. We are droid engineers, but by nature Droids do jobs that others do. Combat droids replace soldiers, Merchant droids replace sellers, etc...
The problem is creating droids that won't step on others toes. I would love to have a droid that heals as good as a doctor, but the only thing that will do is piss off the docs. possible compromise, Surgical droid that can use Doc Created Stims. Maybe it is capped at Stim Cs or can only use wound packs up to B level. Costs alot to reload the med as you can't put the big Stim/woundpack Ds in and you can get better healing by having a doc in the group. Plus think about how bad it would be if you forgot to load up on stims before that hunt?
To summarize, combat droids are just going to be something that some people are going to get to replace thier weaker Creature pets, no big gain. What needs to happen is we need to be able to make droids that people are going to say, hey just made Master (whatever) with my (whatever) droid my life as become so much easier or I couldn't have made it this far with out my trusty droid.
There are a ton of really good ideas floating around on this board... some highlights:
1) A shop tender droid (might as well use the Protocol Droid) that stands in your shop and sends you a tell any time someone enters so that you can converse with them and answer questions. Yeah, you could just use /tell to do this, but that would require that the customer send you a tell to initiate the conversation. The Shop Tender would do that for you and allow you to be more pro-active with your shop.
2) A harvester tender droid that runs out to your harvesters for you and retrieves the resources. It could also take power/maintenance out for you, but I'd be happy with one that just retrieves resources.
3) A harvester droid. Make it about as effective as a personal harvester so that it doesn't step on an Architect's toes. It would allow us to sell a droid that essentially bypasses the 10-plot limit by 1, but in a controlled and limited manner.
4) Taxi droids. I.e. droid mounts.
5) A scout droid that runs ahead of you and scans the terrain for enemies so that you can avoid all those nasty critters that want to have you for lunch. Realistically, this is what the Probot should be, not a combat droid.
6) A surveying droid. Program it with a resource and a concentration and set it loose, and it performs a search looking for a good mining spot for you.
Just off the top of my head... I know there were lots of other really good suggestions.
Actually the thing the crafting professions you listed have in common is that they produce goods used for combat.
That is why they sell so many things.
I tend to think the main reason that WS and AS are on top of the crafting heap (so to speak) is because their stuff wears out with use. You can't just buy one gun or one suit of armor and have it last forever as droids do. Not to mention the fact that guns are a requirement of certain skill trees, you can't make pistol XP without a pistol. BE clothing is in high demand right now because it is new to the market. The BE clothing market will taper off as more people have BE clothing.
The only profession that REQUIRES droids is BH. This is why the majority of most DE sales are Seekers and Probes. And the Investigation skill tree is so tedious, a lot of them are not taking that on. Doctors don't require droids, although they are useful. But once a doctor has a max med droid, he never has to replace it. (Well maybe not never, but it'll take months of use in combat to wear out a droid's vitality.) Even Probots, or even if we had better combat droids, people would only buy 1 every blue moon because they don't wear out.
So, I think it's the lack of requirements for droids and the lack of wear and tear, that droids do not sell, not the fact that experimentation is broken.
ncbur10 wrote:
My Point is simple, the most successful artisan professions right now are Weapons, Armor and Bio-Eng clothing tailors. All these profession have one thing in common. Product differentiation. If you invest your time and money to get the best resources, and skill tapes to increase experimentation, you can get fantastic products. Then someone can slice those products for greater differentiation. I have seen Malls packed with players trying to get a Krayt pistol, composite armor, or +21 medical use shirt.
What do the DE's get? Same product, no matter the resources, no matter the skill. Oh I know I can get that advanced probot up 823 HAM but still gets called at 820. Level 6 med is level 6 med.
I really agree with this post. It is THE reason why DE is only crafting proffessions where underselling takes place most often. Why does anyone want my pricey R2 when the can get an identicle one from another (perhaps a desparate, grinding DE) for cheaper?
If we could make droids of diverse qualities, then that would really rock. It might even creat a DE to DE market for quality components -- say advanced motive systems that really impacted droid speed, or special armor modules.
We need 10 experientation points and for experimentation/resources to matter in the final product and its subcomponents. Then we can sell high end and low end droids, instead of underselling ourselves into bankruptcy.
I dont just buy any heavy mineral harvrester anymore. I wanna know about hopper size and more imprtantly about extraction rate. It would be good for the prof if droids were the same.
Of course, this is even more explaining to do to customers (on top of droid chasis, modules, etc), but when they want the best they want the best and we will know what to give them. Of course, crappy droids will flesh out the low end of the spectrum and also be affordable as entry-level units to noobs.
Excellent suggestion! (I know its been suggested before, but thanks again)
I'm not saying to bring permadeath back, but there needs to be something to create a repeat market for droids. Once a customer has the droid they want, what's going to bring them back? I mean except to buy batteries. Maybe make modules lose effectiveness or something after so long, so it forces people to want or need new droids. Maybe that 110 med module you bought 2 weeks ago has slowly worn down to 105. After a while of this, the doctor will want to scrap the droid or sell it to a newbie doc and upgrade to a new one. If something is useful enough, and it decays/dies after a period, people will replace them, because they NEED them. The permadeath thing hurt so much because pets were so much easier to get and cheaper than probots were.
Basically, my arguement boils down to: Make more useful/effective droids, and give them some form of decay so they need to be replaced periodically. That will bring DE's business, more than experimentation will. If there is no form of decay, once everyone has the best experimented droid, what then? Sales drop off again.
Sly wrote:
Actually the thing the crafting professions you listed have in common is that they produce goods used for combat.
That is why they sell so many things.
OK, so lets go with architects that can increase extraction rates on harvesters and production rates on factories and sell them for high prices due to the reduced cost of maintenance and power useage. Tailors are using bio-eng clothes for more than combat. Every other artisan profession can boost the quality and attributes of their products but the DE.
But like I said, you guys are missing the point. Lets keep dreaming of all those new droids, that every single DE can make and not one will be different.
Here's a business lesson for you, in the absence of product quality, or differentiation, the successful entrepenuer will be based on location, location, location. In other words unless you get in to a guild with one of the big Wal-Mart like settings, you can forget about it. I know BH's that pay 3X the price I charge for probes, simply because it's located in the high traffic area. What is the difference in the product? Nothing, nada, zip, but they don't care.
So to reiterate, stop asking the DEV's for pie in the sky droids, that can make your coffee for you, and get this profession in line with the others. We want to experiment!!!
Esraug
Owner of Smuggletrain Droid Works
Talus, Eclipse