Droid Engineer Archive

I realize this is not a "quick fix" and I apologize if this has been mentioned before, but how about making protocol droids a little more useful by doing the following:

Have Ewoks, Jawas and other non learnable language speaking aliens give quests. You would then need a protocol droid to understand what they are saying. You could expand on this like say make Jawas junk dealers or sell droid parts or something but even that basic start would be cool.

This was also suggested on the smuggler forums who want more usefulness for their language comprehension skill (and twilek smugglers get totally jipped on that one, anyway).

I support the idea 100%

Great idea. I'll also add my ideas from a few months ago, in the off chance this post is ever read by a dev:

Magic 8 Ball
A simple and fun addition to this droid would be a mode that allows you to ask the droid a question and get a cryptic answer according to the personality of the droid. For example, a command like /query could be used, i.e. “/query Will I die if I try to solo this nest of crazed durnis?” Protocol Droid answer: “I believe you could make that assumption, sir.”

Programmable Dialogue
Saw this suggestion on the boards the other day, and love it. Adding the capacity to store preset conversational strings seems like it wouldn’t have a lot of programming overhead, and would save us DEs having to explain what droids do 40 times a day, as we can just save it to our protocol droid and have them tell the customer.

Translator
This would be the most significant and welcome use, but it probably would take a good deal of programming, as the language system would need an overhaul. Protocol Droids should be allow the user to understand all languages, whether through a translated string from the droid, or simply showing the translated text as if you knew the language. The mechanism for this probably wouldn’t be too difficult, but it would require rethinking the entire language system to make it useful. This has been discussed at length on this and other boards, but I believe the BEST solution would be to implement languages as a skill. All non-native languages that you learn count 1 skill point against you, and you would be given the ability to unlearn a language just like any other skill. This would make protocol droids highly sought and true to their place in the Star Wars world.

How about this:

Make a conection between the Protocal Droid and the upcoming Politcal class. Perhaps a droid is needed to to use urban planning.....something like that.

I always felt C3-P0's role was a government Mediator kinda.

Yeah, I dunno about making things hard/adding new skills just to give protocols functions. I like the idea of intergrating them with Politicians somehow. Perhaps we can load them up with diplomacy modules/chips to give bonus to Politicians. They definitly need a role in player cities, along other droids.

I also like the idea of using the protocol droids to get extra missions/trade with alien races. That's cool! Take the protocol droid out to a Jawa droid shop -- just keep an eye on him!

Or how about making them a component for shuttle ports? Would be at least something.

Adding dialogue to them would be great too. I don't know if anyone played Neverwinter Nights, but it could work similar to adding dialogue to NPCs there.