Droid Engineer Archive

Alright, as a long time SWG Droid Engineer and a long time dev boarder, I know the only way things get done is to lay it all out step by step and break it down point by point. (I apologize for the formatting - the boards decided my initial post had illegal characters and turned my formatting into this - I think it's still readable though...why the HECK do I not have "permission to post HTML"???)

Here are the current criteria that TH has given to us:

Although it may be frustrating to those who wanted droids to replace their lost uber-CH pets, I believe these are sound principles to help the devs balance the game correctly. We also have the following criteria that I believe MOST Droid Engineers agree on:

Now obviously the desire of the player community, and the DEs specifically, to have better combat droids is in direct conflict with item number one of TH's criteria list. A solution must be created and thus far from the dev team we have:

I don't feel that either of these presented solutions are what we've been wanting all this time, I think that's clear.

An alternative that has been presented (but mainly shot down) is a Droid Certification system integrated into the current DE tree. I disagree with this as well because it WILL ultimately make DEs they "metallic CHs" as I saw one poster mention.

The problem AS I SEE IT, is that those wanting combat droids are not considering the balance issues carefully enough, and in another post of mine I proposed doing the following:

- Make higher level combat droids expensive and high maintenance

- Keep the max CL level moderate - no higher than CL 25-30 perhaps

TH, you responded that those don't work because of balancing issues, and now that the Dev Tracker is working and I saw your criteria, I understand what you meant However, I believe the 2nd and 3rd are workable. So here's where I'm laying it out, and thank you to the "heretic" out there who posted something similar in the first place:

* Droids with different chassis (yes, get those Droidekas craftable!)

* Focus on different kinds of attacks with different kinds of damage.

- We need to use the systems that already exist, and adding professions or a whole new cert system is going to increase coding time substantially. I'm tired of waiting too, and all this time I've been more interesting in increased functionality rather than super-droids.

- Tie advanced droids to the GCW and put them under the same restrictions as AT-STs. They are already in the game, and I'm sure someone can tell me what CL they are - I'm sure they're over CL 10. This maintains droid autonomy and gives something for the Rebels to get with their faction points on par or slightly below the abilites of an AT-ST (and Imperials could use them too of course!).

* More chassis

That's about all I can drudge up at the moment. So in short, I say we forget the super combat droids we may have wanted in the past, focus on CL 10 droids with varying weapony, damage types, and possibly group enhancements. Get DE back to its roots and focus on cool utility bases functions that make people think, "Wow, it'd be great if I had a droid to help me with ________!" The basic combat droids we would be selling would be sold for looks based on personal preference (so we can say more than, "Gee, I can make you a Probot...") and the type of damage they'll be dealing out. With the combat re-balancing going on, it seems to be that greater emphasis is coming back to Holocron's basic "rock-paper-scissors" principles so that everything has some sort of couter. Let combat droids be a part of that.

Thanks to anyone who read this far - I know I'm just repeating what many of you have said, but perhaps it will help some people to understand presented in this fashion.