Droid Engineer Archive

I am fairly new to Master DE-hood (less than a month, after 2 months working on it), and really new to the DE forums, my reading has not been extensive, and if ideas like mine have been said before, forgive me.

I have been thinking a lot about Droids in Star Wars, and droids in SWG lately, and I have come to some conclusions, and had some ideas. I know many of them will never happen, but let me share my dream a little ok?

My central point is this: Droids can do lots of things, but not neccessarily better than a living being.

Droids in Combat-
I don't want to be a Metal CH. I've done CH (my one and only completed holo from Life Day), it bored me. I think droids should suck in combat. In most of my SW experiences, they are looked down upon, unless they are in massive numbers. I was also under the impression that one of the effects of the Clone Wars was that most combat droids were outlawed and destroyed. I agree that a suitably dedicated DE should be able to make any droid we see in the game, but I do not think they should be easily accessible in production line quantities. There are 2 mechanisms already introduced that would accomplish this. A quest similar to the RIS armor, and limited usage learnable schematics.

Droids at Work-
Am I wrong in thinking that Droids as generally envisioned for Star Wars were intended to do tedious, mundane or perilous work? Here are several concepts and applications that I think would make being a DE desirable, and buying droids worthwhile for our customers.
Programming- My Artoo is supposed to be smart enough to program hyperspace courses, but he cannot find his way 100m to my factory? DE's could have access to a extended Macro language for droids. The Devs could then pass off some of the work of making Droids useful on to the brightest DE's that would be willing to write programs for our droids. Programs could be made similar to Manufacturing Schematics, with a limited number of uses for a non DE, and salable to non DE by a DE.
Game Commands- To get a map of the Death Star, the heroes of Star Wars had to have Artoo-Detoo crack the mainframe. All I need to do is hit Ctrl+M and I have a full map of whichever Cave/Bunker/Whatever I am in. Why not link the area map and/or the /find commands to the sensor Package of a droid? Range, accuracy and effectiveness could all be (gasp) governed by the quality of the module I made. Survey Modules could be included, with suitably shaky results for sending out a droid to do your work. I am not even going to talk about being able to learn every language in the galaxy in 5 minutes instead of having a Protocol Droid to translate.
Droids and your Property- The Lars family had several working droids tied to their farm with Restraining Bolts, and performing automated functions every day. Why not allow DEs to "Bolt" several droids to their home to handle things while they are gone? Power droids take power from a household hopper, and bring it to nearby factories, Binary Load Lifters take things from Factories and put them into the hoppers of my crafting stations. Limit range, based on the size of the house, and allow DEs to run more automated Droids than non DE. Let being a DE mean more stuff gets done while you are logged off or away. I don't see that as an unfair advantage, and it gives a powerful incentive to crafters becoming DE for the ease of working.
Vehicle Interface- Nope, don't need to say it, I understand vehicles as they stand are a first pass, and more and better is coming, but if the ability to link your droid to your ride to get advanced functions isn't part of that it would be a crime.

Droid Fluff-
Speak droidspeak- didn't certain star wars heroes seem able to comprehend the chirping and whistling of droids? I think as a cute bit of fluff, the devs could make DE's able to hear and understand them too. then add in some funny little comments from town droids, and I could finally larn what "ronk" means.
Droid Knowledge- a Scout/Ranger gets Creature knowledge, and what they see upon examing a critter goes up with the skill. I refuse to belive that would be hard to implement for automata and DEs
Droid To Hit Bonus- see above, we know where all the weak linkages are, gaps in armor in the probot design, etc.

thanks for your time, I will enjoy responses, but please don't spoil for an argument or feel the need to disillusion me, I understand the realities of SOE and SWG, I just wanted to put my two cents in here, because I like my DE brethren.

those are some good ideas. It was posts such as this that steered the devs away from combat droids in the first place (which is why we're not seeing a droid handler profession). Hopefully they can pick up on some of these ideas now.

Good Ideas.

A couple points I'd like to make;

The Protocol Droid - Language thing:
I remember thinking how crazy it was that i learned every language spoken in the game within my first 1/2 of playing this game. I remember thinking about how much cooler it would be if a protocol droid were required. But to implement this type of feature into the game nearly a year after release.... i could understand how it would tick off a *lot* of players.

and ithere would also be other questions involved... like... if you can't understand spacial, can you still undersand that rodian or the wookie in groupchat, or guildchat?

Also, i love the idea of being able to understand what a droid might actually be saying behind the chirping and whistling. luke was able to understand R2 quite easily i remember. Having a feature like that would not only be fun, but could be a tie-in on some DE-based missions and such.

I also think that the Dev's could be a little more broad minded when coming up with ideas for usefullness on droids. They tell us that we won't be getting any more free checkers in the game, which i don't really even want to think about anymore because it ticks me off so much when i hear it.

But if my R3 droid could open some bunker door that was needed by my rebel friends while breaking into an imperial base, or if i was on a mission where my droid was needed to hold sensitive info (ala death star, but maybe not as important ). If my power droids actually powered something, that would be cool. How about this... a load lifer that actually.... lifts stuff?

I'll stop the cynisism now. it's easy to be a cynical droid engineer. and i really hope that maybe some of the devs read some of these good posts and realize that it doesn't necessarily take raising a characters innate abilities to be useful.

Rhatella Esona <STORM>
Master Droid Engineer
Master Merchant
Master Artisan
Stormhaven Ambassador
Tempest DENET Representative