Droid Engineer Archive

My intent is not to flame here. However, after spending close to 3 hours today making nothing but MSE droids, and basically having to pay people to use them just so I could get an ounce of usage (if there was any, I didn't really notice it). MSE droids are so incredibly useless that no one will even accept them as a free gift.

Not only am I losing an innane amount of money on this profession, I'm losing the most valuable resource of all... TIME. I've spent hours in front of a crafting station working my ass off with whatever resources I can afford to buy just to have nothing to show for it. Its not even all that useful as a toy since I only get to pull 1 of these things out as it is.

Does it make sense to anyone that a Creature handler can tame and control 3 Graals or Rancors, meanwhile someone who programs droids can only manage 1 at a time? The logic is failing there. Droid Engineers should be able to pull out just as many if not more Droids than a Creature Handler can pull out pets. We made these things, we know these things, and to top it off we've spent idiotic amounts of time building them.

I get around 200xp for each MSE droid I make at Novice. I need 48000 Droid Crafting XP to get even 1 of my Tier I skills. That is basically sitting through 240 MSE droid crafts, not to mention the required component crafting as well, which adds another 240 crafts. Thats 480 items (possibly more) that I have to pound through just to get another set of mediocre droids.

Add in failures as well as the fact that all those resources are WASTED. I literally can't give these away.

Off the topic just a bit more, but still relevant, is the fact that we're given some terrible options as DEs. Sure, we get 1 pet. 1 pet that will be completely owned by anything worth fighting. Not to mention that it will take you an ENORMOUS amount of time to invest in front of a crafting machine wasting your money just to get 1 of them. By that time the ProBot is almost useless.

To add insult to injury, there's the fact that experimentation doesn't work on droids, and materials seem to have no effect on them either. So Droid Crafting is not only expensive, time consuming, and irritating, its also BLAND.

Personally, I can't even begin to fathom how people can casually work their way up the DE skill tree, and still manage to enjoy any other facet of this game.

Now I am confused. I am at the same point you are, just hit novice and working to get my first box open.

Exactly what component crafting are you talking about? My MSE schematic only requires, any metal, and any chemical. That is why people use it for grinding exp. It is so simple.

I have no idea if there is an uxp associated with droids, but I do know if you create them in practice mode you get a 5% bonus to your exp. This is the way I am going about it. When droids were new, maybe a few people bought MSEs for the novelty, but now, until you have the experience to put in a crafting station or something, I can't see anyone buying one, so why not just get the extra practice exp?

Ok you _could_ make money off MSE droids, you just cant really do it any longer.

Look at it this way - when the first players hit Novice DE all they could build wereMSE droids with storage, data and medical modules. Now because of nerfs/bugs only the medical module was really any good (actually the data module used to be a real money spinner until it was nerfed) but it was all people could buy that would do they job, so they sold.

The problem developedbecause DE's tend to go up through blueprints first and start sellingbetter chassiswith the same level 1 modules (and everyone would rather have an R5 then a MSE) and due to competition and grinding pre-practice mode the prices for these better droids got to the point where a MSE wasnt really worth anything at all. All this has resulted in the MSE being generally unwanted (although canny customers will try and get the modules put into an MSE because they know/think the droid is worth less - personally 75% of my droids price is based on the module and not the chassis)

Since I was a droid merchant before I became a DE I have a vested interest in _not_ selling any MSEs since it would put a hole in my R5/WED/DZ70 market

Just to point out... there is still no usage XP gained from any droids. The last piece of information on this was from Q-3PO is his useless post to Sintrosi's first "State of the DE" thread a few months back, mentioning that DE's would get usage XP only when someone programmes the droid and guess what? It was never implemented.

Ok to every youngster who is just now coming up in DE, understand this, we know your pain and there is nothing short of a COMPLETE revamp of DE that is going to fix that.

Everyone who has come to this board say the same thing and the only ray of hope that we have is that we have had the Red Names have said that "they are looking into this". and that they will one day fix this.

The best advise that I can tell you over mine minerals and sell the excess, and grind, grind, and grind.

I agree that droids are broken, and we don't have that much to sell, but at least at the novice level how is that so different from the other crafters?

Ok, I know architects can build some small houses at novice, but chefs make nothing useful at novice. Unless it has changed recently a good CDEF weapon is better than anything that a weaponsmith makes at novice. Tailors and armorsmiths don't come out much better at novice. Novice is just a right of passage. You have go get through it before anything useful comes along.

Well first off I have to agree, the current status of DE sucks...there is limited options, really no way of making money off of these droids we create to gain xp, such as an architect can at least sell his furniture or the houses he builds as a novice architect and get some, all or even more of his money back. There is just not high enough demand for our cruddy droids...the thing I am hoping and praying for:

Now, understand that DE has no logic behind it, but I am hoping that the developers will take this into consideration...

I would hope that the speeders and bikes are built by droid engineers, and not Master DE either...there are very few master DE out there right now, and if the developers release it for only master DE, they will get all the money, they will get all the credit, no one will come to a novice DE anymore for anything...we will have a useless profession until we reach master, and by that time, 80% of the players will have already bought their speeder or bike from some master DE who will then be sitting on nearly $1 million.... I just reached my blueprints 2, so now I am 0/0/0/2 on DE, and it is getting really discouraging, not having anything worth while to sell. What do we have? A medical droid that will last only 10-15 minutes before needing to be recharged...well it takes have that time to run to a mission from a city after stopping at a mission terminal. Now I think the concept of DE is awesome. I just hope the developers dont make it a flop. I am hoping and praying that with the patches and expansion due out next year that the Droid Engineer profession will be a bit more elite and the galaxy will be in a bit more demand for our services...

It is rediculous that we sit there and pound out MSE droids to get experience and then only to destroy them as soon as they leave the hopper. This is like making a Novice architect only be able to develop furniture, and no buildings. I mean, tell me if I am wrong, but there are many more people with small houses than there are with MSE droids. To me, at this point DE is pathetic. One of what I feel, the most talented and mindful individuals in the Star Wars Universe, and all we can make are Automatic Carpet cleaners who cant even keep up with someone at a sprint?! Give me a break. We should be able to build some type of combat droid from the beginning, and the DZ70 droid does not count, it is horrid in battle, dies from one hit. My DZ70 droids have a mere 45HAM...equivalent of your everyday housefly...These things arent that bad, but should be able to do something for us. I think I am most hurt and upset about the fact that I have no way of making money as a Novice Droid Engineer. Who wants an R5 droid that is going to last 2 minutes with a charge for medical wound healing in the field when someone can simply build a camp? Or, who is going to want an MSE droid that can not move faster than walking speed, and offers no assistance whatsoever, when I used one, it actually ran when i was in battle, and ended too far away for me to heal a players wounds when he was incapped? No one wants this. We need a way of making money. It becomes too tedious when we buy resources, build the MSE droids and destroy them. We run out of money from buying the resources, or paying our maintenance on extractors and where do we get more money from? This is an issue I ran into. I had to become master marksman so I could do missions which paid a decent amount out. So, I spend my time building Droids, and then doing missions so I can support my resource use. When have you seen an architect killing a pack of carrian rats, and telling you he is doing it so he can buy 6k of steel to build a house for the XP? That is rediculous. So, again the only hope I have is that they will make the DE profession better with future patches and expansions. This is one reason I DID choose DE, there are not many of them, when I am able to learn a new skill, I can never find someone to teach it, so I have to go to a trainer and pay. With this, I think they will expand our profession and it will be more fun having more droids availalble for construction and not having 20 of us within an acre...as with Bounty Hunters or Architects...

Another thing is the fact we can only control 1 at a time. I agree this is pathetic and wrong. How can a creature handler deal with 3 Rancors, who are not exactly subordinate by nature, and have their own mind and mood swings, but we can not control more than onehunk of metal, wires and circuits we designed and programmed ourself? That is pathetic. Again, feeling under the gun, I think if they do this to us, they should only allow an architect to have only one building put up, or an armorsmith or weaponsmith to have only one factory...can you see the issues this would cause?

In any case, I think the idea of DE is good, and the fact that not every Tom, **edit** and Harry have chosen it may be good for those of us who didin the future of this game. And perhaps the fact that we DON'T make any money off of working our way up is the reason not many people chose this field. I just hope they don't screw it up for me, because I know if I don't have some kewler stuff to build and actually market to players after all the patches and expansions...I am going to be so disgruntled, I am going to turn this game off...for good from my computer. I will have wasted6-8 months on this profession to not get anything out of itand to only see everyone else's profession get all of the attention...and that will not be fun. Yes, I am only 4 levels away from becoming a commando, or a getting master scout from being a BH, but I think DE has a lot of potential, and with the SPACE expansion, I hope they add some things for the ships for us...something we must build in order for someone else to complete their job. Like a repair droid needed for a fighter, or one of those waiter droids for a traveller's ship. Or just circuitry in general for the ships. Targeting scanner device for an X-Wing or a "Communications Radio" for a battle cruiser...something...that would make our job easier, and a way to make money.

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LamrossMantheon wrote:

not to mention the required component crafting as well, which adds another 240 crafts. Thats 480 items (possibly more) that I have to pound through just to get another set of mediocre droids.

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