Droid Engineer Archive
Thread: Why Droids suck. Or interim fixes that would make them useful.
As a novice DE and a low level CH, I would have to say the problem with the probot and droids in general isn’t that they can’t have custom colors. It isn’t that they can’t be experimented on, and it isn’t that they aren’t specialized to certain task. The problem with droids is that they are pretty much useless in the field. And it’s not because they have low HAM or horrible damage, it’s because of a collection of little things that make them logistically difficult to use for any length of time. Even if you took the probot and gave it the same HAM and damage as a cowardly gurek, allowed it to be any color you want, and let it have 16 crafting stations, it would still be an inferior tool compared to the gurek. Why?
A probot can’t be healed. One battle and you got to put it away for couple of hours. This is by far the greatest handicap to useful combat droids. Just making it easier to heal a probot than it is a pet would cause a monumental shift in the number cats to droids.
Probots don’t fight close in. They shot at a distance leading to unpredictable behavior from enemies. Basically they don’t tank well. They need a tank / fight melee command to compete with pets in functionality. This is especially important to rifleman that only have the 50 to 64m sweet spot and are pretty much dead if anything gets within 20m of them.
The Power situation. In five Starwars movies I have never seen anyone put a battery in a droid. Let alone put a battery in every 15 minutes. When a pet is hungry or needs to play’ it doesn’t just stop working without warning. It still fights. I would suggest dropping the whole droid power system it’s just not necessary. If your dead set on keeping it, at least make charges last on a time basis, something like 6 hours per charge and have a meter or some sort if warning that your almost out of power.
Now if you go even further and allowed players to have 2 or 3 droids out at the same time then droids can compete with non CH pets in a price functionality trade off. Devs need to remember that nothing is in a vacuum. If a cowardly Gurrek cost between $5k to 15k then $5 to $15k(at 3 to 5cpu) worth of droid has to be equally useful.
What really boggles my mind is that devs have been spending their limited time creating droids in custom colors. Huh? What? You know a probot in a fabulous eggshell and mauve is just as useless to me as one in rust. I’m not pulling out my probots instead of my gurreks because I don’t like the brown beige of cats. And I don’t see a large market for DE’s in repainting useless droids every two hours.
In short Droids are tools, Pets are tools. Until droids can compete with pets in a price/ functionality /skill point trade off, it’s just going to be pets pets pets. The 3 changes listed above are what I would need to use a droid over a cowardly gurrek. And until there are higher level combat droids, multiple probots with more ham would be what is necessary for me to consider dropping 2100 CH cats for droids.
you're mentioning the same mistake I have to clear many of my clients about. You keep saying 'why would I use a probot that needs a battery and yada yada yada if my pet doesn't need that, and my pet can be healed and my droid can't, and ...'
The thing is... you can have both out! even with all the problems you mentioned, wouldn't it be better to have a second layer of protection between your target and you? They do less damage than pets...? NO, they do 50damage per round in addition to your pets!
It's not that you have to choose if you have a pet or a droid, you can have both!
Great post Obi...
Wolfing...
I don't think you understand what Obi has said above. If I put my probot in a fight with a CL15 creature who will win? The creature of course!! Why?? Because it can be healed!! And it won't stop fighting in the middle of combat if it runs out of power. That is what Obi is trying to say. Yes having both a probot and a pet out are good, but the pet will fight hours longer. You better have more than 1 probot and who wants to do that??
SgtLaRose wrote:
You better have more than 1 probot and who wants to do that??
Actually, I know well over 2 dozen customers on my server alone, 3 of which are CHs, that have 2-4 Probots in their datapad, to add that extra bit of firepower, and tankablitity. Just like any other item in this game, a Probot is a tool. Would you take on a CL15 creature by yourself with a CDEF Pistol? I think not, so why would you make a Probot do it? Every tool has its limitation. A CH supplied pet can't carry extra items for you, act as a crafting station, or act as a Medical center. Ya sure you can heal a CH pet and you don't need batteries to keep it going. However, none of the non-CH pets can stand up to the amount of damage that a Probot can take (Medium 40% Armor installed of course)
Yes, I use the follow target then attack target and it works well on the first target. It doesn’t work well when your being chased and trying to pull something off you, and all other things being equal, I would rather have the pet that doesn’t require the precursor follow target command and then a timed attack command. When things start to get messy that’s just one more operational hurdle to overcome that isn’t necessary with pets.
I carry two probots around with me and only use them as armor for my pets on something that’s really tough, problem is I do that twice and there spent for the night. If I keep them out then they *low power* on me at just the wrong time.
I would rather use droids, and am working to be a DE. You can fix everything in the profession that you want to, but until the product is on par with pets from a client’s point of view, operationally and statically, there will be no real demand for them. The changes and fixes put forward above would go a long way towards a useful combat droid, which would only be better for business.
I agree with most of what you're saying, Obi, but only from a combat point of view. My DZ70 can do nothing for me in combat, and frankly I've neverasked it to.I think it's a nifty little droid that holds my crafting station for me. It's a tool, like you said. However, I primarily use my tools to craft.. not hunt. It's important to use the right tool for the job, and judging all droids because they aren't the right tool for what you prefer to doisa little unfair. 
I agree that a 15k droid should be roughly equivalent to a 15k creature. The challenge this will provide to the DEVs is how to balance droids (which cost us DEs tangible money and resources) against the relative worth of a pet (which only costs the time to tame it and a shuttle ticket home). I'm all for it, but I feelthis distortion of valuewill remain an unsolved mystery for a long, long while to come.
Cheers,
By the way a probot can take more damage than a CL15 pet.
Program the "follow target" command, and use that to get the probot on top of the target BEFORE you tell it to attack. Viola! Tank.
I rotate 4 probots on my Rifleman/scout and they work quite well. I like droid batteries. I think they are good.
The only thing I really agree with you about is that there should be a way for a DE to sell items that allow healing to droids like pets can be healed. I think they should be fairly up the tree though.
That's just my opinion... I could be wrong.