Droid Engineer Archive
Thread: Concept Series: Survey Droid
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Kollos
Wed Feb 18, 2004 12:27 pm
#1
In the interest of moving forward positively, here is the first in a series of slightly more fleshed-out ideas. All of these ideas have been presented here on the forums in the past, in most cases many times. Note that whether these ideas are implemented as new droids or as new modules for existing Droids is largely irrelevant. New droids would be cooler but would also require more time and effort.
Survey Droid
If we're still looking for money sinks, here's an idea that could easily be implemented as a charged droid. It would provide considerable content with, hopefully, one reasonably sized bit of coding. Survey Droids would come in several flavors corresponding to the current surveying tools. I recommend that they be disposable items with charges; experimentation should affect the number of charges and potentially the surveyable radius and/or target concentration.
When used (Artisan required - the intent is not to give new abilities to people, just to make an existing ability easier to use), a Survey Droid would open up an appropriate interface listing all available resources of the appropriate type on the current planet. The user would select a resource and then be prompted to enter a target concentration, which would be the minimum acceptable concentration for the search. Once the concentration is chosen, the Droid would leave and "search" for the requested resource and concentration. After a period of time, it would report back via in-game email with a waypoint to the closest position fitting the criteria. If no such position exists within the Droids experimented restrictions, it would report back that it had failed to locate the desired resource and concentration. In either case, the charge would be expended.
For surveyable radius, I believe it needs to be measured in kilometers and not meters. It is very easy to survey a 2k radius around, say, your home in about 30 minutes. Therefore a Survey Droid should not take any longer than that to complete that same task. After all, if you're doing the surveying by hand you can survey multiple resources during your 30-minute trip. I also don't believe that using a Survey Droid for anything under 1 kilometer is worthwhile - it's just too simple to use a standard surveying tool and a speederbike to do that. So let's set the potential range of a Survey Droid at 1 kilometer minimum and 4 kilometers maximum. Might as well increment by 500 meters. I'd start with a 10 minute response at 1 kilometer and go all the way to 2 hours at 4 kilometers. (No, that doesn't scale properly - the idea is that a droid capable of doing 4-kilometer searches is also faster because it is a much higher quality droid all around.)
For maximum target concentration, at first it seems reasonable to just set that to the droid's experimentation level. However I don't believe that would be a good idea because no one ever searches for a 30% concentration of something. I would set the base at 50% and then increment that by 1% for every 3 points of increased experimentation. That would mean that a Survey Droid experimented to 60% cannot search for a target concentration higher than 70% - 50% base plus 20% for its 60% experimentation. It might find an 80% concentration while searching for a 70% target, but that would just be luck. The maximum possible target concentration using this formula would be 83%, and that seems fine to me. Those 90% and higher concentrations deserve to be discovered by "traditional" surveyors doing the work by hand.
For animation, unless the Devs choose to implement an all-new chassis, I would use a DZ70 chassis. It would call normally, but would then "disappear" in the same way that Seekers and Arakyds "disappear" when used by Bounty Hunters.
Thoughts? Improvements? Should I keep doing these?
Kollos
Wed Feb 18, 2004 3:21 pm
#2
I thought of that too, and in retrospect I'm not sure why I changed my mind. I think I was just trying to come up with extra ways that experimentation could have an effect on the performance of the Droid. This would be much more useful.
Sirgleno wrote:
I was also thinking on doing some fleshing out of the survey droid concept, I especially like the part about having the range be very large, truely less than a 1km radius would not be worth using. I also fully agree that the better droids (ones with greater radai of surveying) would work faster than the normal ones. However I think that the droid, to be very effective (and this is also quite plausable with a droid that actually covers the area), should return the waypoint of the highest concentration of the specific resource within the survey area.
Message Edited by Sirgleno on 02-18-2004 03:05 PM
ScrufylookinNerfherder
Wed Feb 18, 2004 5:05 pm
#3
Having one of these droids would help alot. If only it would be implemented..........
Sirgleno
Thu Feb 19, 2004 1:04 am
#4
I was also thinking on doing some fleshing out of the survey droid concept, I especially like the part about having the range be very large, truely less than a 1km radius would not be worth using. I also fully agree that the better droids (ones with greater radai of surveying) would work faster than the normal ones. However I think that the droid, to be very effective (and this is also quite plausable with a droid that actually covers the area), should return the waypoint of the highest concentration of the specific resource within the survey area.
Message Edited by Sirgleno on 02-18-2004 03:05 PM
MurienAquarius
Sun Feb 22, 2004 9:34 am
#5
How about my idea for using the basic premise of the seeker and probe droids? Seeker for on planet resources, probe for use on other planets. You could require extra components, plus need the appropriate resource survey tool slotted in. I like your idea about 50%, and then having increase based on how your experimentation went. They could even have 5 charges or something. I know you have probably seen me harp on this before, but TH did say that droids are the same under the hood. I have heard that the BH droids are borked, but if they were fixed, then the basic framework for this idea is already in the game. What do you think?
Lonkley
Sun Feb 22, 2004 11:02 am
#6
Personally I would be happy if they just replaced the need for swgcraft.
You send a droid, it scans all of a given resource type and reports back. Also useful for keeping track of resource shifts, like i have 4 harvestors on endor and Im going to either pick them up too soon, or im going to pick them up too late because I dont want to travel there daily.
If we can get wp to concentrations, that would kick, but I think thats pretty unrealistic from a dev view.
Kollos
Sun Feb 22, 2004 11:20 am
#7
Lonkley wrote:
Personally I would be happy if they just replaced the need for swgcraft.
Hadn't thought of it that way, but that's an excellent suggestion.
AynRand
Sun Feb 22, 2004 12:57 pm
#8
I like this and would use them. However this would not be a money sink as unless you were buying them from an NPC it would not be removing money from the game. I would love to buy these by the crate though...
neshura
Mon Feb 23, 2004 12:07 am
#9
The problem I have with most designs for survey droids is that they are designed to do most or all of the work for you. Things that do all the work for you are not going to get a thumbs up from the devs.
Combat tanks, especially for people who consider combat simply onerous, tend to get nerfed. A tank for any subsystem will get similar treatment.
Surveying's onerous for everyone, and I've heard many a person say "a survey droid should return a waypoint to the highest concentration on the planet" or even better, the galaxy. I don't think it should. That's just too easy and too powerful. Resources shift so as (a) provide a random draw element, and (b) to allow all kinds of people, powergamers and dabblers alike, the chance to lay down on a primo spot, if they work at it. Onerous task, rich reward.
I'm gettin all nostalgic now, thinking about shuttling to a new town, getting there, discovering a vein, and discovering that the vein maxes out at 26%, having your vehicle autostore 2 klicks out of town, running back in, shuttling to a new town, following a vein to the edge of the map, then there's the crying and the anger. Then there's the finally finding a 40% concentration only to find that it is in the middle of a lake and there are only two buildable spots but TFG one is still open. I mean, you want to give that up?
Anyway, I don't disagree with the proposal, but I caution against designing anything too powerful. I have a particular preference for a survey droid -- it would be a droid that you drop a single waypoint onto. After "traveling" there, it emails you the concentration. This design doesn't do all the work for you, b/c you still have to know where the promising veins are and where they are likely to max out. A tool that helps would be more likely to be approved than a droid that tanks.
Combat tanks, especially for people who consider combat simply onerous, tend to get nerfed. A tank for any subsystem will get similar treatment.
Surveying's onerous for everyone, and I've heard many a person say "a survey droid should return a waypoint to the highest concentration on the planet" or even better, the galaxy. I don't think it should. That's just too easy and too powerful. Resources shift so as (a) provide a random draw element, and (b) to allow all kinds of people, powergamers and dabblers alike, the chance to lay down on a primo spot, if they work at it. Onerous task, rich reward.
I'm gettin all nostalgic now, thinking about shuttling to a new town, getting there, discovering a vein, and discovering that the vein maxes out at 26%, having your vehicle autostore 2 klicks out of town, running back in, shuttling to a new town, following a vein to the edge of the map, then there's the crying and the anger. Then there's the finally finding a 40% concentration only to find that it is in the middle of a lake and there are only two buildable spots but TFG one is still open. I mean, you want to give that up?
Anyway, I don't disagree with the proposal, but I caution against designing anything too powerful. I have a particular preference for a survey droid -- it would be a droid that you drop a single waypoint onto. After "traveling" there, it emails you the concentration. This design doesn't do all the work for you, b/c you still have to know where the promising veins are and where they are likely to max out. A tool that helps would be more likely to be approved than a droid that tanks.
Bear
Mon Feb 23, 2004 1:17 am
#10
I would be happy with just the Planetary resource survey droid. LIke the BH droids it should be charged. You call up a droid, select a resource type, select a planet and send it off. After a given amount of time the droid would report back the type of resource and its stats that it located via email.
Now the droid to survey for resource concentrations would be a dream come true but I agree it is probably too much to ask for. Would the droid map out the whole planet or would you just set the desired concentration percentage to look forand it would stop when it found one?
I know this the wrong place for this but,
When are they going to fix the harvester notification that they said they implemented a while back. We get an email when factories stop working/finish. What happened to the harvester email? I know i read it somewhere about it being a feature.
MurienAquarius
Mon Feb 23, 2004 3:51 am
#11
How about people that are worried about this being too uber for everyone have results based on your survey skill, as well as the experimented stats of the droid? That way, it won't be EVERYBODY able to do it, just people who can already survey.
scoutmasterDiamond
Mon Feb 23, 2004 4:39 am
#12
i totally agree with neshura. its far to powerfull a tool.
i think droids as portable crafting stations are good. so you can survey craft and experiment all at the same time. maybe they could make more specific ones for just smugglers, or chefs, like elite profession boosters.
O-Jen
Mon Feb 23, 2004 8:17 am
#13
I disagree with the concept that if the droid is too powerful, it should not be implemented.
The way to deal with that is to make the modules required very expensive to build. IF the droid can be realeased and find the highest concentration of a resource on the planet it should burn out the module, and the module should require some inconvenient resource or quantity of resources to build so we DEs have to sell them for big bucks.
If, on the other hand, the droid goes to a waypoint and returns multiple surveys for whatever resource type it is set for, the modules should be more readily build and not burn out.
My two cents.
O-Jen
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