Droid Engineer Archive

preachin' to the choir, kid.

Darth is right. The pure crafties are scared that some power players might take an interest in the DE profession and blow them flat. That's why they can't tolerate any direction for the future of the DE profession that allows for any droid control in it. The scream balance and all sorts of smoke and B.S. But essentially, they are cowards and their ajenda is to lock out any other Droid Engineer play style except their own.

well and its so simply and good for balance, just place DE only combat droid abilities into DE master box and you prevent dabblers, but give DEs a nice feature

just a thought

Yep, would have given the DE's some real value and purpose. But, the decision has been made too appease the pure crafters and as a result we will get some lvl 10 combat droids in the next publish that no one will want.

What a waste of dev resources

And to think we will have been waiting 9 months for this.

But, I will wait here as a master DE and hope that things get better in the future. Cant drop it, no one in my guild is willing to take it up....unless it fullfills a holo requirment

This is not a flame... this is an honest question:you guys really think that high-level combat droids are the only way to make this a viable profession?

Those of you that want to make DE a hybrid profession... you really want to have to Master Brawler or something just to be able to make droids?

Here's how balance works: you can't have a combat advantage without a combat prerequisite. Where does that combat prerequisite come from? There are a few options, all of which have been discussed on these boards extensively, so I'll just list a few of them here instead of discussing them in-depth:

-Make DE a hybrid profession
-Put certs in combat professions
-Createa DC/DH class

It's WAY too late to make DE a hybrid profession, as Drashk stated in another thread. To do that you'd have to reset everyone that's already become a DE if they didn't meet the prereqs. You'd be wiping everyone out and making them start from scratch. So count it out.

The DEVs have publicly stated that they are opposed to spreading out certifications. The reason for this is that it gives additional advantages to people who have done nothing extra to earn them.

A DC/DH class is a reasonable alternative but would suffer from the same balance restrictions as the CH class (since there still are no real combat prerequisites). This option met with fiery opposition from this community, and so the DEVs decided not to implement it at this time.

Those of you who think that combat droids are the only way to improve our profession are being, IMO, close-minded. There is more to this game than combat, and droids should be a major feature of the non-combat part of the game. If you want to pwn n00bs all day long, go get a creature pet.

Zips lips

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OrionsByte wrote:

...you can't have a combat advantage without a combat prerequisite...

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Just to play Devil's Advocate here, this statement is untrue. The easiest way to disprove it is Novice Marksman. This gives a combat advantage over those who don't take it yet it has no prerequisite (beyond 15 skill points).

Balance is a very tricky thing. How does a crafter balance against a healer against a combatant? What is the conversion rate between crafting skills and combat skills? That's sort of like asking how manyeggs it takes toequal an apple. There's no clear comparison.

About the only 'true' test of balance is simply looking at the numbers. If your novice professions have about equal enrollment across the board then they are probably balanced. Likewise if your elite classes have similar numbers across the boards then you've probably got a pretty good balance. A class that has a lot more people than the mean is probably overpowered in some way (as people in general tend to take the path of least resistance). A class with a lot fewer is probably gimped in some way.

Of course this is assuming that the developers want complete balance. In all likelihood they probably don't. One healer can support several combatants and one crafter can support several healers and several combatants. As a developer you probably want something like half your players to be combat types and the remaining half split up in some fashion between the 'support' classes (note: I'm just pulling numbers out of the air. I've got no idea what the ideal numbers are). In the end though if you look at the numbers and actual numbers are close to desired numbers than you've pretty much got the balance you want.

So what does this all mean? It means a couple of things. First off, it means that you can give combat ability without any prerequisite at all as a designer, if that's your inclination. You could add in the Master Droid Engineer ability of Touch of Death +255 if you want and it will stay balanced as long as the downsides to the class are such that you don't suddenly end up with more DEs than you want. Naturally with an uber ability like that you would have to do something to counter it out or you'll have people dropping Rifleman/TKA in droves to be DEs, but you could balance it out without ever touching combat in any other way for the character (MDE requires 240 skill points and requires over a billion crafting XP to reach while the best item only gives 10 crafting XP and macros no longer work).

Secondly, it means that all the whining about a class being unbalanced can be completely pointless. Crying because you as a DE can't do combat well makes as much sense as a TKM crying because he can't make a good droid. If you want to be able to engage in combat take up combat abilities.

One of the nice things about the system is that it doesn't lock you into one class or another. Anyone can make themselves a hybrid. Now you won't be as good at making droids as someone who is a 'pure crafter', but really, should you be? Is it fair for you to split your attention between crafting an combat and expect to be as good in both categories as someone who only focuses in one? Of course not. You should never be as good a combatant as a dedicated combatant and you should never be as good a crafter as a dedicated crafter. One the plus side you are a way better crafter than a dedicated combatant and a way better combatant than a dedicated crafter.

All of which isn't to say that there aren't balance issues. My guess is that DE numbers are lower than they should be. I'm not saying the Devs have got it right yet. I'm not saying that the crafters are right over the combatant DEs. I'm saying that balance is tough and that while you may want something added to your class, if it is going to cause people to swarm to the class then it isn't balanced and it's going to get nerfed (or something else in the class will have to be nerfed).

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Icarus-6 wrote:

The easiest way to disprove it is Novice Marksman. This gives a combat advantage over those who don't take it yet it has no prerequisite (beyond 15 skill points).

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Prerequisite: Something previously required, or necessary to an end or effect proposed

Message Edited by JediKnightMark on 02-25-2004 04:48 PM

Message Edited by JediKnightMark on 02-25-2004 04:49 PM

Ranged support could be used as a pre-req for combat modules/ combat droid use. As much as I would like to have a powerful combat droid this is not really the profession for it. Engineers dont fight wars, they just make the machines that do. Oppenheimer didnt fly the Enola Gay, he just made the bomb, along with others. As a character my DE has no combat experience aside from fighting a few chunker goons that aggro on me, so what gives me the knowledge to use a droid in combat. There shouldn't be a DH profession and it shouldnt be in the DE tree as well.

Icarus, that was a well-thought out post, and I see your point on prereqs. However, when I was talking about them I was referring more to the elite classes than the basic ones... obviously someone has to pick brawler or marksman if they want to be any type of combat profession. Those basic classes give you the prereqs to the other classes.

With the exception of Creature Handlers, any elite profession capable of doing combat in some way relies on either Brawler or Marksman skills. None of the current artisan skills have any inherant combat abilities. This is why I think that DE-only combat droids is a bad idea. It's unbalancing. As you said, the developers can give combat abilites to anyone they want to, but they've chosen to stick to this general rule.

I also respectfully disagree with your definition of balancing. I don't think you can look at how many people take up the profession as a measure of how balanced it is (especially with the remarkable advent of holo-chasing). Balancing, in this context, can be stated like this: "Is it fairfor this profession to have this ability based on what the rest of their skills are?" In other words, if all the other elite professions require marksman or brawler to gain combat abilities, why wouldn't Droid Engineering?

I'm a big fan of playing Devil's Advocate myself, so I'm going to step in to the "what about Creature Handlers?" role for a minute. Creature handlers are unique in that they fly in the face of what I've been presenting so far. They have no combat prerequisite - only scout skills. This would seem to suggest that I'm wrong in my assumption. However, creature handlers still don't have any combat ability. If they are attacked and they don't have their pet out, they're dead meat unless they've got a bonafide combat profession under their belt to back them up.

Switching sides as Devil's Advocate again, this brings us back to, "Well then what's the difference for DE-only combat droids? You'd still have to take them out of your datapad for them to be effective!" First of all, there's the practical matter than anyone can grind up to MDE in a matter of a few days. Just look at the forums - there's a handful of posts every week from some new "Master" DE that can't figure out how to put a storage module in an R5. It basically takes very little effort to become an MDE.

Second, letting the same class craft and use the same item would be unfair and unbalancing to the other classes. If I, as a Fencer, want or need a new weapon, I need to find someone to make it and buy it from. However, if I'm a DE and I want a new combat droid, well heck, I'll just whip one out right here. Basically I've now become self-sufficient without spending skill points on anything but DE (with the possible exception of resources). I am the beginning and the end of the supply-and-demand cycle. CHs, on the other hand, need to obtain their pets from the wild (granted, it's possible to do this solo, but generally not without some sort of protection) or buy them from a BE.

I think the direction the DEVs are going with this is the right one. I think that eventually (SE maybe) we'll see a Droid Commander class that will introduce the higher-level combat droids and be the compliment to (not the clone of) the Creature Handler profession. But until then we'll have to make due with our CL10 droids, 'cause there's really no other way to get them.

Message Edited by OrionsByte on 02-25-2004 02:06 PM