Droid Engineer Archive

Everyone is entitled to their own views. Here is mine, i will start with the basic droids and work my way up in what their function should be. This may be a long post. I fully intend to make it that way. If you disagree feel free to post what you disagree with afterwords. If you agree give me a big thumbs up and give me a good rating. If you think im absolutely out of my mind lower my rating. I make no gurantees my words will be heard or yours for posting in this form. I do intend to read this post regularly myself. I will not reply to all posts and will limit myself per day on what suggestions should be allowed. Today I speak on the Basics of the droid engineer. If it seems that this is overly popular then perhaps we'll change it into a daily discussion. I'll keep an eye on this post for a week at least, more if it's popular.

MSE (mouse): Small droid with wheels. Good for transporting small ammounts of items. One gun, knife or some other relatively small item. I do not see axes or rifles fitting into such a small box. Limit Storage module 1 use on droid. Sure people would see this as a way to have a droid go collect a ton of resources but in reality they're not capable of it. Thus my restrictions on item storage module 1 would be one small weapon (a pistiol, knife, dagger or something else that could be carried easily and stealth like) and 100 resoures at most. Don't complain about this please. I really don't see a mouse droidwhich is about the size of a small dog carting ten tons of material (10k) anywhere with no appreciable speed loss. Since when could a small remote control car drag a tank anyways? Sure maybe downhill, IF the tank is on a platform with wheels on it... well... that wouldn't last the first turn now would it... might even run down the car in the process. Since a storage module is what it is named they should progress properly up from that point on. I will elaborate on the storage module later in this post.Feel free to jump down there and read it now if you wish.

I do not see any way the droid could make use of any medicines though. Perhaps it could be capable of carting healing kits arround but I do not see this as a way it could actually heal players or pets. No medical modules please. It has no way to heal others with it's items anyways. No manipulator arms. It also doesn't have a vocabulator so it couldn't say "take the blue pill, not the red one" either. Maybe it has lights attached to some slots but the use of these items would be severely limited on a small mouse droid. Maybe this should be changed to the repair module for a droid instead and have it's function based on the droids ability to recover slowly over time. I'll elaborate on that later as well. Jump again if you're impatient.

Data however has no appreciable size and thus i'd let any data module fit into this droid.I would suggest that a data module allow a droid to carry2 times the quality level of the module in waypoints. Droids could then be programed to follow a set of instructions. A good example is for a mouse droid named "Eat at Joes" going to the starport and leading people to the cantina. Once this droid is programed it will follow these instructions once every hour, or two hours, or any other ammount of time. Since the droid is programed it will begin to lose power (mind bar) slowly over time. Note your droids are not online if you are not and can not carry any data other than waypoints. No droid can carry any entity of any type and since droids should be considered entitys in either deed format or actual form they will nolonger have the single droid containing others of any kind. (side note, creatures should have the same classification as entity)

Mouse droids do not have the ability to attack. Remove their attack damage rates and attack speed. THEY ARE however hard to hit when running away. This is a standard action when enguaged (and brave brave sir robin, sir robin ran away) and can not be changed. They are fairly stupid though and only consider the last thing that is hostile to them (droid personality chip requirement added) and will probably run straight into something much worse if left loose in the wild. Droids built with better intelligence use superior logic and fairly intelligent ones can avoidhostilethings all together.Please place all thinking function devices under the skill tree droid refinement as a better thinking droid doesnt necissarly have 300 functions. If you remember "global thermal nuclear war" in that one wonderful movie about a machine that thinks (which happens to be attached toa militarystation capable of doing the REAL thing)it learned something by playing tic tac toe. "The only way to win is to choose not to play. How about a nice game of chess?"

Now then... HAM bar:

Health is how much damage the droids exterior can take before it stop functioning. This does not recharge over time unless the droid has a repair module installed. The quality of the self repair module determines the restoration rate. This is the effect of changing the repair and medical modules actual use. I expect a lot of people to complain about this but then again now your droids will self repair as long as they're not ripped appart. Hostile npc's WILL however have a tendancy to destroy things like this when down. Health can be recharged while moving so even if a droid is shot at (but not destroyed) it can continue to work. R2 took many scrapes and bruizes when flying arround with Luke and stoped functioning when severely damaged by that direct hit. He wasn't dead but just couldn't self repair. No functional exterior parts.

Actionis the movement gears of the droid. This does not deteriorate over time however once a droid is unable to move it isn't dead. It's health determines when it's dead. All droids can be hit for this and health as well. A droid with a self repair module can use power to restore its movement capability slowly over time. THEY CAN NOT move while doing this. The only exception of this being any droid that floats or flys, they can't fix the parts if they land and thus will just hover in place while doing repairs.

Mind is the power left in a droid. They can recharge if turned off (stored) or be recharged in a town. A droid is nolonger a Data item though and can not be stored there. C3PO was carried by chewbacca when he was disassembled. Some droids however can not be carried so easily. The bigger the droid the more slots it consumes when carried. A mouse droid is a small entity and would be carried in one slot. The droid can STILL contain whatever it was holding. Mind is the only action bar that recharges when stationary for long periods of time. STAY does not initate this. The new command "shutdown" will turn the droid off and have it's mind bar recharge slowly. This type of recharge happens slowly. UNLIKE any other droid is the power droid which will have the ability to recharge WHILE in motion AND recharge other droids. I will cover this in a future posting.

Items useable in droids however are a quick list.

Manipulator arm. Self explaned.

Motive system. The ability to give a droid the power of movement. This has 3 ratings: How much power it uses per 1024m, how fast it moves 1024m, and how durrable it is. More durrable parts will slightly increase a droids action meter under this setting. ALL droids have set base HAMs and paticularly badly built parts will lower these settings.

Storage compartment. Redundant with Droid ItemStorage Compartment, please remove.

Droid Armor Module 1. Health meter increase. Well built pieces can lower the damage taken. Higher levels protect against more types of damage settings. Armor can be used on all advanced models and a few non advanced ones. Combat capable droids (DZ70 for example) can use armor at the first level and two slots at higher levels. Any armor can be placed on any droid but lowers the overall speed rating of the droid. Module 1 has the least protection but also the least speed reduction.

Droid Medical Module 1. The service of this is currently allowing any droid to be a portable hospital. Thus this needs to be changed to the ability of the droid to repair itself. Droids repair themselfs if they have power left. A droid can not make movements when restoring the action meter but can move while restoring health. Neither of which can be done while in combat. Please rename to "diagnostics module 1" to properly fit this function.

Droid Item Storage Module 1. Can contain small weapons (pistols, knifes, one small item, 100 units of resources) but nothing big and no entitys. As this progresses to higher levels the items allowed to be stored increase in size and the ammount of resources increases from 100, 500, 1000, 5000, 10000, 50000 and finally 100000 (thats all 6 steps for you guys not counting). Not all modules can be used on any droid however lower quality modules can be placed in any higher quality droid. A mouse droid for example can not carry a rifle. It's bigger than the droid is and thus is unrealistic and quite improbable unless you are a magician and can pull a tank out of a hat. Specialized droids (surgical droid, repair droid, power droid) can carry very little due to their functions and thus would have almost no ability to carry anything at all.

Stupid personality chip... A droid is only as smart as the chip installed. This chip will remember only who is currently trying to kill this droid and will look for the straightest path away from said things. When nolonger in combat follow previous orders. Droids with this chip DO NOT DEVIATE from any plans and might run out of power while in transit. Droids like this always travel in straight lines and do not look for the fastest route to anything. If it comes in contact with an obstacle it turns and follows the edge of this obstacle to the right or left (determined when created) and goes arround it. This does not make the best pathing in the game... obviously you'll want a better personality chip in your droids but some droids can't do better than this. These droids are not designed to be smart. They're designed to be.

Thats all for today friends. I'll come back with an accurate description of the 4 paths tomorrow at some time.

Remember if you like my ideas increase my rating. If you hate them decrease it. Feel free to talk about anything i've posted up to the last post i've made. I thank you for your patience and welcome your advice if you have the guts to post it. May the force be with you.

Duct Tape, shadowfire server

Novice Droid engineer, Teras Kasi Novice, Master artisan.

Duct Tape is like the force. It has a light side, a dark side, and it binds the universe together.

Acually, a droid is NOT as smart as the chip that is installed... It is as smart as the Droid Brain installed. The Personality Chip is just that, for personality. Do you look at someone and base their IQ level on what their personality is? No. Droids shouldn't have a level of 'Smarts', that would just be a huge opening for scams and annoyances in general.

Second, you do realise that if you make the lower level droids even crappier than they already are (By limiting the mods allowed in them) you in turn make it almost impossible for a Lower Level droid Engineer to make ANY money at all? Who the fluck wants a droid that can carry ONE item or ONE waypoint/schematic?

Third, how the hell does a droid heal itself? It magically can do internal repairs with a Medical Mod installed?

Medical Mods are just fine the way they are, they only allow a Medic/Doctor to heal certian ammounts at the different level mods anyway. Leave them be.

All I can see in this post are ways of nerfing DE into an even more useless class than it already is.

Another thing I just thought of... in cities when you type /find cantina and the system draws one of those yellow paths with the green arrows...

I've always wondered, well why can't I just set my character to automatically follow these silly paths?That way I wouldn't have to steer or wrestle with those intermittent bouts of urban lag that can throw you off course.

What if, if you owned an MSE, you could do just that? That would put them in demand, don't you think?

Have MSEs be able to follow these yellowpaths... you set it off and /follow it there... hands-free, like autorun... so you can craft or communicate freelywith your buddies on the way there.

I think that would be awesome, and it seems like the easiest,most immediate way the devs could have MSEs doing what they're really supposed to do.

MSE Droid for pathfinding? I like it.

How about this...

The ability to select a waypoint and program the the MSE. Then give the MSE a "Go" command and /follow the MSE droid to that waypoint. The MSE droid would avoid anything that could mean danger...perhaps depending on how "smart" the droid brain is.

I would also like to send the droid to pick up/drop off items for me. Like ArtyD said only one or two items. The ability to send the droid to pick up some stims from a friend.

Hey Orb -- yes, pathfinding to waypoints would be very cool as well! Although I think that for pathfinding acrosslonger distances, say over 500m, a more advanced droid should be required... like anR2 unit or probe droid. MSEs could be the low-budgetpathfinding droidfor shorter distances, mostly within cities and installationssuch.

And I agree, MSEs serving as a courier would be great, as well. Although again I think there should be distance limitations, with astromechs being able tocourier acrosslonger distances (just like R2-D2essentially couriered the Death Star plans--along Leia'sholographic message--from Leia toObi-Wan Kenobi in ANH)and MSEs for the short runs.

microknee: mouse droids are not trackers, but otherwise it's a good idea, town based droids which lead people to places. Droids could be stationed anywhere really but most likely would be stationed at the cantina, the shuttle or space ports, and a hotel. They are not seeker droids BUT should have the option to be given waypoint data from one. Since only bounty hunters can use seeker droids (well... maybe someone in law enforcement could get one but then again they're just non-rewarded bounty hunters on a salary for doing police work) we'll have to cover that when i reach that stage. This is a personal statement reply. This is not a followup posting for my next suggestions for installments. We now have an outlet for income. Replace a defective mouse droid at the (location here) and get paid (whatever is approiate). Perhaps station the medical droids at a hospital for those no skill healing points that people get slowly from sitting there. There are no entertainment droids... too bad people... droids just don't make good musicians or dancers. Unless you can envision an R2 unit with 5 instraments producing pre programed unchanging permant looping music entertainment... Why did i just hear tetris music???

Warder83: so you know this is not a nerfing. This is putting droids back into the role they are supposed to have. What I see you have right now is an idea of a droid mouse with a level 6 medical module so you can use extreme medicine in the field. Droids are not field medics(combat medics) and do not allow you to do that in the field normally. I don't see R2 waking up luke in episode 4. He didn't wake up till Obi'wan came and used his jedi skills of "heal other" and magically Luke woke up. As I see it you see this as removing your exploit. Enjoy your misconstructed information while it lasts. Droids that are not Surgical based DO NOT HEAL ANYONE. These droids are capable of movement and thus can preform their function anywhere in any situation. Now Surgical droids are being in demand instead of a hospital on wheels like everybody else has that they're used for now. Camps are made by scouts which allow many things to be done in the field (except healing battle fatigue which i think should slowly increase when you attack, and decrease when you're not in combat resting anywhere that's not directly in battle) which is what you should get if you're looking to heal wounds in the field. And as for any other droid I've not even gotten to them yet.

On your comment for the droid brains: Stupid is as stupid does. The most intelligent person in the world has a severely advanced ammount of information in their head. Their comprehension of the information is vast and their brain can process it easily. And now like it or not comes the kick. How many YEARS of programing did it take to create the game known as chessmaster? A very smart man knows how to play chess. Does that make him an expert at it? Professional players arround the world know how to guage an opponent without effort. This doesn't mean they will win, but allows them to formulate a plan of attack and defense. I don't care how well you can process the information. Can you apply it properly and change it on the fly? A "stupid" droid will travel in a straight line, find an obstacle, turn and go arround it. A slightly smarter one might just look at the local area map and plan a path along well traveled routes to the destination. Smarter than that would lead you arround the fastest way there from where you currently are. Even better could lead you the least populated route, possibly even avoiding public contact up tothe destinaton. And the smartest droid could actually do some things it's not intentional programed for. R2 doesn't make a terrific barkeep and yet was adaptable enough to serve drinks on Jabas sail barge. You also forget that the medical module will nolonger be called that in my post. Thanks for reading it and complaining before you finished. Proved your intelligence is not dictated by your ability to read but your lack of ability to read everything. Complain when you know what you're complaing about not before. The personality chip is partially on how it acts with pathing, and partially on how it reacts to questions. I intend to rename the whole set of them and place all of them under droid refinement. Stupid is it can recognize basic commands, not complicated ones.

As for the mods allowed I do not see any realistic situation of putting a rifle into a mouse droid. You didn't read that either apparently. You also say "who the hell would want a droid with one waypoint"and forget that some items ARE a single waypoint. A house, extractor, power station, hospital, cantina are all single waypoints. You can PROGRAM any of these into the droid and it will retain the locaiton for as long as you don't change it. You do not need to be a droid engineer to do this... it's a simple matter of moving the waypoint from your datapad with a copy. As it seems that this post is starting to get log i'll end it here and change to my next update.

Hey Arty -- yeah, I see your point about 'tracking' specifically being more of a BH function.

I think the meat of my idea lay mostly in the MSEs being able to automatically take its owner along those "/find cantina" and "/find bank" paths in urban areas.

I'm not so keen anymoreon the municipal function I mentioned before... I think they shouldpeople should have to buy their own MSE. Those who don't own an MSE would have to continue following the /find paths manually as we're doing now.

I think mouse droids should be somehow be able to fulfill the only function we saw them performing in ANH: pathfinding.

In ANH, we see an attachment of stormtroopers being lead through the Death Star's maze ofwinding passages by a mouse droid. It seems to me that thisis supposed to bethe MSE'sprimary function... they help people find their way around. I really would like to see this happen in the game.

I think it would be cool if mouse droids could be programmed with specific paths to run along in urban areas, and flagged with little messages like "Followthis droidfor the best weapons this side of the Outer Rim!" and so forth. Or they could functionin amunicipal capacity in player cities... instead of typing /find cantina, visitors to player cities could askone of thecity-owned MSEs (which could be stationed in specific areas and also scattered all around like the publicbicycles in Copenhagen)to lead them straight to a specific pre-programmeddestination in the city.

Or they could be a way for people tokeep track ofeach other without having toconstantly update their location bytyping inwaypoints. Just program the MSE to find its wayto a mobile target, such as another player. If you're in a group and lose track of another groupmember, you could pull out your mouse droid say /track <name> or something like that. If the player isn't in a certain radius (similar to the /who command) the droid goes "?"... but if the player is around the droid starts twittering happily and takes off, and you /follow it there.