Droid Engineer Archive
Thread: TH: Lets start fresh here.
TH:
Since Sin is away I think the DE profession needs you to out line your confusions here and we will debate your questions in another thread and answer you here so you can have it in one place. I am in no ways saying I am a great rep of this profession but I have read all the threads in here and I am confused so please folks let TH restate what he wants to know lets debate it and arrange a clear answer in Sins absance.
/Netchan..
I have read the threads and I am re-reading them, but if you read through each and every post as I have been doing, the opinions diverge. Im trying to find the consense on those issues and most importantly, Im not a droid engineer. Much of the discussion is "insider talk" and I have to understand the basics as much as anything else.
I get the feeling that sometimes we throw out phrases and sentences and even paragraphs that are too full of jargon and insider knowledge for you to decipher. That does not make them unimportant! Indeed, I would be more than happy to serve as a translator for you if necessary. There is strong consensus on many, many points, and I'd hate to see that tossed or disregarded due to a point of confusion over terminology.
Help us to help you to help us. :-)
OK, I understand you a bit better.
Can you list which of our bugs you need more information or which plan you need us to come to aggrement on ?
There have been a lot of posts recently IE yours with the FIRST and Sins state of the profession.
If you outline what you want us to agree on I will try to help you arrange an answer while Sin is gone.
If anyone else is more of an Authority on DE step up with me and TH here and read the responses and lets get a clear answer in a positive way.
/Netchan..
TH: True. there are a LOT of different opinions. However, what I can glean from all the posts is that Most if not all DE's agree with Sintrosi's post. 2) Gorantoth outlined the issues at hand and stated very specific goals for these issues. My vote would be to start with these. I am confused as tohow much detail you are asking for.
Thanks for trying to make sense out of all this.
Osarp Adoo
Artisan 4/4/4/4
Novice DE
Flurry
Folks,
I am going to lunch for an hour..Please try to stay positive and read everything before blowing up. Answer things in a short clear mannor and we can have our voices heard. Worse comes I think I read that Sin will be back Sunday. Lets try to not make a mess before she can get back...
/Netchan
Thunderheart et al,
I'm a Master DE from Beta and all through live. I've made thousands of droids (while griniding) and a thousand more (to sell to customers).
I whole-heartedly agree with Sinostri's plan. She has an excellent pulse on what we need to reinvigorate this community.
To sum up:
Problem 1: Desire for our droids is very low. Droids do not provide much functionality to advance within the game. They do not provide companionship, or act amusing. They do not assist in Role Playing or to socializers.
Current positives to having a droid:
++ Advanced Probots can do 60 damage/second and take a pretty good beating before being incapped
++ Healing modules allow stimpacks to heal at 110%
++ Crafting modules allow crafters to craft from anywhere
+ Item storage modules allow people to store 10 extra items
+ Data storage modules allow people to store extra schematics
Current negatives to having a droid:
--- There is no functional difference between all 12 non-probot droids. Due to a bug with Cluster modules, you can add10+ submodules into a mouse droid.
- They are expensive to make (there is heavy reliance on Master Artisans, though I like that aspect)
- Batteries in probots only provide about 20 minutes of useful power... it becomes very annoying to constantly recharge them
- Colorization of chasis wear off after 1 use, change randomly everytime you pull droids out, or just never work
- Personality modules add no real personality, just random quotes at very infrequent intervals
- Droids stop at server boundaries. Seem to be even worse then pets
Suggestions: We need to add a desire for players to want droids. Most DE's will be happy with crafting droids, rather than acting as a Droid Handler and using them. We want to make things that players desire and will for.
Possible quick-fix methods:
++ Add weapons/shield to all droid chasis to make them tougher in combat
++ Add some form of certification system to allow multiple pets/droids to be used, but innefective at the lower levels.
++ Increase storage space in larger droids. BLLs should be max, maybe at 60 items
++ Remove the ability for a cluster module to fit in any module slot. Only allow it to fit in a cluster-module slot
+ Increase medical rating in surgical droids, maybe max them at 125% and the ability to accept a command to use a Stimpack-A or Stimpack-B
+ Add power capability to power droids, let them power factories/harvesters or to increase the power pull ratio from fusion reactors by 1 unit
++ Add grenates to MSE droids. Great idea
+ Make a protocol droid a required component to a guild hall
+ Make a BLL droid a required component to a Shuttleport
+ Allow protocol droids to increase the XP a polotician gets when he receives votes
+ Fix conversation droids to let them be named. Allow numbers in names
+ Allow a barking command to Protocol Droids for advertising
+ Add an entertainer module to allow droids to play music in a band, or to dance for an entertainer
+ 100 other ideas by the other smart people here
+ Add a BLL to a factory to increase it's production speed by 20%
+++ Have experimentation do something rather than only affect crafting module rates!!
+++ Give us 10 Experimentation points!!!
Problem 2: Still a lot of bugs!!! Please fix them, there are many lists already
Problem 3: Poor to no communication. Looks like you are fixing this now.
Basically, add RP content/powergamer content so people will want to buy from us!
Thunderheart wrote:
I have read the threads and I am re-reading them, but if you read through each and every post as I have been doing, the opinions diverge. Im trying to find the consense on those issues and most importantly, Im not a droid engineer. Much of the discussion is "insider talk" and I have to understand the basics as much as anything else.
With all due respect Thunderheart, it sounds like you are saying that you are not qualified to present our needs and wants to the developer responsible for our class (GreenMarine, I believe).
Perhaps you should discuss this further with Sintrosi after the weekend, allow her (is she a her?) to ask the questions and collect the data, and then talk to GreenMarine herself. Or if you prefer, she can dump the raw data onto you and allow you to make the calculations.
This was my concern when you came on board. You are a brawler, you have no real need for a droid and have not attempted to make a career out of droid engineering. If I were to post that there is a problem with, say, the LarryCurlyMoe backhand slap 2 skill, you would know what I mean because you are a brawler. But if I say I want to make a gonk droid that can be used in harvester schematics, you'd probably ask for more specific information...and you have done that.
There is a consensus of where DE is today. ADE can make a Combat droid useful for a starting character, a crafting stations droid, a medical droid, and BH droids. Most customers can get all of these in one droid.
So for hundreds of thousands of crafting xp and all the time and effort to get resources I can produce one or two droids that can meet everyone's needs. Or more precisely, provide all the possible utility a DE can possibly provide anyone. An advanced Probot with e Medical 6 and a crafting station is as much as a lot of people are ever going to need. If you use the socket cluster bug, you can't even put enough different modules into a droid. End result, I only need to make one droid that everyone can use, and BH droids.
So where do we go from here?
This is where you will NOT ever get consensus. You'll get probably two or three general directions,DE as crafters, and DE as combat pet handlers. This is where you get the "CH has this, why can't DE" and "WS does this, why can't DE" statements. Personally I think if a DE can do both Combat Pet and Crafting, anyone can choose how they play it.
The current DE population has to be Crafter minded, you just cannot use a probot as a major tanking pet. As crafters we do want more useful and diverse options for what to make and sell to others to use. This is where limiting what modules can go on which frames comes in, and making repair and poer droids work correctly.
Quite naturally, as part of the Star Wars Mythos, there is a need to make sure Droids are desirable enough to the player base that there are lots of droids out everywhere. One of the natural driving forces for this is that droids must be more desirable to have out then creature pets, or at least more commonly out then creature pets. There are many excellent suggestions that have been made on useful droids concepts. One of the major ones requested is a more viable combat droid.
The development of the more powerful combat droid is where the divergence in consensus will occur. There is the Crafter branch which will argue for a WS approach, where there are certifications and DE will produce droids that they cannot use as a DE (though of course you can take the class which has the cert and use it that way). The droid combat pet group will pursue the CH approach, where the CH gets the best pets, so therefore, as a DE, the DE gets the best Combat Droids.
If DE as CH approach is taken, then naturally, as Combat Droids are demonstrated to be as effective or better then creature combat pets, there will be an influx of players into DE for the express purpose of using droids for combat. This leads to the question of whether or not this is a desirable occurence.
At this point it is hard to determine what is a good approach for the profession and the game. I would argue a moderate combination would be a smooth transition. Create the more useful droids for everyone, surveying, spying, maintenance, harvesting, power and repair droids, so a lot of people will have this, and be using them. Some reasonable combat droids usable by most people. And some powerful combat droids available to some elite professions or combinations. Personally, as a Master DE if I can have multiple second best combat droids out, compared to some other elite combat professions single "best" combat droid, that seems okay. I am distinguished by my ability to do multiples, which in itself is useful if I have a repair droid out for example. This approach will allow droids to be more available to all professions, and not require that playes switch or take DE in order to get nice droids. I think if a players needs to bea DE to get neato combat droids, then this may be too limiting in promulgating droids to everyone.
dcazman wrote:
Folks,
I am going to lunch for an hour..Please try to stay positive and read everything before blowing up. Answer things in a short clear mannor and we can have our voices heard. Worse comes I think I read that Sin will be back Sunday. Lets try to not make a mess before she can get back...
/Netchan
An starting yet more threads isn't making this more ofa "mess"?
I'm done with the topic - I've dutifully responded to all of Sintrosi's threads which are conveniently stickied above.
All this is doing is scattering the discussion further.
This isn't a democracy. TH doesn't need consensus, and he'll never get it. We've given all the information humanly possible - it's up to him to take it back to the Dev team and let them make the decisions.
This would have all been so simple if TH had just read the stickies, and asked someone to educate him about the DE profession. I don't see how he can be at all constructive when he admits he largely doesn't know what we are talking about, and it's sad that the only person we have talking to us isn't even familiar with the profession.
Audio
I mostly agree with Audio, Trying to create 4 new threads so that we can answer TH's questions all over again gets us nowhere.
But I disagree with Audio and the others on the topic of Gorantoths thread, though it's good, and well thought out, there are 1 or 2 things in there like "Droid macros" which aren't a viable idea for reasons well outlined in the original thread, and confuse the reader.
Just to answer how to balance the whole medical droid thing...
Have the different models certed in the different medical professions. The medic one being very basic, the doctor being extremely advanced (resuss, enhances, etc etc) and have the CM one be somewhere in the middle (no area attack ability or heal ability, that might overpower healing in combat) but be more sturdy and maybe have a stun tangle pistol attachment. The droids would have to be loaded with Stims and such and power. Then you already have the system in place to make this really good. Use the "pet" system with a new command or two so the Medic/Doctor/CM can target someone, command the droid to perform a function, and then target another and heal another person or creature.
You still need the medical folks...and the droids still need medical crafted items to be effective. And they can be destroyed. And thus you have a returning market for droid engineers.
Thoughts?
Help us to help you to help us. :-)
Im really trying here, but theres a lot of "static".
Im sitting here readin gthrough things right now.
Can anyone point me to a good guide? Thanks 