Droid Engineer Archive

I obviously come from a CH background, but I thought this might be of interest to all the professions concerned.

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The CH dev response said we would definitely not get any more CL. It further suggested that there is a strong disinclination to give us more pet slots. I am of the mind that a CH should have many, many creatures available to them and in their available "pack"to increase the number of unique pets and unique combinations of pets to vary gameplay and strategy. So...

I want to see droids withequivalent statsto meat-pets. The meat pets should have some associated costs, at least for a non-CH. Non creature handlers should have to buy specialty foods ora leash or *something* which can raise the monetary cost of a meat or bio pet to be equivalent of a droid. This lets everyone choose to have their droid or their kittycat without placing any particular bias on one or the other. Give pets and droids varying but equivalent stats such that players get to decide whether they want to get a high-damage blasterbot with high resists in some categories or they want a lower-damage meat-shield. Here we balance the droid engineer and the CH or BE pets such that everyone has a market, even if it turns out to be specialized.

Let bio-engineers build components for pet storage. Change or duplicate the data-module into an "incubator" module. Allow only baby animals to be stored inside such a storage compartment. This means that a creature handler can go out and tame a droidful of babies for public sale without cutting into their personal stash-space. Likewise give bio-engineers control of the "life support" functions necessary to take care of critters like making the specialty foods or enclosures for pets to live in.

Create some new furniture specifically for pet storage. Give players the chance to buy a cage to display their new critter. Give the CH some leeway in that they shouldn't need an extra cage to house their animals because they have creature empathy/communication that should do away with the "Rancor peed on the couch" situations. Give architects or a heretofore unknown profession (Elite/Elite?) the ability to make different housing structures, barns, stables and corrals in which we can place our pets for safekeeping off of our datapad. This gives the CH players more pet slots but doesn't give them the "graul army on the datapad" kind of thing because they have to walk back to their corral to change out their pets.

For BE enable them to make their customized creatures and tissues but perhaps also expand into an elite/elite profession of farmer. I know the title had been done away with, but it makes sense here. Let them sample DNA from wild creatures and use it to create domesticated animals with desirable traits. Something like a domestic leathery hide that has consistent stats between resource resets. They don't have to be high stats, just consistent. The scout/ranger market is preserved, but then chefs and such don't have to wait for a resource flip to make marketable products. The BE can sample DNA which can then be sold to the farmers for the production of the next generation of "product" animals. The costs of raising the domestic animals can be represented in terms of feed or lots necessary to build a farm in order to balance the cashflow.

Let Bio Engineers manipulate the creatures they create in powerful ways. Let them push the CL of their engineered pets up or down as appropriate, select different armor levels and resistances, special moves and attack ranges/types. This gives them a marketable product without the need to nerf wild pets available to the CH out taming. If a BE can provide a similar strength pet but with a lower CL, or a high CL but with better resists/armor the market will still be fine for their products even with wide availability of wild pets. Maybe they even want to experiment *down* the attack levels on a domesticated animal such that they are easier to handle.

I think, in all, this set of changes obviates the need to nerf any profession or creature at least as it pertains to these issues while still addressing the big problems. Bioengineers have no market for their products, a limited number of products and broken products. Droid engineers can't compete with even the most basic meat-pets freely available for taming and trading currently. Creature handlers will get beaten to death with the nerf stick by other combat classes as well as from droid engineers with their fully deserved jealousy and bioengineers who really should be our best friends but are at odds with us due mostly to bugs in their products and the general uselessness of the profession.

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Fighting on behalf of Eetere and Whiskers, a medic and her dire cat who had no idea that a patch would come between them until it was almost too late.