Droid Engineer Archive
Thread: Why droid engineers don't sell more droids
Ever wonder why droid engineers tend make relatively few sales? It's not because droids are useless; in fact, as it stands they are currently fairly useful. Perhaps not as critical as a weapon, or as powerful as a creature, or as cool and cheap as clothing...err, yes. Still useful. But a lack of usefulness isn't what constrains droid sales.
It's need. Who needs more than one droid? Almost no one, except the rare player who wants a high-powered med unit,med and weapon crafting station and attack capability. So, once you buy a droid, you're never going to buy another. There's no need, provided you got yourself the top of the line model to start out with (and at the price differential between bottom and top of the line, there's little reason not to).
This is in sharp contrast to many other artisan professions. Tailor and armorsmiths, for example, are able to sell multiple pieces of armor/clothing. Why? Because characters need more than just one piece of clothing/armor (let's ignore for the moment the low profitability of clothing, which is a separate issue entirely). Architects, who often complain of a lack of repeat business, are able to sell players ten lots worth of items. Ten lots! And I know for one, that I own waaaay more than ten lots worth of buildings. Let's see, there's the two factories, the heavy harvester, the five medium mineral harvesters, the medium and light chem harvesters, the three shops... (I swap harvesters depending on which resources I want at the present time and most of the shops are held by other people). What did the architect I bought all that stuff buy? One...measley...droid.
Even weaponsmiths are able to sell multiple items to the same people. As a player advances through the professions, they need to buy new weapons. At the same time, they can't go straight for the top of the line T-21; they have to buy each new weapon as they advance. Furthermore, as weapons decay, they need to be replaced (especially with those new 40k hp lairs. Ouch).
The fourth artisan profession, droid engineers, doesn't have the potential to make multiple sales to the same customer. Once you buy a good droid from someone, that's it, with the possible exception of probots, waaaay down the line when they ultimately decay. And since droids only decay from combat use, non-combat droids (about half of a droid engineer's sales) will never ever be replaced. So rather than sell multiple items to customers, like artisans, armorcrafters or tailors, or selling replacement items, like weaponcrafters, droid engineers make one sale and that's it. Whatever profit you can squeeze out of that sale, cherish it, because it's unlikely you'll see that customer ever again. Oh, sure, if you're good at your profession, and friendly, they'll refer their friends. But again, one sale is all you'll ever make.
The lone exception to the plight of the droid engineer is batteries. But anyone can make batteries. They're a low level general artisan thing. Fortunately, only droid engineers seem to care enough to pump them out in any volume- try making a schematic for a 3 or 4 charge battery, sticking it in your factory, and pumping out 4 crates of 25 batteries, then selling them for 5k apeice. You'll be pleasantly surprised at the response. But even these sales don't make up for the fact that once a DE sells a droid, that's it.
There are several possible solutions to this problem. One is to create a cert system, that allows increasing levels of droids at different levels. Then, just as with weapons, players would acquire droids and replace them as they got more powerful. Along these lines, creating gradiations of combat droids (other than just the DZ70 and the Probot) would result in people buying a combat droid and then replacing it when they could use a new (as yet unnamed) droid. Adding more useful functionality to droids, beside 'so, do you want a med unit or a crafting station with your probot?' would result in players being forced to pick and choose exactly what they want in their droid, and possibly needing to buy multiple droids to get all the cool stuff they want. Finally, restoring chassis functionality would enable droid engineers to sell multiple droids to the same customer. For example, allowing medical droids a bonus to healing when a medical module was inserted into them, as opposed to a probot, would encourage people to buy a medical droid purely for its healing abilities. Likewise, allowing repair droids, and only repair droids, to use a repair module to heal another droid's damage (white bar) would encourage the sale of both repair droids and combat droids (since the inability to heal a droid's damage (white bar) isa major disadvantage of droids as compared to creatures).
Enough rambling. The reason why many DE's are unhappy is because they are unable to make a 'living' as a DE, especially as compared to the other professions such as architects and weaponscrafters. In large part this is due to the fact that the market for droids is extremely limited: each player only needs to buy one droid, and, provided the DE did his or her job right and sold them a good one, will never buy another droid. Some of the solutions I discussed above would help make droid engineers a little bit happier and seem to fit in with what the Dev's might be doing.
Yes, I know that no Dev will ever read this post. But whatever. It's only a game. A tremendous time sink of a game...
I still firmly believe that the big winner here would be disposable droid subcomponents. I'm not preaching hot-swappable modules (though asa DE, it's a tempting notion), I'm talking more along the lines of individual internal parts that decay at various rates and would need replaced by a DE qualified to build such a droid/component.
It's been brought up in the past (usually in 'combat-droid' threads) that some of the higher-end droids would use expensive components built by other elite professions such as weaponsmiths, armorsmiths, architects, etc..
Anyway, although this hasn't the slightest chance of being implemented due to code complexity, I still think it would smoothly solve a lot of these issues. It would be less dramatic than permadeath yet require repeat visits to your friendly neighborhood DE.
If they limit the modules that can be put in the droids that would solve some problems.
Mouse droids that can holdall the modules??? that's bad mmmkay...
It's also always annoyed me that probots can hold medical mods.
more higherend things in other professions should require parts from DE's. Spare the crafting stations, no one needs us.
I have an idea that we can do now
Form reformation groups on each server!
Best post ever (and I've seen a TON of them....trust me).
You very acutely nailed it.
I do have a small addition. One of the other reasons I don't craft a lot of droids for sale is that....
....wait for it...
I know I'll have little market.
So, I take my time and energy to race up to the Master DE box where the buyers are (that are spending any serious cash). Why? I've been forced to do so by a gimped profession (and market, for that matter). It's really the only sound long-term strategy for me to employ.
Sure, I coulda made/sold droids along the way...but...why?
For some of the exact reasons you describe.
In a way, the bonus is that DE numbers seem to be dwindling on almost every server. Eventually, down the road, we may all be very, very rich (and powerful) players. Of course, at that point, we'll need to decide what we care to do in-game when money's no object.
/bow
Respectfully,
Great post. I agree. And you are right, no dev will ever read this, and even if they did they won't implement it.
TheRealTK421 wrote:
In a way, the bonus is that DE numbers seem to be dwindling on almost every server.
I trained 4 Novice DE's in Int. Blueprints last night. I'm seeing the folks that trained me in my first 2 levels of blueprints hit Master. I was talking to a Artisan at Engineering IV on Saturday, and I asked him what he wanted to do....He said Droid Engineer.
I think the more I tell people what's wrong with the profession, the more people are encouraged to start because they don't believe me. *shrug* Somehow, I don't think the number of DE's are drindiling on Gorath. I still run into a lot of people who don't know a lot about droids (including those who want to be droid engineers) ...and many still think that droid perma-death is still in effect.
One thing going my way is that I've made a deal with a major Mall Merchant who wants droids available. I like that I don't have to have my own shop and he tells me when he needs more stock. It gives me time to work on my smuggling.....at least that's getting looked into soon (so they say).
Each droid had its purpose and the module slots were for additional extras except you could not change the crafting station loadout. This ment there was a reason for people to want many of the lower droids and then as their desires for more features grew they would upgrade to the advanced droids that had a wider range in function.
To fix a problem with crafting stations only working for the creator and droids vanishing from the datapad they destroyed this diversity and turned all our droids into the lump of generic blahness they are today.
One of the biggest problems with droids is they didn't get their last balance pass more than a couple days before release which has set us way behind the fix curve and even more so that the last balance pass completly changed how droids function module wise.
If this game was not scs I don't think you would see so much angst people would just make an alt to play until the classes were all fixed. But with scs I log on at night having devoted most of my points to making something that is not very useful and has extremely limited resale and I usually get disgusted and log off.
Kaid