Droid Engineer Archive
Thread: A possible Droid Handling proposal
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Dagrin
Thu Jan 22, 2004 1:22 am
#1
The Problem
The the current debate is trying to balance droid usage skill with while offering a drastic increase in power and function of droids, both in combat and as support for other professions. The current options currently seem to be either building a new droid handler class that mirrors CH or trying to filter a certification system into all exsisting professions. The Devs seem to favor droid handling because it will be contained and relatively easy to balance, while on the other hand balancing a cert system with cross-profession stacking skill bonuses is a nightmare.
Trying to make a Droid Cert system that's not exploitable does not seem very likely. Some from of droid handling profession seems to be the only choice. My objection to this, as I think is the case with many others, is the trade off. Having to free up skill points, and there by limiting how many droid users there are, is a frustration that's not going to be well accepted.
Proposal
My proposed solution is to make Droid Handling a skill point-free profession. A full profession with 4 trees and a mastery. While XP is required to advance (and infact, a very harsh curve), learning the skills will not consume any skill points. These skills cannot be tought between players, so you are therefore required to purchasethem from a trainer. The novice box will require App XP similar to the Politican profession, this box could also require a quest similar to how you unlock RIS armor.
This will both free players from the restrictionsof tradingdroid skills with their other choosen professions skills, and get the Devs a realatively straight forward system to balance. I also think this will really bring that "starwarsy" feel to droid usage. Anyone should be able to use droids, without being limited by your other choices, but you should still have to learn and grow as a droid user.
Skill Trees
Combat Droids and Medic Droids should be two of the trees. Combat Droid Certs will of course be in the Combat Droid tree. The Medical Droid tree will give us access to droids that can be programmed to auto heal (you still pay for the stims of course).
Each tree will contain Certification for particular droids, while the points for droid level will be distributed through all the trees (like creature skill). To use a droid you must meet the level requirement. If you don't meet the certification, you can still call the droid but you can't reprogram it, passive droid skills will be void, and it's commanded skills will only work 10% of the time. The other 90% of the time the droid will either ignore you, or take some other action (like a combat droid might go berserk and attack everything in sight, including the owner!).
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