Droid Engineer Archive

Here's a set of ideas for some advanced patrolling, behavior and function for droids that might be cool, maybe even do-able.

For the first set of ideas, lets say I have a Binary Lifter droid stocked with all kinds of storage and some armor for good measure.

1. Allow droids with storage modules to have a permissions list for giving and taking objects (separate) and a public/private option for each to allow everyone if the master wants. This would allow a lot of things. The user could give access permission to an associate and send it off to meet him, with a pet escort (or droid if we could get two out)

2. Add a go-to command that takes a waypoint or set of waypoints that makes a linear path and tells the droid to follow it to the end and stop

3. Allow droids to store waypoints in data modules again, and add an interface for getting a patrol path or go-to command from that and expand the range at which that works. This would let the master of the load lifter access the droid's data module, set a string of points for a route to follow, then send him off.

4. Set a permissions list for certain commands. This would be most useful combined with all of the other ideas, so that the associate could send the droid back to the owner, owner's building, the next person to meet, whatever.

5. A droid with a personality chip on patrol should be able to be stopped for conversation just like any NPC in the wilderness you meet that is wandering. If questions and answers (like a FAQ) could be programmed into the droid, well those possibilities are endless.

So imagine if all of these were in the game. (this requires at least 1 cooperative friend The droid owner goes out to their harvester hot spot, unloads all of the material and sends it to his warehouse where an employee packs it all away and sends the droid back to the master. Another very useful thing where these would come in handy and everyone would want one. A mouse with just one decent storage unit could be sent to meet someone who has something for the owner. The mouse meets the person, the person deposits the item and the droid makes its way back to the owner... hopefully the mouse could escape notice by whatever creatures might otherwise want to harm things.

Add to these any kind of remote access for the owner to the droid and you have a great deal of usefullness. Say Im on Naboo and my friend on Corellia wants to give me something. (the following situation is totally in a DE dreamworld) I activate one of the droids at home (corellia) and send him to meet the friend. The friend deposits the item and I then send the droid to the shuttleport, purchase a ticket for it, get it to board the shuttle, and finally come meet me.

The idea isnt to make laziness easier, but to add convenience, practicality and a whole lot of cool factor to droids and droid engineering

Another cool use for these features would be on the repair and surgical droids, once they serve their real purposes. Send the surgical droid to a downed friend to stop the bleeding. Slap a personality chip in it, and a storage module and let it charge for healings till it runs out of goods.

To make the Binary Load Lifter idea work, they need to implement weight limits for characters. There is no reason to have one if I can cary 11,000,000 units of ore around in my backpack. Supposedly, each "Unit" represents 1kg of material. So I can carry 11,000 metric tons of stuff eh? Just call me superman.. and I can run across Corellia with all that too!

If they had weight limits, then Binary Load Lifters would be VERY usefull to miners. In fact, Droids could have weight limits too.. Treadwell droids and Load Lifters should have high carry capacities.

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PirateRob wrote:

To make the Binary Load Lifter idea work, they need to implement weight limits for characters. There is no reason to have one if I can cary 11,000,000 units of ore around in my backpack. Supposedly, each "Unit" represents 1kg of material. So I can carry 11,000 metric tons of stuff eh? Just call me superman.. and I can run across Corellia with all that too!

If they had weight limits, then Binary Load Lifters would be VERY usefull to miners. In fact, Droids could have weight limits too.. Treadwell droids and Load Lifters should have high carry capacities.

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You cannot imagine the uproar that would be caused if something like this were ever implemented. Normally, anything in an MMORPG that shows any kind of realism must be pain free or the intestinal-fortitude-challenged crowd has a conniption fit.