Droid Engineer Archive
Thread: Combat: R3 vs Probot
Though it depends a bit on what the user wants, the Probot is really the superiour combat droid. The hit number is only a little smaller, but the speed is a lot higher.
In combat, the ability to kill something is based on Damage Per Second (DPS) and DPS=<avg hit>/speed. This is an issue more important than just how long the kill takes, since if the target's regeneration rate is higher than the total DPS applied, you can never kill it at all,
However, the damage that the droid does takes away from the user's experience, and may be small compared to what the user can do himself. So many will not care about the droids damage and just want the highest HAM possible. I just ordered an R3 with a single combat module (and other stuff) for just this reason. The owner character is collecting meat andskilling up on rifles. He would rather the droid didn't do much damage. It will just act as a tank if needed, and then harvest whenthe targetis dead.
However, another character of mine is a Merchant who is out of skillpoints with little combat ability. He wants (and will soon get) a maxed out combat Probot for a guard. The lower HAM isn't really much of an issue, since it will only be attacking things that agroed already on the Merchant, and the armoured Merchant is the tank. But the Merchant wants that attacker dead as soon as possible.
I have heard that the actual hit figure is not linear with combat rating, and a50 rating hits for a lot more than 10% of the damage of a 599. Does anybody have any figures?Four stats are of interest:
- Min & Max damage
- Speed
- To hit
- HAM
I don't think the last 3 are based on combat rating, but...
Different droids for different needs.
One point in the Probot vs R3 debate that I think is important, and that often gets overlooked:
A 3200 HAM Probot with 550 CR fight an R3 with 4500 HAM and 600 CR. It's a close fight every time, BUT...
At the end, which droid can be healed and ready for a new fight faster and cheaper? The Probot, every time.
A great way to illustrate this is to have the two fight, and give each controler player 3 identical Droid Repair Kits to use throughout the fight. The Probot will win handily EVERY time.
Just theoretically based on the math...
CombatProbot does 180-ish damage every second. Don't believe the stated 0.75 Attack Speed... it is obviously less than that. So that's 180 damage per second.
AutoHeal R3 does 100-ish damage every 1.5 seconds. Eh... call it 65 damage per second to be nice.
AutoHeal R3 heals itself for 100 damage every 10 seconds... which, in effect, reduces the Probot's damage per second by 10. So the Combat Probot's effective dps is only 170.
Probot kills R3 in 26.5 seconds (4500 / 170). R3 kills Probot in 53 seconds (3200 / 60).
Probot wins hands down.
Message Edited by Kollos on 04-30-2004 05:23 PM
My understanding is that attack speed iscapped at 1, so anything under (for example the probot at 0.75) is actually 1, despite the figures.
Kollos wrote:
CombatProbot does 180-ish damage every second. Don't believe the stated 0.75 Attack Speed... it is obviously less than that. So that's 180 damage per second.
I have noticed that pet attack speed really isn't what is claimed when you look at the combat spam either. When destroying a lair with the pet attacking, the ration of my attacks to the pets is very evident.
But I had a thought that the to-hit percentage might be the difference, you don't see pet misses, but I never miss shooting a lair. I haven't examined it closely enough to see if the numbers work. Hasn't anyone written a log parser for SWG yet? I thought about it, but the syntax is a mess, and it started to look like work.
BTW somebody mentioned how slow droids are as a combat disadvantage. I totally agree! I got a good gurreck the other day that can run fast enough to keep up with a landspeeder, and that turns out to make a big difference in combat. At 60m, it hits my target within 2 sec of my attack command, and stops it well away from me even if I shoot first. The droid I have to send in before I fire, or the mob will be on me.
Good BE non-CH creature pets are still better tanks than anydroids, but they won't harvest or heal.However, no non-CH I have seen compares to a probot as a guard. The probot cankill something that attacked me before it canchew through my armour and do any serious damage. I hardly have to look up from the harvester I am working on.
Well if all you want is a harvester guardian, the LE will keep them off you for longer..much longer.
But on topic, Probot is the winner every time, and I have tried variuus combinations of auto repair inserts as well.
However, that said, I totally agree that the configuration should be to the benefit of the individual customer, and his skills.
And here is where the vendor only sellers lose out in a big way..people pay knowledgable people to custom craft a droid..often in a big way
2 cents again 
I have heard reports of R3 units defeating Probots of comprable quality in combat though in my experience that was not the case. However in most cases the Probot only won with a small amount of health left.
My guess is that at certain levels the R3 is a superior model. The reason for this is most likely tied to the fact that an R3 will max out at a combat rating of 600 instead of 660. In the tests I was running both droids were experimented up to about 95% and were loaded with 110 rating combat modules. Due to the cap the R3 lost about 10% of what could be its maximum combat ability while the probot did not, essentially creating a scenario where the R3 was fighting with 'one hand tied behind its back'. Yes, it did lose under those conditions, but not by very much.
My guess is that the breakpoint falls somewhere between a combat rating of 100-110 per module. If your rating per module is 100 or lower then the R3 will be able to access all the capabilities of its modules and will defeat a similarly equipped Probot.
In the end, however, the best droid will always be the probot, assuming you can generate combat modules of a high enough quality.