Droid Engineer Archive

Never been an AS, so hard to compare.
However, I will try to answer your questions at my best.

1)There are indeed alot of factor to concider, so it's hard to tell.
If you're used to plan your factory run and don't plan to stock your vendor with every droid combinaison possible, you should be OK.
DE have now the possibility to specialise, giving more room on the market for other DE, but if you want to sell everything a DE can do, you'll have nightmares.

2)Named and quality depend resources are 2 different things.
We have quite a few named resources, but most of them aren't a problem really. Again, if you specialize, it'll limit your needs.
Quality dependant is another story.
Some of our modules require high quality resources. Unfortunately, the best resources for us are also the best for WS or AS. Raising the prices quite high sometimes.
And yet again, if you specialize in harvesting droid/combat droids for exemple, you'll need loads of those. But if you specialize in entertainer module and medical droids, you won't care about the quality, except for the final deed, for HAM, but that's not a big problem usually.

3) I think you might be pleased with DE. Most of the customers, if they don't know a DE or don't come on the forum will need alot of education to be done.
Droid deeds lack of alot of the most basic informations, so you'll even end up doing manuals for your droids.

Hope that help.

PS : If you're tired of the all compo of AS, in DE it's usually all R3, but you can do loads of different R3.

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DirthNader wrote:

I originally created my Shadowfire character to become a DE. Along my way up the engineering tree, I fell in love with armorsmithing. I've been doing it for what feels like a long time - probably the better part of six or seven months. I've accomplished every goal I had set out for myself, and don't need any more money - an armorsmith "retirement" sale would probably push me close to 100 million in the bank.

I'm seriously considering moving over to the DE profession. It'd be very exciting to learn a new craft, and just seeing new schematics when I opened up my datapad would be refreshing. I've got a few questions though...

1.) How brisk is an average DE business? I'm sure there's a lot of variation, but in general how busy does your average DE stay dealing with the shop, the factories, the customers, etc? Keeping a full stock of sliced armor and helping folks is wearing me out. It's gotten to the point where I'm getting tells before I've even zoned in, and whileI don't have the heart to flat out ignore people I'm growing tired of my play sessions feeling like a part time job.

I make about a million a week in Droid sales, minus expenses, about 500k a week. I have decent business. You will find that you have less customers as a DE then a weaponsmith. However, you will either need to answer Droid questions, some cna be complicated, or write a lot of detailed descriptions on your product. You will find you need more factory parts then as a weaponsmith.

DE is fun, you have a lot more options then you do with AS.

2.) How dependent do you feel on named, quality-dependent resources? I looked over the resource guide, and it seemed most of the named, quailty dependent resources went into components. Are those components frequently used? Is it absolutely necessary to use the best resources on them to produce a quality product? Another thing I'm growing tired of in armorsmithing is that life stops whena named resource comes into shift with good OQ + SR.

Very. We use over 50 resources, many of which are named. By not selling Droid stims, you can reduce the amount of named resources by a lot.

3.) How much custom business is there? I loved doing custom work back when my sales weren't forcing me to constantly tend factories and vendors. I'd love to get back to helping people one-on-one, and educating them about the craft and what my wares could do for them in whatever role they play. I've felt like a huge **edit** in game for months, because short of RIS, I don't have time for any custom work or Q&A sessions.

It depends. I stock a lot on my vendor, so I don't get a lot of custom orders. However, as I travel, I do end up making some droids on the spot for people. A lot of this will depend on how much you advertize and what type of clientel you have.

Thanks for your time! I really want to continue as a SWG crafter, but I simply can't keep up with the demands of being an armorsmith. I'm hoping that DE can be just as rewarding, and not feel like a part time job.

One last thing, I sincerely hope there's no hint of armorsmith snobbery in my post, and that it doesn't seem as if I'm looking down on DE's. If there is, I truly apologize, as that's not my intent at all. I simply can't stand to make anything less that the best in RL or in SWG, and unfortuneately when you mix that with armorsmithing you become extremely busy.

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Well along with being DE, I'm also our guild resource manager, so I help our armorsmith with resources, so maybe I can help.