Droid Engineer Archive

Droid Engineer is a complex profession for crafting. No other profession has more components and layers of crafting needed to produce finished items. We are also very near the top in terms of how many named resources we need. Crafting fully featured droids by use of a factory is a challenging task, and I will list an example to highlight that.

You will find yourself running a LOT of components if you wish to offer the full range of products we can craft. At the top of the list of Most-Used-Components are (in no particular order) Droid Brains, Electronic GP Modules (GP), and Electronic Memory Modules (EMM). The EMM and GP components are actually found in the Master Artisan box, but as the vast majority of DE are also MA (due to only those 2 components), these MA parts will be included here. Check your Galaxy Trade Forums for anyone selling these parts if you wish to use those skill points in other area’s and just buy your components. Most DE I know have a backpack with a single crate of each module and component we use. This pack will end up with between 35 and 50 items in it. It makes the process of crafting a droid by hand on the fly pretty easy.

Equipment Factories take a single lot, and require Maintenance (credits) and Power (any applicable power, like Radioactive or Solar, etc…). Power is only consumed when the factory is actively running, but the Factory consumes Maintenance all the time just like a House. The Maintenance does not increase while it is making items. You can add Maintenance and Power through Radial Menu options, or use the following /commands. You must have the Power someplace in your personal inventory, but it can be nestled in a backpack if you wish. You can NOT remove excess Maintenance or Power after you have deposited it into the factory!
To add maintenance (currently turned off as of P23 for Hurricane Katrina Relief), be within 10m of it and target the factory, then type (without the “” marks) “/paymaint XXXX”, where the X’s are replaced by the amount of maintenance you wish to add.
To add Power, type “/addPower XXXX”.

Everything crafted in this game (and most loot) has a Serial Number. This unique ID is very important when you are doing complex runs of Droids and Droid parts. Some of the Droid Schematics you see in your crafting tool will be asking for a number of “Identical” components (like Advanced Brain’s or GP Modules). What this means is that the schematic is calling for 2 or more of that specific component that has the exact SAME Serial Number. The only way that you can provide the Schematic with this is if you create the needed components in a Factory first.

Manufacturing Schematics (called MS from here on) are the “blueprints” needed by Factories to mass-produce identical items. You must be by a Crafting Station or have out a Droid with the appropriate Crafting Module installed, and also be using the specific Crafting Tool for your profession. So a DE would need to be by a Weapon, General & Droid crafting station, and be using the same type of tool.
Once you have gone through the crafting process, including any experimentation you may want, you choose to create the MS instead of making a “prototype”. This loads the MS into your Datapad. Be sure you have enough resources to meet the Run Size you choose for that MS. In order for the MS to work, you must deposit the exact same resources you used to make the MS into the factory. So if you used “Chappy” copper and “Diggle” polymer to make a MS, you MUST deposit both Chappy and Diggle into the factory. To make it more complex, if the item you are making requires Identical components, you will need enough of them to fulfill the MS.

To make the MS I used…
14 Copper named Pruton
8 Chemical named Whelab (technically a Lubricating Oil)
8 Siliclastic Ore named Evegiris
5 Inert Gas named Oppe (technically a Hydron-3 Gas)
4 Metal named Esak (technically a Steel)

The factory will take the MS blueprint and the resources and produce 150 Identical (same serial numbers) Droid Brains.

Example 2:

I want to make 125 Prissy Droid Personality Chips

To make the MS I used…
13 Copper named Pruton
6 Siliclastic Ore named Evegiris
1 GP Module with serial number of (qwert56)
1 Electronic Memory Module with serial (65trewq)

Notice in the past examples that you will use up one “set” of ingredients and components in the process of making the MS. Essentially, you are burning that set in order to prepare the data for the Factory. So, technically, if you want a “perfect” factory run of 1000 items, you will need enough resources for 1,001 Items. Also note that a factory run of 1000 items is impossible if the product includes any components, since you can only make 1000 components in a Factory, and at least 1 component will be burned in the making of the MS. In our Example above with the Prissy Chips, you will only be able to run 999 of them in the factory, since one of the identical EMM and GP components needed in the Imput Hopper is burned in making the Prissy Personality Chip MS.

You load MS into the Factory through the Factory’s radial interface. Once this is done, you just load up the Ingredient Hopper with the required component crates and resources, and choose “Begin Manufacturing”.

The Factory Input Hopper for the Droid Brains we made will only have 5 inventory slots taken up, each of them by the 5 raw resources. The Input Hopper for the Prissy Personality Chips will have 12 inventory slots taken up. 2 of them for the raw resources, 5 for the EMM crates, and 5 for the GP crates. Each crate has 25 items in it… 25 x 5 =125

• Droid Brain – 14 Copper, 5 Inert Gas, 8 Siliclastic Ore, 8 Chemical, 4 Metal.


• Stupid Personality Chip – 10 Copper, 1 EMM




• EMM – 5 Polymer, 3 Copper, 2 Inert Gas, 2 Ore, 8 Metal


• Level 6 Armor (level 6 to max out the Combat Level) – 70 Duralloy Steel, 20 Steel, 25 Link Steel Aluminum, 10 Fiberplast


• Combat Module – 35 Non-Ferrous Metal, 5 Metal, 2 Inert Gas, 1 Droid Brain




• Droid Brain - 14 Copper, 5 Inert Gas, 8 Siliclastic Ore, 8 Chemical, 4 Metal.


• Auto-Heal Module (each)– 40 Steel, 20 Inert Gas, 50 Aluminum


• Combat Capable Cluster – Droid Brain, 7 Chemical, 7 Ore, 52 Metal




• Droid Brain - 14 Copper, 5 Inert Gas, 8 Siliclastic Ore, 8 Chemical, 4 Metal.


• LE Advanced Chassis – Adv Droid Frame, Droid Brain, Sensor Package, Motive System, Manipulator Arm




• Frame – 220 Steel, 70 Fiberplast


• Brain - 14 Copper, 5 Inert Gas, 8 Siliclastic Ore, 8 Chemical, 4 Metal


• Sensor – 5 Chemical, 4 Copper, 2 Inert Gas, 2 Ore, 11 Steel


• Motive – 5 Chemical, 5 Ore, 32 Metal


• Manipulator Arm – 5 Chemical, 5 Ore, 45 Metal

The hardest part is getting together the resources. You will need Quality resources for some of the stuff ( like Combat Modules) and then there are parts that can use the crappiest resource ever ( like the Personality Chips). All together you’ll need...

•Chemical - 287
•Aluminum - 100
•Steel - 100
•Steel - Duralloy - 70
•Metal - 57
•Non-Ferrous - 55
•Gas - Inert - 42
•Aluminum - Link Steel - 25
•Copper - 10
•Fiberplast - 10
•Ore – 7

That’s about 763 units of resources to make a single droid. When you go through the steps of making all the MS, you will end up burning this many resources and some change. Remember, you use up one “set” of raw resources and components to make the MS!

To make 100 LE Droids, you will need…

Thanks for being supportive of your fellow crafters...=/

And its not our fault our experimentation is borked...and is one of our top issues

GREAT guide btw...only suggestion would to be a bit more specific on how the extra resources work and how to figure them for the Manufacturing schems =)

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Idahe wrote:

Sorry, But I did not get 3 sentences in before finding a glaring error:

No other profession has more components and layers of crafting needed to produce finished items.

This statement can be refuted. Armorsmith and Chef both have equivalent (or greater) levels of crafting complexity. While there may be additional steps necessary to complete a finished droid, keep in mind that very few of those steps require experimentation. The absence of item quality effecting the finished product essentially eliminates two of the most important ‘layers’ present in crafting for other professions: resource selection and experimentation. We can make most of our best sellers with sub-par resources and our Droids will be none the worse for it.

I may be naive, but is there a market on most servers for mass-produced droids? I have never done factory runs of anything but bomb and storage MSE (save BH droids). Everything else I hand-craft. I can not imagine for how long 100 identical pre-fab droids would sit on my vendor waiting for the right 100 people to come along wanting exactly what I had already made. Every droid I make is custom-made for the owner, down to the color.

That is not to say that the creation of instructions on how to use a factory is not a valid endeavor. The instructions all appear valid and complete.

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Yes there is a Market for the mass produced droid, my best selling droid right now is my Probot with Medical Module, Attack Capabilities, CL30. I throw the AutoRepair modules in them also, for added help, as its easy to get the CL30.

Once my factories and Finished making my R3 Bomb Droids, I will start a run of the Probots.

To me this is nowa basic droid that just flies off my shelves. People place orders for these, and other load outs similar to this. The other ones I will make by hand, but it is far easier to pull one from the crate then to find what parts I need to put together.

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X Machine'Zed X
Obsidian Dagger Squadron

Nice post =)

I'm actually learning Visual Basic, and I am developing a program that allows you to select a componet and enter the number of final products you want, and have it list each resource stack and componet, as well as all the sublevel componets, and the whole thing in a tree system to account for that one set "burn" you mentioned. It would be useful even for myself. Saves some wear and tear (sp?) on my calculator.

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Akkori wrote:
Thanks all. Zalypsis, check out this spreadsheet. Its what I use. Maybe it will speed up your programming?

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