Droid Engineer Archive

I wish I'd taken screenshots of this.

Last night I built an ADV R4 unit for a friend of mine, equipped with storage and level 6 medical. I did no experimenting, no color customization. Everything went smoothly, no critical fails. He asks me to program the droid for him, so I tame the deed and out pops a TEAL R4 droid with BLUE trim. I say "wow, that's odd," but program the droid anyway. I store it, then call it out again, and this time it's TAN with TEAL trim (which is really ugly, btw).

Well now I start to laugh, because A) the droid looks silly, and B) we know how notorious Rs are for not keeping *any* color, yet this one seems to be choosing its own. I store it & call it out again as an experiment. This time I get the message "your droid's customization has completely faded away..." and the droid is bright red with pink trim. It still obeys commands, but the customization rating in the datapad is gone.

I give the droid to my friend and ask him to call it. Sure enough, the droid is teal/blue again.

I would have experimented more, but he had to log out.

Has anyone else experienced this? Does it have anything to do with my skill? I'm DE 1-0-0-4.

OH & before anyone asks what I'm doing with level 6 medical modules, I bought them from a MDE friend of mine.

Seems all the ADV series (might just be the ADV R series) droids have a complex. They will change color everytime you pull em out, until you customize them with a tool. Then the color will stick.

Yup that's exactly right - if you want to colour your droid effectively, you have to do it with a customisation tool when it's been tamed and called. Even THIS paint job will wear off eventually, however.

Its called the W.O.O.S (wizard of Oz Syndrom) named after the horses with the ever changing colors.

Thanks for the info!

How about the message I got saying the droid's customization faded away completely? Isn't that supposed to last for 20 calls?

Kettlemore: I am lookng to buy an R4, boxey headed looking one. But I wanted specific colors. From what I'm reading does that mean after a certain time,.my droid will lose its colors? Providing I got the colors I wanted to begin with.

If so,..what about those Boxey POwer Droids? are they subject to the color bug? Can they come in permanent colors?

And, finally,..if they colors customization reaches zero, do they turn white? or pop to a random color and stay that way?

Ty,...oh,.if R4's(( or PowerDriods) can have permantent colors, and you can make them, on Kettlemore,.leave yer name,.I'lll shoot ya an email : )
Peace

Some notes of interest:

1) All new droids will hold their color, once customized.

2) R2s, R3s, R4s, R5s, Mouse Droids, and Power Droids, will show up in random colors, but will hold their color oncecustomized, IF they were made after Oct. 10. All of these droids will pull out as grey and white, or grey and red, and will NOT hold their color if customized, IF they were made before Oct 10.

Now for my rant <rant>Another half-implemented upgrade by the developers. I know I'm being a bit harsh here, butit's these types of work practices which cause grief. Like the guy who will build you a computer out of his garage for cheap, but will never put the cover on it. There will always be something wrong with it that could be easily fixed. Ifthe SWG developers aregoing to do anything, (like an upgrade on a particular piece of code), they need to follow through and finish the job. Else, there will always be something wrong with each piece of code they change.</rant>

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SnowDog2003 wrote:

1) All new droids will hold their color, once customized.

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What I mean is that the droid CAN be colored. Over the course of about a week, or so, the color will fade. I had to repaint my probot last night, after about 7 days of use.

I had this happen to me with an R2 unit I was going to sell to someone. I pulled it out and it looked teal. I put it away and pulled it out again and it looked orange red. I then used the droid customization tool and the droid stayed in the traditional blue and white. I sold it and asked the guy who bought it to pull it out so I can make sure the color stuck. He pulled it out twice and it stayed the same.

The color on my own power droid keeps falling off... and I can't get by friend's R4 to stick.

Wasn't this supposed to be fixed last week?

The 20 call thing is a myth, I have tested this several times.

In my experimentations I conducted last week on an advanced R2 droid, this is what I got:

Attempt one
18 calls - No "Droid customisation has faded a little more" message, but on the 18th call reverts to random colours

Attempt two
I lost count at how many times I called it this time. However, I would say it was WAY more than 30.

Attempt three
The final attempt was spread over a course of 4 days. At around the 25th call, I started to receive the message that it had faded a little more. After about 4 of those messages, it reverted to random colours.

My point is that I think it has more factors than amount of calls. I think it could also be related to commands and length of time called... not sure on this though.

I *DO* think droid colours should fade. The analogy of car colours not fading? Well they don't "fade" but they DO get chipped. Also, when a damaged part of a car (i,e, a wing) is replied, that section needs to be "repainted" as well.

The reduction of colour in a droid should be based on damage, usage and repair. Each time your droid gets "hit", it should gain a new "chip" which would reduce 1 colourisation point. Each time you whip the droid out it should lose one point to show usage ... droids get dirty! Each time the droid is repaired, it should lose 1 point of colourisation to show that the paint has been effected by the repair.

The colourisation tool isn't just a "painter" it should be a "cleaner" as well. Just remember that at the end of ANH R2 got borked ... after he had been repaired, he would have HAD to have been cleaned up and re-painted.

However, how colour *SHOULD* fade is as follows:
At certain "colourisation" points, the colour should change to a darker version. So basicaly, a DE should only be able to paint the brighter choice of each colour .. as it fades, it slowly gets noticeably darker. When it reaches its final shade, it will remain that shade until "cleaned" or "painted".

thank god its not just me, thought my eye's were playing tricks

my R2 unit is red sometimes, then green other times, then purple other times, i kinda like the fact that he is different each time I call him.

I love my droid just wish it could do something other than look weird, beep allot and eat batterys....