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Before i explain why i think droid commands are the worst idea ever, ill explain what im comparing them to so my thesis will be a bit clearer.

Before Droid Commands andJTL we had a system of Energy Managment. Heres how it works:

Your ship has a finte amount of energy. you can route this engergy as needed to:

Shields
Weapons
Engine

you had levels of how you set this energy:
Maximum Recharge
Increased recharge
Normal - maintain
Incresed drain
Maximum drain

Now by default, your ship placed its energy to your engine. Which means any rerouting of power will drain the amount of power available to your engine.

Heres how it works in action:

You start off with all power settings at Normal. Which means your shield and weapons maintain their current charge. They do not drain, nor recharge, they just maintain what they have.

Your shooting, so you set your weapons to increased recharge. This takes a small drain to your engine, hence you fly a tad slower. So long as you choose your shots, you wont run out of juice. SPAM however, and your cap will run dry.

You want to spam laser fire now.. so you set weapon energy to maximum recharge, but now your flying as slow as a slug. You could continue to fly slower, OR.. you could reroute some of the power from your shields by setting them to increased drain or maximum drain to get your speed back.

Your getting pummled and need your shield back.
You set your shields to maximum recharge, but ah.. were slow again, this is no good, so you dump your weapon energy as fast as you can to regain your speed.


See how it works?

It's a sytem of trade offs.

So whats the problem with droid commands?

It's like being able to set your engines, weapons ,and shields to MAX recharge. No trade offs, no downsides, its having your cake and eating it too.



Now, about those PvP issues.....*rolls eyes*

Not my idea, it was whoever made the past games idea.

Two stars for the win. I guess i must have said something painful for some folks

When I first read the title to this thread, I rolled my eyes and thought "Oh great, another crackpot who thinks everything good in life should be removed." But after reading what you said, I find myself agreeing. The current droid commands are like the buffs in the ground game: they give you plenty of benefits, but have no negatives. What you reference to, the system of energy management as seen in such games as X-Wing vs. TIE Fighter, would be a great way to rework the current droid commands. Not only does it make less possible to turn a ship into an Uber Vehicle of DOOM (TM) but it also forces a bit of strategy on the pilot. Do I reduce weapon's power to give a greater boost to my engines? Or do I siphon energy from my shields, divert the remaining shield energy to cover my rear, and use the energy I just took from the shields to increase my weapon strength?

This may be something that could be a little complicated for newer pilots, but for a basic groundwork of a new system, I think this would be great. Energy management is your friend!

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Salco wrote:
When I first read the title to this thread, I rolled my eyes and thought "Oh great, another crackpot who thinks everything good in life should be removed." But after reading what you said, I find myself agreeing. The current droid commands are like the buffs in the ground game: they give you plenty of benefits, but have no negatives. What you reference to, the system of energy management as seen in such games as X-Wing vs. TIE Fighter, would be a great way to rework the current droid commands. Not only does it make less possible to turn a ship into an Uber Vehicle of DOOM (TM) but it also forces a bit of strategy on the pilot. Do I reduce weapon's power to give a greater boost to my engines? Or do I siphon energy from my shields, divert the remaining shield energy to cover my rear, and use the energy I just took from the shields to increase my weapon strength?

This may be something that could be a little complicated for newer pilots, but for a basic groundwork of a new system, I think this would be great. Energy management is your friend!

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The solution to droid commands isn't scrap them and make it like Xwing and tie fighter. (But I'll be the first to admit that system was almost flawless and shouldn't have been reworked like this...) The game system in place can't be changed the way you say without some major overhauls of the game. So in the interests of making the game more fun very soon, lets focus on what we can do to fix the droid commands. Because my gut is that if the devs didn't implement it way back when they were building this expansion they are not likely to do it now.

The imperial droid commands (cept WO3) are balanced, u lose performance in one area and gain it in another. The freelancer commands give performance and do not take it from another. Lets come up with some solutions for how to give reactor overload/capacitor overload/cap to shield shunt droid commands negatives. And some discussion on the status of the rebel droid commands would help too.

I wasnt saying to scrap them (although id love it if they did) i was just commenting on why i think their a very bad design decision.

But your right, like it or not, were stuck with them now.

I also was not suggesting entirely scrapping the Droid Commands, but yes, the overhaul I put forth is a bit...complete.

First of all, I think the negatives should be worse than just higher reactor drain (as in the case of Engine Overload). It should be a much more noticeable performace negative, along the lines of decreasing the performance of another system that is actively used. For instance, using Capacitor Overcharge should result in lower damage for weapons. And if you use Weapon Overcharge, it should result in MUCH higher capacitor drain (as opposed to the *cough* bugged *cough* reduced capacitor drain we have now).

I can hear the flamers saying that we're going to make it impossible to fight in space any more, but if you really depend on programs that much to buff your ship, you need to find another profession, or stay out of Deep Space. Maybe by reducing the effectiveness of droid programs, pilots will also team up more...or just not fly any more.

1 star bandit strikes again.

Anyone who said anything bad about droid commands got "teh 1 star"

Somebody's bitter, and i find it amusing.

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Menyor wrote:

honestly, i'm kind of a fan of the droid programs. i've never used WO3, as it's broken, and i guess i just like to play fair. i also only use the imperial droid commands, as i'm imperial and i've never really felt the need to get other chips. anyway, as far as i can tell, with the exception of WO3, is that the droid commands work pretty well. when i use WO2, it eats away at my capacitor, but does more damage, obviously. reverse for weapon tuning. so i think the weapon commands work well. now for engine overload...there's no downfall at all to using them. i mean, i like that, but technically speaking, there should be some sort of opposite effect...and i haven't figured out what engine tuning is for. i would think it's supposed to be engine overload gives you a higher top speed, with a cost in ypr, and the reverse for engine tuning. that would give different reasons to use different droid commands, and actually give you a reason to actually have a good droid interface, as you might need to change during combat. as for the privateer and reb commands, i haven't used them, so i don't really know about them.

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Engine Overload results in increased Speed, as well as increased Energy Maintanence for the engine; on the other hand, I belive Engine Tuning is the opposite (although I've never used it myself).

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Ducimus wrote:
Your shooting, so you set your weapons to increased recharge. This takes a small drain to your engine, hence you fly a tad slower. So long as you choose your shots, you wont run out of juice. SPAM however, and your cap will run dry.

You want to spam laser fire now.. so you set weapon energy to maximum recharge, but now your flying as slow as a slug. You could continue to fly slower, OR.. you could reroute some of the power from your shields by setting them to increased drain or maximum drain to get your speed back.

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This is based on the idea that your reactor is already maxed out, which is not always the case. There are a few options:

1) increasing energy effeciency = boost without extra reactor drain (though, may be the result of bypassing recommended safety power regulators, etc)
2) ignoring system limits and overcharging them (and increasing reactor drain), at risk of damaging the hardware.

3) decreasing power to other systems to increase reactor output capacity so that other systems can be overcharged.

4) moving power stored in a power storing system (shields or capacitor) from one to the other.


Increasing capacitor max capacity, would have no affect on a reactor or other system, its just abusing the capacitor's design specs. Storing extra power in the shields...debatable as it could take more energy to sustain a stronger energy field, so that could be arguable that it would cause extra reactor drain anyway.
However, the main power draws are in recharging shields, capacitor, and (presumably) boosters, and in keeping the current speed up. Each component, though it makes sense it has a variable power consumption rate, I think they all have static draw rates.

If you do want a system to get into load balancing though, the only way you could hurt your engine speed, is to not only draw more energy into non-engine systems than is recommended, but to the extent that the power consumption rates of all devices go over the current power generation maximum of that reactor. Then, something has to give, and it could be the max speed. If you do introduce that idea, then reactor drain from the engine, should vary, from 50% when 'idling' at zero, up to 100% at full throttle. Shields should drain 50% of their main power level to maintain them when they are not recharging, and 100% when they are not full and need to increase their charge. Capacitor should not draw full power when its full and you have not fired a shot in 20 minutes.

I do think it makes sense to have risks involved in pushing your systems beyond safety levels. The easiest method would be the 'overheat' idea, where heat builds, and decreases, at fixed rates when you overpower a system. Any system that charges up, increases heat, and when it hits max charge, heat goes down. Overcharge the shield regen but take hits constantly for 5 minutes, you overheat the shields. Spam shots on an overcharged capacitor for 5 minutes without letting it top out and rest, causes it to overheat. Overheating a capacitor could damage a weapon system or the capacitor itself, and cause it to reset to normal. Similar with shields.
It would be fun to have the level of control, that you could change reactor priority of any system, so overcharging the reactor would penalize the system(s) of your choice, and allow you to overpower other systems. Technically, you could install a bigger capacitor that is not over its own specs, but forces the engines to draw less power due to reactor consumption.

Well its a bit of a ramble, but the thing I wanted to point out is that engine speed hit would only occur when you max out other systems at the expense of your reactor's max capacity. If you installed a heavy duty reactor that produces 14000 power and your systems draw 12000 normally, pushing an extra 1000 power consumption rate to the capacitor may abuse the capacitor but never hurt engine speed or even cause the reactor to strain for a moment.