Scout Archive
Thread: Info on Trapping / Harvesting droids:
Harvests: All bone from mountain dewbacks ("medium size"), checked each configuration 3+ times. I am 0030 ranger.
-------------------------------------
Me harvesting, solo: 44 units
Me harvesting, grouped with creature pet: 44 units
Droid Harvesting, grouped with it and pets: 47 units
Me harvesting, grouped with droid and pet: 44 units
So, that appears to be working correctly, albeit a semi smallish bonus. Droid's harvest bonus rating of 81 led to a bonus of 6.8%.
Trapping:
-------------------------------------
Module worked as reported. I could load in traps, up to the amount listed on the deed (each individual trap counts as 1 spot, not each stack). Droid seemed to fire a trap every 5 seconds if I queued up more than one, independent of my combat queue. Only allowed me to load 1 type, even with more than one trap module.
According to the DE that was working on these droids for me (thanks J'Vee!), the trapping module *storage* seems to cap out at 2 modules. He got 24 storage for each, so 48 max traps stored. Not sure if there is a bonus to your to-hit of traps or anything for stacking beyond that.
I think that I'll really like having a 4x harvest 2x trap R3 with me whenever I am hunting, loaded up with phecnacine darts, or adhesive mesh. For when I really want to stock up on resources, I might use a 6x harvest module droid as well.
Hmmm so it does seem to actually give a bonus to harvesting? Well I'm very glad to hear that, which means its actually useful and worth, money, time and effort.
Trapping droids can hold 48 traps with 2 modules in it? Not sure I read that right, but I think thats what you said. Should be good enough for me, load up with Phec. darts.
if the droid harvests something can you harvest the creature as well?
this is the part i'm confused about
Squidwalker wrote:Trapping droids can hold 48 traps with 2 modules in it? Not sure I read that right, but I think thats what you said. Should be good enough for me, load up with Phec. darts.
Yep, 48 traps stored with 2 modules. P. darts are my favorites as well, and have been working well in the droid for me.
Hakai wrote:the thing i noticed with these droids...it's more like a
*point at carcass*
"FETCH!!!!!!"
The "fetching" part is somewhat slow. My R3 takes more time to run up to a carcass and harvest it than I would, not sure if a probot or something else would be faster. However you can just sit in one place, pick stuff off, tell the droid to harvest and move on to the next target. This can even be done from a mount.
XiLorith wrote:Do the creatures attack the droid as it tries to strip their friend of all of their bone or hide or meat???
XiLorith
I haven't had the droid draw aggro for just being in the area around aggressive creatures, or for harvesting. If the droid is close to something, and it notices *you* (not the droid), it may decide to attack the droid, but unless something draws the creature into combat this will not happen. As a side note, droids with no combat modules are "cowardly", and will turn tail and run like the wind if they are attacked. So, if you are going to have a droid running around piles of dead rancors while you pick stuff of from long range, it might be a good idea to get at least 1 combat module put in so the droid will hold its ground when attacked.
Kevie wrote:if the droid harvests something can you harvest the creature as well?
this is the part i'm confused about
Either you or the droid can harvest something, not both. If you have the droid harvest, it will get a different amount than you do; possibly less if you have low quality modules, or not enough modules stacked. I'd say that from what I hear, you break even at around 2 average quality modules.
MasterNerfSlayer wrote:
An extra 3 units? how worthless is that...
It depends on the quality of the droid. That droid had a harvest bonus of +81. The max should be around +120 (fully loaded R3), which may give over 20% increase in yield.A lower quality droid may even harvest less. You have to stack more modules together to get a higher bonus.
I've yet to see any definite numbers in regards to at whatdroid harvest bonusthe droid will harvest more than you, or what the maximum is. With more testing over the next few days I suppose we'll have a better idea.
But I'd like to ask Scout's what increase in harvesting would you find useful?
I, and I'm sure many DE's,will be making droids that will have both creature harvest and trap projectile mods, but it's a bit unclear atm how to balance these modules against each other. Would you sacrifice the number of traps it can carry to get a higher harvest yield, or visa versa? Would you settle for 10% if it could hold more traps?
Would you want a item storage module in there to hold the harvest for you (the harvest will go directly into the droid first if it has space, otherwise to goes into your inventory), which may decrease it's efficiency further?
Harvest Module Test Results
Okay. I've done extensive testing of the Harvest Module and have come up with several observations that I'm going to share here.
First of all, the module does work. More or less as advertised. You have a droid with a harvest module and you have at least novice scout, you can send it off to harvest things while you keep killing more. And if it doesn't have an inventory of its own (storage module), it just dumps the resource into your own inventory. The droid does NOT automatically harvest, it follows your command to harvest, so as soemthing falls (becomes a corpse), you have to tell the droid 'Harvest' (or whatever you have it programmed as) and wait for it to start moving before you can change target. Or get your next attack started and then select the corpse and tell it to go.
As for the thought of these droids being bonuses to your own skill - this is where it gets confusing. I'll do my best to explain what I have observed.
First and foremost, this is not a straight up bonus like Veghash is. It is much more subtle than that. A +27 veghash will increase ANY person's harvest rate. A +27 droid will only increase, say, a Novice Scout's rate. Here are some numbers to help illustrate that.
Using Gurk Trackers to sample and a player with +45 Creature Harvest, we get 79 units of meat. With +27 veghash, that's pushed up to 89u. A +31 droid only increases it from 79 to 80. And a +16 actually DROPS it to 77. A Ranger coming in at +90 (not master, that'd be +100) harvests 97u. With the same veghash, that's pushed up to 115u. With a +31 droid, they FALL to 94u. And with the +16, their take is a pitiful 91u.
So, we've proven that the +XX droid does not have the same type of effect as +XX veghash. So how DOES it work? Well, it's a relationship of your skill to the droid's bonus. It seems like the 'break even point' is where the droid has 70% your skill, though to verify that I need the +90 ranger to use a +63ish droid. Anything above that point can bring in larger returns. Sort of. Here are two examples:
The +45 harvesting scout can bring in 79u. 91u with the +105 droid. 89u with Veghash. And 104u with Veghash AND droid. That means the 105 droid is a 15% gain over the player harvesting for himself. That's slightly better than the 13% boost the player gets from using the veghash. But the player on veghash sees an additional 17% boost using the droid, which means a total boost from no-veghash, no-droid of roughly 32%. Not insignificant.
Now, let's look at the +90 player, who brings in 97u without any help. 109u with the +105 droid. 115 with the +27 Veghash. And 122 with both Veghash AND droid. This player only sees a 12% boost using the droid, but a 19% boost using the veghash. And only a 6% gain using the droid on top of the veghash for a total boost from no help of 26%.
So, as you go up in skill, the bonus a droid can provide decreases. Furthermore, if your droid is too far below you in 'skill', it will actually hinder you. And the higher your own skill, the more outstanding the droid has to be to show any real gain for you.
Finally, it should be noted that droids with harvest modules act as the player when it comes to harvesting. The droid can harvest or you can harvest. Not both. And if you are grouped with another player, you take a 40% hit to your harvest rate, which the droid will then boost. The droid is not immune to grouping 40% penalty - it's only immune to getting hit with the penalty when it's grouped with you.
The big advantage to droids, really, is the ability to be harvesting WHILE you're fighting. In large groups, there's invariably someone who runs around harvesting while everyone else is fighting, which means that by the time everyone else is out of the combat, corpses are starting to disappear. With this droid module, everyone can harvest right away, fight or no fight, eliminating all the yelling at impatient players who harvest right away no matter how many times they're yell...reminded.
-V
The problem I see is that these new droid modules provide no benefit to someone with novice scout. I am TKM / M.Doc, I kill things fast, I can harvest fast, I learnt through practice, but I still don't end up with many organics. I have always needed meat and hide since I started playing the game. This droid slows me down. I see no reason to have a droid. This hurts me, because it is so un star wars. Droids are meant to be useful.
The soultion? Is simple. Allow the droid to harvest as well as the player, or *gasp* at double the rate of the player... This profession needs a boost in it's ability to make money, this is one way to help out. If a group of 20 runs around killing pikets, not all will get to harvest it before it disappears, but why not allow people and their droids to harvest? Why can something in this game that has high "star warsy feel" potential be so useless to the majority of the community?
Maybe the devs feel that restricting the flow of organics is the only way to limit chefs, docs, armoursmiths from making more than a couple of items... I don't know.. but it's not exactly fun. It's not star wars. I have no compelling reason to have or use a droid. Yes my droid has a 110 med module, but I know that is a bug and is likely to be changed to 65 or there abouts in the future, making a droids even more useless, just like pets. I remember when people actually wanted pets.
MasterNerfSlayer wrote:
The problem I see is that these new droid modules provide no benefit to someone with novice scout. I am TKM / M.Doc, I kill things fast, I can harvest fast, I learnt through practice, but I still don't end up with many organics. I have always needed meat and hide since I started playing the game. This droid slows me down. I see no reason to have a droid. This hurts me, because it is so un star wars. Droids are meant to be useful.
I find this droid to BE useful. I can harvest more (Scout Hunting 4, +105 droid) with the droid than without from a given corpse. Perhaps only by eight or ten units, but every unit counts.
I am NOT a TKM/MD. It takes me longer to kill the creatures than it does to harvest. I can have the droid harvesting A while I'm killing B. That's a time-saver for me. It actually helps me quite a bit to not kill one round at a lair, then run around to harvest them all, go back to my shooting position and tap the lair and repeat the procedure. As soon as the last beast in a round falls, I can be tapping the lair because the droid has already harvested everything for me.
The soultion? Is simple. Allow the droid to harvest as well as the player, or *gasp* at double the rate of the player... This profession needs a boost in it's ability to make money, this is one way to help out. If a group of 20 runs around killing pikets, not all will get to harvest it before it disappears, but why not allow people and their droids to harvest? Why can something in this game that has high "star warsy feel" potential be so useless to the majority of the community?
Poor lack of teamwork and coordination, then. The corpse-disappear timer gets SIGNIFICANTLY shorter after the first harvest. If you have everyone in your group HOLD OFF harvesting until everything in the current wave of critters is dead, then everyone DOES get a chance to harvest. Once we got that through the heads of my guildies, our guild-hunts were much more successful. Though, if everyone has droids, everyone can send the droids around to harvest DURING The fight and nobody misses out. That's a bonus there, isn't it?
Maybe the devs feel that restricting the flow of organics is the only way to limit chefs, docs, armoursmiths from making more than a couple of items... I don't know.. but it's not exactly fun. It's not star wars. I have no compelling reason to have or use a droid. Yes my droid has a 110 med module, but I know that is a bug and is likely to be changed to 65 or there abouts in the future, making a droids even more useless, just like pets. I remember when people actually wanted pets.
MasterNerfSlayer wrote:
The problem I see is that these new droid modules provide no benefit to someone with novice scout. I am TKM / M.Doc, I kill things fast, I can harvest fast, I learnt through practice, but I still don't end up with many organics. I have always needed meat and hide since I started playing the game. This droid slows me down. I see no reason to have a droid. This hurts me, because it is so un star wars. Droids are meant to be useful.
The soultion? Is simple. Allow the droid to harvest as well as the player, or *gasp* at double the rate of the player... This profession needs a boost in it's ability to make money, this is one way to help out. If a group of 20 runs around killing pikets, not all will get to harvest it before it disappears, but why not allow people and their droids to harvest? Why can something in this game that has high "star warsy feel" potential be so useless to the majority of the community?
Maybe the devs feel that restricting the flow of organics is the only way to limit chefs, docs, armoursmiths from making more than a couple of items... I don't know.. but it's not exactly fun. It's not star wars. I have no compelling reason to have or use a droid. Yes my droid has a 110 med module, but I know that is a bug and is likely to be changed to 65 or there abouts in the future, making a droids even more useless, just like pets. I remember when people actually wanted pets.
*sigh* yes this is a rant, I'm just tired of thestar wars feeling constantly being nerfed from barely existant to non-existant.
I'm a TKM/Doc 4-4-4-0/Scout 1-1-4-0 and I have to say this is a big let down. I've honed my critter harvesting so that when I'm done I generally have 10 - 20 corpses lying at my feet. I don't needa droid to run around and harvest things to save me a few steps. I need a droid to increase my yeild. Now I've bid 150k of hard earned creds on something that might help me by 1% - 3%? That's terrible.