Scout Archive
Thread: Harvesting Droids: Buyers Guide
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RozhlokLightningskull
Wed May 05, 2004 12:21 am
#1
There seems to be a little confusion and even some contempt for these beautiful little devices in the Scout forum as of late. So I think I need to clear the air a little on these guys.
First and foremost, these things are not a replacement for Master Scout/Ranger. They do not make either profession useless. Every level of scout and ranger receives their benefits. You must also be at least a novice scout to use one. In the past month I have made more money using my Master Scout hunting skills than I have using my Master Bounty Hunter skills. So please, never say scout is useless. There is a lot of demand for creature structural resources out there. You just got to know what's in demand and what to hunt.
Now that, that's out of the way: You'll want to find a good droid, that will harvest *at least* as much as you can. After spending a couple of hours checking every DE vendor on Naboo and Corellia and coming up empty, I hit my galaxy trade forum and scanned the board for MDEs advertising their wares. If you don't find an advertisment put in a WTB post, stating what you're looking for.
Step 1: Make sure that the quality of module your DE can craft will give you some bonus to harvesting (around 3% per module).
I found a MDE that was selling droids with the new modules so I made the trip out to his shop. He didn't have anything on his vendor, but, lucky for me he was sitting in his shop. So I had him make me a custom harvestor droid. He told me that the modules he was making gave a 3% bonus to creature harvesting and that they stacked. So an Adv R3 with six modules would provide me with an 18% bonus. This droid cost me 31K and is an Adv. R3 droid.
Step 2:Setting upyour droid.
You will need to program your droid to harvest. First you pick what you want your droid to harvest. There are four options meat, hide, bone and random. Then you program a harvest command. When you select to program harvest a question mark will appear above your droids head. Type in a command, for example "harvest". An explanation mark will appear over your droid's head indicating it has accepted your command.
Now create a macro you can place on your toolbar called HarvestCorpse. In order to save space on my toolbars I have oneFatality Macro that looks like this: /loot;/deathblow;/tellpet harvest.
You can also choose to program your droid with other commands (attack, stay, follow, store, etc) using the same method. To name your droid you need to program your droid with the name. You do this by programming a command (like stay, follow, attack, etc) with the name preceeding the command, for example: Gort stay. Do this for three commands and the droid "learns" its new name.
Step 3: Using your droid.
To use your droid in the field pull him out of your datapad. I find its best to group with my droid. You no longer receive a 40% penality for being grouped with pets. This was Fixed in publish 8.
Now engage your target. After you have killed your target immediately click on your harvest macro. At this point you may target your next kill, while your droid goes out and retreives the goods. Your droid can still harvest while you are in combat. This is another advantage to the droids. If you send your droid to harvest your target after each kill then its easier to keep track of what you need to harvest.
After you droid harvests the corpse you will receive a message stating a droid has harvested X number of resources from the creature. One thing I noticed is that the message doesn't tell you if the creature was fat, medium or small.
My droid, with six harvester modules, has no other modules so the resources are placed directly in my inventory. I do not know if having a storeage module will place the resource in the droid or not. But, I thought I read somewhere that it did.
Since I got my harvester droid I've only harvested kaadu (some good avian meat right now) so I can't comment much on creature aggroing on your droid. One lair spawned an Kaadu Trampler who are aggro (red) and he did aggro on the droid. The droid (having no combat modules) ran off in another direction, bringing the kaadu with it. I had to burst run to catch up with the poor little guy to save him.
Step 4: Maintaining your droid.
At some point your droid will run out of power and need to be recharged. In this case you will need to have plenty of droid batteries on your person. If you do an /examine on your droid you will see just how much power your droid has remaining. It appears as a percentage. Droid batteries are pretty easy to come by on any DE vendor's site or even on the Bazaar. I recommend buying them in crates.
There are also droid customization kits you can buy to color your droid. These work just like vehicle customization kits. Pull out your droid and then use the customization kit and color your droid how you see fit.
Conclusion.
Harvestor droids are a great tool for any Scout/Ranger resource hunter. They allow you to harvest more resources and they allow you to be more efficient in your killing and harvesting. I highly recommend these droids to any resource hunter.
Marrow1
Wed May 05, 2004 4:04 pm
#2
Very nice post.
My comments regarding my doid are.
1. Dang that guy is slow.
2. He is a bit lazy. I will tell him to harvest and half the time he just stops long before he gets to the creature. So I have to tell him again. You have to really pay attention.
3. Is range stink. He has to go right up onto the creature, where as I can stand far off and still harvest.
4. I did not understand the rating system. Is a 100 droid just as good as a 105 droid?. I believe 120 is max but I have not seen any to test out the difference.
5. I have to protect the little guy or he runs off.
6. My 100 does give a nice bonus (not sure of the exact %).
7. If I eat Vegash (sp) the harvesting food that is stacks with the droid.
8. He will harvest while I hunt but you have to time the command carefuly so that you still have the creature that you killed targeted when you hit the command. It is obvious on paper but a pain in practice.
9. I cant seem to get it to stack commands. It will only harvest one creature then wait for you to tell it to harvest the next. If you try to do multiple ones before it has finished then it only does the last one and ignores the first.
10. Calling and storing is a pain. If your hunting agressive creatures or in a hostile planet then it is a real pain becuese you can't call pets while in combat.
Over all if your harvesting valuable meat like avian then it is worth the effort but otherwise I would not bother.
RozhlokLightningskull
Wed May 05, 2004 4:51 pm
#3
Marrow1 wrote:
Very nice post.
My comments regarding my doid are.
9. I cant seem to get it to stack commands. It will only harvest one creature then wait for you to tell it to harvest the next. If you try to do multiple ones before it has finished then it only does the last one and ignores the first.
10. Calling and storing is a pain. If your hunting agressive creatures or in a hostile planet then it is a real pain becuese you can't call pets while in combat.
Those are two importantpoints I wanted to touch on, but forgot.
If we could queue commands up for the droid (instead of interrupt) it would really add some zing to these new droid modules.
Also, I wish there was a way my droid could ride on my bike with me. Of course, like a good scout I should have a crate of camps on me. But, since they took away the camp requirement I stopped carrying them.
Faymar
Tue May 11, 2004 2:52 pm
#4
Regarding the rating ... there is a lovely post on the DE boards going into detail but to recap the main issue:
The rating must be 70% of your own skill in order for you not to have a detriment.
So with Harvesting skill of 100, any harvesting droid with a rating under 70 will harvest less than you do.
Clearly, you want as high a rating as possible (max is 120) within your budget in order to gain the most benefit.
Tarne_Monter
Tue May 11, 2004 3:14 pm
#5
Actually from the data I've seen it's closer to 50%
That's why I have that Harvest Droid stats thread up, the more data I can get the more of a feeling for how the harvesting rating on the droid works, which I can then report to all you guys who use them.
Also, If you don't want the droid to run away in combat have your local DE put in a combat module while they craft it. That should eliminate the running away factor.
Edit: Added additional info.
That's why I have that Harvest Droid stats thread up, the more data I can get the more of a feeling for how the harvesting rating on the droid works, which I can then report to all you guys who use them.
Also, If you don't want the droid to run away in combat have your local DE put in a combat module while they craft it. That should eliminate the running away factor.
Edit: Added additional info.
Message Edited by Tarne_Monter on 05-11-2004 04:15 PM
Faymar
Tue May 11, 2004 3:18 pm
#6
Would be great to get a decent sized data sample on the harvesting, absolutely!
The issue with a combat droid, as has been reported to me (second hand info) is that it goes into combat and will not harvest until it's out of combat. So if you are pulling a large amount at once and counting on the droid to harvest for you while you keep fighting (i.e. keeping corpses from fading) my understanding is that the combat module is a detriment. Whereas if it runs away, you can /tellpet the harvest command and it will run back and harvest.
Kevie
Tue May 11, 2004 6:35 pm
#7
i have an R3 with 3.3k ham.... it survives a lot of beating on endor
also you must keep a watch and see if the "cannot access that target"message pops up after you tell your droid to harvest..... if that does, you will need to tell himagain
i just had an idea to tell your pet several times all at once.... i wonder if that would work or just give you three cannot access target messages if it can't...... i'll test it tomorrow 
and i'm so with you on the queu of commands so your droid can go harvest a bunch while you still fighting
Shilak
Wed May 12, 2004 5:05 am
#8
I have one of these little guys, used it for a couple of missions and now I dont even bother with it. The additional time and effort of calling it, instructing it andchasingit when it gets agro mean I actually harvest less over time than I do without it. They need fixing because at the moment they are nothing more than game fluff.
1) Make them automatically harvest what you kill. Droids arent totally stupid, Im sure an advanced R3 could keep track of which mobs you have killed and it hasnt harvested yet.
2) Remove the grouping requirement. It causes them to get additional agro.
3) Change the AI so that when they get agro theydont run away. Standing still bleeping for help or moving back to us would make them a lot more user friendly.
Kevie
Wed May 12, 2004 4:19 pm
#9
Shilak wrote:
2) Remove the grouping requirement. It causes them to get additional agro.
what grouping requirement? they can harvest if they're not in your group..... is that what you're referring to?
Sojourner
Thu May 13, 2004 4:49 pm
#12
RaafeSendron wrote:
Hey, don't know if this is a bug or not, but I can still harvest with my droid after I completely dropped scout. I was hunting avian on Talus when I noticed decent Lok Wheat had dropped, so I had to drop scout and retrain in artisan so I could survey. Went back to Talus and forgot to retrain in scout. First time I told droid to harvest, he did but I lost 33000 scout xp. Continued to harvest for about 4 more hours with no problems, other than the fact that the droid harvesteda littleless than he did before. Has anyone else ran into this?
Hmm, definate bug! A few more details might be helpful for the Devs....
A) Was the droid out before (and continiously) you surrendered Novice Scout?
B) You mentioned harvesting for four hours, did you stop hunting/logout or did it simply stop?
C) Did this persist after logging out and logging in?
DeltaXi65
Thu May 13, 2004 9:16 pm
#13
Guys,
Runesabre just confirmed this to me, and the hotfix is in progress as we speak. Should be out by the beginning of next week.
Wow.
I must have pushed the right buttons on that one. 
B
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