Star Wars Galaxies: And now.. Official Word on Droid Engineers!

Our Droid Engineer Player Correspondent, Sintrosi has done a fantastic job getting the issues together, as they all have. Based on interactions between the Droid Engineer developer(s) and the Player Correspondent, we have put together the following Droid Engineer plan.

In addition to this list, anyone who has a droid will see a benefit as we change the Droid AI that controls droids following their owners (the players). This needs to be addressed. Basically, droids need to follow and intercept objects/creatures/players without getting hung up on things or getting lost.

For the Droid Engineers, I have listed the top three items which the developers are going to work on first and then included a bunch of other items below that to give you an idea of the direction the Profession is going in. Please understand that I need to help set realistic expectations. Some of this work requires a lot of people, more than one team and a fair amount of developing and coding. As we go forward, I will include the progress of these changes in my updates.

Without further Adieu:

Item #1

Combat droids. We want to add Droid Modules that will convert many droids and give them combat abilities. ONLY Droid Engineers will be able to make and use these modules. Setting expectations, these changes involve a lot of people and its not something that's going to happen fast.

Some of the abilities Combat Droids would have (barring any unforeseen difficulties) would be:

* Multiple combat modes for droids
* Short range blaster
* Long range blaster
* Anti-droid reactions
* Anti-creature reactions

Item #2

Droid engineers should be able to take out more than one droid at a time, but only one combat droid. The big challenge is integrating multi-droid controls. It's too early to tell what the impact is going to be.

Item #3

Increase Repair Droid functionality. What is planned is to Make Repair Droids work similarly to current pet healing standards. One of the ways we would make Droids more star warsy is to give the Repair Droids expendable droid items to charge up.

Here are things we are thinking about doing going forward:

We want to make the Droid AI so that it targets healers from time to time. Medical droids have a perception that they don't work, so to change their functionality, the following additions could be made:

* Add stim and health pack functionality
* Increase Medical Droid accessibility be letting them out of storage in more places that the are now
* Give reduced mind cost to medics
* Automatically stim incapacitated players

We think all droids when they are used should take power and wound damage. This change is going to take a fair amount of balance planning and would be best supported if Repair Droids were reworked first.

There is a perception that Power droids do not work. To address this, we could give Power Droids the ability to add power to a harvester and attach directly to the facility. Functionally, maintenance fees would go up a bit, but they would not require power. The Power Droid WOULD degrade over time and would have to be replaced.

In the vein of good combat droid abilities, Mouse Droids could have the ability to be remote bombs. This would be a high level Droid Engineer craftable item. The droid would follow someone, run up to them and explode. This is going to be dependent on the Droid AI balance.

We want to add more droid commands to play specific animations and possibly put a droid in "decoration mode" where you can tell it to repeat an action. We agree with the players that there should be more droid personalities and to give Protocol Droids a stronger role. Many different options are being considered.

So here are the top three items and the points of interest that will be developed going forward. I hope you like these changes and as time goes by, Ill let you know what happens and when.

Again, I look forward to getting your feedback. Please work with Sintrosi in the Professions forum to get information and opinion into the pipeline.

Have a great weekend