I know there will be some responses that simply say "you were unlucky" and that my personal experience is merely anecdotal evidence, but I am personally frustrated with my ship droid right now. After spending days of gathering gifts and getting the droid's affection to 10k and buying him the +5 cybertech crit and +5 scavenging efficiency module, I set him to work.

 

Out of 21 earpieces, one crit. One. As I understand it, my droid should have a 20% chance to crit an augment slot on a level 49/50 earpiece. My understanding is based on this recent statement from Bioware:

 

Patrick Malott (Systems Designer): The baseline crit chance for crafting is dependent on the difficulty of the crafting action relative to your current crafting skill level. The difficulty is color coded in the crafting GUI.

 

Orange Difficulty: 10%

Companion Affection scales Crew Skill chance up to +5% at maximum affection.

A Companion Trait critical chance bonus of +1 or +5 is a percentage. Example: The Imperial Agent companion character Kaliyo grants a +2 bonus to Underworld Trading Critical. This is +2% bonus.

 

Using Kaliyo at maximum affection as an example, if she ran a green difficulty Underworld Trading mission for you, she would have a 22% chance to score a mission critical success.

 

 

So the way I see it for my droid, 10% (base) + 5% (max affection) + 5% (cybertech bonus) = 20%

 

I'm not a super mathematician, but I tried to calculate the chances of having 21 ear pieces, but only have one crit. What I did was took my chance NOT to crit (80%) and multiplied it against itself 20 times. (.8 x .8 x .8 x .8 etc.). The result was 1.15%. 1.15% chance to make 20 earpieces w/o a single crit. Please correct me if my math is wrong.

 

So yes, can it happen? Yeah. But a 1.15% chance is really low. Really low. Am I just unlucky? Maybe. But there's also a real possibility that it's not working as intended. If my math is right and other people are experiencing similar "failures", Bioware may need to see if the crit chances are applying/stacking correctly.

You're slightly looking at it wrong. The chance to have bad luck is one thing, but you should look at what is your chance out of how many people? Then ask yourselves how many people are playing SWTOR.

 

In other words, even if you had a 1.15% chance as you calculated, out of the at least 1 million people who play SWTOR, you might just be the person.

You're slightly looking at it wrong. The chance to have bad luck is one thing, but you should look at what is your chance out of how many people? Then ask yourselves how many people are playing SWTOR.

 

In other words, even if you had a 1.15% chance as you calculated, out of the at least 1 million people who play SWTOR, you might just be the person.

 

That's why I'm asking if other people have had similar results to me.

 

The thing is, unless someone goes around and collects data, we cannot empirically prove or disprove that the crit chances are working as intended. All we can do is voice our personal experiences and if there are enough individual instances of a lower than indicated crit chance, Bioware (the one who could go get all the information) should investigate any potential problems.

 

Like I said, a 1.15% chance is still a chance and I may have been unlucky. But if it's happening to a lot of other people too, then Bioware needs to look into it as it suggests that there is a problem.

Their crit chance has to be WAY off in that example. My crit chance for greyed out custom (orange) schematics is much lower than that.

Given a very large amount of time/people, very unlikely event become very likely to happen.

 

If the chance of something happening is 1 out of 1000, given millions are people are playing this game, it'd be really weird if it didn't happen to someone. The chance of you winning Mega Millions is astronomically small (1 in 100+ million) but when several billion dollars worth of tickets are sold, it actually becomes very likely that someone will win.

Their crit chance has to be WAY off in that example. My crit chance for greyed out custom (orange) schematics is much lower than that.

 

well there's one. Mind telling us which companions you usually use and their affection level?

1 in 1000.... % is based of 100%. meaning 1% of 100% is 1 per 100, not 1 per 1000. what you describe is 10 per 1000 which it is not. if that were so, this gear would be way more expensive. if it goes off everyone playing then its the worst system ever designed.

I have had a similar experience to the original poster. I payed the 1million credits for astromech droid, payed 100k for the Armormech/Underworld Trading Sensor unit and equipped it on my C2N2. I was hoping it would display his new abilities in the missions tab like it used to display him as +Diplomacy. Now I used him to make Rakata Belts for myself. I want to crit on a Rakata belt because then I would have better than Campaign. (For me, campaign belt is +10 aim, +7 power, where I could get +18 aim with augment). I used him instead of my normal Armormech guy who is only plus 5. So far I crafted 9 Rakata belts, spent 9 alloys and tons of Mandalorian Irons without an augment. I switched to my other guy after about 5 belts because I figured my droid upgrade was broken. I think I may have just been F'd by the random bad luck, still depressing, so many mats gone to waste. Biometric Crystal Alloy costs 150k+ on my server, or going to a Normal Op, which noone wants to do lol Edited May 5, 2012 by joetacticSW

I have had a similar experience to the original poster. I payed the 1million credits for astromech droid, payed 100k for the Armormech/Underworld Trading Sensor unit and equipped it on my C2N2. I was hoping it would display his new abilities in the missions tab like it used to display him as +Diplomacy. Now I used him to make Rakata Belts for myself. I want to crit on a Rakata belt because then I would have better than Campaign. (For me, campaign belt is +10 aim, +7 power, where I could get +18 aim with augment). I used him instead of my normal Armormech guy who is only plus 5. So far I crafted 9 Rakata belts, spent 9 alloys and tons of Mandalorian Irons without an augment. I switched to my other guy after about 5 belts because I figured my droid upgrade was broken. I think I may have just been F'd by the random bad luck, still depressing, so many mats gone to waste. Biometric Crystal Alloy costs 150k+ on my server, or going to a Normal Op, which noone wants to do lol

 

Guess you never crafted before? Jaesa, my SW companion has +5% crit for synthweaving, so basically the same chance as droid with the right sensor. I made over 40 rakata belts/bracers and only had 1 crit bracer to show for it.

I have had a similar experience to the original poster. I payed the 1million credits for astromech droid, payed 100k for the Armormech/Underworld Trading Sensor unit and equipped it on my C2N2. I was hoping it would display his new abilities in the missions tab like it used to display him as +Diplomacy. Now I used him to make Rakata Belts for myself. I want to crit on a Rakata belt because then I would have better than Campaign. (For me, campaign belt is +10 aim, +7 power, where I could get +18 aim with augment). I used him instead of my normal Armormech guy who is only plus 5. So far I crafted 9 Rakata belts, spent 9 alloys and tons of Mandalorian Irons without an augment. I switched to my other guy after about 5 belts because I figured my droid upgrade was broken. I think I may have just been F'd by the random bad luck, still depressing, so many mats gone to waste. Biometric Crystal Alloy costs 150k+ on my server, or going to a Normal Op, which noone wants to do lol

 

That is because the ship droid sensor for armormech is NOT +crit, it is +10 Efficiency, i.e. it is of absolutely no use when it comes to increased crit chance. Now, your +5 guy? I think that's tanno, and his is +5 crit, not efficiency, so yes he WILL be better than your ship droid at critting. You've basically just wasted money getting that sensor if your intention was to get armormech crit.

Edited May 5, 2012 by Lemina_Ausa

If you care, your math is completely wrong. The chance that you crit 1 out of 21, given that you have a 20% chance to crit is:

 

.2 * .8^20 * 21 = .04842 = ~5%

 

It's not that astronomical.

With a crit chance of 20% I assume you were expecting, out of the 21 you crafted, to get 4 or 5 augmented earpieces, which is a perfectly reasonable assumption...

 

But keep in mind that there is a critical chance of 20% per item you craft. This doesn't mean that if you craft 5, you're guaranteed the 5th will crit, what it means is that every item you craft has a 1 in 5 chance of critting. Crafting 20 and only critting one is not unlikely for a 1 in 5 chance.

 

Think of it as flipping a coin. There is a 50% chance of it landing on heads, and an equal chance of it landing on tails. In theory we would assume that if you flipped it 20 times, 10 of those will be heads, and 10 tails. However in practice you may flip 19 heads, and only one tails. Just because the odds are in your favour, does not make it a sure thing.

 

Your sample size is too small to come to an accurate conclusion about the critical chance. You'll need to craft at least 1000 or more to get some reasonable statistics.

Where do you buy those modules?

 

Thx in advance

well there's one. Mind telling us which companions you usually use and their affection level?

 

Ashara and Talos. Max affection, so it should be, what 20%? 0 for 20 on Ablative Laquerous Headgear. I've loaded them up again, and have no doubt it will be 0 for 30 when I come back in a couple hours. The chance of that happening if the coding is right is incredibly small. Hence me doubting the devs are correct, at least on all items.

 

It wouldnt surprise me if some things are off and they just don't know. I'm just not seeing this 20-25% represented on the market either in augmented orange gear.

I am convinced that crit crafting is broken for ceratin ckmbinations of profession+item level being crafted.

I filed a bug report. They tried to tell me it was working as designed. I gave them examples; they finally agreed to forward on to the developers.

My ship droid crits reasonably often, but I had some crits of him even before I got the sensor.

 

The game does not look at your complete crafting history when calculating crit. It just looks at this one process you've got currently going, and you get a crit or not based on the usual crit chance you have, based on base crit chance, possible bonus and affection.

It doesn't matter if you had 100 tries before, lucky or unucky, for your crit chance.

 

It is like having a great bowl with multicoloured orbs. You are allowed infinite tries to get the single black orb in it - the catch is, you have to put each orb back after you took it out. Your chance to get the black orb will be the same each time you try, because the other orbs are put back and not left out, which would increase your chance over time (1:1000, 1:999.....)

I know I know I know it's possible that it could happen and that there's no crafting history etc. etc. I know that I am probably a victim of unlucky RNG. I made the post to see if there was high number of other players who were experiencing similar problems and while our experience may not be hard evidence that there is a problem, it could suggest that it is a matter worth investigating.

 

For instance, what if there was a bug that instead of granting +5% crit chance, it actually was a -5% crit chance when you equipped the bonus item? I don't know much about coding, but I suspect that an accidental "minus" in the code could do this and be accidentally overlooked. Unless Bioware monitors all of our crafting (and I actually like to think they don't), they wouldn't know unless a large number of players voiced the discrepancy between the crit chance they should be getting and the crit chance they are actually getting. For these types of problems, I look at it like this:

 

Step 1: Notice that I'm not getting as many crits as I should and identifying the chance of that happening

 

Step 2: Figure out if there are other players having similar issues and if so, get a general feeling for how many

 

Step 3: If there is a large portion of the population with similar experiences, there may be a problem. The issue is particularly worth investigating if there is a higher percentage of players experiencing these issues than what the math predicts. (IE: only 3% of players should statistically be this "unlucky", but 10% are having these problems)

 

Step 4: Even if more players are statiscally unlucky than should be, there still may be no problem at all. However, at this point, Bioware should confirm that the code is correct by both reviewing it and testing it themselves.

 

This thread is part of "step 2". I made this thread because the droid sensor that gives the +crit bonus is a new item that was presumably coded for 1.2. Also, the droid couldn't gain affection prior to 1.2. It is possible (but not definitely the case) that the code for the bonus crit chance/code converting droid affection to crit chance is incorrect if there are large number of players who have similar experiences to me. That is all I am trying to accomplish with this thread.

Edited May 6, 2012 by Rischardo

I thought about this and you may have a valid point. Specifically, we need to test if the droid is getting the +5% crit rate.

 

There is a way to test it though. Is to just mass craft level 1 items. And I don't mean a handful, I mean at least a 100-200 and look to see how close we get to our theoretical 20%-25%. Would love for someone with 0-affection droid to test it and also someone with a 10,000 affection droid.

I thought about this and you may have a valid point. Specifically, we need to test if the droid is getting the +5% crit rate.

 

There is a way to test it though. Is to just mass craft level 1 items. And I don't mean a handful, I mean at least a 100-200 and look to see how close we get to our theoretical 20%-25%. Would love for someone with 0-affection droid to test it and also someone with a 10,000 affection droid.

 

Sure, I'll be happy to test that if you'll farm me the mats .

 

All kidding aside though, any tests that are done need to be identical. IF there are any coding errors, it is likely unique to that specific sensor item or that specific companion. So just because Blizz's armstech crit chance is working correctly doesn't necessarily mean that my ship droid's cybertech crit chance is working. Since I haven't done a large scale testing with my droid, I guess I can't definitively say that it's broken. I'll try to test this when I get more time.

I can also confirm this for armstech (somewhat). Maxed affection on my droid with an armstech sensor thing. Crafted 15 custom built sniper rifles, 0 crits... Very unlikely indeed.

 

Didn't submit a bug since I have no faith in the system. This should be trivial for bioware to test, all they need to do is generate a char with said skills and a boatload of mats, and try this out in-game. Then either tell us it's working on the forum or add this to the list of known issues.

 

/sigh

Ship droid was a nice idea but as with all they seem to stop short before the finish line, ive brought the upgrade (what little choice there was ie non for artifice) Truth is hes pretty pointless with out the ability to send out all 5 companions. They said in developer questions that they dont want people to find them selfs with all compaions out doing missions so they have a spare for doing dailys etc.. which is such a flawed copy and past lazy answer from about DEC!! What about when im lvling and im trying to get crafting up to 400 and i only have 1 companion or 3 companions.. Theres a million times im having to do lvling with no companions becuase hes off doing a mission, if you need him you dont send him off simple, thats no reason to stop us using all 5... Ie if i log off ill send as many out as i can if im doing lvling or dailys ill keep my healer with me. Like i say its a crappy copie pasted lazy answer in last weeks dev questions.

 

As a result i dont really use him that much even though i brought the add on for crap loads of credits and the droid i never use in my ship beucase its miles away. Over all im glad we can add affection to him but over all 1.2 was so lacking on so many levels, they just need to take this further.

Edited May 7, 2012 by RichyYoung

As noted by Heriana, this isn't unlikely. You'd have a 5% chance to crit 1 out of 21 objects.

 

To put it another way, suppose that 100k of us went out to craft a 21 items. Of that group, ~1k wouldn't see a crit, and around 5k would only see one crit. If you assume that folks post bad results to the forums more often than good news, this makes for a fairly large number of "X is broken" posts on the crew skills forums.

 

I thought about this and you may have a valid point. Specifically, we need to test if the droid is getting the +5% crit rate.

 

There is a way to test it though. Is to just mass craft level 1 items. And I don't mean a handful, I mean at least a 100-200 and look to see how close we get to our theoretical 20%-25%. Would love for someone with 0-affection droid to test it and also someone with a 10,000 affection droid.

 

Unfortunately, accurately capturing the influence of small effects with statistics isn't that easy. Assuming you're comparing a baseline 15% chance to crit to a 20% chance with the +5 crit bonus, after crafting 200 items with the droid, you'd have a ~25% chance of seeing a bonus that was statistically significant. Even worse: you'd have a 7% chance of seeing a crit rate worse than that without the bonus. (It'd take about 1500 items to get a decent sample size... which even with grade 1 items is about 25 hours of continuous crafting. I did that once, and promised myself never again.)

No amount of testing from players is going to prove anything. If you think there's a problem, report it and let the programmers look into it.

As noted by Heriana, this isn't unlikely. You'd have a 5% chance to crit 1 out of 21 objects.

 

To put it another way, suppose that 100k of us went out to craft a 21 items. Of that group, ~1k wouldn't see a crit, and around 5k would only see one crit. If you assume that folks post bad results to the forums more often than good news, this makes for a fairly large number of "X is broken" posts on the crew skills forums.

 

What sort of logic is that...? Yes maybe 1k would see no crit, and 5k would see one crit... What about the other 94k people in your imaginary test pool? Exactly, they would see more then one crit. So essentially this reads to me as "there is a 95% chance that you will get one or more crits when crafting 21 items at a "crit chance" of 20%...

I hate to say it, because I bought all the different crafting units and I think they are totally useless at that percentage of success. I can randomly craft wtih all the companions I have (of which maybe none have crit chance to what I am crafting) and have a better success rate than using the droid with the new crafting crit module installed.

My advice so far is don't waste your cash on them...buy materials.

It's another money sink that the bio boys are laughing at us about.