Bio Engineer Archive
Thread: Bioengineer State of the Profession
Thanks again for the good report on the "state of the profession."
I have one comment on your report.
The solution of making the survival skill increase the fish harvest is not a very good one. The fact you pointed out earlier is that BE is the most expensive crafting professions in terms of skill points. Why then make it even more expensive by adding the Wilderness Survival line to that formula?
Is that actually how you see the profession? The specialized BE who is either a Tailor, Ranger, Doctor, Creature Handler or Merchant. I personally think the idea floated around for a while that Novice Medic should have a basic survey skill to use the survey tools should be added. After all, a Medic is not a complete idiot when is comes to operating electronics.
Just the fact that I have to WASTE 15 skill points to obtain the Talusian Fungus, Talusian Water, Unknown Radioactive, Dantooine Fiberplast and a slew of other planet specific resources really makes this very unenjoyable. No Artisan or Miner type is wasting their time gathering these things and I have to find it myself. It is a shame to have to use 15 skill points just to gather the stuff I need to craft.
Put this in hand with the week I spent fishing to get a whole whopping 650 fish. (I am more casual than powergamer, as this was done in session 2-4 hours at a time). But still, in that week, I could have most likely leveled up my CH or Rifleman skill. Instead, I spent it knee deep in the oasis on Tatooine while my fellow Imperials kept running past making comments like "jeeze Tagit, you must really love fishing."
So I have my fish and go on the search for Dantooine fiberplast. Overall quality 237. What a crock of poop! I need a planet specific resource and the probability that it spawns with good stats is very low. If we are to continue to need these planet specific resources, then why are they not always at least good quality if not high quality. I guess I can answer that one, so that the resource isn't exploited because it is guaranteed to be good quality, so everybody with a chemical harvester plants it on Dantooine for the fiberplast.
Just a suggestion, but could the planet specific resource requirements be relaxed in some way? Could it possibly be a couple different planet resources or a specific resource by name like the weaponsmiths have? I don't know how that works, or how anybody else feels about it, but I am tired of having to constantly keep track of what the quality of the Talusian fungus and water, Dathomir insect meat, Dantooine fiberplast, etc. etc.
In summary:
> Medics should have a basic survey skill (if that is too controversial, then Doctors, Combat Medics and Bio Engineers)
> Planet specific resources are crap
> Fishing is a waste of time
And here's hoping I find a Holocron that tells me to drop Bio Engineer skills since it appears I have a better chance of finding one of those than finding milk.
This will be a bit longish and probably sound whiney (it does, even to me) but it seems to sum up many of the problems, some of which appear insurmountable, I have encountered with a career decision to become a BE.
I have only two lines in BE at the moment and am slowly coming to the decision that this profession is much like the Theurgist in DAoC (my former home)...kinda fun to skill up but not of any real use beyond the personal enjoyment one might experience from that process.
Pet crafting abilities have a HUGE hole in them which is not likely to be adequately fixed since the whole uber pet/CH issuewould probablyonly worsen with the addition of any substantive influx of a whole slew of high quality BE-created pets.
The ability to make mounts seems, in the long run, of minimal value since speeders and such are looming on the horizon. Seems to me thatthose willprobably be the transportation mode of choice for most players (faster, less care and feeding, CHEAPER to get).As a side note, I understand the "ride" on a pet is bumpy with a good deal of camera jiggling...bet that will become very, VERY annoying in short order.
Our food suppliments are too expensive to make to be viable unless you are making them for self use for an alt chef.Even then, TKAs (an up and coming uber tank class) as well as many of the other classeswill not now usefood since it "messes up" their statstemporarily....and what is food really but a temporary enhancement during periods of serious activity like combat.
Probably one of the best, if not THE best, clothing enhancement in the game in terms of potential popularity can't be crafted since there is no legitimate source of required ingredients. I am speaking of the +taming to wild and vicious creatures and the requirement for milk. Fishing is time consuming but do-able with sufficient brain dead patience and button clicking.GETTING MILK IS NOT !!!
From personal experience, I can tell ya the term "Got Milk?" has a whole new meaning!!! I spent at least 10 hours in two consecutive evenings at the Witches' Battleground on Dath trying for milk drops. After navigating phenominal amounts of agro within the first 2k meters out from the Agro Outpost (aptly named altho that was not the intent), it was a clear run for the other 600 thruscenic and quite emptyterrain. I couldn't go alone, of course, even thoa) this was strictly a resource hunt for my personal use and of no value to anyone else in my guild, and b)I had enough CH for a lvl 40 pet which should have been at least sufficient to handle most of the mobsbut actually wasn't even close to adequate. I say that because onceI arrived at the battleground which is the ONLY known source of milk in game,I wasfaced with the nightsister/singing mountain clan conflictand the battles between their rancor pets. Fortunately, my Significant Other is a MCH and (the first night) a guildie joined us with both his TKA and (this is abig "AND" btw) his alt Master Surgeon so we had some chance of success. Using the maximumnumber of the highest level pets available, burning through weapon duration like mad, and buffed to the 9's, we fought for hours (only dying and autocloning once) to get two....count 'em, TWO, piles of Loose Debris, only one of which was accessable, and a couple of magseal containerswe couldn't open since we had no slicer with us. Second night, we lost the doc/rezzer but had a great CM with us and the ranged heals were lifesavers much of the time. The end result? Customary quantity of the loot spawn was TWO items per container and in the one we were able to open, we ended up with some minimal quantity/horrific quality resources and TWO milk drops --- 17 units of domesticated milk and 14 units of wild milk. Neither of these is uable....can you say "not enuff" for even a single craft attempt and, of course, they do NOT combine, right? Talk about a case of the Terrible Two's. Sheesh! (On the upside, I must admit the experience rocked but not enough for me to want to do that again anytime soon. Question - "Excuse me, madam, but why are you whacking your thumb with that hammer?" Answer - "Because it feels sooooo good when I stop!!")
The moral of this whole long"Wah, wah, woe is me cuz I'm a wanna-BE" is the career doesn't seemtoo practical at the moment or likely to become really viable in future. Acquiring resources for the best enhancements is either mind numbingly SLOW or simply not possible at all. WhatBEs can make is not in decentdemand now andlooking like it will be even less needed, if that is possible to imagine, in future.
Finally...and I bet you thot I would NEVER wind down. 
I am a crafter by inclination, regardless of the game, andhave found that craftersusually aremotivated to a serious degree by two factorsabove and beyond enjoying the general game play.
One is the desire to "make money" by crafting items that have broad general appeal to other players. (Crafters are, after all, merchants at heart....ya make it to sell it, guys!)...and despite the truly awesome craftingorientation of this game,there ain't no real demand for our brand of widgets here.
The other element is recognition and reputation.People that craft (be they tailors, chefs, weaponsmiths or whatever)do so, in part, to be recognized for excellence in their products. Apparelmanufactured by Stoli's Bothanware is recognized as being of the finest quality and manufacture; weaponsfrom Aceor Oush or Kammi are recognized and appreciated for coming from some of the very best crafters. (My toon, Miroa, was the #1 weaponcrafter on the MLF server in Dark Age and it was a matter of pride and statusto many of my customers to have a "Miroa made" weapon...a nice payback and source of satisfaction for thosemonths and months of effort to get to that position. "No, kids, Miroa can't come out and play. She has to sit in the corner by herself and craft now.")From what I read and have heard in just this one forum, the crafts produced by BEs lose their identity and maker's mark...no one knows the clothing or food enhancement you craftedwas even used...and no one even knows that pet came from your hours of skilling once the CH trains and transfers it.
So where's the selling, compelling argument to grow up and be a BioEngineer?
Tirzah, BEish atm
(Milk? Milk? I ain't got no stinkin' Milk to show ya!)
Tirza, Tailor/Chef
Many of you are complaining about surveying. I could not drop it anyway because that is where I get my merchant. I can not be going to a different planet every day and be back home to sell my stuff. No matter how dependant you get off of others, you will still have to do your own harvestors.
The BE profession is too big for anyone to do all of it well, I would drop tissues to give me the ability to make good advanced components.
Good luck hiring someone to go get Dath Insect Meat. People cry for crates, I say, bring me 1250 Dath Insect meat aand I will buy it from you and sell you a crate of Pet Stims.
Who would DNA sample for you? Who would belly crawl through a pack of Mutant Rancors..... oops, busted again.
Okay, I think the developers need to help us out, or even fewer folks will want to become BE's than we are seeing right now.
1. Master BE's should be able to make sentient clones. We had Clone Wars, for goodness sakes, and how cool (and unique) to have your very own blue shaded Wookie slave trailing behind all you Imperial types, mindlessly killing Rebels everywhere.....or, for the Rebels out there, a couple of pretty Twileks carrying guns and mindlessly shooting Imperials? If we could make sentient species clones, the CH's couldn't get mad about it, they wouldn't upset the balance, and we could name them whatever the customer wanted! Oh, you want your clones of your friend Erik to be named Bilbo and Baggins, coming right up, mam!
2. Make Medical Forage help with getting fish, or create a fish finder for the game. I enjoy fishing sometimes, but really! This would take care of the fact that medical forage, which we get with Medic anyway, really doesn't help much. Additionally, the most number of eggs I have ever gotten off of a search of a lair was 4, and it didn't combine with my other 3 or 2 from the days previously. Let the eggs combine! They are all getting scrambled anyway, I would assume.....
3. We need better versions of tamable creatures and unique creatures. I would like to see more cats and some dogs. Cats are popular and everyone likes dogs. Make dogs impossible for CH's to find in the wild. And, could we please see some hybridization? Oh, yes, sir, you can have a hurton/kaadu....well, it won't be very pretty, but your bride will certainly be the only lady in Theed who has one of these!
4. Combine the skill disciplines of Tissue Engineering and Engineering Techniques into one. The last discipline of the tree should be Bio-enhancements. We should be able to do bio-organic weaponry and armor. We should be able to graft it onto avatars so that their weapons and armor can be healed the same way their bodies can! Just think of the business we would get! And, if we could do this in different colors or furs, based on what was used to make the DNA sample, avatars could look incredibly different. Imagine having a neighbor who was a Black and White Wookie with an overlay of green Kimulluga (sorry for the misspelling, I'm tired) armor, sporting his new acid blaster from a gaping spider? I think people would fall over themselves trying to get to the nearest BE to have bio-enhancements. And, for that matter, make them permanent until a Doctor can remove them!!! That way, the BE gets the person on the front end, and the Doc gets them on the back end, making both professions very happy!
5. We need animal buffs. I know lots of people have said this before, but I am saying it again. And for ALL the stats. I think it's kinda creepy the idea of trying to give your Gurreck a Muon gold. And, they should have cute names, like Fluffy's Surprise, for the Mind Buff....because, well, she will be very surprised when she feels this good! Even if they don't have cute names, BE's should have pet buffs....including for their sentient creations.
6. Easier to get a hold of the other resources. I am a Scout/Stimpack Chemist /almost Pistoleer currently, and I AM NOT PICKING UP ARTISAN!!! And I CANNOT find all the resources on the Bazaar. Not by a long shot. So, either developers, put some of those resources (just a few) on every bazaar, or make the resources the same as for the Doctors and CM's out there. BE's have the strangest requirements. Why??? Put us in line with them, and everyone will be lots happier.
7. And please realise that we see your changes. We do. Thanks.
Have a nice day, everyone,
Morella
In something that needs OQ and PE, if a resource is missing PE, the weighted average of the resources used does NOT replace the missing value with a zero.
The recent fix on the TC at the moment has corrected this 'bug' so that now if a stat is missing then it does indeed read as ZERO rather than borrowing from the OQ stat for the materials. There's a whole topic about it actually with someone pointing out that in some cases you're losing as much as 42 damage points from certain weapons so god knows how much we'll lose from the stats of a clone!
I started a new character on Starsider (Wrista Ipex, for the record), um... last week. I needed soemthing new to do because my Smuggler/Pistoleer on Kett has 4.5 million Pistol XP left to grind, and I'm sure you can guess howw much fun a number like that can be when you have trouble finding regular groups to hunt with. But I digress.
After three days of extremely hardcore novice profession grinding, i made my Novice BE/CH/Rifleman standing, and with a wide grin, jumped into the profession. And am now kicking it to the corner trying to get BE and CH levelled as much as I can before mounts go live. that said...
i love BE. Really, I do. i enjoy CH, but BE's like swiss chocolate icing on the cake, broken in places or not, difficult grind or not.
And you know what? maybe it's just my optimism borne out from being new to the profession, but people seem to like what I have to offer, too. Two days after Novice, i managed to get Cloning 1 together. the next day, a MCH spotted me in theed and stopped me to ask some questions about cloning. Could I do mounts? he asked. I said yes. Kaadus, he asked? yes, i said. Tell me about them. So i did... pulled out the kaadu pet I'd made myself with my meager novice skills, and we discussed the process and what all else. Now... as a novice, the best kaadu i could knock out had a HAM of all of 821. Not very impressive. But he was in the market for some mounts that he could have on-hand when they go live, and that he could keep a couple in stock for sales, and his theory was, that the HAM is unimportant, as even the best he was pulling out of the wild would go down in one shot in PvP. So how much do I charge, he asks. I think back to what I hear CHs plan to charge (around 40K, says my research), what I've heard here on the forums, and other stuff, and I tell him 30K. He asks why, assuring me that he's not saying it's an unfair price, so I explin to him how rough it can be to sample 40 units of DNA, and so on. He nods, say he'll take 8. Just like that. The ease of having kaadus around he can tame in seconds without going anywhere is worth it to him, crappy HAM or not. I, overjoyed, agree, and five hours later, I'm handing him 8 kaadus and getting a lot of money back. Was it worth my time? Yes. Was he happy to get his mountables back in five hours? Heck yes-- he was expecting days.
And tissues.... Everyone wants Pet Stims, of course. But I'm finding that a remarkable number of people find out I can give them a blee resistance bonus, or melee defense bonus, and they think it's the best thing since slices bread. I have an order for quite a number of constrictor cloths right now, point of fact. Not as lucrative as the creatures were, but not a bad staple sale. And vendors? i'm going to borrow a friend's shop. He can stick up a vendor for me, slip me the money when stuff sells. He's a tailor-- so telling people that he can weave enhancements in for a little extra is great. i buy my resources from regular suppliers who have a list of my needs and are willing to spend a couple days a month pulling something they don't usually because they know I'll buy it.
in short... maybe it's just that I'm new to it. But I'm not frustrated in the slightest by the profession, despite a somewhat rueful smile about how long it's going to take to climb the trees. But I digress. there's market there, and a lot of people, CHs included, are very supportive and enterested in BE wares. i already have a pre-order for a Kusak when I hit Cloning 2, because I met a CH that's always wanted one, and just wandering around with my kahmurra tagging along behind has sold three of the things, because people've never seen anyone running around with one.
When people stop you and ask 'BE? isn't that really rough?'... say yes... but then tell them of all the wonderful things you can think of about the profession. things we can do, things we can do later. I get more orders from random people on the streets just because i love the darn profession so much. My smuggler doesn't make *near* this much cash, even with spices, slices, *and* the combat ability.
Errr... I'm not sure what the point was. maybe it just felt like there was too much gloom and doom. Maybe i wanted to show there *are* people out there who love the profession, some of whom aren't even BEs. maybe i just wanted to lend weight to the notion that it's rough, but there's already some good points if you work at it. or something. Keep the faith, guys. Find your niche. Find some friends to support your professional needs. Don't be afraid to charge what your skills are worth. Don't sell yourselves short... and... uh.. stuff.
PLEASE DON'T FORGET THREE BIG THINGS:
- Pets are not generic items: please fix the bazaar. Pet meds should, as has been pointed out obviously, appear under pet meds.
- Pets need to appear as a vendor choice on the planetary map. Currently BEs are relegated to using another suboptimal category such as "Weapons" (my choice), "Droids", etc.
- Vendors cannot shout custom messages for those looking for pets or pet supplies.
Thanks! Great discussions, btw, guys. I think this is possibly the best forum I've ever participated in as of late. Intellectual, well-thought out ideas. Very satisfying. BEs rock 
.
I haven't had a chance to see it in action myself, but both these are fixed on TC now and should make it live with the rest of the Mount/Cities patch.
The reaosn I brought it up at all is it's not CURRENTLY a problem on Live, because it doesn't work that way, so I didn't think it should be on the state of the profession list.
ok well here are my 2 cents:
1. please god fix this profession. how many of us spent countless hours either grinding the profession or making creatures.
2. make the profesion worth while. I average one or two creatures a day and get an extreme amounts of tells for pet stims and pet vitality packs.
3. when i think of bio-engineering i think of the movie Gatica. getting rid of impurities and producing the best creature possible. i mean come on for goodness sake give us a couple of creatures that each creature handler lvl would actually want and need. I ton of my creature making comes from pity not need.
4. let us customize are pets with color and look
the rantings of a frustrated bio-engineer
One idea would be to let us really mix the animals up. I have in mind something that allows me to put a rancor in a bunny model, and then allows me to change its colors. In other words I have something that looks like a bunny, but fights like a rancor.
This would be consistent with the story line, and may be a possible partial fix to the cloning issues. Something like this would give us a different market than the CH's - instead of aping the pets in the wild, and the only discussion being over whether wild or engineered pets are better, we would be making pets that could not be found in the wild.
One way to do this would be to have a creature schematic that used DNA templates from different creatures in the various slots. You could have say an appearance slot, an offensive abilities slot, an armour type slot, etc. To avoid making pets that are too powerful, you would have a variable caps, with the attributes adding up to some fixed figure.
This would definately spice the game up. Would make it quite fun to be a mad scientist.
Xantippe
BE on Gorrath
I really don't have time toread all of these now so i am just going to yell in advance.
You don't NEED artisan nor marchant. Vendors are an option, you still have the bazaar. Artisan isn't needed as you can still use harvesters as long as someone else does the survaying. Plus resource suppliers are wide spread.
-Tal-N's post
The bazzar price can only be set to a max of 3K. And with prices of creatures going forwhat I have seen up to 300K. .....yeah the bazaar is an option. Not. 
Well good luck on finding a person to survey for you on Dathmore<luck to survive cause most crafters have no real combat ability>or for that matter just consistantly finding someone to do it for you in general.
Of course you might say we could buy the resources, but then that would lead back to us actually being able to make money. So..... there is a vicious circle going on here and it seems to only be getting worse.
We need something with bite.
I posted an idea on another thread that might be useful. Let BE's cut down the time it takes for the baby to mature to adult. This would fall nicely under the BE relm of abilities. And probably should have be in there from the start. But hey that probably would not have worked either.
Xrrann
My personal BE/movie spoof
" What can I get for 10 credits?"-Customer
"Any Statue you want." Replies Bio-Engineer.
or
"Here, have a free Blurrg with your vitality pack purchase."
Yes and no. You're really looking at a different concept here. Pistoleers, Swordsmen and the other combat professions can theoretically go out and find their own swords. That's a closer comparison to what a CH can do. I have it nice, I do both, but on different characters. I believe that a BE should be able to make an imporoved version of a creature, or at least be able to do some sort of "Genetic Therapy" on a creature to improve certain stats. What always bothers me about CH pets compared to BE ones is the disparity in the number of modifiers.
Creature Handler pets are Creature Handler pets. Making a Creature Handler not able to tame a wild creature negates the one main purpose of the class. Even the best CH uses their pets as a suppliment to combat, not the main focus. ABio-Engineer should be able to make them something nicer. Or faster, or meaner. There should be a risk reward based on these. IE, a chance that your nice creature makes a crappy one.
As for giving a BE the ability to clone, no, they shouldn't. Then the difference between a CH and a BE would be moot. Instead of a flood of CH's, you'd have a flood of BE's, since you'd be able to get the benefits of both without spending the skillpoints.
Beyond that, once you're talking about the pets that Creature Handlers use, you're talking about a pretty big risk in getting them. That Rancor that a BE can make me seems pretty nice as compared to standing right next to a pile of rocks and trying to convince one not to break my mask scent and kill me. There is a great amount of risk for a Creature Handler to get the nicer pets, IE Grauls, Mereks, Rancors. So it's not so easy as just magically "making" a pet. Yes, you can just buy them, same as I can buy a weapon. Or a Holocron, or armor. But someone, somewhere, has to tame them.
It is, but for different reasons. Especially when it comes to mounts. Bols, specifically, are amazingly rare, if not impossible, to get as a baby. I was hunting them for a couple weeks and never got one to spawn. A Novice BE can make a Kaduu, and while working up to Cloning/Tissues/Sampling I on my BE I made a couple dozen. I'm not sure how they compare as mounts when that goes live, but I have a feeling they won't be far off. Trying to do the same thing with my Creature Handler would be impossible (I don't have that much datapad space). This gives a decided advantage to BE's.
dWhisper-
I have taken your comments out cause yes I am going to blast you. And i am going to do it paragraph by paragraph.
The concept is this. The sword that a swordsman ect.will find is not going to be as good as one that is made. Oh please tell me different. not. Get the picture. The creatures in the wild rage better than we as bios can make. And as of right now since we have no ETA on when the experimentation will be fixed it is going to stay that way for now. I am not saying to take away the CH ability to tame pets. I want my class to be more viable to the game and treat the CH class like the fighting class it is and make it as dependant on crafters as the other classes are.
As for having a chance to make crappy creatures, don't worry it is already there. Too my times have i seen good samples go to waste because of the crappy experimentation. So ther is not just a chance the it fails. 99% of the time it fails.
I do agree with not mixing the classes. That is a good point.
Oki here is where your biggest lack of info is. You say that it is so much harger for a CH to tame a Rancor. Well, Ever sample one for DNA. Good freaking luck dude. And we need to do that 5 times ro make 1 creature. You want to talk about difficulty lvl here. Go home. Good DNA is require for the best creatures from the best types of creatures. Sowith no way to really defend myself, and masking scent between me and that creature, HAHAHA you make me laugh.
You talk about making Kaadus to Bols. So CH's can't find one of the creautre to tame. I don't feel bad about that for some reason. A CH 's selection is far more vast. Crying about not getting a Bol for a mount does not move me. You can tame what is 16 creatures to sell as mounts as a master CH. Amaster BEhas to get someone to train only 2 of them he has bio'ed that are weaker than wild ones that are really easy to find. Yeah we can pop out like rabbits. But yes they still have to grow too. same amount of time. So what do you mean you don't have data pad space. 16 to 2. yeah that is fair.
Score Sheet
# Needed2tame-makepet /Other Resources /Danger Factor to get /Useable by creator at creation /store
CH 1 0 Arguable yes 16
BE5 goodsamples2 types Arguable No 2
And to top it all off. BE's are not guarenteed that it is going to make that creature. And with crappy experimentation, the creatures are weak.
If I did not get your point I am sorry, but this is how I see it. Yes there is a line of steping on profession toes hear but, so far the BE is not even able to do what it is meant to. And with bugs of seeing a Master Ch with 5 pets. And yes I do have screens that are real. And i sent in a CSR case as it was happening. and most of the BE class is broken. We don't even have a bug in our favor. Not that I want one.
Just something to think about.