Combat Medic Archive
Thread: How do you afford survey?
My original plan when I decided to go Combat Medic was to do something like this...
Master Medic (obviously)
Master Combat Medic
Master Pistoleer
But then I realized that this combination only leaves me with 4 points remaining. Which means that I would not be able to survey for materials. So, how are some of you dealing with the fact that you need to waste 15 points on the Artisan tree just to be able to survey for materiels to place your harvesters on?
)Also fellow master CM sells me sub-components at a very good price, that helps speed up the process even more (thanks Valina!)
That was my exact template after my 1st week on Naboo. I am into my 4th week and have changed my mind several dozens times. I currently have 0 skill points left and im juggling learning new abilities with losing old ones. I have novice doctor/craft1, novice combat medic/range1,craft2, nov artisan/surv4/buss3, novice pistoleer/mark3,special1, and novice scout/exp3,hunt1,surv1. I love having these skills, but eventually i want to be a master pistoleer with as good ranged healing as possible, with the problems with CM right now I'd rather slowly build up xp and earn a living. At some point death is going to be a huge money sink as will the consumable products like medicatons when pvp heats up. I suggest seriously think about having a source of income for now while advancing towards your goals. One thing I'm sure some people are unaware of is that you can store double the exp you need for a skill. (i.e. if you need 25k you can effectively store 50k.) if you choose your skills evenly like wound healing1, wound speed 1, then your cap would be the same since you need the same amount of exp for both skills, but if you went to wound healing 2 instead of wound speed 1then you effectively can store more exp. In another words, Going to skill level 4 in 1 branch can save you more xp later if you plan on changing abilities. In additon,you would nothave to give up so many other skill while doing so. Hope this helps a you a lil, and don't worry about your final template so much play for today and let your character follow it's own path.
I really don't think I am following the DEV teams "vision" when they threy surveying into the Artisan tree. There are several classes that rely on minerals that are completely out in the cold if they don't waste 15 points on Novice Artisan. Medics, Doctors, Combat Medics, Smugglers (Spices), and even Rangers / scouts(Camp and trap materials) are all non artisan classes that have some sort of crafting imbedded within their class tree.
It is my feeling that we should all be able to survey even if it is only a 2x2 square. I don't want to be able to sample minerals I just want to be able to place my own harvesters. Especially considering all the materials it takes to be a Combat Medic, and the fact that mineral shifts are supposed to happen every 5-8 days?!
To me the ability to survey (especially such a small area) without the ability to sample (even itf it is just 1 sample every sample tick) is useless. I need to be able to take a sample of the resource so I know how good it is. Most of my survey time is actaully spent just grabbing a simple sample of resources just to see thier stats.
I expect that the Dev viewpoint on this is that we should simply rely on Artisan-Surveyors to go out and supply us with our resource needs. It has already been stated by Holo that he does not want to give Medics surveying capabilities because they would then be competetive with Artisans. I personally think that is a load of bunk when you take a look at the nature of the economy in SWG. Frankly I cannot even come close to thinking about competing with Weapon/Armorsmiths who have completely different resource needs and can easily pay 10-20 times as much for a Surveyor's time to acquire thier resource needs than I can. And if a Surveyor has any leftovers of those materials he'll be able to sell them for a tidy profit to some other Amor/Weaponsmith. Medics or some of the other general support classes mentioned simply do not have that luxury, IMHO. And how can a Medic be competetive with those Surveyors when the support class resource needs are so completely different (except in a few cases) from those other classes (Dantoooine Berries and Lokian Wild Wheat for you, my Armorsmithing friend?). And where those needs are the same (Dolovite Iron, for example) an Artisan will outbida Medicfor that resource every time, hands down. Have you seen some of the threads with some guy selling a rare resource for eaily over 25cr per unit? Yeah, I just bet that's a Medic buying that.
Personally I'd like to see, say, the Pharmocology line provide a similar level of survey capability as the artisan Survey line. WIthout that ranged survey capability, placing harvesters can be next to impossible on lower concentration resources, so I think the range part of the line is extermely important for our needs. However, take away our ability to efficiently sample and I would be fine with that. Letus only ever get 1 resource from a sample, instead of increasing how muchwe get like a surveyor would. I could live with that. Then we could actually locate a resource, see if it's geed enough forour needs and drop a harvester thatwe had to buy off some artisan/architect anyway. Sure, maybewe can get away with using a spare lot on the side (a really tough thing to do considering the vast variety of resources needed for med produtcs, especially if you run a factory and need the storage space of a house) to grab some extra resources that some artisan might buy off ofus for 3-5cr. But what wrong with that and do you really think it is all that competetive with the Artisan-Surveyor?
Just my 2 creds.
I made Combat Medic last night and started to look at just the basic materials needed to make some of our packs. I only have the 1st tier of medicine assembly so this list could very well increase in size.
Liquid Petrochemical Fuel
Inert Petrochemical
Reactive Gas
Aluminum
Radioactive
Fungi (W.T.F.?)
Non-Ferrous Metal
Insect Meat
Ferrous Metal
Chemical
So, lets see here we have 10 different types of materials all of which you need to have different qualities and quantities. Purchasing all these materials or getting someone in your PA to help you survey for them is pretty much out of the question especially considering that materials are supposed to rotate every 5-8 days.
I really don't know what Holo and the other Devs were thinking when they made survey part of the Artisan tree. It makes no sense to me to make classes depend upon materials and then have no means to collect them. And what artisan is really going to mine Fungi? Most artisans mine materials needed by Weapon smiths and Architects. Considering thats where the real money is.
I really am suprised you guys have not brought this up to the DEV team as one of your issues in the Medic / Doctor or Combat Medic bords. It seems pretty important to me and I just made the classs. (which I am having serious second thoughts about now that I look at the fact that I will spend 90% of my time tending harvesters andfactories or making packs.
Kitrinia wrote:
I really am suprised you guys have not brought this up to the DEV team as one of your issues in the Medic / Doctor or Combat Medic bords. It seems pretty important to me and I just made the classs. (which I am having serious second thoughts about now that I look at the fact that I will spend 90% of my time tending harvesters andfactories or making packs.
Uh this has been one of the biggest issues on the boards i dont know where u think we havent complained about it...
right now if u dont wanna survey and tend harvesters spend that time running missions and buy resources...
-----------------
Liquid Petrochemical Fuel
Inert Petrochemical
Reactive Gas
-----------------
They are all Chemical and available for 3c in Coronet.
Radioactive: on Naboo there is a lot for sale, but not 900+ quaity, so it's very cheap (I bought it for less then 2c a rsource)
Fungi (W.T.F.?)
Insect Meat
-----------
I saw many for sale on Bestine and Coronet.
Aluminum
Non-Ferrous Metal (Aluminium is Non-Ferrous)
Ferrous Metal
Aluminium is for sale on Coronet for 2c (if you buy more then 1000) and it's 971 qua too.
Ferrous metal is steel, coper, etc... for sale in many places.
Moral of the story: you can buy any resource on the bazaar for 2-4c and not spend any time poking harvesters around.
I got enough resources for 200 stims (using advanced components) and 100 poisons for less then 30k between 2 cities - Mos Bestine and Coronet in 30 minutes.
Thee is no way you can beat that being artisian (both time an dmoney wise).
It's a MMORPG - there are LOTS of people selling resources, encourage them by buing it and save yourself time, money and skill points.
Its very easy to be able to extracter your own resources without even having artisan.
Step 1: Make Artisan Friends.
Step 2: Ask those said friends if they could survey for things with you.
Step 3: Place harvesters.
Step 4: Be happy.
I know we all don't have Artisan friends who are willing to spend a large amount of time moseying around the galaxy finding resources, but it is a very viable solution. I no longer have to perform missions as I can harvest every resource I need (accept for something organic, all the organic stuff on tatooine on flurry galaxy sucks right now) and sell all of the large access for decent money in the right places. (Anchorhead on Tatooine, its small enough that not many things are sold there, giving you mostly free reign of the market. Sell reasonably)
I am sure you can find the very basic materials for the easiest to make stims/poisons/diseases on the bazaar.
I am just as sure you will find it extremely hard to find things like Lokian wild wheat, class 4 liquid petro fuel, class 1 radioactive etc etc. (and these are just a couple of examples for the advanced components)
When you start making the higher lvl area effect stims/poisons/diseases it gets even worse requireing resources noone but a CM would ever look for much less put a harvester on.
As much as i really Need those 15 extra skill points i can't see any way to get all the resources i need without basic Artisan. No one else is going to gather them and sell them, i can't afford a fair price for all the time and travel they would have to do to get them and i can't drag someone with me all over the galaxy to find places to plop down a harvester. Then i have to go back and tend the harvesters on 5 to 10 different planets. Not to mention the fact that some of the resources will not be available at all. On Valcyn there has been no class 4 petro since week 1 or 2 and i have yet to see class 1 radioactive (although i might have missed it at some point)
My point is if you want to be a basic CM with less than the best stims/poisons/diseases then the bazaar is good enough, but if you want to make the best and use your skills and abilities to your best advantage you have to be able to survey and sample. The way SWG is set up now i see no way around it.
Albaka
Valcyn
I gotta agree there. The requirements for resources of any turly decent level for both Docs and CMs are so specific there is simply no decent way to even KNOW what resource will fill the bill without being able to sample and look it up for yourself. You'll never, or only extremely rarely, ever find what you need for this stuff up on the bazaar and you'd be hard pressed to have enough artisan friends who would go out of their way to look up those resources for you when they can survey for Amor/Weaponsmith and Architect resources insted and make a far better profit.
At least with high-level Scouts and Rangers they don't mind nearly as much trying to toss in some extra Herbivore/Avian/Insect Meat while making the most of their money in hides and bone. Heck, some Rangers will flip at the chance to get you high OQ/PE Avian meat if it means they can get some great Buffs out of it (If Buffs are working right, and that's a Doc thing anyway, so sorry for bringing it up).
At any rate, you get the idea. Medic Professions=Specific Resource needs, unavailable/unprofitablefor most surveyors. We need some way to make up for this simple fact.
Don't forget we ARE a crafting profession. We have an entire skill line dedicated to crafting in all of the medical professional trees and we cannot Master our fields without that crafting. We are one of the few lines (other than Ranger and Smuggler) that are in such a major predicament with not being able to affordoutside dependency and not being provide self-sufficiency in this manner.
MichaelF77 wrote:
I buy all materials from basaar, note the name of buyers and offer them a bit more then what they asked for. This way I don't need to have a headache of maintaing harvesters and can go stright to making medicine I need. I currently have stable supply of all materials except berries (so if you are on chilastra and sell them - give me a tell ! )
Bug me about those berries Sekir. I'm sure we can work out something