Combat Medic Archive
Thread: Thoughts from a Non-Combat-Medic!
Speaking as a Non-Combat Medic, I think combat medics should have a means of defence, and it makes sense that if they were to be offensive they would have firearm skills and like the tribal-shamans and clan tactics of yesteryear, would employ the usage of poisons in some way or another. I dont have a problem with this practice, but I do have a problem with the effectiveness of the CM poison, and the fact that it always attacks the mind.
Point 1
The vast majority of poisons which kill rapidly actually attack the body functions, usually resulting in cardio or pulmonary seizure...heart stops killing the victim. This is not mind-pool damage.
Now it also should be said that modern bio-chemical warfare agents are usually nerve-agents, and via the nerves, or directly to the brain cause mental dysfunction, preventing the victim from being able to continue to fight. Ok fair enough; but what kills the victim is not mental disorder, but physical/chemical imbalance of some kind resulting ultimately in heart failure. Again, although there are clearly some mental aspects of effect here, the fatal effect is physiological. It has to be in order to achieve a rapid kill!
So I believe firstly that the poisons employed by CM is innaccurate in attacking the mind pool.
Point 2
Poisons such as Potassium Cyanide are absolutely deadly and very quickly too. A cyanide capsule will kill consistently in somewhere between 12 to 25 seconds. There is a neutralizing agent called Amyll Nitrate which actually instantly cures the effects of Cyanide...which of course it must due to the speed with which cyanide kills. So perhaps we need antidotes as well as Stims. That is scenario 1
Scenario 2 is that the kind of agents used in modern warfare are dispersed through incendiaries and it is impossible to only attack one victim. Anyone within a certain radius of the shell impact is a victim regardless of faction. It is totally indiscriminate.
Conclusions
Clearly we are talking about a game here and not real life so there is room for stepping outside of realities constraints. But we are also attempting here to address a problem within the game mechanics. So given that a game is in many ways an exciting re-enactment of real situations, I think the solution lies in making the DOT of the CM poison attacks subject to the following :-
a) a HAM pool damage which effects all of the HAMs, with a strong leaning towards Health Pool and Action Pool. Lets say 60% Health damage, 30% Action Damage, 10% Mind Pool damage.
b) CMs should be provided with incendiary chemical grenades which are AOE attacks...potentially damaging their own sides. Likewise pre-battle innoculating kits should be craftable by CMs.
c) To target an individual, CMs should also be provided with personal attack forms whereby melee range is required as the most deadly personal attack poisons require blood contact to work. eg.. poisoned combat-blade..this damage should effect the Health HAM primarily.
d) At master level, CMs should be able to craft, through obtaining rare and difficult to come by resources, specific killer agents, that are immune to Stim counter-action, but which are instantly curable by the application of an anti-dote...these to be manufacturable by Master Doctors and Master Combat Medics.
Ok i'll just say that as a Non-combat medic you don't know we can poison and disease ANY stat we want. The only reason you have only seen mind poisons in PvPis that its the only pool that can not be healed in combat and therfore the must effective poison.
In PvE i use health poisons, put a couple of bleed shots in for good measure and they don't last long.
Combat at the moment is decided by just 1 pool and that mind.. thats why people are screaming nerf eye shots on the bounty hunter (because you can't heal mind damage)
As for friendly fire, the devs decided long ago NOT to implement that into the game. So don't expect it to show up anytime soon...if ever.
Well then the very fact that I have never been attacked anywhere but in the mind by a CM suggests a PvP imbalance, and the logic of my post still persists. It should not be possible for fatal damage to be applied to the mind pool.
Ok sure, I hear you say...what if someone puts a knife into my brain...or uses a poison that physically effects the brain? well then that would be just as deadly as any health/action attack. But in this game, the mind pooldoesnt represent the physiology of the brain, but rather the thought processes....Focus....will-power...the ability to think and act intelligently. Therefore the principle of a disease/poison that effects the mind pool stat is never going to be fatal in the way that it currently is.
This is not an issue that questions just CM...it is a game mechanic that is wrong...the mind pool should never be a fatal attack for any profession. Disabling yes...killing...no!
Zubzai wrote:This is not an issue that questions just CM...it is a game mechanic that is wrong...the mind pool should never be a fatal attack for any profession. Disabling yes...killing...no!
Says...you?
The game was designed with three pools, all of which are targetable and attackable. The game was also designed with all three pools being healable(damage-wise) but a change was made to no longer allow mind pool damage healing by Medical Healers WITHOUT something else put in-game to replace it. This is why we are at this stage in the game where everyone who has a mind attack uses it in PvP.
The idea that the 'Mind' should not be attackable has only sprung up since people, in PvP situations, realized that the easiest way to kill someone was a mind attack. Others have become tired of being killed due to a Mind Incap and are now seeking other ways to remedy the situation by either changing the entire game(removing mind incap->db) or making the mind untargetable.
Changing the game in these ways, while logical in some respects, is not the answer. Reinstating mind damage healing is. Once that is done, you will see the use of OTHER pool attacks in PvP.
Zubzai wrote:Well then the very fact that I have never been attacked anywhere but in the mind by a CM suggests a PvP imbalance, and the logic of my post still persists. It should not be possible for fatal damage to be applied to the mind pool.
Congratulations, you figured it out...
Now go to the main boards, (the ones the devs actually read) and suggest this interesting, and unique idea.
The SWG medic community has been demanding this since day one.
Enjoy getting flamed by the BH and riflemen who think they're somehow entitled to doing unhealable damage to an (realisticaly) unbuffable pool.
Technically, Poisons are non fatal in SWG. They merely incapacitate you. Then, using my WEAPON, I have to deliver a fatal deathblow. So your arguing a game balance point that is already the way you state it.
Your comming off as someone that has been incap'd by mind poison too many times, and found that your novice medic skill should of been able to counteract that poison in some such way. Your antidote idea isn't bad...but in order to make that fully realistic...you'd need to give combat medics 20-50 different types of poison..then 20-50 different antidotes. Also, being that I was poisoning you, and not exactly having a nice conversation about it over coffee...you'd have no idea what poison I used...so you'd have to begin tring all your antidotes to get rid of it, and by that time, be flat on your back.
Why don't we save the developers time on this one, and you just deal with the fact that you can't heal mind damage. Travel with a doctor, and make sure he has cure poison. If you don't...the situation will always end in the same way, you on your back...and a combat medic grinning from ear to ear.
Game mechanics should never be held accountable to "in the real world" or "in the movies".
Game mechanics are by far more important than what can happen in the non-game world. If the game mechanics can mimmic and incorperate those attributes and physics we have all come to know, then more the better.
For every point made that something should be changed because "in the real world" it would happen this way, there is an equal amount of things in game that counter that. People neverask for changes tothose because it works in their favor. Can't have it both ways guys.
Daffid Owen M.D.
"Now it also should be said that modern bio-chemical warfare agents are usually nerve-agents, and via the nerves, or directly to the brain cause mental dysfunction, preventing the victim from being able to continue to fight. Ok fair enough; but what kills the victim is not mental disorder, but physical/chemical imbalance of some kind resulting ultimately in heart failure. Again, although there are clearly some mental aspects of effect here, the fatal effect is physiological. It has to be in order to achieve a rapid kill!"
Correct me if I'm wrong, but how is taking a bullet (blaster) to the head and having one's brains splat all over causing mental disorder? Mental disorder might be a side effect admittedly, but it is physical trauma that will do the killing.