Combat Medic Archive

Hi All,

I, probably like many other CMs who read this forum, am constantly amazed and bewildered by the reality of playing the CM class and the perception of the class both by those outside the profession, and some of those in it.

So, hopefully bumping some of the 'Nerf CM' posts a little further down the frontpage, I thought I'd suggest some positive (or largely positive) ideas which may help to improve CM. Some will probably disagree with some of the suggestions and I admit freely that they are probably flawed, but I would like to start a discussion among us CMs as to what to suggest to the Correspondent/Devs the next time we have an opportunity.

Many of these suggestions are based around my perspective that CM is a 'combat veteran' medic. That is someone who is confortable and confident in battle, who has the ability to quickly and effectively deal with the wounds of those around him, and that has an added strength of being the dispenser of ranged and area toxins. The term 'medic' in the title is enough to suggest that we require a group to shine, and this - at least - is the case.

There are also some Medic/Doc ideas thrown in here that I may repost on the relevant forums.

Before I start - I know survey and harvest for medics are a continual source of pain. I'm going to cover them anyway. Also, I would like to say I'm a Doc/CM so this may explain where I'm coming from.

1) /medicalHarvest
An ability gained at novice medic that allows us to use a scout crafted, limited charge tool to harvest from creatures. The tool would be such that it would be as effective as novice scout, but the cost of the tool per charge would equate to around 4cr per unit harvested (25 charges per tool, av 9 units per harvest = 900 creds to buy the tool). Obviously it's far cheaper to hunt with or buy from a scout. A 25 charge tool may be granted at novice scout, as a source of income for new scouts (requiring hide/bone), and possibly a more advanced, 50 charge tool granted as a schematic at novice ranger. This would allow us to be self sufficient where we needed to (carrying a crate of tools), provide a saleable item to scouts and rangers but still ensure that their profession was worth investing 15 skill points in, if they were available.

2) /medicalSurvey
Again gained at novice medic, and again using a charged tool, crafted by novice artisans. Equivalent in performance to novice artisan survey. This is, however, trickier to price as we can place just as efficient harvesters as artisan. Possibly, this should be priced slightly cheaper than hiring a surveyor to find you a waypoint. Again, 25 charges (possibly 7 or 8 charges per resource to find a good spot) means each tool may help you locate 3 resources. About 3k for this tool? The schematic could be gained in artisan either in the engineering or surveyor trees.

3) PvP/PvE balance
I've read separately that CMs have no 75% reduction in PvP like other classes, or that we have both a 75% reduction in PvE and PvP. Whichever way around, our poisons are of little use in attempting to solo even relatively low level PvE missions (which most of us run for cash). As 4004 marksman, I do more damage with a rifle than I do with my poisons, and at a fairly high cost per each poison charge. How about (random figures from the top of my head) a 50% increase in actual poison damage/effectiveness, but the application of the 75% PvP modifier. This is thrown out as a random suggestion - anyone think this would work? (also see point 8 before flaming this one)

4) Ranged anti-buffs
This is a bit of a crazy one. In some senses Doc is the anti-CM and vice versa. They can remove our poisons. How about we can remove their buffs from players? (You can tell I have my CM cap on here). This would need to have a limited chance of sticking, as with poison, and possibly an effect on a random stat, but it may add some flavor to large PvP battles. Ranged or AoE? Don't know... told you it was a bit crazy.

5) /innoculate
Something for Docs that has been on the Doc wanted list for some time. For the CM Nerf-callers, this would end their misery of CM mind damage in PvP. It would require that they were prepared enough to visit a doc before fighting a CM, but if they have a chance to immunize themselves (or at least lower the chances of a poison sticking), they would only have themselves to blame for lack of preparation.

6) CM State attacks
Most poisons (in that tenous real world place) do drain people's health - but chemical and biological agents also have more immediate effects. Blindness, dizziness, intimidation, even a knockdown from these effects is common. As an addition to simple HAM poisons, how about the addition of state effects from poisons. Docs already have cures to these, and again it may add more flavor to large PvP, and another trick when we're trying to run cash missions.

7) AoE state cures
Or maybe not. Not sure whether I like this or not. I'm not keen on Docs getting any AoE stims as that should be a differentiator for our class. Still, thought I'd drop it in again.

8) CM 'melee' poison
I've mentioned this before. I'd love to see an *equippable* CM weapon, possibly that accepts CM crafted 'ammunition' that would help us pull larger missions on non-Death planets. This weapon would be similar to the Vibroknuckle, requiring a 9m or less range. As it would be a lot more risky for us to use it, it may have non DoT properties to allow us to incap those pesky 1 HAM opponents. If we were stupid enough to get close, I would anticipate this would be a fairly powerful weapon.

9) Defense
Again, these have been mentioned before, nothing new here. As CMs, we have +2 melee defense and +6 ranged defense, ALL gained through the ranged support line. As I said at the top, it's my view that Combat Medics are combat veterans, used to being in the line of fire. As such, I think we should have at least +2 ranged defense at something like ?2?? and ?4??, +2 melee defense at ??2? and ??4? and potentially another +2 or +5 at Master. This also serves to differentiate us from Docs who, whilst useful in battle, should not be as efficient as us on the front line.

10) Mitigation
Ever poisoned a TKM and a less advanced player side by side? Or even a TKM and a Master CM? The poison ticks are hugely less effective on the TKA because of their mitigation. Again, it's been mentioned before, but shouldn't CMs have mitigation against the type of damage they cause? This may also serve to make CM vs CM battles more pointless, as both will be more resistant to the other's attack - similarly to a TKM vs TKM battle - in taking the profession they also gain defense against others with a similar profession (Rifleman and ranged defense, etc)

11) /dragIncap
We're supposed to be front line medics, experts in the thick of fighting. Ensure we can drag people out to safety, even to a doc for rezzing if necessary. I haven't checked the trees, but I believe CMs have a lower dragIncap range than docs. This shouldn't be the case.

12) Field Hospital
Possibly a CM schematic which can be used as a subcomponent for a ranger to make a Field Hospital. This should be ranger placeable (after all, camps are their thing, not ours), but should grant some bonuses to healing. It's possible this should be a Doc, rather than CM skill, but I leave it open to the ladies and gentlemen of this board.

13) MSE droid dirty bombs
A humorous one to end on. I read about the possibility of having explosive MSE suicide droids with the new combat droid schematics. Maybe we should be able to craft a component/warhead to add to the droid to allow a huge green poison cloud explosion, instead of a blast. It encourages inter-profession trade, which I hear the devs are keen on!


I think that's it for now. Anyone have thoughts/variations/issues/criticisms? I'm hoping we may hit upon an idea that the devs actually like and will consider implementing for us.


Cheers all,

Maudlin

all pretty good ideas. I really like the "innoculate" idea a lot (would keep the whiners at bay about "CMs are soooo uber in PvP - they'd have no one to blame but themselves now if they didn't get innoculated). I don't really like the "ranged anti-buff". One thing to add that I've mentioned before and have got mixed results on. Why not allow us to buff certain "modifiers", such as +5 to ranged attack, or accuracy, or speed, etc... People say "oh well thats the job of a Squad Leader". Well, my answer to that is there's many professions that have overlapping abilities. There's a few different ways, for each stat, to get an increase. Chefs, smugglers & doctors can buff your H, A & subs. While entertainers, smugglers & chefs can buff M & subs.

Lets go CMs... SOUND OFF about this stuff.

awthtem-xour.lowca

Master CM/Master Pistoleer

Thanks for the reply, Awthtem-xour, I'm hoping to stimulate some discussion and some good ideas from all the CMs out there. I certainly can't take credit for most of these - people have mentioned them all in one form or another. Hopefully, if we can present these in such a way that the devs can read them and understand they are meant to balance our play style in such a way to compliment and assist other professions, rather than weaken them, we may get somewhere.

I kinda like the ability buffing idea, but you're right about people confusing this with an SL ability. Can we present it in such a way that it doesn't overlap too much?

Anyone else want to jump in?

I am not to big on #4, but the other ideas are great. I really like #6

Biological Warfare is about more then just damage. If I can throw poison, why not say, a LSD bomb, something that would confuse the target so much that they would fall down. Or even a muscle depressant that would slow down the targets attacks or speed (so they can’t run away or so that you can). I really think that the CM profession has a lot of room to play with this sort of idea.
A doctor is the professions that works with “defensive” drugs and are the masters of them. They get buffs, stims, cure states, cure disease, cure poison, rez, and wound packs. The CM is to be a user of “defensive” drugs tailored for the battlefield, the ranged stim, but we should be the masters of “offensive” drugs, but all we get is poison and disease.

new year /bump

The survey thing still worries me. If your only using a novice artisan for surveyingitcan take more then 25 surveys tofindthe end of a vein, and even then sometimes you end up on something that is under 40% concentration that youdon'twant to harvest. I wouldneed to buy at least9 of theseany time a massive shift occurs (I have 2 wind generators) 27k apporx every 5 days on top on massive harvester costs and travel fees (6.6k round trip to Yavin). Medics have not been known for massive amounts of money.

That's totally true, Psionic... I pretty much just made up the numbers for costs/uses, because we know from the dev responses to the medic/doc/CM requests for survey that they're not keen on giving us something that they see is an artisan skill - the harvest tool was definitely easier to throw figures around.

So, how can we pitch the medic survey ability in such a way that it doesn't 'offend' the artisans who believe it to be their sole right?

There have been some excellent posts on the nature of medic/doc/cm crafting and our need to survey - and I still don't have a good suggestion for it. If any one thing ruins my experience as Doc/CM it's the inability to survey, or (more accurately now) the fact I have to drop either some of MCM or Master Doc just so I can take 0000 Artisan. I know I have to make sacrifices for my character, but no one thing seems like a bigger contradiction than the insane rarity of some CM resources and no way of finding them. Surely my sacrifice as Doc/CM is that I'm almost useless as a solo character.

So - jump in guys.... how can it be made to work, without stepping on artisan toes?

One simplelimitation is that we can only survey for resources that our schematics use. This would cover a large array of the current materials availible but it wouldn't cover everything. Also sampling should be disallowed, but a pseudo sampling should still exist where we can see stats on resources.

I like your suggestion Psionic - definitely restricts us compared to artisan survey, gets around the whole issue of crafted tools and is simple enough that the change shouldn't require an enormous amount of coding. That, linked to a limited range and /sample ability would be enough to justify artisans investing in the whole survey tree.

Not sure if the devs will agree, of course.

man.. people would rather fight w/each other on these boards thanjoin in on trying to make their profession better (talking about another CM thread). anyways, i think we should fight the battles that can be won. CMs/Docs/Medics have been asking for /medicalforage to be fixed forever now.... don't think it will be fixed anywhere in the near future & besides, its not really a CM matter (you get /medforage as novice medic). I was hanging onto 15 pts for artisan, but finally said screw it. All i do now is keep harvestors going in one spot, and mine the crap outta the high concentrations. Eventually, something good ALWAYS comes along, and you just stockpile it. For the real hard stuff to find, I just buy it - granted its like 10 creds per, but money is no big deal.. I'm able to keep around 250k or so in bank.

so, hopefully the devs are reading these ideas b/c they're pretty **edit** good. i just fear b/c of all the whining going on about CMs in PvP, we're gonna get nerfed sooo bad that I'll just quit. Just have to hope that day doesn't come.

awthtem

Just digging this out from under the pile...

I think your point about just leaving harvesters in place because you have no artisan really makes the point, Awthtem. You *have* to leave the harvesters in place, because as a CM you don't have the ability to survey for the resources necessary for your profession. I still don't see how the class is supposed to be feasible, aside from the stilted notion of class interdependency. While I agree that some interdependence makes the game interesting, resources are the lifeblood of a class. This is not like suggesting that a marksman be able to survey resources to build his own weapon.

As for /medicalForage ... what can you say. I was thinking when I wrote some of the ideas down that medic is a more appropriate place for /medicalSurvey as all medic classes are similarly affected by the inability to find their resources.

To be honest, when I think about it, not having a survey in medic is almost equivalent to removing it from the artisan classes. Make Surveyor a base class, and force artisans and artisan elites to buy their resources from Surveyors. Only then will we be on equal footing with them. Sure we can heal, but they get to be millionaires.

(Nerf Disclaimer: I don't for one minute want the above to happen to artisan. That would be STUPID. The alternative is to give us the ability... look, no nerfs, Ma!).