Combat Medic Archive

Greetings, my fellow field physicians.

Iam greatly dismayed at the implementation of the Combat Medic class. I wanted very much to fulfill the role of both a Medic and a Biowarfare engineer. However, having just achieved Novice Combat Medic, I am beginning to think that the profession is poorly planned, and executed with lackluster indifference.

#1 Queues: The combat queue should be immediately superceded by any healing action taken. Ie: if I have a Action Shot 2 as my next attack, and the person next to me is getting whomped on badly, my healing attempt should take place prior to theAction Shot 2in the combat queue. As it is, when engaged with a weapon, it takes a virtual eternity for the healing action to be performed. Any medic worth their salt would cease firing and heal their comrade that's about to die. This is currently not the case with the handling of combat and medic actions. What ensues is a lot of "Why didn't you heal me?" when my comrade is killed because it was more than8 seconds for the heal to be the next action to take place. Medical actions NEED to have an icon in the Combat Queue, and also need to automatically be thefirst action in that queue.

#2 Resources: There may be some exceptions, but for a "combat class", CM's are the only one that actually cost money each and every time we go into the field. Stimpacks, woundpacks, poison and disease packs... these all cost money to make. And this is a class that, like entertainers and Doctors, primarily relies on the good-nature of other people to tip us to provide income. Not only do we have to pay credits to upkeep our harvestors and factories to get the resources necessary to make the items, but every time we go into the field we have to use up those items. What are we left with? "Sure, I'll join your group and heal you, but I need 300cr per person up front so I can pay my maintenance fees." That'll make you about as well-received as a gift-wrapped bucket of hamster vomit on Christmas morning.

Now factor in the need for interplanetary travel to get the resources needed for high level devices, and you've got a class that cannot achieve financial security. We pay for upkeep to get resources, we use those resources every time we leave the city, and we must travel the stars to get more resources once we get more skilled... and we depend on the kindness of others.

Now, the same argument can be said for Doctors... and that argument is still applicable. Both our classes are shoddily implemented in regards to what it costs to maintain our abilities versus the only real form of cash income we have: /tip.Personally, I have yet to recieve anything more than a "thanks" for providinghealing anywhere other than tending wounds in the med center.

Our crafted items need far more charges each than what we currently recieve, even with experimentation. My first poison canister took me 50 minutes to find all the resources necessary, and for all that effort I had a WHOPPING 7 charges of mind poison.The first usedid 21dmg a tick and gave me 21 points of medical XP to use. The next 4 charges were resisted. The 6th and 7th charges did exactly the same as the first charge: 21/tick dmg for a 1-time XP gain of 21.

So... let's recap: 50 minutes of surveying and crafting for 3 working charges of 21dmg/tick. Does that seem a little (well, greatly) out of line with what is supposed to be an Elite profession?

Combat Medics need:

#1 Priority in the Combat Queue for Healing actions. (Poison/Disease should enter the queue as any attack currently does... as the last item in the list.)

#2 Far greater use and output from what we craft in order to keep us from staying strapped for cash at all times. Our items should not require such a huge loss in both time and money to make for a very limited life span.

As far as I can currently see, given that I play most every day, I will have to spend 2-3nights a week doing missions to maintain a bankroll of enough cash to pay for what it takes to actually perform my duties as a CM.

That doesn't sound like a combat medic to me... and I was in the Army, and a paramedic as well in real life.

The /peace command should help you out when you want to get someone healed fast. It will let you heal right away even if you just finished with your /headshot3.

I completely agree with everything you said, especially the poison, wth is the deal with that? took me the same 50 minutes to get the 7 charges, i've only successfully poisoned something 2 times out of 14, my actionshot2 hits for 700-800 on enemies actionpool which makes the 21 dmg barely working poison completely useless. Not that I dont enjoy being asked to be a vital part of a hunting group but the CM proffesion certainly isnt as great as i had expected, at least yet that is.