Combat Medic Archive
Thread: Weekly Report 7.26.2003
Sorry for the delay on posting this, been very busy with RL things.
These issues were submitted in regards to the most pertinent issues as well as what was told that was going to be addressed. I am aware that AOE is STILL not working even though they said it was fixed. I will be looking in to this problem in depth to see if it's still a valid issue or if it simply requires odd manipulation of the various crafting components.
Anyway, without further adue, here's the list.
Top 5 Issues:
1) Disease/Poisons Packs - while using very high quality resources and components allows you to make a usable pack of each the effects do not seem to be worthwhile for the trouble it takes to make these. Currently Disease does nothing of notice. Also when experimenting on these packs the success rate in which they work is affected by successful Ease of Use experiments rather than Efficiency experiments. Also, packs have been reported to not cause the target to initiate combat with you, or in PVP situations the target won't auto-target you (if they have no target). This allows a CM using well made packs to simply apply it, sit there and kill with little to no risk of being attacked.
2) AOE Stims - This issue is being addressed as per Q's latest post, thank you!
(edit: not submitted in report, this issue is still present, their "fix" of this problem didn't fix anything, will be resubmitting)
3) Ranged StimPacks - there have been inconsistent reports that /healdamage is not letting you heal a target within standard stimpack range (6m) and gives "No Valid Medicine Found" when you actually have plenty of ranged stimpacks.
4) Combat Medic Crafting - Fix typo on the Ranged Stimpack E to only use 3 Chemical Dispersion Mechanisms instead of the 13 it's currently set to. Also, look into the way CMs experiment for their components. Currently all crafting professions start over when they earn their Elite Profession. In the Medic profession this is true with CMs, yet Medics don't max out on Medical Crafting/Experimentation and must continue on to Master Doctor to be able to make the highest possible packs and components. This does not seem to fall in line with how every other crafting profession works. Please either switch CMs to use Medic Crafting/Experimentation for their crafting, or change Medics to finish off Medic Crafting/Experimentation with Master Medic and start Doctors over with Doc Medicine Crafting/Experimentation.
5) The /medicalforage command is pretty much useless since in order to even make the basic StimPack A you need multiple units of any single component. It would take a medic HOURS to /medicalforage to randomly acquire enough resources to make one StimPack A, even in emergency situations. Please look as this command and try to make it worth using. One suggestion is to make it look at the organic resources in the area and randomly /sample any of them (ones that would give an artisan return, not the "resource too low to find anything" message.) and based on concentration & medical foraging skill it would return a stack of units appropriate. Each /medicalforage use would randomly gather just like this, sometimes you'd gather the same thing, other times you'd get something else. In this fashion /medicalforage would be useful in emergency situations where you need XX organics to make that stimpack you really really need.
Reading any of the threads on Page 1 of the Combat Medic forums will give you repeated posts on these issues. I tried to figure out which posts were by people who simply didn't have enough experience playing the game, and which were well thought out problems that needed attention. I believe that fixing these 5 issues will make MANY CMs happy.
Personal Request: Look at the Combat Medic Support line, currently it doesn't seem to affect the class much. In the manual CMs are noted to get terrain negotiation (like scouts), and other combat support abilities which I don't see on the in-game information.
I know many of you will disagree with what I've devised as top priority, there are many many more issues to address. We, the correspondants have been asked to hold off on our next weekly report until these issues are address by the approrpriate divisions, combat, crafting, and other. I will reply on this thread with what information I am given about future updates and fixes so pleas ebe patient. I ask that you don't post any information on the things I have listed above unless it is NEW information. Reposting the same complaints doesn't help me figure out what NEW issues there are. I appreciate the feedback from everyone about this class and I hope with our help we can make it a class that everyone enjoys playing and wants to keep playing. Thank you.
Special thanks to Elenora for her constant in deptch analisys of the class and various ways to improve/fix the problems. Your tireless efforts do not go unnoticed!
no problem Fark...
this is after all all of our classes...
just because you are correspondant doesnt mean that u have to do it all...we can all help by posting and trying to help to find the hot issues but posting our issues in a clear and coherent manner without too much flaming.
Honestly, the correspondant is just our mouth piece...we decide what the hot topics are by posting here and discussing the ideas and proposing solutions. Its jut flithy's job to get it down on paper and send that into the devs.
So lets not spend time flaming for being busy with real life. Lets just work to make it easier for the correspondant to do his job. As long as he is getting out issues to the devs, his job is being done...and he's right you dont have to post religiously or even log on to read the boards and see what people are concerned about. After its been sent to the devs, it outta of our hands.
Flithy dont worry about the critics...just play the game and do the best u can and we'll try to help u out...
and hurry up and put some stims on ur vendor...u being gone has forced the people to come to me for stims and im drowning in orders...so STOP SLACKING and start making them meds!!! See ya on Ahazi
Looks good! Personally I agree completely with 1-4 (though not necessarily in that order).
#5 is a pain, true, but there are lots of ways to get around that (such as planning ahead).
MY #1 COMPLAINT - MEDICAL FORAGE - I once spent 2 straight hours using /medicalforage I filled my inventory with dozensof uniqueitems, and moved spots 6 times BEFORE i found a second unit of even 1 of those resources. And since resourcescan't be combined I estimated it would take around 16 hours! to get enough of one resource that I could use. Compare that to 2 minutes using Artisan Survey.
It is tough enough to go master on any elite tree where you have to have the entire base tree (all of medic to get all of doctor) and still have enough points to even think of holding your own in a fight (despite stimpack useage). Technically speaking to even begin to even think of being solo (not relying on suppliers or the bazaar for that matter) - you would have to burn points in both scout (hunting) and artisan (survey) to be a doctor and cm. That said I finally gave in and sold backmy scout tree andnow rely on the bazaar for crappy animal parts(like avian meat for enhance packs). And now without Explore -anygroup I'm with must wait for me on every hill.(Man I'd love to have that skill back).
So clearly I had to keep artisan cause at the minimum I can survey/sample both organic and inorganic materials for crafting. But I have no intention of ever being "AN ARTISAN".
This brings me to the point of my frustration - what a joke /medicalforage is. The devs needto do something to make /medicalforage useful.It could be made very useful with any one of these mutally exclusive approaches:
redesign suggestion #1) /medicalforagerandomly grabs 24 units of a single given high quality resource in one forage - but burn the entire action AND mindbar requiring a long /sit time. But after doing this you could actually craft something right away in the field, while waiting for your bars to replentish.
redesign suggestion #2) /medicalforage allows resource suggestions, just like a survey tool allows you to choose which resource you are after and even it it gets only a couple of units of this resource (along with failures) per grab, after a few minutes and a heal or two you could have enough to use.
redesign suggestion #3) /medicalforage randomly picks up a single unit of a resource with a much much lower action penalty and far less depleted resource messages, combined with a change to the ingredient requirements for generic crafting slots. Say the slot says "Any Organic" then allow even 18 totally unique and different organics. Do NOT allow any schematic to be created from anything that was made in this way ... no factory possibilities.
clearly if you plan to make stims for anything other than personal use you must either have survey and harvesters yourself to manage and maintain - or rely on others. But /medicalforage needs to be useful enough for the solo crafter, making only a personal supply of goods with SOME EFFORT, to not have to rely on others in order to craft and MOST IMPORTANTLY BE ABLE TO GIVE UP ARTISAN AND STILL SUCCEED. Though granted more slowly. The current /medicalforage arrangement is TOTALLY USELESS.
thanks for listening,
http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=medic&message.id=192
It looks pretty good to me.
You're missing the whole point of forage and med forage. They're not meant as a way to gather resources but a way to see what resources actually are available in a region. Not everyone CM is also an artisan (although it helps a great deal)and forage provides a limited survey function to those with no means of using the survey tools. I agree that med forage should include some better items that might heal a little more damage than the scout foraged items, but it's not meant as a way to collect mass qualtities of resources with which to craft your meds. That's what harvesters are for.
actually /medicalforage should let use use survey tools with smaller ranges than artisans and then let use pull up 1 exactly 1 unit of a type in order to delve what stats a resource has. Then we can place harvesters. Fact is that crafting in this game depends on harvesters, no reason why we should be any different. Only problem is that we spend 15 points in order to even gain the ability to seeveins to place harvesters.
I think my suggestion would in no way lessen the abilities that artisans in survey. I don't think medics should ever be as effectives as a surveyor in sampling. But I also dont think its fair that we cannot place our own harvesters without asking a artisan to spot for us. Its ridiculous.
Hello all,
Im hoping to be Master CM on the test server by the end of this week (sooner depending on work schedule). As soon as I get that grinded out I will post an evaluation on the recent changes (if they dont' get patched before then.) I don't have much information on the changes being that I haven't bothered with the low level disease/poison packs yet since they are all but worthless on anything other than a gorg.
Anyways if you have questions about the CM changes dropa post on the Test Center server and I will try to answer them as best I can. I will also browse these forums and link back to reports on the testing me and other CM's do on the TC.
Gellor (aka Morbus)
That's a good report, i really hope they will fix some of these asap. By the time things get fixed, i ve stopped playing my Combat Medic, being Master with 0 skill pts, i don t want to surrender that class i realllyhaveFaith in. CM was my first char on Beta, and the one i wanted to play since day 1. Sadly i ve been through too many deceptions. I'd rather try something else than grommel about being broken all day 
Bio Engineer, my second choice was somehow well broken too, i ve created one while waiting CM Fix wait and get it close to master just to notice how our products would be valueless on the market and Tissue Eng was still absolutely useless... Am i addict to broken class ??
Well, my Third choice at least is going nice Tailoring doesn t give as much surprise...
Can't wait to play CM again tho.
They should do something for Editing past message.... I ve pressed Submit while correcting....
Well, just wanted to tell my support to your hardwork 
)
Filthy Save us !