Doctor Archive
Thread: Its not about medical foraging sucking...
Its actually about othe careers having skills that are self suficient andbelittle ours. Of course, you cant complain about game balance to the guy that deals with doctors, so naturally we all say make medical forgaebetter, and I agree. How dare they turn to us and say it would make us too self suficient. Need I even name the professions that counter that argument?
The thing is, I jsut cant figure out why its #1 on our list. Seriously? This is THE MOST IMPORTANT concern for all doctors? Holy christ, when were all the other things fixed that this is actually important? The only people that I can think of that would value this would be newbies that dont want to bust their ass like I did to collect resources by hand until they can afford harvesters OR people that are master combat skill and master doctor and dont have enought points left for surveying skills. Thats the price you pay bub. You cant have the best of all worlds.
I dont need to be flamed, just calmly and sensibly tell me how I'm wrong and your point will be taken.
Actually I would suggest that you mention the reason right in your post. It's important for those getting into the profession and it's important for those finishing out their Templates. Both comprise a large portion of the profession.
Sucking it up, to keep Asrtisan, when we have a skill that was built into the class that is non-functional, and suggests that we should have a skill to serve the purpose of the level of capability that other professions have, isn't much of an answer, IMHO. The ability is there, it's was just VERY poorly implimented.
It's a priority because the issue is important to those folks, and for those who are already in the profession but have the foresight to see ahead to when they will need and want to give up Artisan to do something they should have been able to do from the beginning, and to those who see that it would be a good thing to help out those who are just getting started as well. Medic is not the easiest profession to get into and is counterintuitive in many ways if you do not have some other Medic, Doc or CM to help you out along the way.
So what are the other Problems that are much more important than this, in your opinion?
Many other issues have some workarounds that folks can live with. This is one that is obviously bothering them, however, more than those. Please don't suggest they deserve a "Holy Christ, what is wrong with you people?" kind of attitude because of that. Obviously their priorities are simply different than yours. Nothing wrong with trying to convince us otherwise, of course, but that kind of phraseaology doesn't really help to present the argument, it will just get folks to react defensively, even if you present compelling arguments.
I can see how spending 15 skill points just so you can spend another 12 on survey is a little absurd. I'm a merchant, so I need it anyways, thus my previous confusion over why this is a big deal. Something equivalent to the survey skill column might be in order, that increases with skill level. Perhaps begginning in novice medic and ending at both master doctor and/or master CM so that they would have nearly equivalent surveying skills as a Survey IV artisan. That way you couldnt cheat the artisan class because you'd have to be very dedictated to medicine to be worth a **edit** in surveying for medical needs. Would that help novice medics? Of course not, but they arent tight on skill points either, so whats the problem there? A new medic would do well to pick up artisan and surveying to start off with and drop them later.
I agree. But starting medics don't really know that. They need to find it out. Which is why I personally thinkg /medforage and /medsurvey are kind of 2 seperate things.
So far our primary suggestion has been for a compromise, not getting the equivalent of survey, but getting a gimped versio of survey, possibly with minimal, or even no, sample as long as we can at least find out the OQ, PE, UT and DR (and Cond for CMs) of a resource.
I still don't understand the argument for doctors getting surveying skills. We also require herbivore meat and avian meat, but I don't see anyone asking to harvest animal resources (or maybe I'm missing something). Chefs, armorsmiths, tailors, architectsand others also require tons of animal resources but they have to "waste" 15 or morepoints on scout skills in order to harvest themselves. As a former chef and now nearly master doc, I have to say we have it EASY when it comes to crafting and selling our wares. Stimpaks are very profitable and constantly in demand.
Why can't you fork outa few thousand credits + shuttle fareto pay someone to survey for you once a week, or just give one of your customers a discount on a crate if they'll do a surveying mission for you? I've seen it work and I've worked my way up to within 20k experience of master doc crafting without the help of a PA and without surveying. It has been a cakewalk compared to just getting 2 2nd level skills in chef.
Be nice to people, make a quality product and don't be afraid to ask for favors occasionally. You'll do fine. This is a community game folks.
I'm glad our #1 issue is such a miniscule thing. Being a doc is pretty great.
Elsifr - Master Pikeman/Nearly Master Doc/Marginal Scout- Kettemoor
The reason it's less important for the Scout skills is that we only need those items for 2 things. and Advanced component and as 1 of the resources in non-Action Enhance packs. Everything else is needed in much greater quantities and is available thorugh Artisan survey, at this time.
There are many crafting professions. Not all of them rely on Crafting XP to advance (such as Merchant), but all of them do get get Survey as part of their base skills. There are also several "hybrid" crafting professions, including all of the medical professions, scout, ranger, entertainer and musician. Of those professions Scouts and Rangers are at least capable of using their own skills to get the resources they need for most of the things they craft.Of those professions the only ones who can even experiment on thier craftables is the Medic Professions and Ranger (for Camo kits). None of them, other than Medic professions, use components except for 1 Smuggle schematic. And in no case do any of the hybrid crafters need the quantity, variety or specific resource stat requirements that the Medic Professions do. Our crafting requirements are pretty much in-line (and in some cases more complex) than any of the artisan schematics. One could argue that they are actually more complex at the lower levels than any of the artisan schematics1 (getting a schematic that uses 3 seperate components, along with 2 different resources at only the second level of a crafting line... Stim Bs.)
Medics are as much a crafting profession as any of the artisans, yet the only tool we were given to allow us to have some capability of self-sufficiency (like all those other crafters have) is /medicalforage and we all know that command is utterly incapable of even coming close to meeting our requirement needs.
So the few resources we do need coming from /harvest, should be considered part of the standard dependency expected of most any class, as it is not so far out of the question to ask for such minor requirments that are only needed at higher levels, and in fact is a common occurence for the other crafting professions.
The ease of getting Artisan is not in question, nor is it an atempt to steal a skill from another class. We're not asking for /survey and /sample. We are asking for a skill that will provide for us what those skill provide for the Artisan classes. A /medicalsurvey, if you will, that is NOT the same capability as /survey.
BTW, Chef is a poor profession to use as a comparison for Docs. It's generally accepted that Chefs are a bit gimped right now.
Hey Zarlor.
I read your argument and the dev response and I thinksomething is missing here.With the introduction of harvesters, the most powerful component of the artisan sampling tree is finding waypoints to resources, not sampling. I stopped sampling long ago because it is boring, tedious, I don't macro and small harvesters were really cheap and easily available. If docs get a medicalsurvey with even a limited range and a small list of organics/inorganics we can search for, it will still be extremely powerful once you get your hands on a few harvesters.
Taking an extra 20 minutes longer than an artisan with surveyingto find a good spot of Lokian wild wheat is not really adisadvantage when you can drop a heavyflora farmdown for 6 days and get massive quantities of resources anyway. I have chosen to trade money, business relationships, or discounts on products for the ability to find good waypoints to resources. Others have chosen totrade 15 skill points. It is a trade off, and a fair one I think since we have so many other amazing abilities artisans can't even touch.
I guess I'm in the minority as a doc. You do anamazing job as a correspondant of reporting what the community wants and this is it. So uhhh, bring on the medical surveying 
!
Elsifr - Master Pikeman/Nearly Master Doc/Marginal Scout- Kettemoor
+++
Well, this just happens to be one of the issues I'm pretty interested in. The point for me, though, is proper level of balance. In this repects Medical professions are just plain getting the shaft. We have no way to find any of the resources we need, even though we need a level of resources on par with virtually any of the Artisan calsses. In tht respect I simply feel that 15 skill poinst isn't a trade-off, it's a hindrance and hardship not placed on other professions that, in some cases, have lesser crafting requirements than we do.
I guess we could say that the other option would be to make our crafting requirements as easy as a smugglers. If we only needed, say, some lesser number of a couple of organics, or inorganics, for even out toughest schematics, then I think we'd have a fair comparison and no real ability to suggest an actual need for a surveying ability.
And these are my arguments as Zarlor, not as a Correspondent, mind you. Although in this case there appears to be a certain level of agreement between my personal view and those of the 2/3rds majority of other Doctors. 
Survey as they have it here, is using a device to check for concentration values. You press a few buttons and get a readout on the machine that an artisan has crafted. Almost no training should be needed to accomplish thisfor a minimal result. Doctors are not asking for an ability to scan as well as Artisans, or be able to collectsamples. At least I'm not. We would just like to be able to use the same simplistic deviceArtisans can. You would think if we can run a full diagnostic scan on someone that we could use a simple survey tool.
Scout involves skinning and dressing a kill for resources. Much more involved.
-I still don't understand the argument for doctors getting surveying skills. We also require herbivore meat and avian meat, but I don't see anyone asking to harvest animal resources (or maybe I'm missing something).-
You are missing that WE ALREADY HAVE an ability that is geared to this end that is broken, that the devs cant figure out what to do with it. I made a post saying that id like to see med forage improved such that hunting with a party and foraging / medical harvesting while doing it would allow you to make appropriate level meds in small quantities, and imho for me thats the answer to that.
I have to point out that making our resource requirements like the smuggler would be a good alternative, as they dont need much.
I made a post saying that id like to see med forage improved such that hunting with a party and foraging / medical harvesting while doing it would allow you to make appropriate level meds in small quantities, and imho for me thats the answer to that.
I think that would be a fair solution since it would make it very useful for medics just starting out. It actually goes along with the description I've read of medical forage a lot better than a surveying/sampling replacement. Maybe make the quanities randomly matchthe requirements ofa basic medical component or stim.
Right now, for me, medical forage isn't useless. I use itwhen I'm on Lok and Dantooine to check the current quality of the wheat and berries. If I get real bored waiting for a shuttle I'll even forage for a while to see if I get lucky and find a super high OQ/PE organic which I can then go place a harvester on. It isn't great, but it does have a use.
Anyway, the community has alreadyvoted so I'm not going to say anything more. I'm happy with our current state but any improvements will be welcomed.
Elsifr