Doctor Archive

Here is the listing of apparent Bugs for the Doctor Profession. (These are fromthe old Big List of Doctor Issues, now broken out by category.) Please feel free to help me out with your comments and suggestions. Feel free to also mention any new bugs you think you mayhave found or any additional information or testing you may have done on some of the bugs listed.

Below is a summary of the bugs to follow

1.Enhanced HAMs Sticking
2.Experimentation Issues*
3.Resuscitation Timer Issues
4.Enhances Dropping on Resuscitation
5.Enhances Dropping on Logoff
6.Enhances Lowering Stats when Combined with other Buffs and Wearing Off
7.Stat Drain/Stat Loss/Stat Stick Bug
8.Enhance Action -v- other Enhance Pack Resource Disparity
9.Enhance Ease of Use=*
10.Factory Hopper/Inventory Window Refresh
11.Skill Enhancement Concerns=*
12.Enhancements not Assisting Armor Wearing
13.Droid Med Module Rating Overrides
14.Rooms/Dungeons and /DragIncap
15.Factory XP (or lack thereof)
16.Damage/Stim/State Timer and Bug=*
17.Advanced Resilience Compound Not Loading=
18.Enhance Timer on Pets
19.Enhance Pet Radial Menu Request
20.Unable to Use Enhance Notification
21.Incapacitated Player Location Problems
22.Wrong XP on Some Schematics
23.Usage XP Inconsistencies
24.Food Factory Deed
25.Room/Dungeon Wound Healing Problems
26.Crafting Schematics with Unused Ratings%*
27.State Pack Schematics with Range
28.Multiple CRDM problem
29.Radial Menu and Heal Options Bug
30.Battle Fatigue Notification

Notes:
* - Denotes Issue has had some change or addition made to it since last posting.
+ - Denotes New Issue since the last posting. (These will always be at the bottom of the listing.)
= - Denotes Issue is listed by Devs as being fixed in either this publish or the next (generally, 4-8 weeks.)
% - Denotes some part of Issue will be fixed in either this publish or the next (generally. 4-8 weeks.)

Please note that items listed as (*To be Fixed*) refer to the fact that the Devs have acknowledged the issue and expect that the issue will be fixed in either this publish coming up, or (more likely) the very next publish thereafter. In general this will probably mean a minimum of 2 weeks before such a fix will reach the Live servers but that it will more likely be closer to as much as an 8-10 week delay. Few of these items, if any, will rate a Hotfix so in order to ensure complete testing these kinds of delays are necessary. Be sure to check the date the statement was posted for a fix and add 8 weeks to it before considering if there is a problem with the fix not getting out. Please do not mistake the wording of a Dev that states “Fixed such-and-such” in these cases to mean that the item is actually fixed. It is simply a patch note method and the problem may not actually be fully fixed or even ready to go out in the next publish yet. Add the words “Will probably be” before that “Fixed” and you’ll have a better idea of how it should be read for now.

(*In Test*) refers to the next step where the issue has been placed onto Test Center for public testing. In general this means a 1 to 2 week test period before the issue will actually make it out to the Live Servers, presuming there are no undue problems. Again, please check the date of when the fix went to test before considering if there are any undue delays for getting the fix out.

(*Fixed*) Means the issue has been fixed and the fix is currently active on the Live servers. Items marked as Fixed will be removed from the very next issues listing if no further issues arise with the fix.

1.Enhanced HAMs Sticking

Stuck HAMs on buffed players are proving especially annoying to many Doctor characters. Either the HAMs stick after being buffed so that the player cannot see when they are getting damage (Mostly Fixed, still seeing reports of this, but less often), they stick so that the Doctor cannot see that their groupmates are getting damaged (a very dangerous situation)(Mostly Fixed, still seeing reports of this, although it appears it can be worked around by disbanding from the group, running out to 100m away, running back and rejoining the group.), they stick for both the Doc and the player (Fixed?), or they simply do not scale properly so that the buffed bar simply goes out past the edge of the window and any damage sustained to that attribute is not seen until it gets below the point where it can be seen inside the window.
http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=doctor&message.id=16354

2.Experimentation Issues*

(Added Patch Notes)

Experimentation does not seem to work correctly or consistently. Even with experimentation risks being listed as 0% there are still a great many critical failures, failures and some moderate and standard successes. Wholly inconsistent with the 0% failure rating guaranteed by the crafting station. Having highly experimented crafting tools and stations do seem to alleviate the problem a little, but not by very much. At least some think that having some possibility of failure is acceptable, but they do wish to have some indicator of what the possibility really is since obviously it is a greater than 0% chance and some would suggest it is really as high as a 5% chance. Amazing successes, on the other hand, appear to be far more rare than critical failures and do not produce as nearly drastic improvements as critical failures produce in reductions, there is simply no good trade-off here. Even experimenting by 1 point at a time seems will produce the same results (with less risk) as using as many points as possible. Part of the problem might come where recent experimentation with the crafting system would suggest that a crafting tool with a negative rating (up to –14.99) is far superior to a tool with a positive rating (+15). Apparently the values seem to be flipped for experimentation calculations, we think. We really would like more consistency and a more reliable, documented, experimentation methodology. Further Malleability ratings do appear to affect the difficulty levels of crafting an item, but this is not otherwise annotated anywhere, not even in the Advanced Guide on Crafting on the main SWG website. Better documentation on for experimentation needs to be made available.

(*Dev Response:
Test Center Patch Notes:
“Fixed experimentation formula to use the correct range when determining how much an item attribute changes. The formula was supposed to be based on the resource max range, but was using the entire attribute range. A crit success experimenting with an attribute can push the attrib over the resource max value, but never over the item max attrib value.”)

3.Resuscitation Timer Issues

Resuscitation seems to now be subject to a timer that does not allow a corpse to be resuscitated. The timer is inconsistent and otherwise undocumented. If there really is to be a timer we need to know what it is supposed to be or provide the dead player with some kind of indicator or countdown timer, but some folks are reporting that even given immediate access to a corpse they are unable to resuscitate the player.

For more info:
http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=doctor&message.id=15729
http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=doctor&message.id=18255

4.Enhances Dropping on Resuscitation

Enhance buffs are being lost whenever a character dies, even after being Resuscitated. Previously only when cloning would buffs, understandably, be lost. With buffs no longer remaining even after Resuscitation that skill is becoming even less valuable. We are hoping this is just a bug and not a new situation stealthed onto us (it was NEVER mentioned in any patch or publish notes).

5.Enhances Dropping on Logoff

Enhance buffs are being lost on occasion when logging or in rare situations when crossing (or so it seems) server boundaries yet the enhance timer remains active, as if the player still were buffed. This one is proving to be of some difficulty, especially for higher level Doctors who have longer Buff times.
http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=doctor&message.id=15995

6.Enhances Lowering Stats when Combined with other Buffs and Wearing Off

Starting with the October Publish the Enhances now also seem to have the ability to lower a stat when it wears off, much like a Spice Downer will do. However there is no indicator beyond checking your stats. The enhancing of the stats, such as by eating food, does not seem to rectify the problem, like it would for the standard Stat Stick bug. Logging off appears to be the only other workaround, but the issue mentioned above about losing a buff, but not the timer, on Logoff makes this workaround a great inconvenience.

[*Z’s note: This bug has been acknowledged by the Devs and is being worked on. No time estimates available at the moment.]

7.Stat Drain/Stat Loss/Stat Stick Bug

The 60-second stat drain after Resuscitation persists beyond 60 seconds. Food/buffs/spice seems to rectify this problem. Likely this is related to stats getting stuck at lowered levels after taking wounds until those stats are kicked back to normal by doing something to affect the stat. Please fix.

8.Enhance Action -v- other Enhance Pack Resource Disparity

Enhance Action B+ packs use simple Organic and Inorganic resources, while the rest of the B+ Enhance series uses Avian Meat and Reactive Gas. It is often considered a problem in that the Action packs should be brought into line with the rest of the Enhance packs, or the stringent requirements on the other packs lessened. Occasional questions also arise about the 2 or 3 BEC requirement that seems to fluctuate between some of the higher end Enhance schematics. Some consistency would make things less confusing or at least some clarification on the reasoning for these inconsistencies.

9.Enhance Ease of Use=*

(In Test, added Test Center Patch Notes)

(*In Test*) Experimentation on Ease of Use on Enhance Packs makes them HARDER to use, not easier. Very frustrating for the lower level Medicine Use individuals who gains access to higher level Doctor Crafting in that they cannot use these packs in the same way they had gotten used to being able to use Stim Cs at a lower Pharmacology level.

(*Dev Response:
Ben “Marvelin” Hanson response to correspondent on 9/22/03: “Fixed experimentation on enhancement medicines so that skillModRequired is reduced, not increased.” As noted at the top the earliest we can probably expect to see such a fix would be in the November Publish.

Test Center Patch Notes on 11/3/03:
“Fixed experimentation on enhancement medicines so that skillModRequired is reduced, not increased.”)

10.Factory Hopper/Inventory Window Refresh

Factories (and a few other inventory windows, but this is most prevalent and reproducible on factories) are not refreshing properly. When moving an item into the input hopper on a factory, the item actually moves in all other respects (inventory size goes down, hopper size goes up and so on) but the graphic of the object does not move from inventory until either a window is closed or the “Change View” button is pressed to force an update.

11.Skill Enhancement Concerns%*

(Partial Fix, added Dev response, added UI fix request)

(*Fixed*) Some experimentation with SEAs seems to provide some conflicting information. Some suggest that there is a cap of +100 on a skill even with SEAs while many other suggest there is a +125 limit on the skills. A few others suggest that there is no such limit at all. There is no documentation on the issue at all and while this issue would be of utmost importance to BEs (so they can be informed about what they are selling) it is also of import to Doctors because of the possibilities it can provide to them through Wound Treatment to increase Buff capabilities. We would appreciate clarification on the issue. (See Dev Response for the clarification requested.)

For some of the responses and more information see:
http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=doctor&message.id=15426

(*Added*) As noted below by Dev Response this is “as intended”. The only issue now would be to clarify the situation in the game by modifying he UI on the Skills page to reflect that maximum.

(*Dev Response:
Dave "Keldarin" White wrote on the Correspondent forum on 11/3/2003 in regards to a question on if the UI is bugged or if the perceived +25 cap on skill enhancements is bugged:
“There is a UI issue there. The highest bonus you can have to any one skill is +25.”)

12.Enhancements not Assisting Armor Wearing

Buffs seem to have some problems when used to assist in the wearing of armor. Sometimes other buffs methods seem to assist. It is likely related to Mind encumbrance in some manner, but the error message, which always states “'You are not healthy enough” seems to imply it is a Health related problem, when in fact it could be mind or action related, or even related to a substat of those. A more descriptive error message may help in alleviating some of these problems.
http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=doctor&message.id=9640
http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=doctor&message.id=14508

13.Droid Med Module Rating Overrides

Droid med module ratings are superceding the heal rates in other locations, thus GREATLY reducing the heal capabilities of medics (or increasing on those rare instances an experimented Med 6 Module is on the droid in question). Please check to ensure that only the best heal rate is utilized.

This is also affecting the damage stim rates when they are out, greatly reducing what a stim would normally heal damage for with no droid around at all. While it would be nice to have a 10% increase with a well experimented Med 6 module, it is requested that droids either be taken out of the loop for heal effectiveness with stims, or that the greater heal rate of an area is also considered for stims, but where the standard heal rate is considered 100% irregardless of location (thus allowing for a 100 heal rate normally, but gaining the bonuses of a droid that has a higher rate if it is available.)

14.Rooms/Dungeons and /DragIncap

We’d like the ability to /DragIncap from a room or Cave/Dungeon.

15.Factory XP (or lack thereof)

Factories currently do not seem to be providing the 10% Crafting XP they are supposed to provide. We are uncertain if this is a problem with no XP being provided at all, or if there is a timing issue where the XP is being provided at an extremely slow rate. Several folks are trying to investigate the issue further.

16.Damage/Stim/State Timer and Bug=*

(Fixed, added Test Center Patch Notes)

(*Fixed*) Relatedly the State packs (and when a Doctor stims themselves) seem to ignore Diagnostics level in that they notify the Doctor that he must wait, say 3 seconds before healing again, but after three second it continues to give a command stating you must wait before you can do that to what would appear to be the full delay of someone who had no Diagnostics skill at all, or about 6-9 seconds, in effect doubling the delay rate. Please fix.

(*Dev Response:
Ben “Marvelin” Hanson responded on the Correspondent forum on 9/24/03 with an indication that this will be fixed in the November Publish.
Test Center Patch Notes from 11/3/03:
“Fixed a problem with several healing commands using the default roundtimes and not the roundtime modified by skill mods.”)

17.Advanced Resilience Compound Not Loading=

(In Test)

(*In Test*) The schematic for Advanced Resilience Compound will not load into the crafting tool at all.
(Ben Hanson response to correspondent on 9/22/03: “Fixed some problems with advanced resilience compounds. They should now be craftable.” The earliest we can probably expect to see such a fix would be in the November Publish.)

18.Enhance Timer on Pets

The timers on Pets are screwed up in that if a pet is enhanced using the same buff that is used on the Pet’s owner at approximately the same time, after the buff wears off normally from the owner, for example, the Pet’s buff will also wear off. However the Pet’s timer will still be active, so even though the owner could be re-buffed, the Pet cannot as the game states the pet already has an enhancement to that attribute. (Storing then recalling the pet is a likely workaround for this, but also a possible exploit since it allows unlimited buffing of a pet for XP.)

19.Enhance Pet Radial Menu Request

The Pet Radial menu does not show Enhance options (it can be done manually, but it's not on the radial for a pet). Please add it to that menu for consistency sake.

20.Unable to Use Enhance Notification

Enhance A packs can be made at a lower skill ability than Advanced Wound Treatment and are given a low enough med use requirement that most Doctors will have no problem trying to make and use one as soon as they acquire the ability to do so. Unfortunately trying to use the packs without Advanced Wound Treatment means that they do not work, but they also do not give notification of why they do not work. This proves to be very confusing to many new Doctors. Same for Cure Poison Statepack. (And possibly Disease as well). Please provide some form of error notification when trying to use these packs.
http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=doctor&message.id=1168

21.Incapacitated Player Location Problems

Incapped players seem to always change location from where they, apparently, dropped down, even when you are on follow. As such the player who may not have moved since the last time you were close enough to heal them just a few seconds ago, is somehow no longer within healing range, even if they look like they are at your feet. Workarounds have included using the /DragIncapacitatedPlayer command to get them to you, but sometimes the location is so screwed up that even though the player appears to be at your character’s feet, they are still outside of the 20m drag range, although this does seem to be occurring less often lately. A possible solution is using the same location algorithm for locating the “body” that heals were using on the live player (where the player WAS close enough) when they are incapped and allow the /follow command to actually work on incapped players and corpses to get us close enough to them to perform the required heal function.

(*Dev Response:
The system designer in charge of combat, Dan, wrote in a thread regarding design issues and considerations for the combat professions on 9/18/03:
“Melee Out of Range issue:

This is caused by the object on your client being drawn in a different location that it exists on the server.

The proposal to fix this is to increase the melee range of all weapons to a value that is closer to the margin of error between the client/server. This will make combat look a little funny as you’ll be able to hit a target further away, but I think this is an appropriate tradeoff.”

Ref: http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=Development&message.id=565036

This may fix the range errors caused by this issue.)

22.Wrong XP on Some Schematics

Some items do not seem to be giving proper XP, such as Resuscitation Kits providing 0 XP or that experimented items, having a higher complexity, do not give more XP than their unexperimented versions.

It has also been noted that despite the increased complexity and resource requirements of something like an Advanced Liquid Suspension over a standard LS that the standard LS will still provide more XP (35 as compared to 25 for an ALS).

23.Usage XP Inconsistencies

UXP seems to be quite inconsistent. Some preliminary testing suggests that UXP can often be had if the person using the item is right there with you when they use it, but of they are any distance away (possibly a server line issue) or if the Doc is logged off, UXP does not seem to be generating (even allowing for the possible 4 hour delay Holo once mentioned as a consideration for some earlier UXP anomalies being seen.)

24.Food Factory Deed

The Factory schematic for Food & Chem. Factories needs to be renamed. They currently state only “Food Factory” on the schematic and far too many medics, and far too many architects, get confused enough by the name to think that some other factory, such as the Equipment factory, is needed for making meds. Please Fix to read “Food and Chemical Factory.”

25.Room/Dungeon Wound Healing Problems

Additionally non-combat healing actions, such as Wound Healing and Enhancing, that would normally require a Droid, do not function within Caves/Dungeons.

26.Crafting Schematics with Unused Ratings%*

(Partial In Test, added Test Center Patch Notes)

(*Partial in Test*) There are also several schematics that use resources that do not have stats required by their schematic. In particular, the Infection Amplifier and Advanced Infection amplifier use Reactive Gas and Aluminum, neither of which has a PE rating, 33% of the Power for that component. Dispersal Mechanism and Advanced Dispersal Mechanism Use Liquid Petro Fuel and Inert Petrochemical, neither of which has a Conductivity rating which affects the Range and Area of Affect on the component. On the final schematics for all Enhance packs other than Action the schematics require Avian Meat and Reactive Gas, neither of which have UT rating which affects the charges available. The same is true for the top-level Cure Disease and Poison packs.

(*Dev Response:
Response by Ben “Marvelin” Hanson to Kavedawg, the CM correspondent, suggests that in the November or December publish all CM-related schematics will be switched to rely only on Overall Quality and Decay Resistance to help simplify those schematics and the resource requirements.

Test Center Patch Notes for 11/3/03:
“Changed the attribute weightings on combat medical components to fix a problem where it was not possible to get resources to fill all of the requirments. These items now use decay resist and quality for determining experimentation.”)

27.State Pack Schematics with Range

The State Pack schematics all have an experimentable trait for Range that is set for 0 and is not improvable. It should probably be removed.

28.Multiple CRDM problem

Enhances (and other Advanced Meds as well) that use multiple CRDMs do not seem to be reading the Power rating correctly. Preliminary suggestions seem to imply that the power rating from the CRDMs are not being read at all. Further, thorough, testing needs to be done, however. (Anyone wanting to help out on this front, please jump right in.)
http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=doctor&message.id=14087

29.Radial Menu and Heal Options Bug

The Radial menu does not always provide the Heal options, even though the target is obviously wounded and/or the redial menu was just used to provide a heal. Please fix.

http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=doctor&message.id=18435

30.Battle Fatigue Notification

The Battle Fatigue affecting your heal rate should be giving notification at 200 instead of 400. By the same respect the player being healed should also receive the notification message as well to encourage them to get the Battle Fatigue healed at the Cantina first before going to the Med Center and wasting the resources of the Medics their who are not healing to their potential because of this.