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*raises hand*

Same issue here! I gave up and went back to Investigate 0 until they get serious about fixing that.

So frustrating and expensive!

They are probably not invisible, they are probably just not near the waypoint. Look in a radius of up to 400 m away from the waypoint and you should find most of your invisible marks. This worked for higher level missions, but I'm not sure if the novice level missions work the same way.

I have done about 30 marks in total,about 20 before the patch, and have never had an unattackable mark i.e white. Am i just lucky? I am at Inves 1 by the way.

Ran 2 before work and both where good. Last night was actualy my best ever had 6 in a row all worked perfect. No noshows no withe only one stuck in something (i got him out) and my seekers actualy worked. I had been having a major issue where the first couple droids would say they updateded the loc but the WP didnt move then the next one would jump it 4-5k from that spot. At this rate ill get master tomarrow

You guys that din get any whites ... you are lucky ...

I get the non TEF marks alot ... for invisible marks ... usally I send out another arkayd droid once he's launched the mark shows up ...

i had a white mark, then when i moved it turned yellow, then when i went back it turned white.

I was able to judge when I could make it turn yellow and I was able to kill him.

however,

he was in the very same location as another mark, the names where different. This was in Nashul on Talus in the water by a bridge. after I killed my mark the other mark, that was white was their.

this was the weirdest thing ive had happen.

The costs of defense against combat medics and rifleman are listen and compared. Analasis is given of their respective combat strengths. This analysis along with the presented techniques of applications and stacking of poisons/diseases/fires is shown to illustrate their incredible offensive capability. Furthermore, alleviations to this inbalance are noted and further called to be effective.

Here are presented counters regularly used by combatants to mitigate CM danger in PvP. These are:
1.Dancer and musician buffs - 10-15k before every PvP action I attempt
2.Brandy and Canape - 150k-300k a crate for brandy, 90k-220k a crate for canape.
3.Travel with doctors - free
4.Poison resistance food - 90k-220k a crate
5.Poison and Disease resistance skill tapes - +6 disease resistance tape in use, next multi-million purchase
will be for a poison resistance skill tape.
6.Teras Kasi powerboost - free
7.Muon Gold - 4-12k a crate - for use in emergencies and is next to dirt cheap (poor smugglers)
8.Battlefield movement tactics - avoid line of sight with CM's - free as long as no one charges you to teach
this to them. This tactic falls victim to area poison buggs and is often not a very effective tactic. Also
included in this is to remain spread out. When my group knows of CM danger, we spread out.
9.Use of a voice communication system to call for cures

To be fair one can NEVER have enough mind in PvP as it now stands. These precautions above are a good idea no matter who you are up against. These are defensive only counters. The other "half" would be offensive tactics: take the CM out first, don't db him/her, keep moving to targets not around where a CM takes his/her cover, use combat specials to KD/dizzy them, etc.

Here are counters used against rifleman:
1.Stun Helm - 100k
2.Shield Generator - 30-40k - i go through one of these a night as I use the Imperial Prototype ones (3k durability)
3.Synthsteaks - 200k a crate - damage reduction
4.Teras Kasi powerboost - free
5.Dancer/musician buffs - 10-15k before every PvP action I attempt
6.Brandy/canape - 150k-300k a crate for brandy, 90k-220k a crate for canape
7.Muon Gold - 4-12k a crate - poor smugglers
8.Battlefield tactics - pull ranged weapon to take advantage of ranged defenses and mitigation

Defense costs are notably equal. Care was taken not to mention a defense versus weak combat professions like pistoleer - defending against a pistoleer is effectively buying stun comp and a shield generator and gesticulating toward them in a derogatory manner A fair comparison was taken by examination of a powerful ranged profession. The battlefield effectiveness of such equally defense expensive professions is examined below.

Rifleman is a class that the developers have said at FanFest needs a big giant nerf bat to hit them They are capable of engaging multiple targets with strafing shot, but their particular power lies in their headshot. Armed with a Jawa Ion rifle, they can cut through non-stun armor like it's a paper plate. For stun armored foes, they draw their heavy (AP 3) armor piercing T21's to do the job. Result is large mind damage to victims, with occasional little offensive resistance by kited melee opponents.

Note the offensive strengths of combat medics. CM's are capable of delivering strong single and area poisons and diseases that can be stacked multiple times. The poisons tick anywhere from 100-800 points of mind damage every ten seconds, with the average being 500. Mind deseases usually run about 300-400. The use of these poisons can bring an enemy force to a hault as their members stop so they can be physically cured by doctors. Melee classes are most often brought out of their combat offensive for 5-30 seconds due to their need to stay planted until a cure arrives. Overall effect of CM's can be mass disorganization, panic, and very large mind damage to an entire group - let alone an individual target.

The battlefield effectiveness of a combat medic over a rifleman compared to the cost of defenses against them is very significant. Battle reports and observations would conclusively show the large influence of diseases/poisons on an effective offensive. With most combat groups, the first priority target are combat medics because of this large offensive capability. In particular treatment of a fallen enemy combat medic is given special status above all other enemy combatants. Common practice is to not deathblow them, until they are triple incapped to keep them out of battle longer. Treatment like such is rarely given to other players aside from hate/griefing situations with the exception of GTEF'ing cloned fighters (zerg). Overall special treatment can be seen taken by players to deal with CM's and directly implies the sheer force on a CM's arsenal. Player practices developed over time can be taken as evidence of the disproportionate magnitude of effectiveness combat medics have over our comparable rifleman.

Such practices would also indirectly suggest that not only are poisons/diseases also more offensively potent, but also less effectively countered by the above noted defensive measures. Given the average time waited by a non-doctor combatant for a cure (5-30 seconds), mind damage taken can range from 0-1800 and disease wounds 0-1200. Multiple instances of poison/disease stacks further lengthen the time needed to cure a patient and decrease the number of patient able to be cured before a members of that combat groups reach 0 mind or incap.

Further player practices include picking up the doctor profession themselves. Such practice is perhaps THE strongest counter to poisons/diseases. One may also cure any state effect on themselves. Highly effective and group balancing this practice can be. Continuity discrepancies arise however as some modern combat groups can contain half doctors or more

Poisons/diseases as they now exist destroy current the current SWG game vision itself. Player crafting's importance in this game has been given paramount importance in weapon production and other areas. Raph Koster and other developers have long been challenged with providing players gratifying rewards while intelligently avoiding "Uber L3wt" - or regularly dropped items of power exceding what can be crafted or are just extremely powerful. Current DoT weapons are an example of this aside from the fact that they don't normally drop from one particular NPC or creature. Some do however. Such weapons can amplify the combat strenth of a fighter many times over - much like a hydrogen bomb compared to a mere atom bomb.

These DoT weapons contain mind/action/health poisons and diseases up to around 300-400 strength. Pikeman and other combat professions use these weapons to do many times the damage they could regularly incur with even the most superb player crafted weapons on their galaxy server. These poisons/diseases/fires also stack with others from different weapons or combat medics, and are often used in conjunction with them to form a very potent offensive. In some cases, combatants with mind disease or fire weapons can be used to spread a disease or fire silently to a enemy combat group while a combat medic solely focuses on stacking poisons on that group. The result is a higly effective mind damaging situation in which the enemy group has problems discerning where poison/disease/fire effects are coming from. Very deadly.

In conclusion poisons and diseases have very large offensive capabilities and are very difficult to counter effectively in PvP. They can be stacked or silently applied through DoT weaponry. The extreme magnitude of this strength has resulted in a largely disproportionate amount of medical personel that must accompany combat groups. In addition the defense costs-per-person in a group can be seen to slightly excede that of rifleman - a profession the developers see as needing a very strong nerf at this point.

This apparant inbalance can be tied to an overall combat system inbalance say the developers. Information at fanfest suggests that in the new combat system the effects of poisons and diseases will be toned down (see link below). Current wishes by the player base include more effective counters to this imbalance, as living with them for the months that precede the combat balance will certainly do little to ease inflamation. The creation of a mind poison mitigation spice seems to be very apripo for the situation and is hoped to be of the appropriate effect strength.


Link 1: http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=Kettemoor&message.id=171450&highlight=#M171450

Here is a statement given by Tranced, a CM from Starsider:
Here is the link: http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=combat_medic&message.id=34233


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posted this on the gcw forum too, but i wanted the cm community to take a look at it as well and tell me what you think:


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as a cm i can take havla and throw every 2 seconds. which means that in 12 seconds i can stack area a,b,c along with single a,b,c's on you. now all those routinely tick for 3k points of dmg and above -- and youre pretty much defenseless. in the age of pvp where people where 80 base 40 stun there is no way youll be able to take me down in 12 seconds, even with quite a few people firing at me, which means that i am free to do 3k damage to EVERYBODY IN YOUR GROUP every 10 seconds with only 12 seconds of work. now you might say ... but poisons are curable! umm, right. you see when im throwing with havla you have NO chance of keeping up with me, sure the docs might be able to keep it off themselves but as long as im stacking theres no way theyll be able to heal anybody else.

now what repercussions does thie entail?

well i can essentially take ANYBODY in the game down in 12 seconds, and it has nothing to do with how good they are -- they could be the best pvper on the server but they are all the same vulnerable to my poisons.

now, the reason most cms dont understand why people call for crys for nerf is because the majority of cms (as i learned at the fan fest) dont stack like myself and other cms do. instead they might throw an area c, a few diseases, and then be done with cm ... content to go with headshot or their other combat profession. now in this case i dont feel cms are overpowered, but when you give somebody the CAPABILITY to do 3k points of damage through everything they could muster in 12 seconds something is wrong (especially, again, in the day of 80 base 40 stun armor).

now, how do i propose to fix this?

1. make havla not work for poisons and diseases
2. increase the timer between throwing
3. limit the range to 64m MAX, including aoe effects
4. get rid of stacking on a single pool
4. give doctors a range cure (which the devs have already stated they will do)

now who will this effect?

in short this will effect the stacker, the person who gets bitched at after battles because they just ticked for 3k mind damage. now, who this wont effect is the everyday cm, because the speed wont hurt him, since he doesnt stack poisons - because he might only throw a couple. at the fan fest i also learned that most cms dont throw singles because it take so long, so negating stacking wont effect them either. now notice the big thing here -- it also doesnt change the damage at all -- so theyll have the same powerful dot. in effect, what this would do is limit the maximum power a combat medic could dish out, while keeping the majority of the cms at their same power level.

while we're at it, we might as well increase the combat medics power by 4, and then do the 75% reduction. so they do the EXACT SAME DAMAGE in pvp, but pack much more of a punch in pve.
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/endquote

It shows a quite destructive view of CM offensive potential and gives very excelent ideas on how to fix the situation.
Seems not every CM was aware of how potent poisons and diseases can be. This picture of the deadly effects of them actually supercedes that detailed in the first post in this thread.

Message Edited by Ternque01 on 06-08-2004 12:55 AM

You can never have enough medical personel in combat. The fact that you wish that you could have 1 doc for 20 people shows that all you really want is massive damage-dealers and little to no support classes.

I am glad that pvp requires large amounts of support people, it encourages group dynamics, teamwork and a great deal of group tactics. What you are asking for would result in groups of 20 people where 19 of them are riflemen and 1 of them is a doc. Boring.

Don't begrudge your support classes their fun and use in pvp, use them to their fullest potential instead of crying about needing them.

HAHA! Your dumbass spent 2hours typing that, at least...

Message Edited by csretailnoob on 06-08-2004 04:56 AM

Welwood wrote:
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You can never have enough medical personel in combat. The fact that you wish that you could have 1 doc for 20 people shows that all you really want is massive damage-dealers and little to no support classes.

I am glad that pvp requires large amounts of support people, it encourages group dynamics, teamwork and a great deal of group tactics. What you are asking for would result in groups of 20 people where 19 of them are riflemen and 1 of them is a doc. Boring.

Don't begrudge your support classes their fun and use in pvp, use them to their fullest potential instead of crying about needing them.
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A want to travel with only 1 doctor in a group of 20 was not in anyway expressed in the post at the top. It was simply noted that a group would need at least half doctors to counter rapid poisons and diseases. Implication is raised that needing nearly half of a group to be doctors to defend at minimum a competent poison/disease attack is a grandiose overneed of one medical support profession. Needing only half of a group to be doctors is also an underapproximation of the need for that profession in a combat environment as will be shown below.

This is based off raw data. Note the second post in this thread - posted by a CM himself. Some CM's themselves are unaware of how destructive the classes potential is. It is extremely arguable that you would need a great deal more than half doctors in a combat body to cure such attacks - even then with a group taking large amounts of mind damage.

"as a cm i can take havla and throw every 2 seconds. which means that in 12 seconds i can stack area a,b,c along with single a,b,c's on you. now all those routinely tick for 3k points of dmg and above -- and youre pretty much defenseless. in the age of pvp where people where 80 base 40 stun there is no way youll be able to take me down in 12 seconds, even with quite a few people firing at me, which means that i am free to do 3k damage to EVERYBODY IN YOUR GROUP every 10 seconds with only 12 seconds of work. now you might say ... but poisons are curable! umm, right. you see when im throwing with havla you have NO chance of keeping up with me, sure the docs might be able to keep it off themselves but as long as im stacking theres no way theyll be able to heal anybody else." - Tranced, CM of Starsider

A poison/disease attack of such a severity would require everyone in a group to be a doctor to cure. Even when self-curing is finished nearly 3k damage will be done to thier minds. It would take over 10 seconds for a doctor to cure himself alone given network latency and food use conditions. Any group member without doctor curing skills incaps repeatedly with the presence of diseases or from combat until cures arrive. This is truly gross evidence of the power of stackable poisons and diseases.

No mentioning of opinions about scarcely needing support professions in combat was made.

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Ternque01 wrote:

Here are presented counters regularly used by combatants to mitigate CM danger in PvP. These are:
1.Dancer and musician buffs - 10-15k before every PvP action I attempt
2.Brandy and Canape - 150k-300k a crate for brandy, 90k-220k a crate for canape.
3.Travel with doctors - free
4.Poison resistance food - 90k-220k a crate
5.Poison and Disease resistance skill tapes - +6 disease resistance tape in use, next multi-million purchase
will be for a poison resistance skill tape.
6.Teras Kasi powerboost - free
7.Muon Gold - 4-12k a crate - for use in emergencies and is next to dirt cheap (poor smugglers)
8.Battlefield movement tactics - avoid line of sight with CM's - free as long as no one charges you to teach
this to them. This tactic falls victim to area poison buggs and is often not a very effective tactic. Also
included in this is to remain spread out. When my group knows of CM danger, we spread out.
9.Use of a voice communication system to call for cures

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Getting hit by a grouptef CM and dying about 30 seconds later, just about every time you PvP, Priceless.

Message Edited by Gnuut on 06-08-2004 01:26 PM