Medic Archive

Hi all,
I have played this game since the day it came out and I really love it. I plan to be a Combat Medic/Doctor, and Carbine Specialist. I am trying to figure out the whole 'what resource is best to use' thing. I have been searching these forums and elsewhere and am only finding bits and pieces of the information I am looking for.

1. I understand that it is best to look at the overall quality for inorganics and potential energy and overall quality for organics, but I have yet to find information on what to look for in chemicals, water, and metals. Also, do these same methodologies apply to crafting biological effect controllers, liquid suspensions, chemical durations, and the solid components? (Which I forgot the name because I am only able to craft up to Stimpack-B)

2. What are the general guidelines for experimentation for medical crafting? I usually try to either get more uses out of stims or increase the overall effectiveness but the other slider I am unsure of what it does.

3. How can I tell exactly if I have indeed crafted a good pack? I normally get anywhere from moderate to amazing successes but I have had a Stim B that was just a good heal more effectively than one I crafted with amazing success.

I am sorry if these sound like stupid questions or have already been answered in one way or another. I guess I am still not getting it and would really like it clearly explained so that I can be a better medic in the field and know what I am doing.

Thanks in Advance,
Parna
Future Combat Medic/Doctor

1. The most important thing to realize is that the effect of resource attributes is specified exactly in the schematic, most people seem to miss this. Open up the schematic you want to craft, either in your datapad or in the crafting screen, and look at the schematic description. It will have a section for each attribute that you can experiment on that looks like this:

Experimental Effectiveness
57% Overall Quality
28% Potency
14% Potential Energy

(I'm making these values up, I can't remember them). From this you can see that if you want to maximize effectiveness, you should use resources with high Quality, Potency, and Potential Energy. This goes for all resource types, so both the organics and inorganics should have as high values as possible in as many of these attributes as possible.

2. I'm not sure what Experimental Durability does, either. There was a thread on this earlier. My supposition was that it is a holdover from when the plan was for all items to decay over time, not just weapons, and Durability would reduce that decay. Someone said that in their experience durability reduced the chances of an experimentation failure. When I do the math I find that experimenting on Charges increases the total healing power of a stimpack more than experimenting on Effectiveness, but it's debatable which is more useful in combat: having more heals or more powerful heals.

3. Look at the stats. After the experimentation stage of crafting you can see the base heal value and the number of charges in your stimpack. You can also see these by examining the finished product. Also realize that there is an element of randomness when you actually do the heal, so a stim with a base heal of 225 may heal more than one with a base heal of 250 on some heals.

All the basic medical components are based on the same resource properties: 57% Overall Quality; 28% Potential Energy; 14% Toughness. Those are the things you need to look for when selecting organics, metals, water and chemicals for use in your med crafting. Organics have OQ and either PE or Tough (wood has tough); Water has only OQ; Metals have OQ and Tough (radioactives might have PE?); Chemicals have OQ and can have either Tough (Polymers and Fiberplasts) or PE (Fuels). If in doubt, find something with a high OQ and stay away from Lubricating Oils.

The third experimentation option would make the medicines decay slower, since they are consumables you should completely ignore this. As a rule, I experiment with charges on the Bio component and effectiveness with everything else, including the final products. As you get into much higher meds where they pretty much do complete heals, you will want to get more charges out of them.

Before you start and after you finish experimenting, it will tell you how many charges and what base healing effectiveness the pack has. However, in practice, that number is then modified by your skills, your targets battle fatigue, and what seems to be a rather huge random factor, therefore actually seeing a consistent difference is difficult. Some people primarily experiment charges for just this reason, it at least is something they know is working.

Scorus

Some organics also have flavor which from what i hear from medics in beta is important as well...

But truthfully at the upper lvls, the advance components tell you what you need and pretty much force you to use a certain type and takes the picking of resources out of your hands...