A concern relating to PFC Kits

[Renomaki]

Lemme get one thing out of the way: PFC Kits are cool. Getting the option to play a little gimmick during your PFC round makes playing said role all the more interesting and keeps it from getting stale, satisfying the folks that complained about it being too shallow and dull. With mini-engineer and mini-medic kits in mind, it also helps take the load off of the primary engineers and medics, allowing more work to get done in a short span of time or at least ensuring that there is someone who can handle their duties to a limited degree should they happen to fall in combat.

However, as I had been noticing around the forums, I been starting to feel concerned that there might be a serious negative about these kits (or rather, one popular kit in general).

In my 2 years of playing, the staff worked hard to encourage team dynamics and squad cohesion, making every role feel important and not easily replaced, thus making it so that marines in a squad have to stick together and work together as a team as each did their part to support the cause, while also protecting each other to ensure that they don't suffer serious blows to their effectiveness.

However, as I been noticing, a lot of people seem to be taking the Medic Kit not so much to act as a combat nurse of sorts to assist their medics, but rather as an excuse to become more independent and not have to rely on others to keep in the fight. In other words, making medics seem less valuable by becoming pill popping rambos like in the old days, where PFCs didn't have hard-coded limits to them and could pretty much do whatever they wanted if staff weren't watching, which of course meant you had a lot of people fucking off from their squads and duties to do whatever they wanted because hey, they just want to shoot things their way.

I really am hoping that this won't become the case. While a lot of people might disagree with all those old nerfs, I myself rather liked them because it encouraged squads to work together as SQUADS. And I want marines to keep working together and helping each other, not just ramboing about because they got an HPR and enough drugs to heal 2000 points of damage.

The kits were made in the first place due to people complaining about the lack of diversity (if that is the right word) PFCs had, wanting the option to have special traits that could create more interesting gameplay options and thus allow PFCs more ways to play. I don't want it to become an excuse to just start ramboing again.

You can agree or disagree all you want, I just wanted to spill this out here because the thought of having the marines regress into bad habits again worries this weenier.

[That Happy Cat]

The problem with the Minimedic is that healing others is rather more troublesome than healing yourself, and a big part of this is the Analyser delay. While Medics can tap passing marines and find out what's wrong with them (and say "stop you have IB", etc.), a Minimedic can only analyse someone that's still (and if they can't move they probably need a real Medic, not you). If Medic skill 1 allows Analyser use to be instant then I think you'd see a decent portion of Minimedic users use their resources to support teammates rather than just themselves.

It doesn't stop people from ramboing with it, but at least it would be more likely to be used for its intended purpose.

[Kineem]

The medic kit is used regularly for the treatment of others. You notice it more when you play medic because they have a tendency to walk up and scan your patients as you're treating them

Some people do use it for themselves but that's not really a big deal. Most of those marines only pack the three essential pill bottles and need to rely on medics for everything else anyway.

[TheDonkified]

The thing is, minimedics should not be able to completely replace medics. Having the delays and inconveniences with minimedic are meant to encourage people who actually want to medic efficiently to try to play medic.

PFCs will never be independent. They will always require normal medics or engis can they can do the jobs faster, and in then more efficiently, than their PFC counterparts. However, marines using minimedic to be more independent and then caring about death is more of a result of marines not caring about death due to current round times. They just megadose themselves and rush or rush, survive, heal, and repeat. Rounds are too short and the snowball effect of the game (don�t know how it plays out with recent xeno rework) makes medics pretty much the same as minimeds. You want to just chug drugs and apply kits until you�re not longer in paincrit until you die. This is how most if not all marines who understand current meta will treat the game. There is no incentive to not Rambo off with two other marines instead of sticking with your squad.

If pamphlets had a limit per squad or were only distributed via the RO, I don�t think it would matter.

[Swagile]

The thing is, minimedics should not be able to completely replace medics. Having the delays and inconveniences with minimedic are meant to encourage people who actually want to medic efficiently to try to play medic.

PFCs will never be independent. They will always require normal medics or engis can they can do the jobs faster, and in then more efficiently, than their PFC counterparts. However, marines using minimedic to be more independent and then caring about death is more of a result of marines not caring about death due to current round times. They just megadose themselves and rush or rush, survive, heal, and repeat. Rounds are too short and the snowball effect of the game (don�t know how it plays out with recent xeno rework) makes medics pretty much the same as minimeds. You want to just chug drugs and apply kits until you�re not longer in paincrit until you die. This is how most if not all marines who understand current meta will treat the game. There is no incentive to not Rambo off with two other marines instead of sticking with your squad.

If pamphlets had a limit per squad or were only distributed via the RO, I don�t think it would matter.

Exactly this.

Current meta is dog shit and you either rush and win or rush and die.

I personally use mini medic to heal people, and whenever ive gone Medic, ive seen a SEVERE drop in people coming to me to get healed, which is a GOOD thing. This means I can focus on serious cases, such as criticals and defibs, which is what medics should have always focused on but couldn't before because they were the primary healer for 20 + marines and had to fix everyone's boo boo's away.

Mini medic and the choosing of it to go rambo isn't a symptom of bad design, its a symptom of the bad Meta that is being forced on marines if they want even a half decent game. Most good marines choose mini medic so they don't get hit once by a Lurker and now can't heal themselves from bone break and IB, and so they can do the same for their fellow buddies. Again, a symptom of shit game design forced on marines because devs don't want to roll back Mutators, so we're stuck slowly getting drip fed updates that make us half decent again.

[That Happy Cat]

Minimedics already have longer delays and weaker healing with most things, and can't defib or have easy access to advanced meds. I understand the reflex-reaction to criticize any kind of delay reduction, but I think for the Analyser specifically it's a good thing if the concern is people are using Minimedic to primarily rambo. If you can tap a passing marine and find out what's wrong with them, even someone intent on ramboing might deign to spare a pill or something (which you aren't going to use up if you treat no one but yourself anyway, so why not?).

Essentially it will allow more people to use the Minimedic for its intended purpose. I don't think it would change the amount of people who pick Minimedic to begin with drastically, so don't you go worrying about "Medics will be replaced!"

And regarding "Minimedics come up and scan my patients all the time": sure but since it's your patient they're not adding anything (unless it's to OD your patient). They scan your patients because they're standing still for you to treat. If an injured is hobbling around not being treated, many Minimedics wouldn't even bother because Analysing something that can still move is a hassle (and people tend to be less receptive to "stop let me scan you" as opposed to "stop you have IB").

[Ragestunner]

Won�t lie I get scared and uneasy when I�m treating someone and a PFC run over and I see the aid icons poping up on my patient. I always feel I�m gonna scan them again and they�ll be OD�ed on something the PFC felt they need to shove 8 of down their throat.
Every once and awhile one will actually say what he/she is doing and actually helps the flow of medical care.

[Mann handle]

Why not design the mini medic around Auto injectors, (gonna need a BIG pouch for injectors for this to even be viable), if the whole rambo thing is getting out of hand? You know, like what auto injectors are supposed to be for but was nerfed due to marines stocking up on them before they deploy. No matter how one tries to make this work it's always going to draw criticism over powergaming. The only other thing I can think of is to limit the number of kits like you get with specs, the entire battalion gets X amount of mini kits. It's that or people have to go to cargo or medical to receive their kits (and have doctors RP medical training or something).

I personally think that most marines are now actively helping each other more and helping medics. The big hindrance being the speed a mini can scan someone leads to people running away or people OD'ing like crazy. Still, it makes me feel great when I become the rollerbed spec and can actually heal people and use a medhud to spot the wounded again.

[Challade]

Not gonna lie, I've been guilty of this. I get a small burn or cut and I down all 3 pills and move on. eventually it became instinctive to down all three over any little damage and stay pilled up during a fight. I don't know what fix there could be for it, giving us autoinjectors instead of pills would kill the kit entirely.

If I had a proper suggestion it'd be to give us different kits and utilities as to make anyone who wants to be offensive not pick up mini medic kit for the pills. Right now the only offense we have are sniper and flamer, both of which are just attachments and a complementary mag/backpack.

How about giving us some kits with a marksman/rifle pamphlet to steer powergamers to that. I'd be ok with seeing a markman kit that comes with a pistol(markman?) pamphlet, laser sight, rds, and marksman ammo. Maybe we could use something like a Rambo kit that could come with a bfa, stock, rds, and rifle skill pamphlet. Or maybe a paratrooper kit that comes with a para stock, rds, laser sight, and a pamplet(is there an smg skill that fits with this?). After all, those skills just increase accuracy and decrease fire spread, not as powergamey as taking three pills to stay pilled for a fight.

[MasterShakeEZ]

Make pills affect way slower so they don't help in combat, make syringes way better so that real medics carry syringes and bottles of shit. Fixed.