FC why is pharma so costly?

[______________Marqis]

Why the heck is pharma teck sooo costly?

To make a ql15ish restoration kit it wouls cost something like 15-20k..thats a bit rediculous and u prolly get 5 =P...ok so resotration kits are out.

The treatment labs blind you i was told..so even know those are a lil more affordable its completely stupid to use em cause u ave to site there until u can see again...so treatment labs are out.

The muscle stim...I used one of these once and it lowered my body developement.. ???

And then theres the swim stim........

Funcom i think u need to add some more stuff to the pharma teck thing...run stim...energy regen blisterpacks, max nano blisterpacks, rezz reduction blisterpacks.....get creative..

oh ya...AND LOWER THE COST OF IT ALL!...way to expensive. i was gonna spec in pharma teck until i realized all this...now im not until somethin is done.

plz look into this =\

[dypfryst]

1. Blindness effect can be turned off. (under Enviorment -Show other effects)

2. Stims are bugged

Have a nice day

[Kzak]

Besides, the blindness you get from using an Emergency Treatment Lab has no effect on your combat abilities.. you can fight every bit as well even if you can't see for 30 seconds.

[____________Garamond]

Not to mention emergency kits heal about 4 times as much as a normal kit.

I didn't know about turning the blindness off.

[Kzak]

Actually, emergency treatment labs heal 2.66 times the amount of a standard treatment laboratory per hit.

Turning the 'Other Effects' to Off means you'll miss out on some effects, like the glow on bosses, the ripple on zone-borders, and the green effect of old-school LLTSes.

[____________Garamond]

Ok 2.66 if you want to get technical. A heck of alot more if you don't

Blindness doesn't bother me overly much to want to open up the options window let alone turn off something So I'm blind. If I need to go somewhere I still have my map

[____________Intrepid]

Originally posted by Garamond
I didn't know about turning the blindness off.

turning blindness off though also turns the effects of night vision goggles off as well though. So if i turn blindness off i am blind all the time anyways.

funny on my friends computer i can see fine everywhere but on my computer its dark as hell. go figure.

[Bionitrous]

Funny thing about this game. I could probably turn my monitor off and pay attention to the dishes in the sink or the girlfriend and come back and find I've beaten ten monsters and leveled.

So much for involved combat system.

They said they was gonna do something about turning off the Treatment Kit and NT blind effect in an upcoming patch. Guess you'll just have to <Tab> and hit 'Q' unless they get smart and disable <Tab> while you are blinded.

As for Pharma being expensive, I'm not sure. I cover the cost of whoever makes me the nice treatment labs so I know they aren't going broke.

[Kzak]

Besides, I'm likely to pay a good bit of money for items that keep me alive. My health's value is great.

For my fellow guildies, I ask that they cover production costs, and that's it. No sense in profiting off friends.

[Bothead]

I have no problems paying doctors and other pharma tech. specialists to make these invaluable treatment labs, which make life so much safer, and easier for me and my teams.

Examples:

Zoning down from boss room to quickly restore almost all your hp and get back up to kick the boss's ass again. This will be greatly appreciated by any team when the doc's healings aren't enough to keep the tanker alive.

For Fixers using the rapid grid teleport nanos, restoring health from the 1 point you are left with.

When soloing missions, quickly healing up between mobs (or during hard fights for calming professions).

That's why I easily pay whatever the cost + 100k or more to the person who can make me what I need

[______________Lirona]

For a QL 5 stim, it costs about 28K a stack.

For a QL5 Lab, it costs about 36K a stack. (Figures are approximate and Pre 14.5)

These things (which could have been the backbone of the Tradeskill economy) are simply too expensive at lower levels, and apparantly it doesn't scale up too well. Yes, they're VERY good but they're nowhere near good enough to justify blitzing QL5 missions for three playing days to get one.

And even if you do, there's nobody to sell them too. Yes, you COULD use them yourself but since this is a tradeskill I assume the original intent was to TRADE them for something.

This is just about unacceptable. FC really needs to lower the price of these components at lower QLs so that players in this bracket can make and sell them at a small profit. Sure, they should be expensive but more along the lines of 5K to make, and even that's probably a bit too much for newbies.

And don't try to feed me the "This is meant for high levels only" line, either. Monster Parts are probably a more common find at low levels than high levels (no, I can't say this for sure, having not been up there yet.) If this holds completely true, it means that there's no reason a low-level character shouldn't have access to the pharma-tech items that would have made their low-level lives so much easier.

[____________Garamond]

Why do I always hear the line tradeskills are only for higherlevels.

I've been doing tradeskills since level 7. Heck at low levels it's possible to gain levels through it. I know. I did it 3 times. Tradeskills exclusivly.

YHes it's expensive. Way too expensive. nanos are reasonable now however. at levels 1-15 I would agree with a statment that you are just trying to get your feet and you don't have a whole lot to work with. Still a low level person can effectivly do tradeskills. heck if you get a group of newbies together they could be supplying the one newbie with all the parts he needs.

Emergency kits aren't really needed at level 5. Plasma however is extremely valuable at level 5. It's all a matter of what you need when you need it. Noone needs carbonium armor at such a low level. You are going to gain levels so fast you'll outgrow it too quick.

Edit: This is in no way saying that the prices are correct. In my opinion all tradeskills except nano parts cost 10x too much. In fact they fixed the nano parts because they were too high. It makes me wonder why they don't fix the other tradeskills.

[______________Lirona]

Why do I always hear the line tradeskills are only for higherlevels.

The reasoning behind this line is simple: Tradeskills are an expense that is far out of proportion with level. No newbie and few lowbies can get away with it simply because all the tradeskills pre 14.5 were money sinks that didn't produce anything worthwhile except for blood plasma. At higher levels they're viable without being massively twinked. This makes it look like AO tradeskills are meant as a mid-high level playground, something that you're not SUPPOSED to be doing without first doing your time in the killing fields.

I've been doing tradeskills since level 7. Heck at low levels it's possible to gain levels through it. I know. I did it 3 times. Tradeskills exclusivly.

Wow, that must have taken some serious dedication. I congratulate you on that.

Edit: This is in no way saying that the prices are correct. In my opinion all tradeskills except nano parts cost 10x too much. In fact they fixed the nano parts because they were too high. It makes me wonder why they don't fix the other tradeskills.

This was really my point. Perhaps a treatment lab or a stim isn't really necessary for a low-level character, but the simple fact is is that there's no practical way to find out because the option isn't available. Notice how I said that a 5K production for a low level treatment lab seemed more than reasonable. I still think very few fifth level characters would really want to be running around with them, and the sheer expense would probably prevent it, but it would be possible for a low-level character to see the entire tradeskill process early on and decide if a tradeskill character is really the type of thing they want to spend their money on.

[____________Garamond]

That's something else that has always baffled me. Why do I have to go pound things to goo to learn the latest theories in quantumn physics.

Geez. yeah I have to go get money somehow but you would think We could get some decent xp from building stuff.

And before people start screaming about how losers who just build stuff shouldn't level up. how would you like it if you had to build stuff to level up so you could fight harder stuff.

Yeah starting at level 7 wasn't easy at all. It was something that made a couple members in my clan wonder. but you do get parts at that level. Just start putting them togehter. Most people will give them to you at that level as well. It isn't as expensive as all that especially if you are careful about only getting the parts you need. That was what was so tough in the begining. I couldn't aford to slap a ql 40 part on a ql20 gun. I had to go find a ql 20 part either in the shops or in a mission.

Athen was my friend during my early levels. That's why I still hang out there

[Tryk]

Heck yeah! My engineer was about to cry, when he build his first gun, and he was soooo happy... 'till he noticed the experience it gave him (at level 17).

Seriously, I think engineers should be able to build stuff to level up. After all... what would be the interest in playing the game as an engineer?

I am not an avid player of games. In average I play 2 per year, and that's because there's not much attraction in it. You have the shoot'em ups, which are (in my oppinion) boring and inane. You have the strategy games, which get me involved the most, but it's still gets boring after you did all the stages. I just hate games that don't require thinking in order to play it. After all, i don't want to numb my mind when i play.

Now that I found this game, it seems like the best idea ever, but it's... in my oppinion, badly conceived. Engineers fighting? Might as well use agents for healing a team...

I'm sorry, FunCom, but .... did you ever think of the ensamble of the game before you started typing the code? (....I can't wake up... seriously... ENGINEERS fighting?? They should be able to build the damn robots and sell them to other players so they can use them in battle!!)

Besides, I love the way the robot goes looking (for food?) while you push the boss button.... :S

[_____________Hayjyin]

EDIT: This post has been changed to reflect corrected math. If Kzak's following reply does not make sense, the edit is the cause.

Emergency Treatment Laboratories (ETLs), which are really the most sought-after item that Pharmacological Tech can provide (at the moment, mostly because of Restoration Stims' cost), do have their share of advantages and disadvantages.

QL 110, which is the highest I can currently build, costs approximately 245,000 credits, if I find the cheapest parts possible. Let's say I also provide the blood plasma necessary (which I do). That's 350 charges as result.

245,000 credits for 350 charges is 700 credits per charge.
A store-bought QL 110 is 14,000 credits for fifty charges, or 280 per charge. This amounts to a 250% cost increase for an approximate 266% increase in health restored.

After correcting my values, I find that this is much more reasonable than my previous 2.4 Million credits and 2500% cost increase, and quite affordable after all, if still not within my personal price range.

[Kzak]

Um, Hayjyin?

Where are you buying your components?

Me, with 760 CompLit (unbuffed), can build QL125 Emergency Treatment Laboratories for less than 350k - that's 1k per charge.
Please re-check the prices in the tradeskill vendors?

[_____________Hayjyin]

Kzak, not everyone has 760 Computer literacy. Mine is close to 450, which is not an unsignificant difference. Still, I went back to check the prices again, and I do, in fact, come to a much lower cost total. I seem to recall now that the 2.4 million is an older calculation of mine which I later disproved, from the time when ETLs were new. Oddly, though, through error, I came to the same amount a few days ago. I apologise for the confusion; I am, after all, a doctor, and not a mathematician.

The corrected total is approximately 245,000 credits, or 700 credits per charge, which amounts to a 250% cost increase.

I apologise again for the confusion, and withdraw my comments.

[Redrazors]

I just made a ql109 treatment lab for 196k credits by combining the following:

ql81 serum (57809 creds)
ql90 oil (2345 creds)
ql88 monster part (free)
ql93 jar (57128 creds)
ql109 bot injector (79627 creds)

If you really spent a while shopping around you could cut even more off the price. Its got 329 charges. My comp lit is 527 btw.

Which works out at 598 creds per charge, which is a 213% increase in cost comparatively.

I'm not saying that pharmacy parts aren't expensive, but if you shop around they are much better than the store kits.

[seloth]

wheeeeeee......
in case you are not aware some of the new Jobe nanos clusters will require pharm tech to make (nano and hp regen, i know of sure)
others are going to take psycology (the all acs one for sure).

and yes with a trader buff, i can just barely manage to make a 200 with 950 pt skill. (i hate title caps)