Professions: Chugging along...

markfalcone

Before this last major patch, I'd log on to the characters I'm currently only invoking (usually working on four and two on stand by and currently working on just the warlock and 6 on standby) and the professions from the previous day are all done and ready to collect from. Now it is like STO has turned since the creation of their new R&D thing: I get into the character and one by one, very slowly, they finish up. Takes me five times longer to do the invocations of the morning than it use to because of this. What happened?

adinosii

I suspect this may be an anti-bot measure, intended to break scripts. If so, it is badly thought out and will not work, for two reasons.

First, any bot script could be easily modified just by adding a 2-minute delay. Second, I am told that most profession bots use the gateway, which is not affected like this.

godhric

If that's true, then it's becoming more and more annoying and really punish the casuals for doing things manually while the change is not being effective @ fighting bots... we suffer for nothing! xD

angrysprite

Not an anti-bot measure, it's a bug. I am seeing this consistently on the same characters, where other characters it doesn't happen at all. And on the characters it does happen on the length of time of the delay is constant on that character, but time delay varies from character to character.

I can only say I'm hopeful the Devs are aware of this (seeing this and other threads in the subject) and quietly working in a fix. I suspect this is one of those kind of fixes that aren't usually mentioned in patch notes because of the weird nature of it.

rabbinicus

It happens on all of my characters, and if it is an anti-bot measure it makes no sense. Bots have unlimited time, players don't.

whatef

It happens on all of my characters as well.

It's a minor inconvenience, but it gets really annoying when you get the same wait time for every profession slot on every character.

rowin4010

This 'annoyance' isn't just happening with tasks that have finished before you log on, but with tasks that complete whilst you are gaming, too.

Pre-Mod 4, when a task completed, there would be a chime (ding, or whatever) and when you immediately opened the Professions panel, the task would be done. Now when the chime rings and you open the panel, the task is holding for about another five seconds before a -second- chime indicates you can now collect the end result of the task.

In addition...

Pre-Mod4, when I completed a task and clicked the [Commence Task] button, I would start a new task in the same profession that had just been completed - very useful when batch processing mats, doing Leadership tasks for AD's, etc. Now one of three results happens:
1 - The new task starts in the profession that was just completed. (A rare occurrence, but it does happen.)
2 - The new task starts in a random profession, forcing you to reselect the profession you wanted.
3 - Nothing happens - no profession is chosen and you have to reselect the wanted profession.

I can't speak for others, but I am finding this downright annoying, as it adds to the time it takes to clear and commence several tasks. (And if you're trying to do it for several characters in succession, well...) And it's even more frustrating when you combine it with the slow-down in task completions.

almightybizzo

I am having the same issue and thought maybe it was just me. So I checked my pingtimes and saw no difference from pre mod4. It appears to be some change they've implemented in mod4 and it is happening on ALL 11 of my characters where I'm trying work on my professions. This can't be "working as intended" unless the intention is to dissuade players from grinding professions to make AD. And if that is the case all it does is reward the gateway scripters and make the rest of us feel like chumps for playing this game legit.

rabbinicus

Still no fix or comment from the devs on this?

somebob

It's not a bug. It's by design. It's there to fix a bug with the crafting system going unresponsive when something gets done.

In Star Trek Online, this has been an issue for a few months now, where the system gets stuck at 'finishing' any kind of crafting/Duty Officer job. The 5 second delay between jobs is the 'fix' for it.

And hey, it could be worse - in STO, you can have up to 28 crafting jobs going at once.

yamato146

I'm having this, as well. The only thing I have found is that if you have the profession window open, it takes much, much longer, about 3-5 seconds for each task to complete. So I leave the window closed for a few seconds and it usually completes enough that I can start going in and working. It generally works from the bottom up, which is doubly irksome, as I only have a few green men-at-arms per character, so if I'm not careful, those end up in the low tasks, rather than the DEC ones.

chaoscourtesan

Yeah well... Stack this up with much more junk like it, and it's game over. Any game that makes it necessary to sit and watch nothing happen for 5 seconds, click click click, 5 seconds, click click click, 5 seconds.. etc.. for 9 slots? That is broken. I had no problem for a year before this happened, so I don't know what it is they are trying to fix- but they should say something about it, if that's the case.