Effective value is not simply a matter of having the highest quality duty officers, but also the appropriate selection. For example, it does me little good to have four Purple quality Doctors if I have no interest in running Medical assignments and really want to run Colonial assignments, for which I need Quartermasters. Moreover, number matters as well - if I want to run multiple simultaneous Colonial assignments in an effort to maximize my advancement on the Colonial track, it isn't enough that I have one Blue or Purple Quartermaster, I might actually statistically be better off with three White quality Quartermasters.
Min-Maxers and Strategy Afficionados rejoice!
Previous mission or assignment completion will also be a prerequisite to having certain assignments available. For example, you might have to complete the "Establish Colony in the T'Ong Nebula" assignment before you are offered the "Provide Security against T'Ong Nebula Raiders" assignment.
Which assignments are available will change every few hours, and may also be gated by your captain's rank, what sector you are in, and other achievements.
Is it just me or does this sound like they're adding stories to exploration nebulas?
Subsequent to the duty roster system going live we will be rolling out the next component of the system: Department Heads and your First Officer.
Bridge officers will be able to "eat" duty officers of their own branch to learn those duty officer's passive abilities. (Fictionally, think of it as the duty officers are joining that bridge officer's staff.)
With the appropriate expenditures of Merit/Honor and for bridge officers with adequate training, a player can appoint a bridge officer to head up one of six departments - Tactical, Security, Science, Medical, Engineering, Operations. Once heading up a department, those "eaten" duty officer skills will become active.
(For the record, the term "eaten" is used in this description to make sure it is clear that the duty officer goes away.)
Slotting between stations (the current "Assignment" tab), away team and department head slots are independent; if you slot a bridge officer into the Tactical Department Head slot, their passive powers will be in effect. That exact same bridge officer could also be slotted into a bridge station or away team, but whether that bridge officer is or isn't his or her department passives will be in effect.
From department heads, a bridge officer can be promoted to a First Officer once you acquire special "trainer" duty officers. The skill imparted to a First Officer, however, will be an active, clickable skill that you can slot on your power bar and use in space.
When you appoint a first officer, another BO can replace them as department head. Your first officer's passive duty officer skills will however still be active as a first officer - so this means you can effectively double up on the passives in one department.
First Officers may be demoted, but there will be an associated cost, probably in Merit/Honor. The former first officer's skills will be retained, although inert unless reinstated. This is also true of department heads who are removed from their position - the passives they ate from their duty officers will still be there, they just will be inert and inactive until they are reinstated. The first officer skills have not been designed yet, but they are currently envisioned as being new skills, probably similar to your captain skills.
Department head and first officer skills for bridge officers will be in addition to their existing skills - getting them to play nicely with the bridge officers' existing skills is one of the reasons why that part of the system will be rolled out after the duty officer part of the system.
Department head skills are taken from duty officers in their own branch, so the passive skills they gain will in fact be associated with their branch of service. First officer active powers will probably also fall into this pattern as well, but there is still a lot of design that has to be done in this area so I can't promise anything.
Integral to the introduction of department heads and your First Officer we will be revisiting the entire crew user interface in an effort to streamline and integrate it, all with an eye to allowing us to build even more deeply upon that to provide even more functionality and depth to your crew.
I was hoping that the first officer system would be playable on the ground (as in have the option of not bring the captain down, and having the first officer running the show) like Instead of having the captain beam down to that rumulan planet at the end of cloaked intension my first officer would be the patzy
Depending on the assignment, other rewards may also be available including:
DXP
merits/honor
badges/marks
energy units
commodities
items
additional assignments
new duty officers
Sounds very "healthy."
The current plan is that before accepting an assignment you will be told which traits will be good or bad for that assignment (and yep, a trait that is good for one assignment may be bad for another), although you probably won't be told the difference, say, between a trait positively affecting Critical Success and one positively affecting plain Success. Currently, a large majority of assignments affect Critical Success/Success equally and Failure/Disaster equally, though there are exceptions that are left for you to discover - for example, there is one where the Seduction trait increases your chance of both Critical Success and Disaster, but not Success or Failure.
Complexity!
Similarly, a disaster outcome usually results in the deaths of any white quality duty officers put on the assignment and a chance for each higher quality duty officer to spend some R&R time in Sick Bay. Sick Bay and death results for white quality duty officers do sometimes occur outside of disaster outcomes, note - you can see crewmen die even on the successful completion of a ground action.
Added a "Quickstart" section to the very first post to focus players brand new to the system to what they'll actually be doing when they get their hands on their very first duty officers.
My favorite flight-sim was Falcon 4.0 for its complexity.
My favorite strategy games were either Space Empires, Medieval II, or Civlization (again, for their complexity).
My favorite MMO? Well, I'll reserve judgement until I can test this system out but the outlook is great.
And now we see why the DO system is taking so long! LOL!
Seriously, it almost sounds as if you guys could have devoted an entire season to just this. With everything else going on, I can wait for the finished product.
I'd love to see some assignments with only a chance for Critical Success or Critical Failure. For example, consider Spock repairing the Warp Core in WoK. Since he died, I suppose that is outside the scope of the DO system, but look at the likely outcomes. The ship would either have been destroyed or it was able to escape.
Maybe some day if the injury system gets another pass, we could see assignments that relate to repairing those injuries.
Another area I would like to see is short term assignments that offer buffs for your ships. Maybe the assignment time is ~30 minutes and it provides a ~30 minute passive buff. This might be something like a sensor diagnostic that would result in a bonus to cloaked ship detection or anomalies received from a scan.
It would be nice to start my play session by performing some assignments that will impact the session. If I plan to do a lot of combat, maybe I send the engineers and tacticals to ensure everything is in tip top shape and we get the maximum performance out of all our systems. This would naturally come at the expense of other missions they could be performing and would probably not result in monetary rewards. They are short duration assignments and are somewhat self limited by the management time and buff duration.
Spock was Successful in completing his mission to Save the ship and crew, thereby resulting in a Critical Success. However, completing this mission, also resulted in his inevitable death, thereby ensuring a personal Failure.
Will the Duty Officer system be so complex, as to allow an assignment to be successfully completed, and still result in the loss of the officer who completed it?
Spock was Successful in completing his mission to Save the ship and crew, thereby resulting in a Critical Success. However, completing this mission, also resulted in his inevitable death, thereby ensuring a personal Failure.
Will the Duty Officer system be so complex, as to allow an assignment to be successfully completed, and still result in the loss of the officer who completed it?
Yep, that possibility of losing a crew member even on a Success is listed as one of the possible outcomes for some of the missions.
i have a few questions about this DOF system... how much of a grind is it going to be from first starting using it, to getting it "levelled" up so its useful ?
I have 7 max level characters so how much of a grind im i going to be facing on each of them to get any benefit out the system ? Im sure many other people remember the massive soul destroying grind it took for VA's to get all the diplomatic experience....
Also will this DOFF system only work when your in space or can you send your doffs away on missions while you are on ground at ESD ?
[addendum to my above post that would not fit well in an edit]
The short term buff assignments I mentioned in the above post could be unlocked as you progress along a particular Commendation. Sort of like unlocking a technology in a strategy game. Once they are unlocked, they would always be available.
Performing the assignment would not contribute to further progression in the Commendation or provide much in the way of monetary rewards. They would give the benefit of an in game temporary buff (something along the lines of what the special item sets give). Part of their cost would be the opportunity cost of using that assignment slot for something that does not deliver a long term reward.
One of my original hopes for interiors and mini-games was adding this sort of functionality to the game. I believe the Duty Officer System is an as good, or better, home.
i have a few questions about this DOF system... how much of a grind is it going to be from first starting using it, to getting it "levelled" up so its useful ?
I have 7 max level characters so how much of a grind im i going to be facing on each of them to get any benefit out the system ? Im sure many other people remember the massive soul destroying grind it took for VA's to get all the diplomatic experience....
Also will this DOFF system only work when your in space or can you send your doffs away on missions while you are on ground at ESD ?
I imagine it'll depend on what type of build you want.
Considering some DOffs will be incredibly rare, it may take a long time to acquire all the purple DOffs with traits that benefit your playstyle--even longer still should they release DOffs and assignments regularly (and it sounds much easier to add to).
Thanks for the awesome posts and info on the upcoming Duty Officer System, Heretic! Very nice post-work reading, good sir, and I look forward to helping test the system on Tribble soon!
I really like the idea of having a lot of 'micromanagement' if you want (which I plan on doing, heh), and I *love* the possibility of earning other factions' officers as rewards for the commendation categories.
I've also wanted to name a Senior Staff (other than the info I put into my officers' bios) for a while now, so I look forward to the day I can feed them with my doffs. (insert maniacal laughter here)
Again, thanks for the updates, and I look forward to more info (and the system itself, naturally). Good luck to you and the rest of the STO team!
I've also wanted to name a Senior Staff (other than the info I put into my officers' bios) for a while now, so I look forward to the day I can feed them with my doffs. (insert maniacal laughter here
You could feed your Horta a very-rare Soong-type Android. He'd appreciate it.
1. You mention getting an Andorian by accepting an assignment in that "sector" does this mean the Assignments are broken down, not just by sector blocks, but into the actual sectors themselves? Or were you refering to Sectors as in sector blocks?
2. If I have an assignment with a "Trader OR Andorian" requirement and I send an Andorian that is also a Trader does that potential for success go even higher or does the system only acknowledge one aspect or the other?
3. Will assignment rewards be shown the entire time so we can choose to pull officers from that assignment if we find something offering a better reward (without having to memorize the reward that officer was just going for)?
4. Not a question, just thanks for consolidating all this info, now make ThomastheCrypticCat pretty this up and stick it on the website when the DOFF system hits live...
Cryptic, I have an "artsy" suggestion that I ask you please consider:
When we send our Doffs out on assignments perhaps, in some cases, can we also see a shuttle craft leave our ship and perhaps have one return when their mission is over?
[...] When we send our Doffs out on assignments perhaps, in some cases, we can see a shuttle craft leave our ship and perhaps have one return when their mission is over? [...]
This has been asked several times.
Input from Devs on this issue is basically: "We wanted to do something like that, but although we realized that the first time doing it the cutscene would be neat, the times coming after would have people annoyed at the time-consuming cutscene, or they would simply skip it - and skip it everytime they send Doffs out on assignments, which would be a great many times. So, in light of this, we decided to drop that idea since it would just drive people nuts in the long run."
Another area I would like to see is short term assignments that offer buffs for your ships. Maybe the assignment time is ~30 minutes and it provides a ~30 minute passive buff. This might be something like a sensor diagnostic that would result in a bonus to cloaked ship detection or anomalies received from a scan.
It's been discussed and is a possibility, but temporary buffs are harder to account for than permanent ones such as those from your active roster duty officers, and so we'll have to be careful approaching that kind of thing to make sure the overall combat game balance does not get disrupted.
How much of a grind is it going to be from first starting using it, to getting it "levelled" up so its useful ?
I have 7 max level characters so how much of a grind im i going to be facing on each of them to get any benefit out the system ? Im sure many other people remember the massive soul destroying grind it took for VA's to get all the diplomatic experience....
Also will this DOFF system only work when your in space or can you send your doffs away on missions while you are on ground at ESD ?
From the first time you get duty officers - so, probably around the time you make Lieutenant Commander - you can slot these into your active roster and get immediate benefits to both Ground and Space gameplay.
Some of the other benefits do require a fair amount of time spent in ranking up the commendation categories, but we're aware that the current Diplomacy grind is too much for too little reward, so our target will be less painful than Diplomacy currently is. (And, in fact, this system will make it easier to rank up Diplomacy if you haven't already capped it out.)
Assignments are refreshed in sector space and some other social zones (so, ESD probably will allow you to use the system - I need to look into that particular case and make sure it will not cause any problems, though). Other than the possibility of mission-specific assignments embedded in specific ground missions, in general you will not be able to do much if any duty officer assignment during normal ground missions.
1. You mention getting an Andorian by accepting an assignment in that "sector" does this mean the Assignments are broken down, not just by sector blocks, but into the actual sectors themselves? Or were you refering to Sectors as in sector blocks?
2. If I have an assignment with a "Trader OR Andorian" requirement and I send an Andorian that is also a Trader does that potential for success go even higher or does the system only acknowledge one aspect or the other?
3. Will assignment rewards be shown the entire time so we can choose to pull officers from that assignment if we find something offering a better reward (without having to memorize the reward that officer was just going for)?
1. Assignments are sometimes general to wherever you are, sometimes to sector block and sometimes to the specific sector - it all depends on the specific assignment. Recruitment assignments are available near the appropriate species' home sector; Military assignments are (mostly) on the border; Colonial assignments are (mostly) in star clusters.
2. Both are taken into account. I actually want to do some additional analysis of the formula to make sure it does what we want, but even as it is now, yes, it takes into account both that you are an Andorian and that you have the Trader trait. In the case of specializations like "Trader" and "Diplomat", if you also have the species traits for trading and diplomatic, you generally will in fact get double the benefit.
3. Assignment rewards will show you what you get on a success only, so not critical success, nor failure nor disaster. Moreover, if the reward is, say, a random blue deflector, you won't see the specific deflector until you complete the assignment, just that it would be a random blue deflector. You will, however, always be able to check up on in-progress assignments, so you can refresh your memory as to what the potential standard reward for success might be.
If hovering around Andoria/Vulcan allows access to assignments which may grant Vulcan/Andorian/Aenar Boffs and Doffs... this begs the question:
Where would be have to go to gain Boffs/Doffs from races like the Caitians, Benzites, Betazoids, Ferengi, Tellarites, and so forth? It's not like it's very clear on the map.
Tongue in cheek addition: will we be able to get Deferi Doffs?
I totaled up the number of duty officers built so far (over 6000) as well as the number of assignments currently built (a bit shy of 1000)
Three questions to this matter:
1. As extensive as you currently have it, with over 6000 duty officers in the system, as well as just shy of 1000 assignments, will you guys also be expanding these numbers as the game evolves? Additional combinations of officers every Seasonal update for example, more assignments on a monthly basis etc.
2. I understand Assignments are given in part by random, in part by your current rank and position in space/ground. What happens when you inevitably "run out" of Assignments to do? Once you've completed the "just shy of 1000 Assignments", what happens then? The system resets and you are randomly assigned the same assignments?
3. What level of persistence will this system entail? If I complete an assignment involving colonizing "Planet XYZ", and later decide to revisit the same planet, will the game recognize that I previously colonized that planet, and treat me accordingly?
This will be amazingly complex and so much fun. I'm so sad it won't launch with season 4 but I can wait. This level of detail does take a while to put together and we all want it to be right when it does come to the holodeck.
I am not sure I like this system. That's not to say I don't appreciate the thought and/or work put into it, but there's a few major issues it brings up for me.
Fit into Theme: To say nothing of the excessive complexity, it sort of feels like a battle in Civilization or training in EVE where you have your stats or ship or whatever, press the button and wait to see your result. I guess because I like those games I'm not destroyed by that but I'm having a VERY hard time mapping this system to what we saw on television or in movies. While I understand all we saw were the missions and the intent is to flesh the STO world out more than that in an MMO, setting a queue and coming back to view the results doesn't feel like adventure. I guess it's an interesting game concept but kind of reinforces the idea that your crew are nameless, faceless robots. I suppose it's a step up from the current representation of them as white, orange, or black stick figures though. Feels like a mechanic for the sake of having a mechanic. I'd almost rather you expand the mini-chargen on our existing BO's.
Cuts Players Out: One of the other things that bugs me about this is - why would you assign these sorts of tasks that flesh out the world to nameless, faceless crew? Would there not be a value in letting players participate in these sorts of things? I find it very odd that people have been specifically asking for this sort of gameplay but somehow it was turned into what basically amounts to an egg timer. One could make the argument that it's not the most engaging or exciting gameplay in the world but this is one step down from even that.
More BO Dependence: As a manager of people in real life, I can see how people in a department augment the capabilities of the department head but you guys are designing yourselves into a corner by being so reliant on bridge officers to power ships in the STO space combat system. I agree that ships have abilities and while BOs can modify or amplify those abilities, butyou never saw the Defiant change science abilities when Ezri took over for Jadzia. Jadzia was a science officer and Ezri a counselor, so they'd have different strengths (i.e. Ezri would keep morale high, Jadzia would use a tractor beam more effectively.). But the idea that your ship does or doesn't even have a tractor beam installed depending on who's sitting in the chair is silly.
Comments
A: About this deep
Min-Maxers and Strategy Afficionados rejoice!
Is it just me or does this sound like they're adding stories to exploration nebulas?
I was hoping that the first officer system would be playable on the ground (as in have the option of not bring the captain down, and having the first officer running the show) like Instead of having the captain beam down to that rumulan planet at the end of cloaked intension my first officer would be the patzy
Complexity!
Keeps it very realistic, which is nice.
My favorite strategy games were either Space Empires, Medieval II, or Civlization (again, for their complexity).
My favorite MMO? Well, I'll reserve judgement until I can test this system out but the outlook is great.
Seriously, it almost sounds as if you guys could have devoted an entire season to just this. With everything else going on, I can wait for the finished product.
Just wow. SQUEEEEEE.
Maybe some day if the injury system gets another pass, we could see assignments that relate to repairing those injuries.
Another area I would like to see is short term assignments that offer buffs for your ships. Maybe the assignment time is ~30 minutes and it provides a ~30 minute passive buff. This might be something like a sensor diagnostic that would result in a bonus to cloaked ship detection or anomalies received from a scan.
It would be nice to start my play session by performing some assignments that will impact the session. If I plan to do a lot of combat, maybe I send the engineers and tacticals to ensure everything is in tip top shape and we get the maximum performance out of all our systems. This would naturally come at the expense of other missions they could be performing and would probably not result in monetary rewards. They are short duration assignments and are somewhat self limited by the management time and buff duration.
Spock was Successful in completing his mission to Save the ship and crew, thereby resulting in a Critical Success. However, completing this mission, also resulted in his inevitable death, thereby ensuring a personal Failure.
Will the Duty Officer system be so complex, as to allow an assignment to be successfully completed, and still result in the loss of the officer who completed it?
Yep, that possibility of losing a crew member even on a Success is listed as one of the possible outcomes for some of the missions.
I have 7 max level characters so how much of a grind im i going to be facing on each of them to get any benefit out the system ? Im sure many other people remember the massive soul destroying grind it took for VA's to get all the diplomatic experience....
Also will this DOFF system only work when your in space or can you send your doffs away on missions while you are on ground at ESD ?
The short term buff assignments I mentioned in the above post could be unlocked as you progress along a particular Commendation. Sort of like unlocking a technology in a strategy game. Once they are unlocked, they would always be available.
Performing the assignment would not contribute to further progression in the Commendation or provide much in the way of monetary rewards. They would give the benefit of an in game temporary buff (something along the lines of what the special item sets give). Part of their cost would be the opportunity cost of using that assignment slot for something that does not deliver a long term reward.
One of my original hopes for interiors and mini-games was adding this sort of functionality to the game. I believe the Duty Officer System is an as good, or better, home.
I imagine it'll depend on what type of build you want.
Considering some DOffs will be incredibly rare, it may take a long time to acquire all the purple DOffs with traits that benefit your playstyle--even longer still should they release DOffs and assignments regularly (and it sounds much easier to add to).
I really like the idea of having a lot of 'micromanagement' if you want (which I plan on doing, heh), and I *love* the possibility of earning other factions' officers as rewards for the commendation categories.
I've also wanted to name a Senior Staff (other than the info I put into my officers' bios) for a while now, so I look forward to the day I can feed them with my doffs. (insert maniacal laughter here)
Again, thanks for the updates, and I look forward to more info (and the system itself, naturally). Good luck to you and the rest of the STO team!
You could feed your Horta a very-rare Soong-type Android. He'd appreciate it.
1. You mention getting an Andorian by accepting an assignment in that "sector" does this mean the Assignments are broken down, not just by sector blocks, but into the actual sectors themselves? Or were you refering to Sectors as in sector blocks?
2. If I have an assignment with a "Trader OR Andorian" requirement and I send an Andorian that is also a Trader does that potential for success go even higher or does the system only acknowledge one aspect or the other?
3. Will assignment rewards be shown the entire time so we can choose to pull officers from that assignment if we find something offering a better reward (without having to memorize the reward that officer was just going for)?
4. Not a question, just thanks for consolidating all this info, now make ThomastheCrypticCat pretty this up and stick it on the website when the DOFF system hits live...
Cryptic, I have an "artsy" suggestion that I ask you please consider:
When we send our Doffs out on assignments perhaps, in some cases, can we also see a shuttle craft leave our ship and perhaps have one return when their mission is over?
Just an idea.
This has been asked several times.
Input from Devs on this issue is basically: "We wanted to do something like that, but although we realized that the first time doing it the cutscene would be neat, the times coming after would have people annoyed at the time-consuming cutscene, or they would simply skip it - and skip it everytime they send Doffs out on assignments, which would be a great many times. So, in light of this, we decided to drop that idea since it would just drive people nuts in the long run."
It's been discussed and is a possibility, but temporary buffs are harder to account for than permanent ones such as those from your active roster duty officers, and so we'll have to be careful approaching that kind of thing to make sure the overall combat game balance does not get disrupted.
From the first time you get duty officers - so, probably around the time you make Lieutenant Commander - you can slot these into your active roster and get immediate benefits to both Ground and Space gameplay.
Some of the other benefits do require a fair amount of time spent in ranking up the commendation categories, but we're aware that the current Diplomacy grind is too much for too little reward, so our target will be less painful than Diplomacy currently is. (And, in fact, this system will make it easier to rank up Diplomacy if you haven't already capped it out.)
Assignments are refreshed in sector space and some other social zones (so, ESD probably will allow you to use the system - I need to look into that particular case and make sure it will not cause any problems, though). Other than the possibility of mission-specific assignments embedded in specific ground missions, in general you will not be able to do much if any duty officer assignment during normal ground missions.
1. Assignments are sometimes general to wherever you are, sometimes to sector block and sometimes to the specific sector - it all depends on the specific assignment. Recruitment assignments are available near the appropriate species' home sector; Military assignments are (mostly) on the border; Colonial assignments are (mostly) in star clusters.
2. Both are taken into account. I actually want to do some additional analysis of the formula to make sure it does what we want, but even as it is now, yes, it takes into account both that you are an Andorian and that you have the Trader trait. In the case of specializations like "Trader" and "Diplomat", if you also have the species traits for trading and diplomatic, you generally will in fact get double the benefit.
3. Assignment rewards will show you what you get on a success only, so not critical success, nor failure nor disaster. Moreover, if the reward is, say, a random blue deflector, you won't see the specific deflector until you complete the assignment, just that it would be a random blue deflector. You will, however, always be able to check up on in-progress assignments, so you can refresh your memory as to what the potential standard reward for success might be.
Where would be have to go to gain Boffs/Doffs from races like the Caitians, Benzites, Betazoids, Ferengi, Tellarites, and so forth? It's not like it's very clear on the map.
Tongue in cheek addition: will we be able to get Deferi Doffs?
Three questions to this matter:
1. As extensive as you currently have it, with over 6000 duty officers in the system, as well as just shy of 1000 assignments, will you guys also be expanding these numbers as the game evolves? Additional combinations of officers every Seasonal update for example, more assignments on a monthly basis etc.
2. I understand Assignments are given in part by random, in part by your current rank and position in space/ground. What happens when you inevitably "run out" of Assignments to do? Once you've completed the "just shy of 1000 Assignments", what happens then? The system resets and you are randomly assigned the same assignments?
3. What level of persistence will this system entail? If I complete an assignment involving colonizing "Planet XYZ", and later decide to revisit the same planet, will the game recognize that I previously colonized that planet, and treat me accordingly?
Can't wait to test, thank you Heretic.