...
The problem is that the duty officer assignment interface takes up a big chunk of the screen, so unless you had a monster monitor, you wouldn't be able to see the shuttle. Geko would really like to do this, though, so we're still looking into something like when you close the window it activates the effect...but that might require tech.
...
Assuming that my understanding is correct Heretic, are there any plans to have Department Heads interact during normal gameplay? For example, if I'm doing a mission to save a colony from a disease, will my CMO now be the one who hails me and talks it over, rather than the highest-ranking Science Boff assigned on my current ship? While in theory such interaction would be cool, be aware that it rather ruins things for those of us who plan to have a unique Bridge Crew for each of our endgame ships; it's a little immersion breaking to be hailed by the CMO Boff from my Defiant-R when I'm actually flying my Nebula, and am roleplaying that an entirely different Boff is the CMO of that ship.
We already see some examples of something like this. I can think of a couple at the moment. One involves landing on a planet and then my tactical officer back on the ship warns me of an enemy landing party and wishes me good luck. The problem is that very officer is standing next to me and is not on the ship.
Another example is when I enter a system in B'Tran and I am attacked by Borg "raiders" or by Borg supplying weapons to Starfleet's enemies. Those two things don't go with the Borg but with Nausicaans or Orion or a few others. The Borg are there for just one thing, assimilation.
Sounds awesome. My brain hurts trying to wrap my head around quality vs rarity.. and the last few lines of your 3rd post seem to conflict with each other.
It seems like it would be less confusing if RARITY was based on color, and Quality was based on rank.
Since all humans are common, even a purple quality will be "common" - and how does rank relate to that?
Are ensigns white, Lieutenants green, LtCmdrs blue, etc?
Rarity being color-based is pretty much the standard - and its just co-indicence that rarity and quality are usually linked (in items in MMOs, in cards in CCGs, etc) - So seeing "common" purples or rare white items is going to be troublesome.
Or I'm confused.
Think of it like this, pennies are common, but there are also rare extra valuable pennies.
This stuff is great. I'm loving the intricacies of what you've described thus far Heretic.
I have a question/request however. You mentioned specialities, as in Doctor or Nurse and only allowing 3 of those at a time on the roster. Could we have some more elaboration to those? And could we perhaps get a visual representation of the resulting tree of branch, department and speciality, even if it's in text.
For example, the way I'm hearing it at the moment is like this. Could you fill in some blanks?
I missed something - will any of this make a difference globally, or all the affects are on my pool of officers?
In other words, I hope that by contributing officers to the military that I can positively affect some military campaign - maybe take over a planet because my guys did particularly well.
Love the whole DOFF concept, every time I read it. I've mentioned this before but the one thing I can see mildly annoying me is how only Humans are listed as innately common. I really think all founding races should be common. Betazoids and Bolians should be uncommon, Trill and Benzites rare, Aenar and Caitians Very Rare.
It's an IP issue. In every Trek show and movie Humans are by far the most common species.
Department Heads and First Officers
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.)
I get what you are saying but I couldn't help but think of this when I first read that:
I think whne this launches on to Holodeck a tutorial video should be released also, just a qiuck overview, basically putting the OPs into a video format so we have something visual explaining what to do.
It seems like it would be less confusing if RARITY was based on color, and Quality was based on rank.
Since all humans are common, even a purple quality will be "common" - and how does rank relate to that?
Are ensigns white, Lieutenants green, LtCmdrs blue, etc?
Rarity being color-based is pretty much the standard - and its just co-indicence that rarity and quality are usually linked (in items in MMOs, in cards in CCGs, etc) - So seeing "common" purples or rare white items is going to be troublesome.
There were two problems: First, convention is to tie rarity and color rigidly together, though that was felt to be too limiting for what we wanted to do with the system. Second, there are a lot of ranks we wanted to represent beyond just the four levels of quality, and Klingon ranks do not match up perfectly to Federation ranks. Also, Civilians have quality, but no rank, further complicating tying it to rank unless we divorced it from the Star Trek IP.
We chose to go with quality based on color because for purposes of the system, quality is the important thing, and visually color is what is noticed first. We think people will latch onto "color" as equalling "value" which is, in fact, correct. Rarity will be listed, but only on the full description and it will not be emphasized.
Example Progression
Human White: Common
Human Green: Uncommon
Human Blue: Rare
Human Purple: Very Rare
Vulcan White: Uncommon
Vulcan Green: Rare
Vulcan Blue: Very Rare
Vulcan Purple: Very Rare
Saurian White: Rare
Saurian Green: Very Rare
Saurian Blue: Very Rare
Saurian Purple: Very Rare
Ultimately, we want to keep the feel of these being crew with rank and faction etc., but when it comes down to functional play, we wanted to make sure that was as clear as possible.
This stuff is great. I'm loving the intricacies of what you've described thus far Heretic.
I have a question/request however. You mentioned specialities, as in Doctor or Nurse and only allowing 3 of those at a time on the roster. Could we have some more elaboration to those? And could we perhaps get a visual representation of the resulting tree of branch, department and speciality, even if it's in text.
There are a lot of specialties, and they may still undergo some changes, but I'll give some examples:
I missed something - will any of this make a difference globally, or all the affects are on my pool of officers?
In other words, I hope that by contributing officers to the military that I can positively affect some military campaign - maybe take over a planet because my guys did particularly well.
At launch of the duty officer assignment system, all of this will just affect you, not things like taking over planets. Longer term we would, however, like to see what can be done in the area of multi-player persistent effects.
Might I suggest putting Warrant Officer in the Blue Slot and moving Chief Warrant Officer into the Purple Slot?
Warrant Officers (Marine-side) are generally former enlisted who are highly proficient in a given field. They're occasionally given command (like in training commands) but generally fill an advisory role. In the Marines, they're former NCOs or SNCOs (and usually serving 8 or more years).
There were two problems: First, convention is to tie rarity and color rigidly together, though that was felt to be too limiting for what we wanted to do with the system. Second, there are a lot of ranks we wanted to represent beyond just the four levels of quality, and Klingon ranks do not match up perfectly to Federation ranks. Also, Civilians have quality, but no rank, further complicating tying it to rank unless we divorced it from the Star Trek IP.
We chose to go with quality based on color because for purposes of the system, quality is the important thing, and visually color is what is noticed first. We think people will latch onto "color" as equalling "value" which is, in fact, correct. Rarity will be listed, but only on the full description and it will not be emphasized - color/quality, on the other hand, will be.
Example Progression:
Human White: Common
Human Green: Uncommon
Human Blue: Rare
Human Purple: Very Rare
Vulcan White: Uncommon
Vulcan Green: Rare
Vulcan Blue: Very Rare
Vulcan Purple: Very Rare
Saurian White: Rare
Saurian Green: Very Rare
Saurian Blue: Very Rare
Saurian Purple: Very Rare
Ultimately, we want to keep the feel of these being crew with rank and faction etc., but when it comes down to functional play, we wanted to make sure that was as clear as possible.
There are a lot of specialties, and they may still undergo some changes, but I'll give some examples:
At launch of the duty officer assignment system, all of this will just affect you, not things like taking over planets. Longer term we would, however, like to see what can be done in the area of multi-player persistent effects.
It might help if the descriptors were not the same as the terms already used for other items (with corresponding meaning). Perhaps something like:
Example Progression:
Human White: Frequent
Human Green: Occasional
Human Blue: Limited
Human Purple: Distinctive
Might I suggest putting Warrant Officer in the Blue Slot and moving Chief Warrant Officer into the Purple Slot?
Warrant Officers (Marine-side) are generally former enlisted who are highly proficient in a given field. They're occasionally given command (like in training commands) but generally fill an advisory role. In the Marines, they're former NCOs or SNCOs (and usually serving 8 or more years).
Adding to this, I also suggest using the rank system for enlisted with approiate changes:
Crewman Recruit
Crewman Apprentice
Crewman
Petty Officer 3rd Class
Petty Officer 2nd Class
Petty Officer 1st Class
Chief Petty Officer
Senior Chief Petty Officer
Master Chief Petty Officer
Considering the current rank system closely follows modern naval forces, it just seems more appropiate.
Example Ranking
White: [...] Bekk
Green: [...] Warrior
Bekk and Warrior are widely used as synonyms (both in canon, as noted by MA, and by the Trek community at large). If STO chooses to have them denote two distinct ranks (especially of different quality), it will doubtless confuse some Klingon players.
Bekk and Warrior are widely used as synonyms (both in canon, as noted by MA, and by the Trek community at large). If STO chooses to have them denote two distinct ranks (especially of different quality), it will doubtless confuse some Klingon players.
It was my understanding that Bekk was the Klingon equivalent to a Sergeant & Warrior referred to all members of the Klingon Defence Force.
Bekk and Warrior are widely used as synonyms (both in canon, as noted by MA, and by the Trek community at large). If STO chooses to have them denote two distinct ranks (especially of different quality), it will doubtless confuse some Klingon players.
Bekks are a subset of warrior.
All KDF members are warriors. However, bekks are a specific, sub-NCO rank (like seaman or crewman, just a step below Petty Oficers and others NCOs like Sergeants).
It's like all U.S. Marines are devil-dogs, leathernecks, and warriors but only some are Sergeants or NCOs.
All KDF members are warriors. However, bekks are a specific, non-commissioned officer rank.
It's like all U.S. Marines are devil-dogs, leathernecks, and warriors but only some are Sergeants or NCOs.
Doh. I inherited most of the ranking work, and never looked too closely at it. Thanks for catching that. I will see about retrofitting that. Probably just change "Warrior" to "Sergeant", based off of Memory Alpha.
Doh. I inherited most of the ranking work, and never looked too closely at it. Thanks for catching that. I will see about retrofitting that. Probably just change "Warrior" to "Sergeant", based off of Memory Alpha.
I didn't even realize that you'd made a mistake.
I was just explaining that some titles that apply to the same group are not necessarily synonymous. I nearly busted out the euler/venn diagrams to explain how some are subsets of others or titles that work faction-wide.
I was partly wrong: bekk is allegedly equivalent to crewman. This means that they are not NCOs.
Tactical should be changed to Command. Conn(Helm) officer is a command line officer on the TV shows and movies. There should be an option to designate the bridge station as Security/Tactical. In TNG and Voyager, the head of security is also the head tactical officer. Ops station handles resource allocation: rerouting power to other systems and allocating sensor usage. Explosives Expert is more of a Security position. Flight Deck Officer is related to Conn Officer which should be command. Quartermaster could be either command or ops.
I don't think this fits perfectly with what's called for in the DOff system...
However, I could see this becoming a special kind of BOff who acts as the Civilian Department Head and allows you to build rep with a single NPC faction. Unlike traditional factions in MMOs where it's about YOUR personal fame growing, your Civilian Official is a BO who adventures with you but may be sent on special assignments of their own, removing them from your roster) and as THEIR influence grows (through special ranking up), your sphere of influence inside their culture grows.
Just a special BO who doubles as Civilian "Department Head", who ranks differently from other BOs, and who grants you a set of perks. As an additional perk, I'd have it so that they beam down with you to their colony/homeworld when you go there and can do things like get you access to stores, transwarps and council meetings.
Tactical should be changed to Command. Conn(Helm) officer is a command line officer on the TV shows and movies. There should be an option to designate the bridge station as Security/Tactical. In TNG and Voyager, the head of security is also the head tactical officer. Ops station handles resource allocation: rerouting power to other systems and allocating sensor usage. Explosives Expert is more of a Security position. Flight Deck Officer is related to Conn Officer which should be command. Quartermaster could be either command or ops.
I have some questions of my own.
So our DO can train our BO. If my DO trains my BO in the DO "efficient" skill, does the BO have the old "efficient" skill or the new one, that does something different? If the first, that could really destroy the monopoly that uncommon Saurians have in my ship assignments section, lol.
Can you train more than one DO skill to each BO? If so, is there a limit? Can i buy one of every DO for each of my BO and use them all for training so all of my BO have every skill?
We are limited to 3 DO with specific skills to affect the ship, such as "Nursing" which might give faster crew repair. How many different skills are there? Can I buy enough slots in my BO section from the C-store to have 3 different officers for every single skill in order to maximize my ship?
Duty officers come in various ranks up to lieutenant junior grade, if I recall correctly. You cannot promote them. While I won't categorically rule out that it will never be possible, it actually would cause some issues with other systems, so I doubt it will.
So in theory I could have Lt. ranked Doffs who answer to a Ensign ranked Boff department head?
Because if so I'm totally going to do it. And I'll change his name to Harry.
I request that this thread be stickied when it is the appropriate time. DOFFs are a complex new game mechanic. This thread helped me understand it a lot more. And I think it's essential for new players.
I request that this thread be stickied when it is the appropriate time. DOFFs are a complex new game mechanic. This thread helped me understand it a lot more. And I think it's essential for new players.
Agreed. Rub it in honey and slap it at the top of the forums.
Comments
Could you use the Boarding Party animations?
-Auspice
We already see some examples of something like this. I can think of a couple at the moment. One involves landing on a planet and then my tactical officer back on the ship warns me of an enemy landing party and wishes me good luck. The problem is that very officer is standing next to me and is not on the ship.
Another example is when I enter a system in B'Tran and I am attacked by Borg "raiders" or by Borg supplying weapons to Starfleet's enemies. Those two things don't go with the Borg but with Nausicaans or Orion or a few others. The Borg are there for just one thing, assimilation.
Think of it like this, pennies are common, but there are also rare extra valuable pennies.
I have a question/request however. You mentioned specialities, as in Doctor or Nurse and only allowing 3 of those at a time on the roster. Could we have some more elaboration to those? And could we perhaps get a visual representation of the resulting tree of branch, department and speciality, even if it's in text.
For example, the way I'm hearing it at the moment is like this. Could you fill in some blanks?
Science
In other words, I hope that by contributing officers to the military that I can positively affect some military campaign - maybe take over a planet because my guys did particularly well.
-Jeff
It's an IP issue. In every Trek show and movie Humans are by far the most common species.
Okay, that was funny enough that I had to mention it to my Mom. Funnier still, she agrees with this:
Now you have to do it - you even have Trekker Moms behind the idea.
I get what you are saying but I couldn't help but think of this when I first read that:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OXE9pfjSoTE
I don't know if anyone else has already posted this.
All joking aside this doff thing sounds cool. Finally adding a level of complexity that this game is lacking.
But isn't that a budget issue the game doesn't have? I certainly seem to come across Human Boffs no more than other species.
There were two problems: First, convention is to tie rarity and color rigidly together, though that was felt to be too limiting for what we wanted to do with the system. Second, there are a lot of ranks we wanted to represent beyond just the four levels of quality, and Klingon ranks do not match up perfectly to Federation ranks. Also, Civilians have quality, but no rank, further complicating tying it to rank unless we divorced it from the Star Trek IP.
We chose to go with quality based on color because for purposes of the system, quality is the important thing, and visually color is what is noticed first. We think people will latch onto "color" as equalling "value" which is, in fact, correct. Rarity will be listed, but only on the full description and it will not be emphasized.
Example Progression
Human White: Common
Human Green: Uncommon
Human Blue: Rare
Human Purple: Very Rare
Vulcan White: Uncommon
Vulcan Green: Rare
Vulcan Blue: Very Rare
Vulcan Purple: Very Rare
Saurian White: Rare
Saurian Green: Very Rare
Saurian Blue: Very Rare
Saurian Purple: Very Rare
Example Ranking
White: Crewman, Bekk
Green: Petty Officer, Technician, Ensign, Specialist, Warrior
Blue: Chief Petty Officer, Chief Warrant Officer, Lieutenant Junior Grade, Senior Specialist, Lieutenant (KDF)
Purple: Master Chief Petty Officer, Lieutenant, Senior Chief Specialist
Ultimately, we want to keep the feel of these being crew with rank and faction etc., but when it comes down to functional play, we wanted to make sure that was as clear as possible.
There are a lot of specialties, and they may still undergo some changes, but I'll give some examples:
Tactical: Conn Officer, Energy Weapons Officer, Shield Distribution Officer
Security: Security Officer, Assault Squad Officer, Armory Officer
Engineering: Diagnostic Engineer, Fabrication Engineer, Warp Core Engineer
Operations: Flight Deck Officer, Quartermaster, Explosives Expert, Tractor Beam Officer
Science: Astrometrics Scientist, Warp Theorist, Botanist, Research Lab Scientist
Medical: Doctor, Nurse, EMH, Biochemist, Counselor
Civilian: Bartender, Chef, Trader, Diplomat, Prisoner, Colonist
At launch of the duty officer assignment system, all of this will just affect you, not things like taking over planets. Longer term we would, however, like to see what can be done in the area of multi-player persistent effects.
Warrant Officers (Marine-side) are generally former enlisted who are highly proficient in a given field. They're occasionally given command (like in training commands) but generally fill an advisory role. In the Marines, they're former NCOs or SNCOs (and usually serving 8 or more years).
Speaking of cut-scenes... how about those torpedo coffins...errr...nevermind
It might help if the descriptors were not the same as the terms already used for other items (with corresponding meaning). Perhaps something like:
Example Progression:
Human White: Frequent
Human Green: Occasional
Human Blue: Limited
Human Purple: Distinctive
Vulcan White: Occasional
Vulcan Green: Limited
Vulcan Blue: Distinctive
Vulcan Purple: Distinctive
Saurian White: Limited
Saurian Green: Distinctive
Saurian Blue: Distinctive
Saurian Purple: Distinctive
Just a thought.
*Where's my flame retardant suit...*
-Auspice
Adding to this, I also suggest using the rank system for enlisted with approiate changes:
Crewman Recruit
Crewman Apprentice
Crewman
Petty Officer 3rd Class
Petty Officer 2nd Class
Petty Officer 1st Class
Chief Petty Officer
Senior Chief Petty Officer
Master Chief Petty Officer
Considering the current rank system closely follows modern naval forces, it just seems more appropiate.
Bekk and Warrior are widely used as synonyms (both in canon, as noted by MA, and by the Trek community at large). If STO chooses to have them denote two distinct ranks (especially of different quality), it will doubtless confuse some Klingon players.
It was my understanding that Bekk was the Klingon equivalent to a Sergeant & Warrior referred to all members of the Klingon Defence Force.
All KDF members are warriors. However, bekks are a specific, sub-NCO rank (like seaman or crewman, just a step below Petty Oficers and others NCOs like Sergeants).
It's like all U.S. Marines are devil-dogs, leathernecks, and warriors but only some are Sergeants or NCOs.
Doh. I inherited most of the ranking work, and never looked too closely at it. Thanks for catching that. I will see about retrofitting that. Probably just change "Warrior" to "Sergeant", based off of Memory Alpha.
I was just explaining that some titles that apply to the same group are not necessarily synonymous. I nearly busted out the euler/venn diagrams to explain how some are subsets of others or titles that work faction-wide.
I was partly wrong: bekk is allegedly equivalent to crewman. This means that they are not NCOs.
So, Enlisted Ranks:
KDF
Petty Officer---Corporal, Sergeant, Staff Sergeant
Crewman
Bekk
(here's a good chart: Klingons are more like the USMC and Feds more like the USN)
Tactical: Conn Officer, Energy Weapons Officer, Shield Distribution Officer
Security: Security Officer, Assault Squad Officer, Armory Officer
Engineering: Diagnostic Engineer, Fabrication Engineer, Warp Core Engineer
Operations: Flight Deck Officer, Quartermaster, Explosives Expert, Tractor Beam Officer
Science: Astrometrics Scientist, Warp Theorist, Botanist, Research Lab Scientist
Medical: Doctor, Nurse, EMH, Biochemist, Counselor
Civilian: Bartender, Chef, Trader, Diplomat, Prisoner, Colonist
Tactical should be changed to Command. Conn(Helm) officer is a command line officer on the TV shows and movies. There should be an option to designate the bridge station as Security/Tactical. In TNG and Voyager, the head of security is also the head tactical officer. Ops station handles resource allocation: rerouting power to other systems and allocating sensor usage. Explosives Expert is more of a Security position. Flight Deck Officer is related to Conn Officer which should be command. Quartermaster could be either command or ops.
Depending on how Civilians are represented, they COULD have rank within the IP.
It would go something like:
Civilian Official
Liason (ref)
Deputy Director (ref
Director (ref)
Governor Governor
I don't think this fits perfectly with what's called for in the DOff system...
However, I could see this becoming a special kind of BOff who acts as the Civilian Department Head and allows you to build rep with a single NPC faction. Unlike traditional factions in MMOs where it's about YOUR personal fame growing, your Civilian Official is a BO who adventures with you but may be sent on special assignments of their own, removing them from your roster) and as THEIR influence grows (through special ranking up), your sphere of influence inside their culture grows.
Just a special BO who doubles as Civilian "Department Head", who ranks differently from other BOs, and who grants you a set of perks. As an additional perk, I'd have it so that they beam down with you to their colony/homeworld when you go there and can do things like get you access to stores, transwarps and council meetings.
I have some questions of my own.
So our DO can train our BO. If my DO trains my BO in the DO "efficient" skill, does the BO have the old "efficient" skill or the new one, that does something different? If the first, that could really destroy the monopoly that uncommon Saurians have in my ship assignments section, lol.
Can you train more than one DO skill to each BO? If so, is there a limit? Can i buy one of every DO for each of my BO and use them all for training so all of my BO have every skill?
We are limited to 3 DO with specific skills to affect the ship, such as "Nursing" which might give faster crew repair. How many different skills are there? Can I buy enough slots in my BO section from the C-store to have 3 different officers for every single skill in order to maximize my ship?
So in theory I could have Lt. ranked Doffs who answer to a Ensign ranked Boff department head?
Because if so I'm totally going to do it. And I'll change his name to Harry.
Agreed. Rub it in honey and slap it at the top of the forums.
Z
The gameplay additions & comm's compared to launch is just fantastic. Really looking forward to trying this out