Well how many Doff is needed for the assignment, how long does it take to finish and is there any other resources, those factors count too.
20h and one whole officer. critical at 6%, success was about 60%, failure at 30%, disaster at 4% (give or take)
if it needed like 10 officers, and took 4 days and had an astronomical failure date then maybe i could understand it but its still feels too much like clicking on a few things, logging out for a few days, coming back and congratulations. i know that is the duty officer system in a nutshell, but i think overall we are getting too many skill points.
the xp is cool and everything but every day i log in and its like im guaranteed at least half a level to a level from the doff system. i think its too high. its not like levelling up is a massive grind to begin with. im cool with commendation points remaining high as that takes ages to level in but actual skill points should be fairly limited in my view. i know critical success reward big and maybe thats how it should be. but the starting amounts seem overblown to begin with. lower the ones with the big rewards to begin with and then it wont be so quick. if you get a critical you still get a nice chunk of skill points but its not burning through entire levels in a click of your mouse. id rather the rewards were more dilithium, energy credits or latinum.
im fine with getting xp via the system and im ok with the odd big payout but it seems to be happening far too often.
now for clarity i will admit i have been using it a fair amount, and i did buy some duty officers with my test points to try it out faster, so i have more people on missions than someone who is getting them in game. chances are when its live i wont bother buying any so it will be a little slower than it currently is but many players will burn through the ranks using the system.
20h and one whole officer. critical at 6%, success was about 60%, failure at 30%, disaster at 4% (give or take)
if it needed like 10 officers, and took 4 days and had an astronomical failure date then maybe i could understand it but its still feels too much like clicking on a few things, logging out for a few days, coming back and congratulations. i know that is the duty officer system in a nutshell, but i think overall we are getting too many skill points.
the xp is cool and everything but every day i log in and its like im guaranteed at least half a level to a level from the doff system. i think its too high. its not like levelling up is a massive grind to begin with. im cool with commendation points remaining high as that takes ages to level in but actual skill points should be fairly limited in my view. i know critical success reward big and maybe thats how it should be. but the starting amounts seem overblown to begin with. lower the ones with the big rewards to begin with and then it wont be so quick. if you get a critical you still get a nice chunk of skill points but its not burning through entire levels in a click of your mouse. id rather the rewards were more dilithium, energy credits or latinum.
im fine with getting xp via the system and im ok with the odd big payout but it seems to be happening far too often.
now for clarity i will admit i have been using it a fair amount, and i did buy some duty officers with my test points to try it out faster, so i have more people on missions than someone who is getting them in game. chances are when its live i wont bother buying any so it will be a little slower than it currently is but many players will burn through the ranks using the system.
Don't forget that on TRIBBLE, XP-Points are multiplied by a factor (I can't remember what number), so that we can level faster to test more of this 'new' stuff...
It may be that in HOLO those XP's will not be so great. <shrug>
Don't forget that on TRIBBLE, XP-Points are multiplied by a factor (I can't remember what number), so that we can level faster to test more of this 'new' stuff...
It may be that in HOLO those XP's will not be so great. <shrug>
i dont think its everything is though, story missions yes but most other things seem to be about normal,
im pretty sure they wanted the doff system as it will be on live as there is not much point testing really overblown numbers for this system so these amounts should be accurate to a degree (pending changes on feedback).
thats not to say they did not set the figures a little high to begin with just to see what people think but i would expect them to come down by the time it goes live.
It seems that the Doff recruitment assignments that grants you a Doff doesn't work correctly, it showed me that I got a female engineer (Green), but I got a male alien (White), it seems that many of the assignments doesn't give you what it a shows you that you get.
I mentioned in passing in another post that we are adjusting a lot of the numerics for the duty officer system.
Nothing too cataclysmic, but we are going to be toning down the skill point gains, particularly for criticals, but also giving Energy Credits and Dilithium for most assignments.
There have also been some bugs and bad data (ahem, Medical Relief assignments) that have resulted in more-rapid-than-expected advancement.
It is there, it replaced the tab where diplomacy rewards used to be.
sorry i meant for klingons. fed can access commendations via the duty officer window or the rank key at top left. klingons can only get it via the duty officer window.
I mentioned in passing in another post that we are adjusting a lot of the numerics for the duty officer system.
Nothing too cataclysmic, but we are going to be toning down the skill point gains, particularly for criticals, but also giving Energy Credits and Dilithium for most assignments.
There have also been some bugs and bad data (ahem, Medical Relief assignments) that have resulted in more-rapid-than-expected advancement.
Having tested this system on tribble I must say it is awesome!
For me it is very engaging trying to find assignments for my DOFFs. In addition I enjoy trying to match the best officers (if possible) to a given assignment. Finally, by the time I have finished finding assignments for all my DOFFs, many of the shorter missions finish allowing me to search out and find more assignments for those newly freed DOFFs.
The rewards are good in my opinion too. Particle traces, commodities, bridge officers, DL, and more DOFFs are just some of the many many rewards. Also, instead of just DXP (for diplomacy missions) now there are a whole slew of different types of "commendations" like trade, military, etc.. I think it is all really cool.
I am very much looking forward to this going live.
I saw the assignments buffs you get from completing missions now display as little white boxes above your HUD.
We have updated the icons, but I think what may have happened is the icon references got updated on Tribble before the icons themselves did. It is appearing correctly locally, so it should resolve itself soon.
So, only white DOFFs can die on missions, others only end up in sickbay.
I have seen green DOFFs, I may have seen a blue/purple one (dont get me started on blue and purple!!!) - but I am unsure ... the white ones have no white frame, do they? The common, uncommon etc. in the DOFF dossier has nothing to do with this? What does the "crewman", "specialist" tell us?
As colors usually give me nothing but trouble, I tend to favor (for me) more easily recognisable things, like icons, numbers, insignia - could the DOFF icon get an overlay of some kind that makes it easier (for the colorly challenged) to tell, which kind they are?
And BOFFs are similar in this regard - at least to me - and maybe the remaining odd percentage of the population with "special vision". ^^
Thank you so much Heretic. I absolutely adore the Duty Officer System. For someone that does not get to spend as much time online during term time, being able to log in, pick assignments and come back to them later in the day or days later is great. The fact that i am rewarded whilst not being online because of personal commitments is a godsend right now. Not to mention how deep the system seems to go. There is a lot more to it than just random clicks here and there.
One thing i have noticed and this may be a little strange, but just like my Bridge Officers and my association to them, how can i describe this, like some digital friendship, a kind of favourtism as such. With having them for so long now, they are 'my' crew, the ones i know i can count on with away missions. Its weird i know, but i'm sure there must be a few others that think like this...?
*tumble weed* *sobs uncontrollably*
Anyway, i'm starting to get this with a few of my Doffs already (trying not to get too attached to them though, i will miss them when we go live). This is one of the reasons i love STO, and the feeling you get with your crew. Even though the Doffs are just portraits, there is still something so appealing about the whole look and feel of the UI. Maybe one day we will see these Doffs walking around your ship, replacing the generic crew that we see now. But for now, it is quite perfect.
Thank you again for all your work Heretic, i am really impressed (and very much addicted).
Thank you so much Heretic. I absolutely adore the Duty Officer System. For someone that does not get to spend as much time online during term time, being able to log in, pick assignments and come back to them later in the day or days later is great. The fact that i am rewarded whilst not being online because of personal commitments is a godsend right now. Not to mention how deep the system seems to go. There is a lot more to it than just random clicks here and there.
One thing i have noticed and this may be a little strange, but just like my Bridge Officers and my association to them, how can i describe this, like some digital friendship, a kind of favourtism as such. With having them for so long now, they are 'my' crew, the ones i know i can count on with away missions. Its weird i know, but i'm sure there must be a few others that think like this...?
*tumble weed* *sobs uncontrollably*
Anyway, i'm starting to get this with a few of my Doffs already (trying not to get too attached to them though, i will miss them when we go live). This is one of the reasons i love STO, and the feeling you get with your crew. Even though the Doffs are just portraits, there is still something so appealing about the whole look and feel of the UI. Maybe one day we will see these Doffs walking around your ship, replacing the generic crew that we see now. But for now, it is quite perfect.
Thank you again for all your work Heretic, i am really impressed (and very much addicted).
If it's any consolation, I got busted at work trying to log in real quick to get my Doffs working again. I can't wait for this to go live (once bugs are worked out, of course.)
I am wondering if we will see Federation and KDF Liberated Borg Duty Officers! If there is a thread on this already then accept my apologies. I am blown away by the new DoFF system. I can only imagine how awesome a Very Rare Liberated Borg Duty Officer would be. My two Liberated Borg Bridge Officers (Engineer and Science, respectively) are simply great. Can't wait to find out.
I hope it's been addressed before (I tried to read through all 182 pages, but it was too much!) but I hope that the enlisted ranks become organised and corrected before it goes ahead.
The screen shots have me very worried with things like Crewman included, but then Technician and Specialist thrown in. I'm also worried that you have in the example list Warrant Officers behind Petty Officers (WOs are higher than POs, and WOs have actually never really been included in most Star Trek series).
They are fine, of course, but you really need to make the ranks nice and uniform and not just throw in ranks and positions or you'll end up with something that makes about as much military sense as the current award system. You can still have Technicians and Specialists, but they should be the same grade as a Crewman.
An accurate and fairly canon set of enlisted ranks are as follows:
Crewman third class/second class/first class
Petty Officer third class/second class/first class
Chief Petty Officer
Senior Chief Petty Officer
Master Chief Petty Officer
I've edited the rank insignia from a screen shot to show what rank insignia for each enlisted rank might look like here http://startrekonlineblog.blogspot.com/p/accolades.html#Rank but I'm missing some smaller markings to designate classes and the Senior CPO rank.
I hope it's been addressed before (I tried to read through all 182 pages, but it was too much!) but I hope that the enlisted ranks become organised and corrected before it goes ahead.
The screen shots have me very worried with things like Crewman included, but then Technician and Specialist thrown in. I'm also worried that you have in the example list Warrant Officers behind Petty Officers (WOs are higher than POs, and WOs have actually never really been included in most Star Trek series).
They are fine, of course, but you really need to make the ranks nice and uniform and not just throw in ranks and positions or you'll end up with something that makes about as much military sense as the current award system. You can still have Technicians and Specialists, but they should be the same grade as a Crewman.
An accurate and fairly canon set of enlisted ranks are as follows:
Crewman third class/second class/first class
Petty Officer third class/second class/first class
Chief Petty Officer
Senior Chief Petty Officer
Master Chief Petty Officer
I've edited the rank insignia from a screen shot to show what rank insignia for each enlisted rank might look like here http://startrekonlineblog.blogspot.com/p/accolades.html#Rank but I'm missing some smaller markings to designate classes and the Senior CPO rank.
Please don't stuff it up!
I've made some spreadsheets of the DOffs I've come across so far. From what I can tell, it looks like the science/medical divisions have specialists and senior specialists instead of petty officers or chief petty officers. These specialists are using the warrant officer style ranks (which iirc was only shown once on a TNG episode)
This may be more for a later update but one thing i was thinking of is the number of doffs dont really affect things on your ship.
if you have 100 doffs and 50 of them are engineers then that should have some impact on your ship from an engineering standpoint.
so you could either choose a bonus skill like 'improved turn rate' or 'more effective engineering team' to begin with and the more engineers you have the better the buff will be. (quality would also change it).
you could select a buff for each category (security, tactical, medical) and then the numbers you have will alter how good you are in each field. so you can either be balanced and have even numbers across the board or have more tactical or more medical or what ever you want to try and max out those skills. this gives several options.
1) which buff per category do you choose to begin with. if each catagory has 3 or 4 options and you can only pick 1 at a time.
2) how many doffs do you have or try to get per category. if you want to max out the tactical option then you will have a crew made up of mostly tactical doffs to have less or none of the others, which also makes certain doff assignments harder or impossible to do, as you may not have the right people. if you want to be equal in each buff then you need to even them out.
3) paying more attention to what doffs you have at any time, as each doff could be replaced with one from another category to benefit you rather than just leaving there for when an assignment might need them.
The other option is to have very long assignments that take say 10 days to complete and requise quite a few doffs (again 10 or so). doffs can be taken on or off these assignments at any time but progress will slowly diminish.
as the assignment continue you get stronger in an area depending on how long you spend working at it. assignments could be things like increase weapon power for example. spend 5 days on it and your weapon power increases by 3. spend 10 days and your weapon power increases by 6 (max). if you want to progress in a different category (say shield strength) you assign either those people or new people to it and they begin to increase that ability,
you need to keep people assigned to them or they will gradually return to 0. load your crew up with all tactical and you can max out all of the tactical assignments but they have to stay there or they will drop down to 0 eventually.
these again would be broken into category so tactical and engineering assignments dont affect each other, but you need the people to get the job done and to maintain them. the more people you assign to these missions, the less doffs you have to do other category's or smaller tasks.
My compliment on the design and implementation of the Doff system, especially on the integration with commodities, which gives them some meaning.
In my opinion some improvements would make sense:
1. If you loos Doffs on an assignment, it would be helpful, if a completion window listing lost Doffs would be displayed in any case.
2. Being able to accomplish class specific optional missions reserved for other character classes with enogh expirience in a particular commendation category would provide commendation expirience more meaning in my opinion. For example, being a tactical officer with sufficient expirience in the science commendation would allow you to conduct mineral survey during the mission "Mine Enemy". With sufficient engineering expirience you would be able to make the mining drill operational. Other classes would be able to accomplish optional tasks reserved for tactical officers, if they would have sufficient amount of expirience in the military commendation category. Klingons with sufficient marauding expirience could be able to use it in similar ways as federation characters use their diplomacy rank during some particular dialogs with NPCs.
The Marauding Commendation is not like Diplomacy and still you only get 3 Doffs and it takes more CXP to get to next Tier then with Diplomacy and you can only get Marauding CXP from assignments, so I would like to get that 4th Doff like all the other Commendation or more CXP.
I know we have talked about this ad least think we have
Arg, the tradeing assignments don't give any Energy Credits so it's not really worth doing them (I know that has been mentioned before some where).
The assignments "Entertain High-Ranking Warriors" seems to have a minimum 1% in Failure and Disaster, I added half the needed Doffs and got the Failure and Disaster down to 1% and then I added the rest of the Doffs needed, but nothing happened, no changes in the Failure and Disaster they were still 1% and it seems to me that the reward is a bit low for using 5 specific Doffs and paying 50k EC.
The Marauding Commendation is not like Diplomacy and still you only get 3 Doffs and it takes more CXP to get to next Tier then with Diplomacy and you can only get Marauding CXP from assignments, so I would like to get that 4th Doff like all the other Commendation or more CXP.
I know we have talked about this ad least think we have
Arg, the tradeing assignments don't give any Energy Credits so it's not really worth doing them (I know that has been mentioned before some where).
The assignments "Entertain High-Ranking Warriors" seems to have a minimum 1% in Failure and Disaster, I added half the needed Doffs and got the Failure and Disaster down to 1% and then I added the rest of the Doffs needed, but nothing happened, no changes in the Failure and Disaster they were still 1% and it seems to me that the reward is a bit low for using 5 specific Doffs and paying 50k EC.
Quick..., Nobody tell him that They lowered the Fed one down to 5K EC's.... heh...
I just wanted to say thanks for the DOFF system. I LOVE it! DOFF bring a new fun way to enjoy the game. It only makes sense as you know star ships are more than just military vessels. There are plenty of times ships go to sectors and send out various crew members for different missions. There may be some diplomatic missions with local peoples and some geology work in a nearby asteroid field.
Hi Heretic, outstanding job btw on the DOFF system, loving it
I'm not sure where this was posted so I figured I better ask:
Can we get confirmation on what commendation Tier we have to reach? Is it 'get' to any T3 or 'complete" any T3 commendation to receive that special boff not available elsewhere?
Also, with our diplomatic Bridge officers: is it true that now (when doff hits Live Server) they will be of Purple/Very Rare quality instead of white/common? I've read in TTS chat that those who redeemed for the white will be re-issued a token to receive the purple/vr quality one, is that true? If that is true, for those of us who haven't redeemed the white/common KDF Boff, will we get 2 tokens? (the one previously issued PLUS the re-issue when it goes Live) Or is it redeem the white kdf one now, or lose it?
I've made some spreadsheets of the DOffs I've come across so far. From what I can tell, it looks like the science/medical divisions have specialists and senior specialists instead of petty officers or chief petty officers. These specialists are using the warrant officer style ranks (which iirc was only shown once on a TNG episode)
We did a lot of research for this, and the short answer is that the show is not consistent with real world naval ranks, nor is it consistent with itself. We did take some liberties with how ranks match up against each branch, but we wanted to represent as many of the titles that were used at various points in the show as we could.
The way we set it up:
QUALITY/COLOR (Tactical/Security Branch)
White - Crewman
Green - Ensign
Blue - Lieutenant Junior Grade
Purple - Lieutenant
QUALITY/COLOR (Engineering/Operations Branches)
White - Crewman
Green - Petty Officer
Blue - Chief Petty Officer
Purple - Master Chief Petty Officer
QUALITY/COLOR (Science/Medical Branches)
White - Crewman
Green - Specialist
Blue - Senior Specialist
Purple - Senior Chief Specialist
QUALITY/COLOR (KDF)
White - Bekk
Green - Corporal
Blue - Sergeant
Purple - Lieutenant
QUALITY/COLOR (Civilian)
White - Civilian
Green - Civilian
Blue - Civilian
Purple - Civilian
1. If you loos Doffs on an assignment, it would be helpful, if a completion window listing lost Doffs would be displayed in any case.
2. Being able to accomplish class specific optional missions reserved for other character classes with enogh expirience in a particular commendation category would provide commendation expirience more meaning in my opinion. For example, being a tactical officer with sufficient expirience in the science commendation would allow you to conduct mineral survey during the mission "Mine Enemy". With sufficient engineering expirience you would be able to make the mining drill operational. Other classes would be able to accomplish optional tasks reserved for tactical officers, if they would have sufficient amount of expirience in the military commendation category. Klingons with sufficient marauding expirience could be able to use it in similar ways as federation characters use their diplomacy rank during some particular dialogs with NPCs.
We are continuing to work on communicating better through the system which duty officers you have lost and why, and if they are in sick bay. There are also some bugs we are addressing as well that are impacting this.
As for commendation tiers opening up options in missions, it is something we have discussed as a possibility down the line. There are definitely a lot of possibilities opened up by the commendation category system.
Can we get confirmation on what commendation Tier we have to reach? Is it 'get' to any T3 or 'complete" any T3 commendation to receive that special boff not available elsewhere?
Also, with our diplomatic Bridge officers: is it true that now (when doff hits Live Server) they will be of Purple/Very Rare quality instead of white/common? I've read in TTS chat that those who redeemed for the white will be re-issued a token to receive the purple/vr quality one, is that true? If that is true, for those of us who haven't redeemed the white/common KDF Boff, will we get 2 tokens? (the one previously issued PLUS the re-issue when it goes Live) Or is it redeem the white kdf one now, or lose it?
Reach any T3 to receive the special duty officer.
Diplomatic and Marauding cross-faction bridge officers will be purple quality. On Holodeck, those who have already hit T4 will get the purple quality officer in addition to their existing white bridge officer.
We did a lot of research for this, and the short answer is that the show is not consistent with real world naval ranks, nor is it consistent with itself. We did take some liberties with how ranks match up against each branch, but we wanted to represent as many of the titles that were used at various points in the show as we could.
The way we set it up:
QUALITY/COLOR (Tactical/Security Branch)
White - Crewman
Green - Ensign
Blue - Lieutenant Junior Grade
Purple - Lieutenant
QUALITY/COLOR (Engineering/Operations Branches)
White - Crewman
Green - Petty Officer
Blue - Chief Petty Officer
Purple - Master Chief Petty Officer
QUALITY/COLOR (Science/Medical Branches)
White - Crewman
Green - Specialist
Blue - Senior Specialist
Purple - Senior Chief Specialist
QUALITY/COLOR (KDF)
White - Bekk
Green - Corporal
Blue - Sergeant
Purple - Lieutenant
QUALITY/COLOR (Civilian)
White - Civilian
Green - Civilian
Blue - Civilian
Purple - Civilian
Thanks for the list! Updating my spreadsheets now!
Comments
20h and one whole officer. critical at 6%, success was about 60%, failure at 30%, disaster at 4% (give or take)
if it needed like 10 officers, and took 4 days and had an astronomical failure date then maybe i could understand it but its still feels too much like clicking on a few things, logging out for a few days, coming back and congratulations. i know that is the duty officer system in a nutshell, but i think overall we are getting too many skill points.
the xp is cool and everything but every day i log in and its like im guaranteed at least half a level to a level from the doff system. i think its too high. its not like levelling up is a massive grind to begin with. im cool with commendation points remaining high as that takes ages to level in but actual skill points should be fairly limited in my view. i know critical success reward big and maybe thats how it should be. but the starting amounts seem overblown to begin with. lower the ones with the big rewards to begin with and then it wont be so quick. if you get a critical you still get a nice chunk of skill points but its not burning through entire levels in a click of your mouse. id rather the rewards were more dilithium, energy credits or latinum.
im fine with getting xp via the system and im ok with the odd big payout but it seems to be happening far too often.
now for clarity i will admit i have been using it a fair amount, and i did buy some duty officers with my test points to try it out faster, so i have more people on missions than someone who is getting them in game. chances are when its live i wont bother buying any so it will be a little slower than it currently is but many players will burn through the ranks using the system.
Don't forget that on TRIBBLE, XP-Points are multiplied by a factor (I can't remember what number), so that we can level faster to test more of this 'new' stuff...
It may be that in HOLO those XP's will not be so great. <shrug>
The DOFF UI is not easily understandable either.
i dont think its everything is though, story missions yes but most other things seem to be about normal,
im pretty sure they wanted the doff system as it will be on live as there is not much point testing really overblown numbers for this system so these amounts should be accurate to a degree (pending changes on feedback).
thats not to say they did not set the figures a little high to begin with just to see what people think but i would expect them to come down by the time it goes live.
Nothing too cataclysmic, but we are going to be toning down the skill point gains, particularly for criticals, but also giving Energy Credits and Dilithium for most assignments.
There have also been some bugs and bad data (ahem, Medical Relief assignments) that have resulted in more-rapid-than-expected advancement.
sorry i meant for klingons. fed can access commendations via the duty officer window or the rank key at top left. klingons can only get it via the duty officer window.
1) cool, especially more dilithium.
2) get some sleep.
3) latinum rewards would be nice too.
4) seriously get some sleep.
I would've loved to have taken advantage of that but I somehow managed to kill all my medical staff, save for a counselor. >_>
U.S.S Jaeger: Tired of living a normal life? Enlist here!
Actually thats a really nice idea
For me it is very engaging trying to find assignments for my DOFFs. In addition I enjoy trying to match the best officers (if possible) to a given assignment. Finally, by the time I have finished finding assignments for all my DOFFs, many of the shorter missions finish allowing me to search out and find more assignments for those newly freed DOFFs.
The rewards are good in my opinion too. Particle traces, commodities, bridge officers, DL, and more DOFFs are just some of the many many rewards. Also, instead of just DXP (for diplomacy missions) now there are a whole slew of different types of "commendations" like trade, military, etc.. I think it is all really cool.
I am very much looking forward to this going live.
Bravo Cryptic! +1,000,000
While on the subject of rewards, I *love* that I'm getting all these particles without actually having to farm them myself.
much love to Cryptic for the engaging new aspect to STO!
We have updated the icons, but I think what may have happened is the icon references got updated on Tribble before the icons themselves did. It is appearing correctly locally, so it should resolve itself soon.
I have seen green DOFFs, I may have seen a blue/purple one (dont get me started on blue and purple!!!) - but I am unsure ... the white ones have no white frame, do they? The common, uncommon etc. in the DOFF dossier has nothing to do with this? What does the "crewman", "specialist" tell us?
As colors usually give me nothing but trouble, I tend to favor (for me) more easily recognisable things, like icons, numbers, insignia - could the DOFF icon get an overlay of some kind that makes it easier (for the colorly challenged) to tell, which kind they are?
And BOFFs are similar in this regard - at least to me - and maybe the remaining odd percentage of the population with "special vision". ^^
One thing i have noticed and this may be a little strange, but just like my Bridge Officers and my association to them, how can i describe this, like some digital friendship, a kind of favourtism as such. With having them for so long now, they are 'my' crew, the ones i know i can count on with away missions. Its weird i know, but i'm sure there must be a few others that think like this...?
*tumble weed* *sobs uncontrollably*
Anyway, i'm starting to get this with a few of my Doffs already (trying not to get too attached to them though, i will miss them when we go live). This is one of the reasons i love STO, and the feeling you get with your crew. Even though the Doffs are just portraits, there is still something so appealing about the whole look and feel of the UI. Maybe one day we will see these Doffs walking around your ship, replacing the generic crew that we see now. But for now, it is quite perfect.
Thank you again for all your work Heretic, i am really impressed (and very much addicted).
If it's any consolation, I got busted at work trying to log in real quick to get my Doffs working again. I can't wait for this to go live (once bugs are worked out, of course.)
The screen shots have me very worried with things like Crewman included, but then Technician and Specialist thrown in. I'm also worried that you have in the example list Warrant Officers behind Petty Officers (WOs are higher than POs, and WOs have actually never really been included in most Star Trek series).
They are fine, of course, but you really need to make the ranks nice and uniform and not just throw in ranks and positions or you'll end up with something that makes about as much military sense as the current award system. You can still have Technicians and Specialists, but they should be the same grade as a Crewman.
An accurate and fairly canon set of enlisted ranks are as follows:
I've edited the rank insignia from a screen shot to show what rank insignia for each enlisted rank might look like here http://startrekonlineblog.blogspot.com/p/accolades.html#Rank but I'm missing some smaller markings to designate classes and the Senior CPO rank.
Please don't stuff it up!
I've made some spreadsheets of the DOffs I've come across so far. From what I can tell, it looks like the science/medical divisions have specialists and senior specialists instead of petty officers or chief petty officers. These specialists are using the warrant officer style ranks (which iirc was only shown once on a TNG episode)
if you have 100 doffs and 50 of them are engineers then that should have some impact on your ship from an engineering standpoint.
so you could either choose a bonus skill like 'improved turn rate' or 'more effective engineering team' to begin with and the more engineers you have the better the buff will be. (quality would also change it).
you could select a buff for each category (security, tactical, medical) and then the numbers you have will alter how good you are in each field. so you can either be balanced and have even numbers across the board or have more tactical or more medical or what ever you want to try and max out those skills. this gives several options.
1) which buff per category do you choose to begin with. if each catagory has 3 or 4 options and you can only pick 1 at a time.
2) how many doffs do you have or try to get per category. if you want to max out the tactical option then you will have a crew made up of mostly tactical doffs to have less or none of the others, which also makes certain doff assignments harder or impossible to do, as you may not have the right people. if you want to be equal in each buff then you need to even them out.
3) paying more attention to what doffs you have at any time, as each doff could be replaced with one from another category to benefit you rather than just leaving there for when an assignment might need them.
The other option is to have very long assignments that take say 10 days to complete and requise quite a few doffs (again 10 or so). doffs can be taken on or off these assignments at any time but progress will slowly diminish.
as the assignment continue you get stronger in an area depending on how long you spend working at it. assignments could be things like increase weapon power for example. spend 5 days on it and your weapon power increases by 3. spend 10 days and your weapon power increases by 6 (max). if you want to progress in a different category (say shield strength) you assign either those people or new people to it and they begin to increase that ability,
you need to keep people assigned to them or they will gradually return to 0. load your crew up with all tactical and you can max out all of the tactical assignments but they have to stay there or they will drop down to 0 eventually.
these again would be broken into category so tactical and engineering assignments dont affect each other, but you need the people to get the job done and to maintain them. the more people you assign to these missions, the less doffs you have to do other category's or smaller tasks.
In my opinion some improvements would make sense:
1. If you loos Doffs on an assignment, it would be helpful, if a completion window listing lost Doffs would be displayed in any case.
2. Being able to accomplish class specific optional missions reserved for other character classes with enogh expirience in a particular commendation category would provide commendation expirience more meaning in my opinion. For example, being a tactical officer with sufficient expirience in the science commendation would allow you to conduct mineral survey during the mission "Mine Enemy". With sufficient engineering expirience you would be able to make the mining drill operational. Other classes would be able to accomplish optional tasks reserved for tactical officers, if they would have sufficient amount of expirience in the military commendation category. Klingons with sufficient marauding expirience could be able to use it in similar ways as federation characters use their diplomacy rank during some particular dialogs with NPCs.
Just my two cents.
I know we have talked about this ad least think we have
Arg, the tradeing assignments don't give any Energy Credits so it's not really worth doing them (I know that has been mentioned before some where).
The assignments "Entertain High-Ranking Warriors" seems to have a minimum 1% in Failure and Disaster, I added half the needed Doffs and got the Failure and Disaster down to 1% and then I added the rest of the Doffs needed, but nothing happened, no changes in the Failure and Disaster they were still 1% and it seems to me that the reward is a bit low for using 5 specific Doffs and paying 50k EC.
Quick..., Nobody tell him that They lowered the Fed one down to 5K EC's.... heh...
<chuckle>
Thanks for adding this to the game.
I'm not sure where this was posted so I figured I better ask:
Can we get confirmation on what commendation Tier we have to reach? Is it 'get' to any T3 or 'complete" any T3 commendation to receive that special boff not available elsewhere?
Also, with our diplomatic Bridge officers: is it true that now (when doff hits Live Server) they will be of Purple/Very Rare quality instead of white/common? I've read in TTS chat that those who redeemed for the white will be re-issued a token to receive the purple/vr quality one, is that true? If that is true, for those of us who haven't redeemed the white/common KDF Boff, will we get 2 tokens? (the one previously issued PLUS the re-issue when it goes Live) Or is it redeem the white kdf one now, or lose it?
Thanks in advance, time to send out more Doffs
We did a lot of research for this, and the short answer is that the show is not consistent with real world naval ranks, nor is it consistent with itself. We did take some liberties with how ranks match up against each branch, but we wanted to represent as many of the titles that were used at various points in the show as we could.
The way we set it up:
QUALITY/COLOR (Tactical/Security Branch)
White - Crewman
Green - Ensign
Blue - Lieutenant Junior Grade
Purple - Lieutenant
QUALITY/COLOR (Engineering/Operations Branches)
White - Crewman
Green - Petty Officer
Blue - Chief Petty Officer
Purple - Master Chief Petty Officer
QUALITY/COLOR (Science/Medical Branches)
White - Crewman
Green - Specialist
Blue - Senior Specialist
Purple - Senior Chief Specialist
QUALITY/COLOR (KDF)
White - Bekk
Green - Corporal
Blue - Sergeant
Purple - Lieutenant
QUALITY/COLOR (Civilian)
White - Civilian
Green - Civilian
Blue - Civilian
Purple - Civilian
We are continuing to work on communicating better through the system which duty officers you have lost and why, and if they are in sick bay. There are also some bugs we are addressing as well that are impacting this.
As for commendation tiers opening up options in missions, it is something we have discussed as a possibility down the line. There are definitely a lot of possibilities opened up by the commendation category system.
Reach any T3 to receive the special duty officer.
Diplomatic and Marauding cross-faction bridge officers will be purple quality. On Holodeck, those who have already hit T4 will get the purple quality officer in addition to their existing white bridge officer.
Thanks for the list! Updating my spreadsheets now!
Is it still planned for release this week? :P
Though instead of having a generic 'Civilian' title, you could use...
White: Contractor/Licensed Service Provider
Green: Manager/Supervisor/Consultant
Blue: Specialist/Master Contractor
Purple: Professor/Doctorate/Professional Consultant