This has nothing to do with what we are talking about. Congratulations on missing the point entirely. All we are asking is that a doff mission requiring 2 days of time, 5 doffs of very specific types and 50+ commodities have noticeably better rewards than a mission requiring 1 doff of any type, no commodities, and only 15 minutes of time.
The point is the 3 day missions are in play for the people who aren't logging in every day. If all the 3 day assignments gave out huge rewards then the people investing the least amount of time into the system would be reaping the biggest rewards. As it stands I don't do any of the three day assignments because I can log in often and start new assignments. And I have yet to run into a shortage of assignments because I'm avoiding the long ones.
As far as the EC cost is concerned it's a joke. I'm two weeks in on the test server and have 6 million EC. Sell some loot on the exchange. You can also shop around for much better prices then you get from your replicator.
Now the number of officers is also designed for people who aren't logging in everyday. You don't need as many people free if you aren't doing a bunch of different shorter assignments.
^ talking a lot of something*, I have to stop doing Doffs missions because lack of EC, lack of provisions and lack of Doffs, so how in the world did you manage to get 5 mill, you must be grinding the game 24 hours a day? Because the drops are TRIBBLE, you dont get any good item worth a lot of EC at least for us who are still on the LT rank.
Regarding commodity (and other) inputs, this is something that is a work in progress because while I can scale rewards, I can't actually scale inputs other than hard level bracketing it and then duplicating it. We are trying to smooth this out a bit, and regardless of that, certain inputs may simply be too high, for which let me know the specific assignment(s) and I am more than happy to check them out.
On the topic of CXP, I am looking at that this week and will be adjusting it in some fashion. One of the challenges with the system is that the rewards have to be balanced between the opportunity cost (length of an assignment) versus the management time (time it takes you to actually click). We have been rewarding the latter more heavily than the former since we want to reward you for actively playing the game rather than coming back in three days and reaping a bonanza. That being said, I do think the opportunity cost has been devalued, so I am looking into the best way to adjust that to make it fairer.
There are a lot of moving pieces in this system, so I appreciate input, particularly input on specific things or patterns of behavior you find yourself engaging in, and am doing my best to respond to it all.
^ talking a lot of bull TRIBBLE, I have to stop doing Doffs missions because lack of EC, lack of provisions and lack of Doffs, so how in the world did you manage to get 5 mill, you must be grinding the game 24 hours a day? Because the drops are TRIBBLE, you dont get any good item worth a lot of EC at least for us who are still on the LT rank.
IMO, just because a mission is available, that does not mean you should just automatically do it. The Doff system is designed to simulate the executive/management decision of a Startfleet captain. You may have received an assignment to do such and such from Starfleet Command, or an appeal from the citizens of planet, etc., but if you do not have the resources, then you have to tell your boss or whoever asked you that you cannot do it.
They game is in need of EC sinks, and this is one of them, one which leads to some form of reward. I for one have FAR more Doff missions to do than assignment points will allow, and only do the trade missions if it happens to come up with no red triangle (indicating I can do it by paying EC or from selling commodities obtained during a previous trade mission or from mission drops). Remember, there are shipboard assignments as well, and you have to move around to different sectors a bit, check after the 4 hour assignment refresh, etc.
LOL I was been sarcastic lol, the main issue I have is that a lower level, I am a LT 7, the amount of EC is low, speciallyn due to the fact of the low quality of items picked up, many of the aid planet missions are giving no reward at all and I believe if you invest 5000 EC ina Doff mission you should get at least the 5000 EC back with a little bit of interest otherwise why bother doing the mission? If there is not a profit why do the mission?
and skill points, BO points, and dilithium. Is it an "efficient" conversion of EC to those items? No, but it's better than none at all.
Honestly what they probably need to look into next is at the VA level, many, if not most, players need a BO point sink; I have far more than I will ever use, and nothing to spend them on if you are happy with one ship and crew.
Since they have been giving out 400EC with almost every mission... I have been rolling in EC... I went from like 40K to 600K just over the weekend. Very different from a week before when I was scraping by just to keep my gear the same level as my ship.
I must mention though that i dropped A LOT of ec on the exchange for BO's because we were not able to train them with the power store. I found the cheapest BO with the skill that i wanted and then trained my existing ones. I hope the people watching the economy have this in mind because one huge sink went away with the last patch.
I find the requirements mean nothing to me... I have on a few occasions just replicated commodities than go find the special vendor. I don't bother to do the trade commodities for EC since they are bugged, so when those are fixed and I stop being lazy, I'll be rolling in even more EC.
I really think they shouldn't cut back on the EC, but increase a lot of items for sale. I should be able to get a uncommon Plasma Distribution Manifold for any level for EC or something like that. I'd buy those for EC while saving data samples or dilithium for the blues or purples
The point is the 3 day missions are in play for the people who aren't logging in every day. If all the 3 day assignments gave out huge rewards then the people investing the least amount of time into the system would be reaping the biggest rewards. As it stands I don't do any of the three day assignments because I can log in often and start new assignments. And I have yet to run into a shortage of assignments because I'm avoiding the long ones.
As far as the EC cost is concerned it's a joke. I'm two weeks in on the test server and have 6 million EC. Sell some loot on the exchange. You can also shop around for much better prices then you get from your replicator.
Now the number of officers is also designed for people who aren't logging in everyday. You don't need as many people free if you aren't doing a bunch of different shorter assignments.
Again missing the point entirely. Perhaps if you used a shotgun and stood INSIDE the barn you would be able to hit the barn.
It is possible to make the shorter missions more profitable than the longer missions while still giving the longer missions rewards that are in keeping with their investment. Say a short mission has a time of 15 minutes and gives 5 xp. Having a 3 day mission give a couple hundred xp would still have the shorter mission be more profitable for its investment without having the longer mission be a complete waste of time and resources. You would be able to run 288 15-minute missions is the same amount of time it takes to do the 3-day mission, so the 15 minute mission would be more profitable on a CXP/minute basis than the 3 day mission and the 3-day mission would still be worth sending the doffs on. As it is now, with a 3 day mission giving... what, 25 CXP?... not worth it unless I can find a lot of them during a 3 day period where I wouldn't be logging on.
Regarding commodity (and other) inputs, this is something that is a work in progress because while I can scale rewards, I can't actually scale inputs other than hard level bracketing it and then duplicating it. We are trying to smooth this out a bit, and regardless of that, certain inputs may simply be too high, for which let me know the specific assignment(s) and I am more than happy to check them out.
On the topic of CXP, I am looking at that this week and will be adjusting it in some fashion. One of the challenges with the system is that the rewards have to be balanced between the opportunity cost (length of an assignment) versus the management time (time it takes you to actually click). We have been rewarding the latter more heavily than the former since we want to reward you for actively playing the game rather than coming back in three days and reaping a bonanza. That being said, I do think the opportunity cost has been devalued, so I am looking into the best way to adjust that to make it fairer.
There are a lot of moving pieces in this system, so I appreciate input, particularly input on specific things or patterns of behavior you find yourself engaging in, and am doing my best to respond to it all.
You really are doing a great job with the doff system. It is a lot of fun to play in between missions. A little work on the reward to investment ratios and fixing the trade missions not giving EC like they are supposed to and it will be well on its way to perfection.
And that would be the point of the 3 day assignments. I knew if we worked together you would understand sooner or later.
But you can't be guaranteed to find a lot of them to run together for any set period so once again you miss the point. The thing is that right now, I wouldn't even bother running the 3 day missions EVEN IF I WASN'T GOING TO BE ON FOR THOSE THREE DAYS because they just aren't WORTH BOTHERING WITH.
^ talking a lot of something*, I have to stop doing Doffs missions because lack of EC, lack of provisions and lack of Doffs, so how in the world did you manage to get 5 mill, you must be grinding the game 24 hours a day? Because the drops are TRIBBLE, you dont get any good item worth a lot of EC at least for us who are still on the LT rank.
As of late I check in every about 3 times a day. I set up new assignments. I collect doffs and data samples from the assignment that yield them. Then I post them on the exchange and when I come back I have an extra 300K EC from sales. Sometimes a million. Then I buy some other doffs i don't have off the exchange and start all over again. I'm guessing I've been logged in for an average of 3 hours a day this week. I will have to mix in a supply run soon as I bought about 300 of everything last week and am running low of some of those supplies.
The biggest help in all this was the stipend of points we got last week. I spent them all on doff packs and I will not be buying 1200 points worth of doffs when this goes live so I guess it will go a lot different for me. Also in one of the patches they may have tweaked loot I guess. But I noticed my drops were better then I've ever seen on holodeck when I started my new guy here.
But you can't be guaranteed to find a lot of them to run together for any set period so once again you miss the point. The thing is that right now, I wouldn't even bother running the 3 day missions EVEN IF I WASN'T GOING TO BE ON FOR THOSE THREE DAYS because they just aren't WORTH BOTHERING WITH.
You can whip up 20 3d assignments on one lap around the galaxy. It may not be worth it for you. But I do have times where I know I'm not going to have the free time for a week. And I would take the half or so to set that up.
Now if they made an Android app for doffs. Then I would never bother with an assignment longer then a day with the way the reward setup is now.
See, I knew if we worked together you would understand sooner or later.
That's a big IF you edited out of my comment there. IF there was an easy way to check up on doffs on the go I would never bother with 3d assignments as they are set up now. That's a large omission.
Also you really don't need to keep repeating yourself. It's very clear what you are asking for. And I would be all for it if 90% of the missions didn't already offer what you were looking for.
The concept is simple if you are going to play less often you get a smaller reward. If you think that reward is to small then just don't do that assignment and pick one of the hundreds of other assignments that are available in a given cycle.
Also you really don't need to keep repeating yourself. It's very clear what you are asking for. And I would be all for it if 90% of the missions didn't already offer what you were looking for.
The concept is simple if you are going to play less often you get a smaller reward. If you think that reward is to small then just don't do that assignment and pick one of the hundreds of other assignments that are available in a given cycle.
No, obviously it is not clear to you what I am asking for as it has absolutely nothing to do with how often I do or do not play and everything to do with the number of missions I have doffs that are qualified to perform. The vast majority of missions involve doffs that I don't have any of or only have one of and that doff is already off on some other mission. This means I'm either stuck doing this or that long mission for little reward or letting doffs sit idle while I try to find the rare mission I have doffs for.
The concept is simple, unless They are going to put enough missions out there for the doffs that I have, make the missions that they are putting out there worth doing.
I can't argue with the basic premise of this thread (my character has been severly EC starved since I started her on tribble), but I can see what they were thinking with these missions. Resupply missions are basically a more expensive but safer version of Reinforce. The boff inputs and time taken are lower, as is the risk of boff death/injury. Therefore the EC cost is raised and rewards are dropped accordingly.
As for the 3 day missions, they're really designed for the casual player who logs on mabye once a week. Over that timeframe they would theoretically be more lucrative than getting one full set of 2hr missions/wk.
However, in both cases I'm not sure they've quite reached what they were going for and you still have valid complaints.
Buy the commodities from the social worlds/space stations. Replicating commodities is like 3 times as expensive as buying, for example, medical supplies from Vulcan or Shield Generators from ESD.
You can make a profit doing trade missions most of the time, since 50 medical supplies only costs 2500 E.C. from Vulcan, and a normal success rewards you with 7500. A critical success quadruples your money.
I haven't looked too much into this yet, but I believe, if you go to the various commodity brokers and find out what is in need in the area, and then buy it from the merchant next to them, then those particular items are less expensive than replicating them. I.E. In the Kahzan (I think I spelt that wrong) Cluster they need astrometric probes and water purifiers...at the merchant they cost like 200 EC to buy. Your replicator charges like 400 EC I think.
That could be a way to get a pay out. Otherwise, you'll always lose EC on DOff missions like that. (In my experience)
On the topic of CXP, I am looking at that this week and will be adjusting it in some fashion. One of the challenges with the system is that the rewards have to be balanced between the opportunity cost (length of an assignment) versus the management time (time it takes you to actually click). We have been rewarding the latter more heavily than the former since we want to reward you for actively playing the game rather than coming back in three days and reaping a bonanza. That being said, I do think the opportunity cost has been devalued, so I am looking into the best way to adjust that to make it fairer.
There are a lot of moving pieces in this system, so I appreciate input, particularly input on specific things or patterns of behavior you find yourself engaging in, and am doing my best to respond to it all.
Hey Heretic,
I don't do programing or anything, so I don't know if this is a viable option, but if you want to reward people for actively playing the game, the best idea is to get a subroutine in the DOff mission system that actually tracks how much time you play. That can tailor the available missions to a specific player.
For example...the missions that take 3 days that are directed towards players that don't log in much...that same mission should be offered with the same requirements and rewards to someone that logs in every day, but have a quicker completion rate. Instead of 3 days, maybe 16 hours or so...something that is still annoying long, but worth the payout.
In my opinion, that would make an amazingly interactive and personalized DOff system. I'd love to find out if that is a possibility. (And I have my fingers crossed).
I haven't looked too much into this yet, but I believe, if you go to the various commodity brokers and find out what is in need in the area, and then buy it from the merchant next to them, then those particular items are less expensive than replicating them. I.E. In the Kahzan (I think I spelt that wrong) Cluster they need astrometric probes and water purifiers...at the merchant they cost like 200 EC to buy. Your replicator charges like 400 EC I think.
That could be a way to get a pay out. Otherwise, you'll always lose EC on DOff missions like that. (In my experience)
Yeah, buying commodities from the cargo ships in Sirius and Regulus is considerably cheaper than replicating them. However, since they reworked the missions a few days ago (to offer dilitihium ore instead of refined dilithium) "trade X for energy credits" missions no longer actually offer energy credits... >_>
I am a little frustrated about the Assignment requirements. Not so much about their price but rather about the Duty Officers you need. Most assignments ask for certain traits or specializations with the Duty Officers you assign to them. But since you don't get to chose the traits or specializations of the Doffs you get, you can't acquire a balanced mix. Right now about 80% of my Duty Officers have the "Diplomatic" trait. I can't use that many diplomats; and I think I don't even know all the other traits that are out there. And when I ran a recruitment assignemt for "Junior Scientist" I a pack of five Doffs, all of them botanists. I have yet to see an assignment that requires a botanist! I have a total of twenty Duty Officers right now; the botanics department is definitely oversized. This means I have botanists running trades missions, I have botanists running Plasma Research...
I don't know if I just had bad luck, but when I get new Duty Officers I want them to come with some variety regarding traits and skill sets. Get more balance into the recruiting results or give us at least some place (beyond the Exchange; I won't ever pay 999 999 999 EC for a Civilian Bartender) to sell buy Duty Officers for Dilithium oder Energy Credits. There's Elsa Mora on ESD, where you can get Bridge Officers; a store like that where you can get rid of surplus botanists and can get a variety of traits skill sets at reasonable at controlled and reasonable prices would allow players greater control over their Duty Officer Corps.
Comments
The point is the 3 day missions are in play for the people who aren't logging in every day. If all the 3 day assignments gave out huge rewards then the people investing the least amount of time into the system would be reaping the biggest rewards. As it stands I don't do any of the three day assignments because I can log in often and start new assignments. And I have yet to run into a shortage of assignments because I'm avoiding the long ones.
As far as the EC cost is concerned it's a joke. I'm two weeks in on the test server and have 6 million EC. Sell some loot on the exchange. You can also shop around for much better prices then you get from your replicator.
Now the number of officers is also designed for people who aren't logging in everyday. You don't need as many people free if you aren't doing a bunch of different shorter assignments.
Regarding commodity (and other) inputs, this is something that is a work in progress because while I can scale rewards, I can't actually scale inputs other than hard level bracketing it and then duplicating it. We are trying to smooth this out a bit, and regardless of that, certain inputs may simply be too high, for which let me know the specific assignment(s) and I am more than happy to check them out.
On the topic of CXP, I am looking at that this week and will be adjusting it in some fashion. One of the challenges with the system is that the rewards have to be balanced between the opportunity cost (length of an assignment) versus the management time (time it takes you to actually click). We have been rewarding the latter more heavily than the former since we want to reward you for actively playing the game rather than coming back in three days and reaping a bonanza. That being said, I do think the opportunity cost has been devalued, so I am looking into the best way to adjust that to make it fairer.
There are a lot of moving pieces in this system, so I appreciate input, particularly input on specific things or patterns of behavior you find yourself engaging in, and am doing my best to respond to it all.
IMO, just because a mission is available, that does not mean you should just automatically do it. The Doff system is designed to simulate the executive/management decision of a Startfleet captain. You may have received an assignment to do such and such from Starfleet Command, or an appeal from the citizens of planet, etc., but if you do not have the resources, then you have to tell your boss or whoever asked you that you cannot do it.
They game is in need of EC sinks, and this is one of them, one which leads to some form of reward. I for one have FAR more Doff missions to do than assignment points will allow, and only do the trade missions if it happens to come up with no red triangle (indicating I can do it by paying EC or from selling commodities obtained during a previous trade mission or from mission drops). Remember, there are shipboard assignments as well, and you have to move around to different sectors a bit, check after the 4 hour assignment refresh, etc.
and skill points, BO points, and dilithium. Is it an "efficient" conversion of EC to those items? No, but it's better than none at all.
Honestly what they probably need to look into next is at the VA level, many, if not most, players need a BO point sink; I have far more than I will ever use, and nothing to spend them on if you are happy with one ship and crew.
I must mention though that i dropped A LOT of ec on the exchange for BO's because we were not able to train them with the power store. I found the cheapest BO with the skill that i wanted and then trained my existing ones. I hope the people watching the economy have this in mind because one huge sink went away with the last patch.
I find the requirements mean nothing to me... I have on a few occasions just replicated commodities than go find the special vendor. I don't bother to do the trade commodities for EC since they are bugged, so when those are fixed and I stop being lazy, I'll be rolling in even more EC.
I really think they shouldn't cut back on the EC, but increase a lot of items for sale. I should be able to get a uncommon Plasma Distribution Manifold for any level for EC or something like that. I'd buy those for EC while saving data samples or dilithium for the blues or purples
Again missing the point entirely. Perhaps if you used a shotgun and stood INSIDE the barn you would be able to hit the barn.
It is possible to make the shorter missions more profitable than the longer missions while still giving the longer missions rewards that are in keeping with their investment. Say a short mission has a time of 15 minutes and gives 5 xp. Having a 3 day mission give a couple hundred xp would still have the shorter mission be more profitable for its investment without having the longer mission be a complete waste of time and resources. You would be able to run 288 15-minute missions is the same amount of time it takes to do the 3-day mission, so the 15 minute mission would be more profitable on a CXP/minute basis than the 3 day mission and the 3-day mission would still be worth sending the doffs on. As it is now, with a 3 day mission giving... what, 25 CXP?... not worth it unless I can find a lot of them during a 3 day period where I wouldn't be logging on.
You really are doing a great job with the doff system. It is a lot of fun to play in between missions. A little work on the reward to investment ratios and fixing the trade missions not giving EC like they are supposed to and it will be well on its way to perfection.
And that would be the point of the 3 day assignments. I knew if we worked together you would understand sooner or later.
But you can't be guaranteed to find a lot of them to run together for any set period so once again you miss the point. The thing is that right now, I wouldn't even bother running the 3 day missions EVEN IF I WASN'T GOING TO BE ON FOR THOSE THREE DAYS because they just aren't WORTH BOTHERING WITH.
As of late I check in every about 3 times a day. I set up new assignments. I collect doffs and data samples from the assignment that yield them. Then I post them on the exchange and when I come back I have an extra 300K EC from sales. Sometimes a million. Then I buy some other doffs i don't have off the exchange and start all over again. I'm guessing I've been logged in for an average of 3 hours a day this week. I will have to mix in a supply run soon as I bought about 300 of everything last week and am running low of some of those supplies.
The biggest help in all this was the stipend of points we got last week. I spent them all on doff packs and I will not be buying 1200 points worth of doffs when this goes live so I guess it will go a lot different for me. Also in one of the patches they may have tweaked loot I guess. But I noticed my drops were better then I've ever seen on holodeck when I started my new guy here.
You can whip up 20 3d assignments on one lap around the galaxy. It may not be worth it for you. But I do have times where I know I'm not going to have the free time for a week. And I would take the half or so to set that up.
Now if they made an Android app for doffs. Then I would never bother with an assignment longer then a day with the way the reward setup is now.
That's a big IF you edited out of my comment there. IF there was an easy way to check up on doffs on the go I would never bother with 3d assignments as they are set up now. That's a large omission.
Also you really don't need to keep repeating yourself. It's very clear what you are asking for. And I would be all for it if 90% of the missions didn't already offer what you were looking for.
The concept is simple if you are going to play less often you get a smaller reward. If you think that reward is to small then just don't do that assignment and pick one of the hundreds of other assignments that are available in a given cycle.
No, obviously it is not clear to you what I am asking for as it has absolutely nothing to do with how often I do or do not play and everything to do with the number of missions I have doffs that are qualified to perform. The vast majority of missions involve doffs that I don't have any of or only have one of and that doff is already off on some other mission. This means I'm either stuck doing this or that long mission for little reward or letting doffs sit idle while I try to find the rare mission I have doffs for.
The concept is simple, unless They are going to put enough missions out there for the doffs that I have, make the missions that they are putting out there worth doing.
As for the 3 day missions, they're really designed for the casual player who logs on mabye once a week. Over that timeframe they would theoretically be more lucrative than getting one full set of 2hr missions/wk.
However, in both cases I'm not sure they've quite reached what they were going for and you still have valid complaints.
I haven't looked too much into this yet, but I believe, if you go to the various commodity brokers and find out what is in need in the area, and then buy it from the merchant next to them, then those particular items are less expensive than replicating them. I.E. In the Kahzan (I think I spelt that wrong) Cluster they need astrometric probes and water purifiers...at the merchant they cost like 200 EC to buy. Your replicator charges like 400 EC I think.
That could be a way to get a pay out. Otherwise, you'll always lose EC on DOff missions like that. (In my experience)
Hey Heretic,
I don't do programing or anything, so I don't know if this is a viable option, but if you want to reward people for actively playing the game, the best idea is to get a subroutine in the DOff mission system that actually tracks how much time you play. That can tailor the available missions to a specific player.
For example...the missions that take 3 days that are directed towards players that don't log in much...that same mission should be offered with the same requirements and rewards to someone that logs in every day, but have a quicker completion rate. Instead of 3 days, maybe 16 hours or so...something that is still annoying long, but worth the payout.
In my opinion, that would make an amazingly interactive and personalized DOff system. I'd love to find out if that is a possibility. (And I have my fingers crossed).
Yeah, buying commodities from the cargo ships in Sirius and Regulus is considerably cheaper than replicating them. However, since they reworked the missions a few days ago (to offer dilitihium ore instead of refined dilithium) "trade X for energy credits" missions no longer actually offer energy credits... >_>
I don't know if I just had bad luck, but when I get new Duty Officers I want them to come with some variety regarding traits and skill sets. Get more balance into the recruiting results or give us at least some place (beyond the Exchange; I won't ever pay 999 999 999 EC for a Civilian Bartender) to sell buy Duty Officers for Dilithium oder Energy Credits. There's Elsa Mora on ESD, where you can get Bridge Officers; a store like that where you can get rid of surplus botanists and can get a variety of traits skill sets at reasonable at controlled and reasonable prices would allow players greater control over their Duty Officer Corps.