I really do like the Doff system, and can see a mountain of potential with it. It is an amazing system that will help promote and reward casual play while also having a decent amount of depth. These are just some ideas that I think would improve the system, as well as help to integrate it into the larger overall game effect wise. I realize many of these suggestions will take time to implement, but I do think they would be beneficial. Also note this is all from a fed point of view, I have no Klink experience and therefor cannot comment on them.
First off, I really think the general recruitment should be done via a daily mission. As it is it doesn't really 'feel' right, as you get more doffs for little to no effort. It just seems like a doff stipend that I have to log in and goto Sol once every two or three days to get my allotment. You could then also implement another daily/weekly/triggered mission to get the more specific, and better Doffs.
I also think the system would be better served if starfleet academy was for general recruitment and development, and other locations were used as the focal point for the other areas. In these areas you would be able to do the more specific recruitment, either via Doff assignment or otherwise, as well as have a high/higher chance of good doff assignments. For example, Science and Memory Alpha go hand in hand, as would Deep Space K7 for military. It would be nice to have a focal location for the various types.
It would be good too if various Doff assignments could trigger various missions for the player. This would be like an alternate daily system similar to the 'Salvage Dispute' mission and could be coded in a similar way. So for example, you do an Espionage assignment in Romulan space, with a success it triggers an available mission for you to grab where you go to a randomly generated map to infiltrate the facility similar to when exploring in the clusters. Or a trade assignment gives you an escort mission, etc. These should reward dilitium and be another source for solo/casual players to earn dilitium, as well as giving us more content and tying the Doff system into the overall game. For now you could use exisiting exploration missions, but more, many more, should be created and used for this with various mission styles.
There should be more benefits to gaining the various ranks/commendations as well. One really good reward would be the ability to train Boff abilities that are currently captain only trained. This would be a great fix as the current captain training is going to cause much grief for the F2P/casual community with people scamming boffs from one another as well as the increased cost for respec and skill tree revamp currently under consideration. You could automatically gain slightly higher rewards of dilitium or EC for doing the assignments in the relevant tier. You could implement simple passive buffs, like bonus power, crew recovery, or damage, or even increase the effect of the Doff abilities/bonuses. You could also have Doff powers that you could gain, either to train your Boffs in or to replace a specific Boff power slot. Some examples would be:
- Deploy Medial Teams: Restores ship crew
- Manual Power Transfers: ESP flow bonus
- Deploy Repair Crews: Increase subsystem repair speed/rate
Lastly, the Doff UI needs more options. When choosing doffs we need better/more sorting options, like category, trains, etc. Also, I now know that some assignments are locked out, or have a cooldown, after doing them. It would be great if those that you were locked out of were shown somewhere.
Good suggestions in my opinion; i would like to add two things on top of them:
1. Diplomathy assignments are nicely done, but are extra compared to how the progression can be pushed throgh exploration missions. Therefore it would make sense to make diplomatic assignments award you with XP in different commendation cathegories in addition to diplomatic XP in order to male them viable. For sake of eqality this could be done for marauding as well.
2. In my opinion it would be nice to have assignmends for obtaining DOffs in a similar way as it has been done for BOffs. The higher your rank in a particular commendation cathegory would be, the better DOff candidates would apply.
2 see your doffs inside your ships interior (at their proper places)
3 adding shuttle classes. you send your doff out into the galaxy whit a shuttle i presume. that means owning different classes of shuttles should be beneficial. delta flyer type increases scientific, spying and medical missions chance of success. the same goes for a pergrine fighter whit tactical and a runabout whit colonial,exploration.
Well, in my opinion DOFFs could improve their quality through long running assignments. Otherwise the latter can not compete against assignments with short duration in terms of leveling speed after the latest update.
Comments
I too like your ideas.
1. Diplomathy assignments are nicely done, but are extra compared to how the progression can be pushed throgh exploration missions. Therefore it would make sense to make diplomatic assignments award you with XP in different commendation cathegories in addition to diplomatic XP in order to male them viable. For sake of eqality this could be done for marauding as well.
2. In my opinion it would be nice to have assignmends for obtaining DOffs in a similar way as it has been done for BOffs. The higher your rank in a particular commendation cathegory would be, the better DOff candidates would apply.
Just my two cents.
2 see your doffs inside your ships interior (at their proper places)
3 adding shuttle classes. you send your doff out into the galaxy whit a shuttle i presume. that means owning different classes of shuttles should be beneficial. delta flyer type increases scientific, spying and medical missions chance of success. the same goes for a pergrine fighter whit tactical and a runabout whit colonial,exploration.