I will say that the DOFF shortage is a pretty big issue. I do get a rather twisted satisfaction out of knowing that everybody is in the same boat though.
Anyways, I do agree with you on pretty much everything, OP. But I do pretty firmly stand by the system too, in that you are essentially staffing your Starbase, at least to a point.
I do want most of all being able to send bridge officer candidates (only candidates though) off to be fed to the Starbase Monster. (There oughta be a picture of that.) I've got so many of those on all my toons (I do those missions more for the exp then getting a good officer), so having a grinder for those would be good, even if it wasn't to the Starbase.
At least from all this, I'm getting my Recruitment exp going up on all my toons, which is arguably the more annoying one to level.
I remain empathetic to the concerns of my community, but do me a favor and lay off the god damn name calling and petty remarks. It will get you nowhere.
I must admit, respect points to Trendy for laying down the law like that.
that's a bit of an exagerration. At the point I'm at in Doffing all I want is the best of the recruits. The losers get fed into the SB project. Doing academy recritment will get you more than just commons, those are the keepers.
What exactly was an exaggeration? My point was that I'd rather be able to help both myself AND the team, not either-or. I don't see why I should have to give up trading in DOFFs for highier level DOFFs (white --> green, green --> blue, blue --> purple) just to feed the starbase monster. For me, currently it's either or.
Either: I trade in white DOFFs for greens and greens for blues.
Or: I sacrifice DOFFs to the starbase monster, which is very hungry, all the time, for a great many types of DOFFs.
I can't upgrade DOFFs I've sacrificed, obviously. And the 1-2 green or blue DOFFs one gets out of recruitment missions from SFA simply don't level one's DOFF pool as efficiently as trading up. My opinion is that the system would be better if we were allowed to level ourselves up and that by so-doing we ALSO helped the team by thus providing a better pool of DOFFs to perform construction "missions," etc.
I just feel like it should be "help self AND help team [in the process]" rather than "help self OR help team." Know what I mean?
And I feel like having sets of missions with different objectives could be a kind of cool way to do it. Like white missions being the "resource collection" type missions: "drafting prototype plans," "haggling for gamma quadrant commodities," green level missions might then utilize those resources toward some part of a non-linear goal chain. (like, complete these objectives: insert fabrication missions like building the antimatter reactor, fabricating the turrets from prototypes, etc.), blue level stuff would then go up a level to installation (install reactor, bring reactor online, install plasma conduits, install bioneural circuitry), purple level stuff would be the finishing stages: ("bring reactor online," "bring plasma conduits online," "repair broken conduit," "staff shipyard," "staff bar," "staff store," etc.).
Y'know, actually give it the feel of really BUILDING OUT the starbase. Each mission in the linear or nonlinear chains needs to be successfully completed in order for the entire mission section to be completed and move onto the next steps.
I dunno, that just feels like the more logical way about things, and it feels more like actually ACCOMPLISHING THINGS rather than just dumping resources and not giving a dang.
Maybe even as missions complete, new "stuff" shows up. Like you start with just a hulk of a station and have to wear EV suits to walk around. Then you build the hull, and get to see walls and such. But there's still no reactor. Once you build the reactor it actually shows up at the right place in the base. But it's dark and inactive. One you "bring it online," it lights up and you get the various particle effects, etc.
I mean, if we have a "wish list" or a "hopes and dreams," I think something with this level of detail would be pretty awesome! I know it would take a ton of coding a bug testing etc. But it would be COOL to actually see a starbase getting built and seeing specific known progress as you install various things...
In my case, my older chars stockpiled cadre packs from general recruiting and game them to my new chars. Thus my new chars started with 20-ish packs to open and had a full crew to start out.
Lucky you! I was doing the cadres for a while, but then my roster got full and I had to start mailing them to myself, and just took a break from the game for a bit and they changed the system around so now it feels like we don't get as much as we used to, as quickly... And with the hungry starbases it just feels like now there's a strain on DOFF reserves. Plus it's monkied with the exchange rates on DOFFs, which are just crazy. Millions of EC for commons that just happen to get sacrificed to the S/B monster? Not exactly a great reason for super-expensive DOFFs & makes it tough to get them out of the exchange just to do regular missions, not even for sacrificing to the s/b monster... Seems to me this change would fix that by returning them to a quality/ability-based economy rather than a "I need to sacrifice white-level diplomats en-masse to the hungry s/b" economy. If we got rid of the sacrificing, to a large extent, I'd like to think levels would stabilize...?
Anyways, I do agree with you on pretty much everything, OP. But I do pretty firmly stand by the system too, in that you are essentially staffing your Starbase, at least to a point.
Well, AT SOME POINT you're staffing your s/b... Yes. But one assumes that usually comes AFTER it's all built & whatnot. Makes sense to me to have that be part of the proposed mission chains (linear or non-linear), as kind of per-tier "end-game" blue or purple level mission(s) to staff your fully functional [death] star... base. If you build it, they will come (the crew to man it).
I do want most of all being able to send bridge officer candidates (only candidates though) off to be fed to the Starbase Monster. (There oughta be a picture of that.) I've got so many of those on all my toons (I do those missions more for the exp then getting a good officer), so having a grinder for those would be good, even if it wasn't to the Starbase.
Yeah, some kind of way to utilize BOFFs too would be nice. I literally haven't touched my BOFFs in the last year other than to mail myself rares to clear spaces for Very Rares I'll probably still never use...
Actually, I do the Boff recruiting missions just because I like the chance at getting a Boff with rare skills.
Been there, done that. Actually, of late I'm kind of a fan of the assignment chains with DOFFs as reward, as I've gotten a couple Very Rares out of them. Though it still takes forever. But once I complete a few more chains and start re-doing them for DOFFs, I figure it'll pick up, which will be nice.
Now, if I could just put them toward actual DOFF missions FOR THE s/b construction project, that would be sweet. I mean, I'd love to use my leveled up DOFFs to actually help my team rather than just myself. I just feel like that would be a better way to use the DOFF system in the 'Fleet end-game' stuff. That and just to have something to DO with your blue & purple level DOFFs once you've got them in the end-game. I mean what else is there to do with them other than just doing haggle missions for various resources to farm for your fleet or whatnot. I'm kind of hoping eventually we can maybe use them for crafting better stuff in R&D, if they ever integrated the crafting system with the DOFF system, etc.
Seems like there could be some interesting ways to utilize the systems if they'd code them in there. I mean if we could have fleet starbase R&D / crafting stations where we can research and build better tech, or upgrade existing tech to higher levels, etc., and if your rare / very rare DOFFs integrated with that to give better success with crafting or chances at even better end results out of the crafting process. That would be kind of cool.
So the fact that starbases are a resource sink is not the principle. It's an MMO, you get something for giving them up, starbase monster included. The principle is replenishment. Each and every player has limitations on time and resources, and it's his/her choice to decide what's an efficient way to contribute. Now there's a market for commons, nothing wrong with that. Not everyone is going to make use of starbases and it's an economic demand. All stuff covered in the thread already.
I'm not sure what you mean by "replenishment" in the above? I'm not sure how one "replenishes" one's DOFFs by depleting them? :rolleyes:
Did you mean turnover, instead? That is getting rid of DOFFs to clear space for newer potentially better DOFFs? If so, that's accomplished through the trade-in program just fine, and, heck, the trade-in program actually gives you a tangible bonus of a higher quality DOFF out the other end whist also clearing room for new recruits. That system works fine for clearing space.
Or was that a prelude to your next paragraph re: opening up fleet starbase personnel officers & species specific personnel officers to [eventually] replenish the lost DOFFs?
Okay, I can sort of see the latter as a benefit. Though some of the personnel officers, especially the species-specific ones don't drop until pretty far along in the S/B build process. So, it's not like you see a quick return on your investment. Just a vague promise of "maybe someday you'll get a few of these back, if/when you get to such & such a tier." Which will be a REALLY LONG TIME for a lot of small fleets, which feels kind of unfair/unbalanced. I know they want to encourage large fleets and lots of active players. But there will always be small fleets of friends, and it feels like they shouldn't be penalized by having to take YEARS to build their bases. But that's a different topic entirely, so I'll leave it at that.
I HOPE these personnel officers that drop are in addition to the SFA / KA officers (can run recruitments concurrently between fleet s/b & SFA/KA), rather than in place of those officers (shared cooldown timers of some form or function on t he main personnel officer at least). I can see that as a bonus. Though, I don't see why it couldn't STILL be a bonus under the alternative proposal. *Shrug*
First, just a comment toward not ignoring the fact there are already dozens of missions and meat-grinders that consume doffs. How are your 168 colonists getting along?
Well, colonists & prisoners are hardly DOFFs. More like passengers / commodities. Might as well just be carrying exocomps. They're not really people either. j/k. I know, I'm a Luddite, right? :P
Someone with more spare time than I should calculate (or look up?) how many people is required to run a full "Tier 5" starbase, and how many DOFFs get thrown into making a "Tier 5" Starbase.
This is something, I'd like to know as well.
Someone with a canon answer plz?
- Ash
currently it?s rather hard to do, considering we don?t know what T4 starbase assignments will look like. Also you are probably going to see variations, depending on what assignments people are choosing.
but i?ll give it a try. fastest route, least doffs used, no extras, no upgrade costs taken into account .
Tier 0 -> Tier 1 (10.000 Military XP = 1.000 Starbase XP)
10x Reinforce Local Systems = 70 Common Tac or Security
Tier 1 -> Tier 2 (15.000 Military XP, 10.000 Engin. XP, 10.000 Sci XP = 3.000 Starbase XP)
10x Support Local Systems = 70 Common Ops or Engineer
10x Ongoing Research = 70 Common Medic or Science
30x Reinforce Local Systems I = 240 Common Tac or Security
Tier 2 -> Tier 3 (25.000 Military XP, 15.000 Engin. XP, 15.000 Sci XP = 3.000 Starbase XP)
50x Reinforce Local Systems II = 1,250 Common Tac or Security
30x Support Local Systems I = 240 Common Medic or Science
30x Ongoing Research I = 240 Common Ops or Engineer
so that's 2.000+ white doffs just to get the XP needed to get to Tier 3. Since we don't know what the T3 and T4 assignments look like, it's hard to calculate further. If we were to speculate using Tier II assignments up to Starbase Tier 5:
an additional 200.000 Military XP, 75.000 Science XP, 75.000 Engineering XP (10.000 Tac/Sec, 3.750 Sci/Med, 3.750 Eng/Ops common doffs). This number will probably be higher in reality, since T3 and T4 assignments probably eat up more doffs than those at T2.
so it will take more than 20.000 white doffs to get to Tier 5.
What exactly was an exaggeration? My point was that I'd rather be able to help both myself AND the team, not either-or. I don't see why I should have to give up trading in DOFFs for highier level DOFFs (white --> green, green --> blue, blue --> purple) just to feed the starbase monster. For me, currently it's either or.
Either: I trade in white DOFFs for greens and greens for blues.
Or: I sacrifice DOFFs to the starbase monster, which is very hungry, all the time, for a great many types of DOFFs.
I can't upgrade DOFFs I've sacrificed, obviously. And the 1-2 green or blue DOFFs one gets out of recruitment missions from SFA simply don't level one's DOFF pool as efficiently as trading up. My opinion is that the system would be better if we were allowed to level ourselves up and that by so-doing we ALSO helped the team by thus providing a better pool of DOFFs to perform construction "missions," etc.
I just feel like it should be "help self AND help team [in the process]" rather than "help self OR help team." Know what I mean?
yeah, but.. how many people are in your fleet? You don't need to provide all the doffs yourself. Contribute what you can afford and let your fleetmates contribute the rest.
Lucky you! I was doing the cadres for a while, but then my roster got full and I had to start mailing them to myself, and just took a break from the game for a bit and they changed the system around so now it feels like we don't get as much as we used to, as quickly... And with the hungry starbases it just feels like now there's a strain on DOFF reserves. Plus it's monkied with the exchange rates on DOFFs, which are just crazy. Millions of EC for commons that just happen to get sacrificed to the S/B monster? Not exactly a great reason for super-expensive DOFFs & makes it tough to get them out of the exchange just to do regular missions, not even for sacrificing to the s/b monster... Seems to me this change would fix that by returning them to a quality/ability-based economy rather than a "I need to sacrifice white-level diplomats en-masse to the hungry s/b" economy. If we got rid of the sacrificing, to a large extent, I'd like to think levels would stabilize...?
Hehe... it's not quite the right approach. The issue is the incredible demand. I think the demand will drop after a while once the big fleets have already gotten their bases up and running.
Been there, done that. Actually, of late I'm kind of a fan of the assignment chains with DOFFs as reward, as I've gotten a couple Very Rares out of them. Though it still takes forever. But once I complete a few more chains and start re-doing them for DOFFs, I figure it'll pick up, which will be nice.
Try the colonial chains, the rewards are worth it.
I'm not sure what you mean by "replenishment" in the above? I'm not sure how one "replenishes" one's DOFFs by depleting them?
That's sort of what he meant. He was talking about the work required to recover(replenish) the losses you incur by building your base up.
yeah, but.. how many people are in your fleet? You don't need to provide all the doffs yourself. Contribute what you can afford and let your fleetmates contribute the rest.
Currently it's a relatively small fleet with only a couple active players. And the system seems heavily slanted in favor of LARGE fleets, who would probably have an easier time of it. That may change eventually as we recruit more players... But I still think the system would just make more sense the other way around. Having actual things for your DOFFs to *DO* rather than just sending them on their merry way into the gullet of the beast, never to be heard from again (unless they were literally being sent to "staff" the place on a given mission).
But currently, as things stand, it's pretty much just me and a few other players completing it, so yeah, it's either pitch DOFFs to Personnel Officer (preferable, if one wants to advance oneself) OR pitch DOFFs to s/b (not-so-much). If we want to progress anyway... I mean, we could all just sit around twiddling out thumbs and making no progress on the S/B. That or we have to start heavily pitching DOFFs, etc. Seems like there should be some kind of sliding scale of difficulty based on fleet size, under the current system, if there's not already... I mean, I get they want to encourage large fleets & activity. It just feels slightly unfair to smaller groups of friends who aren't recruitment-TRIBBLE, or whatever. Ahh well...
The issue is the incredible demand. I think the demand will drop after a while once the big fleets have already gotten their bases up and running.
I'm not so optimistic. There will probably ALWAYS be new fleets, and if the assignments are the same, there will pretty much ALWAYS be a demand for the specific classes of DOFFs that have been selected for "mass donation." Thus there will probably always be a demand for and deficit of those specific classes as new fleets come into existence and those fleets want their starbases and have to complete the same missions as everyone else in the big fleets already did... Or will thee never be any new fleets created after this first wave of starbases?
Try the colonial chains, the rewards are worth it. :)That's sort of what he meant. He was talking about the work required to recover(replenish) the losses you incur by building your base up.
Slowly getting there... Have a couple finished, I think. & I hear some have repeatable missions for new DOFFs. The Cultural Exchange missions that pop up now and again seem to help too...
So, yeah, it's not like there's NO way to buff your DOFF roster... I just feel like there's still a tension between personal advancement & fleet advancement that maybe shouldn't be there. Though, I suppose it's not dissimilar to the real-life dilemma between personal life & professional life, etc. Still...
And the s/b currently just feel like "grind, farm & dump" rather than actually "doing something" (as in missions, or actually completing specific goals). I think it would be cooler to have a bunch of mini-missions for the s/b, so there are actual concrete steps to building the starbase (framing, constructing walls, building the reactor, installing the plasma conduits, bringing the reactor online, testing the reactor, fixing the parts that break, staffing the place, etc.).
Currently it's a relatively small fleet with only a couple active players. And the system seems heavily slanted in favor of LARGE fleets, who would probably have an easier time of it. That may change eventually as we recruit more players... But I still think the system would just make more sense the other way around. Having actual things for your DOFFs to *DO* rather than just sending them on their merry way into the gullet of the beast, never to be heard from again (unless they were literally being sent to "staff" the place on a given mission).
But currently, as things stand, it's pretty much just me and a few other players completing it, so yeah, it's either pitch DOFFs to Personnel Officer (preferable, if one wants to advance oneself) OR pitch DOFFs to s/b (not-so-much). If we want to progress anyway... I mean, we could all just sit around twiddling out thumbs and making no progress on the S/B. That or we have to start heavily pitching DOFFs, etc. Seems like there should be some kind of sliding scale of difficulty based on fleet size, under the current system, if there's not already... I mean, I get they want to encourage large fleets & activity. It just feels slightly unfair to smaller groups of friends who aren't recruitment-TRIBBLE, or whatever. Ahh well...
~MG
My fleet only has 4 actual human players who are actively contributing to SB projects. But all 4 of us have at LEAST 4 chars. I have 8 personally. Getting doffs is a lot easier that way.
This is not the TV Shows this is STO, we barely loose our DoFF's in starship missions why do we need to loose them in starbase missions? I am at a loss.
Fleet starbases are designed to fulfill the two major goals Perfect World has set for STO.
1. The grind. The longer you grind, the longer you play.
2. Revenue generation. There will always be people who won't, or can't commit the time to the grind. That's why you can trade Zen for dilithium and why doff packs are sold in the Z store.
Fleet module sales ect. ect.
This is good for the game.
The good news is, the doff packs have started offering more than just the doffs. (reinforcement pack).
I haven't gotten there yet, but I hope the rewards are well worth the efforts/costs required.
My fleet only has 4 actual human players who are actively contributing to SB projects. But all 4 of us have at LEAST 4 chars. I have 8 personally. Getting doffs is a lot easier that way.
Well, yeah, we're kind of farming too. I still feel like it's "cheating" a bit to just resource farm. But, I guess if it's able to be done in the game and hasn't been coded out of the game, it must be legal, right? :oP
I know that in most online games I've played "farming" to get ahead tends to be frowned upon. So, I guess I still have reservations about it to a degree. Though, if one can create 8 characters and they can all be part of the same fleet, how is that any different than having 7 characters that send all their resources to the 8th and just that 1 character in the fleet? Other than concentrating the "rewards" toward that character. *Shrug*
I guess I'm just not as big a fan of the "grind, farm & dump" method as something maybe a little more skill-based, like putting together a decent crew of DOFFs to get higher critical chance on missions, etc. And accomplishing actual goals other than just some threshold number of generic resources.
Fleet starbases are designed to fulfill the two major goals Perfect World has set for STO.
1. The grind. The longer you grind, the longer you play.
2. Revenue generation. There will always be people who won't, or can't commit the time to the grind. That's why you can trade Zen for dilithium and why doff packs are sold in the Z store.
Fleet module sales ect. ect.
This is good for the game.
The good news is, the doff packs have started offering more than just the doffs. (reinforcement pack).
I haven't gotten there yet, but I hope the rewards are well worth the efforts/costs required.
Well, I don't think the "grind" would go away under the new system, since you'd still need to get the resources for the various missions (be it provisions, or data samples of specific rare particle traces for making alloys, etc.). Maybe some of that would come from DOFF missions, maybe some of that would come from other missions or from mining data samples & particle traces.
And, again, I don't think that people would stop buying DOFF packs as a shortcut, since likely missions would get harder as the higher tiers came along and people would still need to acquire the various green, blue & better DOFFs to have a decent chance of COMPLETING missions on time & on target, rather than losing DOFFs or having to start a mission or an assignment chain over again. Who knows, maybe certain missions have a low success rate and/or a high casulaty rate, and if you fail them you have to start the particular chain over again (reactor melts down, etc.). But, I still think the value proposition is there and people would still want to get those rare DOFFs out of DOFF packs, etc.
Well, yeah, we're kind of farming too. I still feel like it's "cheating" a bit to just resource farm. But, I guess if it's able to be done in the game and hasn't been coded out of the game, it must be legal, right? :oP
I know that in most online games I've played "farming" to get ahead tends to be frowned upon. So, I guess I still have reservations about it to a degree. Though, if one can create 8 players and they can all be part of the same fleet, how is that any different than having 7 characters that send all their resources to the 8th and just that 1 character in the fleet? Other than concentrating the "rewards" toward that character. *Shrug*
I guess I'm just not as big a fan of the "grind, farm & dump" method as something maybe a little more skill-based, like putting together a decent crew of DOFFs to get higher critical chance on missions, etc. And accomplishing actual goals other than just some threshold number of generic resources.
~MG
Yeah, all 8 of my guys are in my fleet. It's a lot easier to just dump everything directly.
Well, like I said before, keep the good doffs and feed the crud to the "SB monster". At one point I actually stopped doing SFA recruiting because my roster was full. now I have a reason to keep recruiting!
I know that in most online games I've played "farming" to get ahead tends to be frowned upon.
If PWE/Cryptic bans farming they will lose 99% of their playerbase because EVERYTHING in the game will then be way too expensive and too much like work rather than leisure (it already seems that way to many anyway)
Currently it's a relatively small fleet with only a couple active players. And the system seems heavily slanted in favor of LARGE fleets, who would probably have an easier time of it.
The system was designed for a Fleet size of 20-50, what they observed to be the most common range of Fleet size.
Any Fleets smaller than that will have a more difficult time, any Fleets larger than that will be able to go slightly faster via Special Projects (where you spend 40 times more resources to be 0.16 times faster).
They appear to be strongly incentivizing Fleets to be at least of sufficient size for the 20-man events.
Starbases require personnel, so it makes sense to "contribute" them.
At least I hope they aren't used for Soylent Green production.
No, no, NO! Don't be absurd! DOffs used for Soylent Green, preposterous!
Rather, ground up DOff paste makes the strongest construction material known to Alpha Quadrant science. A slathering of that stuff on your starbase and watch the tricobalt torpedoes bounce off as though they'd never been fired!
Wow this is a great idea. I would like to see it implemented even if they still make us feed doff's to the base. I think it just makes sense that you would contribute crew time to a project not give up crew to it forever. I mean sure you can have the "services" of my chief engineer but you can't have him... what's the deal you looking for things that make you go?
At one point I actually stopped doing SFA recruiting because my roster was full. now I have a reason to keep recruiting!
Yeah, I'd had the same problem initially too back when the cadres gave more DOFFs & there was nothing to do with them other than missions.
Though I think they solved that problem amicably with the Personnel Officer (regular & species-specific) DOFF trade-in program whereby you can trade them up for better DOFFs and over time the general "level" of your DOFF roster improves because of it. But having multiple drains on your doff pool (between personnel opfficer & current starbase mass dumping) seems a bit overly taxing anymore. Hence the seeming need to "farm" these as a new currency, basically... =o\ I thought we were supposed to be getting away from a billion currencies.
If PWE/Cryptic bans farming they will lose 99% of their playerbase because EVERYTHING in the game will then be way too expensive and too much like work rather than leisure (it already seems that way to many anyway)
Well, that seems more like a system balancing problem then, more so than anything else. IE, if things require everyone to FARM just to complete things, the system is basically broken and needing to be fixed in some way. So, maybe they need to make things less expensive and alleviate the REQUIREMENT to "farm."
That is, if taking away "farming" makes things 'impossible' to complete, then we need to look closer at why things are so 'impossible' and correct that issue...
I mean, if farming is what it takes and PWE/Cryptic "officially" won't start deleting accounts over it, I'll do it. Y'know? I mean if they're basically saying "we expect you to farm as part of the game," so be it. It just feels WRONG that you should HAVE TO in order to get anything done in a REASONABLE amount of time (weeks, as opposed to months or years, etc. ;] ).
Wow this is a great idea. I would like to see it implemented even if they still make us feed doff's to the base. I think it just makes sense that you would contribute crew time to a project not give up crew to it forever. I mean sure you can have the "services" of my chief engineer but you can't have him... what's the deal you looking for things that make you go?
Yeah, I have no problem with SOME missions feeding DOFFs to the base (staffing missions, basically). Just not EVERY... SINGLE... ONE.... :P (Which it feels like at the moment, except for a couple special projects that are dilithium-only, which in and of itself it just kind of "blah." What are we actually DOING with the dilithium? Is the base being constructed out of pure dilithium? I know, I know, we're "paying" for it, in a sense. It just doesn't feel like we're actually DOING anything. Other than the usual "resource grinding.")
I still feel like it would be more interesting if there were actual "missions" to complete. Either individual missions you do on your own (haggling for resources or creating prototype blueprints) or "team" missions (building major appliances like reactors and power conduits, etc.) where you contribute to the pool and then someone decides which ones to actually USE for the mission. Maybe even "blind," that is, not knowing which player contributed which DOFFs, so nobody can play favorites and give higher rewards to their "buddies" unfairly. Kind of a meritocracy scenario rather than nepotism or cronyism...
Yeah, I'd had the same problem initially too back when the cadres gave more DOFFs & there was nothing to do with them other than missions.
Though I think they solved that problem amicably with the Personnel Officer (regular & species-specific) DOFF trade-in program whereby you can trade them up for better DOFFs and over time the general "level" of your DOFF roster improves because of it. But having multiple drains on your doff pool (between personnel opfficer & current starbase mass dumping) seems a bit overly taxing anymore. Hence the seeming need to "farm" these as a new currency, basically... =o\ I thought we were supposed to be getting away from a billion currencies.
~MG
They did. At one time there were almost a hundred different "Mark of " X currencies that made things insane... These were ridiculously complex, and IMO the game is better off without them.
16 doffs a day is nothing for a 10+ members fleet, stop complaining about that. Just choose the right assignments: those who require the minimum amount of doff, even if they give less starbase XP. If you can constantly have one running you'll get to your goal sooner. There is no need to choose the biggest assignments if you can't feed them at once.
16 doffs a day is nothing for a 10+ members fleet, stop complaining about that. Just choose the right assignments: those who require the minimum amount of doff, even if they give less starbase XP. If you can constantly have one running you'll get to your goal sooner. There is no need to choose the biggest assignments if you can't feed them at once.
I simply don't find "grind & dump" to be an interesting game mechanic. Sorry... Neither do I find it particularly Star Trek-y. I'd much rather we had actual duty assignments or missions to complete with our DOFFs, and we got our DOFFs back afterward. And helping oneself (upgrading DOFFs via reassign missions) would help your team by upgrading the DOFF pool to more efficiently "do missions" better, with lower chance of failure, explosinos, etc.
I just feel like that would be a better system than grind & dump. Besides which doing Fleet DOFF missions would also garner DOFF XP and help you level up your DOFF ranks to get access to better DOFFs through Ferra.
Ohh, and my hope would be that under such a system, Fleet DOFF missions would be separate from your regular DOFF missions (That is fleet missions would be in addition to your regular DOFFing). Whether or not there is a cap on how many fleet doff individual (haggle) or group missions (build reactor core) your DOFFs can participate in, is a different issue. And of course any DOFFs "out" on your "regular" DOFF missions (capped at 20) wouldn't be able to be used on Fleet missions until they returned (no double dipping)...
Comments
Anyways, I do agree with you on pretty much everything, OP. But I do pretty firmly stand by the system too, in that you are essentially staffing your Starbase, at least to a point.
I do want most of all being able to send bridge officer candidates (only candidates though) off to be fed to the Starbase Monster. (There oughta be a picture of that.) I've got so many of those on all my toons (I do those missions more for the exp then getting a good officer), so having a grinder for those would be good, even if it wasn't to the Starbase.
At least from all this, I'm getting my Recruitment exp going up on all my toons, which is arguably the more annoying one to level.
Actually, I do the Boff recruiting missions just because I like the chance at getting a Boff with rare skills.
My character Tsin'xing
What exactly was an exaggeration? My point was that I'd rather be able to help both myself AND the team, not either-or. I don't see why I should have to give up trading in DOFFs for highier level DOFFs (white --> green, green --> blue, blue --> purple) just to feed the starbase monster. For me, currently it's either or.
Either: I trade in white DOFFs for greens and greens for blues.
Or: I sacrifice DOFFs to the starbase monster, which is very hungry, all the time, for a great many types of DOFFs.
I can't upgrade DOFFs I've sacrificed, obviously. And the 1-2 green or blue DOFFs one gets out of recruitment missions from SFA simply don't level one's DOFF pool as efficiently as trading up. My opinion is that the system would be better if we were allowed to level ourselves up and that by so-doing we ALSO helped the team by thus providing a better pool of DOFFs to perform construction "missions," etc.
I just feel like it should be "help self AND help team [in the process]" rather than "help self OR help team." Know what I mean?
And I feel like having sets of missions with different objectives could be a kind of cool way to do it. Like white missions being the "resource collection" type missions: "drafting prototype plans," "haggling for gamma quadrant commodities," green level missions might then utilize those resources toward some part of a non-linear goal chain. (like, complete these objectives: insert fabrication missions like building the antimatter reactor, fabricating the turrets from prototypes, etc.), blue level stuff would then go up a level to installation (install reactor, bring reactor online, install plasma conduits, install bioneural circuitry), purple level stuff would be the finishing stages: ("bring reactor online," "bring plasma conduits online," "repair broken conduit," "staff shipyard," "staff bar," "staff store," etc.).
Y'know, actually give it the feel of really BUILDING OUT the starbase. Each mission in the linear or nonlinear chains needs to be successfully completed in order for the entire mission section to be completed and move onto the next steps.
I dunno, that just feels like the more logical way about things, and it feels more like actually ACCOMPLISHING THINGS rather than just dumping resources and not giving a dang.
Maybe even as missions complete, new "stuff" shows up. Like you start with just a hulk of a station and have to wear EV suits to walk around. Then you build the hull, and get to see walls and such. But there's still no reactor. Once you build the reactor it actually shows up at the right place in the base. But it's dark and inactive. One you "bring it online," it lights up and you get the various particle effects, etc.
I mean, if we have a "wish list" or a "hopes and dreams," I think something with this level of detail would be pretty awesome!
~MG
Lucky you!
~MG
Well, AT SOME POINT you're staffing your s/b... Yes. But one assumes that usually comes AFTER it's all built & whatnot. Makes sense to me to have that be part of the proposed mission chains (linear or non-linear), as kind of per-tier "end-game" blue or purple level mission(s) to staff your fully functional [death] star... base.
Yeah, some kind of way to utilize BOFFs too would be nice. I literally haven't touched my BOFFs in the last year other than to mail myself rares to clear spaces for Very Rares I'll probably still never use...
~MG
Been there, done that. Actually, of late I'm kind of a fan of the assignment chains with DOFFs as reward, as I've gotten a couple Very Rares out of them. Though it still takes forever. But once I complete a few more chains and start re-doing them for DOFFs, I figure it'll pick up, which will be nice.
Now, if I could just put them toward actual DOFF missions FOR THE s/b construction project, that would be sweet. I mean, I'd love to use my leveled up DOFFs to actually help my team rather than just myself. I just feel like that would be a better way to use the DOFF system in the 'Fleet end-game' stuff. That and just to have something to DO with your blue & purple level DOFFs once you've got them in the end-game. I mean what else is there to do with them other than just doing haggle missions for various resources to farm for your fleet or whatnot. I'm kind of hoping eventually we can maybe use them for crafting better stuff in R&D, if they ever integrated the crafting system with the DOFF system, etc.
Seems like there could be some interesting ways to utilize the systems if they'd code them in there. I mean if we could have fleet starbase R&D / crafting stations where we can research and build better tech, or upgrade existing tech to higher levels, etc., and if your rare / very rare DOFFs integrated with that to give better success with crafting or chances at even better end results out of the crafting process. That would be kind of cool.
~MG
I'm not sure what you mean by "replenishment" in the above? I'm not sure how one "replenishes" one's DOFFs by depleting them? :rolleyes:
Did you mean turnover, instead? That is getting rid of DOFFs to clear space for newer potentially better DOFFs? If so, that's accomplished through the trade-in program just fine, and, heck, the trade-in program actually gives you a tangible bonus of a higher quality DOFF out the other end whist also clearing room for new recruits. That system works fine for clearing space.
Or was that a prelude to your next paragraph re: opening up fleet starbase personnel officers & species specific personnel officers to [eventually] replenish the lost DOFFs?
Okay, I can sort of see the latter as a benefit. Though some of the personnel officers, especially the species-specific ones don't drop until pretty far along in the S/B build process. So, it's not like you see a quick return on your investment. Just a vague promise of "maybe someday you'll get a few of these back, if/when you get to such & such a tier." Which will be a REALLY LONG TIME for a lot of small fleets, which feels kind of unfair/unbalanced. I know they want to encourage large fleets and lots of active players. But there will always be small fleets of friends, and it feels like they shouldn't be penalized by having to take YEARS to build their bases.
I HOPE these personnel officers that drop are in addition to the SFA / KA officers (can run recruitments concurrently between fleet s/b & SFA/KA), rather than in place of those officers (shared cooldown timers of some form or function on t he main personnel officer at least). I can see that as a bonus. Though, I don't see why it couldn't STILL be a bonus under the alternative proposal. *Shrug*
~MG
Well, colonists & prisoners are hardly DOFFs. More like passengers / commodities.
currently it?s rather hard to do, considering we don?t know what T4 starbase assignments will look like. Also you are probably going to see variations, depending on what assignments people are choosing.
but i?ll give it a try. fastest route, least doffs used, no extras, no upgrade costs taken into account .
Tier 0 -> Tier 1 (10.000 Military XP = 1.000 Starbase XP)
10x Reinforce Local Systems = 70 Common Tac or Security
Tier 1 -> Tier 2 (15.000 Military XP, 10.000 Engin. XP, 10.000 Sci XP = 3.000 Starbase XP)
10x Support Local Systems = 70 Common Ops or Engineer
10x Ongoing Research = 70 Common Medic or Science
30x Reinforce Local Systems I = 240 Common Tac or Security
Tier 2 -> Tier 3 (25.000 Military XP, 15.000 Engin. XP, 15.000 Sci XP = 3.000 Starbase XP)
50x Reinforce Local Systems II = 1,250 Common Tac or Security
30x Support Local Systems I = 240 Common Medic or Science
30x Ongoing Research I = 240 Common Ops or Engineer
so that's 2.000+ white doffs just to get the XP needed to get to Tier 3. Since we don't know what the T3 and T4 assignments look like, it's hard to calculate further. If we were to speculate using Tier II assignments up to Starbase Tier 5:
an additional 200.000 Military XP, 75.000 Science XP, 75.000 Engineering XP (10.000 Tac/Sec, 3.750 Sci/Med, 3.750 Eng/Ops common doffs). This number will probably be higher in reality, since T3 and T4 assignments probably eat up more doffs than those at T2.
so it will take more than 20.000 white doffs to get to Tier 5.
My character Tsin'xing
Currently it's a relatively small fleet with only a couple active players. And the system seems heavily slanted in favor of LARGE fleets, who would probably have an easier time of it. That may change eventually as we recruit more players... But I still think the system would just make more sense the other way around. Having actual things for your DOFFs to *DO* rather than just sending them on their merry way into the gullet of the beast, never to be heard from again (unless they were literally being sent to "staff" the place on a given mission).
But currently, as things stand, it's pretty much just me and a few other players completing it, so yeah, it's either pitch DOFFs to Personnel Officer (preferable, if one wants to advance oneself) OR pitch DOFFs to s/b (not-so-much). If we want to progress anyway... I mean, we could all just sit around twiddling out thumbs and making no progress on the S/B. That or we have to start heavily pitching DOFFs, etc. Seems like there should be some kind of sliding scale of difficulty based on fleet size, under the current system, if there's not already... I mean, I get they want to encourage large fleets & activity. It just feels slightly unfair to smaller groups of friends who aren't recruitment-TRIBBLE, or whatever.
I'm not so optimistic. There will probably ALWAYS be new fleets, and if the assignments are the same, there will pretty much ALWAYS be a demand for the specific classes of DOFFs that have been selected for "mass donation." Thus there will probably always be a demand for and deficit of those specific classes as new fleets come into existence and those fleets want their starbases and have to complete the same missions as everyone else in the big fleets already did... Or will thee never be any new fleets created after this first wave of starbases?
Slowly getting there... Have a couple finished, I think. & I hear some have repeatable missions for new DOFFs. The Cultural Exchange missions that pop up now and again seem to help too...
So, yeah, it's not like there's NO way to buff your DOFF roster... I just feel like there's still a tension between personal advancement & fleet advancement that maybe shouldn't be there. Though, I suppose it's not dissimilar to the real-life dilemma between personal life & professional life, etc. Still...
And the s/b currently just feel like "grind, farm & dump" rather than actually "doing something" (as in missions, or actually completing specific goals). I think it would be cooler to have a bunch of mini-missions for the s/b, so there are actual concrete steps to building the starbase (framing, constructing walls, building the reactor, installing the plasma conduits, bringing the reactor online, testing the reactor, fixing the parts that break, staffing the place, etc.).
I guess maybe it's just me?
~MG
My character Tsin'xing
Fleet starbases are designed to fulfill the two major goals Perfect World has set for STO.
1. The grind. The longer you grind, the longer you play.
2. Revenue generation. There will always be people who won't, or can't commit the time to the grind. That's why you can trade Zen for dilithium and why doff packs are sold in the Z store.
Fleet module sales ect. ect.
This is good for the game.
The good news is, the doff packs have started offering more than just the doffs. (reinforcement pack).
I haven't gotten there yet, but I hope the rewards are well worth the efforts/costs required.
Well, yeah, we're kind of farming too. I still feel like it's "cheating" a bit to just resource farm. But, I guess if it's able to be done in the game and hasn't been coded out of the game, it must be legal, right? :oP
I know that in most online games I've played "farming" to get ahead tends to be frowned upon. So, I guess I still have reservations about it to a degree. Though, if one can create 8 characters and they can all be part of the same fleet, how is that any different than having 7 characters that send all their resources to the 8th and just that 1 character in the fleet? Other than concentrating the "rewards" toward that character. *Shrug*
I guess I'm just not as big a fan of the "grind, farm & dump" method as something maybe a little more skill-based, like putting together a decent crew of DOFFs to get higher critical chance on missions, etc. And accomplishing actual goals other than just some threshold number of generic resources.
~MG
Well, I don't think the "grind" would go away under the new system, since you'd still need to get the resources for the various missions (be it provisions, or data samples of specific rare particle traces for making alloys, etc.). Maybe some of that would come from DOFF missions, maybe some of that would come from other missions or from mining data samples & particle traces.
And, again, I don't think that people would stop buying DOFF packs as a shortcut, since likely missions would get harder as the higher tiers came along and people would still need to acquire the various green, blue & better DOFFs to have a decent chance of COMPLETING missions on time & on target, rather than losing DOFFs or having to start a mission or an assignment chain over again. Who knows, maybe certain missions have a low success rate and/or a high casulaty rate, and if you fail them you have to start the particular chain over again (reactor melts down, etc.). But, I still think the value proposition is there and people would still want to get those rare DOFFs out of DOFF packs, etc.
I could be wrong, of course. Who knows...
Cheers,
~MG
Well, like I said before, keep the good doffs and feed the crud to the "SB monster". At one point I actually stopped doing SFA recruiting because my roster was full.
My character Tsin'xing
If PWE/Cryptic bans farming they will lose 99% of their playerbase because EVERYTHING in the game will then be way too expensive and too much like work rather than leisure (it already seems that way to many anyway)
Any Fleets smaller than that will have a more difficult time, any Fleets larger than that will be able to go slightly faster via Special Projects (where you spend 40 times more resources to be 0.16 times faster).
They appear to be strongly incentivizing Fleets to be at least of sufficient size for the 20-man events.
No, no, NO! Don't be absurd! DOffs used for Soylent Green, preposterous!
Rather, ground up DOff paste makes the strongest construction material known to Alpha Quadrant science. A slathering of that stuff on your starbase and watch the tricobalt torpedoes bounce off as though they'd never been fired!
Yeah, I'd had the same problem initially too back when the cadres gave more DOFFs & there was nothing to do with them other than missions.
Though I think they solved that problem amicably with the Personnel Officer (regular & species-specific) DOFF trade-in program whereby you can trade them up for better DOFFs and over time the general "level" of your DOFF roster improves because of it. But having multiple drains on your doff pool (between personnel opfficer & current starbase mass dumping) seems a bit overly taxing anymore. Hence the seeming need to "farm" these as a new currency, basically... =o\ I thought we were supposed to be getting away from a billion currencies.
~MG
Well, that seems more like a system balancing problem then, more so than anything else. IE, if things require everyone to FARM just to complete things, the system is basically broken and needing to be fixed in some way. So, maybe they need to make things less expensive and alleviate the REQUIREMENT to "farm."
That is, if taking away "farming" makes things 'impossible' to complete, then we need to look closer at why things are so 'impossible' and correct that issue...
I mean, if farming is what it takes and PWE/Cryptic "officially" won't start deleting accounts over it, I'll do it. Y'know? I mean if they're basically saying "we expect you to farm as part of the game," so be it. It just feels WRONG that you should HAVE TO in order to get anything done in a REASONABLE amount of time (weeks, as opposed to months or years, etc. ;] ).
~MG
Yeah, I have no problem with SOME missions feeding DOFFs to the base (staffing missions, basically). Just not EVERY... SINGLE... ONE.... :P (Which it feels like at the moment, except for a couple special projects that are dilithium-only, which in and of itself it just kind of "blah." What are we actually DOING with the dilithium? Is the base being constructed out of pure dilithium?
I still feel like it would be more interesting if there were actual "missions" to complete. Either individual missions you do on your own (haggling for resources or creating prototype blueprints) or "team" missions (building major appliances like reactors and power conduits, etc.) where you contribute to the pool and then someone decides which ones to actually USE for the mission. Maybe even "blind," that is, not knowing which player contributed which DOFFs, so nobody can play favorites and give higher rewards to their "buddies" unfairly. Kind of a meritocracy scenario rather than nepotism or cronyism...
~MG
My character Tsin'xing
God, lvl 60 CW. 17k.
My character Tsin'xing
I simply don't find "grind & dump" to be an interesting game mechanic. Sorry... Neither do I find it particularly Star Trek-y. I'd much rather we had actual duty assignments or missions to complete with our DOFFs, and we got our DOFFs back afterward. And helping oneself (upgrading DOFFs via reassign missions) would help your team by upgrading the DOFF pool to more efficiently "do missions" better, with lower chance of failure, explosinos, etc.
I just feel like that would be a better system than grind & dump. Besides which doing Fleet DOFF missions would also garner DOFF XP and help you level up your DOFF ranks to get access to better DOFFs through Ferra.
Ohh, and my hope would be that under such a system, Fleet DOFF missions would be separate from your regular DOFF missions (That is fleet missions would be in addition to your regular DOFFing). Whether or not there is a cap on how many fleet doff individual (haggle) or group missions (build reactor core) your DOFFs can participate in, is a different issue. And of course any DOFFs "out" on your "regular" DOFF missions (capped at 20) wouldn't be able to be used on Fleet missions until they returned (no double dipping)...
~MG