Upgrading Doffs...

apophis77

Is there a guide or anything?

I've got about 200 doffs, with maybe half of them being of white quality and I want to upgrade them to Green. I was wondering the best way to do this, without losing my ability to perform doff missions (I did this once, and ended up with no quartermasters).

suggestions?

hevach

Doffs are basically items - you can't upgrade them. You can trade them in, either 5-for-1 in the guaranteed upgrade, but you can't control what you get out. Or send them on cultural exchange missions around the Cardassian areas (need to do chains to unlock these), which is 1-for-1, and has a chance at giving even better than green, but could also give you back another white and again, you can't control what you get back.

Basically, anything you do to generate new doffs is a card draw - if you want to tailor your crew without braving the randomness, the only real way is to sell doffs on the exchange and hand-pick replacements. Selling doffs is great money... but of course then buying them is also big money, so you end up back where you started anyway.

goltzhar

I suggest you save the white/green for "Officer Exchange Program" use the link to see what traits (the ones you should save) must have and then sell all others on the exchange, and with that money buy the ones you need.
Very time consuming but effective.
In my experience as up till this date the exchange has been almoust always blue or purple.
IF you have one or two traits.

There is absolutly NO reason what so ever to use anything else but white and green.
IMO, Not even exchanging bound purple or blue. (Ok.. maybe blue) I traded 13 purple with one or two traits and got 12 green and one blue. (unlucky maybe?).
After a while you will have many bound purple with the same name but they are useful in "Support Colonization Efforts" to maximize your chance for critical success.

Easy and the fastest way (NOT RECOMENDED) is to trade them 5 for 1, but you will receive about 75-85% science or medical... yes FUBAR!!! but it is the way it is.

Keep Doffing!

joxertm2

Lemme just add a few notes...

On officer trade:
- hevach didn't mention asylum assignments where you trade a white refugee for in 99% cases better officer also 1 on 1
- there are swap prisoner assignments that also can bring you a better officer than the white one you have
- you should never use blue or purple officer in assignment 1-1 trades, as there is a big chance you get a green, even white one, so use only white and green ones

On officer "breeding":
- per whatever and whomever design choice (sorry but I say it's a fail) almost every aspect of STO is pure gamble, your skill and knowledge means nothing, doff system is yet another gambling slot machine. For example you want a Bajoran Advisor with Unruly skill but without Efficient for some reason? Yea, you can grind doff recruiting assignment jobs till you die and still not get such doff. Someone else can get lucky and grab exactly that doff in the first try. As combining, receiving and opening christmas boxes return just about anything, useless or not, devs don't care.
Now you tell me, if you're really running a ship, would you accept a duty officer you don't need? If you're building a crew, hell, you're choosing among candidates, right? You don't accept just anything. While BoFF system is designed pretty close to reflect this, DoFF system was made utterly bad for whatever reason. Someone will say you CAN buy exact doffs upon levelling on commissions, but let's be real, you can't buy exactly what you want but what was predefined.

On losing quartermasters:
- the stupidity of random results from combining system left you without any quartermaster you say. It's not a big problem as you can always buy another on the exchange. The problematic part here is that doffs are very expensive on the exchange, too expensive if you ask me - because of the fleet projects. And because of the upcoming change where every doff will now cost dilithium, they'll cost even more.

On doff selling:
- Don't sell doffs. Just don't. Once you don't have a question about doffs at all, then start selling doffs as you'll know exactly which ones to sell.

On doff gathering "secret":
- you can mail unbound doffs or sell to yourself from multiacc or alt-toon. Everyone is abusing that system, so why wouldn't you too. Because of that, you don't have to use Zen for more doff space - for example you need heaps of Klingon Gladst, so you'll have purple Klingon chef on one of your multis who'll mail you "the goods" instead of being on your "main" acc. I'm disgusted by it and will never do it, but you shouldn't be.