If they want people to play other content in-game then why not add a wrapper mission, like Strange New Worlds, but for completing an entire featured episode series? Have the reward be attractive, but not out of line for the amount of time needed to complete the five or so missions in them. At least that way they're diverting players to the better content in STO.
I think its better to just reward per episode.. inbuilt into the system.. rather than adding a wrapper you have to click extra on to get. 200 dil per mission is not much considering some of them are very time consuming and difficult. Also .. mot people play normal when they start.. elite is very few that does so 400 dil for that is reasonable.
Well I don't know about nerfing them "hard" - but I do predict an epic fit and possible mass rage quits by some Feds casually sitting on the fence as to whether to stay - if they don't cut out some of the KDF dailies as well.
The KDF don't have a lot of content - but most Fed players won't see it that way and will just be outraged that they get nerfed and not the KDF - so yeah it could get messy.
Like I said in my last post the majority of casual Fed players will be completely blind to that and won't care one bit until they see a KDF daily nerf of the same amount 1440 dilthium.
You know it will happen - the Fed players ranting could get particularly ugly - it's also not a tiny amout either so yeah - Cryptic just smacked a big Fed wasp nest - with no-where to deflect the anger and say "hey we did it to the KDF to!!"
I still have confidence that if Mr Stahl sees a big drop off in Dilthium generated he will move quickly to lower the requirements for gear/bases etc - I fear if he does not then season 7 will wear off quickly and many players may give up.
(self important blah blah snipped)
I would strongly urge him to make a Blog post or some sort of statment indicating that he is aware of the concerns and will be closely monitoring the situation over the coming weeks and will be quick to move in addressing the dilthium requirements
According to a recent TTS chat , Mr.Stahl is "all over this issue" :
[TTS] <Dev> Oaks@dstahl: @Tarin - I'm letting the design team handle all the dilithium balancing they are doing for S7 - so I don't have an answer for you - i trust them to keep it fair across the board
To translate this for you , he's taking as little responsibility for this issue as he can , just like Zero did for the General Recruitment Doff Dil tax .
Things are just ... happening around these ppl ... , and things seem to happen when they are sometimes around , you know ? This is about ... stuff . :cool:
According to a recent TTS chat , Mr.Stahl is "all over this issue" :
To translate this for you , he's taking as little responsibility for this issue as he can , just like Zero did for the General Recruitment Doff Dil tax .
Things are just ... happening around these ppl ... , and things seem to happen when they are sometimes around , you know ? This is about ... stuff . :cool:
[TTS] <Dev> Oaks@dstahl: @Tarin - I'm letting the design team handle all the dilithium balancing they are doing for S7 - so I don't have an answer for you - i trust them to keep it fair across the board
talk about "pass the buck"
Dictionary:
"Buck passing or passing the buck is the act of attributing another person or group with responsibility for one's own actions. "
I have to say, I'm slightly worried about some of these reports. I have what basically amounts to a one man fleet. Investigate Officer Reports is basically my single biggest Fleet Mark generator, and doing the exploration clusters brings in most of my Dilithium. I've got my starbase about halfway to the level 1 upgrade, and I'm nearly 75% completed on one of the 100,000 Dilithium special projects.
I never actually did B'tran and Strange New Worlds at the same time. I tried to once, but it didn't seem to register for Strange New Worlds, so I figured it didn't count and so went to Delta Volanis to do cluster missions while completing the Delta Volanis Colonisation DOFF mission tree. Having read that chat log, Dan Stahl does say that overall, Dilithium drop rate will be going up, it just might not be in areas of the game you play right now.
This could also be a problem with me. I don't play PvP. Full stop. No interest there at all. I don't really enjoy the Fleet Alert missions (they're just too frantic, and there's no overall plot), and I've stayed away from Special Task Forces, mainly because when I started playing all I read was people moaning about how people who hadn't been playing for years with all the top level gear shouldn't be allowed in them.
What with the extra Dilithium costs involved in the reputation and recruitment systems (General DOFF recruitment? Really? o.0 ), I can now foresee my entire gaming experience grinding to a halt. My starbase will probably never get past level one. My DOFF complement will atrophy. Goodness only knows how far up the Romulan tree I'll get, and that's the only one I'm really interested in.
I've put a lot of hours and money into this game since I started playing back in February, and I really don't want to have to give it up. But if STO becomes too difficult to progress, there are plenty of other games on my shelf that I've not played in a while. And I just got Guild Wars 2.
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
This character is why I don't play my Romulan any more. Tovan Khev is NOT my BFF! Get him off my bridge!
What did he mean by we only refine 3k dilithium a day so we need to be trained how?
I had the means of getting 50k a night if I had the stamina before they removed everything.
Sometimes I fell asleep in my chair before I could go through all the alts. I was thoroughly trained, ha.
So remove fast dilithium to help us earn more dilithium?
What did he mean they're adding dil significantly in S7, just not in what we want to play?
If they just moved the position of the cheese in the rat maze, I could understand that, but is it still equally efficient in regards to dil per hour? You just told me I wasn't making enough dil after all!
His comment about Al making op ships, and that could be fixed by making a more op one the next week was a bit nauseating. He was telling a joke that really wasn't a joke.
Haters gonna hate eh? I would give my left nut to replace you and give this game the things it needs. We're not haters, we're grieved. Not everybody is a groupie.
What did he mean by we only refine 3k dilithium a day so we need to be trained how?
I had the means of getting 50k a night if I had the stamina before they removed everything.
Sometimes I fell asleep in my chair before I could go through all the alts. I was thoroughly trained, ha.
I think:
A) Their assumption is that people don't know where to find dilithium.
It should be relatively easy to get a lot from Fleet Actions and that they want people to spend the bulk of their time in repeatable, social content.
IMHO, everything should award some dilithium, at least as an optional reward. I got no problem with FAs being the prime means of getting the 8k dil in a couple of hours, which is what S7 does. But I think there should be token amounts everywhere in the 280-480 range for things like episode replay and that there should be a little everywhere.
Maybe they want to hook people on Fleet Actions first.
Maybe they want to hook people on Fleet Actions first.
It's this. For a long time STO was a rather "Massively Single Player" game, it appears they want to change that. Kind of goes against what Star Trek was all about, but whatever. :rolleyes:
It's this. For a long time STO was a rather "Massively Single Player" game, it appears they want to change that. Kind of goes against what Star Trek was all about, but whatever. :rolleyes:
DEVs have grand visions and see stars but not sure they always see the realities of the player base.
Case in point ... current dilithium changes and attachments to the DOFFs, etc.
It's also possible they are trying to funnel us towards their new content and want to remove the "distractions" of our current ways of doing things.
Not saying I agree with that at all as I don't ... You add to the system ... not take away while piling in more dilithium sponges all around.
It's this. For a long time STO was a rather "Massively Single Player" game, it appears they want to change that. Kind of goes against what Star Trek was all about, but whatever. :rolleyes:
Yeah - maybe I am wrong and have to pull out my DVD's - but I was sure every series was about Kirk, Picard,Sisko,Janeway(and that other series -yuk) running head long into battle and danger 90%+ of the time by themselves? Maybe my memory is not what it used to be.
Yeah - maybe I am wrong and have to pull out my DVD's - but I was sure every series was about Kirk, Picard,Sisko,Janeway(and that other series -yuk) running head long into battle and danger 90%+ of the time by themselves? Maybe my memory is not what it used to be.
There are several single player Star Trek games to Kirk around in. I think criticizing them for making an MMO more socially rewarding is a bit silly.
Granted, I think they are penalizing small fleets too harshly w/out some sort of scaling starbase resource system.
DEVs have grand visions and see stars but not sure they always see the realities of the player base.
If only they at least had that. I think they were given directives on how they were to change the game. PWE's business model revolves around impulse purchases made during the long long grinding sessions. STO has, until now, been mostly a casual friendly MMO. Where you could get a LOT done with little investment in time. The Devs were given orders to change that. Its to become a huge grindfest with very very low Reward vs. Time/Effort. The idea being to get players to get so fed up that they charge up some Zen to convert to Dil.
To do this they were given a carte blanche and in typical fashion have chosen to nerf the nicer rewarding activities instead of making the less attractive options more attractive (ie. nerf STF rewards instead of making more activities as attractive to do if not as rewarding... looking at YOU boring, repetitive FAs!!)
I WISH the devs had a grand vission, at least that way whatever they released might have a flawed soul somewhere in there. Instead they are following orders to turn STO into something it never was. I keep thinking: "is this finally it for me? I've put up with a LOT of BS and disappointment to get this far... the year of drought, the bugs, the lack of direction... after all that nothing good came out of it all. And it was all my own fault for going against my own gut feeling and choosing to have hope"
I really think a lot of players are staying so far simply because of all the stuff they've had to suffer through, hoping that things would get better, but alas....
All I can really do now is shake my head as 2 of my favorite games, CO and STO mutate into something that I will not want to be part of, and it makes me sad. I think i'd rather they just shut down.
It started out as a Single-Player Friendly, Online game...
Now that PWE is in control that's no longer an option.
The best way to get folks to spend money on a game, is to make it more competitive...
So that the players will always be willing to BUY the power-up that are made available at a reasonable mark-up...
In order to beat out other players.
It becomes a Circle Of Death, in which players with the most money to spend will be the ones to rule the roost...
Till they run out of funds and the next person with a larger bank account takes over.
It's the way it's done overseas and now it's becoming the way to do it here.
One can only hope that most folks don't become willing sheep to this process.
I'll buy playable stuff from the C-Store, but I will never buy dilithium.
STO Member since February 2009. I Was A Trekkie Before It Was Cool ... Sept. 8th, 1966 ... Not To Mention Before Most Folks Around Here Were Born! Forever a STO Veteran-Minion
194 posts so I'm not reading them. But I must say, am I the only one with a real life that doesn't revolve around this game? I mean at the most I did maybe 5000 dil a day on my toons. This 1400 less. I can live with that. Of course like I said, my every waking hour is not STO so let some Chinese morons destroy the game. I'll back to my console. Just got Assassins Creed 3 so I'll spend some time with that. I'll drop onto STO to gather some dil, do some Omega and Romulan stuff, and let the 40 hours run off.
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC] "There's a reason you separate military and the police. One fights the enemies of the state, the other serves and protects the people. When the military becomes both, then the enemies of the state tend to become the people."-Commander William Adama
Gotta agree - if they were going to add NEW rewards they would have said they were doing so already.
Honestly this smacks of poor planning. If it is, as I suspect, because they never intended for us to complete Explore Strange New Worlds and Chart the B'Tran Cluster (Vice Admiral) Daily with a single run through they should have found some way to make us run Explore the B'Tran Cluster separate from Chart the B'Tran Cluster or just removed Explore the B'Tran Cluster because it's completing the Explore mission that nets you the completion of the Explore Strange New Worlds wrapper.
Nah, they're probably holding it in reserve. When the backlash hits them from the playerbase that doesn't access tribble or read the sites/forums they'll need to do SOMETHIGN to try and quell the riot.
It seems, that PWE/Cryptic wants to turn this game into pay to play. Because you will need to pay* to be able to play and have fun from anything else then basic missions that were not upgraded since Cryptic left Atari.
I wonder only why they even turned STO into pseudo-F2P in the first place? Keeping STO as P2P (sub based game) and concentrating on content and PvP for good, immersing endgame content would have probably made them less money in short term, but far more in long term becasue they would have not lost part of playerbase, and if the game was good - people would've be coming to play it.
Silly me, but I think PWE should make this game sub-based again, remove grind/dilithium and C-Store (in long term, they need after all to pay salaries and have profit) and start working on content. Even something small, but regular would be a great thing in terms of gaining new people/keeping the old player base.
* pay, becausetime=money so grind=LOT of money in form of wasted time.
Another thing to consider, I hear TOR is so much worse on its F2P model. PWE probably just figures they have an IP equally as famous as SW so why let players play STO at a "discount" compared to TOR. The two giants of Sci Fi are seemingly collaborating to TRIBBLE us. Neither game has a distinct advantage over the other, so why wouldnt they price themselves the same. Of course they may both price themselves out of existance, but hey, we got other games to play. They wont have another AAA Sci Fi IP to milk once they bankrupt Star Trek and Star Wars MMOs.
STO: @AGNT009 Since Dec 2010
Capt. Will Conquest of the U.S.S. Crusader
Another thing to consider, I hear TOR is so much worse on its F2P model. PWE probably just figures they have an IP equally as famous as SW so why let players play STO at a "discount" compared to TOR. The two giants of Sci Fi are seemingly collaborating to TRIBBLE us. Neither game has a distinct advantage over the other, so why wouldnt they price themselves the same. Of course they may both price themselves out of existance, but hey, we got other games to play. They wont have another AAA Sci Fi IP to milk once they bankrupt Star Trek and Star Wars MMOs.
Everyone is harping on the silly UI and running restriction TOR has, but I wonder..... just how much would unlocking those cost?
If its a small amount i'd have no problem unlocking them for potentially a month or two of playing through the storylines. Compared to the cost/time STO is ramping up to take, buying a few QoL items and unlocks in ToR is looking very attractive.
Yeah - maybe I am wrong and have to pull out my DVD's - but I was sure every series was about Kirk, Picard,Sisko,Janeway(and that other series -yuk) running head long into battle and danger 90%+ of the time by themselves? Maybe my memory is not what it used to be.
I think the "big fleet battle focus" is a necessary evil of having everyone be a Captain (or even weirder, Admiral) in an MMO.
I think a truer Trek experience would probably involve people playing as high as Commander, with ship crews as the guild mechanism and ship interiors serving the role that fleet starbases and many adventure zone style hubs serve here.
The downside to that in Perpetual's model was that they planned for ship battles to be rather silly power level mini-games.
I think it would work though if you put the focus on players in tricked out shuttles and fighters, with the "tank" helming the crew's larger ship... and odd scenarios where you can take your shuttle to commandeer spare ships, friendly or enemy, for a raiding mechanic based on fleet battles.
Imagine the default space player is a shuttle but you can act as a "boarding party" in designed encounters.
Kinda... STO from a DOff's perspective, a BO's perspective, etc.
I wouldn't even make guild leaders Captains. I would make Captains NPCs and being a guild leader would make you the "First Officer" of the ship. This allows a lot of character based development for Cryptic. The Guild Leader (or highest ranking officer online) can determine who gets control of the main ship but the Captain would be an NPC with a well-developed personality.
Maybe eventually have a level cap increase to Captain but by then you serve under an Admiral. (And by the TOS films, they had a few Captains aboard each ship under the commanding officer.) And then you get to maybe move on to a support ship.
Like I say, Captain as NPC. And for kicks, like the opposite of a Bioware companion. The Captain would be an NPC shaped collectively by the crew, with a personality that reflects what your guild collectively does to him or her.
Big Fleet battles would be great if they programmed some that worked right. Most Fleet Actions are broke and the ones that we very broke were just removed as opposed to being fixed. Trying to force the player base into different parts of the game will only work if those parts of the game are actually working. And the notion they didn't want players "double dipping" in b'tran is silly, since it was in place way back when there were still marks as the reward. This is just another step toward the direction of "buy some zen to get your dilitium." Only hurts the casuals as the grinders will just grind something else for dilitium.
Well boo hoo and QQ. I have a career too and it's not all sunshine and rainbows, either. But these devs' job is to add to & support what I consider my recreation - i.e. what I do to enjoy the few hours I'm not working and to which I've gladly spent some of my hard earned $ doing. But instead of it being a recreation, it's now becoming a second job - sorry - too much grind is not fun. Taking away some of the easy ways to help build a starbase is neither adding to nor supporting the game I use for recreation.
If I don't do my job right no one comes to me and says "oh it's ok, you've got a tough career"...no - it's "you need a kick in the pants or else". Well, devs, you need a kick in the pants or else you're going to lose some of your paying customers who have been telling you for weeks not to remove these dilithium sources nor charge dilithium for DOffs.
As much as I agree with you guys saying
" don't remove ways to get dilitium" ..
there is one thing I would like to mention besides:
People always say " Listen DEVs" or "Attention DEVs" ..followed by doom and bad language.
A developer most of the time is a creative guy, staring at the screen most of his lifetime. He consumes unhealthy food, stayes more hours in his office than at home per week, and is close to a total burn-out every morning he has to get up again. He creates ships or haircuts or UI or whatever!
yadayodayada
There are Four Lights... say no to ARCFleet: 1st Order of Role-Players' Guild - gaming together since 2004
Comments
I think its better to just reward per episode.. inbuilt into the system.. rather than adding a wrapper you have to click extra on to get. 200 dil per mission is not much considering some of them are very time consuming and difficult. Also .. mot people play normal when they start.. elite is very few that does so 400 dil for that is reasonable.
lol, you're such an instigator....and playing it off like you're not the one crying by projecting your whining on fictional Fed players.
@DevolvedOne
According to a recent TTS chat , Mr.Stahl is "all over this issue" :
To translate this for you , he's taking as little responsibility for this issue as he can , just like Zero did for the General Recruitment Doff Dil tax .
Things are just ... happening around these ppl ... , and things seem to happen when they are sometimes around , you know ? This is about ... stuff . :cool:
talk about "pass the buck"
Dictionary:
"Buck passing or passing the buck is the act of attributing another person or group with responsibility for one's own actions. "
I never actually did B'tran and Strange New Worlds at the same time. I tried to once, but it didn't seem to register for Strange New Worlds, so I figured it didn't count and so went to Delta Volanis to do cluster missions while completing the Delta Volanis Colonisation DOFF mission tree. Having read that chat log, Dan Stahl does say that overall, Dilithium drop rate will be going up, it just might not be in areas of the game you play right now.
This could also be a problem with me. I don't play PvP. Full stop. No interest there at all. I don't really enjoy the Fleet Alert missions (they're just too frantic, and there's no overall plot), and I've stayed away from Special Task Forces, mainly because when I started playing all I read was people moaning about how people who hadn't been playing for years with all the top level gear shouldn't be allowed in them.
What with the extra Dilithium costs involved in the reputation and recruitment systems (General DOFF recruitment? Really? o.0 ), I can now foresee my entire gaming experience grinding to a halt. My starbase will probably never get past level one. My DOFF complement will atrophy. Goodness only knows how far up the Romulan tree I'll get, and that's the only one I'm really interested in.
I've put a lot of hours and money into this game since I started playing back in February, and I really don't want to have to give it up. But if STO becomes too difficult to progress, there are plenty of other games on my shelf that I've not played in a while. And I just got Guild Wars 2.
This character is why I don't play my Romulan any more. Tovan Khev is NOT my BFF! Get him off my bridge!
I had the means of getting 50k a night if I had the stamina before they removed everything.
Sometimes I fell asleep in my chair before I could go through all the alts. I was thoroughly trained, ha.
So remove fast dilithium to help us earn more dilithium?
What did he mean they're adding dil significantly in S7, just not in what we want to play?
If they just moved the position of the cheese in the rat maze, I could understand that, but is it still equally efficient in regards to dil per hour? You just told me I wasn't making enough dil after all!
His comment about Al making op ships, and that could be fixed by making a more op one the next week was a bit nauseating. He was telling a joke that really wasn't a joke.
Haters gonna hate eh? I would give my left nut to replace you and give this game the things it needs. We're not haters, we're grieved. Not everybody is a groupie.
I think:
A) Their assumption is that people don't know where to find dilithium.
IMHO, everything should award some dilithium, at least as an optional reward. I got no problem with FAs being the prime means of getting the 8k dil in a couple of hours, which is what S7 does. But I think there should be token amounts everywhere in the 280-480 range for things like episode replay and that there should be a little everywhere.
Maybe they want to hook people on Fleet Actions first.
It's this. For a long time STO was a rather "Massively Single Player" game, it appears they want to change that. Kind of goes against what Star Trek was all about, but whatever. :rolleyes:
DEVs have grand visions and see stars but not sure they always see the realities of the player base.
Case in point ... current dilithium changes and attachments to the DOFFs, etc.
It's also possible they are trying to funnel us towards their new content and want to remove the "distractions" of our current ways of doing things.
Not saying I agree with that at all as I don't ... You add to the system ... not take away while piling in more dilithium sponges all around.
U.S.S. Maelstrom, NCC-71417 (Constitution III-class/flagship) --- Fleet Admiral Hauk' --|-- Dahar Master Hauk --- I.K.S. qu'In 'an bortaS (D7-class / flagship)
Yeah - maybe I am wrong and have to pull out my DVD's - but I was sure every series was about Kirk, Picard,Sisko,Janeway(and that other series -yuk) running head long into battle and danger 90%+ of the time by themselves? Maybe my memory is not what it used to be.
There are several single player Star Trek games to Kirk around in. I think criticizing them for making an MMO more socially rewarding is a bit silly.
Granted, I think they are penalizing small fleets too harshly w/out some sort of scaling starbase resource system.
If only they at least had that. I think they were given directives on how they were to change the game. PWE's business model revolves around impulse purchases made during the long long grinding sessions. STO has, until now, been mostly a casual friendly MMO. Where you could get a LOT done with little investment in time. The Devs were given orders to change that. Its to become a huge grindfest with very very low Reward vs. Time/Effort. The idea being to get players to get so fed up that they charge up some Zen to convert to Dil.
To do this they were given a carte blanche and in typical fashion have chosen to nerf the nicer rewarding activities instead of making the less attractive options more attractive (ie. nerf STF rewards instead of making more activities as attractive to do if not as rewarding... looking at YOU boring, repetitive FAs!!)
I WISH the devs had a grand vission, at least that way whatever they released might have a flawed soul somewhere in there. Instead they are following orders to turn STO into something it never was. I keep thinking: "is this finally it for me? I've put up with a LOT of BS and disappointment to get this far... the year of drought, the bugs, the lack of direction... after all that nothing good came out of it all. And it was all my own fault for going against my own gut feeling and choosing to have hope"
I really think a lot of players are staying so far simply because of all the stuff they've had to suffer through, hoping that things would get better, but alas....
All I can really do now is shake my head as 2 of my favorite games, CO and STO mutate into something that I will not want to be part of, and it makes me sad. I think i'd rather they just shut down.
Now that PWE is in control that's no longer an option.
The best way to get folks to spend money on a game, is to make it more competitive...
So that the players will always be willing to BUY the power-up that are made available at a reasonable mark-up...
In order to beat out other players.
It becomes a Circle Of Death, in which players with the most money to spend will be the ones to rule the roost...
Till they run out of funds and the next person with a larger bank account takes over.
It's the way it's done overseas and now it's becoming the way to do it here.
One can only hope that most folks don't become willing sheep to this process.
I'll buy playable stuff from the C-Store, but I will never buy dilithium.
I Was A Trekkie Before It Was Cool ... Sept. 8th, 1966 ... Not To Mention Before Most Folks Around Here Were Born!
Forever a STO Veteran-Minion
Nah, they're probably holding it in reserve. When the backlash hits them from the playerbase that doesn't access tribble or read the sites/forums they'll need to do SOMETHIGN to try and quell the riot.
I wonder only why they even turned STO into pseudo-F2P in the first place? Keeping STO as P2P (sub based game) and concentrating on content and PvP for good, immersing endgame content would have probably made them less money in short term, but far more in long term becasue they would have not lost part of playerbase, and if the game was good - people would've be coming to play it.
Silly me, but I think PWE should make this game sub-based again, remove grind/dilithium and C-Store (in long term, they need after all to pay salaries and have profit) and start working on content. Even something small, but regular would be a great thing in terms of gaining new people/keeping the old player base.
* pay, becausetime=money so grind=LOT of money in form of wasted time.
Capt. Will Conquest of the U.S.S. Crusader
Everyone is harping on the silly UI and running restriction TOR has, but I wonder..... just how much would unlocking those cost?
If its a small amount i'd have no problem unlocking them for potentially a month or two of playing through the storylines. Compared to the cost/time STO is ramping up to take, buying a few QoL items and unlocks in ToR is looking very attractive.
I think the "big fleet battle focus" is a necessary evil of having everyone be a Captain (or even weirder, Admiral) in an MMO.
I think a truer Trek experience would probably involve people playing as high as Commander, with ship crews as the guild mechanism and ship interiors serving the role that fleet starbases and many adventure zone style hubs serve here.
The downside to that in Perpetual's model was that they planned for ship battles to be rather silly power level mini-games.
I think it would work though if you put the focus on players in tricked out shuttles and fighters, with the "tank" helming the crew's larger ship... and odd scenarios where you can take your shuttle to commandeer spare ships, friendly or enemy, for a raiding mechanic based on fleet battles.
Imagine the default space player is a shuttle but you can act as a "boarding party" in designed encounters.
Kinda... STO from a DOff's perspective, a BO's perspective, etc.
I wouldn't even make guild leaders Captains. I would make Captains NPCs and being a guild leader would make you the "First Officer" of the ship. This allows a lot of character based development for Cryptic. The Guild Leader (or highest ranking officer online) can determine who gets control of the main ship but the Captain would be an NPC with a well-developed personality.
Maybe eventually have a level cap increase to Captain but by then you serve under an Admiral. (And by the TOS films, they had a few Captains aboard each ship under the commanding officer.) And then you get to maybe move on to a support ship.
Like I say, Captain as NPC. And for kicks, like the opposite of a Bioware companion. The Captain would be an NPC shaped collectively by the crew, with a personality that reflects what your guild collectively does to him or her.
It's helm (tank)/fighter pilot (DPS)/workbees (healing/buffing)/shuttle pilot (offtank/control).
On the ground:
Security (DPS/Marine Pets/Tank), Engineer (DPS/DoT/Mech Pets), Science (DPS/DoT/Control), Medical (Buffs/DoT/Tank), and Operations (Tank/Control/Redshirt Pets).
EDIT: For color coding sake...
Security: Greenish gold
Engineer: Yellowish gold
Science: Blue
Medical: Teal
Operations: Red
As I understand, you were able to double dip with that missuin ..it makes perfect sense if that is the case.
If I don't do my job right no one comes to me and says "oh it's ok, you've got a tough career"...no - it's "you need a kick in the pants or else". Well, devs, you need a kick in the pants or else you're going to lose some of your paying customers who have been telling you for weeks not to remove these dilithium sources nor charge dilithium for DOffs.
Fleet: 1st Order of Role-Players' Guild - gaming together since 2004
Nah. You can stack up the dilithium rewards over on the KDF side more than b'tran and Explore Strange New Worlds.
This makes no sense other than to keep taking away methods to earn dilithium.