A Bold Proposal: Fold The Doff System Into The Boff System

aestu

It's a very bold proposal indeed, and I'm not so simple or ignorant as to fail to grasp the gargantuan technical challenges. Yet the proposal is not only practical, but potentially very convenient from the perspective of the dev team.

Consider that doffs and boffs have similar numbers and types of variables (traits, species, appearance, gender, etc). It should not be so difficult to input extra boff traits with null functionality to represent doff traits, or to simply add another field to boff profiles for the doff traits and lore text.

There are many benefits to this proposal:

1. Reduced code/UI bloat due to elimination of redundant systems
2. Customizable, individual doffs
3. Less redundancy in current and future content that awards both doffs and boffs (e.g., Embassy Recruitment)
4. Reduced confusion over identically-named doff and boff traits (e.g., Teamwork, Honorable, Resilient)
5. Simpler game paradigm = easier for new players to pick up the game
6. More elegant/rational
7. Easier interoperability between doffs and game world content (e.g., bringing doffs on missions)
8. Potential monetization by way of doff customization
9. Easier to balance doff/boff combat traits by forcing player choice
10. Make populating the bridge more interesting/diverse/strategy-intensive

The up-front labor and inevitable debugging pains that would be required to action this proposal would be substantial - creating a ton of new boff-related systems and values to translate all doff characteristics, including many traits. But the effort would be paid off many times over in short order, as integrating the two systems would reduce the time and trouble involved in debugging and developing both systems individually, and it would facilitate the introduction of new content for both (i.e., no need to code separate doffs and boffs each patch).

Feedback?

smki

aestu wrote: »

It's a very bold proposal indeed, and I'm not so simple or ignorant as to fail to grasp the gargantuan technical challenges. Yet the proposal is not only practical, but potentially very convenient from the perspective of the dev team.

...

The up-front labor and inevitable debugging pains that would be required to action this proposal would be substantial - creating a ton of new boff-related systems and values to translate all doff characteristics, including many traits. But the effort would be paid off many times over in short order, as integrating the two systems would reduce the time and trouble involved in debugging and developing both systems individually, and it would facilitate the introduction of new content for both (i.e., no need to code separate doffs and boffs each patch).

Feedback?

Convince the bean-counters that letting the player base dress up paper dolls and they'll do it because it will be "profitable."

Your suggestion of implementation on the other hand, leave that part out. If they haven't already optimized the object interface for doff/boff/character tearing out the parts that are there would probably result in the longest, indefinite, downtime in STO history - meaning it would never turn back on.

apocalypsespace

It would actually be nice to be able to customize your DOFFs .

It would be even nicer if you could have specific morons staff specific position in your ship . It would add more depth to starship tactics . I know that I'd love to fly with a handpicked crew .

It also adds more roleplay possibilities . It'd spend some cash on that .

aestu

Going to point out, support this proposal, and you can use your MACO photonic boff on Hamlet...or send your Vulcan & Orion entertainment doffs on away missions or sit around the bridge.

dareau

My coins of choice:

1. There is no "code bloat" per-se, the systems are radically different. BOffs = senior staff ready for ground playing, DOffs = junior staff you send out on shuttles all the time...

2. Way I look at it, each DOff is only, maximum, 32 bits of storage on the server - DOff identifier (slot 1-400), unique DOff code (to tell Maela from S'Pan), and location code (mission X, active duty, reserves). Each BOff has close to 1 MB data, between identifier, race, traits, all the body part values, uniform part and color values, weapons, etc. Heck, outside of the second weapon, they have as much data as an actual PC... And your proposal seeks to multiply this by 100-400 times per toon. I've got 1100 DOffs on my 7 toons, so this proposal balloons my DOff storage requirements by at least a GB. Factoring the fact that 1100 slots might be an "average" (very rough guess, we are taking 200 DOff barely used F2P accounts and mixing them with 10+ toon 400 slot accounts of the old timers) and multiplying this by 2 million, and we're looking at (possibly) 2,000 Terabytes of extra storage required - this isn't cheap and also might need an extra file server or two, making this a very expensive proposition...

Now, I'm one of the guys who wants to give the "random DOffs" that roam our interiors matching uniforms that go with the senior staff's theme, only on the bridge can I get my crew in the same uniform that my senior staff wears - and I've been a proponent of "cloning" the department head's uniform across all the random DOffs of that department - and adding an "opposite sex leg" option to each department head slot. For example - Say I have a science BOff decked out in a "canonically colored" WoK uniform (red shirt, olive turtleneck) but elected to "tweak" the legs to give her a black skirt and the knee-high boots. I'd slot the Kahn pants and leather boots in the "opposite sex slots" of my medical DH. Then, when I walk into sickbay, my "random DOffs" all wear the Kahn top, the ladies all have skirts on, and the guys all have a full WoK uniform on.

Taking this to the next level, if the staff elected to "character create" each DOff ever made (contest?) and store that body info on the server, then the game can mix-match DOff bodies and DH uniforms and presto - a ship that's "crewed" by the actual DOffs that populate the player's DOff list. If the game then has an "appropriate" master powers key assigned by specialty and traits - so all DOff consultants are equipped with a variant of, say, the bunker fabrication kit - and it cross-references DH shield/weapon/armor to the department's DOffs, and you can have an away team of DOffs instead of BOffs with "minimal" storage space expansion...

aestu

Boffs aren't nearly that huge (unless Cryptic coded them poorly, which wouldn't be too surprising) for the same reason that doffs aren't, they're built from a few basic parameters.

The bloat is not a question of the demand on server space, it's a question of deploying and running the systems, and the other elegance/redundancy issues I pointed out.

apocalypsespace

The server should be on no concern if this is properly implemented . They don't need the complex tailor system . Saving their final portrait as a small JPEG is just fine , it will probably take less than 5kb per image if done right. The files can be stored in the client cache so they won't cause any additional load on the server .

They don't need any equipment since they still won't be full blown Bridge . They're just lowlifes that have a customizable face , name , upgradeable rank and possibly customizable traits .

What would be cool is making them the starship crew . That would add some extra calculations when the ship is undocking .

Not much of server load . Also I don't think that the playerbase would mind if you shrink the number of duty officers while increasing the value of the missions . I mean let's be honest who remembers 400 duty officers ?