I hope for a redesign on Boffs to allow for a more flexible game.
1 all abilities must be removed from the boffs.
2 All Boff must use kits the same as captains. Since reworking kits (to be more flexible) is high on Cryptic's priority list. making all Boff's use them is not a bad idea.
3 space abilities are slotted into the ships stations. Bridges will function as a kit for ships.
4 Boff's will become full characters that can train in skills and gain/change traits.
5 skills are meant to increase duration, damage, hit-points(hull or shields), slow/hold effects, range etc. or decrease cool-downs of space and ground abilities.
6 traits will not change except that they can now be replaced by new ones if needed/wanted.
7 all abilities must be usable in any slot on a station or kit. Depending on where you slot an ability will affect cool-downs, damage, range etc.
example: you can try to slot gravity well 3 in an ensign slot but the cool-down would be so long that you would hardly ever be able use it. If done properly it will balance out even in PvP.
The idea is to make the cool-downs so prohibitively long and possibly penalize effectiveness so that most players will slot powers where they are supposed to go (are going right now).
8 ranks must be done away whit. A tractor beam is a tractor beam rank doesn't matter. However is meant for an ensign slot so slotting it higher will give a bonus to its range and/or slow effect.
9 a Boff will need to be placed at a bridge station and its skill will only affect the abilities of that station. An unmanned stations abilities can't be activated. You can slot a tactical Boff at a science station but since none of his skills will benefit science abilities so it wont help much. Space traits can effect the whole ship.
10 The rarity of all Boffs will be rated how what traits they have (and how much skill points are invested in them).
I hope these 10 changes will lead to a more flexible game and more valuable Boffs. You wouldn't need to go out an shoot Tovan Khev because whit this system he can continue to grow and become the most valuable member of your crew. There will be no need to do away whit old boffs because you can get a better one for the endgame. You can min-max any boff to suit your needs.
Discuss......
UPDATE
when an idea comes up that good enough ill be adding it to my OP from now on.
The ability to dedicate a BOff to a particular role, and pre-set behaviors for example 'This Sci BOff is a healer and will use Triage II at every reasonable opportunity; and will use regenerators and stims as appropriate on whoever has lowest health' or 'This Tac BOff will close to melee when covered by fire from the other Tac BOff, and will spam Expose techniques'.
my plan was to have several classes of Boff's who each had unique skills benefiting a subset of powers.(tactical,science and engineering) but that would still require us to set behaviors to get the most out of them.
to clearafy:
11 all Boff's will have classes (Nothing new) for starters we'll use the same well rounded classes we have now but perhaps later others can be added. like security(tactical ground) doctor/medic (science ground whit focus on healing) helmsmen (exotic space Maneuvers)
12 Players must be able to assign behaviors to Boff's. this way they can better fulfill their roles in ground game.
Comments
Praetor of the -RTS- Romulan Tal Shiar fleet!
true it would take away from rarity. however I'd assume you recruit them as common(white) quality starfleet academy graduates and build them up from there. as you invest (expertise) in them their quality and value increases. also "unpacked" Boff's must be trade able in the exchange.
that's actually the whole reason for starting this thread. to me skill are only valuable at peak efficiency so every skill on the ensign and lieutenant slots is worthless. (except for tractor beam that skill does not get better at rank 2 or 3.) I consider every skill at rank 1 and 2 as substandard. just do away whit the ranks.
also i want more flexibility in where skill can be placed. this will allow for more builds. however to by slotting a skill "to low" it will hurt efficiency. so players will not slot a skill lower than its supposed to go without good reason.
also slotting skills in the bridge-stations instead of the boff's means they remain coupled to the ship. so flying different ships will be not require retraining your Boff's to get a good build going but the way your Boff is build will effect the skills in the console It's stationed at.
First of all it's not even a crafting system! It's just a dumb game system that's nothing more than a glorified slots machine.
second the "special items" you hope will be the saving the saving grace are messed up to.
The ability to dedicate a BOff to a particular role, and pre-set behaviors for example 'This Sci BOff is a healer and will use Triage II at every reasonable opportunity; and will use regenerators and stims as appropriate on whoever has lowest health' or 'This Tac BOff will close to melee when covered by fire from the other Tac BOff, and will spam Expose techniques'.
Not my highest priority but Crypic may as well do it if they will overhaul Boff's.
good point this is defiantly something the ground game misses. Personally i hate the ground game so I only play the space game. however for a huge change like this you have to look at all sides not just the ones you like but it easy for me to miss things related to the ground game because of this though.
because I can't believe I missed something this obvious ill be adding it to my OP.
my plan was to have several classes of Boff's who each had unique skills benefiting a subset of powers.(tactical,science and engineering) but that would still require us to set behaviors to get the most out of them.
ihmo the single greatest improvement to ground game would be the use of cover in the style of mass effect but I've been crying for that since launch so it's not gonna happen.
First of all it's not even a crafting system! It's just a dumb game system that's nothing more than a glorified slots machine.
second the "special items" you hope will be the saving the saving grace are messed up to.
Well that all depends on the player, an example is I used to use eject plasma 3 with RSP 2, before I changed it to RSP 3 and eject plasma 1, because I get more use from the RSP than I do my warp plasma ejection when it comes to survivability. I can live with the lower dmg from eject plasma 1 for better shldregen from RSP 3. Now if only I were able to slot eject warp plasma into an esign slot so I could move aux2struct and engteam into a LT. and Lt.Cmdr slots to get as I proposed a boost to them would be awesome. But they don't have the ability yet to do so 8(.
Praetor of the -RTS- Romulan Tal Shiar fleet!
Imho there are no powers meant for the ensign and lieutenant slots other than substandard versions of powers that belong into Lt.commander and commander slots. the ranks just have no place in the game. a power is what it is. I know these substandard versions have their uses in the game when you are creating a build. but i Just don't want it in may face every time I activate science team rank 1 that there was a full powered rank 3 that i didn't use....
from a game development point of view there is just no justification not to have powers that are designed specifically to be used in the ensign and lieutenant slots. (watered-down/substandard versions just don't cut it but that's all we have now)
technically if you penalize for slotting "to low" and buff for slotting "to high" you still have ranks behind the scenes but it's not so obviously in your face. if the game was redesigned to work this way it would feel more natural and be more flexible. it could allow for players to experiment whit builds in the same way you did.
I know I am asking a lot of cryptic but i truly believe that this redesign is for the best. It needs to be done for the long turn health of the game.
First of all it's not even a crafting system! It's just a dumb game system that's nothing more than a glorified slots machine.
second the "special items" you hope will be the saving the saving grace are messed up to.