Penalized for being the "right" profession

philipag

I've noticed many times now that running an assignment with a doff with 2 matching crit traits, but the wrong "success" profession is better than running one with 2 crit traits and the right profession (e.g. tropical birds, commendation reports).

No interest in buying a Miner for that reason.

This doesn't seem to be the case in fabricating consoles, so it's not universal.

lucho80

Honestly, this has always been a problem from poor implementation. The right career adds to success by substracting from failing/disaster first and then crits if they go to zero. Crit traits add to crit by substracting from failing/disaster first and then success if those go to zero. So crit traits more often than not override the benefit of the right career. The exception is building stuff. Crit traits add to purple stuff and the right career lowers the chance of green junk.

markhawkman

Yeah, poor Seggis has to sit and watch my other science guys raise birds.

nicha0

Bad implementation followed by lack of maintenance on a system, pretty typical cryptic. They can't even fix a simple formula for recommendations which would lower the Doffing entry barrier.

tonyalmeida2

It effects all missions. Success traits will bleedover onto crit traits. Crafting consoles the best odds you can get without spending hundreds of millions on doffs is 24-51-24. There "failure" still exists. If the mission had a higher base "success" rate, and you used the right doffs you would still see success bleedover.

fraghul2000

But it is how it is and it does make sense. The professions ARE success traits in that case and have nothing to do with crit, hence why it makes complete sense that the reduce crit once they can't reduce failure or disaster anymore.

How should the system know that you're not deliberately aiming for success instead of crit when you're slotting a success trait?

Instigate defection, for example, is an assignment where people who are still missing blue doffs would simply be pissed off if a matching success profession would raise the crit and lower success, as they're aiming for a success and not a crit.

If the profession would be both a success AND a crit trait I'd understand the anger, but the way it's completely logical the way it currently works.

darkjeff

"Logical"?

Fleet Commendation missions only have Success/Critical results. Any 2-Critical trait DOff will outperform one with the correct profession. This also applies with Epohhs.

A system where you want to avoid matching requirements to increase the odds of superior results is hardly "logical".

bluegeek

darkjeff wrote: »

"Logical"?

Fleet Commendation missions only have Success/Critical results. Any 2-Critical trait DOff will outperform one with the correct profession. This also applies with Epohhs.

A system where you want to avoid matching requirements to increase the odds of superior results is hardly "logical".

I agree. Another good example is raising Risian birds. Using a Biologist instead of a DOFF with the critical traits actually decreases your odds of getting a crit, which means you potentially earn fewer marks. You'd think that having the proper specialist would give you better results.

IMO, ALL of the Science and Engineering assignments should penalize using the "wrong" specialists more than they do, or require more of the "right" ones.

nicha0

On all high success or easy doff assignments its the same way. Its quite hard to get people into Doffing because it simply doesn't make sense, why does my warp core engineer do a worse job at making warp cores than my flight deck officer? How could any new player get into Doffing when they keep pushing out more and more nonsensical assignments.

For the Risian birds they could have required a biologist and had 0 success and only critical success traits, that'd make sense, but we won't see that, they'll make the same mistakes over and over.

fraghul2000

Fleet Commendation missions only have Success/Critical results. Any 2-Critical trait DOff will outperform one with the correct profession. This also applies with Epohhs.

The required profession would be "Science department" in the case of the Epohhs.

Being a Biologist is NOT the required profession. It's simply a success trait. Nothing else.

Same goes for commendation reports. There is no "correct" profession in those cases, the specific profession is just a succes trait.

It's just basic, 7th grade statistics...

timelord79

Once success is 100% certain, by lowering failure/disaster to 0, any success traits should add to crit instead. That would be logical.

dareau

The following is based on observation and "gut feeling" more than actual hard math/observations. Please keep that in consideration, as I am using "hypothetical" numbers to illustrate my math:

The system seems designed around "risk/reward". For example, take a 5% crit / 50% success / 45% failure mission needing 5 DOffs, having a single crit trait and a single success trait:

Say each "success" trait transfers 8% of the fail chance to success, and crit trait moves 5% from fail to crit...

"Max success (5 success, no crits)" would result in 5/90/5. "Max Crit (5 crit, "wrong class")" would result in 30/50/20.

See the "risk / reward" in the pattern? Max success "almost" assures completion of the mission, with an equal chance of "critical hit" vs "critical fumble". Maxxing critical gives the best chance of scoring the big prize, but gives a much greater chance of failing the mission...

However, having 5 "perfect" DOffs and Crit > success = 30/70/0. Exact same reward as the "high risk" play, but absolutely no failure. In order to keep "risk/reward" going, you need some level of Success > Crit, so that the final results wind up being, say, 10/90/0. Absolutely no risk, however, the odds of the big payout are reduced since you are not risking anything...

To me, that seems to have been Heretic's design. However, and obviously, building around "risk / reward" fails when there should be no risk to begin with. WAD = unintended feature with these missions, which is why the prevailing wisdom is "pick DOffs that give high risk / high reward over 'safe' DOffs", since with risk = 0%, the need for safety is 0...

fraghul2000

That would be logical.

On the contrary, THAT, while being an advantage for most doffers would be completely illogical.

Why would something that raises and is supposed to raise the chance of event A, suddenly raise the chance of event B to happen?

The only way your scenario would be logical and make sense would be, if instead of having assignments looking like this (the way they currently are) for example:

Requirement: Science
Critical Success: cunning, resolve
Success: Biologist

they would look like this:

Requirement: Science
Critical Success: Biologist, Cunning, Resolve
Success: Biologist

they way assignments currently are though, it absolutely makes no sense that a success trait would raise crit as well.

goltzhar

fraghul2000 wrote: »

On the contrary, THAT, while being an advantage for most doffers would be completely illogical.

Why would something that raises and is supposed to raise the chance of event A, suddenly raise the chance of event B to happen?

Ok so the opposite is logical? Let me say it with your words (almost):

Why would something that raises and is supposed to raise the chance of event A, suddenly reduce the chance of event B to happen?

bluegeek

fraghul2000 wrote: »

they way assignments currently are though, it absolutely makes no sense that a success trait would raise crit as well.

You'd think so, wouldn't you?

But there are assignments out there that are set up exactly like that.

fraghul2000

But there are assignments out there that are set up exactly like that.

Which one?

Why would something that raises and is supposed to raise the chance of event A, suddenly reduce the chance of event B to happen?

...

Because there are only 100% to distribute and because it's being told only to raise the chance of A happening at the expense of every other outcome, which means it's got to take percentages away from B, C and D.

If you, the user, tell the system (by slotting a Biologist over a non-Biologist in the Epohh mission for example) you want to improve your chances of A ("success") above those of B ("critical success"), it'll do just that.

badname834854

Hence, we end up with situations where my Biologist is needed to get me the highest possible chance of a shield buff.

darkjeff

fraghul2000 wrote: »

If you, the user, tell the system (by slotting a Biologist over a non-Biologist in the Epohh mission for example) you want to improve your chances of A ("success") above those of B ("critical success"), it'll do just that.

The extremely stupid situation at the core of this argument is flawed, and is entirely what the complaints are about.

It's not a case of two separate and disparate results - "Result A" and "Result B".
It's "Success" and "Critical Success" - "Result A" and "Result A + Bonus".

The fact that the system treats it as the former instead of the latter is what we're calling illogical and stupid.

It's entirely illogical to have Success reduce Critical Success. It's entirely counter-intuitive to have a situation where the better you are at reducing Failure, the less likely you are to do exceedingly well at your task.

In every situation you will want to succeed (reduce Failure), and in every non-contrived situation you want to get the best results possible (Critical Success).

fraghul2000 wrote: »

Instigate defection, for example, is an assignment where people who are still missing blue doffs would simply be pissed off if a matching success profession would raise the crit and lower success, as they're aiming for a success and not a crit.

Irrelevant. The point isn't to have Success traits also increase Critical Success, the point is that Success chance shouldn't override Critical Success.

milandare

Perhaps the 'logic' is that a character with very different training, yet the right 'personality', may come up with something unique by combining the disciplines - and hence 'critical'. Someone from the discipline will apply known theory, and likely 'succeed', but perhaps not see outside the box.

This is the kind of thinking you get from MBAs all the time. By dint if them not knowing anything, they could get extremely lucky! More likely they'll just make sure they move on to another role before a genuine expert has to be called in.

oddboyout

milandare wrote: »

Perhaps the 'logic' is that a character with very different training, yet the right 'personality', may come up with something unique by combining the disciplines - and hence 'critical'. Someone from the discipline will apply known theory, and likely 'succeed', but perhaps not see outside the box.

This. Exactly what I was thinking.

markhawkman

Here's my thought: why have a success trait at all when failure is impossible?

That is the crux of the discussion for me. If the success trait exists for no reason but to make it HARDER to get a crit, it is useless and counterproductive.