Playable BOFF

asches1

There were some informations of implementing the option to play your BOFFs. Still working on that, or Cryptic abandoned the idea?

mailman650

I haven't seen this idea mentioned in a long time. The idea was to promote a boff to captain be able to play as them.

Perhaps they'll rework this idea in the future when they raise the level cap and *hopefully* introduce new game mechanics to make you *feel* like an Admiral and command a fleet or task force rather than making you do everything.

mirrorchaos

mailman650 wrote: »

I haven't seen this idea mentioned in a long time. The idea was to promote a boff to captain be able to play as them.

Perhaps they'll rework this idea in the future when they raise the level cap and *hopefully* introduce new game mechanics to make you *feel* like an Admiral and command a fleet or task force rather than making you do everything.

even an RA lower can command a small group of Captains and promote them. the rank system is fubar atm. i agree with other players that the rank system should have us at maximum, captain for fed and KDF and commander for rom. then add a completely new feature that gives you the chance to promote your boffs to captain and order them specifically to do jobs in the galaxy by using a galaxy map and some commands with a small list of 3 captains down the left side to choose from, you can order them to do some dailies for you while you do something else like an STF, so they help you collect more dilithium? and even with your flying about yourself as a newly promoted RA that you can see your former Boff now flying past you while they are doing their mission as ordered. it could even be expanded on to have them form up and do space missions as a group at one point. options are out there.

trekkerchick

It's been about two years since they last mentioned the concept.
As it is, we have complete voice work for Male and Female player Captains and our BOffs in multiple styles sitting in our installations not even being used... Including Klingon, Ferengi and even Gorn.
I would think they would get that usable for us since they're done, paid the actors for and already there. Before going as far as being able to play as BOffs....

kheldryn

Would be nice if they were working on it, though if I really want to do that all i really need to do is copy the BoFF's Costume at the tailor and simply create that charcater as a new character anyway. Which I have done, My Sci Officer of one of my mains is actually one of my Captains. He had turned out looking so uncannily like the real me that I just had to make him as a character.

A second BoFF I'm thinking of making into a character is my Tac VA's, Tac BOFF which I made to look like a certain little green alien from SW... yup.. you guessed it Yoda (named him Yhoda) and am debating on whether to make him as my 8th Captain, silly I know, but I'd seen a few attempts at it and, not to boast, but think mine looks the best that I've seen so far.

But, that will have to wait as I was affected by the "Season 8 Crashing Bug" thats on Holodeck right now.

lianthelia

mirrorchaos wrote: »

even an RA lower can command a small group of Captains and promote them. the rank system is fubar atm. i agree with other players that the rank system should have us at maximum, captain for fed and KDF and commander for rom. then add a completely new feature that gives you the chance to promote your boffs to captain and order them specifically to do jobs in the galaxy by using a galaxy map and some commands with a small list of 3 captains down the left side to choose from, you can order them to do some dailies for you while you do something else like an STF, so they help you collect more dilithium? and even with your flying about yourself as a newly promoted RA that you can see your former Boff now flying past you while they are doing their mission as ordered. it could even be expanded on to have them form up and do space missions as a group at one point. options are out there.

But that doesn't make sense, maybe if you were some kind of fleet captain or commodore, but that isn't what you want or else we could keep the ranks as is...you want to be a flat out captain like Picard or Kirk.

If I remember correctly officers don't have the authority to promote others to their rank, why you can't promote your boffs to commander for example when you are a commander.

lordlalo

asches1 wrote: »

There were some informations of implementing the option to play your BOFFs. Still working on that, or Cryptic abandoned the idea?

Logic 101:

1) The idea of playing boffs was tossed around.

2) Android Boffs came out.

3) CBS vetoed Androids as a playable race.

What do you think?

mirrorchaos

lianthelia wrote: »

But that doesn't make sense, maybe if you were some kind of fleet captain or commodore, but that isn't what you want or else we could keep the ranks as is...you want to be a flat out captain like Picard or Kirk.

If I remember correctly officers don't have the authority to promote others to their rank, why you can't promote your boffs to commander for example when you are a commander.

i will rephrase, you get promoted to RA lower from captain and at that rank you get to promote commanders to captains and then you can order them about for your purposes. what they are is upto you.

unangbangkay

Frankly I'm beginning to get a bit tired of the recent surge of "Why are we all admirals?!!?!" talk, and partly because it makes a lot more sense than some folks realize.

It's stemming from a failure of imagination on players' parts, I think.

You think being an Admiral is just a desk job, but in societies as large as the Federation, Klingon Empire, and Romulan Republic (we're talking TRILLIONS of people spread over tens of thousands of light years), it's entirely possible to have a lot of authority figures operating "out on the frontier".

Remember First Contact, when Picard arrived in the Enterprise-E and was notified that "the admiral's ship has been destroyed"? There you go. If the Admiral was such a desk jockey, why was he so close to the cube that he could go get himself melted by some invisible plasma megatorpedo? :P

It's entirely possible for an admiral to personally command a ship. In fact, I would be surprised if they didn't do so more often, especially not in the troubled times of 2409.

mirrorchaos

unangbangkay wrote: »

Frankly I'm beginning to get a bit tired of the recent surge of "Why are we all admirals?!!?!" talk, and partly because it makes a lot more sense than some folks realize.

It's stemming from a failure of imagination on players' parts, I think.

You think being an Admiral is just a desk job, but in societies as large as the Federation, Klingon Empire, and Romulan Republic (we're talking TRILLIONS of people spread over tens of thousands of light years), it's entirely possible to have a lot of authority figures operating "out on the frontier".

Remember First Contact, when Picard arrived in the Enterprise-E and was notified that "the admiral's ship has been destroyed"? There you go. If the Admiral was such a desk jockey, why was he so close to the cube that he could go get himself melted by some invisible plasma megatorpedo? :P

It's entirely possible for an admiral to personally command a ship. In fact, I would be surprised if they didn't do so more often, especially not in the troubled times of 2409.

one admiral can lead a force for his or her own purposes if it is required and if the admiral is not on the front line it does little to inspire confidence. now just because you have trillions of people doesnt mean you got billions of starfleet people and 50% of them are admirals that would be absurd.

star fleet only had a small upper command structure lead by a few fleet admirals in total, the commanders of the entire sections within starfleet; defense, tactical, medical, intelligence...

gstamo01

Honestly, I have always felt that the game was setup wrong. Your character should not be the one that levels up, but that your Bridge Officers do. I'll explain..

You are the Captain and you have all the skill needed to be Captain, else you would not be the Captain.

On Away Team Missions, you select either your Science, Engineer, Tactical, Medical or Communications Officer as your Away Team Partner. So it is not you and four bots, but more like what you find on New Romulus.

Each Officer has a tier skill level that you earn by using them on away team missions. Not all missions require Pew Pew to complete, meaning sometimes you will need to bring your Medical Officer to help fight a plague or your Communications Officer to translate alien species and work out a diplomatic solution.


Space based mission earn the officer experience, but since the player is really doing most of the work and it takes the entire crew to run the ship, the experience earned is dwarfed when compared to Away Team Missions. However, the experience earned via Space based mission is spread equally across all of your Bridge Officers.

Boffs and Doffs are earned by the Captain via Notoriety and can be recruited and micro managed to give intentional benefits to the players ship.



Nothing like this will ever happen with STO, clearly. It's far too late in the game to even pretend like this is a viable option. I just wanted to express my thoughts regarding Boffs and STO.

kheldryn

Hmm... Now here's an idea for Cryptic (Feel free to use this one).....

After reaching RA-VA allow us to promote a BoFF to Captain, Assign that Captain to one of the Ships in your collection not currently used by you as his ship, and have a mission system in place for specific faction gains for these promoted Captains (Exploration (for EC or random ground/space gear), Science Exploration (for crafting resources), Diplomatic Contact, etc.).

This would be similar to the BoFF System, but would allow you to re-allocate unused BoFF's (That haven't joined your crew yet) as the promoted captains crew. In addition your captain (RA, VA..whatever) could make "Inspection tours" to the BoFF's ship as a quest occasionally for some kind of reward.

Something for Cryptic to think about anyway.