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Why aren't boff powers like kit powers, a few slots that're all max rank?
projectfrontier
Member Posts: 0 Arc User
I was thinking about boff powers and how the devs could make their lives easier.
Why don't we treat boff powers like kits?
They've already mentioned replacing kits with a series of "power slots" that you plug a power into (like a console), why not give boffs a similar treatment?
I'll walk you through it.
Tovan and Elise are two buddies candidates for "support officers", meaning they aren't ever going to be Captains - we already have a few million of those. I had to cut the following lines out because it turned into a Foundry mission.
This is the idea - make boff powers, across their entire tray, as strong as their rank.
Instead of having "En","Lt","Ltc", and "Cmdr" slots (whose slotted powers can never go above their respective tier), let us have slots that unlock at "En","Lt","LtC", and "Cmdr (as they currently do) AND give those slots the ability to take a power up to the level of the boff itself irrespective of where it falls on the "you can learn this skill at this rank" tree.
Example:
Currently Tovan Khev, the lowest of the low, is a tactical boff with en/lt/ltc/cmdr abilities. If they train TT1/BO2/CRF2/AO3 today those abilities will always fall within their en/lt/ltc/cmdr power level. And in order to use AO3 you will have to be in a "tactical ship", which for Tovan may be a Scimitar-Cruiser but otherwise is going to be an "Escort" (or the Dyson Destroyer in Escort Mode).
By altering the mechanics slightly Tovan's power trays no longer function as En/Lt/Ltc/Cmdr powers. Instead Tovan's rank dictates the number of powers that can be slotted for use (1-4) as well as the rank-tier that the entire group can be trained up to. So intead of TT1/BO2/CRF2/AO3 Tovan could sport TT3/BO3/CRF3/AO3. In fact Tovan could sport AO3/AO3/AO3/AO3 if they wanted to as there would be no restriction on what skill goes into which slot.
Would you like more flexible boff power tray slotting functionality?
Why don't we treat boff powers like kits?
They've already mentioned replacing kits with a series of "power slots" that you plug a power into (like a console), why not give boffs a similar treatment?
I'll walk you through it.
Tovan and Elise are two buddies candidates for "support officers", meaning they aren't ever going to be Captains - we already have a few million of those. I had to cut the following lines out because it turned into a Foundry mission.
This is the idea - make boff powers, across their entire tray, as strong as their rank.
Instead of having "En","Lt","Ltc", and "Cmdr" slots (whose slotted powers can never go above their respective tier), let us have slots that unlock at "En","Lt","LtC", and "Cmdr (as they currently do) AND give those slots the ability to take a power up to the level of the boff itself irrespective of where it falls on the "you can learn this skill at this rank" tree.
Example:
Currently Tovan Khev, the lowest of the low, is a tactical boff with en/lt/ltc/cmdr abilities. If they train TT1/BO2/CRF2/AO3 today those abilities will always fall within their en/lt/ltc/cmdr power level. And in order to use AO3 you will have to be in a "tactical ship", which for Tovan may be a Scimitar-Cruiser but otherwise is going to be an "Escort" (or the Dyson Destroyer in Escort Mode).
By altering the mechanics slightly Tovan's power trays no longer function as En/Lt/Ltc/Cmdr powers. Instead Tovan's rank dictates the number of powers that can be slotted for use (1-4) as well as the rank-tier that the entire group can be trained up to. So intead of TT1/BO2/CRF2/AO3 Tovan could sport TT3/BO3/CRF3/AO3. In fact Tovan could sport AO3/AO3/AO3/AO3 if they wanted to as there would be no restriction on what skill goes into which slot.
Would you like more flexible boff power tray slotting functionality?
Proposals for using in-game features to improve: (1) the "Phaser Lance" (and other underrepresented/missing "big guns"); && (2) separation systems on all ships that have them; && (3) training boffs in captain only powers by using boffs as pack-mules; OR to add functionality like: (4) "Away Teams Of Space Ships";
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Post edited by projectfrontier on
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Comments
Got it backwards, we need kits treated like boff powers. My boffs have more flexibility than I do! I can give them any combination of powers, I get stuck with 5-6 locked setups.
Slotting 4 Commander skills would be nice, but just look at how much they'd have to change. Never gonna happen. Anyway I see the power levels more a feature of the ship not the boff, since that's what's dictating what can get used.
If I was designing boff powers, they'd all have level 1-3 powers (starting at ensign) and the Commander slot would be for some truly nifty powers since you have only 1 Commander power on a ship. Never understood why cannon/GW/etc powers started at Lt power levels.
I agree more with that statement. I would see more kit slot ranked more like 1 slot 'recruit' with rank I power, 1-2 slot advance with rank I or II and 1-2 slot expert with rank III (or more?) kit powers...
Everything that would make people have to choose what they want more is always a plus to me. This would also fit very well the "kit as module" system we may see coming soon...
I cut the part out about how this idea is inline with the modularized kit slotted-power mechanic that is allegedly going to be out sometime during season 9 or 10.
What would they have to change specifically to allow 4 commander skills to be slotted?
They wouldn't have to change how you gain access to the tiered slots as that's already tied to boffs rank-tier. They wouldn't have to change the powers, how their list of them is maintained, or even how the boff stores them in its object unit. They also wouldn't have to change how any of the UIs where these powers are located or their functions either.
So if we've ruled out changing the architecture for slots, for how the powers are listed in their respective data-tables, how the powers are maintained, how they're stored on the boff, or how the UI functionality operates that leaves us with one thing:
Power assignment. They would have to adjust how you, the player, choose any given power for any given slot.
And along those lines the statements made by developers (at least in the last year) about making the kit-system more flexible and how (a module tray replacing a single kit item) indicates they're already looking at the logical architecture needed to provide the assignment functionality I conveyed in the original post, it's just a matter of how the player interacts with it. Do they drag a little box into another box or do they toggle a radio button?
So your "never gonna happen" seems a little ignorant.
Your boff-power idea isn't all that different from others posted on this forum (where people were asking "why don't all power's availabilities begin at Ensign?"
So you don't know where the kits currently start but you like the modular kit idea that Cryptic already mentions on how they'd like to improve that part of the system?
Gotcha.
I see what you did there, you snuck in Riker's beard so you could make the generalized claim about how kits grant function or enhance function. Riker's beard is not a kit item, their kits granted only function.
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