Point Defense Boarding Party ASO

killdozer9211

The wiki says the Jem'hadar doff from the dominion lockbox, the Assault Squad officer that adds a 40% chance to add a point defense system to a boarding party shuttle, is bugged and the proc chance is actually much lower.

I know sometimes the wiki can be out of date, I was wondering if I could get a confirmation/testing on this before I spent EC on this doff?

markhawkman

I have Adak'Ukan, but never actually use him except for doff missions.

Hmm... is is supposed to be 40% per shuttle, or 40% per launch?

killdozer9211

markhawkman wrote: »

I have Adak'Ukan, but never actually use him except for doff missions.

Hmm... is is supposed to be 40% per shuttle, or 40% per launch?

It doesn't specify. I'm pretty sure the tooltip said per shuttle when I used him like a year ago. I never had problems, with him and the FDO that doubles shuttles I could usually expect at least one turret every time I launched.

But maybe I was lucky or he broke between then and now? That's why I'm asking mainly...

pwstolemyname

I tested using three copies of him a couple of months ago. I thought it might be fun to dedicate a dreadnaught to spamming point defense shuttles.

Unfortunately despite using boarding party repeatedly in a testing environment for an hour or so I only got a shuttle with point defense three or four times.

killdozer9211

Hmm, and I guess we couldn't get a dev to give it a glance and see if it's working as intended or not, could we?

I'll see if I can mess around with it tonight, I have time now that I'm out for summer.

fraghul2000

How did you figure out how big your proc chance was and how many launches/samples did you take?

pwstolemyname

I didn't make proper records when I tested this. I didn't know I was going to be testing a bug when I started. I had simply gotten it into my head that it might be fun to dedicate a build to the often ignored boarding party ability. So I built a ship around two copies of the ability, levels 3 and 2.

I slotted three copies of Uras'Kalan (point defence doff), and three flight deck officers to grant a chance of doubling the number of shuttles launched.

I then went into a solo pve instance to test the effectiveness of the build as a whole.

At first I was surprised to find that the boarding parties never seemed to have point defense. So I ceased testing the ship as a whole and just sat there launching boarding parties at an npc without otherwise attacking it.

The duty officers to increase the number of shuttles launched work as advertised, no problems there, I was launching plenty of shuttles.

Eventually after many launches a single shuttle in a group had point defense. So I then knew that what ever the % chance was, it was applied on a per shuttle basis, not per wave.

I know I did this for an hour or so as I was able to watch a full episode of next gen from start to finish.

Over that time period there were only three or four times that a shuttle was armed.

So while I can not estimate what the actual % chance is. I can at least verify that it most certainly is not 3 times 40% chances with a full set of officers. Heck it cant even be one 40% chance.

dsaris

Sounds like they broke it at some point recently... it used to work to great effect, spamming point defense shuttles was a lot of fun.

warmaker001b

What about... A2B Pt Defense Boarding Party Cruiser build!

Ain't no party like a Boarding Party, 'cause a Boarding Party don't stop!

dsaris

Most fun I had with it was on the free Obelisk Carrier. Pets and armed shuttles galore.

pwstolemyname

I just spent 20 minutes testing this with boarding part 2 and boarding party 3, three Point Defense Doffs and three Double Shuttles doffs.

Out of 148 boarding party shuttles launched only two waves had point defense. In both cases only one shuttle in the wave had it.

So with three of the duty officers my chance of putting PD on a shuttle was less then 2%

I think this warrents a thread in the gameplay bugs section.

borticuscryptic

I'll try and find time to investigate this. Odd that it's happening at all, if it is with such low frequency.

mightybobcnc

Yayy! Borticus to the rescue!

borticuscryptic

I managed to "repair" it. Turns out it was only happening when ... well, when the stars aligned. The 40% chance was on top of a number of other factors having to line up perfectly in order for it to be able to trigger.

So I had to rebuild the whole mess. But that's ok - at least it's working as advertised now.

(And it's really fun to use! Pretty sure I'll be getting some of these for my live character...)

eradicator84

Cool.

So the only question at this stage is:
Is the 40% chance per shuttle or per boff power activation?

Will combining this doff power with the one that boosts shuttle numbers improve the chance of this proccing each time you activate boarding party?

pwstolemyname

borticuscryptic wrote: »

I managed to "repair" it. Turns out it was only happening when ... well, when the stars aligned. The 40% chance was on top of a number of other factors having to line up perfectly in order for it to be able to trigger.

So I had to rebuild the whole mess. But that's ok - at least it's working as advertised now.

(And it's really fun to use! Pretty sure I'll be getting some of these for my live character...)

Well done Bort. I have to say that for a long time long standing issues were piling up, Some, large, some small, and I had lost all faith that the money men at cryptic were ever going to devote any time or resources to game polish and bug fixing.

But starting with the fix to tykens rift and gravity well, then the deflector duty officer, then the stf accolade bugs, and so on cryptic have actually begun to win back my confidence.

I don't know if you fixed this on your own time, on your own initiative, or if it was part of a 'new direction' there at cryptic but well done sir. You have won points with me today.

Not that I don't still have a todo list.... loadouts... Juel Ducane doff.... Chance for Melorazine or Dylovene to apply to your entire team doff... beam overload doff not working with experimental energy weapon... in game voice chat.... teams breaking after qued events.... and so on and so forth...

Ok yes, so a lot still to do, but so long as we can keep the rate of bug fixes in excess of the rate of bug generation we have hope right?

mightybobcnc

borticuscryptic wrote: »

I managed to "repair" it. Turns out it was only happening when ... well, when the stars aligned. The 40% chance was on top of a number of other factors having to line up perfectly in order for it to be able to trigger.

So I had to rebuild the whole mess. But that's ok - at least it's working as advertised now.

(And it's really fun to use! Pretty sure I'll be getting some of these for my live character...)

Yeahhh! Borticus smash!

*plays the Borticus victory theme*

borticuscryptic

eradicator84 wrote: »

Is the 40% chance per shuttle or per boff power activation?

Per activation period of Boarding Party. Which is usually per shuttle unless you're using the 'extra shuttles' Doff.

Will combining this doff power with the one that boosts shuttle numbers improve the chance of this proccing each time you activate boarding party?

No, I'm afraid not. Only one or the other shuttle per activation period can get the PD turret, so your odds don't increase by having extra shuttles.

killdozer9211

borticuscryptic wrote: »

Per activation period of Boarding Party. Which is usually per shuttle unless you're using the 'extra shuttles' Doff.



No, I'm afraid not. Only one or the other shuttle per activation period can get the PD turret, so your odds don't increase by having extra shuttles.

Thank you very much for taking the time to look into this and fix it, and for clarifying on how it works. That's some comprehensive support.

eradicator84

Thanks "J-man", it's great being able to have these things answered. Much appreciated.