Something that should be added

dragnridr

I have a small suggestion. Since our BOFFs seem to use basic abilities while on ground missions, and we have excess kits that we no longer use, Why not give our BOFFs the ability to equip basic kits? I'm not talking VR MkXII-MkIVX gear, but maybe Mk VIII-X kits.

Our BOFFs seem to use abilities pretty well on their own, and it would bring the BOFFs a little bit more closer to your captain's level.

Also, why have their grounds skills that boost their abilities when they could make very good use out of kits that our Captains will outgrow within a lvl or 2?

smeeinn1t

I've been expecting a change like this for a while now, although it would mean changing the BoFF training system. They could leave training space skills as they are and introduce kits to replace the ground training. This would also make your ground team more flexible, just as the captain can switch kits to suit the mission now. For those with less BoFFs this would allow more flexibility. Skill point allocation could be more in line with the captain skills.

davidwford

smeeinn1t wrote: »

I've been expecting a change like this for a while now, although it would mean changing the BoFF training system. They could leave training space skills as they are and introduce kits to replace the ground training. This would also make your ground team more flexible, just as the captain can switch kits to suit the mission now. For those with less BoFFs this would allow more flexibility. Skill point allocation could be more in line with the captain skills.

I would support that. Keep the current system for space skills and swap out the ground skills for kits or perhaps just 4 kit modules.

dknight0001

I'd really hate to give up the BOFFs level customisation for the old premade kits.

Modules would be better but now I'm buying possibly expensive Modules when before I was using the mostly worthless skill points and a handful of ECs.

I'm not saying the system we have now is perfect, but would removing customisation or increasing the cost actually add something?

rodentmaster

Such a system would remove the ability to stack certain skills twice, like an ENG running turret1 and turret2, or a sci running med tric1 and med tric2.

It would actually remove a little of your customizability.

dragnridr

rodentmaster wrote: »

Such a system would remove the ability to stack certain skills twice, like an ENG running turret1 and turret2, or a sci running med tric1 and med tric2.

It would actually remove a little of your customizability.

Not as bad as the so call revamp of the rep abilities. Everyone said they now have MORE customization with less. So, I'm just running of that same principle.

feiqa

Also I would ask this to wait till the kit system gets a little more polish. Right now I have Mk II modules that may be lieutenant grade or might be lt. commander grade. Same with the kit itself some list as mk whatever and are actually for the next tier.
(Which is a little odd when I open a lock box item as a lt and get a lt com. item and so forth. Since they are supposed to be at the level you are when you open it.)

duncanidaho11

dragnridr wrote: »

Not as bad as the so call revamp of the rep abilities. Everyone said they now have MORE customization with less. So, I'm just running of that same principle.

Its all about the combinations. Rather than say stacking up the one set of optimal abilities you have to pick and choose between a few that fit the needs of the mission you're about to play or just your playstyle.


I think though with ground officer kits there's less reason to go that route than player kits. If you want to slot in a different set of ground powers you just use another boff. Each one of those (beyond the first or second tac/sci/eng) is equivalent to a kit variant that you might want to swap in with this proposed system so the question becomes how is this update better than ponying up for a few extra boff slots.

Of course if you only want to use a very particular set of officers for all your ground missions kits would be preferable but consider that with this revamp you'll be taking training away as a single officer contact with incredibly low costs and throwing the process up to the exchange (and while low-level modules are cheap now wait until there's actually demand for them which you wouldn't be able to supplement with fleet, rep, or lock box gear since those are all high level.) That's a lot of hassle just to add easier customization to your dedicated ground team.

Where I see the most potential in BOFF kits its actually those new kit modules which aren't available from the boff training contacts. As it is we don't have an easy system where Cryptic could add those abilities in and therefore however ground powers evolve with each of these additions our boffs are stuck using the same old template. For that reason though we would need to enable XII gear which might require some fine tuning in order to keep the power down to managable proportions (so we don't break all of STO's boff-ready ground content.)

It would be worth it to have more stuff to play with in Boff customization, but it would be a pretty big design challenge to get right.