So, what will happen to my Android Bridge Officer Candidate with ES3? Will Bridge Officer Candidate's abilities be wiped?! Or will they retain them?
Whatever your boffs have now, they will retain, unless something changes when this goes live. Applies to commissioned boffs and candidates. Candidates' abilities aren't currently showing in their tooltips, but they're still there when commissioned.
Special commissioned boffs (I'm not sure if the Android is included here or not -- the intelligence officers from the Delta pack aren't) will regain their rare skills in addition to whatever you've trained them in.
Special commissioned boffs (I'm not sure if the Android is included here or not -- the intelligence officers from the Delta pack aren't) will regain their rare skills in addition to whatever you've trained them in.
Why wouldn't Intelligence officers from the Delta Rising Operations Pack be included? That seems like a bug to me. According to markhawkman, science officers from the pack come with Feign Disintegration III, and engineering officers from the pack come with Electromagnetic Pulse Probe III.
According to the STO wiki, Electromagnetic Pulse Probe III is a rare bridge officer ability. I'm not sure about Feign Disintegration III; no color is assigned to that ability in the table on the wiki page.
Why wouldn't Intelligence officers from the Delta Rising Operations Pack be included? That seems like a bug to me. According to markhawkman, science officers from the pack come with Feign Disintegration III, and engineering officers from the pack come with Electromagnetic Pulse Probe III.
According to the STO wiki, Electromagnetic Pulse Probe III is a rare bridge officer ability. I'm not sure about Feign Disintegration III; no color is assigned to that ability in the table on the wiki page.
You can just claim those boffs over again as many times as you like, so it's really not that big of deal to get those abilities back. Most of the delta boffs don't even come with rank 3 skills. Nothing gets "wiped" by this system, everything you have on your boffs is still there.
I believe they are referring to the Plasma weapons that were only available through the dilithium store, before its removal. They had different models, and matched the common versions that were available from vendors to the Romulan faction.
I have the Full Auto Rifle (VR Mk XI) from the dil store on my Fed main, and it is a pretty decent gun - it is a shame there is no way to get or make them anymore.
You can just claim those boffs over again as many times as you like, so it's really not that big of deal to get those abilities back. Most of the delta boffs don't even come with rank 3 skills. Nothing gets "wiped" by this system, everything you have on your boffs is still there.
By that reasoning, TS3 doesn't need to be restored on the Jem'Hadar boff, since I can play "Facility 4028" as many times as I want. Suppose I trained my Jem'Hadar boff in BO3. I could keep my current Jem'Hadar boff with BO3, or I could dismiss him and claim a new one with TS3. But what if I want both? If TS3 is automatically restored as borticus said, then I can have both. If old abilities aren't restored on reclaimable boffs, then I can't.
Cryptic is doing a good thing with the special boffs, but having to get a new Jem'Hadar to gain TS3 wouldn't be that big of deal to me. I was already planning on doing just that when this revamp was announced, before warpdust and Borticus mentioned them regaining the abilities they came with. It'd be nice if it extended to the intel boffs too, but I'm not too torn up that it's not.
Let's say you have the Jem'hadar Boff from the "2800" series. He comes with Torpedo Spread 3, but you could have trained him in any other Tactical Commander ability, thereby losing TS3. Example: Let's say you retrained this guy in APBeta3.
When this feature goes live, we're planning to restore rare powers like this to the Boffs that originally had them. As a result, you will log in and see that your Jem'Hadar Boff now has access to either TS3 or APBeta3. Both powers will already be Trained on him, and you'll just have to choose which to use.
That's the plan.
Okay, new suggestion. Have Borticus do systems explanations instead of Warpdustdev. Because I just had to wipe a post up in General Discussion flaming Cryptic unnecessarily. Mea culpa.
"Great War! / And I cannot take more! / Great tour! / I keep on marching on / I play the great score / There will be no encore / Great War! / The War to End All Wars"
— Sabaton, "Great War"
Why in hell does the devs think that the way we had trained our BOFFs needed revamping? Was it because there wasn't enough dil sinks in the game already? Or is it because they want to make sure to attach a dil tax to everything we do in game now?
At the rate it's going, the devs will probably think it's a good idea to attach a dil price for every time we use a boff ability in combat.
Soon, it'll be that we have to have x amount of dil before accepting a certain mission or it will be impossible to complete.
Wait, cra.. crafted?! Are you saying we won't be able to train Intel skills ourselves any more, directly, like we can now??!
I'd say so. The feeling I get from this entire "revamp" is to move BOff training from the Captain / specialty dudes in a couple of bases to the crafting system / stores / exchange...
Main thrust of this goes like this. Pre-revamp, to get a Sci with, say, GW III, you'd need to trade him to a trustworthy science captain with 6 grav gens (or whatever skill level ties to GW III) and have said officer execute the training.
Most specialty BOffs, being Bound to Character, couldn't make this jump to get the skill.
With the new system, said Science Captain crafts up a GW III Book, and hands it off to you (or sells it to you via the exchange). Your officer never leaves your hands to get the skill, so it can be placed on whoever you want, even those bound-to-character purple Hierarchy and Voth Scis, for example...
Posts indicate that any skill you currently can train a BOff in will automatically show up in the "BOff skill crafting school"...
Yeah, this means that when I want to train one of my own BOffs in GW III (as I tend to play Sci way too much), instead of clicking "Train -> pick officer -> GW III", I have more hoops to jump through (increases my average play time - hooray metrics) and some lovely extra costs (now I hear a Dil sink for these lovely grade III books), but in the long run it'll be easier for me to get those other IIIs for my BOffs on those days that I take my Sci captain and stuff him in a cruiser or escort...
Detecting big-time "anti-old-school" bias here. NX? Lobi. TOS/TMP Connie? Super-promotion-box. (aka the two hardest ways to get ships) Excelsior & all 3 TNG "big hero" ships? C-Store. Please Equalize...
To rob a line: [quote: Mariemaia Kushrenada] Forum Posting is much like an endless waltz. The three beats of war, peace and revolution continue on forever. However, opinions will change upon the reading of my post.[/quote]
Um, yes?! These aren't skills other Captains could train for you: being able to train those was the result of having earned 22 (or so) Specialization points in Intel.
So I sign in after the update and like, what the hell? My Romulan Boffs, purchased from the fleet embassy, all of their skills have been changed or reset... I cannot play my beam boat right now because tac boffs have cannon skills and I need beam skills. Soo now I have to wait hours, spend DIL, crafting items, EC, and whatever else I need to do JUST TO GET MY BOFFS BACK TO WHERE THEY WERE BEFORE THE PATCH.
Rage doesn't even begin to describe my feelings on this patch.
So I sign in after the update and like, what the hell? My Romulan Boffs, purchased from the fleet embassy, all of their skills have been changed or reset... I cannot play my beam boat right now because tac boffs have cannon skills and I need beam skills. Soo now I have to wait hours, spend DIL, crafting items, EC, and whatever else I need to do JUST TO GET MY BOFFS BACK TO WHERE THEY WERE BEFORE THE PATCH.
Rage doesn't even begin to describe my feelings on this patch.
Open your stations window and set your original abilities back. They shouldn't be lost. They were merely replaced in the 'active' state by abilities they added to those handcrafted Boffs. The added abilities are the ones those Boffs originally came with and now you can choose between them at will (and add any other ones you may like).
TOIVA, Toi Vaxx, Toia Vix, Toveg, T'vritha, To Vrax: Bring in the Allegiance class. Toi'Va, Ti'vath, Toivia, Ty'Vris, Tia Vex, Toi'Virth: Add Tier 6 KDF Carrier and Raider. Tae'Va, T'Vaya, To'Var, Tevra, T'Vira, To'Vrak: Give us Asylums for Romulans.
Nope, they were gone. I had to purchase the manuals from the bridge officer trainer to get the Boffs retrained. Basic ones like tac team and FAW2 all had to get repurchased.
I already had my boffs trained in all the high-end skills I needed, in some cases paying a fortune in EC, which I got via Master Keys (I'm lazy, and thus WAS a good customer).
Today I was looking forward to going into the new Romulan Mystery missions. Thanks to your inability to introduce a new system without totally stuffing everything up, that is no longer an option.
I already had my boffs trained in all the high-end skills I needed, in some cases paying a fortune in EC, which I got via Master Keys (I'm lazy, and thus WAS a good customer).
Today I was looking forward to going into the new Romulan Mystery missions. Thanks to your inability to introduce a new system without totally stuffing everything up, that is no longer an option.
Fix this mess, and do it properly this time.
I've really lost patience with this, Cryptic.
I have to admit, I don't think it's ever been this bad. All my loadouts are screwed up, everywhere; and with all boffs unslotted by default (whose brilliant idea was that?!), and their abilities changed, it's a total mess figuring out even who goes where again.
And NO boff abilites should have been automagically changed to begin with. If they originally came with special abilities, then those should have been passively added to their respective list of learned skills, and not passive-aggressively have been forced on the boffs, the way they did it now.
This sets loadouts back a year or so; and then some.
Yeah I had one out of about sixteen BOFFs whose skills were reset.
I've retrained him, but it was a little of a pain.
A huge pain with the insane Lag on ESD.
"Rise like Lions after slumber, In unvanquishable number, Shake your chains to earth like dew, Which in sleep had fallen on you-Ye are many they are few"
Why the default is the old skill (you know, the one you dont want) is beyond me. I just checked, and all my bridge candidates became stupid . . . I knew this was going to happen, it just amazes me that this is how they planned to do it
Do I understand this right? You have to get 22 specialization points before a captain can train a boff in level III abilities? Also have other manuals like call in artillery II but can't seem to find where to use/train those. Thanks for your help in advance.
problem...You can no longer get any information about what a boff ability does by hovering over an icon you intend to purchase or by right clicking it. The ability to know what you are going to b uy before you buy it has been completely removed.
If I'm new to the game I have no idea what's going on. It would be wise to add the ability info back for each padd at the boff trainer.
Please make the tip pop ups affected by non-instant tooltip delay. as it is now the instant you hover over an icon a tooltip pops up and is distracting.
I looked through everything in the R&D, but I still don't have the ability to craft any of the Commander abilities, like Turret Fabrication III, or Reroute Power to Shields III.
As expected, the new boff ability system has broken the loadouts, badly. In order of grievance:
* Individually 'picked' abilities per boff are no longer reflected in the loadouts/tray. It may only look that way when you switch loadouts, and back, and never made any changes to the boffs' abilities inbetween; but as soon as you change boff abilities (to be used in another loadout), you'll see the individually 'picked' abilities per boff are no part of the loadouts.
For example: I have trained the storyline Intel Hierarchy boff, 'Mr. Potato Head', aka N'hlox, trained in HE1 and IT1. He's part of one loadout. When I needed him for another loadout -- the whole alleged purpose of this change -- I changed his abilities to TS1 and HE2, and also saved a loadout for it. When I switch back to the first loadout, however, he's still set to the latter 2 abilities, thus rendering loadouts useless overnight.
* Discharging a boff now results in a disaster akin to discharging a ship: instead of using a database pointer system (like every programming language after 1980), Cryptic uses 'fixed' positions for the boffs, thus horribly TRIBBLE up your loadouts when their physical position in the list shifts.
* Switching loadouts often leaves several stations empty. And no, putting the boffs back manually does not put their abilities back on the tray.
* In your 'U' screen, your boffs are listed with their default abilities. Maybe not an issue when you have 3 boffs or something, but good luck searching for that boff you needed for a loadout, but who no longer displays the abilities you trained him/her in!
The grievance for this one is compounded by the fact that you, Cryptic, purposely emptied all loadouts upon the dreaded patch.
I can't sell or email any of my bridge officer candidates.
I haven't tried/tested it yet but I'm almost certain I can't trade them either.
This needs to be fixed immediately. Totally annoying when I'm starting up a new Captain and can't mail them the credits needed for the Exchange or the Boffs from another character.
Comments
Whatever your boffs have now, they will retain, unless something changes when this goes live. Applies to commissioned boffs and candidates. Candidates' abilities aren't currently showing in their tooltips, but they're still there when commissioned.
Special commissioned boffs (I'm not sure if the Android is included here or not -- the intelligence officers from the Delta pack aren't) will regain their rare skills in addition to whatever you've trained them in.
Why wouldn't Intelligence officers from the Delta Rising Operations Pack be included? That seems like a bug to me. According to markhawkman, science officers from the pack come with Feign Disintegration III, and engineering officers from the pack come with Electromagnetic Pulse Probe III.
http://sto-forum.perfectworld.com/showpost.php?p=19926161&postcount=16
According to the STO wiki, Electromagnetic Pulse Probe III is a rare bridge officer ability. I'm not sure about Feign Disintegration III; no color is assigned to that ability in the table on the wiki page.
http://sto.gamepedia.com/Bridge_officer_abilities
Can't you train Electromagnetic Pulse Probe III and Feign Disintegration III yourself?
Still, I find it outrageous if those Delta pack Intel boffs especially get wiped: people paid good money for that pack!
My character Tsin'xing
I'm not entirely sure; I was going by the wiki. It looks like someone updated the wiki after I made that post, so maybe you can.
By that reasoning, TS3 doesn't need to be restored on the Jem'Hadar boff, since I can play "Facility 4028" as many times as I want. Suppose I trained my Jem'Hadar boff in BO3. I could keep my current Jem'Hadar boff with BO3, or I could dismiss him and claim a new one with TS3. But what if I want both? If TS3 is automatically restored as borticus said, then I can have both. If old abilities aren't restored on reclaimable boffs, then I can't.
Okay, new suggestion. Have Borticus do systems explanations instead of Warpdustdev. Because I just had to wipe a post up in General Discussion flaming Cryptic unnecessarily. Mea culpa.
— Sabaton, "Great War"
Check out https://unitedfederationofpla.net/s/
Wait, cra.. crafted?! Are you saying we won't be able to train Intel skills ourselves any more, directly, like we can now??!
My character Tsin'xing
Why in hell does the devs think that the way we had trained our BOFFs needed revamping? Was it because there wasn't enough dil sinks in the game already? Or is it because they want to make sure to attach a dil tax to everything we do in game now?
At the rate it's going, the devs will probably think it's a good idea to attach a dil price for every time we use a boff ability in combat.
Soon, it'll be that we have to have x amount of dil before accepting a certain mission or it will be impossible to complete.
I'd say so. The feeling I get from this entire "revamp" is to move BOff training from the Captain / specialty dudes in a couple of bases to the crafting system / stores / exchange...
Main thrust of this goes like this. Pre-revamp, to get a Sci with, say, GW III, you'd need to trade him to a trustworthy science captain with 6 grav gens (or whatever skill level ties to GW III) and have said officer execute the training.
Most specialty BOffs, being Bound to Character, couldn't make this jump to get the skill.
With the new system, said Science Captain crafts up a GW III Book, and hands it off to you (or sells it to you via the exchange). Your officer never leaves your hands to get the skill, so it can be placed on whoever you want, even those bound-to-character purple Hierarchy and Voth Scis, for example...
Posts indicate that any skill you currently can train a BOff in will automatically show up in the "BOff skill crafting school"...
Yeah, this means that when I want to train one of my own BOffs in GW III (as I tend to play Sci way too much), instead of clicking "Train -> pick officer -> GW III", I have more hoops to jump through (increases my average play time - hooray metrics) and some lovely extra costs (now I hear a Dil sink for these lovely grade III books), but in the long run it'll be easier for me to get those other IIIs for my BOffs on those days that I take my Sci captain and stuff him in a cruiser or escort...
To rob a line: [quote: Mariemaia Kushrenada] Forum Posting is much like an endless waltz. The three beats of war, peace and revolution continue on forever. However, opinions will change upon the reading of my post.[/quote]
Um, yes?! These aren't skills other Captains could train for you: being able to train those was the result of having earned 22 (or so) Specialization points in Intel.
Staring to feel upset again.
Rage doesn't even begin to describe my feelings on this patch.
Open your stations window and set your original abilities back. They shouldn't be lost. They were merely replaced in the 'active' state by abilities they added to those handcrafted Boffs. The added abilities are the ones those Boffs originally came with and now you can choose between them at will (and add any other ones you may like).
Toi'Va, Ti'vath, Toivia, Ty'Vris, Tia Vex, Toi'Virth: Add Tier 6 KDF Carrier and Raider.
Tae'Va, T'Vaya, To'Var, Tevra, T'Vira, To'Vrak: Give us Asylums for Romulans.
Don't make ARC mandatory! Keep it optional only!
It DOES NOT WORK.
I already had my boffs trained in all the high-end skills I needed, in some cases paying a fortune in EC, which I got via Master Keys (I'm lazy, and thus WAS a good customer).
Today I was looking forward to going into the new Romulan Mystery missions. Thanks to your inability to introduce a new system without totally stuffing everything up, that is no longer an option.
Fix this mess, and do it properly this time.
I've really lost patience with this, Cryptic.
I have to admit, I don't think it's ever been this bad. All my loadouts are screwed up, everywhere; and with all boffs unslotted by default (whose brilliant idea was that?!), and their abilities changed, it's a total mess figuring out even who goes where again.
And NO boff abilites should have been automagically changed to begin with. If they originally came with special abilities, then those should have been passively added to their respective list of learned skills, and not passive-aggressively have been forced on the boffs, the way they did it now.
This sets loadouts back a year or so; and then some.
I've retrained him, but it was a little of a pain.
A huge pain with the insane Lag on ESD.
If I'm new to the game I have no idea what's going on. It would be wise to add the ability info back for each padd at the boff trainer.
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* Individually 'picked' abilities per boff are no longer reflected in the loadouts/tray. It may only look that way when you switch loadouts, and back, and never made any changes to the boffs' abilities inbetween; but as soon as you change boff abilities (to be used in another loadout), you'll see the individually 'picked' abilities per boff are no part of the loadouts.
For example: I have trained the storyline Intel Hierarchy boff, 'Mr. Potato Head', aka N'hlox, trained in HE1 and IT1. He's part of one loadout. When I needed him for another loadout -- the whole alleged purpose of this change -- I changed his abilities to TS1 and HE2, and also saved a loadout for it. When I switch back to the first loadout, however, he's still set to the latter 2 abilities, thus rendering loadouts useless overnight.
* Discharging a boff now results in a disaster akin to discharging a ship: instead of using a database pointer system (like every programming language after 1980), Cryptic uses 'fixed' positions for the boffs, thus horribly TRIBBLE up your loadouts when their physical position in the list shifts.
* Switching loadouts often leaves several stations empty. And no, putting the boffs back manually does not put their abilities back on the tray.
* In your 'U' screen, your boffs are listed with their default abilities. Maybe not an issue when you have 3 boffs or something, but good luck searching for that boff you needed for a loadout, but who no longer displays the abilities you trained him/her in!
The grievance for this one is compounded by the fact that you, Cryptic, purposely emptied all loadouts upon the dreaded patch.
This needs to be fixed immediately. Totally annoying when I'm starting up a new Captain and can't mail them the credits needed for the Exchange or the Boffs from another character.
I can not train Tovan Khev as an intelligenc specialist. Apparently this is also true with other "special" boffs?