I discovered this in the final hour of the beta, but only got around to posting today.
If you are not in Red Alert you can switch your Bridge Officers.
If you pop something like Science Team I or High Yield Torpedo, then switch your Bridge Officers to something else, you still get the other Bridge Officers powers active.
Now I know that some people probably already know this, and they're going to be annoyed with a post like this, but it's a bug, and could lead to some serious balance issues.
I was able to run Fire At Will along with High Yield Torpedo, and use two separate Science Officer powers.
I was promoting my Tact BO from ensign to Lt. and it said there was an error, so i did it again. Next thing I knew my BO was Lt Cmdr (which is the rank I was) which ment on the ground i could use his 3rd ability.
I'm sorry, I thought this was the procedure when we have a gameplay bug.
Where do I submit a ticket to ?
Go here http://www.startrekonline.com/support and at the bottom of the page is the "In Game" support section, click on "Review Help Tickets" and then create a new ticket. It would have been easier to submit the ticket while you were still in the game.
Haha, it probably would have been easier, but it didn't seem that much of problem at the time, in fact it what quite useful, but I was thinking about it a lot recently and I felt pretty weird with having such a glitch present in the game.
gameplay ticket while servers are down is quite hard to do. Reporting bugs on the forums, in the correct forum, is an accepted procedure too (though tickets are preferred but since there's a character limit on the ticket sometimes the forum post is better).
That said, it's also good practice to keep the bug reports in separate threads to avoid confusion.
And on a final note... I'd hardly say that switching BOffs while out of combat is a bug. I can see that it can cause a little problem where the effects of the boffs power are over a long duration, but it's at most once per combat, not a big deal. It'd be easily solvable with a boff switch delay after a power has been used (the longest duration i've seen for a space power is 30 secs).
But honestly I'm not even sure this isn't by design. The drawbacks are minimal and it encourages building many boffs and using them all. Afterall it's not like you can use many really powerful abilities or stack an ability with itself.
gameplay ticket while servers are down is quite hard to do. Reporting bugs on the forums, in the correct forum, is an accepted procedure too (though tickets are preferred but since there's a character limit on the ticket sometimes the forum post is better).
That said, it's also good practice to keep the bug reports in separate threads to avoid confusion.
And on a final note... I'd hardly say that switching BOffs while out of combat is a bug. I can see that it can cause a little problem where the effects of the boffs power are over a long duration, but it's at most once per combat, not a big deal. It'd be easily solvable with a boff switch delay after a power has been used (the longest duration i've seen for a space power is 30 secs).
But honestly I'm not even sure this isn't by design. The drawbacks are minimal and it encourages building many boffs and using them all. Afterall it's not like you can use many really powerful abilities or stack an ability with itself.
it appears that it is almost impossible to submit a ticket right now. i'm trying to submit one for an account issue and am not having any success.
EDIT: apparently i don't know how to follow my own instructions.
and you're correct about the procedure of reporting bugs and keeping bug report threads separate.
i think if you read his post the bug isn't that you can switch bridge officers, it's that when you do switch officers you still have access to the previous bridge officers power. so even though you only have one tactical station, by switching tact BOs you are able to use all the tact BOs powers when you should only be able to use the tact BO's power that is slotted in that station. please correct me if i'm wrong.
While switching probably isnt a bug, the fact that it cancels cooldowns might be.
For example out of combat i can switch from a hull repper bo to a shield repper bo and back. And while the global countdown is still active the 45 sec power cooldown is reset. Very useful for a quick repair job so i can get pack to the fight
The more significant bug is something I posted about and reported a couple days back during Beta - on top of the fact that you can swap the officers while out of combat, it also causes the game to stop tracking their cooldown, as well.
IE: If you have an officer with a long cooldown, you can pop it, switch to a different officer, and when switching back, pop the cooldown again, because the act of swapping the officers in and out causes all abilities to go on a universal cooldown - the universal cooldown overwrites the individual ability's longer cooldown.
You could also access #stoqa mIRC channel and talk to them about it there.
Do the effects stack? (i.e. two High Yield Torps) or just overwrite? If they stack that's a critical/severe bug. It still seems major as I can see this affecting a skill such as Reverse Shield Polarity at the start of combat and getting it back 20 shortly after the global cooldown expires.
I do not think they stack in such a way like that, but yes, popping one just before a fight, then another nearly straight away is what you can do with it.
o snap so you could preload 3 boffs of tacticle abilities in your klingon bird of prey and then load 3 engie boffs to tank with as you rain down death upon the noob fed.
Comments
I was promoting my Tact BO from ensign to Lt. and it said there was an error, so i did it again. Next thing I knew my BO was Lt Cmdr (which is the rank I was) which ment on the ground i could use his 3rd ability.
and yes, i reported it.
You should make a whole new topic for yours since it seems a more important issue to fix.
not to be a double TRIBBLE, but YOU should be submitting a ticket about this and not just posting about it in the forum.
Where do I submit a ticket to ?
EDIT: Found it
Go here http://www.startrekonline.com/support and at the bottom of the page is the "In Game" support section, click on "Review Help Tickets" and then create a new ticket. It would have been easier to submit the ticket while you were still in the game.
I'm submitting now.
EDIT: Here is my ticket number - #550025
That said, it's also good practice to keep the bug reports in separate threads to avoid confusion.
And on a final note... I'd hardly say that switching BOffs while out of combat is a bug. I can see that it can cause a little problem where the effects of the boffs power are over a long duration, but it's at most once per combat, not a big deal. It'd be easily solvable with a boff switch delay after a power has been used (the longest duration i've seen for a space power is 30 secs).
But honestly I'm not even sure this isn't by design. The drawbacks are minimal and it encourages building many boffs and using them all. Afterall it's not like you can use many really powerful abilities or stack an ability with itself.
But still, I really don't think that the Devs intended for us to be able to do this.
it appears that it is almost impossible to submit a ticket right now. i'm trying to submit one for an account issue and am not having any success.
EDIT: apparently i don't know how to follow my own instructions.
and you're correct about the procedure of reporting bugs and keeping bug report threads separate.
i think if you read his post the bug isn't that you can switch bridge officers, it's that when you do switch officers you still have access to the previous bridge officers power. so even though you only have one tactical station, by switching tact BOs you are able to use all the tact BOs powers when you should only be able to use the tact BO's power that is slotted in that station. please correct me if i'm wrong.
but the new bridge officer's skill isn't active?
I have for example, High Yield Torpedo as my Tactical Officer, I activate this skill.
Then I go into my assignments tab and swap my Tactical Officer to someone that has, for example, Fire At Will.
I then can activate this skill with High Yield Torpedo still being active, and it works too.
and so does fire at will, correct?
that's exactly what i said.
I was just clarifying just in case anyone wasn't totally understanding.
For example out of combat i can switch from a hull repper bo to a shield repper bo and back. And while the global countdown is still active the 45 sec power cooldown is reset. Very useful for a quick repair job so i can get pack to the fight
IE: If you have an officer with a long cooldown, you can pop it, switch to a different officer, and when switching back, pop the cooldown again, because the act of swapping the officers in and out causes all abilities to go on a universal cooldown - the universal cooldown overwrites the individual ability's longer cooldown.
What about kits that grant defence or temporary attack bonus abilities? If you activate and switch these would it work too?
Maybe Cryptic will look into my bug ticket and sort it out.
Do the effects stack? (i.e. two High Yield Torps) or just overwrite? If they stack that's a critical/severe bug. It still seems major as I can see this affecting a skill such as Reverse Shield Polarity at the start of combat and getting it back 20 shortly after the global cooldown expires.