Lately, you have developed a gift for having questions I unfortunately can't address for various reasons. :cool: I have definitely been reading them.
For example, there is no way in a million years I am going to add fuel to an argument between Federation players who want Orion duty officers and Orion player captains and KDF players who want Orions to stay exclusive to the KDF. I have some sense of self-preservation... :eek:
Oh is that what it is... lol
Orions arent exclusive to the KDF though. Not since Diplomacy was added to the game. Issylt is 300something points from rescuing an Orion girl from the clutches of... some... thing.
By aimed at different species, do you mean, for example, Andorian or Orion themed assignments? Or assignments for Andorian and Orion players? The latter does not happen in the current system; the former does to a limited extent, and may well go more in that direction as time goes on.
The former. I fully realize that the game poses some restrictions on species-specific things in that it is still set up to sport *two* factions, even in cases where individual species that are considered part of the larger group may have potential for much more.
That said, I suppose most such assignments may be explained as "available" to other player species even if they seem tailored more to one or few specific races. For example, a smuggling run or piracy may be seen as something Orion first but are perfectly "justifiable" for other KDF Captains as well (Nausicaan mercenaries, down-on-luck Klingons, etc), and it may be up to the individual player to decide if his or her character would endeavour on such paths or not.
This of course would be based on whether or not the KDF and Starfleet will sport a few different possible assignments each? Or was this what you implied when referring to player species?
I'm just assuming that the KDF will have some different options now because I've seen an "Execute" button in the Klingon UI and I doubt this would be something that'd be available to Starfleet players. Anything beyond a basic level of diversity between factions (meaning diversity based on player species) would be super-cool, but not something that could be expected. I'm very positively surprised that the system may favor specific duty officer species already! I think this may even be more important than the other way around, after all it's the duty officers that get sent on the mission, not the Captain.
If you ever do tweak the system more towards one player species or another, I think all you'd need to do was to modify the chances that certain assignments may pop up.
Oh and kudos for being so active here and answering all our inquiries. As you can see, we're all very excited about this.
Orions arent exclusive to the KDF though. Not since Diplomacy was added to the game. Issylt is 300something points from rescuing an Orion girl from the clutches of... some... thing.
And that is still a point of contention for some players...
There are some genesplicing tribble assignments (and I have been working to come up with ideas for other uses for tribbles) that change a tribble to a random other tribble of the same tier. We have talked about coming up with a new tribble for the system as well, but that's very drawing board-ish at the moment.
Will the KDF be getting tribble genesplicing missions in any capacity?
It makes sense (at least to me) that some Kliingons (particularly scientists) could look past their utter hatred for tribbles, and might be interested in vivisecting a few of them to see what makes them tick, and to see if they can't stop the blasted things from breeding endlessly; a gene sequence they could turn off. What a glorious hero of the empire they'd be if they managed that!
Failure of the assignment could easily see the death of the doffs sent on the assignment via 'suffocation by endless tribble reproduction' (that did almost happen to Kirk ), success could just be that they have found out a few more things about the tribble genome that giveshints as to how they have their amazing reproduction powers.
Other Klingons could be interested in splicing, for example, targ genes with tribble genes to make a Tribble Predator, that they could then seed on tribble-infested worlds to cull them, freeing themselves up to engage in glorious battle.
Almost certainly, quite a bit later. Department Heads/First Officer as a system is fully designed, integrated, with issues worked out and much of the code worked out. Conversion of First Officers to a playable captain is an idea that has been tossed around in various conversations.
Personally I am more interested in the Department Heads, if I want to make my first office a Capt. I just re-roll with the same "concept". So it is good to hear the Department heads system is coming along... any chance the Duty Office and Department Heads systems will launch co-currently?
Personally I am more interested in the Department Heads, if I want to make my first office a Capt. I just re-roll with the same "concept". So it is good to hear the Department heads system is coming along... any chance the Duty Office and Department Heads systems will launch co-currently?
Nope, doff system first, department heads later.
Been that way for a while and as of last dev comments I do believe it is still that way.
I'm very happy enlisted and not just commissioned officers are making it into the game finally. I know you can use the chief pip on BOffs but it's just not the same.
And that is still a point of contention for some players...
As an Orion player since launch (even if Im mainly Fed), I have no problem with them being available to the Feds. The latest movie makes it officially canon that Orions do get into Starfleet.
As an Orion player since launch (even if Im mainly Fed), I have no problem with them being available to the Feds. The latest movie makes it officially canon that Orions do get into Starfleet.
That's an alt timeline though
I would have guessed she was abnormal like Worf in TNG or Nog in DS9.
That's an alt timeline though
I would have guessed she was abnormal like Worf in TNG or Nog in DS9.
Doesnt matter, its still canon. If it was in a book, I could see it being in dispute, but movies and tv are official. Besides, if CBS didnt want Orions available to the feds, I think they would have said something when Cryptic made them available to to us through Diplomacy. ^_^
There are some genesplicing tribble assignments (and I have been working to come up with ideas for other uses for tribbles) that change a tribble to a random other tribble of the same tier. We have talked about coming up with a new tribble for the system as well, but that's very drawing board-ish at the moment.
I could imagine one of these experiments going horribly wrong (or right for that matter) and creating a monstrosity called Polygeminus grex frankenstein. Mwahaha :eek:
I doubt it, they never seem to do anything that requires intense physical work from what I remember. They're listeners which would make them more like counselor Troi.
Doesnt matter, its still canon. If it was in a book, I could see it being in dispute, but movies and tv are official. Besides, if CBS didnt want Orions available to the feds, I think they would have said something when Cryptic made them available to to us through Diplomacy. ^_^
I really don't want to derail the Doff discussion here. So, I'll put it this way: There are 2 "main" ST realities at present (it could be argued the mirror universe is a 3rd, but we'll save that for another day). Current "prime" with the destruction of the Hobus star (Romulus' home system) - in which Vulcan still exists. (This timeframe is the the ancestor (by 40 years) of the current one STO uses.) The other ST reality now is the one in which Nero travels back and interferes with the Federation timeline leading to the most recent Star Trek movie.
So, at present, STO is obeying current ST prime universe logic. While nothing has officially ever disavowed the logic of having Orions in Starfleet, it has never been canonically established in the 'prime' universe. I can understand STO wanting to walk that tightrope and erring on the side of what is established, and later embellished upon, in the prime universe.
Doesnt matter, its still canon. If it was in a book, I could see it being in dispute, but movies and tv are official. Besides, if CBS didnt want Orions available to the feds, I think they would have said something when Cryptic made them available to to us through Diplomacy. ^_^
Wait, what? :eek:
I knew we could get Breen, Borg, Reman & photonic, but we can have Orion BOs as feds too?
However, back on thread topic. Has there been any new timeline updates to when DOffs are going to hit the test server?
I could imagine one of these experiments going horribly wrong (or right for that matter) and creating a monstrosity called Polygeminus grex frankenstein. Mwahaha :eek:
I wouldn't mind it accidentally creating that super big Tribble that kept taking over Kirk's chair, in TAS.
I could imagine one of these experiments going horribly wrong (or right for that matter) and creating a monstrosity called Polygeminus grex frankenstein. Mwahaha :eek:
If you become a full ambassador you get can a KDF faction member as a BOff as part of a diplomatic stationing.
I want mine to be a waitress in my crew lounge galley. :S
Well... she is an Orion slave girl... she seems like the obvious choice. At the moment the game plonks her dead centre inbetween the con seats... wiggling her butt in front of my Captain. There's no good reason for her to stand there... she's just a minx causing trouble.
This of course would be based on whether or not the KDF and Starfleet will sport a few different possible assignments each? Or was this what you implied when referring to player species?
I'm just assuming that the KDF will have some different options now because I've seen an "Execute" button in the Klingon UI and I doubt this would be something that'd be available to Starfleet players.
There is certainly some degree of distinction between Starfleet and Klingon assignments. Even aside from Diplomacy and Marauding assignments, there are probably another 15% or so assignments that are specific to one faction or the other. Some of these do deal with specific species and internal politics.
Any hints at how long until the system is ready for braoder testing? Also any chance the marketing guys could approve any more screenshots? :-)
General dates have been updated on the first page of this thread for the duty officer system; there are currently no dates for the department head functionality.
What would you be specifically interested in seeing, as far as screenshots go?
Personally I am more interested in the Department Heads, if I want to make my first office a Capt. I just re-roll with the same "concept". So it is good to hear the Department heads system is coming along... any chance the Duty Office and Department Heads systems will launch co-currently?
Barring Q dropping into the office and thinking it would be really funny to radically alter our reality, there is, unfortunately, zero chance of the department heads system launching concurrently with the initial launch of the duty officer system.
Right, and SOON (tm) we will be able to make Boffs into captains.
I don't believe this is likely to come anytime soon, barring developments happening outside my awareness. It is something we would like to do, but there are a lot of technical and design implications to implementing this feature.
Just wondering if at any point (cos I'd rly like to know) has anyone asked:
There's gonna be El Aurian bartender Doffs right? (very rare obviously)
I do believe that's a subspace temporal anomaly I see on sensors...I wonder what we might find if we investigated that freighter caught in its eddies...? :cool:
Commendation XP scaling is very different than skill points because commendation points have nothing to do with your player level, whereas skill points do. In addition, for unavoidable reasons of current scaling, DXP will remain on a different scaling schema than the rest of the commendation category points.
I assume that Commendation XP scaling has similar modifiers as skill points. Rarity and length of assignment modifiers I assume would be the main two that affect how much Commendation XP you get. However, the modifier values for the commendation XP are different than skill points. Skill points has an X modifier value for doing very rare assignments, but Commendation XP has a Y modifier value for doing very rare assignments.
Barring Q dropping into the office and thinking it would be really funny to radically alter our reality, there is, unfortunately, zero chance of the department heads system launching concurrently with the initial launch of the duty officer system.
I will have to see what kind of weight I pull with the continuum
In all seriousness though, I'm excited for both systems, while I'd love to see the Department heads first, as it is nearer and dearer to my heart I can't wait to send out my duty officers on their first assignments for the glory of the Empire.
How about we weave those into the missions a bit, you see a communication popup
"Hey Captain try a Saurian Brandy, might convince those bad guys to not kill you" from my always loved Bartender aboard the lounge.
Also has nothing directly to do with Doff's but can we please get a real Chef/Bartender into our lounges on the ships. It feels so empty seeing the kitchen area being unattended to (and NO TALAXIAN!).
As far as screenshots go, I would love to see a Mona Lisa pixelate picture that is put together with all 6.000 Doff's . Or some secret picture of a Tribble Doff?
On a more seriouse note, some screens of upcoming assignments for our Doff's. Maybe some of the more exotic ones to drool over.
*dream mode*
Maybe one day you enter your ready room from the bridge, lean over a datapad that will get zoomed into our view and on there is the assigment list. After that you tick of some assignments, maybe 1-2 of the Doffs walk into your ready room to report for Duty on the Assignment or some random Doff that has completed his assignment hands you a report of how he has done. *dream mode off*
That reminds me of a question that I haven't seen answered I think.
When the Doff returns from an assignment, will we only see a window with
"Assignment finnished with success, reward: xx"
Or will there actually be some small window with a bit of text how our brave Doff fared in the assignment what he has done for us and then what he came back with as reward.
For example:
Chief Perill went to the Planet of Andoria where he helped the local government of the whatever Province to repair some broken energy Couplings. The repairs went ahead of shedule and were completed flawlessly.
You gain: 120 Commendation points for Engineering Category
50 Skillpoints
50 Boff Skillpoints
70 Merits
Critical extra: 1 EPS Power Transfer MK XI console.
(for us helpless immersionists that love every small tibit of extra information)
I'd love to see some of those easily replicated yet not already present in-game species. Breccians, etc etc would be great. Do Klingons get Yiridians? I know they're already in-game.
It would be wicked sweet to see a variety of aliens aside from the standard available to players, especially holograms which for some reason make more sense in my mind than most other "species".
For screenshot requests:
I'd love to see both a mission before acceptance and what is required for it/roster view as well as what the assignment window of an in-progress assignment looks like. Please tell me we can see all our rewards pre and post acceptance, that's my biggest complaint about the current game journal.
I had an idle thought that might involve the DOff Assignments...
It would be really cool if STO had a sort of Political Leaderboard that showed the strengths of various factions and sub-factions (KDF vs. Federation, House Martok vs. House Duras, Klingon vs. Gorn, etc.)
What if DO's could do Political Assignments in various categories that acted as one forum of input to such a leaderboard system? Sort of a Politics-based "Territory Control".
What if DO's could do Political Assignments in various categories that acted as one forum of input to such a leaderboard system? Sort of a Politics-based "Territory Control".
I think Territory Control should be a part of PvP exclusively; and since there will be a LOT more Feds than KDFs that endeavor such assignments (or so I imagine), the numbers would require some balancing which is achieved through PvP matches.
On the other hand, I can totally see some sort of Diplomatic PvP involving DOFFs in short-term assigments, such as see that the ambassador feels well in his querters or give our guests a tour of the station and place that surveillance device in the ambassadors quarters or stuff like that. Are there any plans to include DOFF PvP?
I think Territory Control should be a part of PvP exclusively; and since there will be a LOT more Feds than KDFs that endeavor such assignments (or so I imagine), the numbers would require some balancing which is achieved through PvP matches.
On the other hand, I can totally see some sort of Diplomatic PvP involving DOFFs in short-term assigments, such as see that the ambassador feels well in his querters or give our guests a tour of the station and place that surveillance device in the ambassadors quarters or stuff like that. Are there any plans to include DOFF PvP?
A separate system then, that separates military might from political influence?
Comments
Oh is that what it is... lol
Orions arent exclusive to the KDF though. Not since Diplomacy was added to the game. Issylt is 300something points from rescuing an Orion girl from the clutches of... some... thing.
That said, I suppose most such assignments may be explained as "available" to other player species even if they seem tailored more to one or few specific races. For example, a smuggling run or piracy may be seen as something Orion first but are perfectly "justifiable" for other KDF Captains as well (Nausicaan mercenaries, down-on-luck Klingons, etc), and it may be up to the individual player to decide if his or her character would endeavour on such paths or not.
This of course would be based on whether or not the KDF and Starfleet will sport a few different possible assignments each? Or was this what you implied when referring to player species?
I'm just assuming that the KDF will have some different options now because I've seen an "Execute" button in the Klingon UI and I doubt this would be something that'd be available to Starfleet players. Anything beyond a basic level of diversity between factions (meaning diversity based on player species) would be super-cool, but not something that could be expected. I'm very positively surprised that the system may favor specific duty officer species already! I think this may even be more important than the other way around, after all it's the duty officers that get sent on the mission, not the Captain.
If you ever do tweak the system more towards one player species or another, I think all you'd need to do was to modify the chances that certain assignments may pop up.
Oh and kudos for being so active here and answering all our inquiries. As you can see, we're all very excited about this.
And that is still a point of contention for some players...
It makes sense (at least to me) that some Kliingons (particularly scientists) could look past their utter hatred for tribbles, and might be interested in vivisecting a few of them to see what makes them tick, and to see if they can't stop the blasted things from breeding endlessly; a gene sequence they could turn off. What a glorious hero of the empire they'd be if they managed that!
Failure of the assignment could easily see the death of the doffs sent on the assignment via 'suffocation by endless tribble reproduction' (that did almost happen to Kirk
Other Klingons could be interested in splicing, for example, targ genes with tribble genes to make a Tribble Predator, that they could then seed on tribble-infested worlds to cull them, freeing themselves up to engage in glorious battle.
Personally I am more interested in the Department Heads, if I want to make my first office a Capt. I just re-roll with the same "concept". So it is good to hear the Department heads system is coming along... any chance the Duty Office and Department Heads systems will launch co-currently?
Nope, doff system first, department heads later.
Been that way for a while and as of last dev comments I do believe it is still that way.
I'm very happy enlisted and not just commissioned officers are making it into the game finally. I know you can use the chief pip on BOffs but it's just not the same.
Also, isn't specialist a title, not a rank?
As an Orion player since launch (even if Im mainly Fed), I have no problem with them being available to the Feds. The latest movie makes it officially canon that Orions do get into Starfleet.
That's an alt timeline though
I would have guessed she was abnormal like Worf in TNG or Nog in DS9.
Just wondering if at any point (cos I'd rly like to know) has anyone asked:
There's gonna be El Aurian bartender Doffs right? (very rare obviously)
Doesnt matter, its still canon. If it was in a book, I could see it being in dispute, but movies and tv are official. Besides, if CBS didnt want Orions available to the feds, I think they would have said something when Cryptic made them available to to us through Diplomacy. ^_^
Iirc it was already mentioned that someone still has to purchase the c-points that are going to be auctioned.
I could imagine one of these experiments going horribly wrong (or right for that matter) and creating a monstrosity called Polygeminus grex frankenstein. Mwahaha :eek:
I really don't want to derail the Doff discussion here. So, I'll put it this way: There are 2 "main" ST realities at present (it could be argued the mirror universe is a 3rd, but we'll save that for another day). Current "prime" with the destruction of the Hobus star (Romulus' home system) - in which Vulcan still exists. (This timeframe is the the ancestor (by 40 years) of the current one STO uses.) The other ST reality now is the one in which Nero travels back and interferes with the Federation timeline leading to the most recent Star Trek movie.
So, at present, STO is obeying current ST prime universe logic. While nothing has officially ever disavowed the logic of having Orions in Starfleet, it has never been canonically established in the 'prime' universe. I can understand STO wanting to walk that tightrope and erring on the side of what is established, and later embellished upon, in the prime universe.
Wait, what? :eek:
I knew we could get Breen, Borg, Reman & photonic, but we can have Orion BOs as feds too?
However, back on thread topic. Has there been any new timeline updates to when DOffs are going to hit the test server?
Right, and SOON (tm) we will be able to make Boffs into captains.
I wouldn't mind it accidentally creating that super big Tribble that kept taking over Kirk's chair, in TAS.
Super big tribble?
Like back in beta when you gave tribbles to boffs? ^_^
Critters, welcome to Star Trek...
Z
I want mine to be a waitress in my crew lounge galley. :S
Well... she is an Orion slave girl... she seems like the obvious choice. At the moment the game plonks her dead centre inbetween the con seats... wiggling her butt in front of my Captain. There's no good reason for her to stand there... she's just a minx causing trouble.
There is certainly some degree of distinction between Starfleet and Klingon assignments. Even aside from Diplomacy and Marauding assignments, there are probably another 15% or so assignments that are specific to one faction or the other. Some of these do deal with specific species and internal politics.
General dates have been updated on the first page of this thread for the duty officer system; there are currently no dates for the department head functionality.
What would you be specifically interested in seeing, as far as screenshots go?
Yes, the KDF has access to many of the Tribble assignments.
Barring Q dropping into the office and thinking it would be really funny to radically alter our reality, there is, unfortunately, zero chance of the department heads system launching concurrently with the initial launch of the duty officer system.
I don't believe this is likely to come anytime soon, barring developments happening outside my awareness. It is something we would like to do, but there are a lot of technical and design implications to implementing this feature.
I do believe that's a subspace temporal anomaly I see on sensors...I wonder what we might find if we investigated that freighter caught in its eddies...? :cool:
I assume that Commendation XP scaling has similar modifiers as skill points. Rarity and length of assignment modifiers I assume would be the main two that affect how much Commendation XP you get. However, the modifier values for the commendation XP are different than skill points. Skill points has an X modifier value for doing very rare assignments, but Commendation XP has a Y modifier value for doing very rare assignments.
I will have to see what kind of weight I pull with the continuum
In all seriousness though, I'm excited for both systems, while I'd love to see the Department heads first, as it is nearer and dearer to my heart I can't wait to send out my duty officers on their first assignments for the glory of the Empire.
How about we weave those into the missions a bit, you see a communication popup
"Hey Captain try a Saurian Brandy, might convince those bad guys to not kill you" from my always loved Bartender aboard the lounge.
Also has nothing directly to do with Doff's but can we please get a real Chef/Bartender into our lounges on the ships. It feels so empty seeing the kitchen area being unattended to (and NO TALAXIAN!).
As far as screenshots go, I would love to see a Mona Lisa pixelate picture that is put together with all 6.000 Doff's
On a more seriouse note, some screens of upcoming assignments for our Doff's. Maybe some of the more exotic ones to drool over.
*dream mode*
Maybe one day you enter your ready room from the bridge, lean over a datapad that will get zoomed into our view and on there is the assigment list. After that you tick of some assignments, maybe 1-2 of the Doffs walk into your ready room to report for Duty on the Assignment or some random Doff that has completed his assignment hands you a report of how he has done. *dream mode off*
That reminds me of a question that I haven't seen answered I think.
When the Doff returns from an assignment, will we only see a window with
"Assignment finnished with success, reward: xx"
Or will there actually be some small window with a bit of text how our brave Doff fared in the assignment what he has done for us and then what he came back with as reward.
For example:
Chief Perill went to the Planet of Andoria where he helped the local government of the whatever Province to repair some broken energy Couplings. The repairs went ahead of shedule and were completed flawlessly.
You gain: 120 Commendation points for Engineering Category
50 Skillpoints
50 Boff Skillpoints
70 Merits
Critical extra: 1 EPS Power Transfer MK XI console.
(for us helpless immersionists that love every small tibit of extra information)
It would be wicked sweet to see a variety of aliens aside from the standard available to players, especially holograms which for some reason make more sense in my mind than most other "species".
For screenshot requests:
I'd love to see both a mission before acceptance and what is required for it/roster view as well as what the assignment window of an in-progress assignment looks like. Please tell me we can see all our rewards pre and post acceptance, that's my biggest complaint about the current game journal.
It sounds just beautiful. Thank you!
It would be really cool if STO had a sort of Political Leaderboard that showed the strengths of various factions and sub-factions (KDF vs. Federation, House Martok vs. House Duras, Klingon vs. Gorn, etc.)
What if DO's could do Political Assignments in various categories that acted as one forum of input to such a leaderboard system? Sort of a Politics-based "Territory Control".
Thoughts?
I think Territory Control should be a part of PvP exclusively; and since there will be a LOT more Feds than KDFs that endeavor such assignments (or so I imagine), the numbers would require some balancing which is achieved through PvP matches.
On the other hand, I can totally see some sort of Diplomatic PvP involving DOFFs in short-term assigments, such as see that the ambassador feels well in his querters or give our guests a tour of the station and place that surveillance device in the ambassadors quarters or stuff like that. Are there any plans to include DOFF PvP?
A separate system then, that separates military might from political influence?