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Not a fan of "sacrificing DOFFs" to Starbases. Better idea?
mgmirkin426
Member Posts: 164 Arc User
So, I was thinking... I really kind of hate the idea of "sacrificing" DOFFs to feed the Hungy, Hungy Hipp-- err, Starbase. Why do we have to "give up" DOFFs? Will we ever be able to give up BOFFs (which seem pretty useless)? We just finished a mission where we all had to give up a bunch of green level diplomats. I think the entire fleet HATED that mission with a passion...
I like 'leveling up' DOFFs through the personnel office, where I get some kind of a reward out of it and get to do better on future DOFF missions. I don't like summarily getting rid of doffs without like-form compensation, in ways that will NEGATIVELY impact my own performance on my own DOFF missions.
What I'd kind of like to see is a set of COOPERATIVE DOFF missions for fleet starbase construction. That is, a non-destructive way to use DOFFs to complete the starbase. It "feels" more right. That is, we could send engineering DOFFs off to "upgrade power conduits" or send fabrication DOFFs off to "build phaser turrets," etc. These would be kind of "super DOFF missions," requiring fleet participation. It would also encourage people who would otherwise not necessarily use the DOFF system or upgrade their ranks & DOFF inventory to do so.
I'd envision it as a slightly larger version of DOFF missions with maybe a few more DOFFs than the typical mission required (or just MORE MISSIONS, but similar numbers of DOFFs). Certain missions would be white level, green level, blue level and purple level, with differing levels of success/failure, etc.
Basically, each fleet member could tag their DOFFs into a pool of DOFFs, from which maybe the people with permission could select the best DOFFs for the mission and assign them to get the best success percentage and/or reward bonus. Then everyone who participated gets DOFF XP out of it. This would help the fleet level up their players DOFF rankings, and it would encourage people to level up their DOFFs to better participate.
Perhaps it could even give slightly better XP rewards to those whose DOFFs were assigned the mission, medium XP rewards to those who offered their DOFFs for the mission but whose weren't selected (a small 'activity bonus') and minimal or no XP for those who didn't contribute at all.
My thought is that this might make people start using the upgrade options to bump up their DOFFs to higher levels so there's a higher chance of their DOFFs being selected as "best" for the mission and getting the highest bonuses out the other end when it completes. And/or just make people who typically don't "do" doff missions actually start using the system. I have a few friends who never bothered with it that I'm having to coach through it. Seems like this might give people an incentive to learn...?
Ideally, nobody would have to click "collect rewards," the mission would simply complete when it completes and everyone gets their DOFFs back on reserve (rather than having to kill them off). This way nobody has to "give up" their favorite DOFFs to feed a hungry starbase.
That said, maybe some of the missions would have medium, high or extreme casualty risk, so there might be still some CHANCE of losing DOFFs if the mission is poorly staffed. But not a GUARANTEED loss like the current system. And, this way, fleet members won't necessarily have to make the hard decision of whether to support the fleet by killing their DOFFs or support themselves by leveling up their DOFFs (but not having the extra doffs around to "kill off" for the fleet). We could have it both ways (being able to help the fleet by participating in missions, but ALSO being able to bump up your own DOFFs without feeling like you're going "Semper I, to heck with the other guy"). Currently I'm torn between helping myself out in leveling up my DOFF ranks vs helping the fleet by sacrificing the DOFFs I'd otherwise be using to level myself up. It would be nice if we could have it both ways: being able to help the fleet, while also being encouraged to develop one's own resources. I like to have my cake and eat it too, and I feel like this would be a better solution than the current system. I feel like it would have more of a STO feel to it too. Actually completing "missions" rather than just resource grinding & dumping.
Maybe you'd even have certain short-completion-time repeatable missions for resource grinding things like provisions or turrets, which you then use those things to complete the higher level missions. So, like, the repeatable grinding missions might be white level easy missions, which you use to get the resources to unlock the green level missions, etc. And there could even be assignment chains for some of the limited-time-missions for s/b improvements. So, you'd have to successfully complete each of the steps of the chain in order to get the improvement.
As I'm thinking about it, the grinding missions could be like "failure, success, profitable, very profitable" with higher payouts of the grinding materials for the different levels of critical success. Maybe critical success = you get all the 1000 provisions, profitable = you get 1/2 the stuff ~500, success, you get maybe 100. Failure, you get nothing...
And of course, the missions could still each require things like to'duj fighters or provisions or dilithium, etc. It would just require adapting the current doff missions system and applying it to the starbase system. We already have missions in game that require brief DOFF missions as part of the mission (some of the Bajoran / DS9 missions, if I recall right?)... Why not make Starbase leveling similar to that?
What do people think? Would this be a better solution? I think so, personally. It would treat DOFFs more like crew than like disposable commodities to perform Satanic sacrifice rituals on...
It would probably also help even out the ridiculous DOFF prices in the exchange... Since probably people wouldn't be buying up DOFFs just to dump them out of the system entirely. People would just be buying them to actually use them. Or MAYBE for leveling up. But if for leveling up, they wouldn't be making runs on SPECIFIC DOFF types, but more evenly distributing their buying, or just buying the actual USEFUL DOFFs for completing missions, and prices might once again reflect actual in-game utility rather than just which DOFFs happen to have been randomly picked as "dump this DOFF type" in starbase missions.
Just my 2c...
Best,
~MG
I like 'leveling up' DOFFs through the personnel office, where I get some kind of a reward out of it and get to do better on future DOFF missions. I don't like summarily getting rid of doffs without like-form compensation, in ways that will NEGATIVELY impact my own performance on my own DOFF missions.
What I'd kind of like to see is a set of COOPERATIVE DOFF missions for fleet starbase construction. That is, a non-destructive way to use DOFFs to complete the starbase. It "feels" more right. That is, we could send engineering DOFFs off to "upgrade power conduits" or send fabrication DOFFs off to "build phaser turrets," etc. These would be kind of "super DOFF missions," requiring fleet participation. It would also encourage people who would otherwise not necessarily use the DOFF system or upgrade their ranks & DOFF inventory to do so.
I'd envision it as a slightly larger version of DOFF missions with maybe a few more DOFFs than the typical mission required (or just MORE MISSIONS, but similar numbers of DOFFs). Certain missions would be white level, green level, blue level and purple level, with differing levels of success/failure, etc.
Basically, each fleet member could tag their DOFFs into a pool of DOFFs, from which maybe the people with permission could select the best DOFFs for the mission and assign them to get the best success percentage and/or reward bonus. Then everyone who participated gets DOFF XP out of it. This would help the fleet level up their players DOFF rankings, and it would encourage people to level up their DOFFs to better participate.
Perhaps it could even give slightly better XP rewards to those whose DOFFs were assigned the mission, medium XP rewards to those who offered their DOFFs for the mission but whose weren't selected (a small 'activity bonus') and minimal or no XP for those who didn't contribute at all.
My thought is that this might make people start using the upgrade options to bump up their DOFFs to higher levels so there's a higher chance of their DOFFs being selected as "best" for the mission and getting the highest bonuses out the other end when it completes. And/or just make people who typically don't "do" doff missions actually start using the system. I have a few friends who never bothered with it that I'm having to coach through it. Seems like this might give people an incentive to learn...?
Ideally, nobody would have to click "collect rewards," the mission would simply complete when it completes and everyone gets their DOFFs back on reserve (rather than having to kill them off). This way nobody has to "give up" their favorite DOFFs to feed a hungry starbase.
That said, maybe some of the missions would have medium, high or extreme casualty risk, so there might be still some CHANCE of losing DOFFs if the mission is poorly staffed. But not a GUARANTEED loss like the current system. And, this way, fleet members won't necessarily have to make the hard decision of whether to support the fleet by killing their DOFFs or support themselves by leveling up their DOFFs (but not having the extra doffs around to "kill off" for the fleet). We could have it both ways (being able to help the fleet by participating in missions, but ALSO being able to bump up your own DOFFs without feeling like you're going "Semper I, to heck with the other guy"). Currently I'm torn between helping myself out in leveling up my DOFF ranks vs helping the fleet by sacrificing the DOFFs I'd otherwise be using to level myself up. It would be nice if we could have it both ways: being able to help the fleet, while also being encouraged to develop one's own resources. I like to have my cake and eat it too, and I feel like this would be a better solution than the current system. I feel like it would have more of a STO feel to it too. Actually completing "missions" rather than just resource grinding & dumping.
Maybe you'd even have certain short-completion-time repeatable missions for resource grinding things like provisions or turrets, which you then use those things to complete the higher level missions. So, like, the repeatable grinding missions might be white level easy missions, which you use to get the resources to unlock the green level missions, etc. And there could even be assignment chains for some of the limited-time-missions for s/b improvements. So, you'd have to successfully complete each of the steps of the chain in order to get the improvement.
As I'm thinking about it, the grinding missions could be like "failure, success, profitable, very profitable" with higher payouts of the grinding materials for the different levels of critical success. Maybe critical success = you get all the 1000 provisions, profitable = you get 1/2 the stuff ~500, success, you get maybe 100. Failure, you get nothing...
And of course, the missions could still each require things like to'duj fighters or provisions or dilithium, etc. It would just require adapting the current doff missions system and applying it to the starbase system. We already have missions in game that require brief DOFF missions as part of the mission (some of the Bajoran / DS9 missions, if I recall right?)... Why not make Starbase leveling similar to that?
What do people think? Would this be a better solution? I think so, personally. It would treat DOFFs more like crew than like disposable commodities to perform Satanic sacrifice rituals on...
It would probably also help even out the ridiculous DOFF prices in the exchange... Since probably people wouldn't be buying up DOFFs just to dump them out of the system entirely. People would just be buying them to actually use them. Or MAYBE for leveling up. But if for leveling up, they wouldn't be making runs on SPECIFIC DOFF types, but more evenly distributing their buying, or just buying the actual USEFUL DOFFs for completing missions, and prices might once again reflect actual in-game utility rather than just which DOFFs happen to have been randomly picked as "dump this DOFF type" in starbase missions.
Just my 2c...
Best,
~MG
Post edited by mgmirkin426 on
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At least I hope they aren't used for Soylent Green production.
Right now, it feels that way... Are there a number of crew walking around the starbase proportional to the number of DOFFs fed to the starbase? I think not. In which case, they're really just Soylent Green.
I'm not saying A FEW missions "staffing the fleetyard" (an end-game mission for upgrading part of your base) couldn't require actually sacrificing DOFFs to it... But for the most part, it seems like missions could just literally be missions, where you assign some crew to do something, but you don't shoot them in the head at the end of the mission, they actually come back to your crew alive and well to complete other missions.
Upgrading power conduits isn't exactly a suicide mission. Most people usually come back from it. Y'see what I'm saying?
I mean, if the base needs to be staffed after construction it would be easy enough to add that to the missions as like an assignment chain for actually getting the upgrade going. So, you'd maybe have "staff the bar," "staff the kitchen," "staff the store" which would be easy missions, with no chance of failure, just a requirement to give up x number of DOFFs of the proper type. Maybe staffing the kitchen would even be preceded by some of the "prove your culinary skill" missions, where your chefs have to actually complete the mission successfully before they can be sacrificed. Y'know, things that might actually happen as real parts of staffing a place. I mean, you don't just take your staff and shoot them all in the head out back and call the place staffed, which is about what it feels like, currently.
Again, just my 2c.
~MG
Someone with more spare time than I should calculate (or look up?) how many people is required to run a full "Tier 5" starbase, and how many DOFFs get thrown into making a "Tier 5" Starbase.
This is something, I'd like to know as well.
Someone with a canon answer plz?
- Ash
Interested in Role Playing? Join the 12th Fleet Science division!
Are we talking just STAFFING it, or are we talking all the contractors and workmen employed in building it? Heh.
And what is the typical accidental death rate amongst the contractors building it (defective power conduits exploding, etc.)?
Cheers,
~MG
Yeah, I bet. I was torn between sacrificing a green Diplomat yesterday and selling it in the exchange for 2 mil. EC then buying about 4-5 purple Tholian DOFFs. My fleet finagled me into just tossing it into the mouth of the monster rather than going all "Semper I" and making a killing... *Sigh*
I am not fond of sacrificing my doff's for starbase missions!
Staffing it i mean lol haha, and judging my the tv shows... 26-35 people-ish die everyyear on a ship/starbase? HAha
- Ash
Interested in Role Playing? Join the 12th Fleet Science division!
Makes sense there might be ongoing "restaffing the starbase" missions, too. Or other ongoing maintenance missions "repair damage from Tholian incursion," etc. It would even be kind of cool if there might occasinoally be actual damage to the base with associated effects, like the section of the ship with gaping hole in one of the Tutorial missions, or if there's a damaged conduit, maybe an entire section goes "dark" and you have to use a flashlight until the "repair the conduits" mission completes? Wouldn't that be slightly cool anyway?
~MG
I can understand it, TO A POINT... Especially if it's literally to "staff" the starbase. But not all DOFFs who "construct" the starbase will end up staying there indefinitely. It seems to me like those who are just "constructing" it would eventually go back to heir normal duties after their jobs are done.
But, when it comes to actually bringing the fully functional Death St-- (err starbase!) online, that's when it feels more natural to have some crew "losses" as they get permanently assigned to the base.
So, for building & maintenance missions, it feels like we should get our crew back. When things are finally operational, it makes sense we'd lose some crew to "staff" the place. But most construction jobs aren't "suicide missions"... Just saying. And crew have other duties to perform when they're not "constructing" things.
~MG
Fortunately for me, as I used to work construction
That sir is what I am wondering about myself and feel is something that should be added asap
Just like with the 200,000 dilithium for special projects, the contribute duty officers seems to be more of a money sink hole to get those people that have stashed massive amount of ec, dil, etc. to use it all. Considering the vast majority of fleets are small there needs to be better balance.
Balance??? We are still talking about Cryptic/"Pay to Win Entertainment" (PWE) right?
Gotta remember, PWE cares about money, and only money
One of the constructions has come to a grinding halt, as no one is willing to pay such a stupid price for them. I'll just keep visiting star fleet acadamy every few days and requsition doffs with all my characters until i have what i need.
My character Tsin'xing
As for giving up your favorite DOffs: don't. Keep your favorite DOffs. They're worth far more in your roster than in the starbase. Only contribute extra DOffs that you don't need. As a fleet leader, I would never ask my fleet members to contribute so many DOffs that it would impair their ability to run DOff assignments. The starbase can wait.
That said, I do like the idea of DOff assignments that somehow benefit the starbase and the fleet as a whole. I'd love to see more integration between the DOff system and the fleet advancement system. But I think the core mechanic of "staffing up" the starbase is fine as is.
My character Tsin'xing
+1 to that!
Well, either that, or have some actual use for them in the game other than cluttering up the arbitrarily capped at 12-or-20 BOFFs "reserve" roster.
I honestly wouldn't mind feeding a few BOFFs to the Starbase monster, as they serve little purpose once you're fully crewed for your ground missions, etc. I mean unless you for some reason REALLY need to swap one out. Though I can't see too many circumstances unless you really want some specific character trait (as opposed to abilities, which can already just be re-trained).
~MG
That's kinda' what I'm saying. It should be more like the existing DOFF missions, just SPECIFIC DOFF MISSIONS for the starbase project, most of which would be non-destructive (except maybe some of the high/extreme casualty risk type missions), aside from "staffing" missions where there is a 100% chance of losing the officers, as they're being donated to the station. Even cooler if those DOFFs donated actually appear on the station, with their specific names. I'd laugh if I donated my character whose name literally starts with Cinderella ... something something, were to be seen in some vital function on the starbase. Hehe. It would certainly give things a little character, I think?
I beg to differ. If it's a money case, I suggest the following: if they were to switch to this new system PEOPLE WOULD STILL BUY DOFF PACKS. Why? Because, if they went with my suggestion to have DOFF XP gains be proportional to fleet pool DOFF usage, then folks with higher end DOFFs would have a higher likelihood of their doffs being chosen more frequently by the PTB of the fleet, and thus getting higher payouts. So, people would still want to buy DOFF packs for the chance to get rare or ultra-rare DOFFs... Cryptic/PWE still win. This would just make more sense from a player's perspective. (Namely... mine. ;] Heh. j/k).
So, I still think it's a value proposition. And it would also encourage players to USE the DOFF system as it's intended rather than totally ignoring it, as some people currently do. More-or-less they'd have to learn how to use it in order to use the fleet starbase system and get their share of the DOFF XP coming out the other end. And it would encourage people to level/trade up their DOFFs, too.
Just my 2c.
~MG
Already doing it. Not going to say I and everyone I know is farming DOFFs on multiple alts, but... I wouldn't be surprised.
Under my suggestion, helping yourself out by leveling up your DOFFs would ALSO help out your team by adding higher quality DOFFs to the fleet pool, from which DOFF candidates are selected for missions (and then USUALLY come back unharmed; the better the qualiy dof DOFFs in the pool, the higher the success rate and the lower the failure/disaster rate).
Cheers,
~MG
Well, in my opinion, the "eating DOFFs" part of starbase creation is extraneous with the new Personnel Officer option to trade in underperforming officers. That is, one can take all those billion white DOFFs and trade them up into green DOFFs, from green DOFFs to blue DOFFs and ultimately from blue DOFFs to purple DOFFs. Glut problem solved. Having to also "sacrifice" DOFFs to the starbase monster feels like it actually puts TOO MUCH of a strain on the DOFF pool. The trade-in option was, in my opinion, the right way to solve the glut problem. Meaningless sacrifice of DOFFs to starbase monsters, no-so-much.
As you say, it would be nice if the starbase fleet system interfaced more cleanly with the DOFF mission system. I wouldn't mind if SOME missions ate DOFFs, at the point where specific "things" get built and require staffing (stores, shipyards, etc.). But just the "construction" phase should be non-destructive, in my opinion... Other than some missions perhaps having a higher casualty chance, etc. So, yes, SOME DOFF losses make sense, TO A POINT. But not every mission requires the crew to stay indefinitely. Crew eventually go back to their regular duties...
Again, just my 2c.
My character Tsin'xing
Well, without spending Zen to open 2-4 more slots, I've only got 6 slots as a Gold lifer. Currently running 3 Fed / 3 Klink. And for some reason it seems to be much slower going than it used to be when the DOFF system first came out. Previously, I filled my DOFF roster in a couple weeks, now it seems to be taking a month or more. Farming DOFFs and shuffling them to the main Toon helps a bit, but with so many sacrifices to the s/b Gods, it does feel like it takes a long time to make much headway. And I do feel like I'm putting my own personal DOFF growth on hold in order to feed starbase construction projects. Sine it's an either/or choice to feed DOFFs to s/b or to trade up for better DOFFs via Personnel Officer. I'd certainly LIKE the system a lot better if it emulated the current DOFF system with DOFF missions, and getting DOFF XP for doing the missions, non-destructively. Then I could level myself up AND help the fleet by doing interesting fleet DOFF missions. I like DOFF missions, generally, but dislike randomly discarding DOFFs with little personal reward for doing so. The leaderboard isn't all the appealing to me, as it currently stands. So, what's the point? Other than fleet 'cred' for doing it? I dunno. I mean yeah, okay, eventually the starbase grows and we can do stuff. But to a degree I'd almost rather be doing missions where I actually level up my DOFFs WHILE helping out my teammates in the fleet at the same time.
~MG
My character Tsin'xing
So the fact that starbases are a resource sink is not the principle. It's an MMO, you get something for giving them up, starbase monster included. The principle is replenishment. Each and every player has limitations on time and resources, and it's his/her choice to decide what's an efficient way to contribute. Now there's a market for commons, nothing wrong with that. Not everyone is going to make use of starbases and it's an economic demand. All stuff covered in the thread already.
As for the "starbase itself" not giving back doffs, are we making any use of our stationed duty officer contacts? There's no reason those can't give recruiting missions above and beyond the Academy, if for some reason they don't already (just got ours, haven't checked). Once you have a Tier 3 base and the required number starts to skyrocket, it actually makes sense that the base will start to giveth as well as taketh away. I don't know if that's in the design doc, but maybe it's a good feature suggestion to get on. Keeping in mind they don't want to stop people from going to social zones like SFA, where folks can intermingle. That's why no Exchange terminals, ya?
So what is a better idea? How does the existing doff system give us starbase resources? Let's assume NO NEW TECH, NO UI CHANGES. Because c'mon, like that's gonna be the new priority. :rolleyes: So if starbases theoretically no longer eat doffs, how do doffs get used to give ingredients? I see three answers:
1) More doff system commodities required. Turrets, gamma commodities, etc. Easily gated at a system level by rarity, increases the value of DOFFCALLS and the spreadsheet. Market benefits.
2) New doff system currency, let's call it "Space Spackle" for anyone unfortunate to have read this far. Everybody loves new currencies right? :P And this is right when they start selling additional assignment slots on the C-Store, convenient eh!
3) Make Commendation XP an ingredient. Definitely the most extreme notion. Do you choose to give up your fleet mark potential and Ferra purchasing power by spending your 150,000 cxp, to get that shipyard a little faster? I'm starting to frighten myself!
So I think the realistic answer is not to alter the crux of the starbase project system, but to continue improving the doff system so that replenishment and rewards continue to make doffing worthwhile. If a Tier 4 project stalls for 2 or 3 weeks because it takes a while to find the right quality or quantity of doffs, I don't believe that's contrary to how the system is designed to work. What's the hurry, honestly? Monthly subscription lapsing? If that's all you have left to do in the game, then the bloom is off the rose. (STOse?)