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Fleet Credit Doffs
jackal1701apw
Member Posts: 669 Arc User
Incoming wall of text...
TL; DR = Medical and Security Doffs are too rare, starbases need them, and it needs to be fixed.
Cryptic tried to throw smaller fleets a bone by allowing players with copious amounts of fleet credits to purchase white doffs for said currency, so that these could in turn be sent off into the great beyond on the SB missions.
There is a large flaw in this 'solution'. This is that some types of doffs are MUCH more common than others, leading to a complete imbalance in how many pack you need to buy and the doffs you end up with. The 1,000 xp SB missions require an equal amount of both types of doff for that career path (e.g Mil requires Tac and Security, Eng requires Eng and Ops, Sci requires Sci and Med).
So a player trying to fill a 1,000 xp mission by using the packs described below will always be required to spend many, many more FC and end up with a mailbox FULL of the more common type of doffs.
A response to this problem may be to not queue up a 1,000 xp mission and queue up a smaller one that has an either/or requirement on the doff side. The issue here is that all of these require DILITHIUM. When you are grinding up to T5 in a fleet with a handful of active contributers, this is TOO much dilithium to be able to manage. (Given the huge requirements for the upgrades and the fact that all embassy missions require Dil as well)
Here are the packs that we can buy for FC:
Unspecified Officer White Pack: 500 FC - very common probability to give white civilians, which whilst slightly useful for Embassy missions, are not needed in anything like the quantity that the other officers are required for SB missions, so you end up with a roster full of useless civ's. (Also a Civilian is NOT an officer, so why are they in an OFFICER pack?)
So, not really being able to use the unspecified packs we move on to the career path specific ones...
Engineer Officer Specified White Pack: 750 FC - this is probably the most balanced of the career paths, with there being a small tendency to receive more Ops officers than Eng ones. Filling up a mission that requires 90 of each side by buying these packs I will often get to 90/90 Ops at the same time I reach c. 70/90 Eng. This leaves me to find the remaining 20 by either opening more packs (and having a surplus of Ops) of finding them on the exchange.
Tactical Officer Specified White Pack: 750 FC - the imbalance here is larger. You will get more Tac than Sec Off. I will often get to 90/90 Tac at the same time I reach c. 40/90 Sec. A larger number of remaining doffs to find, so wither more FC spend and a large surplus growing up, or lots of EC spent on the exchange.
Science Officer Specified White Pack: 750 FC - This is the worst. The absolute worst. You have an insanly high probability of getting a Science officer as opposed to a Medical one. I will often get to 90/90 Sci at the same time I reach c. 20/90 Sec. Hell, once I opened 100 packs and got 3 Medical officer. Three, from one hundred.
This madness must stop. :mad:
Suggested solutions:
1) Change the fleet mission requirements to be either/or on the 1,000 xp missions. (There is precedent for you to do something like this as it was done on doff quality requirements last year)
2) Change the calculations that the game makes when it opens one of these packs. Rather than rolling from all available job titles (specifications) in that career path, it first rolls at a 50/50 probability to decide which type you are going to get (Tac vs Sec, Eng vs Ops, Sci vs Med) then rolls again on job title from there. This would even out the observed distribution of results.
3) Introduce another type of Fleet Credit doff box, that is more specific than those currently available. There would be 6 types of this box at each quality (Tac, Sec, Eng, Ops,, Sci, Med) Sell this for 1,000 FC for a white and increasing amounts for higher qualities. e.g. a white officer would cost 500 FC, a white sci/med would be 750 FC a white Med would be 1,000 FC. This way you are paying extra for the certainty of what you are going to get.
These could ptentially open up at one higher grade than the current packs available, which may mean that you could never get a purple versions of the above (since Tier 5 military will unlock VR tactical duty officers, it would only unlock Blue/Rare more specific ones.)
I think Option 3 is my preferred option, and I wouldn't have thought it was that difficult to implement?
TL; DR = Medical and Security Doffs are too rare, starbases need them, and it needs to be fixed.
Cryptic tried to throw smaller fleets a bone by allowing players with copious amounts of fleet credits to purchase white doffs for said currency, so that these could in turn be sent off into the great beyond on the SB missions.
There is a large flaw in this 'solution'. This is that some types of doffs are MUCH more common than others, leading to a complete imbalance in how many pack you need to buy and the doffs you end up with. The 1,000 xp SB missions require an equal amount of both types of doff for that career path (e.g Mil requires Tac and Security, Eng requires Eng and Ops, Sci requires Sci and Med).
So a player trying to fill a 1,000 xp mission by using the packs described below will always be required to spend many, many more FC and end up with a mailbox FULL of the more common type of doffs.
A response to this problem may be to not queue up a 1,000 xp mission and queue up a smaller one that has an either/or requirement on the doff side. The issue here is that all of these require DILITHIUM. When you are grinding up to T5 in a fleet with a handful of active contributers, this is TOO much dilithium to be able to manage. (Given the huge requirements for the upgrades and the fact that all embassy missions require Dil as well)
Here are the packs that we can buy for FC:
Unspecified Officer White Pack: 500 FC - very common probability to give white civilians, which whilst slightly useful for Embassy missions, are not needed in anything like the quantity that the other officers are required for SB missions, so you end up with a roster full of useless civ's. (Also a Civilian is NOT an officer, so why are they in an OFFICER pack?)
So, not really being able to use the unspecified packs we move on to the career path specific ones...
Engineer Officer Specified White Pack: 750 FC - this is probably the most balanced of the career paths, with there being a small tendency to receive more Ops officers than Eng ones. Filling up a mission that requires 90 of each side by buying these packs I will often get to 90/90 Ops at the same time I reach c. 70/90 Eng. This leaves me to find the remaining 20 by either opening more packs (and having a surplus of Ops) of finding them on the exchange.
Tactical Officer Specified White Pack: 750 FC - the imbalance here is larger. You will get more Tac than Sec Off. I will often get to 90/90 Tac at the same time I reach c. 40/90 Sec. A larger number of remaining doffs to find, so wither more FC spend and a large surplus growing up, or lots of EC spent on the exchange.
Science Officer Specified White Pack: 750 FC - This is the worst. The absolute worst. You have an insanly high probability of getting a Science officer as opposed to a Medical one. I will often get to 90/90 Sci at the same time I reach c. 20/90 Sec. Hell, once I opened 100 packs and got 3 Medical officer. Three, from one hundred.
This madness must stop. :mad:
Suggested solutions:
1) Change the fleet mission requirements to be either/or on the 1,000 xp missions. (There is precedent for you to do something like this as it was done on doff quality requirements last year)
2) Change the calculations that the game makes when it opens one of these packs. Rather than rolling from all available job titles (specifications) in that career path, it first rolls at a 50/50 probability to decide which type you are going to get (Tac vs Sec, Eng vs Ops, Sci vs Med) then rolls again on job title from there. This would even out the observed distribution of results.
3) Introduce another type of Fleet Credit doff box, that is more specific than those currently available. There would be 6 types of this box at each quality (Tac, Sec, Eng, Ops,, Sci, Med) Sell this for 1,000 FC for a white and increasing amounts for higher qualities. e.g. a white officer would cost 500 FC, a white sci/med would be 750 FC a white Med would be 1,000 FC. This way you are paying extra for the certainty of what you are going to get.
These could ptentially open up at one higher grade than the current packs available, which may mean that you could never get a purple versions of the above (since Tier 5 military will unlock VR tactical duty officers, it would only unlock Blue/Rare more specific ones.)
I think Option 3 is my preferred option, and I wouldn't have thought it was that difficult to implement?
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
...#LLAP...
...#LLAP...
Post edited by jackal1701apw on
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There's precedent for changing those projects, too - they've already made some substantial changes to them since the fleet and rep project systems went live, including reducing quality, widening scope, removing inputs entirely, even altering durations. Aside from some UI issues for the first project cycle after the change it hasn't been disruptive the last several times they've done so, either.
Personally, I'd suggest opening it up a bit farther yet. For example, at tier 4, those 1000 XP projects have two 90 doff inputs, one for each department in the division. Rather than create one input for 180 of either department, I'd keep the two 90 doff inputs, but make one accept either department, and make the other any or non-civilian.
This has the added benefit of sort of satisfying option 2 as a side effect. It doesn't change the relative abundances, but would help even out the values, as more abundant departments can be spread around in the second inputs, reducing the relative demand on scarce ones.
It is a absolute insanity the amount of crappy doffs we get, they are not even worthy to sell on the exchange.
For me the bigger problem like the OP said, is the Tactical and Science professions.
I do not agree (much) with point 1 because that will reflect only for the starbases not for, example, when you want ultra rare doffs.
I think the best solution is number 2. Roll out 50/50 % if its science or medical, then roll out again 50/50 % for the doff specialization.
This solution will solve the problem of having 99999 crappy science doffs and from those 99 of medical.
With this solution, not only we can even the odds of spending the fleet credits to buy the white doffs to fill out the 1k xp missions, but also when we are ready to get the ultra rare doffs we get more variety of each profession and not a huge in-balance of doffs that we really do not want or need.
I do not need 100 gravimetic doffs, probably I need like 10 or 20 at best to doff the good missions that I want, but could use good doctors, biochemists (and these are kinda important for doffing in exploration/science missions to get traces).
We have 9 types of specialization on science and only 5 types on Medical. This is absurd.
So not only option 2 is better for the starbase but also for latter when we want to buy ultra rare doffs.
This all of course, is irrelevant because we all know the answer: Everything good or bad in this game is supposed to "work as intended" BS from PWE.
This small rage :cool: is of course saying that probably they know this and expect us to keep spending this way to grind more, to get more stuff, to spend more, etc....
But serious, option 2 is by far my favorite because it serves 2 things, filling the starbase, and get a more stable system to even the odds. So, 2 roles: 1 for science or medical, second roll for specialization according the type of doff that came out on the first roll.
Tactical is the second worst also, its 6 to 3 giving a very low chance of getting security officers. There are 6 types of Tactical and only 3 of security.
Regarding all this, I also think some doffs are in the wrong department. For example, a Biologist should be on medical not on science, but if someone disagrees with this, everything on medical is science also and vice versa thats why they all came in the same package.
I am sorry, cause I already got some warnings on the forums each time I get to be a little harsh on PWE but for once they should listen and be more communicative with us, the ones that playing for free or not, still spend lots of money in this game, we deserve to have our opinions listen and PWE should listen us, after all, we play the game everyday for hours and hours and hours.
We do not want to make it easy, we want to make it better and more balanced, I guess that is a good thing, but sometimes it seams they do not care as long the money keeps coming.
I already saw better companies and games having huge problems because of not listen to their player base.
We want to give you money PWE, but we demand a good and balanced product. Free to play is not really "free" and we all know this.
Anyway, enough of trolling or I get my butt kicked by pwebranflakes again. :P:D
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100% agree.
Great write up OP - this is something which has been seriously annoying me for a long time and I kept meaning to write a post about it but never got around to it.
This really does need fixing!
Kirk's Protege.
Kirk's Protege.
Kirk's Protege.
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On an unrelated note, I'm working to build a good fleet and looking for longterm players like myself to help build with me. You may have heard the stir on zone chat. Check it out in the Starbase One section of these forums. Thread title is: STO Talent Search. See you there!
I had a project start up yesterday and required 30 Medical / 30 Science. I bought 50 DoFF's at the starbase and out of the 50 I ended up with 41 Science and 9 Medical. Many members in the fleet have resorted to using the mailing system because they keep filling up their roster, and most members have their roster increased to 200+
Something definitely needs to be done.
That is all backstory though. After having invested so much time and money for such characters, Cryptic/PWE asked me to spend yet another $1,000 just to unlock doff slots on them all. To which I say no. That's out of control. Doffing is Okay, but its not that exciting that I want to spend that much for my whole account, particularly given the initial investment already spent on ships, character slots, races etc. On top of this, one could also consider the Bridge officer and Ship Slots in this, but I'll not go further on that.
I almost completely burned out on this game, running into a frenzy picking up doff missions on my army of characters to fill our base. It was mind numbing, and my hat is off to members in my fleet that can put up with what it takes to do some of those things. Its not as though I don't want to chip in, I certainly do, but there is a point at which the spirit and fun of the game get lost. The situation Jackal is talking about is just such a situation, and when you're in a lean but mean fleet, it can be frustrating for all parties involved.
Doffs are not the only thing irritating me in the Starbase missions. Its a small issue, but nevertheless I feel the need to comment on the filling of Starbase missions themselves. Picking up and dropping 70 Mk V torpedoes to launch a mission is quite irritating. Its not the cost, its more the annoyance of having to fly to the Shipyard, and individually pick up 70 Torpedoes and load them into the Base that is obnoxious. Essentially, the game has turned me into the Quartermaster. Why can't I go send a doff to do this, and give him money to do it? It makes me feel less like a Captain/Admiral, and more like Ensign Bob.
The same can be said of other items as well, and it carries into other systems of the game like Reputation and even Doffing. if I have to go acquire Thousands of an item, I can't just make an order from the Vendor for that amount. Instead I've got to click, drag, click, drag, click, drag... over and over and over ad nauseum. Hypoes/Shield Charges/Weapons Batteries, etc are the most egregious of this particular crime. They stack in 20's. 20!!! I am holding back the expletives here. Really I am, and its a fight. Why on earth does 20 squirts of a hypospray somehow equal the space of 250 Warp Coils or an Engine or a Deflector. What in the galaxy is in those Hyposprays and how does Bones manage to heal a colony of people with them? Does he have the strength of 30,000 men? Is the mass of his bag so dense that he has a micro black hole in it? Seriously, this has irked me for years in this game. Back when the STF's were united Ground/Space, when I played my Tactical captain I found I would have to stack 100 of these things to stay alive... because many/most healers didn't know how to heal back then... and Borg hit hard, and were generally tougher to kill. It drove me nuts to have to waste so much of my inventory space on this. I realize they want to make inventory feel scarce, but at least it should be scarce about the right things.
This brings up another point about inventory in general. Why are pets taking up inventory space? They're pets for goodness sake. They serve no actual purpose other than fun and clutter. There's enough clutter in the game already, for the sake of fun I'd really like to see them turn pets/fireworks/non-useful/fun items into powers that are unlocked on a character or account. There's no reason my Type 10 Shuttle pet needs to be an item.
Let me get back to my point here about purchasing though. All purchasing should allow for specific quantities to be entered. There's no reason not to make this user friendly. Its not fun buying stuff for hours on end, day after day after day. Starbase missions are part of the long haul. Reputation is long haul. Doffing is long haul. At least make it the side-effort it was meant to be and not an all consuming task. For fleets of hundreds of members this might not be an issue. For fleets of moderate or small size who play hard, this is just sucking the life out of the game.
I'll cut myself short at this point, but I just wanted to interject these thoughts on top of what Jackal had to say, and maybe remind the game designers that it is a game and therefore meant to be about fun. Lets streamline the game toward that end eh?
Pets should have a 'kennel' in the Science labs. Ditto Tribbles.
Anything that can be bought in bulk should have a 250 quantity slot in your bank
.
For Ghu's sake, please give us the option on SB to buy the type of doff we need for a mission. I don't play lockbox lotto, and that's what the base doffs are becoming. There have been at least 4 other threads I have seen about the poor distribution of necessary doffs; I don't know where they went or if they simply got lost in the general noise.
Romulans: left one homeworld, lost another, third time's the charm?
In many of the larger fleets many have stockpiles of the mark's with nowhere to spend them so potentially this could help all sorts of fleets.
People were selling their fleet marks for EC not too long ago. No UI just join a fleet, give marks ..... be paid. There is a fleet mark bonus consumable available but it's just not worth it.
the easiest solutions are to either require dual category doffs or to balance the requirements to match the drop tables.
changing the drop tables requires too much coding and creates other problems.
devs have commented twice on this topic, once about 3 weeks ago where the dev only asked a very non-committal question and a few weeks before that where the problem was pretty much dismissed.
Exactly for many fleets with 15 or more active people fleet marks are just useless , Doing rom space mark's you get more than you will be able to spend.
The only ones penalised by fleet marks are the small inactive fleets , Large active fleets can find a stockpile on players of 20k-30k since the demand for them has died down.
I digress a bit though, the issue here is how mailbox changes now make doing your Starbase work a hell of a lot harder because the system is broken. Due to the massive amounts of doffs required to feed a base, a smaller feet has to cycle through quite a few of these doffs, ferreting them away in their account mailbox for the time when it is needed, in order to feed it. This system in and of itself is terrible, and I personally condone something different such as creating a Starbase 'Bank' of sorts that then can be drawn from by the Starbase. Really it could be as simple as creating a counter for items like marks. Its not rocket science here, but at least then the issue of excessive storage no longer remains an issue. The problem here is made excessively worse by the fact that medical officers do not drop in reasonable proportions. The system as it stands here is rather clunky. I've stated other reasons before (such as the ridiculous chuck 50 Mk 5 torpedoes) why they need to rethink how some of this is done. The core idea is good, but it most certainly needs refinement, and this new change to the Mailbox only shines light on an already problematic system.
And it's working.
Make you work for Dil, but offering a pointless return on the investment.
Make you work for DOffs, then unbalance the return to tie up inventory and mail space.
Make you go out and buy countless heaps of commodities to burn through your EC, while making EC impossible to earn outside of the glutted exchange.
It's a crock of steaming bird TRIBBLE.