yah, uhmmm ok...uhh cool, i guess? but thanks...uhh yes
No i was talking about boffs. I was a sub before F2P came about, but i'm F2P now. It is possible that my BoFF quantity is set to a different limit. I dont know about all the different allowances for LTS, gold, blue, silver or pink members. Thats why i said check with other people to be sure.
If you have 4 boffs with 1 tac (Tovan), 2 Sci (Satra Hiven) and 1 Eng (Veril) you should be good in the Mogai. I think you mentioned in another thread that you were level 27 and still had a Mogai? the boff arrangement on that will match up with your current boffs. But if you decide to get the level 30 Arkif, the ship in the next tier that has manueverability your boff layout for the Arkif will be two tac, 1 eng and 1 sci. Your last free ship will be the level 40 Ha'feh, which is again the ship in the tier that has maneuverability, will require 2 tac, 2 eng and 1 sci.
Is it possible that I've trained up and used up my candidates instead of letting them on the team? I've done that a few times not knowing really what was going on lol. I'm about to hit 30 and so with the Ar'kif I'll get more BOFFS then? Will the option to bring them on board become and option then? I'm finishing up the quest "Final Stand" or "Last Stand" or something to that effect.
Do you even *have* any boffs left on your candidate list?
I've mentioned it several times already where to look. And i've been very specific about how to get to that screen, how to tell if you have room left for additional boffs, and where to look for any boff candidates.
You either do or you dont have room for additional active boffs
You either do or you dont have candidate boffs under your candidate list
The number of times you use the train up option doesnt matter. As I mentioned before if you do use that option on a candidate the ability you train is transferred from that candidate boff to the active boff that you chose, and that candidate boff is lost.
Again just hit the U key, at the top click the stations tab. Either take a screenshot and post it, or type out what you see on the left side and right side of the box. Left side starting with your name, ship names, all boff names, and anything else. On the far right under bridge officer candidate what do you see there? does it say anything like human science officer candidate, klingon tactical officer candidate, gorn engineering officer candidate, romulan science officer candidate. There will be a box for each candidate and the text will either be white green, blue or purple.
There is an image of my ship, i took the names out cause i dont want any of you guys stalking me in game. The first block on the left is me, you can see i have a scorpion shuttle, a scimitar, and 9 bridge officers. At the very bottom you see a grey block that says [no officer]. That means i have room for 1 more bridge officer that can be transferred from my candidate list. If i had no room then that grey block wouldnt even be there, it would just be my last bridge officers name and thats it. On the right side you can see my list of candidates. A human tac candidate, romulan tac candidate (green quality), and two romulan sci candidates.
Do you even *have* any boffs left on your candidate list?
I've mentioned it several times already where to look. And i've been very specific about how to get to that screen, how to tell if you have room left for additional boffs, and where to look for any boff candidates.
You either do or you dont have room for additional active boffs
You either do or you dont have candidate boffs under your candidate list
The number of times you use the train up option doesnt matter. As I mentioned before if you do use that option on a candidate the ability you train is transferred from that candidate boff to the active boff that you chose, and that candidate boff is lost.
Again just hit the U key, at the top click the stations tab. Either take a screenshot and post it, or type out what you see on the left side and right side of the box. Left side starting with your name, ship names, all boff names, and anything else. On the far right under bridge officer candidate what do you see there? does it say anything like human science officer candidate, klingon tactical officer candidate, gorn engineering officer candidate, romulan science officer candidate. There will be a box for each candidate and the text will either be white green, blue or purple.
I haven't been able to play but yes, I do have candidates left on my screen when I press U and go to my Stations tab. No need to get annoyed. I'm just trying to understand what possibly could have happened. Thanks for the help. I'll get it.
I'm not annoyed i'm just puzzled, so long as you have candidates the only thing that matters is if you have room or not. The only 'possibility' is that maybe a race from the opposite faction made it onto your candidate list if you took it from a mail attachment. But the exchange doesnt let you buy boffs from the opposite faction and i'm assuming the mail works the same way too.
Well this was weird...I discharged Satra to test if I discharged one of my BOFFS if space would open up. A spot opened up and I filled it but now the weird thing is this (I'll explain as best as possible):
The left side under the Stations tab shows my BOFFS now (including the new one) but no [no officer] tab. But in the MIDDLE where it has the drop down boxes and skills associated with each BOFF, I now have TWO Tactical, two engi, two sci slots. But obviously only one of each is filled. What happened? Why did these empty slots all of a sudden appear but I can't assign anyone to it? I guess that will happen at 30 like you said?
EDIT: It fixed itself upon restart but now I don't have my Science hull repair skill which I really liked . Wah. Also I'm on this mission right before 30 (I think called Final Stand) or something and I have to destroy three waves of Elachi and it took me nearly twenty minutes to clear the FIRST wave. And I died three times. I either must suck or have ****ty weapons. They're all in the 200s on terms of dps. I have two arrays, a DBB and two torpedoes in the aft (2,000+ Dmg). What am I doing wrong?
That [no officer] tab *is* the empty boff slot. If you only have room for 4 boffs and you have 4 boffs, it sounds like all you did was discharge one and replace them with another. Your boff allowance isnt going to change just because you are swapping officers out.
So you say you discharged Satra, and she was a science officer. What did you replace her with? a different science officer? a tac or an engineer? also what ship are you flying? It sounds like your ship stations glitched out and you said it fixed itself on a restart. I've had the same thing happen to me once too where i had double the amount of stations.
But anyways what ship do you have now and also what is that new boff? tac, sci or eng? Remember Tovan is tac, Veril is eng, Hiven is sci and Satra who you said you discharged was sci.
For that last stand mission, dont worry about it too much. Just get the best weapons that you can. Maybe in addition to your ship, put down what your boff abilities are. If you have credits to spend you go to the exchange or maybe even a shipyard vendor (that sells gear for credits). Beam arrays have a wide arc and less damage, dual beam banks have a narrower arc and a little more dps. Dual Heavy Cannons have the narrowest arc and the highest dps. You can get some white quality weapons or even green. I think you were getting help on weapons in another thread. If you are flying a Mogai or Arkif, both of which are very manueverable try this layout:
front: 1 torpedo launcher, the rest dual heavy cannon
rear: turrets (or mines if you want to lay them on top of bad guys)
Yeah I only have room for four. And all I did was discharge and replace with another Sci officer. Idk if I should have a tax officer there though instead.
Idk the skills I have but I'll have to get those later. I'll definitely check out he exchange though. Even if they only are good for a few levels it may help with this level Thanks for the tips!
Yeah I only have room for four. And all I did was discharge and replace with another Sci officer. Idk if I should have a tax officer there though instead.
Idk the skills I have but I'll have to get those later. I'll definitely check out he exchange though. Even if they only are good for a few levels it may help with this level Thanks for the tips!
Well you will want your boffs to match up with your ship layout, especially if you plan on doing a lot of space missions. If you stick with the warbird ships like the Arkif, and Ha'feh you will see the Arkif has 2 tac stations, 1 eng and 1 sci station. The Ha'feh will have 2 tac, 2 eng and 1 sci. For the Mogai Tovan, Satra, Veril and Hiven matches up with the Mogai ship stations. But once you go to the Arkif your stations change so you will want to have 2 tac boffs as well as 1 eng and 1 sci.
Since you will soon be going to 1 eng and 1 sci and two tacs soon it may help to post up what skills you have available in the ship stations. We can help you optimize your build a little bit, and we can see if you are lacking hull or shield healing or if your dps boff skills need some work.
Well you will want your boffs to match up with your ship layout, especially if you plan on doing a lot of space missions. If you stick with the warbird ships like the Arkif, and Ha'feh you will see the Arkif has 2 tac stations, 1 eng and 1 sci station. The Ha'feh will have 2 tac, 2 eng and 1 sci. For the Mogai Tovan, Satra, Veril and Hiven matches up with the Mogai ship stations. But once you go to the Arkif your stations change so you will want to have 2 tac boffs as well as 1 eng and 1 sci.
Since you will soon be going to 1 eng and 1 sci and two tacs soon it may help to post up what skills you have available in the ship stations. We can help you optimize your build a little bit, and we can see if you are lacking hull or shield healing or if your dps boff skills need some work.
Okay so then the stations that I have right now are good but I definitely know their skills need work. I'm at work atm so I'll list them off as best I can. I'll only list the space ones for now.
Toven: Attack Pattern Beta III, Beam Array: Fire At Will, Beam Array: Overload
Veril: Emergency Power to Shields, Emergency Power to Weapons, and I THINK Auxiliary to Dampeners
Veril & NEW Sci Off: Hazard Emitters, Tractor Beam Repulsors, and I THINK (not sure) Transfer Shield Strength
I'm also a little confused as to how skill training works for BOffs. I noticed that when I do train a new ability, I can't seem to find it...it doesn't add itself to my hotbar or anything. Where does it go? And when can I train a current officer with a new skill? How do I do it? I remember you said the Train up option from a candidate only swaps the skills so how do I learn a completely new skill? I assume there's a trainer somewhere for that type of thing.
Lastly, on the wiki - what does a grey BOFF icon mean?
There are several ways to train them:
1) NPC trainer teaches the common version of skills and is fine for leveling up.
2) YOU can train the ones of the same type as your character (that is, if you are an engineer, you can train engineers). The skills YOU can train them are tied to your skill selections (both ground and space); the descriptions say this (for example, a tactical player can look at the first ground skill, grenades, to see that 3 ranks teach plasma grenades to officers and 6 ranks teaches stun grenade).
3) OTHER players can do the same for you -- you trade the officer, train it, and trade it back. Some skills can ONLY be trained by players.
4) Finally, candidates that you do not need can be used to train rare skills. Some skills can only be found on purple quality candidates (?) I think, or they duplicate some of the player training skills (?). I forget how much overlap there is there.
Also remember that you want BOs with good passives, and space passives are hardest to find.
BO quality and DO quality is just like items and everything else: grey/white color, green, blue, purple. There may be another color for super unique megaepic items, I dunno, because I am new and don't have that stuff yet.
Remember that beams and cannons are not the same thing --- that can be confusing at first.
My BOs are my defense, as I drive a rather fragile dps ship. So I have things like tactical team, engineering team, and science team, as well as reverse shield polarity (eng) and then dps boosters (cannon rapid and cone attacks), and a mine pattern (delta 3!), rounded out with hazard emitters (science) to get rid of plasma hull problems. If you drive a tough ship, you can skimp on some of these defensive ideas and use more attacks or other tricks --- its all about your build but that one is mine.
There are several ways to train them:
1) NPC trainer teaches the common version of skills and is fine for leveling up.
2) YOU can train the ones of the same type as your character (that is, if you are an engineer, you can train engineers). The skills YOU can train them are tied to your skill selections (both ground and space); the descriptions say this (for example, a tactical player can look at the first ground skill, grenades, to see that 3 ranks teach plasma grenades to officers and 6 ranks teaches stun grenade).
3) OTHER players can do the same for you -- you trade the officer, train it, and trade it back. Some skills can ONLY be trained by players.
4) Finally, candidates that you do not need can be used to train rare skills. Some skills can only be found on purple quality candidates (?) I think, or they duplicate some of the player training skills (?). I forget how much overlap there is there.
Also remember that you want BOs with good passives, and space passives are hardest to find.
BO quality and DO quality is just like items and everything else: grey/white color, green, blue, purple. There may be another color for super unique megaepic items, I dunno, because I am new and don't have that stuff yet.
Remember that beams and cannons are not the same thing --- that can be confusing at first.
My BOs are my defense, as I drive a rather fragile dps ship. So I have things like tactical team, engineering team, and science team, as well as reverse shield polarity (eng) and then dps boosters (cannon rapid and cone attacks), and a mine pattern (delta 3!), rounded out with hazard emitters (science) to get rid of plasma hull problems. If you drive a tough ship, you can skimp on some of these defensive ideas and use more attacks or other tricks --- its all about your build but that one is mine.
If you're kdf aligned, run with nausicaans for a space crew. They have the excelent Pirate space trait which is a bargain basement value compared to the millions players expect for Romulan operative. In turn, always select a romulan boff with the superior romulan operative trait when leveling up gives you a choice in new boff and sell it for 6-10 million credits. That will pad out your bank for when you hit the level cap.
If you're kdf aligned, run with nausicaans for a space crew. They have the excelent Pirate space trait which is a bargain basement value compared to the millions players expect for Romulan operative. In turn, always select a romulan boff with the superior romulan operative trait when leveling up gives you a choice in new boff and sell it for 6-10 million credits. That will pad out your bank for when you hit the level cap.
How can I check traits? I'm coming up on 30 and should be due for a new boff. Should I go for one that I can sell or go for one I can use?
Okay so then the stations that I have right now are good but I definitely know their skills need work. I'm at work atm so I'll list them off as best I can. I'll only list the space ones for now.
Toven: Attack Pattern Beta III, Beam Array: Fire At Will, Beam Array: Overload
Veril: Emergency Power to Shields, Emergency Power to Weapons, and I THINK Auxiliary to Dampeners
Veril & NEW Sci Off: Hazard Emitters, Tractor Beam Repulsors, and I THINK (not sure) Transfer Shield Strength
If you do decide to go with all DHC remember to swap out fire at will and overload for cannon rapid fire (CRF) and/or cannon scatter volley (CSV). CRF increases your single target damage and CSV has like a cone AOE type effect.
Only thing i would add to your boff abilities list really is 1 or 2 copies of tactical team (TT). You can train this to Tovan or your upcoming tac officer which you will need for your Arkif (if you decide to get it). TT you can train into one of your ensign slots, either Tovans ensign ability slot or your new tac officer. The good thing about TT is that it redistributes shields automatically to the facing that is taking continous damage. So say if your front facing is taking repeat damage and it is going down fast, popping TT will cause your front facing to rise up and your other 3 shield facing will go down.
I think you also mentioned not having enough hull heals? well the arkif engineer spot will only have 2 engineer boff abilities. You *could* take emergency power to shields (EPTS) and Aux to Structural Integrity. For the Arkif you will also only have 1 science spot and they will also have 2 sci boff abilities that you can slot. Transfer Shield Strength (TSS) and Hazard Emitters (HE) will work fine for those.
The main thing you should focus on are your tac abilities once you get the Arkif. One tac slot will be able to use Ensign, Lieutenant, Lt Commander, and Commander abilities. While the other tac slot will be able to use Ensign and Lt abilities only. That is still plenty though, and you will pretty much be going with the 'best defense is a good offense' strategy.
One last thing...next time you are in game and have 5 minutes to burn, hit U and take a look at your interface. Click on the different tabs at the top, then click on the stuff on the left, then look at the top again to see if the tabs changed. Take a look at the skills tab and traits tab, mainly the skills tab and then click on each of your boffs. I just want to make sure, but under the skills tab have you been adding points/bars to your different boff abilities? and have you been promoting your boffs?
Awesome tips and I can tell you that now. Yes I have lol. I promote them and put the max points into each skill so far. Idk of that's right or not but I've had the skill points for it
And no one answered my question about checking the traits of candidates I can select. How do I see if one I'm about to get had the Romulan special officer trait or skill or whatever? Because I should sell those and buy another one, right?
And no one answered my question about checking the traits of candidates I can select. How do I see if one I'm about to get had the Romulan special officer trait or skill or whatever? Because I should sell those and buy another one, right?
On the candidate list just hover over their name and you will see a bunch of info pop up. You will see their name, rank, sex, career (tac, sci, eng). Underneath all that will see space traits if they have any, then their 4 space boff abilities, then their ground traits (if any) and their 4 ground boff abilities. If you have any romulans, remans or humans on your candidate list right now the romulans should have subterfuge, maybe operative and i forget what the human space trait is. You can also go to the exchange and search for say "romulan tactical". A list of romulan tactical boffs will come up and you can mouseover each one and you will see the same info i mentioned above.
The space trait "Subterfuge" is very common to see on Romulan and Reman boffs. However the space trait "Romulan Operative" and "Superior Romulan Operative" are a bit more rare so you wont see Operative on every Romulan boff. If you want to see how Rare Superior Romulan Operative (SRO) is go to the exchange and set the filter to very rare quality and search for romulan tactical/science/engineering. Once you start to get to 10mil - 15mil EC price range you will start to see SRO boffs. Other traits are pretty standard with races, humans have i think 'creative' which helps with hull heals or something like that. Nausicaans have 'pirate' which increases damage.
The cool thing about traits is you can build your boff crew to maximize the effects from your boff traits. This is because most of the traits stack (they add up). My Scim has 1 Reman boff with Subterfuge+Infiltrator and 4 Romulans each of them with Subterfuge+Superior Romulan Operative. There is like 1 or 2 things within all those traits that do not stack. But i do get a lot of crit, crit severity, and defense since that is the bonus that does stack. Also Infiltrator has a bonus that adds 10 seconds to your de-cloak ambush bonus. Normally when you decloak you have 5 seconds where your weapons do 25% increased damage. But with the Infiltrator trait instead you have 5+10 seconds total where your weapons are doing 25% increased damage after a de-cloak.
So I'm running around in my Ar'kif and I love it! I went to the exchange and got three DHCs, torpedo launcher and two turrets and I'm destroying everything so easily now. Thanks for that advice!
For the BOFFS though I have a question regarding their skills. When I'm training them at the trainer, how do I know which skill will replace a skill they already have? It was kind of a guessing game for me and took up a lot of time.
When you are at your trainer, i think the best thing to do is first set the filters. There is a dropdown box somewhere that allows you to check and uncheck tac space, tac ground, sci space, sci ground, eng space and eng ground boff abilities. Once you set the filter then it will only show the trainable boff abilities for that career and only for space/ground.
As far as organizing who to train on what there are several ways to do it. Go to the boff trainer until you are standing next to him and you see his interaction window come up (hit F to talk to this guy). BUT before you actually click him, hit U and click on the boff that you want to train and look at their skills tab (at the top). Move the entire window to the left a bit, until you can see the interaction window for the boff trainer and when you see it click it. You can now look at the boff trainer window and you own interface. Click the boff and click skills at the top and you will see all 4 of their space and all 4 of their ground abilities.
Another way is you can do it without opening up your own interface window. Just walk up to the boff trainer and hit his interaction window. Set your filter to tac-space, tac-ground etc. If you want a LCdr tier ability go to those abilities and click on the one you want to expand it. A list of all your active boffs will show up and only the ones that can be trained in that ability will be selectable. When you click the button next to the boffs name it will say "this will replace beam overload" or something to that effect. Or if they already know that ability it will tell you too.
If you know where the trainer is dont be afraid to just click on stuff. Just remember rule #1 of figuring stuff out on your own. Dont click anything that says: delete, accept, confirm, or yes. Just be careful what you are clicking, you can explore a bit but just know when and if it looks like you are about to do something that might not be reversible.
Other than quests, what else can I do to level up? Most MMOs I've played have instances dungeons or something for players to break up questing. Anything like that here? Or at least anything worth my time?
Other than quests, what else can I do to level up? Most MMOs I've played have instances dungeons or something for players to break up questing. Anything like that here? Or at least anything worth my time?
You get xp for just killing things. You can kill things all over the place, though many are tied to reputation or quests, you can still DO them without really trying to find missions. For example, there are quests to explore the various nebulae but you don't have to quest, you can just go in there and beat things up for fun.
You can also patrol certain sectors of space, hitting each planet in turn for small missions. Take a lap around the tau dewa sector and patrol each planet, for example.
Leveling up is easy. My first character got stuck on a quest that was broken and leveled to 50 just messing around checking out the universe --- then at 50 I finally figured out how to skip the broken quest and move on. Some of the "story line" quests are PRETTY HARD if you are 50 when you start them, they scaled UP a bit more brutally than you may be ready for in "starter 50" gear. So while you can do it, it may be in your best interest to follow the story first, and let that level you up, then do the mess around stuff at 50. Also, the story chain leads you to quests that give you some good starter gear, purple stuff that is better than what you have been looting, so its worth doing.
Oh don't get me wrong I will do all the story quests for the gear but questing one after another with nothing to break it up gets monotonous. Not terrible though because I love the game so far but just thought id try something else
IMHO the most productive thing to do would be a foundry quest every day to get the bonus dil & do something off the wall. There are tons of things to do -- keep exploring new places. Most content scales so you do not have to be afraid of a "high level zone" or "going somewhere you should not" type problems.
Comments
Is it possible that I've trained up and used up my candidates instead of letting them on the team? I've done that a few times not knowing really what was going on lol. I'm about to hit 30 and so with the Ar'kif I'll get more BOFFS then? Will the option to bring them on board become and option then? I'm finishing up the quest "Final Stand" or "Last Stand" or something to that effect.
I've mentioned it several times already where to look. And i've been very specific about how to get to that screen, how to tell if you have room left for additional boffs, and where to look for any boff candidates.
You either do or you dont have room for additional active boffs
You either do or you dont have candidate boffs under your candidate list
The number of times you use the train up option doesnt matter. As I mentioned before if you do use that option on a candidate the ability you train is transferred from that candidate boff to the active boff that you chose, and that candidate boff is lost.
Again just hit the U key, at the top click the stations tab. Either take a screenshot and post it, or type out what you see on the left side and right side of the box. Left side starting with your name, ship names, all boff names, and anything else. On the far right under bridge officer candidate what do you see there? does it say anything like human science officer candidate, klingon tactical officer candidate, gorn engineering officer candidate, romulan science officer candidate. There will be a box for each candidate and the text will either be white green, blue or purple.
https://imageshack.com/i/1n2ebjj
There is an image of my ship, i took the names out cause i dont want any of you guys stalking me in game. The first block on the left is me, you can see i have a scorpion shuttle, a scimitar, and 9 bridge officers. At the very bottom you see a grey block that says [no officer]. That means i have room for 1 more bridge officer that can be transferred from my candidate list. If i had no room then that grey block wouldnt even be there, it would just be my last bridge officers name and thats it. On the right side you can see my list of candidates. A human tac candidate, romulan tac candidate (green quality), and two romulan sci candidates.
I haven't been able to play but yes, I do have candidates left on my screen when I press U and go to my Stations tab. No need to get annoyed. I'm just trying to understand what possibly could have happened. Thanks for the help. I'll get it.
The left side under the Stations tab shows my BOFFS now (including the new one) but no [no officer] tab. But in the MIDDLE where it has the drop down boxes and skills associated with each BOFF, I now have TWO Tactical, two engi, two sci slots. But obviously only one of each is filled. What happened? Why did these empty slots all of a sudden appear but I can't assign anyone to it? I guess that will happen at 30 like you said?
EDIT: It fixed itself upon restart but now I don't have my Science hull repair skill which I really liked
So you say you discharged Satra, and she was a science officer. What did you replace her with? a different science officer? a tac or an engineer? also what ship are you flying? It sounds like your ship stations glitched out and you said it fixed itself on a restart. I've had the same thing happen to me once too where i had double the amount of stations.
But anyways what ship do you have now and also what is that new boff? tac, sci or eng? Remember Tovan is tac, Veril is eng, Hiven is sci and Satra who you said you discharged was sci.
For that last stand mission, dont worry about it too much. Just get the best weapons that you can. Maybe in addition to your ship, put down what your boff abilities are. If you have credits to spend you go to the exchange or maybe even a shipyard vendor (that sells gear for credits). Beam arrays have a wide arc and less damage, dual beam banks have a narrower arc and a little more dps. Dual Heavy Cannons have the narrowest arc and the highest dps. You can get some white quality weapons or even green. I think you were getting help on weapons in another thread. If you are flying a Mogai or Arkif, both of which are very manueverable try this layout:
front: 1 torpedo launcher, the rest dual heavy cannon
rear: turrets (or mines if you want to lay them on top of bad guys)
Idk the skills I have but I'll have to get those later. I'll definitely check out he exchange though. Even if they only are good for a few levels it may help with this level Thanks for the tips!
Well you will want your boffs to match up with your ship layout, especially if you plan on doing a lot of space missions. If you stick with the warbird ships like the Arkif, and Ha'feh you will see the Arkif has 2 tac stations, 1 eng and 1 sci station. The Ha'feh will have 2 tac, 2 eng and 1 sci. For the Mogai Tovan, Satra, Veril and Hiven matches up with the Mogai ship stations. But once you go to the Arkif your stations change so you will want to have 2 tac boffs as well as 1 eng and 1 sci.
Since you will soon be going to 1 eng and 1 sci and two tacs soon it may help to post up what skills you have available in the ship stations. We can help you optimize your build a little bit, and we can see if you are lacking hull or shield healing or if your dps boff skills need some work.
Okay so then the stations that I have right now are good but I definitely know their skills need work. I'm at work atm so I'll list them off as best I can. I'll only list the space ones for now.
Toven: Attack Pattern Beta III, Beam Array: Fire At Will, Beam Array: Overload
Veril: Emergency Power to Shields, Emergency Power to Weapons, and I THINK Auxiliary to Dampeners
Veril & NEW Sci Off: Hazard Emitters, Tractor Beam Repulsors, and I THINK (not sure) Transfer Shield Strength
I'm also a little confused as to how skill training works for BOffs. I noticed that when I do train a new ability, I can't seem to find it...it doesn't add itself to my hotbar or anything. Where does it go? And when can I train a current officer with a new skill? How do I do it? I remember you said the Train up option from a candidate only swaps the skills so how do I learn a completely new skill? I assume there's a trainer somewhere for that type of thing.
Lastly, on the wiki - what does a grey BOFF icon mean?
1) NPC trainer teaches the common version of skills and is fine for leveling up.
2) YOU can train the ones of the same type as your character (that is, if you are an engineer, you can train engineers). The skills YOU can train them are tied to your skill selections (both ground and space); the descriptions say this (for example, a tactical player can look at the first ground skill, grenades, to see that 3 ranks teach plasma grenades to officers and 6 ranks teaches stun grenade).
3) OTHER players can do the same for you -- you trade the officer, train it, and trade it back. Some skills can ONLY be trained by players.
4) Finally, candidates that you do not need can be used to train rare skills. Some skills can only be found on purple quality candidates (?) I think, or they duplicate some of the player training skills (?). I forget how much overlap there is there.
Also remember that you want BOs with good passives, and space passives are hardest to find.
BO quality and DO quality is just like items and everything else: grey/white color, green, blue, purple. There may be another color for super unique megaepic items, I dunno, because I am new and don't have that stuff yet.
Remember that beams and cannons are not the same thing --- that can be confusing at first.
My BOs are my defense, as I drive a rather fragile dps ship. So I have things like tactical team, engineering team, and science team, as well as reverse shield polarity (eng) and then dps boosters (cannon rapid and cone attacks), and a mine pattern (delta 3!), rounded out with hazard emitters (science) to get rid of plasma hull problems. If you drive a tough ship, you can skimp on some of these defensive ideas and use more attacks or other tricks --- its all about your build but that one is mine.
Awesome advice! Thanks a lot!
How can I check traits? I'm coming up on 30 and should be due for a new boff. Should I go for one that I can sell or go for one I can use?
If you do decide to go with all DHC remember to swap out fire at will and overload for cannon rapid fire (CRF) and/or cannon scatter volley (CSV). CRF increases your single target damage and CSV has like a cone AOE type effect.
Only thing i would add to your boff abilities list really is 1 or 2 copies of tactical team (TT). You can train this to Tovan or your upcoming tac officer which you will need for your Arkif (if you decide to get it). TT you can train into one of your ensign slots, either Tovans ensign ability slot or your new tac officer. The good thing about TT is that it redistributes shields automatically to the facing that is taking continous damage. So say if your front facing is taking repeat damage and it is going down fast, popping TT will cause your front facing to rise up and your other 3 shield facing will go down.
I think you also mentioned not having enough hull heals? well the arkif engineer spot will only have 2 engineer boff abilities. You *could* take emergency power to shields (EPTS) and Aux to Structural Integrity. For the Arkif you will also only have 1 science spot and they will also have 2 sci boff abilities that you can slot. Transfer Shield Strength (TSS) and Hazard Emitters (HE) will work fine for those.
The main thing you should focus on are your tac abilities once you get the Arkif. One tac slot will be able to use Ensign, Lieutenant, Lt Commander, and Commander abilities. While the other tac slot will be able to use Ensign and Lt abilities only. That is still plenty though, and you will pretty much be going with the 'best defense is a good offense' strategy.
One last thing...next time you are in game and have 5 minutes to burn, hit U and take a look at your interface. Click on the different tabs at the top, then click on the stuff on the left, then look at the top again to see if the tabs changed. Take a look at the skills tab and traits tab, mainly the skills tab and then click on each of your boffs. I just want to make sure, but under the skills tab have you been adding points/bars to your different boff abilities? and have you been promoting your boffs?
And no one answered my question about checking the traits of candidates I can select. How do I see if one I'm about to get had the Romulan special officer trait or skill or whatever? Because I should sell those and buy another one, right?
On the candidate list just hover over their name and you will see a bunch of info pop up. You will see their name, rank, sex, career (tac, sci, eng). Underneath all that will see space traits if they have any, then their 4 space boff abilities, then their ground traits (if any) and their 4 ground boff abilities. If you have any romulans, remans or humans on your candidate list right now the romulans should have subterfuge, maybe operative and i forget what the human space trait is. You can also go to the exchange and search for say "romulan tactical". A list of romulan tactical boffs will come up and you can mouseover each one and you will see the same info i mentioned above.
The cool thing about traits is you can build your boff crew to maximize the effects from your boff traits. This is because most of the traits stack (they add up). My Scim has 1 Reman boff with Subterfuge+Infiltrator and 4 Romulans each of them with Subterfuge+Superior Romulan Operative. There is like 1 or 2 things within all those traits that do not stack. But i do get a lot of crit, crit severity, and defense since that is the bonus that does stack. Also Infiltrator has a bonus that adds 10 seconds to your de-cloak ambush bonus. Normally when you decloak you have 5 seconds where your weapons do 25% increased damage. But with the Infiltrator trait instead you have 5+10 seconds total where your weapons are doing 25% increased damage after a de-cloak.
For the BOFFS though I have a question regarding their skills. When I'm training them at the trainer, how do I know which skill will replace a skill they already have? It was kind of a guessing game for me and took up a lot of time.
As far as organizing who to train on what there are several ways to do it. Go to the boff trainer until you are standing next to him and you see his interaction window come up (hit F to talk to this guy). BUT before you actually click him, hit U and click on the boff that you want to train and look at their skills tab (at the top). Move the entire window to the left a bit, until you can see the interaction window for the boff trainer and when you see it click it. You can now look at the boff trainer window and you own interface. Click the boff and click skills at the top and you will see all 4 of their space and all 4 of their ground abilities.
Another way is you can do it without opening up your own interface window. Just walk up to the boff trainer and hit his interaction window. Set your filter to tac-space, tac-ground etc. If you want a LCdr tier ability go to those abilities and click on the one you want to expand it. A list of all your active boffs will show up and only the ones that can be trained in that ability will be selectable. When you click the button next to the boffs name it will say "this will replace beam overload" or something to that effect. Or if they already know that ability it will tell you too.
If you know where the trainer is dont be afraid to just click on stuff. Just remember rule #1 of figuring stuff out on your own. Dont click anything that says: delete, accept, confirm, or yes. Just be careful what you are clicking, you can explore a bit but just know when and if it looks like you are about to do something that might not be reversible.
You get xp for just killing things. You can kill things all over the place, though many are tied to reputation or quests, you can still DO them without really trying to find missions. For example, there are quests to explore the various nebulae but you don't have to quest, you can just go in there and beat things up for fun.
You can also patrol certain sectors of space, hitting each planet in turn for small missions. Take a lap around the tau dewa sector and patrol each planet, for example.
Leveling up is easy. My first character got stuck on a quest that was broken and leveled to 50 just messing around checking out the universe --- then at 50 I finally figured out how to skip the broken quest and move on. Some of the "story line" quests are PRETTY HARD if you are 50 when you start them, they scaled UP a bit more brutally than you may be ready for in "starter 50" gear. So while you can do it, it may be in your best interest to follow the story first, and let that level you up, then do the mess around stuff at 50. Also, the story chain leads you to quests that give you some good starter gear, purple stuff that is better than what you have been looting, so its worth doing.