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[http://bit.ly/DOFFS] DOffTrekker / DOFFJOBS / DOFFCALLS
zerobang
Member Posts: 0 Arc User
Hi DOffers,
the last Thread about the DOffTrekker was closed for inactivity (granted it was a bit old)
but it was requested of me to make a new Thread so it can get stickied *yay*, so here we go
First let me say to the Oldschool DOffers that know their way around the DOff Community:
I am not very active in-game anymore (6000 hrs playtime and 11 chars over 4 years seems like enough of STO for the moment.) and not everybody has access to the Editor Sheet's Talk Page... so this is a good place to get into contact with me for any sort of Feedback about the DOffTrekker and stuff.
I will make sure to keep an eye on this Thread.
But we want to make a Sticky Thread, i guess a little introduction for any new Players to what we do and how we play is in order here.
INTRODUCTION:
What is DOFFJOBS?
"DOFFJOBS" is a chat channel.
Obviously for the purpose of talking about DOff Stuff.
I am NOT the Owner of this chat channel, whoever created that channel has left STO and never returned, this channel is pure anarchy by now, use of your Ignore button is highly recommended if you have problems with Trolls.
But it is still the best place to talk about the Duty Officer System and share assignment infos etc.
There have been attempts to take control of the channel back or move the Userbase to a new moderated channel, that didn't work, so instead we moved the "Assignment Callouts" into another Channel.
What is DOFFCALLS?
"DOFFCALLS" is also a in-game chat channel, created by *us* (this one IS moderated),
and it has strict rules:
- NO CHAT! / NO QUESTIONS! / NO TALKING! (that is what DOFFJOBS and /TELL are there for)
- ONLY Assignment Callouts
- "Bridge Invites" are technically allowed too, but they usually stay inside DOFFJOBS too.
be warned, if you start chatting in DOFFCALLS there will be at least 3 - 5 players jumping at you (which technically is a violation of the rules too, that can be done via /tell too... but... whatever).
The main function of this Channel is so our DOffTrekker Editors can easily see all the Callouts from you Players and add it to the Editor Sheet, which then will forward the found information of the Player to the DOffTrekker, without searching through all the Chat that is going on in DOFFJOBS.
But it is also a nice channel if you just like to keep your Ears open for good assignments, just in case you don't use the DOffTrekker.
What is DOffTrekker?
The "DOffTrekker" is what i made... with a little help of the Community (which means a LOT of Help from a few People and a little Help from a lot of People.
)Technically it is a Google Doc (Spreadsheet), you will want to make your own Copy of it, for that you will need a Google Account (username, password, email address... the usual account stuff).
The complete Setup Information can be found on http://bit.ly/DOFFTREKKER3
And in fact i suggest you go there right now, because on the first "Tab" i have made a pretty extensive Read Me that explains everything the DOffTrekker is and does in Detail already (with pretty pictures and everything).
(Tabs for the other Sheets "Account Overview" "FED" + "KDF Character" are on the bottom, the first thing you will see is the Read Me).
DOffTrekker tracks your Duty Officer progress for all your Characters and tells you where to go for Assignments that you want to do next.
That means:
- It tells you the Location of current DOff Assignment (that have been found in this current 4 hour Cycle and reported by currently playing Players! -> no Automation, all Info is collected and submitted by Players! So if you find something that is not listed yet, report it in DOFFCALLS, or register as Editor and add it yourself ).
- It has Timers for "Duration" AND "Cooldown" for every more or less important Assignment and DOff Chain [which i can almost all update in the Background on my end so you do not need to bother with any of the techy detail stuff
and you do not need to update your DOffTrekker for every single number change i make, it just imports all that data directly from the Editor Sheet]
- There is a Custom Dropdown Menu section, which has all kinds of assignments you might want to Track, if any new Assignments are added to the Game you will find them there, or if you want to track something specific that is not yet listed then you just tell me the details of that assignment and i will add it to the Dropdown and everybody else can use it too.
FYI: i add mostly stuff that Players request of me. So there might be a few odd things in there that seem useless or are just on FED but not KDF side etc. if you are missing anything that you want to use, just tell me i'll add it.
But "DOffTrekker" is not all of it, there is more:
The "Editor Sheet" ( http://bit.ly/DOFFSEDIT registration required ), with currently 228 registered Editors (it was 500+ before i cleaned up all the inactive users).
8 "Mirrors" a.k.a. "Viewscreens" where you can look at a "view only" copy of the Editor Sheet http://bit.ly/DOFFS1 - http://bit.ly/DOFFS8
there are also different visual options like FED or KDF only Viewscreens,
a DOff Checklist, you want to collect ALL those Purple DOffs, right?
a "Glossary" for all the abbreviations used in the channels and on the Sheet (like BU = Beta Ursae ... stuff like that)
so there is a lot of stuff to explore
http://bit.ly/DOFFS (this is the main link, i suggest you bookmark this one, the other links might change from time to time)
Current Status of the Project:
I have been working on bit.ly/DOFFS for over a year now, it was a fun ride, a lot of nights spend coding and testing stuff.
I consider the Project pretty much complete at this point.
Well, as far as you can ever call a piece of Software "complete".
For all i know Cryptic can come in next Season with a huge Duty Officer System Update that will throw everything into Overdrive again.
But for the Moment it is rather quiet around the DOff System, so i don't expect to have to make any huge updates anytime soon, it is 100% bug free as far as i can tell and we got more functionality in this thing than i thought was technically possible with Googledocs.
I have no ideas anymore how to make this thing any better (technically).
I am still maintaining the Docs of course, make sure that the Timers are working correct (you have no idea how Timezones and Daylight Savings stuff can TRIBBLE around with a doc that is all about Timers!).
I also have to manually allow every single Editor registration (by hand) and on occasion i add a new Timer to the Custom Dropdown Menu ...or fix a few Cells that someone has broken by mistake.
But that is all just the daily 5 minute maintenance stuff really.
What this means for you is that the current DOffTrekker 3.11 is probably pretty much it.
If you make your copy now you can be 99,47% sure that you will not need to make a new copy of a version 3.12 in another week or so. (of course now that i've said it that may change... like it always does... *hides*)
All in all it runs pretty much perfect on its own now and *we all together* have added more functionality to this thing than i thought was technically possible, seriously, i stopped calling things impossible, every time i said it and was 100% sure this GoogleDoc stuff could NEVER do this or that function, one of you guys came out of hiding and showed me that it was indeed possible.
And now DOffTrekker just does that impossible Stuff too...
ok enough rambling from me, this should do as a first introduction, now get in there!
Have Fun & may the crit chance be with you.
http://bit.ly/DOFFS
@Z3R0B4NG
Post edited by zerobang on
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Comments
zerobang writes about it in the original message, but somewhat indirectly, so - as one of the top editors of the Sheet - let me emphasize something, which often comes up and which I need to explain to people in the game every couple of days:
There are three classes of assignments:
- sector assignments. These are specific to a given sector, they reset every 4 hours (at midnight GMT, and then on the 4-hour cycle), and you can see in-game how much into the cycle you are by looking at the assignment tab (where it says in the left-hand lower corner "sector update"). That's what is reported in the Sheet and that's what the calls should mainly be made about.
- personal assignments. These are specific to your character, they are on a 1 hour timer, which initializes when you log into the game and click the assignment tabs. You can see how much into the cycle you are and when to expect the reset by looking at the assignment tab - where it says in the left-hand lower corner "shipboard update. Some of these will still only appear in specific sectors of the galaxy map. Since these are specific to a player, there is no point in reporting them: you are the only one who can see them and who can use them.
- department head assignments. These can be accessed by going to the department head tab or by talking to a department head on your ship bridge. They vary from sector to sector and reset every 20 hours, at the same time for everybody. The reset timer is tracked by the Sheet, but it can't be seen directly anywhere in the game. These assignments are specific to your account - other people checking their own department heads will see different assignments. These are assignments that zerobang means when he talks about bridge invites: you can invite other people to your bridge, so that they can use your department heads and assignments they offer. Unless you intend to stay in a given sector and invite people to your bridge, please do not report these assignments. That's something I really can't stress enough. Other people won't be able to see them on their department heads. If you do intend to invite people, please make it clear that these are department head assignments, so that we don't put them in the Sheet.
What am I doing wrong?
Having said that I have a made a few tweaks of my own like customizing the interface a little more to my liking - please rest assured its no reflection on how you did it whatsoever
I've also modified my summary page to auto populate all my custom tracked missions - I noticed by default these all had to be manually entered.
I also have a suggestion possibly for improving the functionality of the trekker overall (unless it's something you've already implemented and is just not working on my side), if there is functionality like this already in place, please let me know
I noticed each character sheet has its own Colony / Refugee / Prisoner count, but they only seem to be manual entries. I'd love to see these values linked into all the colonization / settle colonists / pick up refugee and prisoner missions, to auto update these values upon completion of a relevant mission. I think it would be very useful if these counts were dynamically updated whenever relevant missions were completed. I'm currently dabbling on the back-end side of the tracker to see if this can be done - if I have any success with it I'll be sure to let you know
Again, big kudos to you zerobang for this incredibly useful tool you created!
Cheers,
Zhelix
that sounds like the scripts were not copied when you made your copy... that should not happen but google messes up sometimes when the serverload is high.
nothing i can do about that but to tell you to try again...
when you go into the script editor you should get something like this:
http://s14.directupload.net/images/131208/hn6rkzom.jpg
if that thing is empty, then the DOffTrekker button can not appear, that stuff is all in the scripts...
if you still can't get it to run send me your googleaccount name to z3r0b4ng@googlemail.com and share your copy with me so i can take a look what went wrong.
@zhelix
glad you like it
it's fine to modify it to your liking, it is just a template and if you know what you are doing you can do anything you like with your copy (just be aware IF there is a huge update some day, you might need to start all over again or skip on the updates...),
my own private version looks a bit different than the template too.
about that colonists / refugees thing... i had 10 characters and it was a nightmare to keep track of how many colonists i had on what char and if i was able to do the next few steps in the colonial chains etc. then send one Char to the Exchange and buy refugees, then mailing them to myself and have them ready to go when they are needed. (that also was before those stupid mail limitations that came with LoR)...
i guess it would be possible in theory to subtract colonists or refugees with the clean up script...
but adding is impossible, since most assignments have more or less random outcomes.
I don't know how useful that would be and by now most players have completed the Colonial Chains anyway and are just hunting Supports... i even got requests to remove the complete box.
in fact on my copy i already removed that cellblock, i just leave it in the template because new players still might find it useful to know how many colonists they still need.
But if you can make it work like you want, feel free to share the doc with me and i'll take a look at what you got and if i can use it for the template.
@ all:
i got myself a Nexus 7 2013 Android Tablet for xmas ;P
i'm not making any promises and no ETA on anything, but...
http://s1.directupload.net/images/131208/edtpl65e.jpg
it already looks like this could actually work... if i can make a few tweaks to make the DOffTrekker buttons work...
(there is no Timestamp button in that google docs app, because it has a dumbed down menu and in browsers the on screen keyboard pops up all the time, which is just annoying.)
soo... when i got time... and when i'm bored enough... and IF it works like i hope i might just get this thing android app compatible -> no promises
DOffTrekker 3.11b
- game patch notes say: "The Duty Officer Roster Slots cap has been increased from 400 to 500 slots." (why not 1000 Cryptic?)
...updated that cell
- added some conditional formatting to Officer Exchanges so that they black out, because people keep posting dashes on the Editor Sheet
That would be Fan-Tab-U-Lus
A very minor bug note - keep meaning to mention it in the editor's note. The KDF mission "Suppress Gorn Uprising" gives an error when you do the timestamp. The "complete" countdown cell gives a 'value' error - hovering over the cell, the message is: "error: Not a number: 12:00.00"
It's done that ever since the 3.1 update, and I did the hotfix script change myself for the named ranges. Don't think it has anything to do with that. It's obviously not a huge issue,just some day if you're bored take a look and see if you can replicate it. Otherwise I might have something particular to my sheet.
Thanks again - you rock!
Aliella Hawklight, Divine Oracle Devoted Cleric
"Whenever a time arises where clarity is desired, it is always wise to reflect on the sage within."
― Sereda Aleta Dailey
DaiMon Moogie, U.S.S. Acquisition
Rule of Acquisition #57: Good customers are as rare as latinum. Treasure them.
STO LTS since launch; NW player since 2014; ARC user - only when I have to put in codes for free stuff
@hcnathanps35
A couple things to try:
1) Go to the Google Drive page and click the more option then go to all items. That's were your doc history is kept and delete any item listed for the doff trekker sheets. After that try again. It might be something cached that is causing the issue on Google's end.
2) If option one does not work, try clearing all data from your browser's cache and do step 1 again. Also try in a different browser; I had to stop using Firefox then IE due to weird issues that started to pop up when I used them. I use Chrome now, try that if you dont use it already.
3) Sometimes the sheets like to choke on themselves when you load a different tab. For example with me sometimes when I load the sheet after its been closed for a while and I click on my toon's tab at the bottom, it will not load fully and I have to refresh the page a few times to get it to finish. This isn't the sheet or the code, its Google being stupid or under load.
I hope one of those options helps solve your problem.
Happy Doffing.
Original Join Date: Jan 2010
OOOPS! - fixed
(the numbers for the timers are on the editor sheet, fixes it for all users instantly, no need to update anything on your end)
what admsim said
and
techincally speaking "Pineapple" is only written on the Mirrors when they (usually) temporary loose connection to the Editor Sheet.
The DOffTrekker imports the data from one of the 8 Mirrors.
If The DOffTrekker screws up an import from the Mirror, or that mirror is unreachable completely then it will just write errors or N/A all over the timers...
that stuff usually goes away on its own when the google servers wake up again.
Thank you for your suggestions. I tired removing all history and cookies still getting pineapple. Thanks for all your hard work I loved it a few months ago.
@zerobang
I will keep trying.
It's only after I make a copy just making sure I was clear.
Thanks!
@hcnathanps35
Another thought - make sure you are making a copy of the DOFFTREKKER 3 document (the middle link at bit.ly/doffs), not one of the viewscreens. Also, "Duplicate" tabs, don't "Copy" the tabs, once you have the copy of the doc in your Google drive.
I've never seen pineapple except with the viewscreens. Copies of the viewscreens won't work, I hope this helps.
Aliella Hawklight, Divine Oracle Devoted Cleric
"Whenever a time arises where clarity is desired, it is always wise to reflect on the sage within."
― Sereda Aleta Dailey
DaiMon Moogie, U.S.S. Acquisition
Rule of Acquisition #57: Good customers are as rare as latinum. Treasure them.
STO LTS since launch; NW player since 2014; ARC user - only when I have to put in codes for free stuff
The "Glossary" tab of the spreadsheet lists the sector abbreviations.
You can find a "Glossary" Tab on the Viewscreens or the Editor Sheet, if you want to have it on your own DOffTrekker you can copy it by rightclicking on the Tab and selecting "Copy to", then select the Sheet where you want it.
---
can you guys tell me when the DST change is through in the US if the Sheet has addapted properly to it or if the timers are off again?
Worked correctly!
Aliella Hawklight, Divine Oracle Devoted Cleric
"Whenever a time arises where clarity is desired, it is always wise to reflect on the sage within."
― Sereda Aleta Dailey
DaiMon Moogie, U.S.S. Acquisition
Rule of Acquisition #57: Good customers are as rare as latinum. Treasure them.
STO LTS since launch; NW player since 2014; ARC user - only when I have to put in codes for free stuff
@DevolvedOne
Completed are :
Omega IV Virus
Correllium Fever
Anaprolean Fever is on Step 2 from 2
I've search on both "Doc's" the Trekker und the Jobs Viewscreen, I'll find the the Investigtions but not the Weaponization.
Are these new or missed I them.
Thanks for sharing some light
They're not listed - they were bugged for so long (step 2 never showed up) and I believe they're all personal. To my knowledge they've never been added.
Aliella Hawklight, Divine Oracle Devoted Cleric
"Whenever a time arises where clarity is desired, it is always wise to reflect on the sage within."
― Sereda Aleta Dailey
DaiMon Moogie, U.S.S. Acquisition
Rule of Acquisition #57: Good customers are as rare as latinum. Treasure them.
STO LTS since launch; NW player since 2014; ARC user - only when I have to put in codes for free stuff
I just got the Trill Cultural Exchange in BU, which has a 2d runtime, with an unknown cooldown. However, the generic "cultural exchange" dropdown is a 20h job. The same for Saurian Cultural Exchange in AC, too.
Thanks for a great piece of work, I can't even imagine the time it took to figure all this stuff out.
As you may or may not know, with Season 9.5 that came out yesterday, some major changes occured with the doff missions. Mainly, with the withdrawal of the exploration clusters, the Colonization chains are now available through an interract button in sector...but more importantly, the reset of the support missions now occur every 20 hours (with the DH reset) instead of every 4 hours. Unfortunately, the sheet wipes the information every 4 hours, so an editor must copy/paste the information after each reset.
Can you do something about it on the dofftrekker sheet ?
Thanks a lot
@Schizojr
i think you are confusing something...
Cultural Exchanges are the assignments on Starfleet Academy where you have to talk to those NPCs.
In space there are only Asylums, the Asylums are on the left side of the Dofftrekker, not in the custom dorpdown section.
I don't see a 2 day runtime for either of those on my end...?
I'm aware of the situation by now, thx for pointing it out.
I've disabled the reset of the Colonial Chain completely for now, so now the Editors have to clear it manually at DH Reset. ...for the moment anyway.
I contacted @Deltabrainwave, he made the Clear script, hope he is still around.
I also tried to get an answer out of Geko about this on the STOked Radio Interview yesterday, he basically said the update should NOT have changed anything with the missions, they only moved the Exploration Sectors into Sector Space and if something changed with "a mission" its a BUG...
i don't think he even realized that i was talking about ALL Exploration Sector Missions.
I'm not sure he fully understood the question, they were going on pretty hectic about another topic at the time... he pretty much shrugged it off and didn't even seem aware of anything having changed with the timers.
so you guys make sure you bomb Geko's and Thomas the Cat's Twitter accounts about this bug to make them aware.
I doubt they even read this sub forum enough to notice this change / bug / problem.
Geko even openly disregarded all of the Feedback on the DOff sub forum as being "not specific enough" and that he basically just sees a lot of general whining about buttons being "too big" but can't understand what people actually don't like about the new DOff UI as far as functionality goes.
So make sure that your feedback here is more specific about what functions are missing / lacking. etc.
They went a bit into detail on the Stream, but Mav (the host) isn't a Hardcore DOffer either, so obviously that pretty much amounted to nothing but agreeing that it is now better.
(i personally have no opinion on it, i didn't play in a year or so, i maybe will come back with Expansion 2... for a while... i'm kinda done with the whole Grind game approach STO has these days, if they have actual content to play, fine but those Adventure Zones are not for me and thats all they seem to do now...).
Anyway... Geko pretty much said if something changed with the missions it's a BUG.
And i would call this one a pretty HUGE Bug.
Actually this is even a HUGE NERF to the Colonial Chain and DOffing in general, now there is just one chance PER DAY to get a Support mission from one Cluster while before you had about 12 - 16 chances per day (the second chance via Department Heads is gone too, which on its own is a 50% NERF already).
Either they wanted to intentionally nerf the ability to get purple support DOffs so they can sell more LockBoxes or Doff Packs or whatever... (it's not like they never have done things like that before) or it was simply a sloppy Copy&Paste job of Code and nobody noticed or cared for the reset timer and the 2nd DH chance being removed...
In either case, big fat thumbs down from me for this mess.
It is HARDER for their beloved new Players to complete the colonial chains now, and a heavy NERF to the Support DOff farming ability of the hardcore DOffers.
I'm not even playing STO anymore and it pisses me off... i can totally understand if people rage quit over these changes.
There were plenty of people who gave specific feedback, both before and after Season 9.5 went live. Here is my latest feedback:
http://sto-forum.perfectworld.com/showpost.php?p=18064101&postcount=178
Apparently "The old UI is superior in every possible way, shape, and form" is too complicated for them to understand.
Abject failure of UI and UX design.
Joined January 2009
There are VERY random, personal 'cultural exchange' missions (in space) that require no inputs and run for 2 days. There is no way to know a CD for these, it's not like they appear with any regularity at all. So to OP, if these are the ones you're talking about, just run the missions when they appear. I don't believe there's any way that they're going to appear again in X hours, although I could be wrong.
With that being said - I've never seen a Saurian one, but I don't always go to AC, either. So, as Zero said, you could be confusing Asylums (requires a refugee) with Cultural Exchanges (requires no input, runs for 2 days). Easy to confuse, since the Cultural Exchanges at the academies are named the same but have a different timer and cooldown.
Aliella Hawklight, Divine Oracle Devoted Cleric
"Whenever a time arises where clarity is desired, it is always wise to reflect on the sage within."
― Sereda Aleta Dailey
DaiMon Moogie, U.S.S. Acquisition
Rule of Acquisition #57: Good customers are as rare as latinum. Treasure them.
STO LTS since launch; NW player since 2014; ARC user - only when I have to put in codes for free stuff
Thanks for the temporary patch on the dofftrekker.
While Cryptic get two thumbs down for all this mess, you sir get three thumbs up. You following this forum even tho you're not playing the game anymore is called dedication.
@Schizojr
I look back to all that feedback and work we did when the DOff system first came out, and now it's just so obvious that no one on the dev team even USES the DOff system. I just don't understand how someone even slightly familiar with the system could possibly "not understand" timers and CDs and the colonial chains.
The system is so messed up - and, sorry, I am NOT a whiner. I generally try to work with new stuff, attempt to get used to stuff and not spend time crying about how I want the old system back, etc.
I'm tired of giving specific feedback. There was TONS of specific feedback in the Tribble 'official feedback thread'; there is TONS of specific feedback now that it has rolled out; if all Geko sees is 'general whining about buttons being too big' he doesn't actually read anything. The fact that he has no idea what you were talking about shows how little he understands about the system in the first place.
The most basic functionality has been removed - I have maxed doff slots, about 85% filled with purples on 5 toons, with the rest being commons for starbase projects - and it's a NIGHTMARE to scroll through all of them to slot a simple project. No filters, auto-slotting the supposedly "best" doffs for the mission (which clearly shows an inability to understand their own RNG and crit success optimization), I could go on but it's time to stop before I do an unhelpful rage post.
If for no other reason than to see this abomination, I wish you would log in and look at this mess. Then again - it will probably depress you so much, I wouldn't want to risk losing your support with the DOfftrekker. Just think back to before the doffing was released, then subtract about 80% of the functionality; that's what we've reverted to.
I will take your suggestion, try bombing the twitter accounts, and start filing BUG REPORTS as well. Not that it will do any good, but it's worth a shot.
Thanks for your continuing support - especially since you're not playing anymore. Don't blame you a bit, but glad you're still supporting the doffing community.
Aliella Hawklight, Divine Oracle Devoted Cleric
"Whenever a time arises where clarity is desired, it is always wise to reflect on the sage within."
― Sereda Aleta Dailey
DaiMon Moogie, U.S.S. Acquisition
Rule of Acquisition #57: Good customers are as rare as latinum. Treasure them.
STO LTS since launch; NW player since 2014; ARC user - only when I have to put in codes for free stuff
@deltabrainwave reacted quickly and also found a pretty simple solution pretty fast. *thumbs up*
implemented his changes, tell me if anything explodes
i've put a lot of work into this thing (and a lot of other people too), i would hate to just abandon it, and as long as i can keep it alive with just a few clicks and no MAJOR complicated updates are required i will keep it alive as long as it makes sense to do so.
(i mean it is now pretty much running perfect on its own, all i need to do is to allow new Editors on the sheet when i get requests via mail, click, click, done).