thats not much of an answer. is it just a photoshoped preview picture that just happens to have that error, instead of it just being a screen shot? or can devs hax their ship however they like? lol
everyone would pay $$$ for the option to reconfigure a ships console setup as they see fit...
My first guess would be they were having a problem with your ship changing to the new bridge officer and console layout after switching ships via sector space.
As far as I understand their 'dev' accounts, yes, they can hax almost anything they like in the game within certain parameters (that I have no clue about lol), at any time.
If I'm correct that is; I don't know the full story XD
Most of the senior devs can make whatever changes they want - to whatever they want - jamjamz has flown a few interesting ships around and Dan Stahl has spawned some massive sized toon's to squash players,however, this was mostly in the past and I believe cryptic rules for devs is not to do anything out of the ordinary on holodeck. I don't know if the same rules apply on tribble.
This argument is growing tiresome. If your precious social zones don't attract people who aren't forced to be there, then you need to accept the fact that not enough people share your priorities to make this a valid complaint.
I agree with the above statement. Not everyone feels the same way as other people, so don't push your ideal onto other people just to suit your selfishness (this is in regards to sirboulevard's sentiment).
This argument is growing tiresome. If your precious social zones don't attract people who aren't forced to be there, then you need to accept the fact that not enough people share your priorities to make this a valid complaint.
There, hit the nail on the head, people are forced into the social zones. There is nothing there to make them WANT to be there. Instead of making social zones a have to go place they should be made into a fun WANT to go place. I'm sure the devs are working on it.
YAY all that I had hoped!!! and perhaps more, bravo, lets hope this means a more robust server system in the works, the ability to put these mothballed ships to other uses as well!!!!
This is by far for me the single best improvement to the existing game mechanics since I started playing it in 2010. I would love to see this trend continue on improving existing game content and mechanics.
Gold Sub since March 2010
Lifetime Sub since June 2010
Ship builds are intrinsically bound to BOFFs, DOFFs, and Power Tray binds. I love the idea that we can have ship builds swappable but this is equipment level only. The real power behind using this kind of functionality is to be able to have a larger DOFF and BOFF pool so you can hot-swap abilities with the build type without having to spend a half hour respec-ing active BOFFs and DOFFs each time you make the switch. The time spent redoing a ship build is a two fold process and I seriously hope Al and the rest of the UI team understands the implications here.
However, I in no way support changing ships in space with no restricts. There has got to be something like a 3 hour cooldown on it. I know that irks some people but there has to be some limitations on making the game convenient for you. And heres' why: it's killing off zones.
Good.... there is nothing but Gorn jokes, politics, and stupid stuff there anyway.
Good improvements, but I wasn't too fond of the Quick-change system on tribble, because it lists everything that could go in that slot. For an example, you wanted to switch a gun on your Captain, it lists every equipable weapon that's in your inventory and on your BOFFs. Which makes it worse to switch weapons than just double clicking or dragging from your inventory.
And by judging from the pictures in the blog, this will also be the same with ship weapons and equipment. Which will surely antagonize people, so hope there is a way we can choose what to be quick swaped or a way for us to turn it off.
Perhaps the quick change will have a check system like for traits and quality when doing Doff missions. You only see weapons with the check of Inventory, Bank, equipped on officers and you can uncheck the things that you don't want.
If you purchase a slot from the c-store will that be one free slot on each ship and if it is only for one ship how do you define which ship that is?
I am hoping and just throwing it out there and hoping it sticks, that the load out slots are going to be you purchase a slot and all ships now have three load outs instead of two. I guess they would balance that by having it as per character, though having it be per account is always welcome.
The Gorn jokes can be funny, the real problem with them is that they swallow up the entire chat and no other conversation can remain coherent behind a wall of Gorn puns. Needs its own channel. The politics are all bad politics. And there's stupid stuff everywhere.
"Rise like Lions after slumber, In unvanquishable number, Shake your chains to earth like dew, Which in sleep had fallen on you-Ye are many they are few"
This looks good. I don't swap around ships like that often. Since I use one for about 1-2 months before I change out. But it will help when I do swap out.
Bringing up the slots to 50 is good. But I hadn't really filled up my freebies yet. As the latest ships replaces the older ones from an lower level. Like Lv30 Galaxy is now a Lv50 Galaxy.
USS Casinghead NCC 92047 launched 2350
Fleet Admiral Stowe - Dominion War Vet.
Raising the cap on possible ships is one thing but what about the default number of ship slots? You guys have been throwing event ships at us relentlessly and I'd prefer to not have to spend zen to get an anniversary ship that's ostensibly free.
In life, it is very rare for something to be really free.... You always pay in some way... in this case by giving up a coveted free slot or having to buy one. Why do you think they give the free ships out? Not for fun. They are a business and their mission is to acquire your business in some way or another. I do not fault them for that.
Their weekly reports are probably an interesting read in relation to the content that is released.
I will definitely be getting loud out slots. <insert Fry Shut up and take my money.gif>
join Date: Sep 2009 - I want my changeling lava lamp!
Already said this in another thread. IN NO WAY I AM AGAINST QUICK SHIP CHANGING (just to be clear).
There needs to be a EC cost for this tho, the farther away you are from a dock, the higher the price. Both realistically and logistically it makes perfect sense. Thus, there will be an incentive to actually go to dock when you have nothing else to do and when in a hurry... quckly jump ships for a small ec fee.
I have quite a few issues with this I am wondering about.
One issue is even with it pulling from inventory, bank, or other ships there are so many items being pushed some of us are at a point where the amount of items being pushed out that we collect exceeds the amount of space available. For instance for characters that have maximum inventory and bank purchased we basically have to purchase additional ships we don't want or will never use just to get the space.
Another issue comes down to ships with the KDF as well. When it comes to raptors and destroyers because we don't have c-store ships that come with items and such pretty much either raptor or destroyer there isn't really any uniqueness besides a raptor having a standard innate cloak to ships like say the nausicaan destroyer that has no cloak. So the begging question is are these ships going to just exist as ship storage.
Third issue I have relating to the last at the end there is the bortasqu'. Are there any plans to revisit the console set. Reason I ask this other than it having so many draw backs without much of any gain(also due to counters were built into the game that pretty much make the set useless). Right now that ship takes up 3 console slots which do not benefit it and pretty much make a poor ship design even worse. So in all I am to still believe Cryptic just wants this ship to be item storage to compensate for lack of item storage to pull these loadouts from imo.
Last though would it be possible to say have boffs work in a similar fashion to cut down on how many you actually need to get boff skills. Like per say if you wanted to have a boff specialize in emr to shields skills where they can pool from a collective of resources so you don't need to have specific boffs for each station of every ship. Where as if you had 3 ships for example and the difference in boff stations required you to need 3 additional boffs just to have a specific rank skill difference for each ship to minimize the need for doing so. So my question basically boils down to if one boff in the roster were to be trained in a specific skill they could all use that skill. Instead of having to retrain every time you want to switch ships because that is the problem I have a lot and find it frustrating to have to buy a new boff slot for a new boff just to have one skill difference in most circumstances.
There needs to be a EC cost for this tho, the farther away you are from a dock, the higher the price. Both realistically and logistically it makes perfect sense. Thus, there will be an incentive to actually go to dock when you have nothing else to do and when in a hurry... quckly jump ships for a small ec fee.
No. There are enough EC sinks in the game already, and no matter how many people desperately wish it were otherwise, there is no inherent value in visiting social zones.
These changes are brilliant and are certainly going to make me want to fly more of my ships! Maybe even buy more! Speaking of buying, I'll echo the question about additional load-out slots, character or account level purchase?
Thanks for the reply, but yikes is this going to make for some very loonnggg matches!!
Hope So! Ship PvP in STO has mainly been;
Escort vs. Escort = Gun Fight
Cruiser vs. Cruiser = Wrestling Match
Sci vs. Sci = Chess Game
Allowing people to switch equipment during a match shakes things up a little.
You should know by now that MMO devs like to shake things up now and again, keep players on their toes, stop them getting complacent and too comfortable with an "I Win" build.
Also regarding the quick-equip window and possible issues with its size/scrolling, if I am interpreting this image from the blog correctly, it would appear you have two view options to choose from; a detailed list (as shown in the pic) and a icon grid (with infoboxes/tooltips on hover).
One question though. How did you overcome the memory limitations for allowing us 50 ships now?
The cost of computing power and data storage generally decreases over time. It's likely since the launch of the game these have fallen enough for Cryptic to invest in more processing and storage capacity.
The other thing I have a problem with is some ships like raiders don't exactly have their own place in the game either there is nothing to actually raid. There is pi canis bravo sorties for the KDF but that is back under pre-f2p mold. Where as of these days tactical console powers actually stack and pretty much your own dps can make you fail for over doing it.
All that being stated along with flanking they need to put some more emphasis on places raiders can be used.
I think this is an awesome addition to the game. I do hope that the cost per ship slot will go down though. I am disabled, and have no income. Therefore, it is hard to save up for all of the Dil needed for bank expansion, C-Store ships, and everything else I want.
I would also like to see the lifetime membership in the C-Store. There is already a $160 LoR pack in there. It shouldn't be to hard to get this on there.
Still, awesome work to all involved. Please keep up the good work in updating existing game mechanics. It shows that there is focus on improvements, and not just new ships, and grind content. Thank you so much for this. After the release of season 8, something like this was needed.
Leader of Elite Guardian Academy.Would you like to learn how to run a fleet? Would you like to know how to do ship builds (true budget as well as high end)?The join the Academy today!
No. There are enough EC sinks in the game already, and no matter how many people desperately wish it were otherwise, there is no inherent value in visiting social zones.
Theres no inherent value in having all the max level gear you want and having no new content to work with either. The fact is the game needs to start adding incentives beyond new rep, new powers!
No. There are enough EC sinks in the game already, and no matter how many people desperately wish it were otherwise, there is no inherent value in visiting social zones.
I dont care about the social zones. Fine with me if they all die in flames. It's just logistically sound that a huge ship/crew switch in the middle of nowhere space should also implicate a financial drawback. Simple as that.
I think this is an awesome addition to the game. I do hope that the cost per ship slot will go down though. I am disabled, and have no income. Therefore, it is hard to save up for all of the Dil needed for bank expansion, C-Store ships, and everything else I want.
I would also like to see the lifetime membership in the C-Store. There is already a $160 LoR pack in there. It shouldn't be to hard to get this on there.
Still, awesome work to all involved. Please keep up the good work in updating existing game mechanics. It shows that there is focus on improvements, and not just new ships, and grind content. Thank you so much for this. After the release of season 8, something like this was needed.
Same boat you are in except I was here before f2p and that it just so happened that what I did have built up which was mostly KDF characters. This ended up working in my favor so pretty much you can build up slowly like I did which was 18 kdf characters now over the course of 3 years but over time its become easier and easier to get more and more dilithium. I maybe spend 1-2 hours doffing for dilithium once a day or every other day and come close to or over 200k dilithium a day just off doffing. You can also play lockboxes to spread it over to feds to having 20+ toons a day easily max capping dilithium. Being that most reps have TRIBBLE gear in them most of my toons don't want or need once these last few toons are maxed in reps all I will be doing is spending an hour or so doffing then go playing some other game out there so the ability is there you just need to act on it.
There, hit the nail on the head, people are forced into the social zones. There is nothing there to make them WANT to be there. Instead of making social zones a have to go place they should be made into a fun WANT to go place. I'm sure the devs are working on it.
Yeah, but there's also the segment of the populace who doesn't want to acknowledge the existence of other players.... they automatically hate any aspect of the game that encourages social behavior. :P
Same boat you are in except I was here before f2p and that it just so happened that what I did have built up which was mostly KDF characters. This ended up working in my favor so pretty much you can build up slowly like I did which was 18 kdf characters now over the course of 3 years but over time its become easier and easier to get more and more dilithium. I maybe spend 1-2 hours doffing for dilithium once a day or every other day and come close to or over 200k dilithium a day just off doffing. You can also play lockboxes to spread it over to feds to having 20+ toons a day easily max capping dilithium. Being that most reps have TRIBBLE gear in them most of my toons don't want or need once these last few toons are maxed in reps all I will be doing is spending an hour or so doffing then go playing some other game out there so the ability is there you just need to act on it.
Thank you for the info. It is encouraging to know that I can have 20 characters that I just Doff to get that much dilithium. It is discouraging though, that it takes 3 years to get to that point, if my health holds out that long. Lol.
I think I will just stick with the free ship slots, and not buy more till they go on sale. If all I do is level up characters to do nothing but Doffing, I will get bored really quick, and leave for a long time.
But, thank you again for the info. I now know that is an option.
Leader of Elite Guardian Academy.Would you like to learn how to run a fleet? Would you like to know how to do ship builds (true budget as well as high end)?The join the Academy today!
I'll be happy when/if the Tray loads the saved powers and the doffs are swapped as well. That is mentioned as coming later. Sadly without it, the ship (and also the loadout) swapping is sorta pointless.
I'm actually curious how you're gonna handle the doff part, since the needed doffs might be used in an assignement when calling upon them. Will the assignement be cancelled, will they be temporarily doing both the assignement and the active duty, or will they simply not load till the assignement completes?
Still, well done if that system ends up working. That's a potentially enormous quality of life upgrade.
TOIVA, Toi Vaxx, Toia Vix, Toveg, T'vritha, To Vrax: Bring in the Allegiance class. Toi'Va, Ti'vath, Toivia, Ty'Vris, Tia Vex, Toi'Virth: Add Tier 6 KDF Carrier and Raider. Tae'Va, T'Vaya, To'Var, Tevra, T'Vira, To'Vrak: Give us Asylums for Romulans.
This would be awesome, but I don't know how they could do it as you only have one and it is hard set for the character. Maybe Al would be kind enough to throw out some ideas - or at least say if it is possible or not - even if we had to pay for another skill tree.
Another MMO I used to play, which shall remain nameless, had 2 separate character builds like that, but you had to buy the second one. In addition, there were 3 main builds (with customization in each) and you could only have 2 builds to swap between, meaning you couldn't have everything you may want. I think if they allow multiple builds like that 1) it should have to be purchased and 2) there should be some limit on the number.
I do think they should though as, for one, a cruiser build will be different than an escort carrier build, so if you use escort carrier as your primary, you may still not be inclined to play your cruiser much, even with the changes. also, character traits would be nice to switch with ships, using the carrier/cruiser example from before, if I have Wing Commander trait, it is wasted trait slot if I switch to my cruiser.
Yeah, but there's also the segment of the populace who doesn't want to acknowledge the existence of other players.... they automatically hate any aspect of the game that encourages social behavior. :P
You know it's interesting. Starship crews in peacetime go off to explore strange new worlds, far away from home. It seems like the ideal life style for the human who doesn't want to have to deal with majority of humanity, just go off in to deep space with a few hundred people and forget about everyone else.
"Rise like Lions after slumber, In unvanquishable number, Shake your chains to earth like dew, Which in sleep had fallen on you-Ye are many they are few"
You know it's interesting. Starship crews in peacetime go off to explore strange new worlds, far away from home. It seems like the ideal life style for the human who doesn't want to have to deal with majority of humanity, just go off in to deep space with a few hundred people and forget about everyone else.
4 out of 5 Trek shows, the ship was generally off operating on its own, no help, no team, no swapping equipment between missions, no foreknowledge of what they were up against, just what they had with them and one chance to get it right.
Thank you for the info. It is encouraging to know that I can have 20 characters that I just Doff to get that much dilithium. It is discouraging though, that it takes 3 years to get to that point, if my health holds out that long. Lol.
I think I will just stick with the free ship slots, and not buy more till they go on sale. If all I do is level up characters to do nothing but Doffing, I will get bored really quick, and leave for a long time.
But, thank you again for the info. I now know that is an option.
Another thing to remember is the 1st year of dilithium it was not possible to do what you can now. Thus everything in i'd say almost 2 years I've worked on could probally be pulled off in 3-6 months now.
Then get for each KDF toon 6 transporter officers, 6 tractor beam officers and then fill the rest with white or green tactical or security doffs just to start off and then ween off the lower rarities per character as the opportunity presents itself. The chart is basically to show you which ones gave that person who made it the highest chance of contraband. Use the prisoners for forced labor missions under military and the exploration sectors use the colonial forced labors that along with contraband will flush you near or above 8k per toon per day.
Edit: Until you build it up try to harness/save up dilithium to be converted into new character slots and level them up just high enough to doff and let the doffing system level those characters for you so over time you'll have all the KDF characters you could ever want
Comments
My first guess would be they were having a problem with your ship changing to the new bridge officer and console layout after switching ships via sector space.
--->Ground Combat General Bugs Directory
Real join date: March 2012 / PvP Veteran since May 2012 (Ground and Space)
Most of the senior devs can make whatever changes they want - to whatever they want - jamjamz has flown a few interesting ships around and Dan Stahl has spawned some massive sized toon's to squash players,however, this was mostly in the past and I believe cryptic rules for devs is not to do anything out of the ordinary on holodeck. I don't know if the same rules apply on tribble.
There, hit the nail on the head, people are forced into the social zones. There is nothing there to make them WANT to be there. Instead of making social zones a have to go place they should be made into a fun WANT to go place. I'm sure the devs are working on it.
Lifetime Sub since June 2010
Good.... there is nothing but Gorn jokes, politics, and stupid stuff there anyway.
I agree with James T. Kirk on the matter
I am hoping and just throwing it out there and hoping it sticks, that the load out slots are going to be you purchase a slot and all ships now have three load outs instead of two. I guess they would balance that by having it as per character, though having it be per account is always welcome.
Devs, any word on pricing yet?
The Gorn jokes can be funny, the real problem with them is that they swallow up the entire chat and no other conversation can remain coherent behind a wall of Gorn puns. Needs its own channel. The politics are all bad politics. And there's stupid stuff everywhere.
Bringing up the slots to 50 is good. But I hadn't really filled up my freebies yet. As the latest ships replaces the older ones from an lower level. Like Lv30 Galaxy is now a Lv50 Galaxy.
USS Casinghead NCC 92047 launched 2350
Fleet Admiral Stowe - Dominion War Vet.
In life, it is very rare for something to be really free.... You always pay in some way... in this case by giving up a coveted free slot or having to buy one. Why do you think they give the free ships out? Not for fun. They are a business and their mission is to acquire your business in some way or another. I do not fault them for that.
Their weekly reports are probably an interesting read in relation to the content that is released.
I will definitely be getting loud out slots. <insert Fry Shut up and take my money.gif>
There needs to be a EC cost for this tho, the farther away you are from a dock, the higher the price. Both realistically and logistically it makes perfect sense. Thus, there will be an incentive to actually go to dock when you have nothing else to do and when in a hurry... quckly jump ships for a small ec fee.
One issue is even with it pulling from inventory, bank, or other ships there are so many items being pushed some of us are at a point where the amount of items being pushed out that we collect exceeds the amount of space available. For instance for characters that have maximum inventory and bank purchased we basically have to purchase additional ships we don't want or will never use just to get the space.
Another issue comes down to ships with the KDF as well. When it comes to raptors and destroyers because we don't have c-store ships that come with items and such pretty much either raptor or destroyer there isn't really any uniqueness besides a raptor having a standard innate cloak to ships like say the nausicaan destroyer that has no cloak. So the begging question is are these ships going to just exist as ship storage.
Third issue I have relating to the last at the end there is the bortasqu'. Are there any plans to revisit the console set. Reason I ask this other than it having so many draw backs without much of any gain(also due to counters were built into the game that pretty much make the set useless). Right now that ship takes up 3 console slots which do not benefit it and pretty much make a poor ship design even worse. So in all I am to still believe Cryptic just wants this ship to be item storage to compensate for lack of item storage to pull these loadouts from imo.
Last though would it be possible to say have boffs work in a similar fashion to cut down on how many you actually need to get boff skills. Like per say if you wanted to have a boff specialize in emr to shields skills where they can pool from a collective of resources so you don't need to have specific boffs for each station of every ship. Where as if you had 3 ships for example and the difference in boff stations required you to need 3 additional boffs just to have a specific rank skill difference for each ship to minimize the need for doing so. So my question basically boils down to if one boff in the roster were to be trained in a specific skill they could all use that skill. Instead of having to retrain every time you want to switch ships because that is the problem I have a lot and find it frustrating to have to buy a new boff slot for a new boff just to have one skill difference in most circumstances.
https://youtube.com/channel/UCJZ5FBJ9bFaZ6yAFiNpZiRQ/featured?view_as=subscriber
Twitter:
https://twitter.com/CaptainCidStorm
No. There are enough EC sinks in the game already, and no matter how many people desperately wish it were otherwise, there is no inherent value in visiting social zones.
Hope So!
- Escort vs. Escort = Gun Fight
- Cruiser vs. Cruiser = Wrestling Match
- Sci vs. Sci = Chess Game
Allowing people to switch equipment during a match shakes things up a little.You should know by now that MMO devs like to shake things up now and again, keep players on their toes, stop them getting complacent and too comfortable with an "I Win" build.
Also regarding the quick-equip window and possible issues with its size/scrolling, if I am interpreting this image from the blog correctly, it would appear you have two view options to choose from; a detailed list (as shown in the pic) and a icon grid (with infoboxes/tooltips on hover).
The cost of computing power and data storage generally decreases over time. It's likely since the launch of the game these have fallen enough for Cryptic to invest in more processing and storage capacity.
Commander, Starfleet Corps of Engineers • 7th Fleet
Commanding Officer, U.S.S. HEART OF OAK • NX-1759-B • Odyssey class Star Cruiser ( Lexington Tactical Configuration))
(Steam - feel free to follow/friend me : )
All that being stated along with flanking they need to put some more emphasis on places raiders can be used.
I would also like to see the lifetime membership in the C-Store. There is already a $160 LoR pack in there. It shouldn't be to hard to get this on there.
Still, awesome work to all involved. Please keep up the good work in updating existing game mechanics. It shows that there is focus on improvements, and not just new ships, and grind content. Thank you so much for this. After the release of season 8, something like this was needed.
TRIBBLE Hydra! Hail Janeway!
I dont care about the social zones. Fine with me if they all die in flames. It's just logistically sound that a huge ship/crew switch in the middle of nowhere space should also implicate a financial drawback. Simple as that.
Same boat you are in except I was here before f2p and that it just so happened that what I did have built up which was mostly KDF characters. This ended up working in my favor so pretty much you can build up slowly like I did which was 18 kdf characters now over the course of 3 years but over time its become easier and easier to get more and more dilithium. I maybe spend 1-2 hours doffing for dilithium once a day or every other day and come close to or over 200k dilithium a day just off doffing. You can also play lockboxes to spread it over to feds to having 20+ toons a day easily max capping dilithium. Being that most reps have TRIBBLE gear in them most of my toons don't want or need once these last few toons are maxed in reps all I will be doing is spending an hour or so doffing then go playing some other game out there so the ability is there you just need to act on it.
My character Tsin'xing
Thank you for the info. It is encouraging to know that I can have 20 characters that I just Doff to get that much dilithium. It is discouraging though, that it takes 3 years to get to that point, if my health holds out that long. Lol.
I think I will just stick with the free ship slots, and not buy more till they go on sale. If all I do is level up characters to do nothing but Doffing, I will get bored really quick, and leave for a long time.
But, thank you again for the info. I now know that is an option.
I'm actually curious how you're gonna handle the doff part, since the needed doffs might be used in an assignement when calling upon them. Will the assignement be cancelled, will they be temporarily doing both the assignement and the active duty, or will they simply not load till the assignement completes?
Still, well done if that system ends up working. That's a potentially enormous quality of life upgrade.
Toi'Va, Ti'vath, Toivia, Ty'Vris, Tia Vex, Toi'Virth: Add Tier 6 KDF Carrier and Raider.
Tae'Va, T'Vaya, To'Var, Tevra, T'Vira, To'Vrak: Give us Asylums for Romulans.
Don't make ARC mandatory! Keep it optional only!
Another MMO I used to play, which shall remain nameless, had 2 separate character builds like that, but you had to buy the second one. In addition, there were 3 main builds (with customization in each) and you could only have 2 builds to swap between, meaning you couldn't have everything you may want. I think if they allow multiple builds like that 1) it should have to be purchased and 2) there should be some limit on the number.
I do think they should though as, for one, a cruiser build will be different than an escort carrier build, so if you use escort carrier as your primary, you may still not be inclined to play your cruiser much, even with the changes. also, character traits would be nice to switch with ships, using the carrier/cruiser example from before, if I have Wing Commander trait, it is wasted trait slot if I switch to my cruiser.
You know it's interesting. Starship crews in peacetime go off to explore strange new worlds, far away from home. It seems like the ideal life style for the human who doesn't want to have to deal with majority of humanity, just go off in to deep space with a few hundred people and forget about everyone else.
4 out of 5 Trek shows, the ship was generally off operating on its own, no help, no team, no swapping equipment between missions, no foreknowledge of what they were up against, just what they had with them and one chance to get it right.
Another thing to remember is the 1st year of dilithium it was not possible to do what you can now. Thus everything in i'd say almost 2 years I've worked on could probally be pulled off in 3-6 months now.
Basically use the chart on this link https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0Aq64hqu0WjM2dGJmbU9zN1d2NlhCSzhRRUVEcUlabnc&usp=drive_web#gid=0
Then get for each KDF toon 6 transporter officers, 6 tractor beam officers and then fill the rest with white or green tactical or security doffs just to start off and then ween off the lower rarities per character as the opportunity presents itself. The chart is basically to show you which ones gave that person who made it the highest chance of contraband. Use the prisoners for forced labor missions under military and the exploration sectors use the colonial forced labors that along with contraband will flush you near or above 8k per toon per day.
Edit: Until you build it up try to harness/save up dilithium to be converted into new character slots and level them up just high enough to doff and let the doffing system level those characters for you so over time you'll have all the KDF characters you could ever want