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Suggestion on training special Bridge Officer
darramouss1
Member Posts: 1,811 Arc User
Hello all.
There are quite a few special BOFFs out there. There's the Jem'Hadar, the 2 Borg, the Reman, the Android, the 2 holograms and the Breen. If I've missed any please forgive me.
I love using these BOFFs. I love having a Jem'Hadar in ground combat with me. I love seeing my Breen on the bridge. I don't know why, but I just do. They have a severe weakness, though. Training them new skills when your captain is a different class than they are is impossible.
If I'm a tactical captain and I want to train my sci Borg Hazard Emitters III I can forget about it as I can't trade him to another person for training. Likewise, if I'm an Engineer and I want to train my Jem'Hadar CRF III I can also forget about that.
These BOFFs are special but the character binding does, to an extent, cripple them. There needs to be a method of training them so we can maximise these awesome crew members.
Making them account bound won't work as then people with multiple toons will be able to stack their crew with multiple special BOFFs. How to get around it, then?
Make them account bound but only ever allow one of these to be slotted on a ship's crew or away team at a time. That way you can send one of these special BOFFs to another one of your toons, have them trained but not be used to have multiples on the same ship.
For this idea to work, the sending of BOFFs to another one of your toons needs to be restricted to these special BOFFs. Allowing all toons to be moved in such a manner will weaken the cooperative nature of the game.
Opinions? Would anyone else like to be able to train their BOFFs skills in this manner?
There are quite a few special BOFFs out there. There's the Jem'Hadar, the 2 Borg, the Reman, the Android, the 2 holograms and the Breen. If I've missed any please forgive me.
I love using these BOFFs. I love having a Jem'Hadar in ground combat with me. I love seeing my Breen on the bridge. I don't know why, but I just do. They have a severe weakness, though. Training them new skills when your captain is a different class than they are is impossible.
If I'm a tactical captain and I want to train my sci Borg Hazard Emitters III I can forget about it as I can't trade him to another person for training. Likewise, if I'm an Engineer and I want to train my Jem'Hadar CRF III I can also forget about that.
These BOFFs are special but the character binding does, to an extent, cripple them. There needs to be a method of training them so we can maximise these awesome crew members.
Making them account bound won't work as then people with multiple toons will be able to stack their crew with multiple special BOFFs. How to get around it, then?
Make them account bound but only ever allow one of these to be slotted on a ship's crew or away team at a time. That way you can send one of these special BOFFs to another one of your toons, have them trained but not be used to have multiples on the same ship.
For this idea to work, the sending of BOFFs to another one of your toons needs to be restricted to these special BOFFs. Allowing all toons to be moved in such a manner will weaken the cooperative nature of the game.
Opinions? Would anyone else like to be able to train their BOFFs skills in this manner?
Post edited by darramouss1 on
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Regular BOFFs would require interaction, we would get out bound/unique BOFFs trained and Cryptic would add something to the grind. Win/win/win.
Heck, I'd be prepared to pay 50 zen to train my holographic science officer Hazard Emitters 3!!
I also wish for more customisation to our "unique" BOFFs like being able to alter KDF marauding BOFFs, give Romulan Embassy BOFFs their faces back after they've been traded and unlock a Breen costume for our whole bridge crew to wear. I can hope.
Jo Cox 22.6.1974 - 16.6.2016
Now for their ground abilities, I do agree entirely. The reward officers were all tailor made for ground. If I wanted to train the Jem'Hadar in Target Optics 3, Overwatch 3, or Suppressing Fire 3, no such luck. So instead of worrying about that, you need to start searching for abilities that come from bridge officers only, such as Lunge 3 or Ambush 3. For a full list of what abilities can be trained from other bridge officers, please have a look at this list. Hopefully, one of the purple abilities on that list will strike your fancy.
My Ship Builds: USS Conqueror, HMS Victorious, HMS Concord, ISS Queen Elizabeth, Black Widow III
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That was my first thought in reading the OP, but then you realize that it's no different than the rest of the junk we tend to say we need - just junk we don't need. It's not a case that we need XYZ or we can't do something...XYZ just means we might be able to do something faster.
But yeah, that was my first thought...course, my Reman is working toward the standard 5x Sub/Sup Op and all my KDF are running Naus crews.
The second thought was going back to an older podcast where Geko had mentioned wanting to change the training to skillbooks instead of the way things are now...I wonder whatever happened to that, eh?
There are other bits of the game that need fixing more than this but I hope it's remembered and addressed one day.
Not sure about APB/D but APO3 you can pull off of junk boffs (take for instance the Jem'Hadar reward from Facility 4028 or thereabouts).
As for the original post topic of training:
If they improved boff training people would start asking "when are you going to update system N which you have been ignoring since Day-Z, too" and that would draw too much attention away from the whole "Yay, Star Trek: Go Go Fleet Gold Ammo Spaceships!" for management to be comfortable. And that's the real issue, management being comfortable - it is certainly not an issue of whether or not the engineers can hack it.
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
Yep, basically the book thing Geko had mentioned in a podcast - that...I don't ever remember being mentioned again...meh.
Well yes and no, because Romulan BOffs can only be trained by other Romulan BOffs. Which means you will have to sacrifice a blue or better romulan BOff to get the high level APs, which may or may not be worth it.
You cannot use the Jem'Hadar freebie?
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Um, did that change? Because the workaround for that was having a non-Rom BOFF of the same Career. Say you wanted to train your Rom Tac in something, you'd need a Fed/KDF Tac as part of your crew and then you could use another to train...
admittedly never tried that, so that probably works.
Was a workaround from way back during the LoR beta...which I guess they left in place as the fix instead of fixing it. Don't remember if it worked for getting a friend to train though...as in something you needed a Captain to train, if you could slot a non-Rom BOFF of the same Career and then get a non-Rom Captain to train.
Still think they should fix that...though, as mentioned a couple of times - I'd favor the book angle.
Not as a training dummy no. Course, I haven't tried in a long time, so I should probably check that.
Yeah, I thought that this was the case, since I tried a while ago (as in when LoR came out), and I found that the only way to train Romulan/Reman BOffs was with another Romulan/Reman BOff or with your captain. Skill trainers still work, but for BOff to BOff training, Rommie only.
Um... nope. I don't think that one ever worked for me, and I think it was summarily removed. I will need to go back in-game to check this...
I don't think I've tried it in 3-4 months or so...haven't had to change my build in that long outside of the normal stuff I could hit up a trainer.
Your idea may be "easy" sounding but recycling the "challenge invite" and "boff trainer" UI-widgets to work as training-request and "captain so-and-so's training list" while adding an "ask captain to train officers" to the target-drop-down is almost as easy as not changing the game at all - even if you add a "tip jar".
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Instead of pointing the UI to the BOFF trainer, to the Captain, to the BOFF...you'd point it to the book...er...
It may have seemed like a good idea at some point, but I really think this is not the way to achieve whatever design goal was behind it.
Thing is, even if they moved the current stuff...you know they're still looking at being able to sell stuff down the road (like they have with Traits)...
You're probably right, but it just seems like such a good place to centre boff training...
Can't imagine the current form getting them either zen or sympathy, though. Maybe we'll get Mk IV versions of abilities through the next Fleet holding?
After a smoke, you know - even there they could do it...treat it as an unlock. Whether it had limited charges or was a single charge token, it could be added to the list at the BOFF trainer. They could still be something that could be sold on the Exchange to maintain that illusion of community and interaction...
You could use what I wrote to point at a book, yes. The reason why the book idea is more complicated generally is that it requires adapting/creating UI widgets AND implementing an item to support the logic required for just books.
Now if you want "so easy it requires one modification" here is another co-drafted concept; you know that "commission" button? Copy it and make a "Prepare for Transfer" button which "reverts" boffs to their "commission ready" state.
Yes/yes/it is/they tend to but never really are.
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Or you treat the books as a trimmed BOFF object. The UI looks to the BOFF currently to see what items it has available for training other BOFFs. Depending on how that data is stored, its requirements, you could either do the trimmed BOFF object or child that data element to a new book object that includes it. The change to the UI would be a check to see if it is a BOFF or a book - as a book, it wouldn't need to be commissioned - so you do not display that button. Even if it were a trimmed BOFF because of the hierarchy, you instead would look at checking for a value that would be a zero for the book and thus not display the commission button either.
You just rehashed this:
And you did it poorly. So poorly in fact that many BOFFs dismissed themselves from the game to get away from the rehashing's mere existence.
So I have to ask, were you trying to do that or did you really just take a swipe at me in spite of the fact you have next to no idea what you are talking about?
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Okay, assuming this is a means for a Captain to train Career-specific BOFFs either to sell on the Exchange or to trade/mail...let's take a look at this, eh?
First (not necessarily first, but where I'll start - first is probably later, but this is easiest, imho) you're going to need an empty Active BOFF slot to be able to slot the BOFF you intend to train with the skill. If no such slot is available, you will either have to dismiss one of your current BOFFs or purchase additional BOFF slots.
Second (again, not necessarily second - and I won't point out further that these are not necessarily in the order that I'd put them in...not putting that kind of effort into it) would be the case of the "Commission" button. Er, just which button are you talking about?
When you first receive a new BOFF, the typical three buttons you see in the Bridge Officer Assistance window would be Train Up, Join, or Not Now. Needless to say, none of those buttons would matter in this situation. No buttons actually would apply in the suggestion to "Prepare for Transfer".
"Commission" itself appears when you right-click one of the BOFFs in your Bridge Officer Candidates list. If you have a BOFF in inventory, you have the option to "Move to Candidate Roster" or to "Equip" (which replaces "Commission" in this instance). None of this applies to a BOFF that has Joined, been Equipped, or been Commissioned...moved to the Active BOFF list.
Your options for an Active BOFF can be found by going to the Status for that particular BOFF, where you will find a dropdown titled "Career Options" - which provides three choices: Discharge, Promote, and Train.
This is most likely where you meant the "Prepare for Transfer" option would be added. No copying of any button required, it would simply be added to the options for the dropdown list and linking it to the process.
Third, we get into that process...and...it will be a process. It would not simply be a case of flagging the BOFF as being in an Active or Candidate state. A series of checks would be required to see if that state could and should be changed.
Is this a BOFF that might be Bound to Character, Bound to Account, or otherwise limited in some fashion as to how it may be traded? If so, then that has to be maintained through the decommissioning process.
Is it a case of rejecting any attempts to decommission a BOFF that has any items equipped or is it a case of providing a warning that such items will be lost when the BOFF is decommissioned?
What would be a suitable warning to provide the player for any BOFFs that have had EXP spent on them so that the player is sure of the action they are taking and to avoid potential customer service interaction/bad feelings down the road?
Would it be a case that only BOFFs that have had 0 EXP spent on them are able to be decommissioned? If not, then the process would not only need to reset gear but it would also have to reset EXP spent to 0.
In completing the decommissioning process, will the Candidate be moved to the Candidate roster? What if there is no room in the Candidate roster? Will the process be allowed and the BOFF placed in inventory? What if there is no room in inventory? What information/feedback will be provided to the user so they understand why the process has failed?
Fourth, having created the Captain trained Candidate BOFF - what means will be available for transferring said BOFF to another player? Will we be looking at the current methods?
Are we going to adjust the ability for "non-mission" BOFFs to be placed in inventory or are we going to continue to require that there be space in the Candidate Roster? Will we update the displayed information when the transaction fails to make the player better aware of why the transaction may have failed, whether we allow them to be placed in inventory or not (either the Candidate Roster or the inventory may be full)...?
Fifth, are we going to improve the search functionality of the Exchange? It's only reasonable to assume that more people will begin training their otherwise garbage BOFFs instead of discarding them.
Sixth, if we choose to create any special skills either as rewards or as items to sell (either directly or via lockbox) are we also going to create a special BOFF for the skill or just create a training fodder BOFF?
If it is a special BOFF for the skill, what traits are we going to give it? Are we going to create a Romulan version as well as KDF and Federation? If we add additional playable factions down the road, will we then go back and update all of the special BOFFs?
Seventh, yeah - the list will go on and on and on and on and on...
Or we create a book. Yep, we would have to create a new item. How much database space is this new item going to take up in comparison to a BOFF though? Look at all the issues we do not have to deal with by it being a book rather than a BOFF, eh?
Like any item, it would have to check inventory - but that's any item. There's no messing with Active BOFF slots, Candidate Roster slots, or the like. There's no EXP issues, no gear issues, and no oh so many issues. It's just an item.
Whether we stick the item under Commodities, some other area of the Exchange, or create a new category - imagine the players' glee when they can just search for the skill using the current search feature, eh?
Down the road, if we want to add any special skills - there's no concerns about whether we have to create special BOFFs or training fodder. There's no issues regardless of how many playable factions we might add.
Imagine the KDF players' delight in not having to face higher prices because of the imbalance of faction population and potential scarcity?
What about creating the book? You could either copy the "Train Officer" button to make a "Create Book" button, that would then check inventory to see if a blank book was available, and then proceed to pretty much the current Train Officer window. Select the skill, select train, and voila! Perhaps there are no blank books needed. The book itself is simply created during the book creation process. You do the check for space in inventory, if there's no space, you let the player know why the process failed.
With the book in hand, the player doubleclicks or right-clicks and select Use - the training window comes up, they select the BOFF, and voila. What if there's no BOFF of that Career? Same as what happens when you try to do Captain training without such a BOFF.
Fewer UI changes required, more reuse of current mechanics, less database space required, more player friendly, fewer logic checks that need to be made, and this list too...goes on and on and on and on...albeit with a smile instead of a frown like the other list.