I'm hoping that when this system hits Holodeck I don't suddenly find my Bridge Officer's skills wiped out. Beam Overload 3, Torp Spread 3, DEM3, EPTW3... I even have the photonic science boff with Photonic Officer 3.
I'm hoping there's not some "Bug" that wipes all these skills out, forcing me to pay out to get back what I already have.
Fingers crossed though.
I'm not sure why you have fingers crossed when we already know from Tribble that currently active BOffs retain whatever powers they have, but "regular" Boffs on reserve (and on the exchange, presumably) are "empty". Given that C-store and special mission BOffs don't seem to have this problem, it's entirely possible that what's going on right now is that for some reason there is no way for the system to recognize the randomly selected starting powers of "regular" random BOffs who aren't yet active, but it can recognize the powers for the hand-crafted "special" BOffs. I tried promoting a random BOff from my reserve to active list, to see if he would be populated with powers at that point, but no such luck - he started with no powers trained in space or ground, so would be unusable until I trained him up at ESD. I also noted, however, that the "train up" option in that dialogue was still there, despite being useless since the BOff had no skills to transfer.
Obviously, then, this is a work in progress - my money is on the ultimate solution to this "empty BOffs" issue will be to find a way to get the system to recognize the random powers on ordinary BOffs, and that the BOff to BOff training system will be retained, as that prevents them from having to invent a new mechanism for getting the powers like Beam Overload III that are currently only found on random BOffs.
So, to sum up - any BOffs you have in your active roster currently will retain all the powers they currently have. Any "special" BOffs you have in your reserve roster (such as the Dyson Rep BOff) retain powers as well. Any normal BOffs that you have on reserve, in your inventory, or on the exchange may end up losing their powers, but it's not 100% clear that's the intent.
That is pretty much the start and end of it, isnt it?
Costing EC is not free...
And even if you + many others do consider that free, it's still hardly the end, especially since the majority won't get their Boffs to train in every single skill out there. Even for the most casual players, 500 Dil for the occasional Boff training isn't that much to ask, and this time the investment won't go to waste if they change their minds later
Was named Trek17.
Been playing STO since Open Beta, and have never regarded anything as worse than 'meh', if only due to personal standards.
Well if you are training them with your own captain's career path yeah.
If not, its too the exchange and you better have lots of EC.
I think you are VASTLY overestimating how much these will cost - at worst they will be as expensive as the "cheap" Very Rare crafting components (the ones that take one very rare material and 500 Dil) - so, they will cost around 80-100k ec, if even that. If they allow the project to crit (it doesn't currently, but if you use a catalyst you see that your "success" bar empties by a little bit, presumably because the extra skill is going to fill an invisible "crit" bar that hasn't been hooked up yet), that will drive the prices down even further. If both the PADD and the Training Manual can crit, then you will likely be better off simply buying the finished Manuals, but in any case, we're talking on the order of a few hundred thousand EC, and likely not even a total cost of a million EC to set up your BOffs, from scratch, with the powers you want for your specific ship.
Now, before people chime in with "That's so much EC for a starting player!", remember, the ONLY powers this applies to are powers at the Lt Cmdr and Cmdr level - meaning that before a player needed to think about buying these he/she has had a chance to save up through the lower level missions. Also worth noting that newer players will definitely benefit from the fact that they no longer have to spend Expertise to "rank up" a power once it's purchased anymore - that was always frustrating for me when rolling up a new toon.
I think the more interesting question is what happened to the BO powers on those rank-up Bridge Officers. Are they gone unintentionally? Will players get Training Manuals during levelling?
Rank III ability training becomes only really relevant at endgame, but before that, expenditure cost in Dilithium are... difficult, since there is very little regular activity that would actually grant Dilithium as you level your character. DOFFing may actually be the main source.
Star Trek Online Advancement: You start with lowbie gear, you end with Lobi gear.
I think the more interesting question is what happened to the BO powers on those rank-up Bridge Officers. Are they gone unintentionally? Will players get Training Manuals during levelling?
Rank III ability training becomes only really relevant at endgame, but before that, expenditure cost in Dilithium are... difficult, since there is very little regular activity that would actually grant Dilithium as you level your character. DOFFing may actually be the main source.
maybe they can add pads to the random loot table like they did with superior upgrade kits?
maybe they can add pads to the random loot table like they did with superior upgrade kits?
Maybe. But that would be... well, random. I think it may be more important for players to get a larger selection of powers during leveling - after all, you got a few slots to fill, and there are many limitations on the bo skills - so even if you get 50 BO training manuals, most of them won't "fit" because they will cover slots you already got powers for...
Star Trek Online Advancement: You start with lowbie gear, you end with Lobi gear.
I think the more interesting question is what happened to the BO powers on those rank-up Bridge Officers. Are they gone unintentionally? Will players get Training Manuals during levelling?
Rank III ability training becomes only really relevant at endgame, but before that, expenditure cost in Dilithium are... difficult, since there is very little regular activity that would actually grant Dilithium as you level your character. DOFFing may actually be the main source.
Well, remember, in order to train powers yourself, you have to have 3 or 6 ranks in the relevant skill, as well - which is another reason why leveling characters are probably better off just spending the EC to buy the few Rank III abilities they want while they finish leveling, and then potentially look at spending dilithium to save themselves EC once they hit endgame and want to start experimenting with different builds. To me it looks like the way the system is set up from a new player/character perspective is that by the time you could actually use those rank III powers, you will be able to afford at least a few key ones, and the dilithium cost of crafting and training those powers yourself is largely irrelevant because you don't have many of the powers you would want to train unlocked until you hit the levels where you start earning Dilithium more anyway.
I agree on the rank up BOffs question, but I think it will really come down to two possibilities - either they will have a random selection of powers "Pre-slotted" but for whatever reason the system isn't set up for that yet, or else they will come with a "Training Pack" that gives a randomly selected set of training manuals to represent the powers they would have had in the old system. Honestly, now that I think about it, I would honestly prefer the second situation (provided there was a way to give the existing BOffs on the exchange and in reserve lists the same treatment), as it would allow people to do things like sell off the extra Beam Overload III manual they got with a random Boff they like, but don't want that power on.
I love these nerfs where they take away one system and bring back an overhauled one that is either watered down or has costs that weren't in the old system. "Oh but it's only 500 dil here, 1000 dil there". Then they nerf the dil and neurals in fleet actions, nerf the dil from dyson, introduce a dil hungry upgrade system, remove daily events in favor of weekly events that don't happen every week and average out to a net loss compared to running their previous daily counterparts etc. At least we got a little convenience out of the deal this time? I guess.
I mean on their own it might not seem like much. But slowly but surely, over a year or so these kinds of not-a-nerf nerfs have a heavy cumulative impact on our overall resources and stretch them thinner and thinner. Half of you are just too dumb to notice. Cryptic is becoming the Time Warner of MMO's.
Crafting Training Manuals
You need those PAdds, they take 4 hours to build (you can queue up to 5) and cost 500 Dilithium. I forget any other EC cost or material cost because meh.
If you got a PADD, you can then create a training material, which takes a few seconds.
This is the only way currently you can get Rank III abilities - any skill you could previously train. In my case, I noticed I could also train abilities from other careers. I suspect that this is not intended, and you can only train those of your career.
I have not seen any way to train powers that could only be gotten from other BOs.
I was hoping to do a thorough look at this also but the characters I copied never made it there and I had a piece of ancient history stored away on Tribble. LOL
Buying Training Manuals from the old BO Trainers
It costs a marginal amount of EC that I didn't memorize. You can pick all the powers you could previously pick there.
Seemed they ranged from 100EC for the ensign (now Mk I white?) to 10,000EC for the commander (now Mk ? Purple - sorry I didn't read the Mk). But... white = ensign, green = lt, blue = lt cmdr, purple = cmdr.
Using Training Manuals
When you go to the skills tab for a Bridge Officer, you can see what skills he has slotted. If you pick a Ground or Space slot, it shows what powers the BO knows already, and what powers he could be trained in, for that slot.
If you train that power, the Bridge Officer keeps that skill forever. YAY!
The cost for training additional powers increase. The cost seems to be separately increased by power rank - e.g. if you train multiple Ensign powers, the price for Ensign powers seems to go up, but this doesn't affect the Lt.Cmdr powers.
The cost seem to be in the same low regions as before (e.g. Hundreds to Thousands at worst).
Personal note: I found it clunky. I would like to be able to see my entire crew while setting powers so I don't make a mistake and end up with a double-up. Again, this is just a personal observation. Will maybe drop that in the suggestions thread.
BO skills no longer have a training level from 1 to 9
You used to need to spend points to train a skill from 1-9 (for space skills, that lowered the cooldown). That seems to be gone entirely and the skills seem to be maxed out automatically.
Seems sensible, the system gained some complexity with the change and there is not really a need for this separate mechanic. (Of course, people that trained Emergency Powers only with 5 ranks to ensure the cooldowns would fit their intended usage cycle can no longer do that, but I think overall the number of people that didn't max out BO skills at endgame are probably minimal.)
Seemed this way to me as well. I checked everywhere to make sure it wasn't hiding. Training points seems to be 100% covered by the skill point cost to train the skill.
Slotting Powers
In the Skill Tabs, you can train a Bridge Office provided you have the manual for it, and you can select what powers he has currently active.
You can change the powers the BOFF has active also in the Station Tabs, where you get an overview of all the stations (space and ground) you have, but you can't train new ones here.
The selection of powers is part of the ship's loadout (as you'd expect).
Restrictions are generally the same as before - a Lt.Cmdr power like Transfer Shield Strength III can only go in a Lt.Cmdr Slot of a Bridge Officer, and only be used if the ship has a Bridge Officer Station for a Lt.Cmdr Science power.
The difference to before is that your BOs now can know multiple powers for a particular slot and you can choose which one is to be active.
Bridge Officers have a "default" loadout of skills. I presume this is the default when you use them for the first time on a ship and haven't yet a loadout specified.
Bridge Officer Reserve
The UI for your Bridge Officer Reserve has changed, it is now its own window you can open from the spot you could originally see them lined up on the right.
I noticed that many of the Bridge Officers (but none of the "Special" officers gained from reputation completion or featured episode series) no longer had any powers listed.
Unfortunately I don't remember how I got these BOs - I suspect most may actually be from DOFFing. The character is older than dirt, aka from before F2P, so he's unlikely to still have any old BOs from mission or levelling rewards (other than those of a few Featured Episode Series and from Reputations).
Worst case scenario could be that a lot of BOs I kept around for their specific power set to use for training at some point will lose their powers.
---
Overall I think that looks pretty interesting and I like the features. The Dil cost aren't big, only needed for Rank III powers, and not needed often - since BOs no longer "forget" powers.
I turn, you get a lot more flexibility and can work with a much smaller crew of actively maintained BOs. It invites more experimentation. No longer need I worry about a BO "forgetting" Beam Overload III just because I misclicked or wanted to try something different.
I haven't tried how the changes affect the levelling experience, I wonder if you get new pre-trained BOFFs, or if they plan to add some Training Manuals as mission reward... (I haven't checked the new missions yet.)
Things I was not able to really do was craft anything. I copied my current mains over - engineer and science - but they never got there. I had to work with relics of a long gone era and they didn't have much to work with.
As he said, I didn't find BO3 or any other previously trained by other BOFF powers anywhere and the reserve crew only had traits in their descriptions. I was hoping to find that a BOFF could make a manual but it does not seem they can. This testing is, however, Day 0 more or less. I expect a lot of changes from what I saw just now.
Also, concur that you can do more with less. It's not going to be hard to maintain a very rare quality crew with the superior traits you want when the officer can literally know everything in the book. If you have ships with different seat layouts, you will still need a boff for every seat meaning if you had a ship with 2 engineering seats, 1 tac seat, and 2 science seats and a ship with 2 engineering, 2 tac, and 1 science, you would still need 2 engineers, 2 tacs, and 2 science officers.
Overall, I like the new system.
Thank you very much for the initial post. I used it as a roadmap when I did my poking around.
Currently this testing phase is only usable on Hybrid ships or consoles, yes?
In that case, I don't own one. Second, when it makes to Holodeck...there's a high chance I won't be able take part of this feature, since I don't have a ship that fitted for that use.
No. My copies on Tribble are way back from LoR testing and they had the ability, even if I couldn't test it all due to empty inventories, to do everything. I am sure you can't use an intel power in a seat that is not intel but you don't need a T6 ship to use the boffs, only the intel powers.
I love these nerfs where they take away one system and bring back an overhauled one that is either watered down or has costs that weren't in the old system. "Oh but it's only 500 dil here, 1000 dil there". Then they nerf the dil and neurals in fleet actions, nerf the dil from dyson, introduce a dil hungry upgrade system, remove daily events in favor of weekly events that don't happen every week and average out to a net loss compared to running their previous daily counterparts etc. At least we got a little convenience out of the deal this time? I guess.
I mean on their own it might not seem like much. But slowly but surely, over a year or so these kinds of not-a-nerf nerfs have a heavy cumulative impact on our overall resources and stretch them thinner and thinner. Half of you are just too dumb to notice. Cryptic is becoming the Time Warner of MMO's.
And the other half just don't care, because it really isn't that big a deal overall
Compared to other MMO's (especially ones like EVE), STO's grind is relatively light, and much of which is not required for the more casual people.
Plus, the old system did have a cost; EC. Normally it was small, but many would pay hundreds of thousands for Boffs off the exchange, looking for that rare Rank III ability to give to theirs. Changing one cost for another is not adding a cost, fairly obviously
Was named Trek17.
Been playing STO since Open Beta, and have never regarded anything as worse than 'meh', if only due to personal standards.
Have not retrained my BO in the last 4 years... they are fine as they are. As long as this 'update' does not interfere; I wont complain
Not white knighting you here... LOL
You shouldn't need to do anything then. My crew knew the powers they had previously. I wouldn't have had to change anything except I wanted to test the system. My ships were ready to fly as they were when copied.
And the other half just don't care, because it really isn't that big a deal overall
Compared to other MMO's (especially ones like EVE), STO's grind is relatively light, and much of which is not required for the more casual people.
Plus, the old system did have a cost; EC. Normally it was small, but many would pay hundreds of thousands for Boffs off the exchange, looking for that rare Rank III ability to give to theirs. Changing one cost for another is not adding a cost, fairly obviously
not to mention all the ec wasted swaping one skill for another and back again tweeking because Boffs couldn't "remember" any of their old skills
Even for the most casual players, 500 Dil for the occasional Boff training isn't that much to ask, and this time the investment won't go to waste if they change their minds later
Why make it more expensive in dil terms though? I can understand a higher ec cost, but I don't see the point of adding a dilithium cost on to something that, as far as I can see, has no justification for it.
Ten soldiers wisely led will beat a hundred without a head. - Euripides
I no longer do any Bug Hunting work for Cryptic. I may resume if a serious attempt to fix the game is made.
Why make it more expensive in dil terms though? I can understand a higher ec cost, but I don't see the point of adding a dilithium cost on to something that, as far as I can see, has no justification for it.
Perhaps they were not selling enough extra "BOFF Slots"?
I wonder if Tovan Khev will finally be modifiable?
Why make it more expensive in dil terms though? I can understand a higher ec cost, but I don't see the point of adding a dilithium cost on to something that, as far as I can see, has no justification for it.
I believe that's because of one thing.
With the old system, you could spend only the standard EC cost, or you could spend hundreds of thousands finding the right Boff with the right skill to train... but either way, if you wanted to change your mind later, you'd need to find the new skill again (which could cost even more hundreds of thousands of EC)
With the new system, Boffs will remember anything they're taught, period; just need to swap them. The cost may be 500 Dil, but ultimately, the long-term benefit is considerably above the short-term loss, imo
Was named Trek17.
Been playing STO since Open Beta, and have never regarded anything as worse than 'meh', if only due to personal standards.
With the old system, you could spend only the standard EC cost, or you could spend hundreds of thousands finding the right Boff with the right skill to train... but either way, if you wanted to change your mind later, you'd need to find the new skill again (which could cost even more hundreds of thousands of EC)
With the new system, Boffs will remember anything they're taught, period; just need to swap them. The cost may be 500 Dil, but ultimately, the long-term benefit is considerably above the short-term loss, imo
That's fair, and maybe I wouldn't mind if the current dil sinks weren't so bad. The dil sinks that got added with DR, the Upgrade System being the elephant in the room, I feel adding yet more is just adding to what is already a pretty alt-unfriendly issue, not to mention you can get locked into a build.
Adding another dil sink will just inflate that problem, even by a little bit, as it means less dil available and therefore makes committing to a build or a character even more a necessity than it can currently be for a number of players, I know I certainly feel that way, while others in my fleet have expressed the same feelings.
Ten soldiers wisely led will beat a hundred without a head. - Euripides
I no longer do any Bug Hunting work for Cryptic. I may resume if a serious attempt to fix the game is made.
My question is regarding whether specialization Padds are personable, account bound, or character bound?
Because if I need to gain 20 levels just to give a Boff an Intel specialization, and decent abilities, that in itself is painful.
Tradeable. As are the Training Manuals. It seems to me the will replace a large part of the BOFF trade on the exchange. It will only exist for species, gender and traits.
Star Trek Online Advancement: You start with lowbie gear, you end with Lobi gear.
That's fair, and maybe I wouldn't mind if the current dil sinks weren't so bad. The dil sinks that got added with DR, the Upgrade System being the elephant in the room, I feel adding yet more is just adding to what is already a pretty alt-unfriendly issue, not to mention you can get locked into a build.
Adding another dil sink will just inflate that problem, even by a little bit, as it means less dil available and therefore makes committing to a build or a character even more a necessity than it can currently be for a number of players, I know I certainly feel that way, while others in my fleet have expressed the same feelings.
I think the real culprit are all those DR sink we have.
If the Boff revamp had been released a few months before DR, it would have been fine as it is. I think 250~ instead of 500 would be better, but that's more for new player that can't have that much dil unless they play the foundry, or wait 2 days and do the academy quizz each day.
In fact, I'm pretty sure it would have been acclaimed as one awesome update, like the kits changes.
As for the cost, pretty sure the padd and skill will be dirt cheap after a while, except for the spec skill. But that's because we hit another DR problem, the grind for XP, and how a lot of people doesn't have enough spec point to train them.
I think it's fine as it is, the possible benefits, at least to me, are just too good.
Doesn't change that DR sink are really, really bad. But nothing will change that, unless they change them.
I know it's difficult to take this update out of context, but we need to. The DR grind is one thing, and I truly hope they'll work on it. The BOFF system is awesome, and I hope they'll keep it.
I've found an issue with the new system as it stands.
Without the "training" capability of using a BO to train another BO, and you want to use something like Beam Overload 3 or Reverse Shield Polarity 3, you MUST use the BO that has that specific non-learnable ability.
Unless I'm missing something... (been fiddling with it on tribble)
People were buying things like keys and reselling them for EC so they could outfit their characters with stuff off the exchange, and if anyone that thinks Boffs with certain skills wasn't one of the things they were buying they are delusional. :rolleyes:
I am delusional then.
BOFF for certain traits. Yes, totally. For certain skill ? Really ? I've dumped so many of those because the price was incredibly low. And never had any issues into finding the one I needed cheaply.
My only issue with this new system is the fact there's still no means to train the rare skills like TS3 or BO3 yet.
I'm hoping Cryptic sets things so that at the very least, Boffs on the Exchange and in Reserve already have their listed skills set, and can still be used to pass on those skills via "Train Up".
That way, it won't entirely crash the Boff market (while I don't care about it too much, I do understand the value of still selling Boffs with those rare untrainable skills).
If they do that, I'd gladly suffer the 500 Dil cost for obtaining/training Rank 3 skills from my Captains or from other player Captains.
If they don't do that, they can just do away with the Dil costs. I'd only be willing to pay the 500 Dil if it was to obtain otherwise unobtainable skills, such as TS3/BO3, TBR3/TR3, and AtS3/RSP3, to name a few Boff-exclusive skills.
I think the more interesting question is what happened to the BO powers on those rank-up Bridge Officers. Are they gone unintentionally? Will players get Training Manuals during levelling?
Rank III ability training becomes only really relevant at endgame, but before that, expenditure cost in Dilithium are... difficult, since there is very little regular activity that would actually grant Dilithium as you level your character. DOFFing may actually be the main source.
Mustrum,
First thanks for the excellent overview. As always, your posts are worth reading (at least in my experience).
Have you seen any indicator/any information/have any theories on what this will do or is expected to do to resolve the Bridge Officer personnel bloat we seem to have currently?
What's the endpoint target for all the, very likely, massive surplus of Bridge officers this is going to generate when we don't need to keep them around even for training up particular skills anymore?
As it is, it's pretty easy and kind of slilly not to exclusively use purple boffs with the traits you want and just build skills to suit.
Are they making any mention or direction on making BOFFs valuable on any level rather than 'disposable people', past your active bridge teams?
Just wondered if you saw anything and thanks for the overview.
"The only thing mankind learns from the study of history is that mankind does not learn from the study of history." ~G. Santayana
This system is 1000x better. The dil cost is insignificant compared to purchasing Boff slots... 250 zen for 2 boff slots is 40k dil... it's a win, win and if you can't see that you are blind.
First thanks for the excellent overview. As always, your posts are worth reading (at least in my experience).
Have you seen any indicator/any information/have any theories on what this will do or is expected to do to resolve the Bridge Officer personnel bloat we seem to have currently?
What's the endpoint target for all the, very likely, massive surplus of Bridge officers this is going to generate when we don't need to keep them around even for training up particular skills anymore?
I have no idea. There isn't anything on Tribble that suggests a use for them, and no developer comment on it as far as I could see. So anything would be speculation and guessing.
I think the most likely thing is - they'll be a bit more superflous then now. That's not satisfying, but I wouldn't count on more until I see something.
Star Trek Online Advancement: You start with lowbie gear, you end with Lobi gear.
Comments
I'm not sure why you have fingers crossed when we already know from Tribble that currently active BOffs retain whatever powers they have, but "regular" Boffs on reserve (and on the exchange, presumably) are "empty". Given that C-store and special mission BOffs don't seem to have this problem, it's entirely possible that what's going on right now is that for some reason there is no way for the system to recognize the randomly selected starting powers of "regular" random BOffs who aren't yet active, but it can recognize the powers for the hand-crafted "special" BOffs. I tried promoting a random BOff from my reserve to active list, to see if he would be populated with powers at that point, but no such luck - he started with no powers trained in space or ground, so would be unusable until I trained him up at ESD. I also noted, however, that the "train up" option in that dialogue was still there, despite being useless since the BOff had no skills to transfer.
Obviously, then, this is a work in progress - my money is on the ultimate solution to this "empty BOffs" issue will be to find a way to get the system to recognize the random powers on ordinary BOffs, and that the BOff to BOff training system will be retained, as that prevents them from having to invent a new mechanism for getting the powers like Beam Overload III that are currently only found on random BOffs.
So, to sum up - any BOffs you have in your active roster currently will retain all the powers they currently have. Any "special" BOffs you have in your reserve roster (such as the Dyson Rep BOff) retain powers as well. Any normal BOffs that you have on reserve, in your inventory, or on the exchange may end up losing their powers, but it's not 100% clear that's the intent.
And even if you + many others do consider that free, it's still hardly the end, especially since the majority won't get their Boffs to train in every single skill out there. Even for the most casual players, 500 Dil for the occasional Boff training isn't that much to ask, and this time the investment won't go to waste if they change their minds later
Been playing STO since Open Beta, and have never regarded anything as worse than 'meh', if only due to personal standards.
I think you are VASTLY overestimating how much these will cost - at worst they will be as expensive as the "cheap" Very Rare crafting components (the ones that take one very rare material and 500 Dil) - so, they will cost around 80-100k ec, if even that. If they allow the project to crit (it doesn't currently, but if you use a catalyst you see that your "success" bar empties by a little bit, presumably because the extra skill is going to fill an invisible "crit" bar that hasn't been hooked up yet), that will drive the prices down even further. If both the PADD and the Training Manual can crit, then you will likely be better off simply buying the finished Manuals, but in any case, we're talking on the order of a few hundred thousand EC, and likely not even a total cost of a million EC to set up your BOffs, from scratch, with the powers you want for your specific ship.
Now, before people chime in with "That's so much EC for a starting player!", remember, the ONLY powers this applies to are powers at the Lt Cmdr and Cmdr level - meaning that before a player needed to think about buying these he/she has had a chance to save up through the lower level missions. Also worth noting that newer players will definitely benefit from the fact that they no longer have to spend Expertise to "rank up" a power once it's purchased anymore - that was always frustrating for me when rolling up a new toon.
Rank III ability training becomes only really relevant at endgame, but before that, expenditure cost in Dilithium are... difficult, since there is very little regular activity that would actually grant Dilithium as you level your character. DOFFing may actually be the main source.
maybe they can add pads to the random loot table like they did with superior upgrade kits?
Maybe. But that would be... well, random. I think it may be more important for players to get a larger selection of powers during leveling - after all, you got a few slots to fill, and there are many limitations on the bo skills - so even if you get 50 BO training manuals, most of them won't "fit" because they will cover slots you already got powers for...
Well, remember, in order to train powers yourself, you have to have 3 or 6 ranks in the relevant skill, as well - which is another reason why leveling characters are probably better off just spending the EC to buy the few Rank III abilities they want while they finish leveling, and then potentially look at spending dilithium to save themselves EC once they hit endgame and want to start experimenting with different builds. To me it looks like the way the system is set up from a new player/character perspective is that by the time you could actually use those rank III powers, you will be able to afford at least a few key ones, and the dilithium cost of crafting and training those powers yourself is largely irrelevant because you don't have many of the powers you would want to train unlocked until you hit the levels where you start earning Dilithium more anyway.
I agree on the rank up BOffs question, but I think it will really come down to two possibilities - either they will have a random selection of powers "Pre-slotted" but for whatever reason the system isn't set up for that yet, or else they will come with a "Training Pack" that gives a randomly selected set of training manuals to represent the powers they would have had in the old system. Honestly, now that I think about it, I would honestly prefer the second situation (provided there was a way to give the existing BOffs on the exchange and in reserve lists the same treatment), as it would allow people to do things like sell off the extra Beam Overload III manual they got with a random Boff they like, but don't want that power on.
I mean on their own it might not seem like much. But slowly but surely, over a year or so these kinds of not-a-nerf nerfs have a heavy cumulative impact on our overall resources and stretch them thinner and thinner. Half of you are just too dumb to notice. Cryptic is becoming the Time Warner of MMO's.
I was hoping to do a thorough look at this also but the characters I copied never made it there and I had a piece of ancient history stored away on Tribble. LOL
Seemed they ranged from 100EC for the ensign (now Mk I white?) to 10,000EC for the commander (now Mk ? Purple - sorry I didn't read the Mk). But... white = ensign, green = lt, blue = lt cmdr, purple = cmdr.
Personal note: I found it clunky. I would like to be able to see my entire crew while setting powers so I don't make a mistake and end up with a double-up. Again, this is just a personal observation. Will maybe drop that in the suggestions thread.
Seemed this way to me as well. I checked everywhere to make sure it wasn't hiding. Training points seems to be 100% covered by the skill point cost to train the skill.
Things I was not able to really do was craft anything. I copied my current mains over - engineer and science - but they never got there. I had to work with relics of a long gone era and they didn't have much to work with.
As he said, I didn't find BO3 or any other previously trained by other BOFF powers anywhere and the reserve crew only had traits in their descriptions. I was hoping to find that a BOFF could make a manual but it does not seem they can. This testing is, however, Day 0 more or less. I expect a lot of changes from what I saw just now.
Also, concur that you can do more with less. It's not going to be hard to maintain a very rare quality crew with the superior traits you want when the officer can literally know everything in the book. If you have ships with different seat layouts, you will still need a boff for every seat meaning if you had a ship with 2 engineering seats, 1 tac seat, and 2 science seats and a ship with 2 engineering, 2 tac, and 1 science, you would still need 2 engineers, 2 tacs, and 2 science officers.
Overall, I like the new system.
Thank you very much for the initial post. I used it as a roadmap when I did my poking around.
No. My copies on Tribble are way back from LoR testing and they had the ability, even if I couldn't test it all due to empty inventories, to do everything. I am sure you can't use an intel power in a seat that is not intel but you don't need a T6 ship to use the boffs, only the intel powers.
Compared to other MMO's (especially ones like EVE), STO's grind is relatively light, and much of which is not required for the more casual people.
Plus, the old system did have a cost; EC. Normally it was small, but many would pay hundreds of thousands for Boffs off the exchange, looking for that rare Rank III ability to give to theirs. Changing one cost for another is not adding a cost, fairly obviously
Been playing STO since Open Beta, and have never regarded anything as worse than 'meh', if only due to personal standards.
Not white knighting you here... LOL
You shouldn't need to do anything then. My crew knew the powers they had previously. I wouldn't have had to change anything except I wanted to test the system. My ships were ready to fly as they were when copied.
not to mention all the ec wasted swaping one skill for another and back again tweeking because Boffs couldn't "remember" any of their old skills
Oh, is it not?
OK.
Let the casuals speak for themselves, nothing wrong with being considerate but speaking on others behalf? Really?
Edit: Personally I feel there's no need for more dil sinks, considering the upgrade system is already asking way too much.
Because if I need to gain 20 levels just to give a Boff an Intel specialization, and decent abilities, that in itself is painful.
Though they jacked up the EC price considerably.
Why make it more expensive in dil terms though? I can understand a higher ec cost, but I don't see the point of adding a dilithium cost on to something that, as far as I can see, has no justification for it.
Perhaps they were not selling enough extra "BOFF Slots"?
I wonder if Tovan Khev will finally be modifiable?
With the old system, you could spend only the standard EC cost, or you could spend hundreds of thousands finding the right Boff with the right skill to train... but either way, if you wanted to change your mind later, you'd need to find the new skill again (which could cost even more hundreds of thousands of EC)
With the new system, Boffs will remember anything they're taught, period; just need to swap them. The cost may be 500 Dil, but ultimately, the long-term benefit is considerably above the short-term loss, imo
Been playing STO since Open Beta, and have never regarded anything as worse than 'meh', if only due to personal standards.
That's fair, and maybe I wouldn't mind if the current dil sinks weren't so bad. The dil sinks that got added with DR, the Upgrade System being the elephant in the room, I feel adding yet more is just adding to what is already a pretty alt-unfriendly issue, not to mention you can get locked into a build.
Adding another dil sink will just inflate that problem, even by a little bit, as it means less dil available and therefore makes committing to a build or a character even more a necessity than it can currently be for a number of players, I know I certainly feel that way, while others in my fleet have expressed the same feelings.
Tradeable. As are the Training Manuals. It seems to me the will replace a large part of the BOFF trade on the exchange. It will only exist for species, gender and traits.
If the Boff revamp had been released a few months before DR, it would have been fine as it is. I think 250~ instead of 500 would be better, but that's more for new player that can't have that much dil unless they play the foundry, or wait 2 days and do the academy quizz each day.
In fact, I'm pretty sure it would have been acclaimed as one awesome update, like the kits changes.
As for the cost, pretty sure the padd and skill will be dirt cheap after a while, except for the spec skill. But that's because we hit another DR problem, the grind for XP, and how a lot of people doesn't have enough spec point to train them.
I think it's fine as it is, the possible benefits, at least to me, are just too good.
Doesn't change that DR sink are really, really bad. But nothing will change that, unless they change them.
I know it's difficult to take this update out of context, but we need to. The DR grind is one thing, and I truly hope they'll work on it. The BOFF system is awesome, and I hope they'll keep it.
Without the "training" capability of using a BO to train another BO, and you want to use something like Beam Overload 3 or Reverse Shield Polarity 3, you MUST use the BO that has that specific non-learnable ability.
Unless I'm missing something... (been fiddling with it on tribble)
BOFF for certain traits. Yes, totally. For certain skill ? Really ? I've dumped so many of those because the price was incredibly low. And never had any issues into finding the one I needed cheaply.
What was those "certain skills" ?
I'm hoping Cryptic sets things so that at the very least, Boffs on the Exchange and in Reserve already have their listed skills set, and can still be used to pass on those skills via "Train Up".
That way, it won't entirely crash the Boff market (while I don't care about it too much, I do understand the value of still selling Boffs with those rare untrainable skills).
If they do that, I'd gladly suffer the 500 Dil cost for obtaining/training Rank 3 skills from my Captains or from other player Captains.
If they don't do that, they can just do away with the Dil costs. I'd only be willing to pay the 500 Dil if it was to obtain otherwise unobtainable skills, such as TS3/BO3, TBR3/TR3, and AtS3/RSP3, to name a few Boff-exclusive skills.
Mustrum,
First thanks for the excellent overview. As always, your posts are worth reading (at least in my experience).
Have you seen any indicator/any information/have any theories on what this will do or is expected to do to resolve the Bridge Officer personnel bloat we seem to have currently?
What's the endpoint target for all the, very likely, massive surplus of Bridge officers this is going to generate when we don't need to keep them around even for training up particular skills anymore?
As it is, it's pretty easy and kind of slilly not to exclusively use purple boffs with the traits you want and just build skills to suit.
Are they making any mention or direction on making BOFFs valuable on any level rather than 'disposable people', past your active bridge teams?
Just wondered if you saw anything and thanks for the overview.
I think the most likely thing is - they'll be a bit more superflous then now. That's not satisfying, but I wouldn't count on more until I see something.