I think this system needs to explain better why my carrier group needs to spend 24 hours in maintenance after a 15min recalibration mission. =P
I really think that maintenance times should be mission dependent, not ship tier dependent. Whether it's a 15 minute recalibration mission or a 20 hour high risk tactical mission, the maintenance time is the same? I also want to know why higher tier ships need longer maintenance as well, seems very backwards.
Maintenance does seem to be a little excessive just now. I know Bort has mentioned that it's "because it's an MMO", but still it is excessive. My ship can get blown up completely five times in a row and still get back out there right away and kick butt. Yet these ships apparently need a day of shore leave to recover from a 15 minute passenger cruise.
Join date is wrong, I've actually been around since STO Beta.
True alters don't have a "main". Account wide unlocks for all unique event rewards!!
Some more positive feedback, because I really do like this system in principle even though I think it needs work:
(1) I love the concept of the tour of duty, and I love that at least the first mission is good for low-tier ships (reminds me of the misadventures of the Rotarran, haha). I'd love to see a story attached to it; it is fair to assume that that's coming?
(2) As much as I've complained on this thread about the way low-tier ships work, I really do love that you've included every. single. ship. in this system. It gives me a lot to play with, and really breathes new life into my old, disused ships/alts. That's really cool.
(3) The special abilities have potential, and (once some numbers are tweaked) I think they will give this system some really interesting depth as we try out different synergies and so forth.
(4) YAY for the Federation and Klingons being full-blown allies again, to the point where I can send my KDF ships on Fed missions and vice versa. It's cool to see the peace accord directly represented in a system like this. Here's hoping a Romulan campaign isn't too far behind.
(5) On a more personal note, good on you for making my T5 bugship UR. I no longer feel so bad about not having a T6 one, lol.
So yeah: I'm complaining a lot in this thread, but I really do think you're on the right track with this, Borticus. I think that this has the potential to be a lot of fun.
I love it so far. Low level ships are really awesome for this, people just didn't find out yet. In the shorter assignments they vastly outperform higher tier ships when you add in maintenance costs, which is great!
One UI suggestion:
When selecting ships for an assignment a new window pops up, containing the list of available ships.
This window is unmovable and overlaps the assignment window. The way it is you can't see both the ship and the assignment requirements at the same, which is very unfortunate.
I suggest making it movable or (if there's an engine limitation) move it to the side of the assignment window.
The most important information needs to be visible.
I think this system needs to explain better why my carrier group needs to spend 24 hours in maintenance after a 15min recalibration mission. =P
I really think that maintenance times should be mission dependent, not ship tier dependent. Whether it's a 15 minute recalibration mission or a 20 hour high risk tactical mission, the maintenance time is the same? I also want to know why higher tier ships need longer maintenance as well, seems very backwards.
Maintenance does seem to be a little excessive just now. I know Bort has mentioned that it's "because it's an MMO", but still it is excessive. My ship can get blown up completely five times in a row and still get back out there right away and kick butt. Yet these ships apparently need a day of shore leave to recover from a 15 minute passenger cruise.
I hate to sound like I'm complaining, I'm actually pretty fine with the system as it is (assuming it's more polished on arrival). I have bought/won/earned quite enough ships over the several years that I've played that I suspect the limiting factor for the admiralty system, to me, will be the mission cap. It may seem limiting now, but much like crafting, but we'll have everything unlocked in a few months.
However, The maintenance stat is what drives me batty. From the internal mental role playing state of, "why does my Atrox need the exact same days worth of maintenance!?' regardless of what mission she is sent on.
I have been amazed at how exited myself and many others have been about the Admiralty system. It seemed like a great way to get use out of all the ships I don't really use. For the first time I decided that it was worthwhile to try something new out on tribble and it has turned into a huge disappointment.
The maintenance mechanic is ruining the experience. I had enough ships to run one mission for the Federation and one for the Klingons. Both missions took less than three hours to complete and the results were success and critical success. Now those ships are tied up in maintenence for 24 - 36 hours. I could understand the long maintenance time if the missions had failed maybe.
The best way to fix this would be to remove maintenance but I know that won't happen. The next best thing would be to increase mission times and reduce maintenance times so they are more balanced. A 1:1 ratio would be a good place to start. At least then those of us who would rather spend dilithium on things like fleet projects that require it than speeding up maintenance wouldn't feel like we were being penalized so much.
I don't mind the progression taking time. Everything is a grind but if it wasn't what would we do. The thing that I dislike is that there is going to be a little button allowing people to speed up maintenance for dilithium allowing them to run eight missions in the time it takes me to run one.
The admiralty system as it is today is not what I was hoping for. Once it goes live and I have access to all of the ships I have purchased/earned this may not be such a big issue for me. There are a lot of players who don't have a stockpile of ships to draw from though especially new players.
At least a good chunk of the carriers have good Sci KDF side, Vo'Quv (freebie) had 48, Kar'fi (C-Store) 42, Fleet Kar'fi 48, Breen Sarr Theln 50. Though, the formerly cheap-ish now expensive Mirror Vo'Quv has a massively low 15 Sci for some unknown reason. Most of the other mirror ships I had on hand were only mildly off of the prime version's numbers, but Mirror Vo'Quv was hugely slanted to Eng, despite still having a Commander Sci.
At least a good chunk of the carriers have good Sci KDF side, Vo'Quv (freebie) had 48, Kar'fi (C-Store) 42, Fleet Kar'fi 48, Breen Sarr Theln 50. Though, the formerly cheap-ish now expensive Mirror Vo'Quv has a massively low 15 Sci for some unknown reason. Most of the other mirror ships I had on hand were only mildly off of the prime version's numbers, but Mirror Vo'Quv was hugely slanted to Eng, despite still having a Commander Sci.
Good to know; thanks. That will at least help a little.
Like any new system, there will be tweaks coming. People tend to forget the changes that came to the reputation system a few weeks after the LoR launch.
That's why I'm not passing judgement on anything on Tribble, until I see what gets transferred to Holodeck. If the maintenance process is too long now, I'll bet money that it will get shortened. Heck, look at the changes to R&D during the first 6 months.
My suggestion, relax for bit. I've only watched one of the reviews so far, and plan to check it out tonight. So far, I'm not that concerned.
I'm not saying it spent 8-12 months in development. I'm saying if they held this back, really thought about it, refined it, added polish, considered interesting rewards, interesting ways of interacting with it...
Then waited 8-12 months FROM NOW to release it, it might be a system to get excited about.
I've managed to do friends and family beta and I think some alpha testing on MMOs. This is not 4 weeks away from being ready. This is a system that is easily over 6 months from being at its potential. I know not all of Borticus' time could be spent on this if it were delayed. Some of the work that still needs to happen is inspiration. Sleeping on ideas. Letting creative ideas happen organically.
Since this isn't a direct monetization system, delaying it both to think about it and add polish to it should not have a dramatic immediate impact on financial targets. This is a system that needs to stay in light development for awhile.
Well it's them wasting their budget, not ours. But if it took them that long to think of a system paralleling the DOFF system, I question why it took so long.
But as for this not being a "Direct monetization system", I have to somewhat disagree. While it's true there currently is no Dilithium Sinks (/knocks on wood), the Fleet Ships (Very Rare) ships, to me, says otherwise.
As it was stated previously, lower quality ships really don't perform that well, unless it's cheap 15-45 minute missions (which the requirements are low). But given the Mid-to-High end missions do require lots of High Quality ships, it does pressure players having to buy Fleet Ships. And with Fleet Ships, we all know that while you do get a discount for buying C-store ships, if you dismiss them, its just literally wasting $5 to $35 to unlock a card. A card that very well could disappear with a bug.
Epic - unknown (for some reason my free Bortas was shown as Epic, but nothing similar on my Fed character).
From having checked this myself, it's not actually Epic quality. It just looks a bit like it is at first glance because for some reason they use a yellowish coloured border for the common ships. When you un-box them though and then open the Admiralty window you can see the colours of them as they unlock in the rewards display section and the free Bortas is indeed common.
I agree with what some other people have said regarding Science levels though. On factions other than Feds it's actually pretty difficult matching some of the high Science requirements since those factions have such a massive disparity in the number of science vessels available to them.
Yes, I just realized it's the Engineer-Class Border, not an Epic Rarity Indicator.
I guess the assignements could take longer to complete while maintenance times are decreased somewhat.
Because I find it odd to have so many assignements counting in minutes. (EDIT: ...yet maintenance times in hours. Same as many others remarked.)
Besides, there's a weird thing in the ship description window where both common and uncommon ships get one star under rarity. Rares then have two stars, very rares 3 etc...
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.
The system doesn't seem that bad to me, except for the long maintenance times. I feel they should parallel the mission times: 10 minutes for a 10 minute mission, etc.
I will say that it's not what I expected as it's very similar to the DOFF system. I would like to see the ability to call one or more of my ships to aid during combat similar to the pirate call only with some form of customization. Maybe as a high level reward for the Admiralty system?
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC] Cleverly disguised as myself - Helmsmn2
I think people need to stop panicking and start thinking a little more when it comes to the maintenance times. There are very specific problems facing us as testers right now.
Try to remember that most of us have been playing for quite some time. Most of us will have slowly been replacing their lower tier ships with t5/T6/lockbox ships, meaning that unlike a character levelled up from scratch with the admiralty system at endgame we've all pretty much ended up transferring characters over to Tribble with an inordinate amount of endgame ships. That is leaving a very false impression that maintenance is far too long, when what we're actually doing is sending some the most heavily armed and most expensive to maintain ships our factions have available on what are essentially milk runs.
This is why on most missions I have run in the system seem to have a 100% success rate and usually 50% or above chance to crit. The missions aren't meant to be run like that. You're supposed to have a fleet of lower tier ships to fill out the easier missions, maybe only reaching 60-70% chance to succeed with 10% chance to crit, but with maintenance times that allow you to put those low tier ships back on missions almost immediately.
Unfortunately, due to the nature of the Tribble server, it isn't possible to get access to any of the c-store ships that you may have purchased in the lower tiers and decommissioned. Nor is it really feasible to re-purchase the free ships you got through levelling due to the Dil costs. This is leaving us with a very skewed perspective on the Admiralty system.
Both we as testers, and Cryptic need to keep this in mind.
So, the system as it is presented is interesting, it actually has a fair few hooks in it, but far, far too many players are not going to understand the system well enough to really enjoy it.
Maintenance time is already a great example of this. I get, absolutely, why it is the way it is, and what it's designed to do, which is force interesting resource deployment questions. I even think the timelines are about right (though T6 ships probably could be a little shorter, and I think for most players a 4 hour mission is about the same as a 20 hour mission in that you will queue it up when you are done playing, and get the rewards tomorrow). The thing players aren't getting is that the goal here was always to make players think about opportunity cost - of COURSE I'm not going to send my Hestia out to help with a simple salvage run, because the Hestia is too valuable a resource to expend to earn those rewards, so you are supposed to send a "cheaper" ship. The big hook here, then, is to reward players for thinking like an admiral and weighing rewards versus risk of failure versus limited available resources versus opportunity costs. The system actually includes all of that in what I feel is a nice, elegant package.
The issue (as far as I can tell) is that players are instinctively NOT going to play the Admiralty system "right", because the DOFF system has trained them wrong. The subtle UI assumptions that people are going to be making because of how Doffing works really undercut the resource management angle of the Admiralty system, because people are always going to assume you have to send three ships on every mission, and that if you don't meet the "requirements" (IE targets), you can't (or at least shouldn't) run the mission. We can already see this happening in some of the complaints in this thread about how useless lower tier ships are, basically because they don't guarantee success. The same thing is happening with people who are talking about how the system seems like it's forcing them to buy more ships - players are feeling like they need (at a minimum) an eventual fleet of at least 24 top-end ships to spend on missions when that really isn't the case. The devs are assuming that players are going to naturally come to the conclusion that they aren't supposed to fill every slot on every mission, and that not every mission needs to be 100% success 50% crit chance, but players are NOT going to make that leap, and/or are going to resent being forced to send "sub-par" ships on assignment.
So, what can be done? In the short term, the two most important things are going to be proactive communication from the devs about what the intended way to play the Admiralty system looks like (watch out for the inevitable fauxtrage about being "told how to play"), and probably a bit of re-branding of the admiralty system. While the idea that we are sending our specific ships off sounds nice and all, as presented the system doesn't really support that. After all, none of my ship cards have my ship names, nor do they look like my ships in many cases. Thus, I think really a better way to talk about this system is to talk about being granted access to types of ships, rather than one individual ship. Thus, "maintenance" stops being about repair etc. and starts being about straight up hull availability. Our cup runneth over with Mirandas, so light cruisers are a low-wait option, while T6 hulls are thinner on the ground and in higher demand, so have to be used more sparingly.
In terms of feature improvements, I would say a subtle but effective thing to do to break player of the "fill 'em all, max chance always" strategy may be to expand significantly on the after-mission reports. I would, ideally, like a paragraph or so of text that tells me briefly what happened on the mission - Why was it a critical success? More importantly, why was it a failure? Obviously, this is HUGE amount of work, but one great payoff here would be that at least players are rewarded even on a failure with a (possibly) amusing story, as well as improved immersion overall, which takes some of the sting out of failed missions, and thus makes gambling more on missions more worthwhile.
Even longer term, I think the Admiralty system points the way towards an overhaul of the currently underused DOFF system as well. I would love to see the DOFF system remade into something that more clearly indicates that with DOFF assignments we are playing the role of a captain allocating the resources of a single ship, while the Admiralty system is much larger in scale. In pure pie-in-the-sky wishlisting, I would love to see connections between the DOFF system and the massively underutilized crew mechanic. The thought that grabs me here is the possibility of "crew slots" limited by the size of the ship's crew stats. Smaller ships would be easier to staff with an all elite crew, with the associated advantages, but as they had crew taken out of action in combat, they would lose relatively more capacity as well. Alternately, setting up the DOFF system so that for "away" missions I am both assembling a team AND assigning a shuttle would be pretty cool.
Sorry, I know that was long, and definitely went into unsolicited feature whiteboarding there at the end, but the TL;DR is that I think the complaints about the Admiralty system are going to be loud and fierce unless more is done to get players on board with the assumptions about how the system is supposed to work.
I'm impressed so far with the stuff i see.
With one exception, science heavy missions are going to be a nightmare for KDF!
A 110 Base sci mission with a +30 sci required event can make the hardest warrior sweat. (And pay to win isn't even a option for KDF)
EDIT: Interim solution: replace the sci penalty with a Eng/Tac penalty until we have more science ships available for ROM/KDF
EDIT²:The Mirror Ha'nom Guardian proved quite usefull with the ability to ignore +sci requirements from events, did anyone found more ships of that type?
EDIT³:The Annorax does too
Post edited by valenn1 on
Beta, LTA, CE, Multiple preorder Versions, all Addon Packs except AoY, nearly all KDF/Rom and ~50% of all Fedships, over 25 LockboxShips, Endurer of Atari's "Year of Hell", but...
Adding on to mrtshead's great suggestions, a mechanical way of encouraging lower-tier/fewer ships could be a "renown" modifier to the crit rewards, that goes up based on less ships and lower tier ships being used. The in-game flavor could be how amazing it was for one captain or a bunch of fresh officers piloting Mirandas to succeed, drawing more rewards and accolades for showing promise as a future officer worthy of [Player Character]. Balancing it may need work, but it would be built-in instead of requiring external explanation. It would change the opportunity cost impression from purely the time penalty to more blatantly indicate missed rewards.
Out of curiosity, what's the ballpark on the buy-out of maintenance going to be?
Tied to duration the same way it is for R&D stuff, 18k dil per 20 hours?
xxxxxxx@xxxxxxx: What are the buyout costs for maintenance gonna be like ?
Borticus@Borticus: Not finalized. But fractions of a dil per second.
Borticus@Borticus: I have a model calculated out at 0.05dil/sec, but I dunno if that'll be final.
Borticus@Borticus: Sorry, 0.025. That means 1.5dil/min.
The missions aren't meant to be run like that. You're supposed to have a fleet of lower tier ships to fill out the easier missions, maybe only reaching 60-70% chance to succeed with 10% chance to crit, but with maintenance times that allow you to put those low tier ships back on missions almost immediately.
Unfortunately, due to the nature of the Tribble server, it isn't possible to get access to any of the c-store ships that you may have purchased in the lower tiers and decommissioned. Nor is it really feasible to re-purchase the free ships you got through levelling due to the Dil costs. This is leaving us with a very skewed perspective on the Admiralty system.
Both we as testers, and Cryptic need to keep this in mind.
Indeed, a good portion of the long-term players retired their original STO ship years ago, in favor or T5 and T6 ships. Until recently I actually kept most of my originals out of sentimentality (and used them in Admiralty Testing). But now, will people actually spend their Dilithium savings to buy old ships just for cards and sell them off again? In a way it parallels the problem with the Fleet Ships for the Admiralty System.
Now I question if the Devs really put thought into this and aspects from the player's perspective.
Indeed, a good portion of the long-term players retired their original STO ship years ago, in favor or T5 and T6 ships. Until recently I actually kept most of my originals out of sentimentality (and used them in Admiralty Testing). But now, will people actually spend their Dilithium savings to buy old ships just for cards and sell them off again? In a way it parallels the problem with the Fleet Ships for the Admiralty System.
Now I question if the Devs really put thought into this and aspects from the player's perspective.
You can also get Ships from the Admirality System, got two, a Malam or Malem T6 Warbird and another ship (i cannot remember) so far from normal missions, so the purchase of additional Ships (Mirror/Consolidation Price Ships, Dilithium, Zen, Fleet, Lobi and Lockbox ships) seems to be merely optional for a "quickstart" and totally not mandatory.
Beta, LTA, CE, Multiple preorder Versions, all Addon Packs except AoY, nearly all KDF/Rom and ~50% of all Fedships, over 25 LockboxShips, Endurer of Atari's "Year of Hell", but...
I wish each ship card had its own randomly generated ship name. Its an immersion thing. Instead of sending a generic Ambassador Class ship on assignment, I much rather be sending the USS Honolulu, NCC-97213-D, Ambassador Class.
On a similar note, I would prefer to see the starship's class name rather than official designated type on the ship card. By this, I mean instead of seeing on the card "Advanced Escort", I would prefer to see "Prometheus Class", "Luna Class" instead of "Reconnaissance Science Vessel". Part of the reason is again for immersion purposes. The bigger problem is due to the fact that there are only 3 major ship types - escorts, cruisers and science vessels. So the ship roster ends up listing a bunch of ships with very similar names. As an extreme example, a roster of escorts would look like this, "Heavy Escort", "Heavy Escort Carrier", "Fleet Heavy Escort", "Tactical Escort", "Tactical Escort Refit", "Advanced Escort". I believe the same list of ships would look better if instead it were listed as, "Akira", "Armitage", "Fleet Akira", "Defiant", "Defiant Refit", "Prometheus".
General feedback
In general, I like the system. It reminds me a lot of doffing with space ships, but it has enough of a unique feel to it that this isn't hindersome. I like that you can open the system wherever you are, and that it's not tied to a certain location. In this way it's as user friendly as the R&D system, as opposed to the Doff system where you need to be at a certain location to start duty officer missions. Not that I mind that latter by the way, but I do appreciate that I don't have to keep flying around the whole galaxy to start missions.
The pass system is also a good idea, I've used it a couple of times to skip the short missions that don't reward very interesting things, in favour of opening up missions with good rewards.
It's nice to see two unique tiers where you can either focus on getting exp or dilithium, though it does make me wonder what kind of unique and attractive tiers you'd add down the road. I think it'd also might make more sense to give them different kind of names. Dilithium for example sounds more like mining, while the KDF is about honour, conquering space, singing operas, etc. I don't see the Klingon Empire massively going down to drill for dilithium ore. This is a personal taste, however, and I'm also fine with the current names.
Things I'd like to see changed
I know that the system is still in development, and here are a couple of points that I'd like to see improved:
- Right now the EXP you can earn in the system isn't show in the UI. This is very frustrating since it makes it hard to plan which missions you want to take up first, and to which missions you should assign better starships to get the best results.
- The missions I played had short times, within the hour I did 3 missions and then had 9 starships that I couldn't use for 20.5 hours to 1 day 11 hours. I like to see the time needed to complete the missions going up, and the cooldown time on ships to go down. Short missions is typically a doff thing, logically seen, I can't justify assigning 3 starships on a 15 minute mission and then seeing them on cooldown for more than a day. The mission was a success, but what went so horribly wrong that they need to go for a day maintenance after 15 minutes of flying?
- To add to the above point, at the current rate I'd have all my ships on cooldown for a day or more after just 4 hours with playing this system. To me that sounds kind of rediculous.
- Right now I needed to assign 3 ships each time, I'd like to see more diversity here, where I can assign a single starship or perhaps even 6 starships for a very rare mission that requires a small fleet to complete. Considering my fleet roster, 3 ships each time is quite an investment. I'm playing an end-game character myself with lots of ships, so for me this should be easy. I can only imagine how horrible it's going to be for new players that don't have the resources that I gathered through my STO career.
- I'd also like to see an easier way implemented to add new ships to the Admiralty roster. Right now I have to reclaim, commission, and delete starships again, just to get them on that roster. I'd rather see a button added where you can claim your Admiralty ship without having to get all my low tier and zen ships, only to end up with a maxed out ship list with a load of ships that I don't even use. It's also causing me problems with ships I do have and don't want to get rid off.
By the way, is there an easy terminology to distinguish between real ships (as in, the ones you fly) and the admiralty roster ships, that are like ship doffs? Such a term would be nice for this topic since it can get confusing else.
One thing I just now remembered is that if if you are Romulan you have access to allied faction ships T1-T4. So a Romulan Admiral can have a substantial roster of lower Tier ships.
20 hours - 0.25 = 19.75 x 2% = 39.5% reduction in maintenance.
This makes it so that a 15 minute mission MAY still have a long maintenance but it will only be around 60.5% what you'd see on a 20 hour mission.
Now, beyond that, I'm going to suggest tossing out a few additional maintenance perks here and there.
10% maintenance reduction for Gold subscribers.
I'm also going to suggest this could be where you bring the non-Diplomacy/Marauding DOff categories up to par, reward-wise.
Duty Officer Commendation Perks
Science
+25 to Crafting Skill on Science R&D Assignments
- 10 to Science Event Requirements for Admiralty
Engineering
+25 to Crafting Skill on Engineering R&D Assignments
-10 to Engineering Event Requirements for Admiralty
Military
+25 to Crafting Skill on Ground Weapon R&D Assignments
-10 to Tactical Event Requirements for Admiralty
Exploration
Chance to receive Salvage from R&D Projects
-10% Assignment Duration for Admiralty
Espionage
Exotic R&D Recipes Unlocked (Dominion Polaron, Romulan Plasma, Spiral Wave)
Receive Opposite Faction Admiralty Ships (One uncommon, one rare, one very rare -- These would be Sci ships Fed-side)
Medical
Emergency Medical Hologram Duty Officer (Another nurse with a chance to beam down an EMH) and EMH Bridge Officer (Another photonic BO, this one could look different from the convention one; maybe the Quinto-type EMH?)
-10% Maintenance Duration for Admiralty
Colonial
Colonial Refugee Bridge Officer (Off-Duty Costume)
One Free Admiralty Pass Per Week
Trade
25% energy credit/gold-pressed latinum store discount (overrides Ferengi bonus)
Unlocks Admiralty Pass tokens for GPL
Development
Exclusive Winter Jacket/Scarf and Floater Unlock
Receive 50 Latinum per hour for Admiralty Maintenance
Recruitment
Reduces the cost of dilithium-purchased Duty Officers by 10%
Receive one random Bridge Officer for every Admiralty Tour of Duty (The random pool includes Aenar, Caitian, Ferasan, Romulan, Diplomacy/Marauding, Veteran Bridge Officer)
I think creating this interaction with DOffing commendations would create excitement.
Additionally, I think maybe you could look into something longer term like having Admiralty contribute towards a mini-personal starbase as an office on DS9. Accessed via Turbolift, this would be the DS9 Conference Room seen in The 2800. Ship trophies can be displayed here. Maybe it could be setup to have your ship visible outside the window. And look at new ship trophies. Right now, many of us have bridges that can't use ship trophies but this would restore that functionality for us by having an Admiral Office on DS9 where we can display our ship trophies (one floor and 4 wall) along with other perks to be unlocked later.
One thing I just now remembered is that if if you are Romulan you have access to allied faction ships T1-T4. So a Romulan Admeral can have a substantial lower Tier roster.
That does seem like an odd imbalance. Maybe it's time to unlock the T1-4 Romulan ships for Feds and Klingons as well or at least the ability to claim A-ship versions of purchased ships on cross faction alts.
One thing I just now remembered is that if if you are Romulan you have access to allied faction ships T1-T4. So a Romulan Admeral can have a substantial lower Tier roster.
That does seem like an odd imbalance. Maybe it's time to unlock the T1-4 Romulan ships for Feds and Klingons as well or at least the ability to claim A-ship versions of purchased ships on cross faction alts.
Ohh... make it T1-T6, i am sure many Romulans would love to trade a few Warbirds for Science Ships
Back on topic:
When i assign starships for a assignment, the pop-up list of available ships often blocks the view of the requirements for the missions. Can we get a moveable (drag and drop) list here?
Beta, LTA, CE, Multiple preorder Versions, all Addon Packs except AoY, nearly all KDF/Rom and ~50% of all Fedships, over 25 LockboxShips, Endurer of Atari's "Year of Hell", but...
Comments
Maintenance does seem to be a little excessive just now. I know Bort has mentioned that it's "because it's an MMO", but still it is excessive. My ship can get blown up completely five times in a row and still get back out there right away and kick butt. Yet these ships apparently need a day of shore leave to recover from a 15 minute passenger cruise.
(1) I love the concept of the tour of duty, and I love that at least the first mission is good for low-tier ships (reminds me of the misadventures of the Rotarran, haha). I'd love to see a story attached to it; it is fair to assume that that's coming?
(2) As much as I've complained on this thread about the way low-tier ships work, I really do love that you've included every. single. ship. in this system. It gives me a lot to play with, and really breathes new life into my old, disused ships/alts. That's really cool.
(3) The special abilities have potential, and (once some numbers are tweaked) I think they will give this system some really interesting depth as we try out different synergies and so forth.
(4) YAY for the Federation and Klingons being full-blown allies again, to the point where I can send my KDF ships on Fed missions and vice versa. It's cool to see the peace accord directly represented in a system like this. Here's hoping a Romulan campaign isn't too far behind.
(5) On a more personal note, good on you for making my T5 bugship UR. I no longer feel so bad about not having a T6 one, lol.
So yeah: I'm complaining a lot in this thread, but I really do think you're on the right track with this, Borticus. I think that this has the potential to be a lot of fun.
One UI suggestion:
When selecting ships for an assignment a new window pops up, containing the list of available ships.
This window is unmovable and overlaps the assignment window. The way it is you can't see both the ship and the assignment requirements at the same, which is very unfortunate.
I suggest making it movable or (if there's an engine limitation) move it to the side of the assignment window.
The most important information needs to be visible.
I hate to sound like I'm complaining, I'm actually pretty fine with the system as it is (assuming it's more polished on arrival). I have bought/won/earned quite enough ships over the several years that I've played that I suspect the limiting factor for the admiralty system, to me, will be the mission cap. It may seem limiting now, but much like crafting, but we'll have everything unlocked in a few months.
However, The maintenance stat is what drives me batty. From the internal mental role playing state of, "why does my Atrox need the exact same days worth of maintenance!?' regardless of what mission she is sent on.
The maintenance mechanic is ruining the experience. I had enough ships to run one mission for the Federation and one for the Klingons. Both missions took less than three hours to complete and the results were success and critical success. Now those ships are tied up in maintenence for 24 - 36 hours. I could understand the long maintenance time if the missions had failed maybe.
The best way to fix this would be to remove maintenance but I know that won't happen. The next best thing would be to increase mission times and reduce maintenance times so they are more balanced. A 1:1 ratio would be a good place to start. At least then those of us who would rather spend dilithium on things like fleet projects that require it than speeding up maintenance wouldn't feel like we were being penalized so much.
I don't mind the progression taking time. Everything is a grind but if it wasn't what would we do. The thing that I dislike is that there is going to be a little button allowing people to speed up maintenance for dilithium allowing them to run eight missions in the time it takes me to run one.
The admiralty system as it is today is not what I was hoping for. Once it goes live and I have access to all of the ships I have purchased/earned this may not be such a big issue for me. There are a lot of players who don't have a stockpile of ships to draw from though especially new players.
Good to know; thanks. That will at least help a little.
That's why I'm not passing judgement on anything on Tribble, until I see what gets transferred to Holodeck. If the maintenance process is too long now, I'll bet money that it will get shortened. Heck, look at the changes to R&D during the first 6 months.
My suggestion, relax for bit. I've only watched one of the reviews so far, and plan to check it out tonight. So far, I'm not that concerned.
Well it's them wasting their budget, not ours. But if it took them that long to think of a system paralleling the DOFF system, I question why it took so long.
But as for this not being a "Direct monetization system", I have to somewhat disagree. While it's true there currently is no Dilithium Sinks (/knocks on wood), the Fleet Ships (Very Rare) ships, to me, says otherwise.
As it was stated previously, lower quality ships really don't perform that well, unless it's cheap 15-45 minute missions (which the requirements are low). But given the Mid-to-High end missions do require lots of High Quality ships, it does pressure players having to buy Fleet Ships. And with Fleet Ships, we all know that while you do get a discount for buying C-store ships, if you dismiss them, its just literally wasting $5 to $35 to unlock a card. A card that very well could disappear with a bug.
Yes, I just realized it's the Engineer-Class Border, not an Epic Rarity Indicator.
Because I find it odd to have so many assignements counting in minutes. (EDIT: ...yet maintenance times in hours. Same as many others remarked.)
Besides, there's a weird thing in the ship description window where both common and uncommon ships get one star under rarity. Rares then have two stars, very rares 3 etc...
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!
I will say that it's not what I expected as it's very similar to the DOFF system. I would like to see the ability to call one or more of my ships to aid during combat similar to the pirate call only with some form of customization. Maybe as a high level reward for the Admiralty system?
Try to remember that most of us have been playing for quite some time. Most of us will have slowly been replacing their lower tier ships with t5/T6/lockbox ships, meaning that unlike a character levelled up from scratch with the admiralty system at endgame we've all pretty much ended up transferring characters over to Tribble with an inordinate amount of endgame ships. That is leaving a very false impression that maintenance is far too long, when what we're actually doing is sending some the most heavily armed and most expensive to maintain ships our factions have available on what are essentially milk runs.
This is why on most missions I have run in the system seem to have a 100% success rate and usually 50% or above chance to crit. The missions aren't meant to be run like that. You're supposed to have a fleet of lower tier ships to fill out the easier missions, maybe only reaching 60-70% chance to succeed with 10% chance to crit, but with maintenance times that allow you to put those low tier ships back on missions almost immediately.
Unfortunately, due to the nature of the Tribble server, it isn't possible to get access to any of the c-store ships that you may have purchased in the lower tiers and decommissioned. Nor is it really feasible to re-purchase the free ships you got through levelling due to the Dil costs. This is leaving us with a very skewed perspective on the Admiralty system.
Both we as testers, and Cryptic need to keep this in mind.
Maintenance time is already a great example of this. I get, absolutely, why it is the way it is, and what it's designed to do, which is force interesting resource deployment questions. I even think the timelines are about right (though T6 ships probably could be a little shorter, and I think for most players a 4 hour mission is about the same as a 20 hour mission in that you will queue it up when you are done playing, and get the rewards tomorrow). The thing players aren't getting is that the goal here was always to make players think about opportunity cost - of COURSE I'm not going to send my Hestia out to help with a simple salvage run, because the Hestia is too valuable a resource to expend to earn those rewards, so you are supposed to send a "cheaper" ship. The big hook here, then, is to reward players for thinking like an admiral and weighing rewards versus risk of failure versus limited available resources versus opportunity costs. The system actually includes all of that in what I feel is a nice, elegant package.
The issue (as far as I can tell) is that players are instinctively NOT going to play the Admiralty system "right", because the DOFF system has trained them wrong. The subtle UI assumptions that people are going to be making because of how Doffing works really undercut the resource management angle of the Admiralty system, because people are always going to assume you have to send three ships on every mission, and that if you don't meet the "requirements" (IE targets), you can't (or at least shouldn't) run the mission. We can already see this happening in some of the complaints in this thread about how useless lower tier ships are, basically because they don't guarantee success. The same thing is happening with people who are talking about how the system seems like it's forcing them to buy more ships - players are feeling like they need (at a minimum) an eventual fleet of at least 24 top-end ships to spend on missions when that really isn't the case. The devs are assuming that players are going to naturally come to the conclusion that they aren't supposed to fill every slot on every mission, and that not every mission needs to be 100% success 50% crit chance, but players are NOT going to make that leap, and/or are going to resent being forced to send "sub-par" ships on assignment.
So, what can be done? In the short term, the two most important things are going to be proactive communication from the devs about what the intended way to play the Admiralty system looks like (watch out for the inevitable fauxtrage about being "told how to play"), and probably a bit of re-branding of the admiralty system. While the idea that we are sending our specific ships off sounds nice and all, as presented the system doesn't really support that. After all, none of my ship cards have my ship names, nor do they look like my ships in many cases. Thus, I think really a better way to talk about this system is to talk about being granted access to types of ships, rather than one individual ship. Thus, "maintenance" stops being about repair etc. and starts being about straight up hull availability. Our cup runneth over with Mirandas, so light cruisers are a low-wait option, while T6 hulls are thinner on the ground and in higher demand, so have to be used more sparingly.
In terms of feature improvements, I would say a subtle but effective thing to do to break player of the "fill 'em all, max chance always" strategy may be to expand significantly on the after-mission reports. I would, ideally, like a paragraph or so of text that tells me briefly what happened on the mission - Why was it a critical success? More importantly, why was it a failure? Obviously, this is HUGE amount of work, but one great payoff here would be that at least players are rewarded even on a failure with a (possibly) amusing story, as well as improved immersion overall, which takes some of the sting out of failed missions, and thus makes gambling more on missions more worthwhile.
Even longer term, I think the Admiralty system points the way towards an overhaul of the currently underused DOFF system as well. I would love to see the DOFF system remade into something that more clearly indicates that with DOFF assignments we are playing the role of a captain allocating the resources of a single ship, while the Admiralty system is much larger in scale. In pure pie-in-the-sky wishlisting, I would love to see connections between the DOFF system and the massively underutilized crew mechanic. The thought that grabs me here is the possibility of "crew slots" limited by the size of the ship's crew stats. Smaller ships would be easier to staff with an all elite crew, with the associated advantages, but as they had crew taken out of action in combat, they would lose relatively more capacity as well. Alternately, setting up the DOFF system so that for "away" missions I am both assembling a team AND assigning a shuttle would be pretty cool.
Sorry, I know that was long, and definitely went into unsolicited feature whiteboarding there at the end, but the TL;DR is that I think the complaints about the Admiralty system are going to be loud and fierce unless more is done to get players on board with the assumptions about how the system is supposed to work.
That must have been one hell of a party, lol. I have to agree here, makes zero sense.
Very well said. In the VERY LIMITED TIME this system has been out I think it's a great way to look at it.
With one exception, science heavy missions are going to be a nightmare for KDF!
A 110 Base sci mission with a +30 sci required event can make the hardest warrior sweat. (And pay to win isn't even a option for KDF)
EDIT: Interim solution: replace the sci penalty with a Eng/Tac penalty until we have more science ships available for ROM/KDF
EDIT²:The Mirror Ha'nom Guardian proved quite usefull with the ability to ignore +sci requirements from events, did anyone found more ships of that type?
EDIT³:The Annorax does too
Indeed, a good portion of the long-term players retired their original STO ship years ago, in favor or T5 and T6 ships. Until recently I actually kept most of my originals out of sentimentality (and used them in Admiralty Testing). But now, will people actually spend their Dilithium savings to buy old ships just for cards and sell them off again? In a way it parallels the problem with the Fleet Ships for the Admiralty System.
Now I question if the Devs really put thought into this and aspects from the player's perspective.
You can also get Ships from the Admirality System, got two, a Malam or Malem T6 Warbird and another ship (i cannot remember) so far from normal missions, so the purchase of additional Ships (Mirror/Consolidation Price Ships, Dilithium, Zen, Fleet, Lobi and Lockbox ships) seems to be merely optional for a "quickstart" and totally not mandatory.
On a similar note, I would prefer to see the starship's class name rather than official designated type on the ship card. By this, I mean instead of seeing on the card "Advanced Escort", I would prefer to see "Prometheus Class", "Luna Class" instead of "Reconnaissance Science Vessel". Part of the reason is again for immersion purposes. The bigger problem is due to the fact that there are only 3 major ship types - escorts, cruisers and science vessels. So the ship roster ends up listing a bunch of ships with very similar names. As an extreme example, a roster of escorts would look like this, "Heavy Escort", "Heavy Escort Carrier", "Fleet Heavy Escort", "Tactical Escort", "Tactical Escort Refit", "Advanced Escort". I believe the same list of ships would look better if instead it were listed as, "Akira", "Armitage", "Fleet Akira", "Defiant", "Defiant Refit", "Prometheus".
In general, I like the system. It reminds me a lot of doffing with space ships, but it has enough of a unique feel to it that this isn't hindersome. I like that you can open the system wherever you are, and that it's not tied to a certain location. In this way it's as user friendly as the R&D system, as opposed to the Doff system where you need to be at a certain location to start duty officer missions. Not that I mind that latter by the way, but I do appreciate that I don't have to keep flying around the whole galaxy to start missions.
The pass system is also a good idea, I've used it a couple of times to skip the short missions that don't reward very interesting things, in favour of opening up missions with good rewards.
It's nice to see two unique tiers where you can either focus on getting exp or dilithium, though it does make me wonder what kind of unique and attractive tiers you'd add down the road. I think it'd also might make more sense to give them different kind of names. Dilithium for example sounds more like mining, while the KDF is about honour, conquering space, singing operas, etc. I don't see the Klingon Empire massively going down to drill for dilithium ore. This is a personal taste, however, and I'm also fine with the current names.
Things I'd like to see changed
I know that the system is still in development, and here are a couple of points that I'd like to see improved:
- Right now the EXP you can earn in the system isn't show in the UI. This is very frustrating since it makes it hard to plan which missions you want to take up first, and to which missions you should assign better starships to get the best results.
- The missions I played had short times, within the hour I did 3 missions and then had 9 starships that I couldn't use for 20.5 hours to 1 day 11 hours. I like to see the time needed to complete the missions going up, and the cooldown time on ships to go down. Short missions is typically a doff thing, logically seen, I can't justify assigning 3 starships on a 15 minute mission and then seeing them on cooldown for more than a day. The mission was a success, but what went so horribly wrong that they need to go for a day maintenance after 15 minutes of flying?
- To add to the above point, at the current rate I'd have all my ships on cooldown for a day or more after just 4 hours with playing this system. To me that sounds kind of rediculous.
- Right now I needed to assign 3 ships each time, I'd like to see more diversity here, where I can assign a single starship or perhaps even 6 starships for a very rare mission that requires a small fleet to complete. Considering my fleet roster, 3 ships each time is quite an investment. I'm playing an end-game character myself with lots of ships, so for me this should be easy. I can only imagine how horrible it's going to be for new players that don't have the resources that I gathered through my STO career.
- I'd also like to see an easier way implemented to add new ships to the Admiralty roster. Right now I have to reclaim, commission, and delete starships again, just to get them on that roster. I'd rather see a button added where you can claim your Admiralty ship without having to get all my low tier and zen ships, only to end up with a maxed out ship list with a load of ships that I don't even use. It's also causing me problems with ships I do have and don't want to get rid off.
By the way, is there an easy terminology to distinguish between real ships (as in, the ones you fly) and the admiralty roster ships, that are like ship doffs? Such a term would be nice for this topic since it can get confusing else.
Take the existing formula, right?
Then apply a 2% discount per hour less than 20..
20 hour assignment:
20 hours - 20 = 0 x 2% = 0% discount.
15 minute assignment:
20 hours - 0.25 = 19.75 x 2% = 39.5% reduction in maintenance.
This makes it so that a 15 minute mission MAY still have a long maintenance but it will only be around 60.5% what you'd see on a 20 hour mission.
Now, beyond that, I'm going to suggest tossing out a few additional maintenance perks here and there.
10% maintenance reduction for Gold subscribers.
I'm also going to suggest this could be where you bring the non-Diplomacy/Marauding DOff categories up to par, reward-wise.
Duty Officer Commendation Perks
Science
+25 to Crafting Skill on Science R&D Assignments
- 10 to Science Event Requirements for Admiralty
Engineering
+25 to Crafting Skill on Engineering R&D Assignments
-10 to Engineering Event Requirements for Admiralty
Military
+25 to Crafting Skill on Ground Weapon R&D Assignments
-10 to Tactical Event Requirements for Admiralty
Exploration
Chance to receive Salvage from R&D Projects
-10% Assignment Duration for Admiralty
Espionage
Exotic R&D Recipes Unlocked (Dominion Polaron, Romulan Plasma, Spiral Wave)
Receive Opposite Faction Admiralty Ships (One uncommon, one rare, one very rare -- These would be Sci ships Fed-side)
Medical
Emergency Medical Hologram Duty Officer (Another nurse with a chance to beam down an EMH) and EMH Bridge Officer (Another photonic BO, this one could look different from the convention one; maybe the Quinto-type EMH?)
-10% Maintenance Duration for Admiralty
Colonial
Colonial Refugee Bridge Officer (Off-Duty Costume)
One Free Admiralty Pass Per Week
Trade
25% energy credit/gold-pressed latinum store discount (overrides Ferengi bonus)
Unlocks Admiralty Pass tokens for GPL
Development
Exclusive Winter Jacket/Scarf and Floater Unlock
Receive 50 Latinum per hour for Admiralty Maintenance
Recruitment
Reduces the cost of dilithium-purchased Duty Officers by 10%
Receive one random Bridge Officer for every Admiralty Tour of Duty (The random pool includes Aenar, Caitian, Ferasan, Romulan, Diplomacy/Marauding, Veteran Bridge Officer)
I think creating this interaction with DOffing commendations would create excitement.
Additionally, I think maybe you could look into something longer term like having Admiralty contribute towards a mini-personal starbase as an office on DS9. Accessed via Turbolift, this would be the DS9 Conference Room seen in The 2800. Ship trophies can be displayed here. Maybe it could be setup to have your ship visible outside the window. And look at new ship trophies. Right now, many of us have bridges that can't use ship trophies but this would restore that functionality for us by having an Admiral Office on DS9 where we can display our ship trophies (one floor and 4 wall) along with other perks to be unlocked later.
That does seem like an odd imbalance. Maybe it's time to unlock the T1-4 Romulan ships for Feds and Klingons as well or at least the ability to claim A-ship versions of purchased ships on cross faction alts.
Ohh... make it T1-T6, i am sure many Romulans would love to trade a few Warbirds for Science Ships
Back on topic:
When i assign starships for a assignment, the pop-up list of available ships often blocks the view of the requirements for the missions. Can we get a moveable (drag and drop) list here?