I decided to "Head Canon" a starting bridge officer playthrough!

captainwells · November 2016

I just began another Federation game, but decided to recreate one of the original starting bridge crew officers as my own new player character.

Initially I planned for that to be Elisa Flores, but at the last minute went with T'vrell, easily recreating her appearance with a limited amount of tweaking (hairstyle). I kept the starter contingent around for just a couple of missions beyond the Borg attack upon the Vega Colony to earn enough dilithium and then raced back to Earth Spacedock where I immediately released them all (definitely glad to see T'vrell2 go; as that was weird) and replaced the whole group with commons from requisition officer Elsa Mora.

Human and Trill males for the two tactical spots, an Andorian female for science and another Vulcan female for engineering. I guess I'm only mentioning all of this to see if anyone else has done something like this?

turbomagnus · November 2016

Can't say I have. Closest I've come is creating BOffs based on a couple of NPCs for one of my Romulan characters ('Law' and Rinna Khev).

sagison1 · November 2016

I used to model my liberated Borg BOFF after Koja Nara (Bajoran helm officer) from the first tutorial. Head canon was that she was one of the few members of the crew who were able to be liberated from assimilation after the Borg boarded the ship.

kronin · November 2016

That is an awesome idea. I just might get some new character slots and do this. Can you use the same name, or does it make you pick something else?

captainwells · November 2016

kronin#4685 wrote: »

That is an awesome idea. I just might get some new character slots and do this. Can you use the same name, or does it make you pick something else?

That's what prompted me to give it a try and having done so with T'Vrell, the model version was redesignated "T'vrell2" by the game mechanic. Must be the case for the others also!

captainwells · November 2016

sagison1 wrote: »

I used to model my liberated Borg BOFF after Koja Nara (Bajoran helm officer) from the first tutorial. Head canon was that she was one of the few members of the crew who were able to be liberated from assimilation after the Borg boarded the ship.

My head canon tale was that following her classmates eventual promotion to Lt. Commander and an entirely new vessel, that characters fellow class members returned to Earth Spacedock onboard Capt. Taggart's training ship for reassignment; some like T'vrell to receive their own command.

peterconnorfirst · November 2016

Interesting idea. I always wanted to do Rebecca Simmons from fluid dynamics/infected manus.

jonsills · November 2016

captainwells wrote: »

kronin#4685 wrote: »

That is an awesome idea. I just might get some new character slots and do this. Can you use the same name, or does it make you pick something else?

That's what prompted me to give it a try and having done so with T'Vrell, the model version was redesignated "T'vrell2" by the game mechanic. Must be the case for the others also!

Yes, you can use the same name for your captain and the BOffs. The game will put a number after the BOff name; my Romulan, Tovan Khev, has a bridge crew consisting of Tovan Khev2, Tovan Khev3, Rinna Khev, Rinna Khev2, and the Reman engineer Rinna NotKhev.

officerbatman81 · November 2016

Already did this. My Rom Delta recruit was Tovan Khev.
All that stress and combat aged quite aged him.
Then after he completed his last mission he died.

vendahra · November 2016

At the beginning of the game I created a KDF character who was a female Orion. I didn't play her much and decided to delete her. When my main reached max Diplomacy and was able to take a BOff from the opposing faction, I chose an Orion female, giving her the same name as my KDF and approximating her appearance. I then deleted the KDF.

My Orion has been serving as a loyal member of my crew for years now.

byozuma · November 2016

I did that (sort of), kicked my whole starting line-up though not as soon as that. I did it around start of Wasteland when you get to the first real adventure area and everyone can see your crew. Kind of felt a bit subconscious that so many people had the same crew I did, that I wasn't really standing out. So I started my side hobby of recreating aliens from other franchises. No room for Elisa on a ship of fools.

duncanidaho11 · November 2016

I haven't made a player character based on a Cryptic character (yet) but I've got up to some shenanigans with portrayals across my crew. My Delta Recruit is a boff for my Temporal Recruit and vica versa. I pretty much have to ignore rank in this but I don't have any problem with that.

ranvage · November 2016

I did this recently as well with 2 of my boff's I had been using for 3 years. A pair of Klingon brothers, one was my head of security and the other was my CMO. Made the HOS brother Captain and the Science brother his first officer and as CMO. I also have my daughters Caitian as the new head of security on my mains ship. Gotta love head canon.

catsmeat · November 2016

I leveled a Reman named 'Slamek' to 60 and have a Reman 'Slamek' BO on all my other Rom/Rem chars ships. Why? I dunno, just to be stupid I guess....

captainwells · December 2016

I have actually been taking my time with this playthrough, only getting back to it from time to time between other STO characters. As of yesterday, I've gotten T'Vrell within a mission or two before she will level up to Captain rank.

I initially dismissed all of her starting bridge crew asap in order to head canon this playthrough; post an undefined period past the original tutorial missions block. However I recently sought out bridge officers on the exchange to serve as former Academy classmates recognizable in-game. So Saurian Razkii is now a tactical officer aboard her ship, with his bio stating that since they were close friends as classmates he eagerly accepted a role on T'Vrell's ship after having served a tour onboard the Enterprise under Captain Shon.

Another former cadet, the Benzite Morek survived the Klingon raid on the Utopia Planitia Fleet Yards and was subsequently recruited by T'Vrell, and lastly I recreated the Bolian engineer Zarva (adding her last name "Haro") to complete a core of old friends to serve alongside Captain T'Vrell ongoing. Zarva's bio states that none of them had ever actually liked Elisa Flores, therefore explaining her absence.

smokebailey · December 2016

My AoY Tactical I made, I used a costume model of Elisa I saved yonks ago and used that for her, named Mariko, she's pretty much Elisa with blue hair.

angrytarg · December 2016

There's quite a lot of that going on, but with my own characters. My Federation characters all somehow have a relation to my first character I ever created, they started out as BOFFs but now have their own commands. My Klingon main is this character's security chief's brother. My AoY is a ancestor of another character and so on. I'm putting way too much thought into this.

stee1max · December 2016

captainwells wrote: »

I kept the starter contingent around for just a couple of missions beyond the Borg attack upon the Vega Colony to earn enough dilithium and then raced back to Earth Spacedock where I immediately released them all (definitely glad to see T'vrell2 go; as that was weird) and replaced the whole group with commons from requisition officer Elsa Mora.

Congratulations on the worst decision you could probably make in STO. That might have been 50k EC and 5 minutes of your free time at the market console, but no.

smokebailey · December 2016

angrytarg wrote: »

There's quite a lot of that going on, but with my own characters. My Federation characters all somehow have a relation to my first character I ever created, they started out as BOFFs but now have their own commands. My Klingon main is this character's security chief's brother. My AoY is a ancestor of another character and so on. I'm putting way too much thought into this.

Pretty much yes, I do that to, often, with more to follow in the future, I think.

marcusdkane · December 2016

captainwells wrote: »

I have actually been taking my time with this playthrough, only getting back to it from time to time between other STO characters. As of yesterday, I've gotten T'Vrell within a mission or two before she will level up to Captain rank.

I initially dismissed all of her starting bridge crew asap in order to head canon this playthrough; post an undefined period past the original tutorial missions block. However I recently sought out bridge officers on the exchange to serve as former Academy classmates recognizable in-game. So Saurian Razkii is now a tactical officer aboard her ship, with his bio stating that since they were close friends as classmates he eagerly accepted a role on T'Vrell's ship after having served a tour onboard the Enterprise under Captain Shon.

Another former cadet, the Benzite Morek survived the Klingon raid on the Utopia Planitia Fleet Yards and was subsequently recruited by T'Vrell, and lastly I recreated the Bolian engineer Zarva (adding her last name "Haro") to complete a core of old friends to serve alongside Captain T'Vrell ongoing. Zarva's bio states that none of them had ever actually liked Elisa Flores, therefore explaining her absence.

Anti-clone prejudice! That's all that is!

I have to admit, I felt bad for dismissing Elisa, so I crafted a new one as an engineering BOFF, but when I actually looked at Elisa's native talents, and was told where I could recruit her again, I had to... She's actually a pretty good BOFF... By no means the best, or useful for all builds, but definitely worth having on the roster...

theraven2378 · December 2016

The Elisa Flores on my crew is not a clone but she's from an alternate Federation where they lost the Dominion War

mmankei · December 2016

Not sure if this is quite the same thing, but a few of my characters have bridge crews full of my alt designs. The problem is the Romulan-faction alien, which doesn't exist in Boff form. You can use a Fed alien boff, but it's missing critical tailoring bits and some of the sliders don't have the same range. So the Rom-Alien kind of ended up being the official captain for awhile to keep it off the other crews, until I had enough alts to relegate it to recurring guest character status.

Also, for added authenticity, with the ones who started as boffs I planned to complete all the story content using only shuttles and ships that can be launched from carriers, on the premise that the "real" captain was somewhere at the edge of the map in a dreadnought-class and had sent me on an away mission. That's easily do-able in the early levels and at 50+ with T5 frigates, but the middle levels were a slog at times. I did one full playthrough like that and decided that was enough kamikaze shuttle runs. Give it a try if you're bored though. It'd probably be more fun if you could find other people bored enough to try replaying story missions with you as a dedicated fighter squadron, although I don't know how long the novelty of it would remain entertaining for the group. Maybe it's someone's dream to play a pure healer class in STO and they can use an actual carrier to keep the shuttles alive.

captainwells · December 2016

I don't dislike Elisa Flores at all and have usually kept her around and as a key away team member too. This playthrough is the lone exception.

By the way, does anyone know why this game doesn't have Benzite bridge officers; apparently of any quality?? (I created Morek using an alien template.)

I decided to "Head Canon" a starting bridge officer playthrough!

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