Benefits to Doffing?

tiberious · December 2016

So the Junior Officer Event started on the consoles yesterday (PS4 for me). I have been using the Doff system for a few weeks now and not seeing a lot of benefit from the system besides a boff officer here and there that I don't really need and some items for the Winter Event. Wondering with limited gaming time, how much effort I should invest in the system for 5 characters.

Are the purple doffs worth going after since it take 75 particles to get one? Or would my time be better spend to replace the hologram doffs with white or green doffs? Or just focus on the doffs for my main?

Thanks for any replies!

alexstory · December 2016

The purple duty officers are extremely valuable when used in active duty. They can vastly modify or improve bridge officer skills.

There are several other minor benifits to the doff system, but the admiralty system would be better to invest time into for reward factor.

seriousdave · December 2016

Srsly, you don't see the benefits of getting stuff for doing nothing?

Doffs that affect bridge officer powers aside that's what it's use is. XP, contrabrand, EC and all around neat stuff for clicking a button and wait while you may or may not play.

rifter1969 · December 2016

alexstory is right on the purple doffs.

They are valuable if slotted into active duty slots (5 for each space and ground with the ability to expand more of each depending on fleet holdings).

Now with that said, doffing also has the added fringe benefits of other things...

1. For Fed and Rom aligned Feds.. you can get a doff missions that awards contraband. When you get 5 contraband there is a security officer at ESD and on DS9 that you can trade them in for dilithium. On the KDF side, Contraband is still gained by doing DOff missions, but at a higher rate.
2. Doing DOff missions also builds up points to Commendations. For the most part they are just little extras. But the Diplomacy one does have some added benefits, like adding speed in Sector space, even if its just a little.
3. A number of DOff missions can also provide resources for R&D.

DOffing isnt really that big of a chore really. Its kind of set and forget. Sure there are some that run their course very quickly. But its isnt that hard to manage.

Hope that helps.

leemwatson · December 2016

Doffing is a good source for getting XP, EC, Dilithium, Contraband and all the other little things it awards. It takes a couple of minutes to set off the missions. There's also the Doff's doing this awards as well as Doff's from levelling the commendations, which at level 4 will enable you to earn more Fleet Marks and other perks. You really shouldn't think that there's no benefit, as every little helps and Doffing requires very little effort!

fiberteksyfir · December 2016

Doffing is a game in itself, you can play sto and literally never do anything but. Plus if you used to play st:ccg like myself back in the day you will just love it anyways as it has some quite obvious inspirations from it (not sure if it was intentional or not, but the original dev that made it has been gone for a long time so we may never know) He is inmortalized these days in freighters however

tiberious · December 2016

seriousdave wrote: »

Srsly, you don't see the benefits of getting stuff for doing nothing?

Doffs that affect bridge officer powers aside that's what it's use is. XP, contrabrand, EC and all around neat stuff for clicking a button and wait while you may or may not play.

Not big enough benefits when it is not much fun doing? Between 5 characters, I spend roughly an hour and 15 mins doing nothing but clicking buttons for admiralty, research,reputations, doffing, giving stuff to my main, etc. Maybe have 15 to 30 minutes after that to play. Besides occasional research materials which I don't know how much I'll be crafting, doffing hasn't provided much in the way of EC or dilithium. I can make more just putting that time in playing something instead of clicking buttons. Admiralty is a different story.

This game has so much stuff and is taking time to discover so I ask to learn. Found out here I can convert convert contraband to dil, purple doffs are worth going after, and doffing is a game within itself that I don't really have time for. Heck by accident yesterday I discover there are more personnel officers to get doffs from than the one Vulcan officer I stumbled across.

Limited gaming time and I need to figure out what works for me in this game as you don't have to do everything.

Appreciate all the replies!

nephitis · December 2016

You don't have to use the DOFF system. To be perfectly honest I only use the DOFFs for crafting and for the "passive" bonuses for having them slotted under the Active Space and Ground tabs. That's where their true value lies in.

baddmoonrizin · December 2016

I thought the OP was originally asking if the Junior Officer Event was worth doing to acquire Purple DOFFs. Was I mistaken? Generally, I don't bother with the Academy particle chase. I collect the special Event Purple DOFF (Exocomp/Kazan) and done. If I undestand correctly, the Purple DOFFs that one can acquire from the particle chase can be acquired through other means, as they draw from the same table.

OP, the Event itself isn't necessary, but DOFFing is a good way to level a multiple characters, and acquire EC, Dilithium, etc. if your play time is limited. Especially during XP/Commendation weekends.

DOFFing (and Admiralty and Crafting) would be ideal for a mobile platform that would allow players to continue to play when they're away from the keyboard. I really wish Cryptic could implement it.

strathkin · December 2016

baddmoonrizin I'll admit the purple duty officer's are nice to have, but you're right some people earn them then sell them, other's acquire duty officer's thru lockboxes, and some even use DIL on obtaining Rank 4 in professions.

What is sad is they really have not introduced many new duty officer missions or rewards in a very long time. It would be GREAT to see a Developer say they are looking to add a little new functionality to the duty officer missions with expanded reward's after achieving Rank 4. I'll admit aside from the odd minor tweak it's been left alone for 3-4+ years, it be nice to see something done similar for admiralty get adopted into Duty Officer system: 4 EPIC missions awarded after achieving Rank 4 every 25000 xp that's unique but complimentary from just being able to convert it into fleet marks...

Reward's that might allow:

Expand maximum Crew compliment +1, to a maximum of 20-25 extra crew; even those who purchased a full compliment in CSTORE.
Expand Mission(s) compliment +1, to a maximum of 4-5 extra slots from maximum of 25.
Earn one Ultra Rare duty officer for specialists in each area of Diplomacy, Science, Engineering, Tactical/Military, Espionage, etc... players get a choice of specialty with unique ability required in that field.
Rare opportunities for missions where crew locate R&D Omega particle's of different color's or even qualities in their travels depending on the missions success to make the odd Omega Upgrade?
I'm sure there are others upon completion of 4 EPIC missions given every 2500, 15000, 50000 or 100000 Rank Tier earned similar to Admiralty levels upon completion each 10th EPIC mission.

I admit Admiralty has been a nice addition but with a few improvement's the Duty Officer system could be more rewarding for those who put in the effort...

jbmonroe · December 2016

I generated a few thousand Dil a day from the DOff system, and I can usually scare up that much again in Admiralty. I guess it takes longer on the consoles than it does on the PC, because I don't spend anywhere near that much time setting up DOff activities.

Engineering DOffs let you create lots of weapons, shields, consoles, and armor that's sometimes good and sometimes trash--but it can be sold to vendors to generate EC. You might have to travel through a few sectors to see all the opportunities.

At least on the PC there are a fair number of can't-fail, use-any-crew-member missions that earn 50 Dil and don't take forever to complete, and few that require a few token replicatible resources. Find and do the "Resettle Colonists" mission whenever you can; you can then transport those colonists to a new planet via another DOff mission for a 500 Dil gain.

There's a lot of opportunity out there...and maybe the problem is that you're trying to level too many toons at once. Get one toon into the stratosphere (metaphorically speaking), and then let that toon help the others along by crafting, EC and Dil generation, and Rep 2x advancement tokens.

leemwatson · December 2016

strathkin wrote: »

I'll admit the purple duty officer's are nice to have,

What is sad is they really have not introduced many new duty officer missions in a very long time, despite Delta, Iconian, Yesterday's War, Future Proof, and yet another Alliance episode Arc being introduced. It would be nice to see a few new duty officer missions with some expanded reward... it's just been FAR TOO LONG since any new one's have been introduced and be NICE to see.

I'll admit aside from the odd minor tweak it's largely been left alone for 3-4 years, it be nice to see something done for admiralty be adopted into Duty Officer systems for the odd EPIC missions every new & then...

Reward's that allow you to:

Expand Crew compliment +5, to a maximum of 20-25 extra crew; even those who purchased a full compliment in CSTORE.

Expand Mission(s) compliment +1, to a maximum of 4-5 extra slots.

Earn a Ultra Rare duty officer for specialists in each area of Diplomacy, Science, Engineering, Tactical/Military, Espionage, etc... players earn choice of one from those whose specialty or abilities are required within that field.

Or opportunities for missions where crew find's R&D Omega particle's of different quality every now & then?

I admit Admiralty has been a nice addition but with a few improvement's to Duty Officer system it could be more rewarding for those who put in the effort...

I agree. The system could use an overhaul, however, I'm not one to ask for more free stuff. I get alot of resource through doffing 11 toons, yes it takes time and it would take longer if not for the system auto-selecting doff for missions.

strathkin · December 2016

I'll admit DOFF is mostly minor benefit, when in contrast to the admiralty system, and the last method most reward's are earned is through gameplay... Most of the suggestions I made were just small way's to expand your crew a little at end game; along with seeing a few new missions introduced every now and then, and wouldn't drastically change how quickly SPEC points or even DIL is earned.

People get 100 duty officer's and you can purchase an extra 400 (500 maximum) through the CSTORE, it be a very minor benefit to allow everyone earn another 20-25, or possibly expand mission assignments from 20 to a maximum of 25, and these wouldn't come over night but slowly increment over month(s)/year(s).

Also having a way to earn one Ultra Rare duty officer like a department head for each of the area's like Diplomacy, Science, Engineering, Operations, Military, Espionage, Medical, etc...

While we did have Omega particle's last December, there were two Winter event's recently 2014 & 2016 they've been omitted, I'm in fact suggesting a slower more regular method for how they might be earned...

Phoenix box, I'd also prefer the developer move Ultra Rare upgrades to Blue (Rare) phoenix rewards that generate 51,200 tech points, and Green (Uncommon) reward's be limited to (Very Rare) boxes that only awarded 25,600 tech points that still required a small DIL payout perhaps half of superior upgrade. So I'm asking the dynamic being changed...

Also having Omega particles appearing in DOFF assignments the odd time be good to keep the lore alive in a manner that slowly had people earn them while not rendering superior or experimental upgrades obsolete after the overly generous phoenix upgrades...

gavinruneblade · December 2016

A few things people left out:
Doffs have commendation categories each ranks up to 4. At rank 1&2 all give a free green doff and a few also give the ability to replicate a hologram. At 2 all give a blue and some allow replicating blue hologram doffs. At 4 all give purples and the same few allow purple holograms.

Diplomacy (fed) and marauding are special as they give transwarp and other goodies. Rank 2 is k7 / romulan territory transwarp. Rank 3 is star base 39-sierra/ regulus sector as well as a buff for allies in sector space. Rank 4 is deep space 9 transwarp / cardassian space.

Most importantly rank 4 gives a single enemy faction bridge officer. Feds usually go gorn or Orion for Barbie or nausicaan for pirate. Kdf don't usually care much from what I've seen, heh.

Post rank 4 extra experience can be traded i for fleet marks.

Edit: almost forgot, if you go to your bridge and talk to the chef Klingons have the option to murder tribbles and bake them or to make tribble kebabs. These are good items that give a big ground combat damage buff. And are generally cool.

potasssium · December 2016

fiberteksyfir wrote: »

Doffing is a game in itself, you can play sto and literally never do anything but. Plus if you used to play st:ccg like myself back in the day you will just love it anyways as it has some quite obvious inspirations from it (not sure if it was intentional or not, but the original dev that made it has been gone for a long time so we may never know) He is inmortalized these days in freighters however

Never made the connection with Decipher's ST:CCG, makes me feel better about the hours I've spent Doffing. I run the whole contraband game on my 7 KDF & 2 KDF allied Romulans, but I don't do much more than turn in contrabands once a day, a colonization, the Eng one that gives 250 dilithium, and then whatever to fill the slots on my 2 Feds & 1 Fed allied Reman.

I break up the monotony with a Red Alert or two, while watching TV on my other Monitor.

Several of my characters I really don't use for anything but Doffing or Mirror Invasion or Crystalline Entity stuff, and they are sitting on 15+ spec points with nothing applied, just for future use.

Despite having 12 max lvl 60 captains, I've only played each storyline once, rest were just played until lvl 11 and then brought up via Doffing. I actually still need to finish my Delta Recruitment run through for completion of all requirements, as well as my AoY captain who is not one of the 12 mentioned above as they are still down at lvl 5.

So yeah it's low-key but worth it in my opinion. Admiralty however, I am not quite as enthused with so only kind of half TRIBBLE it while I am on that captain.

starrfoxx71 · December 2016

It's a fun, side game. I actually maxed out to Level 60 before I even finished the Klingon War story. I already have another character at 60 and a third one is halfway through 59.

The other obvious benefit is dilithium. I make it a goal to make at least 8000 a day, and the DOFF and Admiralty missions help extremely.

spiritwalker1969 · December 2016

Not seen it mentioned (or my eyes are too tired) but under the personal tab for DOFF missions there are several missions such as "Refrequence Shield Emitters" which if they give a critical success also provide a BUFF to your starship or player - these missions tend to have green text somewhere in the description.

salazarraze · December 2016

Doffing has many benefits.

- Doffing generates experience
- Doffing generates dilithium
- Doffing generates fleet marks at 110,000 CXP
- Doffing generates commodities
- Doffing unlocks special bonuses like diplomacy boffs and the diplomat outfit for FEDs

strathkin · December 2016

I agree with what you identify above... It does give a little bit of XP more helpful at junior levels and can help you earn another 250-3000 DIL every 2 or 3 days; if you have contraband available, but typically you only earn 1-3 a day and require 5. But it does help earn some green, blue and even purple duty officer's, which can also be used for active duty assignments, and completing rank 4 allows you to later buy more Blue & Purple with DIL.

Still it be nice to EXPAND it slightly as I identified above. I'm not aware of the embassy boffs however, but diplomacy does grant (allied) duty officer.

It be NICE if at end game you could further expand your maximum roster by 1 with EPIC missions every 100k per speciality (or 3 each) with the 4th EPIC assignment possibly even earning a Ultra Rare Duty officer you can choose from a list of specialities in each profession 1 time as a department head.

That and allow the Duty Officer assignments & Admiralty to every now and then find different types of Omega particles or change or add a few new missions once and awhile.

salazarraze · December 2016

My mistake. I should have said Diplomacy boffs. Not Embassy boffs.

dracounguis · December 2016

Benefits are many. Free equipment (get lucky and get big $$ on Exchange for it), more doffs, dilithium, EC. Plus you can essentially get your captain to max level w/o doing anything else. (My bank toon got there just by doffing while sitting at SFA.)

And it really takes very little time/effort to fill your queue with missions each day. I generally just fill them up once a day. I don't have the time to go revisit them every 3-4hrs. Plus most of the good missions only reset every day or so. My best place to park for doffs is DS9, outside DS9, and the short flight to the Fleet Dil Mine for those 2 doff missions for 500 Dil and 50k? EC each day.

xyquarze · December 2016

As for doffing: I guess it is still worth it. When playing multiple characters and looking for straight XP, it gets dwarfed by admiralty. But commodities (can be used for latinum or sold on the exchange) and other nice goodies will be gotten by it, and it makes that way to 52 (when you can start admiralty) that much quicker.

But if you don't enjoy it (15 mins, phew, may be a console UI problem, may be still needing more time due to lack of really knowing which ones you want), you can easily skip it. It is not in any kind mandatory. And don't feel like you need to do it daily if you're juggling multiple toons - only when you have enough time and enough motivation to do so. (Exception: I would suggest to go for the R&D 6k missions daily, until you at least reached lvl 15 in each - gives new traits which can be valuable and unlocks all crafting, while really taking less than a minute for collecting 5 (6th slot not worth it IMO, YMMV) and restarting them)

About the event: I did it the first two times around (first two times for me), but needing almost one hour for the purple is just way too much for me to really want to sit through an annoying mini game (the flickering script ain't easy on my eyes). But if you want to do it, go for the purple - if you doff at all, blues and greens will soon enough be somewhat obsolete, and then you lost time. Grinding a blue doff a bit akin to buying gear for a T3 ship to perform better before it gets old by T4.

Also: music helps

fluffymoof · December 2016

If you can DOFF and choose not to DOFF, you're seriously hurting your characters in-game. That little bit of XP from DOFFing is a ton to a low level alt. You get stuff for R&D or to just plain sell. You can get BOFFs from it or even more DOFFs. Right now you can get ornaments for the Breen warp core or fun cold kits.

Again, not DOFFing hurts you in the long run as does not doing Admiralty.

starrfoxx71 · December 2016

"Not seen it mentioned (or my eyes are too tired) but under the personal tab for DOFF missions there are several missions such as "Refrequence Shield Emitters" which if they give a critical success also provide a BUFF to your starship or player - these missions tend to have green text somewhere in the description"

How long do those buffs last? I've done a ton of them, and I can never tell the difference.

starrfoxx71 · December 2016

"Still it be nice to EXPAND it slightly as I identified above. I'm not aware of the embassy boffs however, but diplomacy does grant (allied) duty officer"

What about the missions from the Fleet Starbase and holdings? I'm still upgrading my starbase, so I haven't seen them yet. There are also DOFF missions in some of the lock boxes. One I'm working on is the Mirror Incursion series. There's also the Holonovel ones.

spiritwalker1969 · December 2016

starrfoxx71 wrote: »

"Not seen it mentioned (or my eyes are too tired) but under the personal tab for DOFF missions there are several missions such as "Refrequence Shield Emitters" which if they give a critical success also provide a BUFF to your starship or player - these missions tend to have green text somewhere in the description"

How long do those buffs last? I've done a ton of them, and I can never tell the difference.

TBH I'm not sure myself, what I have noticed though is that they are continually counting down when you are active regardless of whether you are in combat, in space or on the ground. In all honesty, the effects are probably not really big enough to be noticable overall but an extra 1% (ballpark figure for example) on any skill or stat is still 1% and I'll take it even if it only lasts through a single STF/Queue. Personally, I'd rather slot DOFF assignments which give me something for nothing like these do, than slot one which takes a chunk of EC and awards me an item which sells for less than the assignment "cost" - that way if it fails I lose nothing but if it crits at least I get a "bonus" of sorts. Same goes for assignments that award BOFF's - at the very least you get a training manual which if it proves to be worthless on the exchange then it can go in the Fleet Bank for less advanced members to use. (Being in a small fleet where the participation rate is virtually nil I tend to look for assignments which "give" rather than "take".)

jaguarskx · December 2016

I Doff a lot. It is the primary way I get contraband and dilitihum (mostly from Forced Labor missions) for my KDF captains. I funnel the contraband to my Fed captains so they can turn them in for dil. It is also a good source of XP, when I don't have time to play on my secondary account, I at least try to do Doff missions which still allows the captains on that account to level up. Items crafted from the engineering missions are mostly vendor trash, but sometimes I get something decent that is worth listing on the Exchange.

spiritwalker1969 · December 2016

jaguarskx wrote: »

I Doff a lot. It is the primary way I get contraband and dilitihum (mostly from Forced Labor missions) for my KDF captains. I funnel the contraband to my Fed captains so they can turn them in for dil. It is also a good source of XP, when I don't have time to play on my secondary account, I at least try to do Doff missions which still allows the captains on that account to level up. Items crafted from the engineering missions are mostly vendor trash, but sometimes I get something decent that is worth listing on the Exchange.

I have often thought that a ship bearing an uncanny similarity to a combine harvester would be the ideal mount for my secondary KDF captains

I also find that running each KDF through CCA each day and harvesting some Nukara marks helps boost dilithium takings (720 per Capt per day plus 5000 every 3-4 days - rep mark boosts and the daily bonus gives about 156 marks/day)

One of my AOY feds has still to start the first 25th C mission but already has most of the non-mission temporal rewards complete mostly due to DOFF/Admiralty assignments and is sitting on ~500k of dil ore.

tiberious · December 2016

Thanks for all the replies. Lots of good information how you do benefit from doffing so I can now see how doffing is worthwhile for the long run. I'll just skip trying to get purple doffs through the Junior Officer. I rather buy them with dil down the road.

ltminns · December 2016

While Admiralty rewards are much better, setting up Doff Missions is much quicker. A number of my alts made it through the mid - levels strictly by Doffing.

My Temporal Recruit participated in the Junior Officers Weekend exclusively. Got the Exocomp and four Very Rare Doffs.

Also run the Cluster Chains. When completed you get a Rare Doff. Afterwards running the 'Support...' Cluster Mission can Award a Very Rare Doff in addition to the standard Refugee. They are also a good source for Colonial CXP.

The sad thing about Doff Missions is that the ones you do in Q's Winter Wonderland award a Dilithium (125) reward that should be the minimum Dilithium for normal Doff Mission instead of 5.

salazarraze · December 2016

ltminns wrote: »

The sad thing about Doff Missions is that the ones you do in Q's Winter Wonderland award a Dilithium (125) reward that should be the minimum Dilithium for normal Doff Mission instead of 5.

No. That's just crazy.

Benefits to Doffing?

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