test content
Logo
What is the Arc Client?
Install Arc
SIMPLIFY - Divorce BOFFs from Ship Stations
tonywc
Member Posts: 8 Arc User
I've been getting back into the game lately and I've really been enjoying myself. There has been some systems though that have drug that enjoyment down and honestly kept me from coming back earlier. There are too many systems of complexity in the game. I plan to offer some suggestions on how I think the game could be changed to keep its current balance but remove items that I see as unnecessary. I'm very ignorant and I'm an outsider looking in so please give me context where I lack it.
BOFF - SPACE ABILITIES
One of the most confusing aspects of the game is the Idea that your space abilities in the game are not yours, but your BOFFs. I understand the mindset, but I think it is an un-needed complication. As you level or learn powers they should always be available to your captain in R&D or a completely different menu. Upon getting a ship you select or train your crew with these abilities. Tie them to the ship instead of the BOFFS. Devs can decide whether to not to limit the amount of abilities you can train a ship (crew). How many you can have active at any one time would stay the same as current play.
BOFF - GROUND ABILITIES
Ground combat seems like a raging hurricane most times. and so I think reducing what is going on would greatly help to comprehend the combat. In most cases I would reduce the size of the away team to the captain and 2 BOFFs. I would remove all but one of the BOFF abilities and that one ability should be an "Active Ability" or clickable by the captain. Otherwise the BOFFs just fire weapons and revive the captain/BOFFs if they are incapacitated. BOFF Traits should be totally removed.
BOFF - LEVELING
Leveling up a BOFF can give additional selection when choosing the 1 ability.
BOFF - SPECIALIZATIONS
Only relevant to ground abilities.
BOFF - SPACE ABILITIES
One of the most confusing aspects of the game is the Idea that your space abilities in the game are not yours, but your BOFFs. I understand the mindset, but I think it is an un-needed complication. As you level or learn powers they should always be available to your captain in R&D or a completely different menu. Upon getting a ship you select or train your crew with these abilities. Tie them to the ship instead of the BOFFS. Devs can decide whether to not to limit the amount of abilities you can train a ship (crew). How many you can have active at any one time would stay the same as current play.
BOFF - GROUND ABILITIES
Ground combat seems like a raging hurricane most times. and so I think reducing what is going on would greatly help to comprehend the combat. In most cases I would reduce the size of the away team to the captain and 2 BOFFs. I would remove all but one of the BOFF abilities and that one ability should be an "Active Ability" or clickable by the captain. Otherwise the BOFFs just fire weapons and revive the captain/BOFFs if they are incapacitated. BOFF Traits should be totally removed.
BOFF - LEVELING
Leveling up a BOFF can give additional selection when choosing the 1 ability.
BOFF - SPECIALIZATIONS
Only relevant to ground abilities.
0
Comments
> I enjoy the BOFF system for both ground and space and feel comfortable with it as it is. As a captain, you aren't pushing many buttons yourself, but you give orders to your bridge crew throughout the battle. I see it as one of the few game features that link it to Star Trek. Though admittedly I don't share your perspective as a returning player. If it helps new and returning players get into the game, perhaps some revision could be good. These feel like pretty radical suggestions to me though - they might not get much support from many players as they could significantly change the way builds work probably making them weaker. Also I expect it would take more dev time than they could justify.
I think the distinction that you're giving orders versus hitting a button yourself is a pretty minor distinction especially since users are actually the ones clicking the buttons. I think the goal is just to make things more straightforward.
Ground is a bit confusing for me. I have 20 buttons I can click on. And that doesn't include the 5 abilities each that your boffs can generate. If your away team 5 members we're talking 45 abilities that could be going off together. That's too much to keep track of. Rather than spamming a crazy amount of abilities to generate enough damage to take out bad guys I'd rather shrink the number to 8 for myself and 1 per boff ending the number at 10 if you only have two away team members.
By shrinking the number of abilities I think it allows players to be more involved in the fight. These kinds of changes would require a lot of rebalancing for ground combat. But at the moment ground combat just seems to be an explosion of abilities that melt enemies. It doesn't really seem like there is much strategy. I'd slow the combat down, reduce the number of enemies and increase enemy and player health so combats last longer and and it's not just crazy all over the place.
> BOFFs aren't irrelevant to space combat. For one thing, some of them have traits that can be significant damage boosts. (For example, it's possible to get +6% critical hit chance and +15% critical severity, just from BOFF traits... assuming you are not Romulan and are flying a ship with 2 tactical BOFFs. If you're Romulan or using 3 Tactical BOFFs, that number is higher; lower if you are non-Romulan and using only one Tactical BOFF. There is also a BOFF trait that will triple the timer on the decloaking ambush-damage bonus.)
>
> So removing BOFFs (or even just their traits) actually would affect game balance.
>
> I will agree that the way the BOFFs are on ground is kind of klunky. They don't follow well, they don't use their abilities efficiently or appropriately (though you can manually trigger them). They tend to just run around and shoot. This may however be a case where it could be fixed by improving it rather than removing it. (For example, if you could program a BOFF to always execute their abilities when standing still.) Also I would argue that their revive-ally function should be made player-triggerable.
I think that this actually makes my case pretty clearly. The fact that BOFFs have traits that matter completely escaped me. In the research that I've done most people say they're irrelevant unless you're min-maxing. It's a complexity that isn't straightforward and can be challenging to utilize for players given you have to completely replace and rebuild your BOFFs if you have bad traits. I don't know how you utilized this game mechanic is. I know that I haven't built anything around it and again from what I've read not many have. I believe that the mechanics that exist should have clear purposes, should obviously matter and be easily understood by the players.
One idea though that could possibly be contradictory is if they wanted a way to try to reduce character data and create a new generation of ships. One possible way is being able to develop a system that allows your characters to take the place of boffs on the roster so you could have npc versions but still able to play them all when you change to that character. Possibly a great way of QoL for making the logging in and out problem be consigned to the past.
It could be a play on how the TOS crew was at the era of the Undiscovered Country/Enterprise B era where they were basically all about to retire and were pretty much all the same rank.
The small revamp corinthalas described sounds good though.