Reporting for Duty | STOked 118

Reporting for Duty | STOked 118

We chat with Thomas “the Cryptic Cat” Marrone, then it’s part one of our comprehensive guide to the Duty Officer System. We’ll start you with the basics, and ramp it up to advanced!

Plus our review of the First Contact Day event and the new KDF mission Alpha!

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Show Notes:

Intro

  • Happy First Contact day to all STO players
  • Dan Stahl & Brandon hosted a Q&A in the RedAlert chat channel on First Contact Day
  • Utopia Planetia social zone introduced
  • Replica of the Phoenix Warp 1 craft made available as a space pet
  • New KDF mission released which is an homage to “Predator” in many ways

News

  • First Contact Day Q&A – Highlights:]
  • Gates Of Stovokor Interview with Daniel Stahl
  • They (KDF players) see the KDF as the Horde in WoW and wonder why it is doesn’t have its own zones with an entirely separate content track unto itself. The game was just not made to be that at launch. The only way we’ll ever get there is if we spin up an entirely separate team of content designers to go back and make a few years’ worth of content and release it as an expansion.
  • CBS believe that only around 20% of Star Trek fans would be interested in playing a Klingon character and Daniel Stahl has previously stated that 18% of STO players actively gaming with the KDF faction. That was believed to be too low a number to warrant a lot of development time on the faction due to a low return on investment. It is unlikely that the Romulans / Cardassians have a higher percentage of fandom and as such, does that mean that we will only get to see a third faction in STO if they add a separate development team with the goal of producing a paid expansion for a F2P title. Lord of the Rings Online is likely a good example of this sort of effort as they recently released a paid expansion called War In The North.
  • Link to the study Perpetual Entertainment Study
  • Would you be willing to pay for an expansion which would add KDF / Romulan / Cardassian faction content?

Interview with Thomas “The Cryptic Cat” Marrone

  • What does the Cryptic Cat do?
  • The original minigame concept graphics he created
  • The “patches” he has introduced to the game
  • Multiple areas of the UI that he has worked on
  • Trek design inspiration

Support the show: Grab the book that inspired Thomas!

Tactical View – First Contact Anniversary Mission

  • “First Contact Day” mission available from mission contact list
  • Transwarp directly from the active mission list or zone into Utopia Planetia from SOL
  • Interact with the Enterprise F crew while exploring a new social zone
  • Pick up a space pet replica of the Zefram Cochrane warp 1 ship – The Phoenix

Tactical View – “Alpha” KDF Mission

  • Chancellor J’mpok offers the mission from your contact list
  • Investigate a system which contains a MASSIVE gas giant
  • Explore the jungle looking for survivors while being hunted yourself

Duty Officer Guide Part 1

  • What is a Doff? Junior officers and crew on your starship.

  • When do we get Doffs? FED at lvl 8 and KDF at lvl 23

  • Doffs are essentially “trading cards” that you constantly swap for better ones

  • Doff Characteristics: Faction / Species / Quality / Rank / Department / Specialisation

  • Doff Traits: Each duty officer can have between 1 and 5 traits which each possibly affecting the outcome of any mission that Doff is assigned to e.g. Unruly send on a diplomacy mission

  • How many Doffs can you have? 100 default, 400 max using c-store purchases

  • 25 Duty Officer slots for 180 C-Store points (per character)

  • 100 Duty Officer slots for 580 C-Store points (per character)

  • Duty Officer assignments give item rewards and commendation XP

  • Commendation XP (CXP) has categories: Diplomacy (FED) / Marauding (KDF) / Science / Engineering / Military / Exploration / Espionage / Medical / Colonial / Trade / Development / Recruitment

  • Commendation XP allows you to achieve Commendation Ranks

  • Everyone starts off as Rank 0 in each CXP category

  • Rank 1 – 2.5K CXP

  • Rank 2 – 15K CXP

  • Rank 3 – 50K CXP

  • Rank 4 – 100K CXP

  • Rank 5 – not currently implemented but CXP can be gained up to 150K CXP currently.

  • Ranking up gives a character title, access to more missions in that specific category, a token to purchase a new duty officer for that rank (increases in quality as rank increases) and in special cases a new ability. Diplomacy / Marauding rank 4 allows each faction to enter the home sector of the other which provides access to Duty Officer missions in those sectors. Transwarps can also be gained from

  • How can you get additional Duty Officers? character ranks / recruitment missions / CXP ranking up / trade in missions / dilithium purchases / Doff assignment rewards / STF token vendor / c-store / EC exchange / FE – Facility 4028 /

  • Where can you find Doff Assignments? Sector tab / personal tab / social zones / inside your ship

  • Basics of the Duty Officer Assignment user interface

  • The button to activate the Doff interface is located under the mini-map

  • Overview tab
    + Assignments Summary gives you details on how many mission you are currently running
    + Duty Officer Summary show how many Doffs you have and where they are currently
    + Commendation Advancement is your master view of your CXP rank progress and rewards

  • Assignments tab includes red icons to indicate why you currently cannot take certain missions. This allows you an opportunity to correct those issues and pick up the assignment e.g. you need a duty officer not currently in your roster, you need some commodities
    + Current Sector
    + Personal
    + In Progress
    + Completed
    + Assignment Log
    + Assignment Chains

  • Duty Officers tab
    + Full details of every duty officer in your roster including bonuses for putting them on active assignment
    + Filter provided to allow you to focus on the specific Doffs you want to examine
    + Option provided to dismiss a Doff and be compensated in dilithium
    + Sections: Roster / Active Space / Active Ground / Sickbay / Brig / Passengers / Cargo Bay

  • Request Duty Officers tab
    + Purchase additional roster slots from the c-store
    + Purchase Doff packs from the c-store
    + Open any cadres you have and have them added to your roster
    + See your most recently added Doffs and filter through them as needed

  • Department Heads
    + Assign a first offcer and obtain missions for that Bridge Officer
    + Departments: Engineering / Operations / Science / Medical / Tactical / Security
    + These bridge officers will make suggestions on what Doffs to assign to missions which fall under their specialisations.
    + These suggestions are NOT always the best Doffs to assign and that will be covered in more detail during the advanced guide next week on STOked 119.

  • Basics of running a Duty Officer Assignment
    • Choose an assignment from a category that interests you
    • Read the assignment description to get an idea of the “story” involved
    • Take note of the “Time To Completion”
    • Examine the “Rewards” for this assignment
    • Use the “Chance of success” percentages and graph to gauge the expected outcome of the assignment based on the Doffs you choose to assign to it. This updates as you change Doffs.
    • The “Requires” section tells you how many Doffs are needed and the specific traits and specialisations that are required. The more of the good traits you have in your assigned Doffs, the higher you chances of success and possibly critical success will be. Failed missions sometimes result in Doff injuries and disasters result in dead white quality Doffs. Blue / Green / Purple doffs only take injuries from such failures. The only exception where higher than white quality DOffs “die” are when you assign them to “Execute For Incompetence” missions.
    • Some Doffs have an innate % boost to rewards provided e.g. 5 (green) / 10 (blue) / 20 (purple)
Next Week:
  • Assignment chains and the special rewards from them
  • Pro tips from Brooklyn Knight / Z3R0B4NG / Lucas Purcell
  • Entire Duty Officer guide for these segments published in the show notes
  • DoffJOBS Spreadsheet usage
  • DoffJOBS Tracker
  • DoffJOBS in game, global chat channel
    investigation.
Foundry Files:

Foundry Files will have it’s own release soon, stay tunned to STOked for further announcements!

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  • Boop

    hehehehe, Duty.

  • Songbird

    I haven’t watched since STOked took a break. I’m glad to see you seem to be feeling better about the game. I came back to it after a long while, and I feel so much better about it right now.

  • TimJ

    Great show on the duty officers mate, carnt wait until next Tue…

     I started this discussion off (the 5th person too) in the main STO forum about ranks, about were all forced into being Admirals when most of us just want to be Captains and how it would be a great idea if the Admiral ranks were used just for the fleets (the leaders ect…) anyway heres a link to it if anyone wants to have a looksy http://forums.startrekonline.com/showthread.php?t=265015

    (maybe a discussion in the next instalment of Comunity Feedback)

    TimJ.

  • Anonymous

    Love me some Cryptic Cat chat! I’m not too impressed with the new dilithium game, too much work, but i love the skill behind it. He Jman and Heretic are my favorite devs, because they work on the things im most interested in. I love the new ui stuff CC has done, the new ship store rocks, so kudos to him and the rest who worked on it.

    I love the Utopia Planitia.

    As for the KDF *facepalm*, sigh, first off stats will always tell you whatever you want them too. Who were asked these things, i know i never heard from perpetual, its an important question in any poll. We are told there is no interest in the KDF, although college students are paying real money to learn the language, and i have never heard of any Fed based courses in any colleges in the world. Whenever i went to ST conventions although most people did not wear costumes, almost half of those that did “seemed” to be in Klingon costumes. To put that in perspective it should be noted that KDF costumes, post next gen, take a lot more time, money, and effort to achieve. Expensive/complicated makeup was also usually involved, i.e. more than just cheap pointed ears. Those pieces of soft data would indicate that there should be a bunch of people out there that would love to play KDF. How many polls have been taken at ST conventions, those are the people that need to be asked? It would not hurt to make them “more ” aware of STO.

    As for your commendation levels there is also right clicking on the exp bar at the top of the screen and checking the right tab. Really loved the whole Doff segment.

    * I used ” ” to indicate bold print.

  • Infinite Chaos

    Awesome show gents! I’m thinking Irish is going to HAVE to be the fill-in for Jeremy. You guys REALLY got me salivating for episode 119. More helpful MATHed sections is what got STOked noticed in the past. Keep it up! The episodes where we’re MATHed are incredibly helpful. 

  • Anonymous

     You had to go there didnt you?

  • AGNT009

    Chris, PLEASE, when a guest has a camera THAT bad, NEVER do a closeup shot, it looks horrendous. So much so Id look away from my 40 inch tv because it would start looking like I needed new glasses. Even the medium closeup side by side with Irish was still bad. He was better kept in the smallest window where was saw all three of you at once.

    DOFF Question for next week: When you dont have enough officers of a particular department, am I really getting an added benefit or success percentage increase when I throw in an Astrometric science officer into a Tactical Officer doff mission? Like if I only had two tacs, but no others, I throw in a green from any other department thinking that 5% boost will help, even if my science officer doesnt know the first thing about tactical. Or is there a bonus to adding a doff from the wrong department, he’s a white, but maybe he has one of the traits for success, like memory, telepathic, etc. Is throwing in the wrong department guy that has a color or trait bonus helping me at all when I have 3 slots to fill but only 1 or 2 doffs that are actually in the departments being asked for? Please cover that next week.

  • Z3R0B4NG

    green is always better than white, if the white has at least 2 matching traits, even if from another profession, then the white will be better than a green without any matching traits.

    anyway you will want to have some DOffs of every profession because there are always some assignments that REQUIRE a certain profession.

  • Jtkirk86

    Is the foundry files going to be linked like you mentioned in the show?

  • CedricO

    What the hell does that perpetual world data have to do with anything …. Ive never been asked to fill in a survey. Where did they get their data from? Did that poll just said most people wanted a borg faction? The polls on the OFFICIAL STO website about the next faction were decisively romulan as first choice. Ugh i just started watching and im already annoyed … *unpauze*

  • CedricO

    Well i lied, a lot of people were asked to fill in a survey somewhere at the beginning of STO. got some Cstore points for it if i remember correctly. Still, its pre-launch useless data. If i go back enough in time ill give you a link to polls that decide racism is a good thing. Does that mean it is? Obviously any sane person would say no.

  • Anonymous

    The current plan is to reshoot the segment that was originally included in this episode along with the next installment. The taping will likely be next Saturday along with STOked 119. I believe that the two segments will be combined and released as a “spin off” of STOked. As the plan solidifies, I will update this page.

  • Commander88

    Well, o ye of hindsight, did you actually read the Perpetual post? A lot of what they found out in the survey colored their decisions several years before Cryptic came along, and probably also informed (and continues to inform) CBS and PW.

    Since I do a fair amount of customer polling in my line of work, what people “claim” they’re going to want/do/buy can often times be different than what they actually go out and do/buy/act upon…there’s an inherent bias in someone saying what they think they should/think someone wants to hear, and what they actually do. (I’d say at this point people are probably sick of the Borg, or at least would like something different, which it contrary to what they claimed they wanted years ago…yet STO is a tiny bit Borg-heavy, IMO.)

    Perpetual built a game model on this, and FOLDED, and then Cryptic snapped up the license CBS/Paramount granted to them, and shoved a game out the door under a certain deadline that probably could have safely used about 6 more months of programming/testing time (people can argue about that, I suppose), or more, before going live.

    Thus, we found ourselves in the state of events in 2010, 2011, & 2012 going back to work that was done back in 2004-2005; those who do not learn the lessons of history are doomed to repeat them.

    And even though the comparison annoys people, look at TORs dev/launch cycle; that game was pushed back how many times before it finally launched, and went through how much testing? And I’m sure there is a population that would say it needed more. And it’s probably not even a fair comparison to look at STO dev resources vs. TOR.

    If the ROI isn’t there for a Rom/Cardy faction in the dev/IP holder/parent companies mind, it doesn’t matter how many people post about it on the forums; it isn’t going to happen. We don’t even have Klingons up to where they truly should be as far as a parity of game experience.

  • Z3R0B4NG

    I agree that pulling out surveys from years ago for ANOTHER GAME that was never released, and not a single one of the Voters had the chance to play that game and therefore have no idea what they were talking about to begin with.

    That isn’t exactly solid data to act upon for a 2 year old, released game with an active and experienced Playerbase.

    Would it hurt Cryptic / PWE to do a new survey every 6 Months or so?

  • Matthew Stickney

    whens seson 6

  • Mkickenweitz

    Couldn’t help but notice your screen shot of the C-store and how you apparently were able to buy the Millennium Falcon? Really surprised nobody commented on it…

  • Valiant797

    Minor thing: Irish mentioned that you have to Diplo Rank 4 to access Klingon sectors. As I recently discovered leveling, that’s inaccurate. You gain Diplomatic Immunity at Rank 3.
    I’m not sure if that was a change with the Duty Officer system, cause I seem to recall needing to be an Ambassador under “old diplomacy,” but I can confirm it’s only Rank 3 now.

  • Commander88

    Why don’t you ask them, and I’ll have a completed Romulan faction all programmed for you when you get an answer and the regularly scheduled surveys posted to the forums. *smirk*

  • Ian Reinard

    Hey, just FYI. There is a slight error in the show notes. While Cryptic might be looking to LOTRO for how to do a paid expansion, War in the North was a completely different game than LOTRO, not an expansion. But I would agree that the thinking is still sound.

  • Cronon666

    So that guy is responsible for the dreadful decor as in lack of colour what is cryptics obsession with grey? they do realise that there are other colours right??? I mean ESD and STA are prime examples of places that could use a serious load of colour like reds and purples and pastels you know to brighten the place why in the name of all that is holly does ESD STA have to be so damn dull???? were they like lets make these surroundings so damn boring???? colour is not a crime get hint so next time your spking with one of the devs please tell them add other colours on floors and walls of both ESD and STA grey is boring!!!!! some art work would not go a miss either on ESD and STA :)  

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