Star Trek: Online

At level cap you keep getting bridge officer skill points but not personal skill points. I doubt they will allow players to fly Borg ships. How do you balance that? I mean I am not a big proponent of "balance" at all costs in MMO's but a Borg ship is a bit much.

 

The skillpoints you would have gotten are converted to BO skillpoints in addition to normal BO skillpoints.

 

I'm liking the game so far

the hardest part for me is creating a character that I like, and actually want to level up. So far I've spent most of my time in the character creator trying to come up with something that's not bland . . .

(most MMOs suffer from limp character creators)

 

Which are also kinda wasted, because by this point, all the BOFs you have are maxed out, and you've even probably retrained them to better skills and maxed THOSE out. I suppose you eventually get a new BOF, but since there are a limited number of slots, and I've also got about 20 potential BOFs waiting in queue to join me, the points aren't worth much.

Besides, I'm kinda partial to my original crew. Since they've been respec'ed anyway, they all have the powers I want for them, and I've got a couple of different load-out options depending on the mission or ship configuration I'm flying.

Would have been nice to get at least a FEW more character skill points, as you only get enough to fill about 50-60% of the bar, so plenty of areas you can't upgrade, and then you've got a ton of BOF skill points instead and nowhere to put them...

 

I'm trying to change my viewpoint toward my original boffs at the moment.
I got kind of attached to them as well, but really they are little more than any other gear you cary around.
And if you compare your original boffs, most likely common whites or green at the most, to the ones on your waiting list, those will have visibly better passive skills and buffs and usually better original skill training. Blue's and purple's come often enough with rare level III skills you wont get otherwise.
So what I am trying to do is, dismiss the old and make the new ones just as interesting or even more interesting characters.
If you don't want to see the attention you gave them earlier go to waste, you can always transfer them to other (lower level) captains who can still benefit from them.
I think this is what the devs really intended for them originally.

We could even start a BOFF exchange here on the board, where you can post officers you like to sell or, something I would immensely prefer, treat them as a fleet resource for new or low level fleet members and offer them for free.
Unfortunately we can't stuff them in the bank like hand phasers

 

If they did that, then when the new levels were added you'd immediately skip some of them, thus meaning all the content for those levels was effort spent only on users who aren't at the cap yet, not the users who are.

Of course, the vast majority of the active subscribers don't have a single character at the cap yet per Dan Stahl, but still; I'd hate to have them spend six months writing content for levels 62-through 66, then the minute I log in I'm level 66 and missed it all.

Save your Boff skill points up. You'll need them for when you can promote boffs to higher ranks, you'll need them for boff respecs when powers change and you want to take advantage of the changes, and you'll need them when some new boff is so incredibly awesome that you decide it's time to bench somebody (or promote your First Officer to a playable Captain, which is coming probably this year.)

 

Apart from the fact that I'm vehemently against the current BOff rank system (being able to promote all of them to 'Commander' just to max out their powers, because there's no rank hierarchy, is really annoying), this brings up an important point:

Promoting a 'First Officer' to playable-Captain status would imply that we have a 'First Officer' to begin with. Which we don't, since it's impossible to have true assignments like 'First Officer', 'Chief Engineer', 'Flight Controller', etc.

...unless, of course, we're getting the beginnings of such assignments, so we'll have 'First Officers' to promote!


If that's the case, I'll be a very happy man - anything that moves the game mechanics closer to representing how things work on the shows is a good thing, and sorely needed, IMO.


Next up: true Bridge Officer functionality (...ok, hope springs eternal!)!

 

I'm wondering if we can mail our BOFF's to our other characters. I have a Pakled female (purple) that is sitting in my waiting list that I don't want to use on my current VA character.

I've recently updated a few of my old BOFF's with newly acquired characters - Borg BO (from KA), Gorn BO (from Diplomacy), and Reman BO (from FE).

 

I think you can mail unassigned officers no problem.
if they are already assigned you can only transfer them directly from one captain to the next so you need an intermediary player to help you.

 

Which is coming this year.

First Officers, department chairs, crew assignments that affect gameplay; it's all in the works.

 

A-ha!

That's interesting news - by assignments/department chairs, would that mean we're finally getting closer to having working stations for Ops, the Helm, the Weapons Console, and so forth?

That would be fantastic, because at present, our 'bridge officers' are little more than a security detail - they don't actually 'work' on the bridge like a true crew would.

 

I don't think you can. I tried to do that with the Breen officer I didn't really care for (never used him, was just going to give him to my new toon), and after reading up on it (and also trying to mail it off), wouldn't work.

Can you mail regular items to your other characters? Haven't played with it a lot, but haven't had luck with that. Sucks that you can't have a common bank for your various characters. Annoying to no end when you get a cool new kit or something, but it's for a Science officer and you're a Tactical. Or you fly a cruiser, and get nothing but rare cannons...

Only way I could see all that could work is if we used a Fleet Bank tab as a placeholder, and you make a rule that you only withdraw what you personally put into it. That way, you could deposit something, change characters, and then log in and grab it back, and we make the rule you don't take shit that's not yours. Actually, I'd really like that feature if we've got the spare cash for it. Otherwise, you have to give it to another character and trust them not to steal it from you in the interim...

 

They are definitely not planning any kind of "fly your ship from the bridge", ever. What they're working on is a system where how you assign your people affects bonuses and crafting. There aren't a lot of details yet because it's still early in its development.

 

Flying from the bridge wasn't what I was talking about, and what you mention sounds more like the 'Duty Officer' system.

What I'm talking about is taking a ship's bridge officers, and instead of having '2 tac, 2 eng, 1 sci' or what-have-you, you can assign actual positions, like 'Ops Manager', 'Flight Controller', etc.

For example

If a ship has X amount of each type of officer, it'd be great to have the divisions/departments revised, so instead of having 'Tactical, Engineering and Science' officers with no real role on the bridge, you instead have the following:

COMMAND:

- First Officer
- Flight Controller
​

OPERATIONS:

- Chief Engineer
- Ops Manager
- Tactical Officer/Chief of Security
​

SCIENCES:

- Science Officer
- Chief Medical Officer

​

In other words, I'm talking about taking a squad of 'BOffs', and turning them into an actual Bridge crew.

 

No, you can, i've done it. but the breen officer is a special unique reward. It's bound to your character on pick up.

 

I managed to mail my Breen between Lex and Foxton originally, but I don't know if it's still possible with the new changes..

 

Yeah and it's a good way to get a full bridge officer compliment with a new character without having to spend merits.

 

Understand that the system will be an iterative process, like many other things they're working on. Duty Officers are first, but that's not the end of that. From the last Ask Cryptic:

There's more coming.

 

well what i meant for the most part is either sell the Borg Vessels at their teir status in the C-Store, for an ubber amount of Atari tokens...or since they would be so powerful cut out the damaged versions and such and start handing out the weaker ones at like tier 3 for a borg probe, then Spheres at Tier 4, Cubes at Tier 5, and Tactical Cubes at Teir 6...the people you assimilate can be numbnuts NPC's at different locations and you can choose liberated borg versions of the characters for standard new crew members when you beat certain levels if you are using a borg vessel. or atleast get assimilated versions of the other ships with enhanced speed, weapons and Defense depending on which bridge crew members you have on board. (i.e. more engineers boost speed, more tactical boost weapons, more science boost shields.)

just a possible thought to intigrate better options for the borg fans out there lol

 

What's the point then of calling your officer liberated if he has nothing better to do than fly around in Borg ships and assmiliate people?
Starfleet would never allow that.
You might as well call for the Borg as a playable faction which also won't happen.