Designing Starships | STOked 119

News

• Hearts & Minds – Friday the 13th mini-mission

• Dan Said Stuff: In defense of of Friday the 13th mini-mission by dstahl

• Ferengi Lockboxes Released – New D’Kora marauder class ship included.

• The Reman shield tooltip now indicates that it’s a part of a set – upcoming Vault event perhaps?

• Impending STF Update from Gozer (possible for April 20th)

• Drop rate for “Tech” loot increased

• New respawn timer that increases the more you die

• KA Ground  – upper base Borg must be completely killed before entering lower base

• KA Ground – optional timer will start when exiting the first room rather than upon entering the lower base. Should make it as challenging as the Infected ground optional.

• Gozer coming on next week to explain it all and talk STF loot tables too

• Big changes for the Foundry Files in the very near future

• Becoming it’s own podcast

• Will still visit STOked from time to time

• New budget for all the wigs Murphy wants (frickin’ Diva)

• Irish stepping down from Technical reviewing to focus on production but will visit

• “Spirits Of Ramok Nor” author – Alimac30 replacing Irish. Great coup for the team!

Tactical View – Friday 13th Mission ”Hearts & Minds”

• short mission – 5 to 10 minutes
• Interesting gas leak environmental hazard mechanic
• Another use for our EV suits
• Unique Doff and Lirpa rewards

Duty Officer Guide Part 2

• Best Practices & Pro Tips For Running Duty Officer Missions

• Trade in missions where you swap 5 lower quality doffs for 1 doff of the next quality level up have a small dilithium cost, check this before you complete the transaction.

• Trade in NPCs offer you the chance to receive a doff of a specific species

• Department Head / Shipboard assignments reflect each other currently which negates the need to zone into your ship to check every sector.

• Unlocking repeatable assignments is crucial to efficiently gaining CXP for the tier 3 and tier 4 ranks where the targets are 50K adn 100K respectively.

• If you pick up a rare assignment on your ship, consider posting that in the Doffjobs channel and inviting others to your bridge so that they can get that assignment too.

• Check the list of “special” Duty Officers for rare and ultra rare doffs that you may want.

• Dilithium Attainment Tips

• In the center room of ESD there is an NPC who gives Doff missions. One of these is to turn in 3 contraband to gain 2, 000 dilithium ore on a 2 hr timer per character.

• The KDF equivalent of this mission is located in The Great Hall in First City.

• Recently the 24 hour cooldown on this mission  “disappeared”. It is unknown if that was intentional or simply a bug.

• The KDF can pick up lots of Contraband from marauding assignments. Mailing those items to the FED characters on your account can allow you to run multiple version of this mission at the same time thus maximising your dilithium gains.

• The 800 day veteran reward grants access to a new assignment at the academies which allows the veterans to refine an additional 1,000 Dilithium Ore above their 8,000 per day dilithium ore refinement cap.

• Efficient Travel Tips

• Sector Space travel is your constant enemy for Hardcore Doffing. Not only do your Bridge Officers constantly ask you to warp into wrong Sectors, lots of loading screens all the time… but if you Doff a lot, you do not want to spend half that time staring at your ship crawling slowly through sector space at Warp 10.

• The Borg Engine for 5 EDC from the STF Vendor is the cheapest and STILL the fastest engine in STO.

• The Omega Force Engine gives players the ability to use Slipstream twice as often. This is not listed on the tooltip but is easily verified in game.

• Set your Drive Coil skill to at least 6, if not 9 for a solid base warp speed boost.

• Diplomatic Immunity and Raiding Party buffs from other Players will also give you Sector Space speed gains. Players have been reported to reach speeds of Warp 40 in slipstream with all these Buffs stacked!

• There is also a Personal Assignment that will buff your Drive Coil skill for one hour, make sure you have that one ready when you participate in the “Tour The Galaxy” Event (if you fly around Sector Space all the time you can just as reel in the free energy credits from that event too).

• Additional Transwarps are always nice to have, but it has a cooldown timer so the Excelsior is not an ideal solution.

• Astrometric scientist doffs on active space duty can reduce the cooldown of your transwarp to as little as 5 minutes.

• The Odyssey cruisers also give you double the time in Slipstream mode.

• That all cuts down on travel time, the more characters you play, the more important it will get to cut down on that.

• You also will need to know where you want to go. Suricata’s Star Chart may help you with that, but the ingame map is fine too, just make sure to know your sector blocks and the sector borders within them.

• Assignment Chains & Other Goodies

• These are basically a series of Doff assignments that are linked together where you must complete one mission before unlocking the next*. When you reach the end of a chain there is often a special reward such as a rare or very rare duty officer, Mark XII Consoles, unique Food Items, Player Titles and all sorts of Items.

• Mission completion is all that matters.  Success or failure is not considered.

• The most important chain at the moment probably is the Colonial chain. There is one Colonial chain for every exploration cluster, it’s the hardest chain to complete but it also has the best rewards.

• For every exploration cluster that you complete you will get one unique Rare Duty Officer and unlock a repeatable “support” assignment.

• The unlocked support assignment will give you a Very Rare Duty Officer with the same traits as the Rare Duty Officer, but only on critical success so you might need to repeat it a few times to get lucky.

• Once you complete the whole Colonial chain you will have gained 14 Rare and 14 Very Rare Duty Officers which is a great base roster to build upon.

• The repeatable Support Mission will reward “Refugees”, which on their own seem rather worthless, but they can be turned in at “Asylum” Missions. Depending on the Refugee traits, you have a good chance to get a random high level DOff (not including the new Gamma Quadrant Races!).

• You will need a lot of Colonists for these chains. 168 (per Character) to be precise, start collecting them whenever you can. If you got Energy Credits it’s a good idea to buy them on the Exchange as you need them.

• Other than that there are “Resettle Colonists” assignments which will give you 5 Colonists every time, but it can only be started every 28 hours.

• Colonists are stored separately from your DOff Roster in an extra Tab. That Tab can only hold 20 Colonists, so when you run out of space, take 5 of them and put them in a mail addressed to yourself.

• You will need a certain amount of various the commodities. There is a Spreadsheet with all the Commodities you will need and the prices in the different places, cheapest are the Freighters that fly around Sector Space. If you follow the sheet you can save 238,700 Energy Credits (PER CHARACTER !).

• If you place the purchased commodities in your Bank you will not have to open your replicator and scroll past all the food for every single assignment, which can get annoying real fast!

• If you follow the “2 of each Profession” method on your DOff Roster you will run into problems on certain steps of the chain that require Technicians and Quartermasters, so it will be better keep more of those around until you are done with your Colonial Chains.

• It is also noteworthy that Klingons can not enter Delta Volanis until they reach Marauding Rank 3 and Federation Players can not enter any of the Klingon Sectors until Diplomacy Rank 3. You can ask in the DOFFJOBS chat channel if someone can give you Diplomatic Immunity or Raiding Party.

• The Consular Authority chain was released together with the Gamma Quadrant C-Store Packs. It is the “free in-game way” to get your hands on the new Duty Officers species like Bajorans, Cardassians, Wadi, Dosi, Karemma and so on. It is the only way to get Duty Officers with the new “resolve” Trait that is required for some assignments and gives you better chances for many of the new assignments that were added with the latest Duty Officer expansion. It does NOT include Jem’Hadar, Vorta, Tosk or Hunters, these seem to be only available through the C-Store Packs.

• Biochemical Investigations: comes in 6 variants which each providing a different Gamma Quadrant commodity and completion rewards are special ground consumables. The assignment can be picked up from the DS9 zones.

• Biogenic Weaponisation: a 2 part chain that unlocks a repeatable 45m assignment that grants elevated CXP rewards over other similar short duration assignments  i.e. 98 CXP. The initial  assignement can be picked up from Klingon Academy making it KDF only.

• Children’s Toys: This 4 part assignment chain grants green, blue or purple MK XII random consoles upon overall completion. The first part gives you a “strange alien artifact” and this assignment  can be obtained in most of the Cardassian sectors. The remaining parts of the chain are then unlocked at the Science Officer inside your ship.

• Colonisation: a 7 part chain which unlocks repeatable refugee and prisoner assignments in the exploration clusters. Critical success in those unlocked assignment can reward with a rare purple Doff. Each cluster offers a different purple Doff for a critical success. The initial assignment must be picked up in any of the exploration clusters.

• Culinary Credentials: a 5 part chain which unlocks multiple repeatable assignments for elevated CXP rewards and overall completion unlocks the “Chef” and “Master Chef” titles. The initial assignment is picked up from within your ship.

• Colonial Team: comes in 4 variants with 3 assignments in each aligned to the 4 Gamma Quadrant species (Karemma / Paradan / Dosi / Wadi). Completion unlocks high CXP assignments in the Zenas Expanse. The initial assignment can be picked up in the Cardassian sectors.

• Consular Authority: a 4 part chain with 7 variants (Bajor / Karemma / Parada / Cardassia / Dosi / Ferasa / Wadi). Completion opens up a Doff exchange assignment where you can swap existing Doffs for one from the species variant you have completed. The initial assignment can be picked up in the Cardassian sectors.

• Extreme Bartending: a 5 part chain where your bartender gets to show off some skills to unlock multiple repeatable assignments. The 4th part grants the “Bartender” title and the 5th grants the “Master Bartender” title. The initial assignment can be picked up aboard your ship.

• Facility 4028 Fugitives: a 5 part chain which yields gamma quadrant commodities and rare gamma quadrant duty officers. The initial assignment can be picked up in the Regulus sector and sometimes in adjacent sectors.

• Gaming Proficiency: a 4 part chain that unlocks the “Strategema Master” title upon completion. The initial mission can be picked up aboard your ship.

• Ghosts Of The Jem’Hadar: a 10 part chain that unlocks many repeatable assignments and then provides a purple named Doff upon chain completion. The initial assignment can be picked up in the Cardassian sectors.

• Project Chrysalis: a 6 part chain that unlocks a few repeatable missions and a purple doff upon completion. The initial assignment can be picked up from the Cardassian sectors.

• “Instigate Defection” assignments can be used to pick up doffs from the opposite faction. The assignment is picked up from…

• “Extricate Intelligence Asset” can be used to pick up doffs from the opposite faction. For FEDs the assignments can be picked up in Klingon bordering sectors and vice versa for the KDF.

• “Reclaim Assimilated Borg Drones” yields a green or blue doff and the assignment can be picked up in either the Sirius or Regulus sectors.

• “Investigate Temporal Anomaly” yields a purple bartender *(Guinan Doff) upon completion is is once per character only. The assignment can be picked up in exploration clusters, Beta Ursae, Eta Eridani and Omega Leonis so far. There may be other sectors too.

• Combat Benefits With The Active Roster

• Active Space Roster – some doffs provide boosts to your space abilities, cooldown reductions or “proc” effects when those doffs are put on active assignment.

• Active Ground Roster – some doffs provide boosts to your ground abilities, cooldown reductions or “proc” effects when those doffs are put on active assignment.

• Tactical

• Conn Officer (Evasive Maneuvers) – cooldown reduction

• Conn Officer (Tactical Team) – cooldown reduction & Starship Attack Patterns buff

• Energy Weapons Officer – reduce cooldown on subsystem targetting abilities

• Projectile Weapons Officer – cooldown reduction

• Shield Distribution Officer – chance to improve shield regen & shield regen rate

• Security

• Armory Officer – 20% chance to beam in an additional turret of increasing quality [ground]

• Assault Squad Officer – 33% chance to reduce grenade cooldown timers [ground]

• Security Officer – 20% chance up to 100% chance (purple) to beam in additional security escorts of increasing quality when Security Team is used [ground]

• Engineering

• Damage Control Engineer – 20% chance for cooldown reduction with “emergency power to” abilities

• Diagnostic Engineer – 10% chance to increase ranged damage when using the Equipment diagnostics ability [ground]

• Fabrication Engineer – 20% chance up to 100% chance (purple) to beam in additional support drones of increasing quality when Summon Support Drone is used [ground]

• Maintenance Engineer – cooldown reduction for Engineering Team and a buff to hull repair

• Matter/Antimatter Specialist – chance to immobilise enemy ships when Eject Warp Plasma is used

• Systems Engineer – chance to shutdown additional subsystem when using Viral Matrix

• Technician – 10% chance to reduce cooldowns on all bridge officer abilities when “Aux to Emergency Battery” is used

• Warp Core Engineer –  20% chance to buff all 4 power levels when any “Emergency Power to” ability is used

• Operations

• Deflector Officer – chance to reduce cooldown on all deflector abilities after they are used e.g. Scramble Sensors / Viral Matrix / Jam Sensors / Gravity Well / Tyken’s Rift / Science Team / Tachyon Beam

• Explosives Expert – chance to create an additional mortar when Quantum Mortar is used  [ground]

• Flight Deck Officer – chance to reduce the cooldown timers on all hangar bays and boarding party abilities

• Hazard Systems Officer – buffs damage resistance when Ramming Speed or Brace For Impact are used

• Quartermaster – cooldown reduction to Combat Supply when used  [ground]

• Sensors Officer – severely debuff enemy damage output when Sensor Scan is used

• Tractor Beam Officer – applies a shield drain when Tractor Beam is used

• Transporter Officer – chance to remove hostile boarding parties when Transfer Shield Strength is used

• Science

• Astrometrics Scientist – cooldown reduction on all Transwarp abilities

• Biologist – none

• Botanist – none

• Development Lab Scientist – reduces cooldown timer and buffs Starship Shield Emitters

• Geologist – none

• Gravimetric Scientist – chance to create an additional Gravity Well when used

• Photonic Studies Scientist – reduce cooldown on Photonic Officer & Photonic Shockwave when used

• Research Lab Scientist – none

• Warp Theorist – debuffs the turn rate of targets when Tachyon Beam is used

• Medical

• Biochemist – add a damage resistance buff when Science Kit abilities are used [ground]

• Counselor – none

• Doctor – chance to increase maximum health points when Medical Tricorder or Vascular Regerator is used  [ground]

• Medic – chance to beam in a medic who will heal you and your team when a Hypo is used  [ground]

• Nurse –  chance to beam in a medic who will heal you and your team when a Hypo is used  [ground]

• Civilian

• Advisor – none

• Friday the 13th reward: Advisor – reduce psionic powers cooldown by 15% / reduce recharge time by 15% (typo?)

• Bartender – none

• Chef – none

• Colonist – none

• Diplomat – none

• Entertainer – none

• Prisoner – none

• Refugee – none

• Trader – none

• Miscellaneous:

• Facility 4028 Biochemist Reward Doff – when added to your active ground roster allows you to use your replicator to produce Ketracel White for your Jem’Hadar bridge officer.

• CXP Boosts – obtained from C-Store or lockboxes provide you with a way to double the CXP rewards from your missions up to a cap e.g. 1K or 10K

• Helna Duty Officer – taken from a popular foundry character created by Havraha of Podcast UGC fame. You can pick up this homage doff via the colonial chain in the Arucanis Arm.

• Helpful Resources:

• DoffJOBS Spreadsheet

• DoffJOBS Trekker

• DoffJOBS in game, global chat channel

• STOwiki – always needs new contributors

Artwork Credit

Ambassador Class U.S.S Yamaguchi