I’ve been keeping an eye on Heretic’s latest forum thread on the Duty Roster and there’s been some more good information posted besides the work-in-progress interface.

First, the STO team isn’t happy that duty officer names can’t be customized either, but it’s a technical limitation. I’m sure this is primarily a database issue. Because a character in STO is more than just a single individual, it’s always had more restrictions on the number of characters you could have without paying for additional slots in order to offset the higher storage costs.

The species traits I commented on yesterday will combine with a duty officer’s assignment to affect mission outcomes. Heretic give the example of “Aggressive” duty officers having a better chance of succeeding in military category assignments. Also in that same post, Heretic confirms that duty and bridge officers are completely separate resources (at least for now), so you can’t take surplus bridge officer candidates and convert them to duty officers.

Duty officers can’t be promoted and their rank contributes to the effectiveness of their passive abilities as well as the chance of success on away missions. Promotion is technically possible but not on the schedule currently. Civilian duty officers cannot be place in the active roster list, they are solely for mission assignments. Heretic give examples of: traders, advisors, and holodeck characters (which sounds very neat).

Clarification that the duty officer system is a precursor to the department head system, where you’ll be able to select a Chief Medical Officer, Chief Science Officer, etc. from among you existing bridge officers.

More on the Duty Roster
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6 thoughts on “More on the Duty Roster

  • May 14, 2011 at 6:49 am
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    STO just keeps on giving. The duty roster seems like a really neat idea, it’s a cool way to make it seem as if your ship really has a crew besides you and your bridge officers. Kind of an aside, but STO ranks as one of the most innovative mainstream MMOs we have seen for a good long while. Yet it seems to get little credit for it.

    • May 14, 2011 at 8:23 am
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      I agree on both counts (and I fixed that typo you mentioned and deleted the second comment). I think there’s three reasons why, STO doesn’t get much credit for innovation.

      First, there’s the Trek fans who wanted/expected a fully fleshed out virtual world, rather than a game. There’s a multitude of reasons for that group such as not being able to play the game from your bridge and not having multiple players crewing a single ship.

      Second, STO was launched too early for most players, and that’s something a lot of players can’t/won’t forgive anymore. There were a lot of people hitting max level within a week or less of launch and there was no endgame content at the time (I think, or at least very little). People didn’t like the cartoonish astrometics-view sector space. There were no non-combat ways to advance, and crafting was very basic. Of course all of this has been substantially improved in the first year, and (I’m guessing) there were financial and contractual issues requiring them to launch when they did.

      Third, there’s the Cryptic haters. Players who were disappointed in Champions, who don’t like the hybrid subscription/cash shop model, who hate Bill Roper and by extension any place he’s ever worked.

      Unfortunately, I don’t think there’s much they can do about the first or third groups. But I think the Featured Episodes have brought back a lot of the players who were disappointed at launch.

    • May 14, 2011 at 12:49 pm
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      @Yeebo that is what I’ve always thought. The bridge officer/ability system is more innovative that people give it credit for. The flight mechanics and space combat system is also something we’ve never seen before. But as much as gamers constantly cry for innovation and revolution in our MMOs, does Cryptic ever get noticed? It’s a bit unfair, to be honest.

      • May 16, 2011 at 12:54 pm
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        That’s the thing about gamers, most don’t know what they want they just know they want something else.

  • May 14, 2011 at 12:46 pm
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    Someone’s just going to have to make a nice and handy little flowchart for me when all this is finalized. I love the duty officer feature and can’t wait until it comes, but these minute details and changes coming in with each update is giving me a headache.

    • May 16, 2011 at 12:58 pm
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      I think it’ll be a little easier to understand once it goes live and all the details are finalized. For right now, I would just think of it as a hands-off and time-based way to earn more passive bonuses like what you get from completing Accolades, as well as a way to get small rewards.

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